by Frank Kusy
Betsy went suddenly serious. ‘Oh, very distressed at first. I had to leave my pussy behind. I missed him terribly. And then they put me in the TV room, bang next to the television. I don’t like television, never have. But this was the only seat they had left when I came in. I had to wait until someone died before I got another one.’
‘Oh, that must have been awful,’ sympathised Anna. ‘I’m not a big fan of television either. It kills the art of conversation, doesn’t it?’
Betsy nodded in furious agreement. ‘When I was young, we used to play tennis or go swimming. Or read, or go to dances, or see friends. We were never bored. Nowadays, everyone rushes to the station. Even the young ones. And they rush home, and they sit down! And if there’s nothing on the telly, they sit around and wait until there is something on the telly. I can’t understand it. They’ve got the whole of London to explore, and they can’t be bothered to walk around it. The best thing that could happen to this country would be if there was no television for six months! It’s a drug, a terrible drug.’
I opened my mouth to comment, but was silenced by a booming voice on a megaphone.
‘Okay, you lot,’ Mr Parker addressed us. ‘I got a special announcement. My mum, Mrs Duff, has her 100th birthday today. Yes, that’s right, she finally made it. So let’s all gather around and give her a big cheer!’
There was a moment’s silence as the Chairman’s white-haired old mother was wheeled onto the lawn, and then everybody launched into three choruses of: ‘Hip, hip, hooray!’
Mrs Duff looked happy, but confused. And her confusion deepened when Mr Parker handed her the congratulatory card from the Queen. She studied the picture of our most gracious Majesty, and then the gold embossed message inside. Then, as we all stood around her in expectant silence, she lifted her tired old head and fixed us with a look of puzzlement.
‘Elizabeth? Elizabeth?’ she enquired querulously. ‘Who is this woman? I don’t know her!’
*
‘So,’ I said to Anna as we walked back to my flat at the end of the day. ‘Do you still feel like helping out on the home’s magazine?’
‘Of course,’ she said with a smile. ‘But honestly, Frank, a magazine is not enough on that place. You should write a book.’
Chapter 13
The Importance of Mission
As 1983 slid into 1984, I had reasons to be cheerful. Not only was my relationship with Anna going well – we were talking about a holiday together on the island of Skiathos in Greece – but I had finally got my head around being a Buddhist group leader. Yes, the lash of Brenda’s ridicule had left its mark. Instead of just staring at the list of local members’ names I had overcome my painful shyness and had started ringing up names on it. Result? At the second meeting at my house all 16 people turned up. Plus two guests and a dog.
Just one last Buddhist-related hurdle remained, and it was one I had been putting off for a long time. I was going to have to meet Richard Causton.
I was not looking forward to this. If Nick, my helicopter owning friend, had problems with authority figures – in particular with male ones – they were as nothing compared to mine. Okay, I had my grandfather to look back on, he was a male role model to treasure, but I still – at coming up to 30 years of age – had no-one I could look up to. I hoped against hope that Dick Causton could be that someone. If he wasn’t, if the big chief of our small Nichiren movement in the U.K. turned out to be a disappointment, I wasn’t sure I could handle it.
But I needn’t have worried. Tall, dignified and charismatic, Dick impressed me from the start. I was particularly impressed when, at my first big leaders’ meeting at Euston House, he spotted two guys asleep at the rear of the hall. ‘WAKE UP back there!’ he thundered, bringing down his fist on a table and nearly smashing it in half. ‘You can sleep long enough when you’re dead! We’re supposed to be roaring lions for world peace – WAKE UP to your mission in life. Wake up NOW!’
Mission? What was he talking about? I was honouring the memory of my grandfather by protecting the rights and dignity of the old people in my care. Wasn’t that enough?
I didn’t get a chance to ask Dick this question at that big meeting – there were over 100 people present and, to be honest, I had been a little intimidated by his show of temper – but then, a few weeks later, he unexpectedly accepted an invitation to attend a much smaller meeting at Anna’s house in Crystal Palace.
