Paradise Lodge (24 page)

The building work began. All staff had annoying extra jobs so that the owner didn't have to pay the builders to do things we could do. Having the builders around was most inconvenient. For instance, no cars could park in the courtyard because the paving stones were being levelled and fixed on the drive. And the builders constantly needed cups of coffee and cigarettes and made the nurses feel uncomfortable. None of us wanted to go anywhere on our own because of the feeling of embarrassment when they said things and laughed.

One day I was given the job of moving the contents of the larder into the morgue, along the corridor—it had to be done
that
day as the dry-lining of the larder was due to start the next morning. I began but, because the builders were in and out and couldn't help but shout things at me (‘Nurse, Nurse, prick my boil' etc.), I decided I'd do it after 5 p.m. when they'd gone home.

Then at 5 p.m. we were all called to the kitchen to have pancakes with lemon juice and sugar to celebrate Eileen's birthday. Sister Saleem gave her an eyelash- and brow-tinting kit and someone gave her Tweed by Lenthéric, which she was spraying around. Carla B gave her a strawberry pendant because she was known to love strawberries and I gave her a tiny tin of La Sirena anchovies with a beautiful mermaid illustration and foreign writing that I'd found in the larder. I knew it was worth having because my mother had bought an identical tin from Casa Iberica in Leicester and displayed it like an ornament even though it only cost 20p. Mike Yu was there—peeling vegetables and doing odd jobs to prepare for the builders—and he was embarrassed not to have a gift for Eileen.

‘You do so much for us, Mike, it's more important than any gift.'

After the pancakes most of us—though not Mike or the owner—went to the Piglet Inn for vodka and gin drinks. As we left, I heard Mike quietly ask Miranda what time she'd be back and should he wait for her—to do some kung fu practice.

Her response, ‘For the last time, Mike, I'm not fucking doing it,' made Mike look so sad.

I never liked going into the pub. I was always questioned by the landlord about my age and had to swear on my mother's deathbed, out loud, in front of all the blokes at the bar, that I was eighteen, and then he'd burst out laughing. I hated the pressure to have vodka and lime and how, even though I sipped it really slowly, it made me red in the face and unable to think straight.

A few of Eileen's old friends turned up, including Nurse Gwen. Feeling out of my depth, I turned and chatted to Miranda even though I hated her for being so mean to Mike.

‘How's the kung fu demo coming along?' I asked.

‘I'm not doing it. I'm sick of Mike,' said Miranda, taking a swig of her vodka, ‘and all that Chinese stuff.'

I shrugged.

‘He'll have to find someone else,' she said.

‘Have you dropped him?' I asked.

‘Yeah, probably, I don't know, I'm torn between him and Smig,' she admitted. She scrabbled about in her bag, ‘Look, I've made a pros and cons list, because honestly, Lizzie, I just don't know which way to jump.'

Even though I was mildly drunk, Big Smig came out yards ahead of Mike on the pros and cons front. Mike only having his future foil container business and a possible life in America going for him (Miranda, like me, was wary of his strong family bond). Big Smig had, first and foremost, a love of sexual intercourse and all types of sex, a sense of adventure, humour, an interest in reggae music, motorbikes, skiing and amateur dramatics, plus a wealthy family (with weak family bonds) and an unusually attractive penis.

‘I don't know what to do,' Miranda whined.

Then, with perfect timing, Big Smig appeared at the door with his helmet on and she went off with him.

I left the pub quickly before anyone could engage me in conversation. And I went back to finish clearing the larder—running, so that I wouldn't miss Mike Yu. I'd decided that if Mike was still there, I'd offer to stand in and do the kung fu dance instead of Miranda. I had to dash, so as not to miss him and then change my mind. The drive was out of action so it was difficult to know whether or not he was there, but scanning the street outside Paradise Lodge, I couldn't see his car.

I shuffled into the back corridor and gazed into the larder at all the giant tins and jars I had to move. I wasn't in the mood to finish the job but I had to—the builders would arrive at eight in the morning. Now I'd had the vodka, the job seemed almost insurmountable. I wandered out to the kitchen and asked the night nurse if she'd seen Mike. And if not, to see if she might be able to give me a hand. And if not, if Mr Simmons might be around.

