Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War

by Vernon Coleman

  `She's been behaving very strangely,' Veronica whispered to the doctor, as though she did not expect Mrs Caldicot to be able to hear her. `We've found her a really lovely home to move into - The Twilight Years Rest Home it's called - but she says she doesn't want to go!'

  The doctor, listening to Veronica, nodded and grunted in Mrs Caldicot's direction, looking at her critically and suspiciously.

  `She can't stay here!' insisted Veronica, still speaking in a perfectly audible whisper. `Vandals!' she explained. `They've already been round here once.' She related in exaggerated and much rehearsed detail the saga of the chrysanthemums. By now the vandals responsible for this act of premeditated violence had arrived on motorcycles, had brandished machetes and had threatened Mrs Caldicot with a fate worse than death.

  `Why don't you want to go to this nice home your relatives have found for you?' asked the doctor, as though Mrs Caldicot's had chosen to turn down a gift of a million pounds, a villa in the South of France and a lifetime’s supply of champagne.

  Mrs Caldicot stared at him and wondered how anyone so unintelligent and unperceptive could have attained a position of such responsibility. `How would you like it,' she thought, `if your relatives turned up one day and insisted that you had to sell up your home and move into a Salvation Army hostel?' She thought this but said nothing.

  `I know Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor of The Twilight Years,' said the doctor. `He's a splendid fellow. Heart in absolutely the right place.'

  `The right place for his heart would be someone else's body,' thought Mrs Caldicot.

  `They'll provide all your meals and look after your laundry,' continued the doctor. `They'll take complete care of you, and you won't have to worry about being a burden on your relatives.'

  `Why,' wondered Mrs Caldicot, `do people assume that I am suddenly incapable of looking after myself? Up until a few days ago I looked after myself and my husband. I did all my own shopping, cooking, cleaning and laundry. Now, suddenly I need to be put into a home.' She did not say any of this.

  `That's another thing,' murmured Veronica, as though by speaking quietly she could ensure that she would not be overhead by her mother-in-law, `most of the time when you talk to her she doesn't say anything. You can tell she's heard you and you know she's thinking, but she doesn't say anything.' Veronica paused and pursed her lips as though she had vinegar in her mouth. `It's very disconcerting.'

  Mrs Caldicot, who had for years chosen to keep her thoughts to herself and who had put up with the inane and pointless blathering of those around her, listened to this criticism resignedly. She kept silent not because she couldn't think of anything to say, but because she couldn't see the point in saying what she'd thought. She had long ago realised that her husband and her daughter-in-law had the combined intelligence of a potato peeler, and rather than waste her time on pointless conversations she preferred to remain silent. Over the years she had got quite good at it. She could hear what people were saying to her, of course. And she formulated replies in her own mind. Replies which were unconstrained by social niceties and were, therefore, simple and honest. But whatever the temptation or provocation she had rarely opened her mouth apart from to communicate specific information. She was honest to herself but not necessarily to others.

  The doctor, unworried by Mrs Caldicot's silence, which he mistook for a mixture of deference and depression, nodded sagely. `I can give you a little something to help you over these difficult days,' he said, speaking to Mrs Caldicot with what she supposed was his sympathetic look. He took out his pen, a cheap, white plastic instrument with the name of a pharmaceutical product emblazoned on the side in bold blue lettering, and started to write a prescription in one slick, well-practised movement. As he did so Mrs Caldicot found herself wondering if doctors had competitions to see which of them could draw a pen and write a prescription the fastest.

  The doctor finished the prescription writing, put his pen away and handed the completed form to Veronica. `Just one tablet three times a day,' he murmured, speaking to Veronica as though unwilling to entrust Mrs Caldicot with these complicated and important instructions. `They'll help her behave a little more rationally.'

  `I'll see that she takes them, doctor,' promised Veronica, accepting the prescription as though it were an award. Mrs Caldicot rather thought that her daughter-in-law might have curtsied had the doctor not thwarted this by picking up his unopened bag and heading speedily towards the door.

  Mrs Caldicot turned back to look through the living room window and was glad she did so for the rain was now coming down more heavily than ever. She saw Derek, who was clearly soaked, slip and drop the bundle of canes he was holding, falling face down into the mud. It was, thought Mrs Caldicot, the most graceful thing he had ever done.

  For the first time in many months Mrs Caldicot laughed out loud. Although the laugh did not last long, the incident cheered her up for a moment, and she could not help thinking how therapeutic a moment of laughter can be. She realised with some sadness that it was the first time that her son had ever made her laugh, but underneath it she felt a sadness and despair. What she really wanted, she decided, was time to think and time to come to terms with what had happened, time to re-plan her life and time to think about the future.

  But people seemed keen only to offer her advice; time was the one thing no one wanted to allow her.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Mrs Caldicot sat in the back of Derek's motor car and stared at the back of Veronica's neck trying to decide whether or not to be sick.