‘Nichiren Daishonin was the son of poor fisher folk,’ he told us when I finally got a chance to speak up. ‘He spent his whole life battling arrogant priests and evil authorities to reveal his mission, which was to return the promise of the Buddha – happiness in this world and peace and security in the next – to common, ordinary people just like him. We have got to do the same as Nichiren; we have got to find our mission. We have got to discover who we really are, what our bigger selves are, what we’re here on this Earth to achieve. And then, having discovered this, to go ahead and fulfil it. With the fearlessness and the joy of Nichiren Daishonin.’
I blinked. This mission thing was obviously big on Dick’s agenda. But how did that relate to me?
‘Chant to see your kyo’, said Dick when I posed this second question. ‘Kyo is the final syllable of Nam myoho renge kyo, and it means “sound and vibration”. Every living thing has its natural path in life – the way it vibrates most naturally with its environment. Fish swim naturally, birds fly naturally, but human beings, blinded by illusion and the three poisons of greed, anger and stupidity all too often miss their natural calling in life. I would like you – not just you, Frank, but all of you – to go away and chant to see your kyo, to see where you can become your greater selves and create maximum value for kosen rufu or world peace.’
Dick’s words made a great impression on me. I went straight home and chanted five hours to see my kyo. Then I booked myself onto a Buddhist course at Trets in France and chanted for a whole week to see my kyo. And at the end of all this, when I came to have personal guidance with Dick, I told him I wanted to become a writer. It was a dream I had had when a child, but one that had been drummed out of me by my ‘Get a proper job’ mother and by the Jesuits.
‘That’s jolly good timing,’ said Dick. ‘I need a writerly type right now. I’m thinking of putting all my lectures on the basics of Buddhism into a book called Buddhism of the Sun. Have you been to any of those lectures?’
Well, yes, I had been to all those lectures. Even the one that had collapsed in hilarity when Dick’s Japanese aide had leapt up at the end to say: ‘T’ank you, Mr Cawstun. Now, evelybody crap!’
‘I even taped them,’ I told Dick, showing him my trusty Walkman. ‘So you can have an oral transcript to go with your written notes, if you like.’
Dick beamed. ‘That would be great. Though you’ll have to work with the primary editor, Jim Cowen. Will that be a problem?’
‘No problem at all,’ I said breezily. ‘I’m good at working with other people.’
I was deluding myself. I was not good at working with other people at all. Especially when the other person turned out to be the most arrogant, annoying know-it-all I had ever met. Jim was a brash, red-headed powerhouse of energy with the word ‘ego’ stamped all over him. I tried to like him, but just couldn’t – everything I suggested to Jim, he had a contrary (and better) opinion about, and every new idea I came up with, he promptly adopted as his own.
The crunch came when, after two weeks of laborious banging away on my typewriter, I produced transcripts of all six of Dick’s public lectures.
‘Oh no,’ sniffed Jim, flicking dismissively through them. ‘We can’t be doing with those. You’ve even put “loud laughter” in brackets after what you perceive to be the funny bits. Are you trying to trivialise the serious nature of Buddhism?’
‘No, I’m not,’ I replied hotly. ‘People did laugh at those lectures. Dick used humour a lot to get his message across. And of course we’ve got to use these transcripts. That was specifically why I was brought
into the project!’
Dick walked in just as we were about to come to blows. ‘You are two of the angriest people I’ve ever come across,’ he said with an amused expression on his face. ‘I feel like banging your heads together!’
We looked at him in puzzlement, especially me.
Moi? Angry? What was he talking about?
‘He’s talking about your fundamental life-state, Frank,’ laughed Anna when I told her my experience. ‘Of the ten “worlds” of Buddhism, from Buddhahood and Bodhissatva to Hunger and Hell, you exist mostly in the world of Anger. And don’t tell me I’m wrong – I’ve worked with you myself at the F.T., remember, and you couldn’t be “told” anything by anybody. You were a right stroppy grump most of the time.’
