Down to the Sea

by Sue Lawrence

  Chapter 9

  1982

  Rona sat at the desk in the office and looked up at the clock. It was four o’clock. She’d been working all day putting the folders and files in order in new filing cabinets. It was only a week till their first residents arrived and the bedrooms were all finished, en suites gleaming, beds decked in crisp new bed linen. She kept thinking of her granny and what she would have wanted if she had been in a home and not in their house for her final years. The only old folks’ homes around were awful; Rona used to visit them with the school choir and sing to the residents. As well as the dark corridors and air of sadness, she also remembered the smell: cabbage and disinfectant. Wardie House would be fresh and light and the only smell would be freshly baked cake.

  Everything was going according to plan except that she still had a shortage of carers. Rona had signed up three nurses, which she hoped would work well initially, one being on duty overnight. Any nursing shortfall, Craig could deal with. He’d been only two terms away from graduating as a doctor before that incident they never talked about. But they needed at least eight carers, enough to cover night duty, and she only had six. She was interviewing another man at 4.30 p.m. Hopefully he’d be suitable even though he had little experience of working with the elderly.

  Rona went out into the corridor and admired the dark panelled walls and carpeted floors and the lifts with their shiny stainless-steel doors. She couldn’t help but feel proud. They had worked so hard over the past four months and now it was almost ready. She’d be glad to get rid of the workmen after all this time; she was forever making them teas and coffees and enduring the constant hammering and banging. And even though they stored their paints and equipment in the cellar, there had been debris and dust everywhere in the main house for months. And then, over Christmas, the pipes had frozen so they had a water leak which was another expense and more disruption.

  But now it was all finished. At last everything was ready, still smelling of fresh paint and everywhere spotless. They had eight residents arriving the following week. This would leave them four spare rooms which they would fill when they were fully up and running as Wardie House Care Home. Theirs was still a new concept, placing the elderly in a home that was more like a luxury hotel with nurses and carers. In addition to medical care and support to dress and bathe and the provision of all sorts of activities, it was Rona’s intention to make residents’ entire experience excellent. All the meals would be special, served on crisp, white tablecloths with flowers on the tables, delicious food and wine or sherry for those who wanted. These were people nearing the end of their lives – why not make it joyful? Of course, it meant they had to charge hefty fees, so only wealthy residents could move in, but hopefully when the council saw how successful it was, they’d allocate grants for people less well-off.

  Rona had hired a cook the week before and she seemed very good. The housekeeper in charge of cleaning and laundry came highly recommended from the local school which surely boded well.

  Rona stood staring at a patch of wall. Had she hung the Victorian portrait too high? Some of the old folk might have difficulty craning their necks. She was stretching up to remove the picture when the phone rang. She dashed back into the office.

  ‘Hello, Wardie House Care Home?’

  ‘Hi Rona. I’m not going to make it home tonight after all. Sorry.’ It was Craig.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The weather’s really bad in Inverness, snow everywhere. What’s it like down with you?’

  Rona looked out of the window at the light dusting of snow on the lawn. ‘Nothing much at all. So when will you get home?’

  ‘As soon as I can. Been a good day up here though, really interesting course. I’ve learned loads about running a care home.’

  ‘Suppose it’s worth it, then.’ Rona looked outside at the darkening winter sky. ‘I thought I might leave some lights on overnight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, remember the security man’s not coming to fit the burglar alarm till tomorrow morning.’

  ‘God, yeah, I’d forgotten. You could do, but you’ll be fine in the annexe. Anyway, you’re a country girl. Intrepid. Frightened of nothing.’

  ‘It’s not me I’m worried about, it’s all the expensive equipment we’ve got in here.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Rona. Any burglar attempting to remove a bath hoist deserves a medal. Not exactly easy stuff to steal.’

  ‘I suppose so. And we won’t have any medicine to steal till the nurses start next week. Let me know how you get on tomorrow.’