Mike had been around, she said, but she hadn't seen him for a while. Mr Simmons was watching a drama and the night nurse was doing her nails. I went back to the larder and moved a few 10lb tins of apricot jam and some marrowfat peas into the morgue. I put the sweet things (tinned fruit, grapefruit segments, fruit pie fillers and jams) along one wall. And savoury things (tinned stew and mince to the left, and then soups) along another, and the things in-between (like flour and rice) in the corner.

If Mike was still here, waiting for Miranda, he'd soon give up and leave and when he left, he'd have to walk past the morgue door. I stopped caring about doing a good job and just waited to see Mike, and the more he didn't walk past, the more I wanted him to, and the more I daren't turn away from the corridor. I kept nipping to the kitchen to see if he was there, but he never was.

After a while, I heard ‘Kung Fu Fighting'—the track for Mike and Miranda's story-dance—faintly playing, drifting down the backstairs. When it finished, it started again. It made me feel really sad for Mike. He must be upstairs in the nurses' quarters, rehearsing on his own, waiting for Miranda to turn up, not realizing she'd sped off on the back of Big Smig's Kawasaki Z1B 900 and wouldn't be seen again until the next morning, with today's eyeliner still on.

Mike's ordinary, everyday expressions made me want to sob; his hopes and dreams, his tenderness towards his grandfather made me want to sob; his hair made me want to sob. He had the nicest hair I'd ever seen on a man. It was straight but had a spring in it that meant it didn't flop down over his forehead but stood away and danced around his face in clean wisps. And strands of it reached down his neck. It was cut into a sort of kung fu feather cut, but because he had such good face bones it looked wonderful. His eyes were black and his lips were like an elongated heart. He was a work of art that you could just look at and look at. He was like a teenager's drawing of a boy. He was actually rather like David Cassidy—a calm, smiling, Chinese David Cassidy who'd never pose in a cowboy outfit or with his shirt off.

And sitting there, on a tin of marmalade, in the morgue thinking about Mike's unusual hair—knowing that Miranda wasn't going to do the dance with him at the open day because she was going to do a Barry Sheene demo in hot pants with Big Smig—I did
actually
sob.

I went to the kitchen to blow my nose on some kitchen paper and make myself a cup of coffee. The night nurse was fiddling with the breakfast trays. I asked her if Miranda had come in. ‘No,' she said, ‘the day nurses are all at the pub.'

I went to the sluice and checked my face. I looked perfectly normal and actually the drunken pinkness was a good look on me and I seemed on the brink of weeping. I crept into Ward 2 and saw Lady Briggs sitting up in bed looking at her papers with a torch.

‘Miranda has gone off with another boy,' I told her, in a whisper.

‘I think you told me this already,' said Lady Briggs.

‘Yes, but she has actually dropped him now,' I said.

‘Is this about the Chinese horoscopes again, dear?'

‘Not really, well, yes, sort of.'

‘I suppose it was inevitable,' said Lady Briggs, ‘and good for you, since you like him, hmm?'

‘I'm going to offer to do the dance with him,' I said.

‘The what, dear?'

‘The kung fu dance,' I said, ‘at the open day.'

‘Oh, yes, I see,' she said.

‘What do you think?' I asked.

‘He won't be surprised,' she said, smiling and taking my hand, ‘I've told him all about you, how much you care about him and how well suited you are, and he was thrilled.'

And though her words were ridiculous, they gave me a real boost.

‘Oh, you know Mike, do you?' I laughed.

‘We've spoken on the telephone,' she said.

‘Well, thanks,' I said, ‘wish me luck.'

I knew the kung fu dance was a love story involving a girl and a boy and a flock of magpies. And I knew the soundtrack off by heart. I was going to step in and I was going up to tell Mike, now.

Giggling quietly, I followed the soft music upstairs to the nurses' quarters. It was coming from the spare room, as I expected. I didn't want to burst in, mid-song, and embarrass Mike (mid-kick) so stood outside and waited for the song to fade out—which, if you know the song, you can imagine now. I giggled again slightly at the thought of Mike and, as the song faded away, I knocked gently on the door.

The song started again straight away and I realized Mike wouldn't hear the knock, so I opened the door. It took a while to understand what I was seeing.

It was Mike and Sally-Anne.

‘But she's dead inside,' I thought.

‘Sorry,' I said, ‘I was looking for volunteers to help with the larder clearance.'

‘Bad luck,' said Mike, and Sally-Anne giggled.

