Mrs Caldicot's Cabbage War

by Vernon Coleman

  Mrs Caldicot knew that if Derek was in charge, `control' was not a word to be used without a considerable number of qualifications, and so she was not to be easily distracted from her investigation. `Who gave you permission to sell my house?' she wanted to ask. `Who said you could sell my furniture?'

  `Where is Kitty?' she demanded firmly, putting first things first.

  `Kitty is fine,' said Veronica, who was wearing a black and yellow houndstooth check suit, a pink man-made fibre scarf and a pillar box red hat. `She's in a lovely home too.'

  `Where?' asked Mrs Caldicot.

  `The Sleepy Pussy Cattery,' replied Veronica. `It's very expensive so it must be good.' She twisted her mouth as she said this, giving the clear impression that she considered the price that was being paid for Kitty's welfare to be absurdly wasteful and Mrs Caldicot knew in her heart that if Veronica was left in charge she would soon find an excuse to take Kitty on a one way trip to see the veterinary surgeon.

  `And that,' said Mrs Caldicot rejoicing in her new found freedom of expression and wondering why she had spent so many years thinking things and not saying them, `just about sums you up, Veronica!' Mrs Caldicot had never liked Veronica much and found her ready willingness to equate price with quality a suitable indictment of her intelligence.

  `I want Kitty here, with me,' she said, firmly.

  Veronica, deflated by this unexpected firmness, stepped backwards a pace and opened her mouth as though she had entered a fly catching contest. Mrs Caldicot thought that her daughter- in-law's response reminded her very much of that of Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor.

  `Oh good heavens, mother!' said Derek. `You can't have a cat living with you in a hospital.'

  `This isn't a hospital!' Mrs Caldicot pointed out. `When you first brought me here you told me quite specifically that it wasn't a hospital. What's more it doesn't smell like a hospital and it isn't run like a hospital.'

  `I don't think it would be fair to the other patients to bring a cat here,' said Veronica, who had made a temporary recovery and was now speaking in what she clearly thought was a whisper, though as a whisper it would have been more at home on a stage than in a boudoir.

  `Oh do shut up, Veronica!' said Mrs Caldicot, surprising herself yet again.

  `I'll see what Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor has to say,' sighed Derek, heading for the door.

  `If I stay here I'm having Kitty here to live with me,' said Mrs Caldicot. `She can have a litter tray in our room and she won't be any bother to anyone else.'

  ***

  After that bold and successful stance Mrs Caldicot decided to spend her time in her room getting to know her companions a little better.

  The two other beds in The Windsor Suite were occupied by Miss Nightingale and Mrs Peterborough. Miss Nightingale was the elderly, bed bound lady needing a bedpan whom Mrs Caldicot had seen on her first visit. Mrs Peterborough was an unremittingly talkative woman; a physically much more robust individual than Miss Nightingale who, as the result of some mysterious, cortical disorder had acquired a personality like a piece of blotting paper.

  Mrs Caldicot had originally assumed that Miss Nightingale spent her days as well as her nights in bed because of some physical disability, but this was not the case. Miss Nightingale, was, like so many elderly people (and Miss Nightingale, having enjoyed her eightieth birthday some months previously was not shy about describing herself as elderly) a mild, modest and innocent victim of a disease which used to be known as senile dementia but which is now more usually classified (with the appropriate enhancement of status) as Alzheimer's Disease.

  The two main consequences of Miss Nightingale's disability were confusion and memory loss, though the problems created by these symptoms were exacerbated enormously by their unpredictability. One moment Miss Nightingale would talk cogently and wittily about the decline in the status and morals of the British Royal Family while the next she would slip back into some childhood drama and lose all contact with reality; it was as though she were forever playing some large as life game of snakes and ladders, clambering up ladders to momentary sanity and then sliding down snakes into temporary insanity while fate threw the dice for her.

  These unpredictable mental forays worried the establishment at The Twilight Years Rest Home and, arguing that they regarded Miss Nightingale's mental condition as potentially disturbing for the other residents Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor and his staff kept her constantly sedated and effectively imprisoned with a confusion of powerful tranquillisers and sedatives.

