A Book at Bedtime

by Barrie Shore

  The District Nurse in her turn arranged a home visit by a representative from the Social Services (Mental Health Team) who assessed the level of invalidity benefits for which Eva might or might not qualify and who left a thirty-five page application form for Jack to fill in, in order to claim Eva’s statutory right to a Carer’s Allowance.

  The Agency Carers, now elevated to Service Providers, were obliged by Miss Nicknock to come in twos. They were identically uniformed in blue joggers and jackets as if about to embark on a work-out at the gym, which in a sense they were, for there was certainly a great deal of physical exertion involved in the business of Service Providing, as Miss Nitpick never failed to point out.

  And the cost was exorbitant. Jack’s income from the shop, never large, had dwindled to virtually nothing in recent years, and now that he was expected to pay for two Service Providers, plus Agency Fees, not to mention one-and-a-half or double time for Call-outs During Unsocial Hours, and bearing in mind all the extra equipment he had been instructed to buy, he was damned if he knew how he would manage.

  He had telephoned Miss Pickpocket to demur, to tell her that he didn’t need two carers calling, that he was quite capable of assisting Mrs Last in her duties as they had so amicably done for the last seven years.

  Miss Jackboot gave him short shrift. She informed him that the Provisionment of two Service Providers was now a Legal Requirement, that Interference in the Proper Conduction of Duties performed by her Service Providers on the part of the Service User’s Spouse, Relative or Misguided Friend (unless they could provide evidence in the form of an Appropriate Certificate of their having a National Vocational Qualification or NVQ) was Entirely Unsuitable. Added to which, she, Miss Lickspittle, had a Duty of Care to protect her Service Providers from Injury to the Person, whether Accidental or Intentional, and must at all times have the accompaniment of a Witness.

  ‘A witness?’ Jack was bewildered. ‘What on earth does she mean?’

  Eva was no longer able to facilitate the process of getting her up and dressed and was still likely to fall into a rage in which she laid about her, scratching and biting, hurling abuse. She hated the new sling and hoist, shrieked with outrage as they strapped her in and winched her up; threatened murder by knife, by poison, by strangulation with bare hands. An accident waiting to happen.

  Margaret was no lover of her employer but was at pains to defend her. ‘Say, like if one of us went and fell over or something. Like there’s water all over the floor in the bathroom, or baby oil or whatever, and one of us went and like slipped or whatever.’ She clipped Eva into her seatbelt and winched her up. ‘Or say, like, we tripped on the bathmat or something and went and cracked our heads on the toilet or whatever, so we’ve got to have a witness, haven’t we?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Like was it our fault or yours. Like was it us that sloshed water all over the floor or was it you? I’m talking accidents, Mr C.’

  ‘But if it is was my fault, whatever it was, I’d say so at once.’

  ‘You might, Mr C, most wouldn’t. And why not? I’ll tell you why not. The Law. Litigation. Culpable Injury. You see what I’m saying?’

  ‘Well, yes, but…’

  Eva was suspended in mid-air, swaying gently like a child on a swing.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh, oh…’ she wailed.

  Jack held onto her feet to keep her steady while Margaret manoeuvred the hoist to the middle of the room.

  ‘And then there’s abuse.’

  ‘What? What sort of abuse?’

  ‘Mental, verbal, physical… you name it, I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Good heavens.’

  Jack fetched the commode.

  ‘Oh-ho, ho-di-ho…’ Eva’s cries, more a bad habit than a demonstration of genuine distress, were beginning to diminish.

  ‘And that’s not the worst of it.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’

  Margaret blew out her cheeks and stretched her eyes. ‘You’d be surprised what some of these blokes get up to, dirty old sods. Whip out their willies like it was some sort of treat, like they was offering you a tube of Smarties or something.’

  She talked to Jack as if he were less than a man, like some comfortable woman companion or even inanimate, an old woollen blanket or a cuddly toy.

