Too Young to be Old: From Clapham to Kathmandu (Frank's Travel Memoirs, #1)

by Frank Kusy

  Maggie shot me a look of pure venom.

  ‘I fucking hate animals!’

  I rolled my eyes and sighed. If this was the Committee’s idea of filling up vacant beds in a competitive market, I didn’t like it.

  ‘You sit here, Maggie,’ I said, showing her to the dining room. ‘Lunch will be up in a minute...’

  ‘Oo’s this woman?’ snarled Maggie, eyeing one of her new co-diners with suspicion. ‘I don’t know ‘er!’

  ‘She’s a very nice lady, just like you. Her name is Miss Sherring. She used to be a Tory council member.’

  ‘I don’t like ‘er. She looks stuck up, she does. Look at the gob on ‘er – she looks like she just swallowed a lemon!’

  ‘Well, try and like her. Say something pleasant!’

  Maggie thought for a moment, and then leant forward conspiratorially.

  ‘You won’t believe this,’ she confided, ‘but I used to know Elizabeth Taylor. Oh yerse, me and Liz go way back. I used to char for ‘er when she woz in London shooting that film, the Vips!’

  ‘The “Vips”?’ sniffed Miss Sherring haughtily. ‘Don’t you mean, the “V.I.Ps”– Very Important People?’

  ‘I know wot I mean. And “Vips” it woz. Liz said it stood for “Very Inebriated Prat,” ‘cos Burton was on the piss again and couldn’t get it up in the bedroom department.’

  ‘What’s she talking about, Mr Kusy?’ complained Miss Sherring. ‘She’s making all this up!’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ I said, panic rising in my chest. ‘But look – here’s your lunch. Chicken supreme, you’ll like that.’

  ‘Fuck chicken supreme,’ interrupted Maggie. ‘It smells of peppers. I hate peppers!’

  ‘Well, just pick them out...I’ll do it for you, if you like.’

  ‘Liz hated peppers too. Gave her gas.’

  ‘Can I sit somewhere else, Mr Kusy?’ Miss Sherring demanded. ‘This woman is quite deranged!’

  Maggie’s lips curled in an ugly sneer. ‘Don’t like the company, do yer? Well, I’m telling you, you toffee-nosed bitch, me and Liz were like two peas in a pod. I told her one day, I did. I said: “’Ow many husbands have you ‘ad now, Liz? Six? Seven? I dunno why you bovvered. One cock’s enough for me!’”

  Miss Sherring moaned in dismay, and fell back in her chair.

  ‘Okay, Maggie, I think it’s time we left,’ I said, rapidly reconsidering my career in care management. ‘I have a nice little room where you can eat all on your own.’

  *

  I returned to the dining room to find Matron newly arrived and in a high old dudgeon.

  ‘I just heard what happened!’ she protested, her pink rouged cheeks puffed with annoyance. ‘The staff may be yours, dear, but the residents are my responsibility. You should have left Miss Pratt to me!’

  ‘We did try,’ I replied. ‘We rang all around the building, but we couldn’t find you.’

  ‘Well, I had my hair in rollers,’ Matron said defensively. ‘I can’t be everywhere at once!’

  All around us was confusion. The high walls of the wood-panelled dining room echoed with the scraping of chairs as some residents left in disgust at Maggie’s antics, while others clustered around Miss Sherring and tried to console her in her affronted outrage.

  In the middle of all this, Mr Parker burst in and announced to nobody in particular: ‘I’ve just had a steaming row with the Social. I’m not in a very good mood. My wife’s called three times, and wants to know why I wasn’t home two hours ago. I’ve just about had enough!’

  Everybody, even Miss Sherring, froze. Whatever was this bushy browed madman going to say or do next?

  ‘Oh, excuse me,’ he said, darting suddenly to the left. ‘Can I have a chat with you in the office?’

  The object of his attentions was Mrs Hyde, who was the daughter of little Betsy. Cool and frosty, she was as unlike her saucy mother as it was possible to be.

  ‘I’m not here very long,’ said Mrs Hyde evasively. ‘Yes, I should be getting along.’

  Mr Parker erupted. ‘Well, alright – you please yourself. If you’re not interested in trying to sort this problem out, Mrs Hyde, well, that’s it! You know, if you can’t spare a couple of minutes...I’m not bothered!’