Walking home along the lane, I noticed the hedge was as thick as it had been all year. Still in full leaf and with some berries. I loved this hedge—over a mile of blackthorn, hawthorn and some elder. The ditch on the field side was like an empty stream with a single strand of rusty barbed wire—unneeded now since the hedge had done so well. Nothing would get through it. Unless a speeding car swerved to avoid a collision with an oncoming vehicle and came off the road. That would go through it.

At home I cried, which my mother said was only natural after such an ordeal.

‘What exactly were they doing?' asked my sister.

‘Oh, God, they were in some kind of cross-legged, facing-each-other thing,' I said.

‘Naked?' asked my sister.

‘Yes, completely naked,' I groaned and grimaced and relived the whole fucking thing, ‘naked, except for all her hair and his bandanna.'

‘Definitely having sex?' she asked.

‘Yes,
definitely
,' I said.

‘Like this?' My mother showed us a sketch she'd done using Carrie Frost's fail-safe people-sketching method.

I looked closely. ‘Yes.'

‘The lotus,' she said, ‘it's in
The Joy of Sex
, very middle-aged.'

I had a couple of days off work and school and read the rest of the George Orwell and started and gave up on
Julius Caesar
.

I had a long talk with my mother and sister. I decided it was time to start making an effort.

What happened then was odd and yet obvious. Lady Briggs had gone to bed early one night and hadn't drunk her Horlicks. The night nurse—on that occasion Carla B with her cowlick, cleavage and clompy shoes—found her dead on the 9 o'clock round. I was shocked to hear it. I thought about our last conversation—when I'd been tipsy and planning to approach Mike Yu about the kung fu dance.

Carla B was upset and full of self-recrimination at not having picked up on Lady Briggs being poorly. She'd seen her at eight and had asked if she'd like to have her Horlicks warmed up and Lady Briggs had declined, saying she ‘hadn't the puff to sit up' and then at half past eight she'd told Carla B she felt as though she'd danced the tarantella and maybe she should return to Room 9, and half an hour later she was dead.

‘Well, she's in the morgue now, with all the tins and jam jars,' said Eileen, who had come to take Carla B off for a private pep talk. I sat in the kitchen and rested my head on the table. The owner came in—I could tell it was him because of his jangling buckles—but I was too embarrassed to look up. A chair scraped and a lighter clicked.

‘I'm sorry you're upset,' he drawled.

‘Well, she wasn't paying any fees, so I suppose it's not that bad for the business,' I mumbled, ‘but I really, really liked her. I didn't realize how much until now.'

‘I can't say I liked her, but I'm bloody sad the old girl's gone,' said the owner.

‘I liked her a lot,' I said. ‘It's like when a very important dog has died long ago and you know you'll never have such a glorious dog and you take other, subsequent dogs for granted and don't realize just how much they've come to mean to you.'

I told him how the memory of our dog Debbie had eclipsed poor living Sue until the night she ate the sock and might have died. And we all felt differently about her after that.

‘Except Lady Briggs didn't sick up a sock and come back to life,' I said. ‘She died, full stop.'

‘Well put,' said the owner.

The solicitor arrived then and the owner patted my arm and went to speak to him in private. Eileen came back and told me the owner's mother had also died, the day before. I wished I'd known and could have offered my condolences.

Paradise Lodge felt strange now with no Matron and no Lady Briggs and Mike having done the lotus sex-position with Sally-Anne. Sister Saleem did the morning routines almost single-handedly and at coffee break said the kindest, nicest things about Lady Briggs. ‘She was a marvellous lady,' she said, ‘and we must be very happy that she made it downstairs before she died.'

‘She was up there all that time, though,' I said, ‘just waiting to come down but taken for a recluse.'

‘Yes,' said Sister Saleem, ‘it was awful, but let's remember that she made it down and she had a fine time at the end.'

The staff treated me slightly as if she'd been my relative—I suppose because I'd always answered her bell. Even Mike Yu approached me to offer his condolences.

‘She was a great lady,' he said, ‘and very intelligent and caring.'

‘Yeah, she was great,' I said, rather snappily, and went to walk away.

‘You know, Lizzie, it was Lady Briggs who told me that Miranda and I weren't compatible,' he said, ‘and that Sally-Anne was in love with me.'

‘
Sally-Anne
?' I said. ‘How did she even know Sally-Anne?'

‘Well, she called her the quiet little nurse,' he said.

