Riotous Retirement (9 page)

“Yes, I have been listening but I didn’t catch your name,” Terry said.

“Well I know that because I haven’t given it yet,” and Terry could hear a loud sigh. “I’m Mrs. Hay, Mrs. Audrey Hay and I live at number 4.”

Terry was now fully informed and knew that all he had to do was check up on the lady at number 48 whose name he could find out from the records. He was anxious to get off the phone with Mrs. Hay!

“I’ll try to ring her or go around to see her,” Terry explained. He expected that would satisfy the old biddy but he was very much mistaken. He almost fell off his chair when she yelled down the phone at him.

“You will not do that young man. You will not ring her and you most certainly will not visit her. If you do, she will know that I have been talking to you about her. You will not do that do you hear me?” and suddenly the phone went dead in Terry’s ear.

Okay then, what the hell am I supposed to do now? Terry thought. Well no, I can’t just do nothing, can I? He got out the map of the village and located villa 4, Mrs. Hay, and villa 48. He discovered it belonged to a Mrs. Brown who also lived on her own. But there were no large trees in the area of Villa 48 so what could possibly have gone wrong? She was probably just in the shower when Mrs. Hay had telephoned or had the television up too loud or not heard the phone for any number of reasons. He would leave it to the morning.

As the evening wore on Terry could not shake the thought of Mrs. Maggie Brown from his mind. He pictured the poor woman sitting in the shower, shower still running and the lady totally unconscious or lying on the kitchen floor having pulled a heavy pan down on top of her or perhaps she’d had a heart attack—no, he had better phone her now. As his hand went to the phone he suddenly realised it was 10.30 pm and far too late to disturb the lady who, provided she was not on the bathroom floor, would by this time have very sensibly gone to bed—and that’s what he should do now.

Young and confident he might have been for the past few days but now Terry was a nervous wreck—so much so that he could not sleep. He could not get this lady’s welfare out of his mind. Bugger it, he thought. He got up, got dressed, took his large umbrella and at approximately 1.30 am went out into the night to walk to villa 48.

When he arrived there he was half expecting an ambulance with lights flashing, perhaps a police car in attendance, but no, it was not like that at all. The night was pitch dark, the wind had died down and all that could be heard was a gentle but steady rain. The house was in complete darkness and, oh God, how he wished and hoped that Mrs. Maggie Brown was in bed. But of course there was nothing he could do and he was no better off. He returned home and went back to bed.

Terry slept fitfully until about 5.00 am by which time he could stay in bed no longer and, without thinking, he put his trousers on and went straight to the phone and rang Mrs. Brown’s number. He just had to know if she was all right. He had been a fool. He had thought about the problem all night and now knew that what he should have done immediately Mrs. Hay slammed the phone down was to go to villa 48 on the pretext that he had to check the water pressure or something and no one would have been any the wiser.

The phone rang and rang and rang. He should hang up. No he shouldn’t, she would be coming to the phone now! Okay he will hang up now and just ring for an ambulance! But suddenly the phone was answered.

“Hello,” said a very feeble voice and Terry was immediately relieved and terrified at the same time. He slammed the phone down. What the hell did he think he was going to say to this lady at 5.00 o’clock in the morning: hello Mrs. Brown, you don’t know me but I was just wondering how you were? or it’s a beautiful morning, I’m the new manager and I just thought that all residents should be up and about, appreciating this beautiful new day!

Mid-morning Terry was in the office even if it was a Saturday. He was determined to get on top of this job. A lady resident came in and Terry immediately introduced himself.

“I’m Terry. I’m the manager filling in for Helga while she is on leave,” he explained.

“I am Mrs. Brown and I live at number 48.”

Terry’s heart skipped a beat but he managed to remain cool.

“And how can I help you, Mrs. Brown?”

“Well it’s the telephone. I had a call in the middle of the night and when I got out of bed to answer it there was no one there. Most annoying, and I just thought I ought to report it, just in case anyone else had reported such calls. This sort of thing can be very annoying you know.”

“No, no, nobody else has reported any calls like that, but I can assure you I will look into it. Let us hope that it was just a one-off call, someone made by mistake,” Terry suggested.

The following week the rain and wind returned to Burnside retirement village. The beautiful trees swayed and branches were under increasing strain due to the unusually violent movement and increased weight of water. Some snapped and fell. Terry, Alex and the gardener were again busy clearing village roads and keeping an eye on the trees they thought might collapse altogether. It was a worrying time for a new trainee manager on his first posting.

Terry was kept busy by villagers phoning and advising him of what had to be done to specific trees close to their particular property. They were not requests. They were generally demands or orders he suddenly realised! Bloody marvellous, he thought to himself, how a bit of wind and rain suddenly drew everyone’s attention to the trees that they paid little heed to in normal times when all they did was appreciate their shade. 

The problem was, how did you respond to an impossible demand regarding one tree about to fall on one resident’s house, an emergency in their eyes, which it  might very well be, but at the same time attend to similar requests coming in from every second resident?

All the time Terry was trying to hold to the RPI maxim ‘never argue with the clients, just move on, always move on’. He was making promises to come out in the wind and rain and inspect particular trees from one end of the village to the next. It was the only way he could get off the phone.

He had tried valiantly to make notes and work on an order of who he was to see first, second and so on, but the phone calls kept coming, he couldn’t take notes on one call because Alex had come into the office to tell him something which he had already forgotten, and then there was another call!

