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

by Frank Kusy

  ‘Yes, even to them,’ smiled Kazuo. ‘Buddhism is compassion, and the law of cause and effect is strict. My advice to you would be to chant for her happiness and the happiness of everyone in your work environment. Then, without fail, you will become happy yourself.’

  Chant for Maggie Pratt’s happiness? Was he joking? The only thing that would make Maggie happy would be for everyone else to be miserable.

  But then I went back to Clapham and took Kazuo’s advice, and lo and behold, not two days later, a long lost relative materialised out of nowhere and took Maggie home to live with her.

  ‘Problem over,’ I thought happily. ‘Now we can get back to normal.’

  Yeah, right.

  Chapter 7

  A Contract is a Contract

  The day the staff got their contracts of employment, I nearly lost my job.

  Monday, the 16th of December, started out like any other. I entered the home, unlocked the post box, unlocked the office door, unlocked the telephone dialling lock, unlocked the filing cabinet, and commenced opening the mail.

  Minutes later, Matron, who had just come on duty, turned up for her constitutional half-hour chat. In between showing me the progress of her new ballroom gown, choosing the new wallpaper designs for her room out of the just arrived catalogues, she complained that a) the admin memos sent to her from my office were an insult to her intelligence; b) the fact that an inch of paper cut off her new rota for assistant staff, now pinned to my board, smacked of a nefarious plot to undermine her authority; c) could she be lent £2 for bingo tonight?

  Yes, Matron and I were getting along at last. But only because John Gray had not so much undermined her authority, but quietly usurped it. All the time she spent in my office or dolling herself up in her room or chatting inconsequentially to all and sundry, John was getting on with the actual business of running the home: settling staff disputes, mediating with awkward suppliers, making sure the residents were well attended to, and generally making himself useful.

  John was also making daily reports to me, so that I could give the Committee up to date information on what needed doing and undoing. Though this particular day, he had a far more pressing issue, one that I could totally relate to.

  ‘You just wouldn’t credit this!’ he said as he stumbled into my office. ‘I’ve just been chatted up by a 96-year old man!’

  ‘Get away,’ I said. ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Charlie Godbolt. I was getting him undressed for his bath this morning, and I was helping him out of his pyjama bottoms. So he was holding onto my arm while I doing this. “It’s alright for you,” he says. “You’re young, and you’re a good-looking bloke.” “Oh, thanks,” says I, and – feeling it only fair to return the compliment – return with: “I bet you were good-looking once, when you were young.” So he looks me up and down, and comes out with: “Oh, you’ve got a lovely, firm young body.” I didn’t know where to look. I just thought: “Oh God, I don’t believe this!” Then he says, “Yes, I bet under all those clothes, you’ve got a really nice muscular body!” So I said, “Yes, it’s all right!” and wondered whether to give him a cold shower instead of a hot bath.’

  I laughed, and started to commiserate with my distressed deputy. ‘I’ve got one of those,’ I told him. ‘Her name is Betsy, and she’s not just touchy feely. She also has buzzing appliances...’

  Just then, there was a sharp knock at the door and Mrs Teasdale walked in. Her cheeks were flushed and the bun in her hair was wobbling with excitement.

  ‘I’ve got to have a private word with you, Mr Kusy,’ she said. ‘If you don’t mind, Mr Grey...’

  The pinch-faced Deputy Chairman waited until John had left the office, and then turned to me with a look of triumph.

  ‘Well, here they are,’ she said, brandishing a thick folio of printed papers. ‘Your contracts of employment, and terms and conditions of employment too. As of right now, every single member of staff will have them!’

  ‘My word,’ I stuttered, taking the pile from her and fingering through it in disbelief. ‘How on earth did you accomplish that?’

  Mrs Teasdale’s thin lips widened in what could only be described as a cheeky grin. ‘I reminded Mr Parker of what went on in the cloakroom at the Conservative Party Conference in 1970.’

  ‘You and him?’ I said in shock.

  ‘Yes, but keep that strictly under your hat. We were both drunk at the time, and we were both excited to be planning the home. It was before Mrs Duff stuck her oar in and ruined things. Oh, but you should have seen the look on Mr Parker’s face when I jogged his memory about it. He did not want that getting back to Mrs Parker.’