Approx one week after Lady Briggs had died, it seemed like an ordinary day but Jeremy Hughes, the owner's solicitor, arrived and went into a meeting with the owner.

Sister Saleem made a tray of hot drinks to take through but the milk had gone off and went into globules on the surface of the coffee and no amount of frantic stirring disguised it. She made another round of coffees but found that every bottle of milk had turned because the fridge had been accidentally unplugged for the Philishave and no one had noticed. So I had to run over to the Piglet Inn. They couldn't give me a pint but gave me some sachets of Coffee-Mate.

The moment I got back I was sent into the owner's sitting room with four cups of coffee/Coffee-Mate. I put the tray down on the low table and was about to leave when the owner asked me to stay and told me to take a cup of coffee. I turned and saw then that the Owner's Wife was also there, taller than ever in sling-backs with heels and piled-up hair and tendrils.

‘Hello, Lizzie–' she said, and she went to introduce herself.

But I interrupted. ‘Yes, I remember, hello.'

She touched the back of her hair and told me she'd used Linco Beer shampoo ever since I'd put her on to it. She said it to break the ice really—but I must say, her hair did look healthy.

‘It looks very healthy,' I said.

‘Are you still using Linco?' she asked.

‘No, I've switched to Silvikrin lemon and lime for greasy hair,' I said, which wasn't true but I didn't want to use the same shampoo as her any more.

She looked crestfallen. I felt guilty.

I took a sip of coffee. God, the Coffee-Mate was good. It had transformed the slightly stale catering granules into a strong but creamy cup. It was gorgeous.

‘Isn't the Coffee-Mate delicious?' I said.

The Owner's Wife pointed to Jeremy Hughes; he was trying to get our attention.

‘So, your mother,' he began, nodding towards the owner, and then, looking at me, ‘that is, Lady Briggs, has made her wishes very clear in her will.'

And that was when I first knew that Lady Briggs was the owner's mother. No one said it like that but I put two and two together and then asked, just to make sure.

‘Are you saying that Lady Briggs is—was—the owner's mother?'

And the Owner's Wife, with a puzzled little laugh, said, ‘Yes, of course she was—but you knew that, surely?'

And I said, ‘No, I didn't, I don't think anyone knew that.'

And the Owner's Wife laughed again and the owner looked sad.

‘I'm sure everyone knew—didn't they?' said the owner, grimacing.

‘They didn't,' I said, ‘they really didn't. I wouldn't have said all that about it being like loving a dog, and sicking up a sock, if I'd known she was your mother,' I added.

The Owner's Wife gasped.

‘No! It was a lovely thing to say,' declared the owner, and him saying that made me want to cry.

The solicitor began his talk. I looked around the room, to keep my tears at bay. It must have been built and furnished according to the highest aesthetic law. It was so perfect. The shape (a chubby rectangle) and the central fireplace, with three long settees in a horseshoe around a low table in front of it. The high ceiling with pretty plasterwork and a central thing from which the loveliest chandelier hung. Glass droplets, not diamond-cut, not fancy-looking but like water, and not grand but just beautiful. Tall panelled doors, diagonally opposite each other. The dual aspect giving the room pretty light and French windows, closed now for privacy, leading out on to a secret glade. The wobbly old glass slicing the view, of fifty different greens and yellows and oranges, into segments.

‘
Did
everyone know?' the owner asked his ex-wife.

‘I'm sure they did, Thor,' said the Owner's Wife.

‘Does it really matter?' asked Jeremy Hughes.

‘I don't know,' said the owner.

‘No, it doesn't matter, she's dead now,' said the Owner's Wife.

‘She told me she was the first patient here?' I said.

‘That's it,' said the owner, ‘she was the bellwether, she helped us get patients in the beginning.'

‘Oh, yes, she did,' said the Owner's Wife, ‘she showed prospective patients around and said how super it was, dear Allegra.'

The couple had a little talk about her and I gleaned that Lady Briggs had been the first patient at Paradise Lodge because she'd already lived there. It had been her house. It was her money that started the business. It was she who executed the trust fund that later denied the business money when it was being run badly. It was Lady Briggs who denied the Owner's Wife the right to modernize. And then, it was she who'd demanded a business manager be taken on after the Owner's Wife had left and things had hit the skids. It was she who'd taken on Sister Saleem. And it was she who'd put Mike Yu off Miranda and told him about the quiet little nurse who liked him.

Jeremy Hughes was eager to get on with the business in hand and coughed.

