Paradise Lodge (6 page)

Hilary returned and marched up to the bed, took Miss Granger by the chin, calmly twisted the denture back in and pulled the sheet over her face.

‘Is she dead?' I asked.

‘No, I just can't stand to look at her,' said Nurse Hilary, and she laughed and pulled a face at me. ‘Only joking—yes, she's gone to Heaven, Lizzie.'

Hilary flicked the switch on the ripple mattress to ‘off' and the slight hum died away and the two ladies called out, ‘Is she dead, then?' and, ‘Thank goodness!' etc.

I couldn't help but make a tiny cry sound. I was sad about the death. I always was. Even the merciful ones. I still had silly ideas about people miraculously recovering and laughing about it the next day over a hearty breakfast and all the nurses and relatives saying what a close thing it had been.

‘Go and get yourself a cup of tea and a fag,' said Nurse Hilary.

In the kitchen, Matron had literally just breezed in and still had her headscarf on. They'd had a lovely time, her and Mr Greenberg, at the Weetabix factory and she was extolling the virtues of a cereal breakfast in place of bread and marmalade and praising the countryside. I didn't want to spoil it with the sad news straight away but Nurse Hilary came in behind me just as Matron was telling a tableful of staff about Northamptonshire's gently undulating hills.

Hearing this, and seeing Matron all smiles with a sample box of Weetabix and a tin of sucky sweets, Hilary put her hands on her hips.

‘Sounds as though you've had a lovely day, Matron, I'm so glad.'

‘Yes, we did, thank you–' Matron began.

‘Well, the news here is that Granger's dead,' she snarled. ‘Died with her fucking teeth in and no relative.'

‘Another eighty quid a week gone,' said Nurse Gwen. ‘I thought she had another year in her.'

There was a general sadness but no one reacted philosophically. None of them imagined it being their granny, mother, sister or themselves. No one seemed to care that this woman—who'd once been someone's baby girl, who'd seen Captain Scott leave for the Antarctic, whose favourite colour had been peacock blue and whose dressing gown had caught fire on a candle one winter's night when they still had candles—was dead and gone. And the last image in her mind having been the waxwork model of Lester Piggott.

Hilary and Sally-Anne left the kitchen to do whatever you have to do to a recently deceased person.

‘By the way, Brixham's shit the bed,' barked Hilary from the door, ‘Lizzie had better come and sort her out.'

I followed them to Ward 2. A screen had been put round Miss Granger's bed and Hilary and Sally-Anne went behind and clanged around a bit.

I laid an inco-pad across the seat of the communal wheelchair and helped Miss Brixham out of bed.

‘Where are you taking me?'

‘To the bathroom,' I said. ‘You've had a little accident.'

Matron appeared in the bathroom and said quietly to me, ‘It's a bad omen. I bet Mr Greenberg's going to go and die on me. I bet you he's next, and I need to get out of here before this place closes down.'

‘No, he won't,' I said, just meaning to shut her up.

‘I'll give you a pound note if he's not the next to go,' she said, looking gloomy and folding her headscarf again and again, into a tiny, tiny square.

‘He won't die,' I whispered.

‘Ah, something'll go wrong,' said Matron.

‘What could go wrong?' I asked.

‘He'll either die or, worse, get better and leave,' she said. ‘I'll give you a pound note if he doesn't.'

‘Right,' I said.

‘And you give me one if he does,' she said.

After cleaning and powdering and putting Miss Brixham in a clean nightie, I began wheeling her back to the ward. On the way, a traffic jam had developed in the corridor behind Hilary and Sally-Anne struggling to carry Miss Granger in what looked like a cricket bag. They'd not secured her properly and it looked as though she might tumble out. She didn't, but an arm flopped out and the owner, who was drifting along with a large Campari and soda, looking for Lazarus, let out a high-pitched scream.

Paradise Lodge, for all its faults, started to feel like home—the comings and goings, the bickering, smoking, eating, laughing—and with no one guarding the biscuits, and only Miranda telling me smoking would stunt my growth and poison the air. There was all the hair-curling, making-up and bathing, and I was being paid.