He gave up. He stopped taking notes and just fobbed the complainants off with anything—he wasn’t arguing, he was just moving on. And then he was getting calls from people who had called him half an hour beforehand. That’s when he told his secretary to just tell all the callers that he was out. He’d had enough.

He was standing there in the main office reception area when the outer door opened and a huge gust of wind literally blew this lady complete with her wheelie walker right into the office. There was no introduction, no handshake, no greeting took place whatsoever.

“There is a huge tree branch right across my drive and I would like it removed right now.” The lady made this statement standing in a large puddle of water that had entered with her and dripped from her person as she stood there.

“Look, come through to my office, let me take your coat please and we can have a talk,” Terry said.

“I want that branch removed now,” she said, making no moves to take off her coat or even make any response whatsoever to Terry’s solicitous concern for her.

And suddenly it struck him and it all fell into place. This was the voice he’d heard on the phone last week on that terrible night he’d spent worrying about Mrs. Brown. What was the lady’s name again, at number 4—yes, yes that was it—Mrs. Hay. At that moment Terry also knew just how determined this lady must be, having braved the weather all the way from number 4 villa to the office with a wheelie walker.

“It’s Mrs. Hay is it not?” said Terry extending his hand, “I don’t think we’ve met, well not officially.”

“Look young man I was not impressed the last time we talked and I’m not impressed now …”

“Won’t you take off your coat and…” Terry interrupted, but Mrs. Hay wouldn’t be diverted.

“I want you to move that branch off my driveway immediately and secondly have every tree in this village inspected for safety. We are all at risk here of falling branches.  You must do this right now!” and she lifted her wheelie walker off the ground and slammed it down again to make her point.

That was when Terry lost the plot. Suddenly he had just had enough. He didn’t give a toss about the RPI course or this bloody village or Mrs. Hay or anything remotely to do with any retirement village—stuff ‘em all!

“Right,” said Terry, coming as close as he could get to Mrs. Hay without pushing her wheelie walker back into her, “tell you what I’ll do. If another tree branch falls over your driveway in the next four days that I am here, I will pay you $100, and what’s more if a branch falls on you I’ll pay you $1,000. How’s that, lady?”

“Well I …” Mrs. Hay turned and went out into the storm again, muttering about complaints and locum managers.

The locum manager spent the next four days of his stay at Burnside retirement village praying regularly about the weather and giving very serious thought to his alternate future career.

The Locum

That youth should be so bold
To consider managing Golden Old
Terry started out with ease
But lost the plot to fallen trees
He felt his future had been rolled

The Yellow Car

Alex, the Burnside Retirement Village caretaker, and Duncan were standing in Duncan’s garage admiring his large bright yellow car.

“So when are we taking this baby out for a burn Duncan?” There was no reply, just a quizzical look from Duncan. Alex then put his index finger to his ear and Duncan gave him a thumbs up and disappeared into the house. He came out after a minute adjusting his hearing aid.

“I-was-asking,-when-are-we-taking-her-out-for-a-spin?” Alex said again.

“NO NEED TO SPEAK THAT SLOWLY,” shouted Duncan, “I’M DEAF NOT STUPID!—I DON’T TAKE HER OUT THAT OFTEN ’CAUSE THE PETROL GOES THROUGH IT LIKE THERE’S A HOLE IN THE BLOODY TANK. BUT WE CAN TAKE HER OUT WHEN YOU KNOCK OFF IF YOU LIKE?”

“It’s a deal,” said Alex and gave Duncan the thumbs up, just in case he hadn’t heard.

Duncan and Alex were mates rather than village resident and caretaker. Alex regarded Duncan as a bit of a bushy and Duncan would give Alex a hand from time to time with jobs around the village. They also had mutual interests, such as ballad music, and over the last year or so since Duncan had moved to the village Alex had learned a lot about him. For example Alex knew that, confirmed old bachelor that Duncan was, he was sweet on Susan two doors along. Mrs. Susan Kennedy was a widow of indeterminate age. Refined, would be how many would describe Susan. She took great care with her appearance and had been, and indeed still was, what Duncan called ‘a looker’! He had already done a couple of little jobs on her car for her. For the past six months Alex knew that Duncan had been considering asking Susan out for dinner but Duncan just couldn’t pluck up the courage!

Duncan Stuart had been a hard worker all his life. He was from a poor family who lived in the run-down tenements (council owned large blocks of units) in Maryhill, Glasgow. After serving his two years compulsory national service in the Highland Light Infantry (HLI) in the early 1950s he knew that, if life for him was to be anything other than a local gang member, he had to leave Maryhill. He took a chance, and with his small amount of demobilisation pay he bought himself a ‘Ten Pound Pom’ ticket on a boat, in the ‘Bring out a Briton’ campaign of the mid 1950s.

In northern and western Queensland, Duncan learned to shear sheep, cut cane and came by many other skills solely by dint of his willingness to tackle anything in exchange for money. He had never had any formal training but Duncan was never short of a bob or two because he rarely spent it. He would admit to being a ‘tight arse’ as they called him in the Highland Light Infantry—and if this is your reputation within a Scottish regiment you can bet your life that this is really what you are! Not for Duncan the wasteful drinking and carousing with mates. He remembered well the influence of group behaviour on individual gang members in Glasgow where the end result of doing as the others did was all too often youth detention and eventually the prison at Barlinnie. Within a few months Duncan learned to love the healthy outdoor life in Australia that was such a contrast to existence in Glasgow.