  Mrs Hyde fluttered her eyelashes and looked injured. ‘Mr Parker! I don’t know what you’re so upset about!’

  ‘I’m going home. Now.’

  ‘I was just going to get my bag. Then I can see you.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ grumbled Mr Parker. ‘I apologise.’

  ‘I was just waiting for a wheelchair to take my mother somewhere.’

  ‘I apologise...I apologise!’

  Mrs Hyde’s voice built up to a shrill whine. ‘I wasn’t trying to be awkward...’

  ‘I APOLOGISE!’ said the apoplectic Chairman. He was so dizzy with rage that he had to grab hold of a chair to stop falling over.

  I watched as both he and Mrs Hyde filtered off in the direction of my office, and then I turned to John Gray, who had just come on the scene.

  ‘What was that all about?’ I quizzed him. ‘What’s the problem with Mrs Hyde?’

  ‘Her mum has run out of money,’ said John. ‘All the equity from the sale of her house has gone on paying her fees here.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not our problem at all, but the Social won’t pay – they only pay a flat rate of £110 per resident – and our fees are £124, so Betsy is running £14 short on fees per week. And the Social won’t take responsibility for her. So we’ve had to give her notice to quit. That’s why the Chairman’s in such a stink – imagine the bad press we’ll get if we’re seen to kick her out into the street! Mrs Hyde would have a field day with that. Our name would be mud. But what’s the alternative? A few more like her, defaulting on fees, and we’ll not be making enough money to pay the staff’s wages.’

  I stared at John. ‘How come I didn’t know about this? Did it all happen over the weekend? And why can’t Mrs Hyde pay the excess? That’s only £14 a week.’

  ‘Yes, it all kicked off Saturday morning, when you were off duty. And that’s the line we’re going to have to take. Mrs Hyde can afford it. The alternative, of course, is for poor, frail Betsy to go back and live with her. Or go into a cheaper home, and there’s not many of them nowadays. The idea of putting a borough ceiling on Social help, presently £110 a week per resident, is aimed at doing away with private homes who have been exploiting the market. But it doesn’t take into account small voluntary homes like ours. We’re caught in the middle.’

  This rang a bell. I remembered the stormy Committee meeting of a week or two before, with Mrs Teasdale raging: ‘I don’t want to admit infirm and mentally disabled people! We’ll become nothing more or less than a nursing home!’ And the Chairman shooting her down with: ‘We got no choice. We’re in danger of being closed. That’s all we’re being offered. The Social and the Council won’t subsidise people with some mobility and wits about them. They’re only going to give us wheelchair cases and basket cases from now on. Chew on that!’

  And they had chewed on that, and the result was...Maggie Pratt.

  *

  The scale of the problem presented by Maggie became evident two days later, when John Gray escorted her to a big London hospital for an appointment.

  ‘It was a nightmare,’ he reported back. ‘The moment we arrived at Leicester Square tube (*underground railway) station, we hit a problem. Maggie was terrified of the escalators. And she refused to go up them. It was about 9am on a Monday morning – just about the worst time we could have arrived – and she was deluged by a tidal wave of rush hour traffic. She just sat down on the floor at the bottom of the escalator and let everybody try and climb over her. “Help! Why don’t one of you bastards help me?” she was screaming as she grabbed at people’s ankles and trouser legs. “I’ll help you! I’ll help you!” I said. “Don’t panic!” And all she could offer was to sit on the escalator while it was going up. I told her this was impossible �
� if she got her dress caught, she’d have had it. At this point, a whole troop of school kids turned up and practically stomped Maggie into the ground on their hazard ascent. So I thought, “Right, that’s it!” and went and got the escalator stopped. On a Monday morning. At Leicester Square. In the middle of the rush hour. Can you imagine it?”’

  No, I couldn’t imagine it. It sounded like the stuff of nightmares.

  ‘So,’ he continued, ‘while this swaying mass of people accumulated behind us, I slowly took Maggie up the escalator by foot. It took twenty minutes. I don’t know if you’ve been on the escalator at Leicester Square? Well, it’s massive. I smoked four cigarettes going up it – four! And of course she was gripping the handrails on both sides with grim determination, and nobody could squeeze past her. It was bedlam.’

