And now cause for yet more thanks: Sharon was standing before them with the tray of snacks. Gnarled and wrinkled hands stretched out to grab sandwiches, cheese tartlets or sausages on sticks. One lady took six sausages but, having sniffed them suspiciously, put them back again. Lorna helped herself to a sandwich, taking the precaution of first pulling it apart to see what it contained. In fact it contained nothing, but that was preferable to ham-fat, and at least the bread was fresh.
‘Take plenty,’ Sharon urged. ‘Then I won’t have to keep coming back.’
Lorna willingly piled her plate with food. Some of the other sandwiches looked more promising, with a pinkish-coloured filling. But whether it was fish, fowl or face-cream she couldn’t tell, even when she’d swallowed it. Like the sausages, it had no taste whatever. One man was eating the sausage sticks instead and appeared not to notice the difference. She kept wanting to intervene: to wipe faces or noses, brush crumbs from laps or help those who lacked the coordination to feed themselves. But that was the job of the staff, who already had their hands full restraining the more murderous of the children and dealing with relatives’ complaints. Trevor, for example, was demanding to know why his mother hadn’t had a bath for two weeks. Instantly Lorna felt guilty. Had it been Marjorie this morning trying to storm into the bathroom? No, the poor woman looked incapable of speech, let alone creating such a fuss. Neither did she smell – which was more than could be said of some of them. Still, one learned to develop an imperviousness to smells, as the only way to cope with malodorous rooms and residents.
This room was actually quite attractive, with floral curtains, a squiggled carpet and a dozen round dining-tables, six people to each. Christmas decorations abounded, in the form of paper-chains, bunches of balloons, artificial holly-wreaths, and Christmas crackers piled on every table. The staff sported Santa caps or tinsel in their hair, while the residents’ dress varied from 1930s cocktail frocks to baggy, food-stained sweat-pants. (One woman was trying to undress, much to the consternation of her son.)
It would be better, Lorna thought, had the ratio of food to decorations been reversed. She would have been satisfyingly full by now, munching holly and balloons, whereas in fact she was still ravenous. Biting into a sausage roll, she found only a smear of grey gunge in the tough and greasy pastry. However, she was lucky to be able to bite. Teeth were by no means a standard commodity here.
A sudden bang startled her. Some of the children were pulling the crackers, which without exception contained plastic whistles or noise-makers. Soon a cacophony broke out, eclipsing the strains of ‘Silent Night’. Sydney trembled in alarm, possibly confusing the din with a past campaign when he had been under enemy fire.
The care assistants began picking up the paper hats that had fallen out of the crackers and placing them on residents’ heads. The contrast between festive hats and bleak expressions was marked, and deeply sad. But this was Christmas Eve, so everyone must enjoy themselves, even if the jollity was forced. Would they play party games later on: Pass the Parcel or Blind Man’s Buff? – although more were deaf than blind at Oakfield House. (Perhaps just as well considering the volume of noise.) Another potential game might be throwing balls – or food – into the many permanently open mouths. Not only were teeth valuable, she realized: so was the ability to close your lips. Several residents dribbled constantly or made repeated chewing movements, even though their mouths were empty. Others simply sat with gaping Os.
Another tray of food had materialized – the second course, presumably: iced fancies, Penguin biscuits, slices of Swiss roll, and individual pots of shop-bought trifle. These last posed a problem since they still had their foil lids on, which few of the elderly could manage to remove. Even the relatives were having trouble: one woman broke her thumbnail, and Trevor finally resorted to jabbing Marjorie’s lid with his penknife, spattering himself and his mother with cream. Lorna decided not to risk it – she had only a couple of outfits to wear and didn’t want them messed up (especially if laundry facilities were as scarce here as were bathrooms).