  ‘So he’s agreeable about the contracts?’

  ‘Agreeable is not the word I would use. “This is outright buggering bribery!” he said, and walked off in a right huff. I haven’t seen him in days.’

  The pleasure I got in handing out those contracts of employment to the staff was indescribable. It was the first real sign that I could do the job for which my young years and inexperience had apparently made me so unsuitable. Matron was gobsmacked, and so was Mr Bragg. ‘There you go,’ I felt like saying to the snarky handyman as I gave him his papers. ‘Stick that in your mealy mouth and suck on it!’ But then I remembered that even he had Buddhahood and contented myself with a short victorious nod. As for the rest of the staff, they instantly stopped all their dark gossiping and talking behind my back, and were – for that day at least – all smiles and laughter.

  The only fly in the ointment, of course, was Mr Parker. I had also not seen him in days. How was the irascible Chairman going to react to all this?

  I did not have long to find out. No sooner had I returned from my pleasurable tour of duty – in which I felt like a king distributing honours to his poorly-treated and grateful supporters – I was confronted by the terrible tyrant himself.

  ‘I just been in the kitchen,’ he said ominously. ‘And there’s a new cook. What happened to the old one?’

  I couldn’t tell him the full story, he wouldn’t have believed it. The old cook had put some pork chops in the oven with the plastic wrapping still on it. And she had cooked it that way. And the next day she got rather ill. She had puked up, her false teeth had flown out, and she had flushed them down the toilet.

  ‘She...err...left.’ I abbreviated my answer.

  ‘Well, the new one is stark, raving mad!’ said Mr Parker. ‘I went in the kitchen and she started blessing me. Then she dropped a load of pots and pans, and started blessing them too!’

  Again, I had to abbreviate my answer. I really should have suspected something when I first interviewed her. ‘Why are you always smiling? I’d asked her and she had flashed me a crucifix.

  ‘She’s got religion,’ I explained.

  ‘She’s got more than religion. She’s stark, staring mad. First, she tried to convert me, then she turns to me and says: “Can you smell it?” And I say, “Smell what?” And she says, “The smell of sex! It’s following me around!” And I said, “Well, I dunno what sex smells of, let alone sticking my nose in it!”

  ‘I think she might be having some personal problems. She’s not a bad cook.’

  ‘I don’t care what kind of cook she is. If she’s going round smelling sex and turning my kitchen into a church, she’s out!’

  ‘Out?’ Alarm bells were ringing in my head. ‘As in sacked?’

  ‘What the hell else do you think I mean? Get rid of her!’

  ‘Erm...I can’t,’ I said weakly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’s got a contract of employment. She might claim unfair dismissal.’

  Mr Parker paused, a dangerous gleam in his eye. ‘Oh yes, contracts of employment, that was your bright idea, weren’t it? I dunno about you, Mister Kusy. I can’t sack staff when I want to no more? You’re giving me a right pain in the arse.’

  I raised my voice in mild protest, but he wasn’t having it. ‘That’s one strike against you, Mr Kusy,’ he said as he swept
out of the office. ‘Two more and you’ll be on my shit list. You do not want to be on my shit list!’

  *

  To calm myself down, I paid a visit to Betsy. Okay, I was risking being intimately frisked for her pocket money, but Mr Parker’s visit had really unsettled me. I needed to be in the company of a friend.

  ‘How are you today, Betsy?’ I asked her.

  A spidery little hand gestured for me to sit down, then settled on my knee.

  ‘Never felt better in my life,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Mind you,’ she continued in a confidential whisper. ‘I am having trouble with my boyfriend.’

  ‘Boyfriend?’ I said, secretly relieved. ‘I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry,’ giggled Betsy. ‘I should have let you know. You probably think me a two timing tart, but I’m not. That’s him over there...Bertie.’

  I looked up at the happily waving figure across the hall from us. He looked like Punch with a red nose.

  ‘All the jolly!’ Bertie shouted over, and lifted what appeared to be a tot of rum in our direction.

  ‘Is he new?’ I enquired. ‘I haven’t seen him before.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t have done,’ said Betsy. ‘He’s been away in hospital, having an operation “down there”. But he says not to worry, he’s still in perfect working order!’