  The tablets which the doctor had prescribed for her, and which Veronica and Derek had made sure that she had taken, had a number of unpleasant physical side effects among which indigestion, headaches, dizziness and nausea were most prominent. They had also made her feel extremely drowsy, and everything that had happened to her since she had started to take them had taken place in a thick mist which had slowed both her perceptions and her actions. Despite all these side effects the tablets had not affected Mrs Caldicot's colicky pains which remained as strong, as persistent and as unpredictable as ever.

  The car stopped with a shudder and Mrs Caldicot, looking out through the rear window with dull eyes, recognised the front steps but could not remember precisely why.

  `Come on, mother!' said Derek cheerily. He held open the car door and offered Mrs Caldicot his hand. Cautiously, hesitantly, Mrs Caldicot moved her legs and swung them out of the car. They felt as though they were separated in some way from the rest of her body and she watched them move with some surprise and a little relief. She felt overcome by physical tiredness, though she dimly realised, with some relief, that the intense almost suffocating feeling of dizziness which she had experienced a few moments earlier had subsided a little.

  It seemed to take her an age to walk from the car to the bottom of the stone steps and another lifetime to climb them. By the time she, Derek, Veronica and Jason stood together outside the front door of The Twilight Years Rest Home Mrs Caldicot had become so depressed by her lack of strength and energy that she felt tears rolling down her cheeks. Through the sadness and the weakness and the mist in her mind she vowed to herself that she would take no more of the pills she had been given. Derek, seeing the tears streaming down his mother's cheeks turned away in embarrassment assuming, quite wrongly, that the tears were inspired either by apprehension or regret.

  The rest of that day passed by Mrs Caldicot in a blur. It was almost as though her body had been taken over by someone else, and she was standing to one side watching as an only partly interested spectator.

  ***

  Much, much later, she awoke to find herself lying flat on her back in bed. She was aware that she could hear someone else in the room but she kept her eyes closed and lay still and silent, trying to get her bearings.

  `Come on!' she heard someone say. `Time you were up! Breakfast in fifteen minutes.'

  She opened her eyes. A large, shapeless woman in a white overall was standing by the side of her bed.

 
`Take this!' said the woman in the white overall, thrusting a capsule in Mrs Caldicot's direction.

  Mrs Caldicot stared at it for a moment without moving.

  `Open your mouth!' instructed the woman in the white overall.

  Mrs Caldicot did as she was told and the woman in the white overall popped the capsule into her mouth before moving on to the next bed.

  Carefully making sure that she did not swallow the capsule Mrs Caldicot watched the woman give something to each of the two other residents in the room, then open the door and leave. Only then did she spit the capsule into her hand, ease her stiff body out of bed, walk slowly across the room to the sink and wash the capsule away down the plughole.

  ***

  It took most of the day for the effects of the previous day's drugs to wear off, and by dinner that evening Mrs Caldicot was beginning to feel almost human again. She still had a mild headache, she still felt slightly nauseated and she still felt a little sleepy, but the worst of the thick mist had dispersed.

  It had not, however, taken Mrs Caldicot that long to realise that The Twilight Years Rest Home was a considerably different place when seen through the eyes of a resident compared to when it was viewed through the eyes of a visitor.

  Most noticeable was the enormous difference in the behaviour of the proprietor, Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor.

  When Mrs Caldicot had been a prospective resident, accompanied by her family, Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor had attempted to give the impression of being a kindly, humane, fairly patient sort of fellow. But when Mrs Caldicot had become a resident Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor had become a very different character; all pretence at a generous, sensitive nature abandoned.

  She spent the next morning sitting in the lounge. She did not know what she ate for lunch. Apart from half a plateful of pale and watery cabbage she found it impossible to identify the constituents of her meal.

  In the afternoon she returned to the lounge where she sat in an uncomfortable communal silence; a silence broken only by the loud breathing of several residents who had temporarily escaped from drug-induced consciousness to drug-induced unconsciousness without apparently attracting any concern from Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor and his highly-trained staff.

  And in the evening she returned to the dining room only to be repelled by an unrequested reprise of lunchtime's dominant and malodorous vegetable.

  Feeling her stomach churning and her appetite gone Mrs Caldicot turned to leave the dining room and found herself being called back by Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor.

  `Where are you going, mother?' called Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor, who used this term of reference when addressing all his female residents (strangely and unevenly he referred to the men as `dad').

  For a moment Mrs Caldicot, who was not sure that Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor was addressing her, failed to respond. She quite rightly assumed that even if he was talking to her he was using this familial form of address solely because he could not be bothered to remember her name; and her dignity, although it had been threatened, savaged and beaten had not yet been dissembled.

  Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor repeated himself, speaking if anything a little louder than before. He spoke to his residents in the same way that Veronica Caldicot would speak to a foreigner: assuming that all misunderstandings and communication failures could be remedied simply by turning up the volume.

  Mrs Caldicot turned and stared at him coldly. For years and years she had been put upon, talked down to, bullied and pushed around. She had spent her life doing what other people wanted her to do, and saying what she felt other people expected her to say. She suddenly felt angry and indignant and realised that she had nothing to lose.

  Later, she wondered if the remnants of the drugs had influenced her at that moment; covering up her overdeveloped sense of social obedience and releasing the tiger within her which had lain dormant for so many years.