  ‘Will do.’

  ‘What’ll you do tonight?’

  ‘I’ll be heading for the bar soon. Nothing else to do.’

  ‘Craig, don’t drink too much. Please.’

  ‘’Course not. And Rona, you’re the one who’s to look after yourself. No lifting anything heavy.’

  ‘Yes, doc.’

  ‘Love you.’

  Rona went back into the corridor and into Room 1. There was the bed, chest of drawers and wardrobe. It could almost have passed for a hotel until she walked into the shower room and there were safety rails and hand grips everywhere. They had followed all the guidelines and had already had an initial inspection so hopefully everything would run smoothly. She wished she had a little more energy, but another early night would help. She could have a nice relaxing bath, then bed at nine. She was so sleepy at the moment, she felt she’d like to hibernate.

  The doorbell rang. Rona rushed along the corridor to open the door to the man who was here for the interview.

  ‘Hello there. Mr Devine? Come into the reception room.’

  Rona thought about the interview as she lay in the bath. It had gone pretty well: Ian Devine was nicely turned out, articulate and obviously intelligent. He had been a gardener and a labourer in the past and had worked as a hospital auxiliary, though only for a year. But he seemed not only caring and genuine, he was also well-built, strong enough to help with lifting any elderly residents if some of the younger girls were unable. She had provisionally taken him on, although she still needed to see the references he said he’d tried to obtain that morning without success. Surely he could just start meantime, no harm in that.

  ‘I’m willing to try my hand at anything,’ he had said.

  ‘Toilet duties, serving teas, leading exercises classes?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure, why not? I don’t understand the way some people treat old folk as second-class citizens, they’ve got to be treated with respect. We’re all the same. Just that some need a little bit more looking after.’

  Rona got out of the bath, dried herself, then made a mug of milky cocoa. She opened the door of their annexe into the main building where everything was pitch dark and felt reassured by the silence. The main building was all locked up. Rona closed the annexe door and locked it too. She gulped down the cocoa, brushed her teeth then went through to the bedroom and into bed. She flicked through a magazine for a couple of minutes then put the light out.

  Rona fell asleep almost immediately but woke with a start to a grinding noise. Was it a key in the lock? She pushed herself up onto her elbows to listen.

  ‘Craig?’ Her voice was a whisper.

  There was no way he could have got home in the snow. She slipped out of bed and peered round the bedroom door. The main room was still. Through the gloom she could see that the front annexe door was locked as she had left it. She must have been dreaming. No one apart from Craig had a key. ‘Pull yourself together, Rona.’ She went back to bed and to sleep.

  Some time later in the night Rona awoke from another dream in which there was the intermittent sound of foghorns booming. Was it actual foghorns down on the Forth? There was a woman in her dream, with long auburn hair, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, all in black. She had said nothing but had flitted in and out of vision as she chased a large freewheeling pram in the fog. Rona patted to her right for the bedside light then squinted at the clock. 2.15 a.m. She tilted her head to o
ne side on hearing another noise, an indistinct, faint sound – unless it was just the gentle flurry of the wind against the windows?

  Rona got out of bed, pulled on her dressing gown and reached up to shut the top window in their bedroom. She was freezing. She went to the main door of the annexe, unlocked it and went into the main hall, patting the wall for the light switch. She looked up at the high window above the door to a narrow shaft of moonlight and shivered. She strode across the hall to the main building. It was bitterly cold, the wind outside whipping blasts of chilly air under the doorway. She made a mental note to get draft excluders and adjust the timer on the heating to stay on all night when the residents moved in. She should have put something on her feet but didn’t want to go back till she found out what the noise was.

  As Rona padded along the corridor, putting on all the lights, the noise seemed to grow louder, though it was still indecipherable. Was it a clicking noise? A creaking noise? Or was it the sound of wheels? Grasping the banister, Rona climbed the stairs to the top landing. She stopped for breath. She was so unfit – no chance of a daily run these days. The wind was battering the windows upstairs and shadows moved across her path. She looked out from the large window on the landing at clouds dancing across the moon.