I loved the feel of the place, the big sunny windows, and the height of the ceilings, the space, the smell of fruit pies baking and talcum powder in the air, the sound of the owner's sandal buckles as he mooched drunkenly about, the endless perfect denture smiles and the dreamy niceness of the old ladies, their constant murmuring, their gladness to see me and their tales. And that the simple act of singing ‘Play That Funky Music' while I dusted caused such happiness among them.

I loved the continual, ongoing gossip. Eileen telling us her technique for relieving her boyfriend in the cinema without their seat-neighbours suspecting. Not in a rude way, or to be aggressive or showy-offy, but to have an amusing conspiracy against men and their keenness to be relieved in cinemas. She told us about one boyfriend of hers who'd unexpectedly begun relieving himself during the film
Jaws
at the Odeon, Longston. Eileen had been so shocked she'd had to leave before the end (of the film).

I very much liked hearing this stuff (the relieving of men etc.) but only in a group scenario and not if the speaker was looking at me. I used to listen intently but look down and sharpen the end of my lit cigarette by twirling it round and round in the ashtray. To this day a full communal ashtray reminds me of Nurse Eileen spitting into her hand during
Airport
.

But things were not getting better at school. The next time I turned up for classes Miss Pitt sent for me. She had a spiteful manner.

‘How are you, Lizzie?' she asked.

‘Fine,' I said.

‘I gather from your tutor that you're frequently absent from school,' she said. ‘I shan't beat about the bush, Lizzie, I
am
, as warned, going to have to remove you from the “O” Level group starting from the autumn term unless you make dramatic and immediate improvement, attendance-wise.'

She talked in paragraphs, like teachers sometimes do. It wasn't a conversation.

I'd been ready for a little row with her, but hadn't expected this full-blown threat. I told her straight away I'd turn over a new leaf, attendance-wise. And I meant it.

‘I have never seen a letter explaining your absences,' she said, ‘so I would like a letter of commitment from your mother—stating that she will support your getting to school, every day.'

‘
OK
,' I said and left the office.

Later, I wrote a letter of commitment—from my mother (blaming herself for my absences)—I made her sound like a busy mother with sore gums and breasts and signed off like this:

Anyway, I hope you'll accept my sincere apologies for asking Lizzie to take the occasional day off school. The thing is, I have had mild periodontal gum disease due to having a baby recently (an afterthought) as I think you know (much against my fiancé's wishes) and Lizzie has very occasionally had to look after it while I am at work or at the dental hygienist's etc. but all the while reading a wide range of literature with a view to taking her ‘O' Levels next year.

She will turn over a new leaf, attendance-wise, from September. You have my assurance.

Yours, etc.

Elizabeth Vogel (Mrs)

PS
: I have found a childminder.

I dropped the letter into the Deputy Head's office the next day and, instead of going home from school, I called in at Paradise Lodge. I needed to ask Mr Simmons for advice on the mind of his stepdaughter.

‘Your stepdaughter has threatened to chuck me off the “O” Level course,' I said. ‘Do you think she means it?'

‘Yes,' said Mr Simmons, ‘she is quite hard-hearted.'

And by ‘quite', he meant ‘very'.

‘I hear she would prefer you to be at home, and not here,' I ventured.

‘Yes, and yet the harder the wind blows the tighter the man holds his coat around himself,' he said and laughed.

Mr Simmons had made a speedy convalescence after his operation and though I disliked his stepdaughter, I had to agree that his prolonged stay at Paradise Lodge was probably not entirely necessary, medically speaking. In fact, Paradise Lodge seemed like an expensive social club.

It suited us well, though, and Mr Simmons soon became an important member of the team. He'd get up early and help with the breakfasts and then he'd go for a little walk in the village and come back with the newspaper. He'd help out with assorted day-to-day duties, such as cooking and pie-making, and did his best to keep on top of the paperwork. He was especially helpful in handling the owner when he was sad or drunkenly ranting at the poor patients—a thing he'd started to do since his wife left. Mr Simmons seemed more like a friend than a patient, diverting the owner from his various troubles and preventing him slipping further into depression via trips to the Piglet Inn, games of backgammon, and talks about how difficult marriage could be, and business. Mr Simmons would say, ‘The show must go on!' and things like that to gee him up.