  ‘What’s with the rum?’ I asked. ‘And why is he wearing a fez on his head? Does he want to be a magician like Tommy Cooper?

  ‘Oh, he does like his rum,’ giggled Betsy. ‘And the fez is part of his most treasured memory – of the time when he jumped on a P & O ship bound for Cairo. “I’d just had a major operation for ulcers,” he told me, “and the surgeon advised me to spend some time by the sea.”

  ‘So what’s your problem with him?’ I asked. ‘Why doesn’t he come over here?’

  Betsy tossed her tiny head. ‘Oh, I had a tiff with him earlier. He’s very set in his ways.’

  ‘How’s that, then?’

  ‘I said to him, I said, “I feel wonderful! I think I’m in love!’ and he said nothing. So I said, “Don’t you want to know who I’m in love with?” And he said, “If you’re thinking of sharing a room with me, you can’t. You don’t get up early enough.” Well, that was rude, wasn’t it?’

  I nodded and laughed, and decided to change the subject.

  ‘I’m so sorry you’re having trouble with the Social. We’re doing everything we can to sort that out. The Social can be very difficult.’

  ‘Don’t knock the Social,’ said Betsy, suddenly serious. ‘The Social is the best thing to ever happen to this country.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean...Here, Ethel, wake up!’ Betsy whipped out her hand fan and directed it into the left ear of her sleeping companion. ‘Wake up and help me tell Mr Kusy about the Social!’

  There was a pause as Ethel’s ear began to turn blue, and then a sudden gasp as her open mouth flapped shut and her eyes bugged out of her head. ‘Jesus at Christmas!’ she snapped grumpily. ‘Did you have to do that?’

  ‘Well, we don’t want a repeat of last Thursday when Father Brown passed by and saw that gaping gob of yours and accidentally gave you communion, do we?’ cackled Betsy.

  Ethel harrumphed a bit, but then settled herself down and said, ‘Are we back talking about the “good old days” again? Here, switch that machine of yours on again, young man, you’ll have a book by the time she’s finished!’

  ‘We’re talking about the Social,’ said Betsy, ignoring the insult, ‘and how hard life was for people before it. I mean, when we were growing up there was not much money about, was there? And most families were big families. Not like today. And the mothers were like really the slaves. They were on all day and all night. Sending the children to school, cooking and washing for them, sewing and cleaning, and all that lark. Didn’t have washing machines like they got now. I was one of six kids. But I learnt my lesson. I only had one of my own!’

  Ethel gave a reluctant nod of agreement. ‘It was a saying in those days, that “to be poor, and look poor, was a damned bad habit.” You see, the thing was, if you sunk or let yourself sink below a level, that was curtains. Because there was no social security, there was nothing. And no-one would help. You’d probably just die of starvation or cold in the winter. Because nobody was going to give you anything. It’s like with a native dressing up in the jungle so that civilised people would give him half a coconut, cos he felt if he didn’t he’d just end up lying down and dying of fever. I think that was how people were. They must, for their own self-respect, keep up their appearance. Because if you dropped behind, you’d had it!’

  ‘There was nowhere to get help,’ piped up Betsy. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘The most you got,’ continued Ethel, ‘was ten shillings a week, the old age pensioners. But if they had any sons or daughters – it didn’t matter whether they were a long way away – they didn’t get a penny, because their children were expected to support them. That was the system.’

  I was finding this fascinating, and more than a little disturbing. Having been born the day rationing finished in the U.K. (17th June 1954), I had experienced none of this hardship. Nor had any of my generation.

  ‘What happened, then,’ I asked, ‘to elderly people who had no-one to look after them?’

  ‘They got ‘em in the workhouse!’ said Betsy.

  ‘Yes, the workhouse,’ agreed Ethel. ‘That only stopped after the second world war. Many of the old hospitals today used to be workhouses. In which they put the men in one part, and the wives in the other, and kept them separate. And they may slag the Welfare State, but it has done away with that. This is what we all fought for.’

  ‘What did they do in the workhouse?’ was my last question.

  ‘Well, nothing much,’ mused Betsy. ‘They took the old folk in for maybe a couple of years, and then they let them out – if one of them got a job, maybe.’