  Rona thought back to the phone call with her mum earlier that evening. She’d asked her to check in Granny’s Scots dictionary for the word ‘Winzie’. It turned out it was an obsolete word meaning ‘cursed’. In the chill of the night, as she crept along the corridor of a huge, deserted house, it was something she wished she hadn’t learned.

  Rona continued switching on all the lights and headed for the end room where the noise seemed to be getting louder. She pushed open the door to Room 12 and headed for the window which was being hammered by the wind. Why had she heard so little wind in the annexe? Of course, it must be protected by the high walls. She peered out the window at the back garden where the snow had disappeared and everything looked dark. There was little sign of fog; it was more of a wet mist. Perhaps the foghorns had been part of her dream. She stood on her tiptoes and tried to see into Martha’s garden. Was that where the noise was coming from? It now sounded like wheels, creaking wheels that needed to be oiled. She couldn’t see into the garden but as her eyes adjusted to the dark she thought she saw a faint light from somewhere, perhaps it was a torch in the mist. She blinked and it was gone.

  Rona pulled her dressing-gown collar up high round her neck. Her teeth were chattering with the cold. She went out of the room, shutting the door and putting off all the lights as she went back along the corridor and downstairs. She’d ask Martha about the strange noise the next time she called round. Rona crossed the hall, heading for the annexe. She glanced up at the portrait on the wall and realised the auburn-haired woman had been in her dream. Who was she? Was she the woman whose husband had the house built over a century before? She was turning away when she noticed the cellar door was slightly ajar. The workmen had definitely closed it after they left that morning; the wind must have blown it open. She closed the cellar door firmly, then walked back to the annexe, locked herself in and pushed an armchair up against the door. Rona headed for the bedroom and tried to shake the word ‘Winzie’ from her brain.

  Chapter 10

  1899

  Jessie stood up straight and stretched her back. She clapped her hands together to try to warm them up. She had done many hard tasks when she was growing up in her fishing village on the shore but she had never had to tackle vegetables in a hard frost. She was standing in the back garden picking off the last of the kail. Molly had said there wasn’t much left on the stalks but enough to use in the dinnertime broth. Her basket was only half full but there was no more green to be seen. Molly would have to eke out the broth with more onions from the store in the larder. One beef bone for that huge soup pan never gave enough flavour but it was all she was allocated by the butcher. Molly used to grumble after the butcher’s visit every Monday. He brought beef steaks and lamb chops for Matron and the Governor’s dinners, but no more than seven bones, one for each day, for the residents’ dinnertime soup.

  Having been accustomed to fish every day of her life, Jessie was fascinated to see the bones, different shapes and sizes, lined up on the ashet in the larder. Some even had tiny scraps of red flesh on them which Molly said became the brown meat when cooked. Jessie was only familiar with herring and mackerel – and her Ma’s fish soup made from the bones of fish gutted at Newhaven market. There had been quite a to-do when the Granton fisherfolk built an ice-house beside the market the year before she left home. Ma had said it was so that the boats could stay away at sea longer and the fish wouldn’t go off. But the ice-house increased the rivalry between the fishing villages; they wanted one in Newhaven too.

  Ma had sometimes cooked a crab that got stuck in the nets. She said they were served as special treats in the big houses and taverns, but they were just a nuisance for the common fisherfolk. Jessie liked the taste of the creamy brown flesh, and even more delicious was the sweet white meat from the claws. They sometimes had oysters too. Her Pa used to bring home oysters to eat as no one else wanted them and she remembered the wonderful smell from The Peacock Inn along the shore on the day they were cooking their beef and oyster pie. She had dreamed of one day going in there and tasting it. But now she never would. She was stuck in this place forever. And though herring was not a treat – they ate it nearly every day – she was now salivating at the very thought of it, dipped in oatmeal and fried in butter for tea.