One morning, Daybreak, the owner's gelding, came trotting into the courtyard without the owner on board. He didn't try to tell us anything with his hoof, he just went to his hay net, tripping a bit on his trailing reins, and munched away, regardless of his poor owner.

It was Mr Simmons who searched for and found the owner and helped carry him home on a plank of wood, because, in spite of a hurt back, he wouldn't agree to an ambulance. Mr Simmons had known where to look for him because he'd listened to all his mumbling nonsense about the places he liked to go for quiet contemplation. And that had saved his life. Later that day the owner called us all into his quarters and gave a gloomy talk from the chaise longue, warning us that we were ‘on the skids'. I put it down to his general discomfort.

Almost every day the staff talked about the owner's state of mind. We also talked about the Owner's Wife and wondered what had become of her—whether she'd ever come back and whether that would be a good thing. Or not. Had she started up the art school? And if so, where? Some said St Ives in Cornwall because of its associations with the arts. Others felt it more likely she'd gone to Italy to run watercolouring holidays—where you might paint an olive grove in the morning, have a bottle of wine and a knees-up by the pool in the afternoon, followed by lasagne, then bed.

We were careful not to tell the patients that the Owner's Wife had gone—and to fool them, the owner would dress up occasionally in his wife's old Dannimac and headscarf and dash past the day-room window with a trug of something.

And then one day we had news of her. And if it hadn't come from Miss Tyler—our most able-bodied and mentally reliable lady—we shouldn't have believed it.

It was teatime and Miss Tyler began on an anecdote about her favourite hat, a solid turban in duck-egg and ruby shot silk.

We all knew the hat—she almost always wore it and, if truth were told, it was getting a bit raggedy. Everyone had something to say about this hat, for it was extremely handsome and had a touch of something exotic. That day Nurse Eileen picked it up and put it on. She looked amazing, like Elizabeth Taylor. I couldn't try it because my nurse's hat was pinned on too fiercely, but everyone else did and all looked equally fetching in it—it suited everyone, patients and staff alike. The turban was declared a ‘wonder-hat' and we all vowed to steal it away etc.

‘Well, I almost lost it this week,' said Miss Tyler.

‘Oh, no,' we all said, not being able to imagine her without the duck-egg turban.

‘Yes, I was visiting a friend at the new nursing home—Newfields, in Longston—and I forgot to pick it up when I left, and I was just getting into my taxi when I saw the Owner's Wife—our dear Owner's Wife—running out into the car park with it in her hands. It was most definitely she. She asked me how we were all getting along.'

‘What?' we all said.

‘She has taken over the nursing home. She's bought it with a business loan and refurbished it with council grants. She's the owner,' said Miss Tyler. ‘And Nurse Dee-Anna's there too.'

‘So who is it rushing past the window in the Owner's Wife's mackintosh, then?' asked Miss Boyd.

‘That's the owner pretending to be her so we won't know she's run off,' said Mr Freeman. ‘Either that or the chap's lost his marbles.'

And it was true. The Owner's Wife hadn't gone to start up an art school at all. It was much more exciting and treacherous than that. She'd opened Newfields—a rival, purpose-built nursing home with all mod cons, including safety flooring and corner-to-corner handrailing. Plus being situated on the outskirts of Leicester (Longston side) and on both the County Travel and Midland Red bus routes, making it handy for frozen food supermarket Bejam, the Pork Pie Library, the Odeon and a huge Co-op that sold everything from tinned peas to toilet seats.

As soon as the truth was out and confirmed, everyone could suddenly see what an utter bitch she was. And they stopped blaming the owner for making her life hell. They blamed her and only her and they devised all sorts of versions of how she'd planned it all along. How she'd let Paradise Lodge slip into a state of near collapse before abandoning ship with her lesbian lover (Nurse Dee-Anna) and how they'd set out to ruin us with their perfect nursing home with all its sly and spiteful extras that would appeal to anyone with a relative to dump and shopping to do.