  I nodded sympathy. ‘But you got her to the hospital in the end?’

  ‘Oh yes, she made her appointment, but then I decided to take her for a meal. At a fish and chips place. And halfway through our meal I suddenly felt the urge to check my jacket. It felt somehow “light”. And so it was, because my wallet had gone. Somebody had pinched it. So there we were where, halfway through two meals we couldn’t pay for, with me going frantic worrying how I was going to explain it to the waiter, and Maggie howling: “Oh! He’s has his wallet pinched! Silly bugger can’t pay for the meal!’ all over the restaurant. Well, I eventually persuaded the guy to take a cheque and set off back home, groaning inside at the prospect of having to go down Leicester Square tube station again. I had to get the escalator stopped once more, to take her down it. It was dreadful! And she moaned the whole way back on the train, telling all the other passengers: “He’s had his wallet pinched! We were sitting in the fish bar, and he had his wallet pinched! We couldn’t pay. No, we couldn’t!” And I was trying to tell her to shut up or I’d throttle her, and then she got it into her head that I was trying to attack her. “He’s a devil, this one!” she started shouting. “He’s going to beat me!” And I could see all these old biddies sitting around waggling their heads. “Ooh!” they were going. “How shocking!” I tried to calm her down, and gently took her arm, but she wrested it away and flung herself to the floor. “Don’t do that!’ she began screaming. “Don’t touch me! Ooh, he’s a devil!” And all these women rushed over and shielded her from me, muttering: “Don’t worry, dear...we’ll protect you!” God, she’s a nasty piece of work.’

  *

  While I was mulling over what to do with Maggie – and it was a long, hard mull because I could see absolutely nothing I could do with Maggie – I came across her file.

  ‘Sent into care following a string of suicide threats,’ someone had written, ‘brought on by paranoic fear of the front door buzzer. Each time it went, she was sure there would be a “black man” on the other side. Never washes, smells a lot, wears the same duffle coat that she’s worn for the past 30 years, plus bright purple drainpipe slacks with stirrups under the feet. Refuses to submit this clothing to the home’s staff for washing. She is at a total loss to understand why people stare at her all the time. Was sent in by social worker after last suicide threat, when she phoned up a neighbour to announce that she was about to bump herself off – in full knowledge that the neighbour was laid up in bed with a broken back. The neighbour was just restrained from crawling out of her bed to Maggie’s aid. Maggie promptly admitted to the home.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ I silently panicked. ‘This is even worse than I thought. Whatever am I going to do?’

  *

  Just then, the phone rang and it was Brenda.

  ‘Your month is up,’ coughed my old editor friend through one of her liquorice flavoured hand rolled fags. ‘Did you get what you chanted for?’

  ‘Oh yes, indeed,’ I replied. ‘Now I’m Director of the home and everybody hates me. Plus I got the most difficult old lady in the world on my hands.’

  Brenda laughed. A deep, throaty laugh which belched forth as a single explosive gunshot.

  ‘I think it’s time you went to a meeting,’ she said.

  ‘A meeting? With other Buddhists?’

  ‘Well, you can continue to practice on your own,’ advised Brenda. ‘But you might get a quicker solution to your problem if you share it. Besides, discussion meetings are the cornerstone of our Buddhism, they’re often great fun.’

  So I went to a meeting and it was nothing like I had expected. For one thing, it wasn’t held in a temple or a monastery, but in a large, whitewashed building called The Richmond Centre in south-east London. Second, despite the poster outside saying: ‘Come to Nichiren’s meeting!’ there was no evidence of the bald old person pictured on it being present. ‘Where is he?’ I wondered to myself. ‘Is he going to shuffle in once we’ve all taken our seats? Or is he going to spring out of that big, black lacquered box everyone seems to be chanting to?’

  The answer was neither. ‘Nichiren is the 13th century Japanese priest whose teachings we follow,’ Brenda informed me when I voiced my concerns. ‘He’s not going to be shuffling in or springing out of anywhere. Oh, and that box is called a butsudan. It houses the biggest gohonzon – or supreme object of worship – in the U.K.’

  Supreme object of worship? I didn’t like the sound of that. It brought back memories of poor Jesus on the cross and the Jesuits who made me pray to Him.