‘I just want to run through your late mother's—Lady Briggs'—wishes as specified here.' He held a wodge of papers. ‘Firstly, as far as they pertain to Lizzie Vogel.'

I blushed.

‘Lizzie, Lady Briggs wished for you to have her collection of books to help with your studies—a marvellous collection of novels and a rare Audubon. She also left you fifty pounds towards your education—should you still be in education at the time of execution—or to be used as you wish.'

‘I hope you love novels?' said the owner.

‘I'm actually reading the second novel ever to be written at the moment.'

‘Oh, what is it?' asked the Owner's Wife.

‘
Moll Flanders
,' I said, ‘by Daniel Defoe.'

‘Oh, didn't he also write
Robinson Crusoe
?'

‘No,' I said, ‘he didn't.'

The Owner's Wife smiled at me but I'd really gone off her now, so didn't smile back.

‘Thank you,' I said, looking at the owner, ‘I don't really know what else to say.'

‘The books are mostly here, in the sitting room,' Jeremy Hughes gestured behind us to a wall of bookshelves, ‘and on the shelves in the drawing room.'

I gazed at the books. I should have been grateful but I only felt panic and embarrassment at the thought of lugging them all home in a bin liner in Danny's pram and then, I don't know, shoving them in the garage.

It must have shown in my face and Jeremy Hughes said I didn't have to take them immediately, or in fact ever, and that Lady Briggs had written that I should choose the books I wanted and not feel obliged to take them all, or any. The disappointing (for them) truth was that my mother owned a similar collection—to which I had full and free access—but I didn't say anything and let them enjoy the gesture.

The solicitor turned away from me then and spoke to the owner. It seemed Lady Briggs had left some money plus two flats in Leicester and a house in Norfolk, most of which went straight to him, Harald Anderssen, and some bits and bobs went to the Owner's Wife, including a tiny watch that she'd already been given and a special painting of some fruit, which I had previously assumed Nurse Eileen had done, it being so out of proportion and wrong-looking.

Lady Briggs had left a small cottage in the next village, ‘Myrtle Cottage', to Bridget Marie Monaghan, a distant cousin, who the owner said he'd have a heck of a job tracking down. ‘I doubt her name is even Monaghan these days.'

The Owner's Wife had never heard the name before. ‘Bridget Monaghan,' she said. ‘I didn't know you had a distant cousin called Bridget, Thor.'

The three of us stood about while Jeremy Hughes talked us through the ins and outs of the will in the most boring way and asked for my postal address and then said I could go back to work. I went back to the kitchen and told Sister Saleem about my inheritance.

‘What a lovely thing,' she said and stroked my head.

Afterwards, while Jeremy Hughes talked more with the owner, the Owner's Wife popped into the kitchen to say hello to Sister Saleem and Eileen. Eileen was frosty, which was fair enough.

‘Have you been into the day room to say hello to the patients?' Sister Saleem asked her.

‘Er, no, I wasn't sure I should,' said the Owner's Wife.

‘Oh, yes, please do,' said Sister Saleem.

The Owner's Wife seemed so reduced suddenly. I realized I didn't like her one tiny bit but because I felt sorry for her I went with her to the day room. The patients were having their coffee and biscuits. I could see from the colour, they'd got the Coffee-Mate too.

‘We've got a visitor,' I said, quietly, and braced myself for a whoop or two, but none of them seemed to remember her, except Miss Tyler.

‘Oh, hello, are you back now?' she asked.

‘No, no, just a flying visit,' said the Owner's Wife.

It was so embarrassing I couldn't stay and watch and I scuttled back to the kitchen. Sister Saleem sent me back with another cup of coffee for the Owner's Wife. But when I got through there, she'd gone.

Later, I questioned Eileen and the others. Had they known that Lady Briggs was the Owner's Mother? And not a single one of them had. They were as shocked and troubled by it as I was.

The day before the wedding day, my mother and sister dashed into town to Green's the Jeweller to collect Mr Holt's wedding ring, which had been engraved with a secret love message. And, according to my sister, my mother had forgotten what the message was and it was a total surprise when she read it.

It was this: ‘Shall we?' Which I thought a bit much and obviously sexual and therefore private.

And on the way home they'd called in at ‘Fresh Blooms' and bought tons of orange and yellow chrysanthemums and kaffir lilies and picked armfuls of foliage from a railway siding.