  Suspecting that Miss Nightingale's physical weakness was probably a consequence rather than a cause of the long hours she spent in bed, and knowing from her own experience that the tranquillising tablets she had been given had weakened her spirit, muddled her mind and muddied her capacity for clear thinking, Mrs Caldicot decided to try to resuscitate her elderly roommate by helping her to stop taking her medication.

  Mrs Caldicot had stopped taking her pills the day she had entered the rest home, and although the nursing auxiliaries still gave her pills, which she took from them with a suitably blank smile, she regularly washed them down the plug hole of the bedroom wash basin.

  She now set about the task of helping Miss Nightingale to escape from her pharmacological imprisonment. To do this was easier than she had expected. She ingratiated herself with the auxiliaries who were eager to hand over one of their tedious chores and to escape to their rest-room a few minutes earlier than planned to enjoy an illicit cigarette and a gossip about the comings and doings of the latest television celebrities. The auxiliaries were to start with suspicious of Mrs Caldicot after her outburst outside the dining room, but they were at the same time secretly pleased that their tyrannical employer had been put in his place and they did not mind making friends with his conqueror. Within three days of arriving at the rest home Mrs Caldicot had taken on the responsibility for giving Miss Nightingale all her pills. This meant that several times a day a colourful mixture of tablets and capsules were washed down the wash basin plug hole.

  Mrs Caldicot found that the hardest part of her enterprise was persuading Miss Nightingale to pretend that she was still under the influence of her pills.

  As the mist of drug-induced depression lifted from her mind Miss Nightingale grew gradually more and more lively and increasingly alert. Instead of lying still in her bed, as inert and as full of sparks as a rubber hot water bottle, Miss Nightingale began to waken, as though from a deep slumber.

  Mrs Caldicot quickly found that one way to suppress Miss Nightingale's newly found propensity to chatter incessantly and unpredictably about anything and everything was to tire her out; to exhaust her physically so that she fell into a genuine sleep at night. To do this she conducted impromptu exercise classes in The Windsor Suite. At first, Miss Nightingale could not stand without help, but within two days she could walk by herself and within a week she could perform a determined and spirited, if slightly uncoordinated, jig to the music that Mrs Caldicot played on her small tape player.

  Miss Nightingale loved these simple exercises and although she may not have the sort of reliable intellect, regard for temporal or spatial rules or sense of logical continuity that one would normally expect in, say, an accountant or a judge, Mrs Caldicot could see that Miss Nightingale was coming back to life. The third resident of The Windsor Suite, Mrs Peterborough, whose daily medication had been similarly hi-jacked by Mrs Caldicot, also enjoyed these impromptu exercise classes.

  Mrs Peterborough's mental condition was, in some ways, potentially far more disturbing for the residents than Miss Nightingale's, but neither Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor nor the medical advisers who regularly visited the home to hand out prescriptions for newer and ever more powerful pharmacological truncheons, had yet managed to find anything strong enough to quell her mental status without at the same time rendering her completely unconscious (this was considered an unacceptable alternative, not because of any respect for Mrs Peterborough's rights but because unconscious patients need very concentrated nursing care, and
very concentrated nursing care costs a lot of money).

  Each one of us has a personality which we and our friends grow to recognise. Most of us wake up each morning knowing who we are and roughly how we will respond to the people and the problems we meet.

  This was not, however, the case with Mrs Peterborough. She woke each morning with no fixed personality but with a fresh, blank canvas upon which would be painted a series of personality caricatures derived entirely from her worldly experiences and mirroring, often with unerring accuracy, the personalities and moods of people whom she encountered. The stronger the personality or the more determined the mood she encountered the more Mrs Peterborough was likely to adopt it. If someone was cruel to her she would be cruel to them. If someone was kind to her she would be kind to them. Everyone who came into contact with her reaped exactly as they sowed; although some confusion was created by the fact that if she watched television Mrs Peterborough would quickly adopt the personality of the most powerful character on the screen. Life with Mrs Peterborough was made even more complicated by the fact that she had a habit of repeating everything that was said to her. She was a vocal mirror; a human tape recorder set constantly on record and replay.