  Eva laughed. She was holding one arm over her breasts, the other hand covered her pubis, in a pathetic attempt to hide her nakedness. She laughed riotously as Jack and Margaret released the straps on the sling; hooted with merriment as they eased her forward and whipped the sling from behind her; cackled with delight as Margaret lowered her onto the commode.

  ‘You know what I mean, don’t you, my darling?’ Margaret spun the commode round briskly. ‘Seen one, seen ’em all, isn’t that right, my sweetheart? And speaking for myself, I wouldn’t care if I never saw one again.’

  And she wheeled Eva off to the bathroom, leaving a trail of derision behind.

  ‘All right, Mr C?’

  Margaret is a short woman of considerable bulk who is further encumbered this morning by the padded jacket she’s wearing, by a bulging shopping bag and by two packs of incontinence pads whose size and number oblige her to negotiate her entrance through the front door crabwise. Nor does she fail to notice the damp stain down the front of Jack’s pyjamas.

  ‘Oh, dear, Mr C, had an accident, have we?’

  ‘I don’t know about you, but I most certainly have. I spilled my tea.’

  Margaret has a sunny temperament and a soothing way of dealing with Eva that fills Jack with admiration, gratitude and a touch of jealousy. Her only fault is a disinclination to submit to authority. And a bad habit of bullying Jack.

  ‘Best get them off, then. I’ll put them in with the rest of the wash.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘Don’t try and get funny with me, Mr C, you just don’t suit it.’ Margaret dumps the incontinence pads at the bottom of the stairs, divests herself of her jacket and hangs it on the newel post. Meantime, a bicycle with a glaring lamp comes into the hall, followed by a young person of unidentifiable sex, wearing a helmet and an outsize pair of dark glasses.

  ‘That’s Sharleen.’ Margaret indicates with her thumb.

  ‘Hey, Jack.’ Sharleen’s greeting is sung on two melodious notes, high and low, soprano and alto.

  ‘Good morning.’ Jack presses himself against the wall to let the bicycle past.

  ‘She’s new,’ says Margaret, ‘so don’t go doing anything to upset her.’

  ‘I most certainly won’t,’ says Jack, bundling his dressing gown about him.

  Sharleen props her bicycle against the wall, switches the lamp off, removes her helmet and shakes out a swarm of multi-coloured curls. She takes a mobile phone from her pocket and peers at the screen through the fog of her glasses. Jack wonders if she has something wrong with her eyes but decides it’s too early in their acquaintance to embark on so personal an enquiry. He closes the front door and leans against it, rubbing his knee.

  ‘You want to see the doctor about that knee of yours,’ says Margaret, gathering up the incontinence pads. ‘I won’t relish the both of you stuck in your beds.’ She clatters upstairs, stops on the landing. ‘And that clock’s slow.’

  ‘I know, I’m due to wind it tonight.’

  ‘And don’t forget those pyjamas of yours.’

  Jack follows them to the bottom of the stairs and listens to the morning ritual in the bedroom.

  ‘All right, my darling?’ He imagines Margaret looming over the cot. ‘We’ve got a new lady this morning. She’s called Sharleen.’

  ‘Oh, bless.’ Sharleen joins Margaret in tuneful duet.

  ‘Well, don’t just stand there gawping like a half-wit, say hello.’

  ‘Hello…’ Sharleen sings her greeting in a triplet of notes.

  Jack would like to pound upstairs, knock their two
heads together, send the pair of them packing; but he’s tied to Margaret and her bike-riding sidekick as surely as he’s tied to his wife. So he rubs his knee and stomps off to the storeroom and on through to the kitchen, where he subjects himself to further torture by switching on the baby alarm and monitoring Margaret’s mutterings.

  ‘Right, Shar, you catch hold whilst I roll her over.’ The crash of the cot rail. ‘No, not like that, put some wellie in it, get your hand to her shoulder and hang on to her bum.’

  Oh, the pity of it, that a witless young woman by the name of Sharleen should have the right to grasp his wife (his wife!) by the shoulder and hang on to her bum. And, worse, that Eva doesn’t protest.

  ‘Funny old place this,’ shivers Sharleen.

  ‘Tell me something I didn’t know.’