I didn’t appreciate what Anna was saying, I had always considered myself a quiet, easy-going sort, not given to anger or violence at all. But then my mind fled back to the day I’d finally got fed up of being picked on at school and had beaten up a bully at a bus stop. And then to the day I had hospitalised my two room-mates at university for playing loud music when I was mugging up for my finals. A white heat had descended upon me on both occasions – I had become anger and violence personified.
‘So what do I do about Jim?’ I said, deflecting Anna’s observations.
‘If I know Jim’, she replied, ‘he’s probably resenting someone muscling in on “his” book. And you’re probably pushing your ideas a little too forcefully. The positive side of anger is courage, sometimes the courage to let go of one’s pride or ego. Try praising or encouraging him a bit, even if you don’t mean it. Keep your final goal – the best possible book for Dick – in mind. That’s worth a little give and take, isn’t it?’
I decided that Anna must be right and to my surprise, three months later, Buddhism of the Sun – the UK’s first home produced book about Nichiren Buddhism – went into print. Even more surprising, by this point, Jim and I had become friends. We were never going to see eye to eye on everything, that was clear, but both us had gained enough trust and respect for each other to bring a common objective to completion.
And to change quite a big chunk of karma in the process.
*
A month or so later, I returned to the home after a lovely holiday in Skiathos with Anna to find Old Bill standing furiously in the corridor.
‘I’m not going!’ he ranted, his white stick flailing about in the air. ‘I’m not going, and you can’t make me!’
‘What’s the story here?’ I accosted John Gray. ‘Are you taking him somewhere?’
John ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. ‘It’s a black day for Bill,’ he said. ‘He’s going to hospital.’
‘Hospital? He looks alright to me.’
‘Yes, I know he does,’ said my phlegmatic deputy. ‘But the drugs he takes for his depression, they make his hands shake. He can’t hold things anymore and shouts for help to fasten his trouser fly buttons. You missed it, Frank, all that shouting has really got the other residents down. This morning he was complaining of “shortness of breath”. He demanded oxygen. He probably used all his own up shouting. He’s terrified of going to hospital, thinks he’s never coming back, but he’s got to go and there’s an end to it.’
I looked over John’s shoulder and spied Bill upping his protest. The decorators were in, papering the reception lounge, and Bill was tempting fate by walking back and forth under their ladders. Mrs Lowry, a dotty old lady with an armful of toilet paper she had just removed from the toilet, tried to remonstrate with him but was instantly attacked. Bill seemed to want that toilet paper, I couldn’t imagine why.
‘Oh, he’s getting quite impossible!’ fumed Matron, turning up with a wheelchair. And before Bill knew it, he had been shoved into it and out into the waiting ambulance.
All was quiet for the next three days. Then, on the Friday, Old Bill returned. He wore a look of betrayal and scowled at all the staff.
‘I have suffered a terrible shock!’ he proclaimed, and retired to bed.
‘He should never have come back,’ scowled Matron. ‘I don’t understand that hospital. Why do they keep sending him back?’
I had mixed feelings on the matter. Yes, Bill was a pain, but the home had been dull as ditchwater without him. No fun at all. Part of me was really looking forward to him being back in action – tormenting the staff and demanding their respect – when I next turned up for work on Monday.
But it was not to be. Back at the home after a quiet weekend with Anna, I detected a tangible air of gloom. It hung over everybody like a shroud.
‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ I enquired of Miss McCann, who was lingering outside my office.
The sallow-faced deputy Matron drew me close. ‘It’s Bill,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s gone, I’m afraid. He went last night.’
‘Gone?’ I said in shock. ‘What do you mean, “gone”?’
Miss McCann’s expression remained detached. ‘Saturday, he refused to get up. He said he had a “frozen arm”. He’d got a chill on it, he said, from opening the door for Matron. He wanted to be spoon fed by the staff, ‘cos he couldn’t eat with a frozen arm. Well, we thought he was just playing up again, and stuck him in the patio with his breakfast, expecting him to get on with it himself. But no, two hours later, he’s dead! He really did have a frozen arm. It was a stroke, and the arm was the first thing to be paralysed. Poor old Bill. He kept telling me, that morning, about a “visitation in white” he’d seen in his sleep. I thought he was kidding, but maybe he did see the writing on the wall...’