  ***

  Next door to The Windsor Suite was The Duchy of Cornwall Suite, shared by Mr Hewitt and Mr Livingstone.

  Mr Hewitt was 92-years-old and proud of it. He had worked as a gardener all his adult life and had only stopped working when his granddaughter and her husband, who were both solicitors, had decided that he was too old to work. Ignoring his protests they had written to his employer warning him of the dangers of employing such an elderly pensioner, had ended his tenancy of a cottage on a nearby estate and had placed him in The Twilight Years Rest Home. They had even sold his beloved gardening tools (though Mr Hewitt had rescued a small trowel, a hand fork and a wooden dibber and he kept these three instruments, oiled and wrapped in a piece of dark green canvas, in the bottom of his bedside locker).

  Mr Hewitt desperately missed managing a garden and had, he told Mrs Caldicot, on several occasions begged Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor to be allowed to dig up and cultivate a small portion of the lawn around the home. Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor had summarily rejected these entreaties claiming that relatives wouldn't pay him good money if they saw old people getting sweaty and dirty in the garden.

  `But I like getting sweaty and dirty,' protested Mr Hewitt to Mrs Caldicot. `It's what I do best!'

  Compared to Mr Hewitt, Mr Livingstone was a mere youngster, having recently celebrated his 75th birthday. Mr Hewitt had been at work for five years when his junior room-mate had been born.

  At heart Mr Livingstone was a musician.

  He had not, however, earned his living as a musician because his wife, a nervous sort long since passed away, had never thought a career in a jazz band a stable enough way to bring up three children and pay the household bills. And so for fifty years Mr Livingstone, a loyal and selfless husband and father, had spent the best waking hours of his life working as a wages clerk for a factory making cardboard boxes.

  But in his heart he always thought of himself as a musician and still described himself as such when anyone bothered to ask. He could play the piano, the flute, the trombone and the drums, but Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor would not allow him to practise any of these instruments because, he said, the noise might prove disturbing. Even when the other residents made it clear that they didn't mind the noise Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor remained unmoved, unmoving and unmoveable. Deprived of the chance to make music Mr Livingstone was slowly drifting into a slough of despair.

  And so, it was in this way that Mrs Caldicot passed her first few weeks in The Twilight Years Rest Home: getting to know and to love her new friends. She felt fitter, stronger and happier than she had for years.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor didn't like Mrs Caldicot and would not willingly have done her any favours. When he had reluctantly agreed to allow Mrs Caldicot to keep her cat in The Windsor Suite he had done so only because he was primarily a businessman and his affection for money outweighed his pride and yearning for vengeance. He didn't want to risk calling Mrs Caldicot's bluff and seeing her leave the nursing home.

  But he knew that he only had to be patient and his time would come. And he did not have to wait very long.

  A month after Mrs Caldicot (and Kitty) had moved into The Twilight Years Rest Home Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor was approached by another family looking for somewhere for an elderly female relative to stay. Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor knew that this was the moment he had been waiting for; having another potential resident to fill Mrs Caldicot's bed gave him a chance to be tough without having to risk any financial loss.

  `I allowed you to keep your cat in the suite for a trial period,' he said to Mrs Caldicot. `But I'm afraid that the trial period is over and the cat will have to go.'

  Mrs Caldicot was shocked but not entirely surprised. `You didn't say anything about a trial period,' she protested, accurately.

  `I want the cat out by tomorrow night,' said Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor, ignoring Mrs Caldicot's protest.

  `Have there been any complaints?' asked Mrs Caldicot, knowing full well that there hadn't been.

  `I'm afraid I can't answer that,' said Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor coldly and pompously. `It would be a breach of confidence.'

  `And just where is Kitty supposed to go?' asked Mrs Caldicot.

  Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor shrugged. `I don't care where she goes,' he said callously. `You can send her to a cattery or have her put down by the vet for all I care. But I don't want her here.' And with that he turned and stalked off. `Don't forget,' he added, turning his head as he walked away, `I want the cat out by tomorrow night.'

  Mrs Caldicot, who had shivered with anger and horror at the phrase `put down by the vet' stared after him. `If she goes then I go,' she said loudly and firmly. She had long ago weighed up Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor accurately. She believed that he was far too greedy to risk losing her weekly cheque, and she felt certain that she had the upper hand. Sadly, for her, she had no way of knowing that there was another potential resident waiting to take her place and that, therefore, her threat was an empty one.

  Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor retraced his steps so that he was standing no more than a yard or two away from Mrs Caldicot. `Fine,' he said, clearly savouring the moment. `Please vacate your room by noon tomorrow.'

  To say that this both shocked and startled Mrs Caldicot would be an understatement of heroic proportions. Although she did not like The Twilight Years Rest Home the truth was that Mrs Caldicot had nowhere else to go. Her son, Derek, had put her house on the market even before she had left it; the furniture had been sold at auction and her few remaining private possessions were now stored in a trunk in Derek and Veronica's garage.

  But Mrs Caldicot was not going to let Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor know that his calling of her bluff had discomforted her. `It will be my pleasure,' she said with apparent sincerity, fervently hoping that Mr Fuller-Hawksmoor could not hear her pounding heart and praying that whatever happened she would not collapse in front of him. `If the shock of this has to kill me,' she prayed silently, `please let me survive until I've got out of this place. I don't want to give Fuller-Hawksmoor the satisfaction of knowing that he's upset me.'

  ***

  `But you can't go!' sobbed Miss Nightingale, when Mrs Caldicot told her that she and Kitty were leaving. With Mrs Caldicot's help Miss Nightingale had made enormous progress, and although she had still not ventured outside The Windsor Suite she had become physically independent. She was still forgetful and occasionally confused and she wandered freely through time but instead of being a bed-bound lunatic she was now merely a rather eccentric and frail old lady.

  `You can't go! You mustn't go!' said Mrs Peterborough, mimicking Miss Nightingale and bursting into tears.

  `I've got to leave,' insisted Mrs Caldicot quietly. She was holding Kitty who was purring contentedly in her arms.

  She still had no idea where she would go but for the moment tha
t was the least of her problems. She walked across to the television set, switched it on and flicked through the channels until she found the calming and reassuring face of a woman presenting an anodyne programme made by brain dead producers for brain dead housewives. The television repair man had managed to get a picture out of the elderly set but he hadn't managed to find all the colours; the result was that everything and everyone on the screen appeared to be suffering from a rather severe case of sunburn. Mrs Caldicot adjusted the volume so that it could only just be heard and put a kindly arm around Mrs Peterborough's shoulders. `Sit and watch this!' she murmured, knowing from experience that Mrs Peterborough would soon match the mood of the soothing presenter. Once, before she had realised just how closely Mrs Peterborough's moods and emotions mirrored those which she saw, she had left her watching a Tom and Jerry cartoon. She had come back to find Mrs Peterborough sitting grinning in the middle of the floor surrounded by torn bedclothes, broken bric a brac and many other signs of mayhem. She had, since then, been careful to make sure that she never left Mrs Peterborough watching any cartoon programmes or any programmes which contained any elements of violence or unpredictability. She put Kitty down on the bed and started gathering together her few belongings, packing them into a battered blue cardboard suitcase which she had pulled out from underneath her bed.

  `But you're my friend!' said Miss Nightingale, sitting sadly on the edge of her own bed and moodily banging her heels onto the carpet. `What on earth will I do without you?'

  `Add two spoonfuls of olive oil and a splash of vinegar,' nodded Mrs Peterborough faithfully, carefully watching the television presenter and even managing to sound uncannily like her.

  `What about my exercises?' asked Miss Nightingale, plaintively. `I like doing my exercises!'

  `I'll show you how to work the tape player and you can do them by yourself,' promised Mrs Caldicot.

  `It won't be the same,' insisted Miss Nightingale, miserably.