Miranda snatched the news for herself and, gasping, suddenly remembered that the Owner's Wife had tried to recruit her for the dastardly new venture. Miranda was lying, though—I could tell because she did a false yawn afterwards.

The badness of the Owner's Wife became the number one favourite thing to gossip about. Some stories were mundane: she fertilized the raspberry bushes with urine-soaked horse manure, and this caused the owner chronic one-year-long tummy-ache and meant him constantly having to dismount Daybreak to go behind a bush on long hacks.

And some were wild and vivid: she was a nymphomaniac who used her vagina to gain power over the owner, only to brush him aside once he'd begun to suffer with brewer's droop. She wasn't just sex mad like a normal nympho—with her it was a sickness of the mind and all to do with power and control, expressed via refurbishing the house to make it like a hospital.

It sounds unkind but it was understandable—the staff had all loved her so very much before she left and their feeling of abandonment turned that love sour. It always does. All the tiny tales of evil made them feel better about being left behind. My little brother had felt like this about our divorced father. He hadn't wanted to hear how great he was, why would he? He was the head of a whole new family now and someone else's father. It's always better to think the thing you lost is worthless.

Secretly I still liked the Owner's Wife. Other tall women I'd known had always stooped slightly to bring themselves down an inch or two. She didn't, though—she had stood up straight as if she intended to fill the horizon, which she did, like a soldier trying to unnerve the enemy or a goalkeeper flapping his arms about to make the goalmouth seem smaller, or a bird puffing its feathers up to look bigger, and so on and so forth. I tried to remember this—her occupying of the space—because it was honestly one of the most powerful things I'd ever seen, woman-wise. And it was the reason I'd gone into high wedges. Not because I was copying Miranda.

My loyalty to the Owner's Wife had influenced the way I went about my day-to-day work from day one. Before she left, she asked me to keep a particular eye on Lady Briggs in Room 9. It had seemed like nothing at the time.

‘You will make sure Lady B isn't forgotten—up there—won't you, Lizzie?' she'd asked.

And I'd said of course I would make sure.

I soon understood that she'd said it because she was about to leave and that in itself was strange and troubling. The burden of it—on me alone.

And so it was that, right from the start, I'd been up to Room 9 numerous times every day and waited while Lady Briggs tried for a wee in her commode—which she often didn't manage. There was something a little bit spooky about her. Partly it was her long, cobwebby hair, rheumy eyes and ghostly demeanour, and partly it was a click that came from her mouth—not a side-of-the-mouth click that might go with a wink of the eye, but a hard click as if the tip of her tongue was striking the very centre of the roof of her mouth and it was made of brass. The click was regular and intermittent like the tick of a clock. But mostly it was the knowledge that Lady Briggs had been at Paradise Lodge for seven years and had never once left her room. She'd had no visitors except occasionally the owner (or so she claimed) and once a bogus window cleaner who'd tried to steal the antique ablutions jug from her washstand in 1975 but had been caught by a nurse sunbathing on the fire escape. Lady Briggs saw hardly anyone—unless they'd come to put her on the commode—she never listened to the radio or watched telly or read a book or a newspaper. She'd just sat there, for seven years, clicking and thinking. She was a recluse. And they're always spooky.

Anyway, we were supposed to be keeping the Owner's Wife's departure a secret from the patients, so as not to unsettle them, and even though the true facts behind her departure had now been blurted out, over tea, by Miss Tyler, we'd been asked to keep mum. On one particular day, though, I'd gone up to see Lady Briggs after coffee and she'd been trying for a stool and we were having our usual commode-side chit-chat, and she'd said such intuitive things about the atmosphere at Paradise Lodge—a sense of things not being entirely all right. And even though I knew I wasn't supposed to, I told her that the Owner's Wife had left and opened a rival nursing home with all mod cons in a better spot etc.