  But Brenda was ahead of me. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said as the doors to the box were slowly opened. ‘It’s not a “god” or anything “outside yourself”. It’s just a devotional scroll, an aid to concentration. Nichiren inscribed the original one, of which this is a copy, shortly before he died. It depicts the human life in the Buddha state. Chanting to it helps bring out the Buddha state in you and in all of us.’

  I gazed at the long, white scroll with strange black characters on it. This Nichiren certainly had artistic talent. It looked beautiful.

  All of a sudden, a bell sounded and everyone whipped out little liturgy books and went into a long, urgent praying session called gongyo. This went on for about twenty minutes and then they launched into ten minutes of even more urgent chanting of Nam myoho renge kyo. The walls of the brightly lit room literally vibrated with the joy and enthusiasm of their efforts, and I found the hairs on the back of my head standing up. ‘Wow,’ I whispered over to Brenda. ‘What a buzz!’

  The first thing I noticed when the chanting stopped and I looked around the room was the incredible diversity of the people present. Not only were there all sorts of nationalities – African, Indian, even Malay and Thai – but all sorts of backgrounds too. I saw a city gent in a bowler sitting next to what appeared to be a bag lady, and a punk with a Mohican in deep conversation with a prim and proper mother of two.

  ‘There’s no distinction between people in our Buddhism,’ Brenda informed me. ‘And before you ask, there’s no inequality between men and women either. We all achieve Buddhahood “as we are” – no need for funny clothing or shaved heads, though that punk guy might not agree with you!’

  To commence the meeting, a small, dapper Japanese man stood up and introduced himself. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘my name is Kazuo Fuji, and I’d like to pass on some guidance from our mentor in Japan, Daisaku Ikeda. This is especially important for any of you here who are new to the practice and do not understand what our Buddhism is about.’

  I felt my eyes drooping. The combination of the warm, stuffy room and the prospect of being lectured to reminded me of Jesuit school and made me suddenly very tired.

  ‘Wake up, Frank!’ Brenda nudged me urgently. ‘This is important!’

  And so it was. Kazuo drew forth a slim volume from his shiny black attaché case and what he read out really got my attention:

  ‘The human being is not a frail wretch at the mercy of fate. Shakyamuni, the original Buddha, insisted that to change oneself now is to change the future on a vast scale. The Western impression that Buddhism is all about meditation is alien to the spirit of Shakyamuni. The goal of Nichiren Buddhism is neither escape from reality
nor passive acceptance. It is to live strongly, proactively, in such a way as to refine one’s own life and reform society through a constant exchange between the outside world and the individual’s inner world.’

  ‘Isn’t that great?’ said Kazuo, closing the book. ‘Buddhism is action. It is not about hiding away from the world. And each one of us can achieve Buddhahood right now, by changing ourselves, by doing our own human revolution, by contributing to society. It is the only sure way to world peace. Now, does anybody here have an experience?’

  Brenda gave me an even more urgent nudge. ‘Go on, then!’ she hissed.

  I stood up, and then sat down again. Then raised my hand.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m new to all this. This is my first meeting.’

  Cries of ‘Welcome!’ and ‘Well done, you!’ reverberated round the room.

  I stood up again. ‘Okay, well, thank you. I’m not sure if this counts as an experience, but I’ve been chanting for a month and I got exactly what I chanted for – to be put in charge of an old people’s home – but I’m not sure I want this responsibility. I’ve got a volcano of a boss, none of my staff trust or respect me, and one of my old ladies is a borderline sociopath.’

  ‘Congratulations!’ shouted everybody. ‘That’s fantastic!’

  Brenda looked up with a grin. ‘Don’t expect sympathy here. These people just thrive off difficulties.’

  ‘Difficulties are great!’ the plump, spiky-haired woman next to her told me. ‘Struggling against and overcoming difficulties enables us to develop tremendously. That’s why we’re so happy for you – some of us chant years to get such an opportunity to grow!’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Kazuo, ‘but don’t let us frighten you with this concept, it’s not an easy one to grasp at first. The main thing to remember is that all of us have Buddhahood inherent in our lives. Even a hardened criminal, if he snatches a child from the jaws of a speeding car, is, for that moment at least, a Buddha.’

  I bridled. ‘Does the same thing apply to vindictive, foul-mouthed old ladies with all the charm of an anaconda?’