  The hoist rumbles.

  Jack fumbles about in the cutlery drawer.

  ‘I mean, why’s he want to live here at all?’ Sharleen is puzzled.

  ‘Bloody-minded, that’s what.’ Margaret is disparaging. ‘Rattling round in that shop of his, making out he’s got a business to run and a wife that needs him.’

  The commode blunders and squeaks.

  Jack thunders and slams, searching for spoons.

  ‘She couldn’t care less, don’t even know who he is any more, do you, my darling?’

  Surely Margaret knows that he’s listening? Or does she think that he’s deaf? Or daft. Or possibly both.

  ‘Just slipping your pad off, my darling.’

  ‘Ergh, no, she’s soaking wet.’ Sharleen is offended.

  ‘Oh, get a grip, it’s only a bit of wee. You’ll see a lot worse than that before the day’s out, I promise you. All right, my lovely? Just slipping your sling on, my darling.’

  Bang, crash, upstairs and down.

  ‘Haven’t they got no kids or nothing?’

  ‘Not that I know.’

  ‘Ah, shame,’ carols Sharleen.

  ‘There’s this friend comes down every now and again, Miss Jones, she’s ever so nice. Dodie he calls her, damn silly name.’

  Damn silly woman. No, not silly, didactic, interfering…

  ‘He doesn’t like her, does he, my darling?’

  No, he doesn’t.

  ‘Lucky to have her, that’s what I tell him.’

  Lucky, so lucky. Oats, milk, spooned into saucepan.

  ‘Right, Shar, hang on to her feet whilst I hoist her up.’

  The hoist whirrs.

  Jack stirs.

  ‘He should put her in a home, that’s what Dodie says.’

  Damnable Dodie. Eva’s best friend, Dorothy Jones, who arrives with relentless regularity, bringing hampers from Harrods stuffed to the brim with sustaining meals and unwanted advice. Diabolical Dodie, with whom it seems Margaret is now as thick as a thief.

  ‘Put her in a home, that’s what he should do. Get himself into sheltered accommodation, poor old bugger, before he falls off his rocker completely.’

  Before he does what? The porridge begins to boil. So does Jack.

  ‘But does he listen?’ Margaret drips with the resignation that years of caring for people who couldn’t care less if she cares or not have taught her. ‘They’re all the same, silly old sods, have to cling on to their independence and to hell with all the rest of us.’

  Spoon hurls across the room, spattering porridge. He clicks the switch on the baby alarm. Speak now, loud and clear.

  ‘And to hell with you too.’

  He switches back to listen again.

  Waits.

  Silence from the baby alarm.

  ‘I heard that, Mr C.’

  Flick the switch. ‘And so you were meant to. I’ll be damned if I ever put Eva into a home. And as for sheltered accommodation, I’d rather die.’

  There. That’s telling her. He switches the baby alarm to off, sets the porridge to simmer and escapes to the shop.

  He stops in the doorway in the dark, breathing the papery, peppery smell, listening to the shift and creak of the shelves, the shuffle and sigh of the books and, whether imagined or not, their gentle sounds unruffle his anger. He can forget the chaos upstairs when he’s here, forget about Margaret, the hoist and the incontinence pads, forget even Eva for a while.

  He switches the light on and looks about with a sigh of relief, recognition, greeting. He knows each book on every shelf, mourns each one that is sold like the loss of an old friend; condoles with the pathetic volumes that sit unsold on their shelves year after year, like refugees that nobody wants.

  This is where he is happy, this is his home.

  And yet he still feels a stranger, only minding the shop while Bob is otherwise occupied, gone to a book sale or house clearance; still thinks that if he turns quickly enough he might catch Bob playing chess with the Reverend Bright, or the Great Man admiring the bust of himself by the side of the till; same old till, carved in chrome, tarnished, dented, squatting at the end of the counter, that Eva had called the Malignant Dwarf; same old bust with the chip in its chin that has been in the shop since Jack was a boy.

  How long ago? Eighty years, nearly eighty years, since he’d arrived, trembling with fear, on that first Saturday morning.