A deathly calm settled over the home that Monday. All the residents knew Bill was dead and none of them wanted to talk about it. But most of them turned up for the funeral. Matron said it was very necessary for them to be allowed to attend. Painful perhaps, but very necessary. The final stage, as it were, on which each one of them would give their final performance. And much better than just telling them: ‘Oh, Bill has gone to heaven.’ Elderly people were all too prone to ask awkward questions like: ‘When will he be back?’ Matron didn’t see why they should be shielded from that. It was then, and only then, that I realised that she cared.
Old Bill used to like singing first World War songs like ‘It’s a long, long way to Tipperary’ and ‘Hang out your washing on the Siegfried Line.’ He was a fat, bald man of 82 and no sooner had he gone than I realised how much I was going to miss him. He was always coming up and asking: ‘Am I alright?’ And I’d say: ‘Yes, Bill, you’re fine.’ And he’d smile and say: ‘Oh, that’s good,’ and be no trouble for the rest of the day. All he wanted out of life was reassurance and attention. ‘Rather too much attention!’ grumbled little Betsy when the subject came up. ‘But I cried when I knew he’d gone. He was ever such a fat man, wasn’t he? He used to say Mr Parker was his father. How could he be?’
Chapter 14
Too Young to be Old
The passing of Old Bill marked the end of an era. Not just for me personally – all of a sudden, my ‘mission’ in Clapham didn’t seem so important anymore – but for the home in general. A cluster of other residents followed Bill in quick succession, and in their place came a cluster of Maggie Pratt style dementia and incontinence cases.
‘Trouble is,’ I observed to John Gray, ‘the elderly sector is changing so fast. A year or so ago, as you remember, the home was in danger of closing because the committee was reluctant to admit infirm or mentally disabled people. Yet that was all we were being offered. Now we have twice as many wheelchair patients and cases of senility as before, staff have had to receive nursing training, and a whole new set of residents have arrived.’
John nodded in sad agreement. ‘Yes, it’s just as Mrs Teasdale predicted. We’ve become nothing more or less than a nursing home. All the elderly with some mobility and wits about them are being kept in charge of their relatives – simply because, unless the relatives can afford to send them to expensive private homes, the Social and the Council won’t subsidise their fees. They wil
l now sponsor only elderly people with real physical or mental debility.’
Some of the new breed of residents were not a problem. Dotty old Miss Gillings, for instance, was rather sweet. Yes, she did worry too much about voices in her head to make much sense, but even that was endearing. ‘These noises...are they angels?’ she enquired of me one day, and when I nodded non-committally she followed up with: ‘Well, if they are angels, can you ask them to speak up a bit? I’m deaf, y’know. I can’t hear a WORD they’re saying!’
But then we got Mr Headland, and he most definitely was a problem. Mr Headland was an ex-policeman who had apparently never rested until he had solved a case. It was exactly the same with his bowels – no sooner had he been admitted to the home than he headed straight for the toilet. And he stayed there, straining away, for two hours. Finally, with half the staff banging on the door, he emerged from his lair.
‘I have found the problem!’ he declared triumphantly, and held out a large piece of caked faeces for our inspection.
I guess the crunch, for me, came when – two days after Mr Headland died in the toilet trying to solve his next ‘problem’ – I opened the door to the Committee room to let Mr Parker and the rest of his cronies in for their monthly meeting...and then closed it firmly again. What I had witnessed – a doubly incontinent man having physical congress with a seriously confused old lady on the table – gave me nightmares for weeks. It also made Mr Parker close down the Committee room.
‘This is getting ridiculous,’ I told John Gray. ‘I don’t dare open any doors in case of what I might find. I just walked into Matron’s office, to have a quick word with her, and found Miss McCann and two of her aides foraging around the nether regions of a naked fat man.’
‘Oh, that’s Mr Wilson,’ explained John. ‘He came in over the weekend. He’s so fat, we had to send out a search party to find his penis. It had receded completely into his scrotum, with ensuing risk of infection.’