Watching Trevor feed his mother with spoonfuls of the trifle, she was reminded of Ralph again. He was partial to trifle and she always made him one on Christmas Eve – a gloriously alcoholic concoction with brandy, sherry, raspberries and ratafias, toasted almonds and proper custard. She could just imagine his reaction to this wodge of orange-jellied sponge, topped with synthetic cream and a meagre sprinkling of hundreds and thousands.
But her attention was jolted back to the proceedings when the activities organizer, Val, fought her way to the centre of the room. A Titian-haired giantess, she bore an uncanny resemblance to a lampshade in her fringed pink tent-style dress. Clearing her throat commandingly she announced the cabaret.
Cabaret! Lorna waited with bated breath while Val somehow managed to coax the children to sit down and be quiet – a minor miracle – before ushering in a man in a black evening-suit. The music switched abruptly from ‘We Three Kings’ to ‘Isn’t It Romantic?’ and he burst into song, crooning into his hand-held mike and wiggling his bony hips.
Many of the audience continued to gaze into space, as if they hadn’t actually registered his arrival, while Lorna found it incongruous that he should sing so passionately of romance yet be so blatantly over the hill. His dyed hair and haggard face made his Elvis Presley-style gyrations acutely embarrassing for the relatives and induced sniggers in the children.
He bowed low in all directions, acknowledging the tepid applause and declaring grandly, ‘My name is Rodrigo’ (Brian or Keith, more likely, Lorna thought) ‘… and I’m absolutely delighted to be here. Are you all enjoying yourselves?’
‘No!’ a small boy yelled.
‘Oh yes!’ gushed Val. ‘We are.’
‘Now I’d like you to put your hands together for a charming young lady – Carmen. She comes from sunny Spain and she’s going to sing all your favourite numbers.’
This time Val led the applause and the relatives dutifully joined in as a female of uncertain age in a sleeveless, backless, strapless creation teetered into the room on four-inch stiletto heels. With the extravagantly frilled black-and-scarlet dress she wore elbow-length red satin gloves and a red feather boa flung around her scrawny neck. Her hair was dyed exactly the same shade of black as Rodrigo’s (perhaps they economized by sharing the same packet) and was adorned, as were her shoes, with artificial roses – red, of course.
With her long black lashes fluttering and the dangling flesh on her upper arms aquiver, she virtually made love to the microphone, singing in a husky voice:
‘In olden days a
Glimpse of stocking …’
On cue she lifted her skirt to reveal a glimpse of black fishnet, complete with saucy red garter.
‘Get ’ em off!’ Fred shouted, unexpectedly roused from his torpor, and quickly hushed by a nurse.
But Carmen, fired by this solitary spark of audience appreciation, made a beeline for his wheelchair and, without interrupting the song, leaned so close her face was within inches of his – a veritable assault by eyelashes.
‘… heaven knows,’
she warbled on,
‘Anything goes.’
Fred made a grab for her boa and again had to be restrained (although not before he’d managed to pull out a fistful of scarlet feathers).
Clearly one for the gentlemen, Carmen next approached Sydney, but even a full-throated rendering of two more verses of ‘Anything Goes’ elicited no response beyond a dribble.
Lorna admired the woman’s valour as she pranced around the room, skilfully avoiding furniture and wheelchairs, and flirting with relatives, male care assistants or indeed anyone who could meet her eye without flinching. What a way to earn a living – putting on a performance for a circle of largely uncomprehending faces, plus an assortment of bored relatives, derisive staff and unashamedly giggling children. Some of the residents looked not just blank but terrified – and, of course, imprisoned in their own private world of demen
tia, they would be frightened by the extra noise and upheaval.
‘Wasn’t that just glorious?’ Rodrigo enthused, again taking centre stage. ‘Let’s give the lovely Carmen a great big hand. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen! Thank you, thank you kindly. And now I want you all to join in. I’m sure you know this next number – maybe you even danced to it in your youth. Well, let’s be young again!’
With a twirl of his hips, he broke into ‘Dancing in the Dark’ – somewhat inappropriately, since the lights were glaringly bright.