  Saturday, 14th May, 1927

  Verity Alley was a narrow cut from the High Street through to Market Square, wide enough for a one-horse trap to get through or a motorised van of small proportions; but a cart-and-two, or one of those new mechanised lorries belching smoke, grinding their gears, were obliged to stop in the High Street to unload, a source of much aggravation to the Council of Castlebridge Town but of great satisfaction among the traders, who ran hither and yon holding up traffic and taking far more than necessary time to check their deliveries, load up their handcarts and consider the problematical question of pedestrian transport on to the stores, hampered as they were by the urgent requirement to stop and gather in huddles for the exchange and updating of the latest gossip.

  Saturday was market and the town was thronged. Jack raced up the High Street, dodging traders, shoppers, rickety carts, skidding the corner into Verity Alley, where he slowed down to an idling walk, keeping his eyes to the pavement as if there was nothing to interest here. There were only a dozen shops in the alley, all of them small with only one window apiece and a single door; each with a display of goods stacked up on tables outside, designed to waylay customers on their way through to the market: butcher, baker, grocer, ironmonger, pawnbroker, cobbler. Jack stopped in an accidental sort of way in the ironmonger’s doorway and peeped at the shops across the street: haberdashery, laundry, pharmacy, chandlery… and the one in the middle, taking up space where there once were two, with a door set back from the pavement and a window on either side.

  Bob’s Books.

  Tarnished letters on grimy fascia.

  Sole Propt. Rbt. Pride. Est. 1895.

  Incomprehensible.

  The door behind him crashed open and the ironmonger came out, wrestling a table before him. Mr Bashem, big-bellied, bad-tempered. ‘Get out of here afore you feel the back of my hand.’

  Jack skedaddled out of his way across the alley, stopped on the pavement in front of the shop.

  Bob’s Books.

  It was a friendly name, a welcoming name, suggesting a kind invitation to step inside and meet the proprietor, to browse for a while without obligation. Except that the door was shut and the blind drawn down, with a sign in the middle, hanging askew. Closed. Should he knock? Was there a bell he should ring? But what if the goblin came out? The hunchback goblin that lived in the cellar with eyes made of glittering glass and hooks for hands; the goblin that lay in wait in the dark, licking his lips, ready to pounce on unwary little boys, gripping them tight, dragging them down to his filthy domain, boiling them in his bubbling cauldron, gobbling them up for his goblin tea.

  He skulked in the d
oorway, trembling with fear; edged round to the corner of the window and peered in, ready to flee the moment the goblin appeared. But there was nothing to see, only the edge of a bookcase disappearing into the murky shadows beyond, otherwise stillness and silence. So he sauntered round to the window front and gazed in, boldly now, like a customer inspecting the goods for sale. A row of plaster heads was set on the sill, serious men, grey dust gathering on their sleeping lids, in the whorls of their ears, adorning the hair of their mighty beards. An ancient globe of the world stood in one corner, coloured in bronze, lettered in black, and a skull in the other, that seemed suddenly to turn and grin at him, all terror and teeth.

  Oh, and then didn’t he nearly scuttle off for his life, run away to the safety of home, only to be caught by the second window on the other side of the door, where a more easeful picture presented itself. An actual picture, a painting in a gilt frame, set on an easel with a set of books on a shelf below, bound in green leather, lettered in gold. The books were impressive to see, after all, was this not why he was here? To tidy the books, to dust them, to keep them safe; to read them perhaps, to learn their magic. But it was the picture that drew him. The picture of a very old man. How pink and speckled he was, what an enormous nose, how bushy his eyebrows, how long his thumbs; and how startled he looked, how rather sad as he gazed into the middle distance, just as Jack did at school when he should have been working out a difficult sum but was actually miles away in another world, dreaming unimaginable dreams of a future. He gazed at the face, wondering who the old man might be, whether he was real or whether he was any old man, all old men, with the wisdom of age and the sadness of the world in his eyes. He looked down at the row of books on the shelf below and tipped his head to one side to read the titles, thinking he might discover a clue to the old man.