  `Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor,' she thought and said, `I don't want to eat your cabbage. Moreover, to the best of my knowledge I am not your mother and I would, therefore, be grateful if you would stop calling me `mother'.' She paused briefly to allow her words to sink in. `My friends call me Thelma but you can call me Mrs Caldicot.'

  She thought and said!

  She said!

  For a brief moment Mrs Caldicot was not even sure that she had said what she had thought. She was so accustomed to thinking things but not saying things that for an instant she did not realise that she had actually shared her private thoughts with the obnoxious Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor. For years she had been inhibited, frustrated and thwarted by a husband who had filled her life like stale, stuffy air fills a room the morning after a party. Even after he had gone, her husband's influence had clung to her like a pall of cigarette smoke. She waited for her colicky abdominal pains to begin.

  Then, the moment the look on Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor's face confirmed that she had indeed said what she had thought, Mrs Caldicot felt herself blushing deeply. Never before had she defended herself with such certainty. Never before had her spirit and her body united in such a single minded display of solidarity. Her heart beat faster and faster until she feared that it would burst from her chest. She felt the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her palms felt damp and clammy. She had always kept her thoughts to herself; every emotion she felt, every instinct for self defence, had always been overshadowed by an overpowering sense of obedience, an unwillingness to disappoint or upset those around her and a matching desire to please. She made a vow not to waste any more of her life on mealy mouthed compromises and hypocrisy, on social courtesy and dishonest politesse.

  Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor stared at her for several moments, clearly unaccustomed to being spoken to in such a manner and just as clearly quite uncertain about what to say in response. He opened his mouth for an instant, as though about to quell this rebellious mischief maker with a neatly crafted barb. But although his mouth was open no sound came from it. Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor was, quite literally, lost for words.

  And then, to both Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor's and Mrs Caldicot's surprise, the other residents, at least all of the ones who had overheard this very one-sided exchange, burst into a spontaneous round of applause. It was not, it is true, the sort of applause that you are likely to hear at Lord's Cricket Ground on a balmy summer's afternoon when a batsman has scored a spectacular century. But then the audience was severely disadvantaged, both in terms of numbers and physical ability. It takes two healthy arms and two healthy hands, preferably with the requisite number of fingers, to produce a decent burst of applause, and the residents of The Twilight Years Rest Home were almost unanimously deprived of these essential physical constituents. Still, they did their best with their arthritic fingers, wrists and elbows, and those enthusiasts who were unable to applaud in the usual way banged their walking sticks on the floor or scratched their walking frames backwards and forwards. They had been mistreated and deprived of their dignity by Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor, and Mrs Caldicot's moment of rebellion had brought them together in a glorious spirit of revolution.

  Normally, at precious moments like this, there is a temptation to spoil the perfection; to try to add another layer to the card house. But Mrs Caldicot, as though naturally aware that another word from her would have turned the put-down into a mere conversational gambit, resisted the temptation to say anything else. Instead she turned and, head held high, headed for the stairs and the relative seclusion, privacy and safety of her one third of The Windsor Suite.

  She sat in her room and thought of all the times she had said (or thought) `I wish I had done that' or `If only...' and then she thought of all the times she had said `I wish I hadn't done that' or `I wish I hadn't said that' and she realised that the regrets from the former far outweighed the regrets from the latter.

  She also realised, with some surprise, that she had suffered no pains in her abdomen. Her colic seemed to have been banished by her honesty. To her surprise and delight it did not return.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mrs Caldicot, who had become something of a heroine to th
e residents of The Twilight Years Rest Home (but a dangerous anarchist to the proprietor), quickly found that she had now burnt her boats, destroyed her bridges and cut off her retreat. She had made her bed and now she had to lie on it (or, more commonly, at least during the daytime hours, sit on it).

  `I suppose you think you're clever,' hissed Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor, bursting into The Windsor Suite a few minutes after Mrs Caldicot's memorable defiance and looking for all the world like a stage villain in a children's pantomime as he glowered at her.

  `It's all relative,' thought and said Mrs Caldicot, now freed of her reluctance to speak, `Compared to Einstein I'm not clever.' She shrugged. `But...'.

  `Don't you try to get the better of me!' threatened Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor, waving a podgy finger. `If you do you'll soon find out who's the boss around here.'

  Mrs Caldicot smiled at him, raised an eyebrow and turned away. The message was clear. Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor left.

  ***

  Mrs Caldicot pounced on Derek and Veronica when they arrived to see her that first evening. (Jason had come with them but, thought Mrs Caldicot, only in the sort of way that a bad odour will follow its human source).

  `Where's Kitty?' Mrs Caldicot demanded. `And what have you done to my house? What about all my furniture? My clothes? And everything else?'

  `Now don't you worry about a thing, mother,' said Derek, closing his eyes in that way that people do when they are embarrassed and don't want to look at the person they are talking to. He held up what he thought was a calming hand. `Everything,' he said with a glorious overstatement, `is under control. I've put the house on the market and we've organised an auction for your furniture.'