‘… till the tune ends we’re dancing in the dark.
And it soon ends …
Time hurries by. We’re here, and we’re gone.’
Too true, thought Lorna, noticing a man near by who looked as if he was gone already, his eyes closed and his skin deathly pale. Still, her heart went out to Rodrigo. He was doing his desperate best, smiling and cavorting and coquettishly ogling the few souls brave enough to join in – among them a tiny, bird-like lady with a bandaged knee and her arm in a sling, who was being minded by a nurse.
‘Elizabeth used to sing in a professional choir,’ the nurse whispered to Lorna. ‘She had a beautiful voice, didn’t you, Elizabeth?’
‘Used to’ must be the watchword here, Lorna reflected as she listened to the old lady’s wavering monotone. Used to sing, used to dance, used to work, make love, bring up children, contribute to the community. Strengths and talents could atrophy as much as ears and eyes.
In sudden gratitude for her own powerful voice, she too sang along, and was rewarded with a beaming smile from Rodrigo.
By the end of his performance she was hoarse. They seemed to have worked their way through the collected works of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and Richard Rogers, finishing with a lacklustre rendition of ‘Will You Love Me in December as You Do in May?’ (unlikely).
An agitated Val now returned to the microphone to inform the assembled company that, although Father Christmas was expected, she’d just had news that he was unavoidably delayed. ‘You know how far it is from Lapland!’ she said gamely, rather spoiling the effect by mentioning a hold-up on the A3.
In the air of anticlimax, the care assistants cleared the dirty plates and removed those residents whose brains, bowels or bladders were unequal to any more excitement. Lorna would have gladly sacrificed several thousand brain cells for the chance of leaving too, but she was jammed into a corner and could hardly claim priority treatment with so many valetudinarians present. One of the worst things about old age was dependence on other people for every aspect of life, including motion up and down or in and out.
Still no sign of Father Christmas, much to Val’s dismay. Carmen and Rodrigo had departed (with much kissing of hands and a force-nine gale from Carmen’s lashes), so to fill the gap she tried to jolly the care assistants into doing a turn or singing a song. No takers: they were all too shy or too busy. Lorna wondered if she should offer – do a one-legged jig, for instance, or recite ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, which she had once known off by heart. Instead she helped herself to the last of the iced fancies – a particularly garish specimen iced in lemon-yellow with puce-pink decorations. She assumed there would be no more food till tomorrow’s breakfast, and even that wasn’t a certainty on Christmas Day with severe staff shortages.
Val kept glancing at her watch, and every so often would dart over to the window to look for the awaited car (sleigh) or scuttle to the door and peer left and right in a state of high anxiety. Lorna found it distressing that Father Christmas should be so eagerly anticipated when the presents in his sack could never be what these people really needed: health, happiness and hope.
However, Val was now engaged in a long whispered conversation with a young West Indian nurse, who left the room taking several carers with her. A search party for Santa?
‘He was late last year as well,’ Dorothy One complained.
‘And the year before he never came at all.’
‘I don’t know why they bother. He probably charges an arm and a leg. I’d rather they spent the money on more nurses. I waited half an hour this morning before anyone answered my bell. And then it was a coal-black fellow who couldn’t understand a word I said.’
‘I won’t let the black ones touch me. They’ve all got Aids, you know.’
Poor Oshoba, thought Lorna, licking icing off her teeth. Nevertheless she joined in the conversation. On Christmas Eve even racist company was preferable to none. ‘How long have you all been here?’ she asked, resolutely changing the subject.
‘Three years,’ said Dorothy Two. ‘Which is three years too many.’
‘Six months,’ Dorothy One chimed in. ‘I was a fool to give up my house, but my daughter said I couldn’t manage. She couldn’t manage, more like it. And since I’ve been here she hasn’t had to, of course. I scarcely ever see her these days. I suppose she may pop in tomorrow, give me a present I don’t want, stay for five minutes and say she’s got to rush back for the boys.’