  Ethel assumed a stern tone. ‘This is what happened after the war, where everybody fought to ensure that never again would old folk have to suffer the indignity of the workhouses.’

  ‘That’s the way it was,’ said Betsy. ‘There was no work for anyone, especially in the winter. Builders, like my husband, didn’t hardly work at all. The workhouses were always full in the winter. My father, who was a bricklayer, was always in and out of work. Until he got his job in Mitchells in Dulwich, where he was for 30 years. He only got that after the second war, when they kept building and building. That put everybody in work.’

  ‘So that’s it,’ said Ethel in conclusion. ‘People figured, after the war, that “if they can find the money to fight a war, they must have money to build us decent homes and our old people decent hospitals!” Which is how the Welfare State came in...’

  I switched my Walkman off. This had been particularly interesting to me. Blow the petty officialdom which wouldn’t top Betsy’s fees up by a measly fourteen pounds a week.

  I would never take the Social for granted again.

  Chapter 8

  Don’t put your Director on the Stage

  Christmas was upon us, and the home was alive with excitement and anticipation. Streamers and bunting were going up all over the place, and Miss Sherring, the residents’ unofficial spokeswoman, was busy planning the big Christmas party in the visitors’ room. I had a lot of time for Miss Sherring. Sharp as a tack and very self-motivated, she took a keen interest in all the home’s activities and was to be found each and every day filling in her time with one thing or another – reading, doing crosswords, flower pressing, making things to sell at fetes and bazaars, or chatting to other residents.

  ‘Do you play bridge?’ she asked when I dropped in to see how she was doing. ‘We need a fourth for tonight.’

  ‘Well, yes I do, as a matter of fact,’ I said. ‘I played in the Evening Standard Bridge Congress a few years ago.’

  Miss Sherring’s blue rinsed hair shivered a little as she digested this unlikely piece
of information.

  ‘How did you do?’ she said in a sceptical tone.

  ‘Not very well. It was an all nighter and they wouldn’t let me and my partner play two diamond Stayman because it was an American convention. We were forced to play basic Acol and came last. Oh, and in the final hand, I found myself playing against Omar Sharif and went four down in six no trumps.’

  ‘So, you’re not very good, then?’ Miss Sherring’s face visibly brightened. ‘Well, you must play with us!’

  I returned to my office to find a growing line of residents waiting outside. They all wanted the same thing: Paracetemol tablets. ‘It’s that Bill again,’ complained Mr Reitz. ‘He’s been shouting all morning – we’re all sick in the head!’

  Yes, I had heard a bit of that shouting while I was with Miss Sherring. What’s Bill upset about now?

  ‘Oh, he came across the Supervisory Report Book in Matron’s office,’ said John Gray as he lounged in to help me distribute painkillers. ‘And he read all the recent reports of his bad behaviour. Confronted with his unpopularity in black and white, he kicked up an awful stink and ran amok in the dining room at tea-time, chasing care assistants round the tables with his white stick. His reign of terror only ended when he tried to hide in the toilet when deaf old Mrs Glendening was already in it. In the ensuing scuffle, both parties fell down and couldn’t get up again!’

  *

  As for me, I was engaged in a two-pronged attack in trying to regain the favour of Mr Parker.

  First off, I got rid of the cook. ‘How are we today?’ I asked her over lunch, and when she came back with: ‘I think I can smell shit – this smell of shit is following me around everywhere I go!’ – I sniffed the air and said, ‘Yes, I can smell it too. Awful, isn’t it?’ Overjoyed at being understood for once, she then confessed: “The bishop from my old church is following me around all the time. Should I be scared?” Which was my cue to look over her shoulder and say: “Oh yes, there he is. And he’s holding an axe.”’

  She fled screaming.

  My second gambit to make a good impression wasn’t half as successful. Every Christmas, before their big party, the residents were treated to a ‘show’ put on by the staff and their friends. This year it was the 1920’s Broadway classic ‘No, No, Nanette’, and in my new capacity as the home’s Director I was encouraged – no, expected – to be in it. I wondered why Matron hadn’t volunteered to be in it too, but I didn’t have to wonder long. ‘Oh no, dear,’ she said when I posed the question, ‘I don’t do theatricals.’ I rolled my eyes at that. Matron was all about theatricals.