  As she looked around at the fine layer of frosty white over the solid earth she realised how much she missed home with its familiar smell and taste of fish. Here the smells she’d become used to were Molly’s broth or porridge, nothing else. There was never fish in the kitchen, which was curious since the sea was not that far away. One day she’d been told to go up to the men’s dormitories to find Old Sandy Grant, the only one who could fix the gas lamps. Having checked there was no one about, she went right through the dormitory which was at the other end of the corridor to the women’s and girls’ dormitories. She headed for one of the tiny high windows, pulled over a chair then climbed up on her tiptoes. There, through the solid bars, she could see the sea, the wide Firth of Forth stretching over to Fife. There were a couple of tiny black dots which she realised were fishing boats. At the sight of them, she felt her eyes prick. She was blinking away the tears when she heard Old Sandy Grant’s stick striking the wooden floor. She knew she would get into trouble if she was found at the window so she jumped down, gave him the message and ran downstairs, the old man tap-tapping behind.

  Jessie was about to take the basket of kail back into the kitchen when she heard a noise and turned around. It was coming from round the back of the little lodge house, where the Governor and Matron lived. It was the sound of someone sniggering, then there was a yelping noise then silence. Jessie picked up her basket and headed over towards the lodge. As she stepped onto the path, her footsteps crunched on the thick frost. She stood still for a moment then a figure emerged from the back of the lodge and sped along the wall, heading for the main building. Jessie couldn’t see clearly enough but it was one of the boys, one of the taller ones. She was about to head back to the kitchen when she saw Bertha come round the front of the lodge house, glance furtively back, then run towards the back door.

  ‘Bertha,’ Jessie hissed. ‘What were you doing?’

  Bertha looked round, startled. ‘Oh it’s only you, Jessie. Billy said I’d not to tell.’ She lowered her head.

  ‘Tell what, Bertha?’

  Bertha shook her head and shuffled her dress around her. ‘Nothing.’ Bertha looked around again, then bolted for the back door.

  ‘Stir the soup while I’m along at Matron’s with her tea.’ Molly stood at the door, a tray in her hands. ‘And add a tiny bit more salt if it needs it. Only a little, mind, I’ve already put a bit in.’

  Jessie nodded and picked up the long wooden spoon. She stirred the soup the
n tasted. She screwed up her face. It was a bit sour, but it was maybe all the onions. Molly had been muttering all morning about the fact the kail was over now. What on earth was she going to put in her soup?

  Jessie reached over to the salt bowl and took a couple of pinches then stirred and tasted again. Yes, that was a little bit better, but still too oniony.

  Jessie got the bowls out and was clanking the soup spoons onto the tray when Molly rushed in. ‘Matron says we’ve to have dinner soon as the minister’s coming this afternoon. So hurry up and take everything along. I’ll give you a hand, then we’ll come back and carry in the soup pan together.’

  Jessie and Molly carried everything along to the dining room and set up the serving table as usual, before coming back for the soup pot and ladles. One pan handle each, they marched out of the kitchen into the corridor as the dinner gong clanged. As Jessie and Molly set the pan on the table, Jessie noticed Annie Rae slink into the room first. Soon everyone else was rushing in from the workroom to queue up in front of the serving table. After the Governor had stood in front of them to say prayers as usual he commanded everyone to eat, then swept past them all. Jessie was listening to the thud of his heavy footsteps disappearing along the corridor when she heard the first person gasp.

  She and Molly looked over towards the tables where people were pushing their bowls away. Usually not allowed to speak, someone whispered, ‘Can’t eat this.’ Others joined in with complaints.

  Matron, who had been striding up and down between the tables, yelled, ‘Silence!’ She pointed her finger at one of the men who had started the grumbling. ‘What, pray, is the problem?’

  ‘Can’t eat the broth, Matron. It’s far too salty.’