Lorna gave a sympathetic murmur, although a pep talk from Aunt Agnes might have been more effective – a reminder of how lucky they were to have daughters, presents and grandsons at all, and to be waited on hand and foot (well, stretching a point) in a nursing-home.
The next half-hour passed innocuously enough, with the two Dorothys capping each other’s complaints about the staff, food and management at Oakfield House, the demise of decent standards in both the monarchy and the BBC, and the deplorable state of the pavements, the countryside, the education system, the present government and the nation in general. No wonder the Monster was lying low – he couldn’t cope with the competition.
Dorothy One was just fulminating about the incompetence of the local council when Val bustled in triumphantly to announce Father Christmas’s arrival.
‘About time too,’ said the Dorothys in unison.
In walked not Father Christmas but a scowling tight-lipped Tommy, kitted out in a red velvet dressing-gown and one of the Santa caps. A large quantity of cotton-wool whiskers was affixed to his chin with an even greater quantity of glue, and he carried a bulging pink nylon pillowcase stamped ‘Property of Oakfield House’.
‘Father Christmas doesn’t wear glasses,’ a little girl objected.
Val sprang to his defence. ‘Oh, but he does! You see, he spoiled his eyesight reading the long lists of presents all you children sent him.’
‘Where are his reindeer then?’ the girl insisted.
‘I’m afraid they’re delayed on the A3. But he has brought two of his elves with him.’
‘Where?‘ asked the child.
‘They’re, er, coming.’
‘Tommy,’ Fred called. ‘Why are you wearing a dress?’
‘Now, Fred, dear, don’t spoil the fun,’ one of the nurses chided. ‘It isn’t Tommy, it’s Father Christmas. He’s come all the way from Lapland.’
‘Like hell he has,’ muttered Tommy. ‘I’m suffocating in this bloody stupid get-up.’
Val ignored him. ‘And here are the dear little elves’, she said, ‘who help Santa in his grotto.’
‘They’re Angie’s boys,’ Dorothy said disparagingly. ‘She’s had to bring them with her today because their nan went down with flu.’
‘Who’s Angie?’ Lorna asked.
‘One of the cleaners. Nice girl, but useless – can’t see dirt unless it’s under her nose. And the boys are a pair of right little tearaways.’
In fact they looked enchanting, dressed in makeshift crêpe-paper costumes and coloured tights, and seemed a good deal keener on the task in hand than Father Christmas himself, who stood shuffling from foot to foot and glaring down at the carpet, misery personified. Seizing the pillowcase, the boys began pulling out presents and ripping off the paper.
‘No! No!’ Val shrilled. ‘You don’t unwrap them, you hand them round.’
The boys’ enthusiasm patently dwindled.
‘Each one has a label with a name on. Can you read them out, Sam?’
‘Sam can
’t read,’ his brother declared proudly.
‘Oh dear. Can you, Josh?’
‘Some words. Not the hard ones.’
‘Look, I think I’d better do it. And you can distribute the presents.’ Val put on her glasses and peered at one of the labels. “‘Dorothy’’,’ she pronounced.
Half a dozen voices piped up simultaneously, all laying claim to the gift.
‘We’d … er … better leave that one for the moment.’ Val rummaged in the pillowcase and pulled out another present. “‘Ellen’’.’
‘She’s not here,’ someone said. ‘She had to see the doctor.’
‘I’ll have it then.’ The older boy made a grab for the package.
‘No you won’t, Josh.’ Val’s eyes narrowed in anger for an instant, before her mask of professional geniality returned. ‘Right – third time lucky: “Sydney’’.’
Sydney didn’t recognize his name, but Val pointed him out to Josh, who raced across (with Sam in close pursuit) and hurled the present on his lap.
‘Gently, boys! Gently. You’re not on the football field! Maybe Sydney would like you to help him open the present.’
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