Tread Softly

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘I’m not sure – pain-killers and stuff.’

  Anne stood, arms akimbo, hot flush and coughing fit subsumed in indignation. ‘Do you mean to tell me, Lorna Pearson, you’re taking drugs without knowing what they are? You could kill yourself that way.

  Only the other day I was reading about people in residential homes being dosed up to the eyeballs with tranquillizers and sleeping-pills.’

  Lorna wouldn’t have said no to a few tranquillizers, as an antidote to Anne. Perhaps the Monster had lost his voice and sent her in his place. Whatever, she was doing a marvellous job.

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why you collapsed. Valium affects your sense of balance.’

  ‘Right on the nail, Anne! They’re drugging her deliberately, to beat her into submission. No wonder her bowels won’t work. It’s the morphine, I expect. It bungs you up – then kills you.’

  Lost his voice? What an absurd idea! His squawk was as loud and malevolent as ever. ‘Go to hell,’ she hissed, before turning to Anne. ‘I think these are only ibuprofen.’

  ‘That’s nearly as bad. It can cause internal bleeding and stomach ulcers and –’

  Clare barged back in, minus the glass. ‘Sorry I was so long. I got collared by some weird old boy who didn’t seem to know where he was. He kept asking me to take him home.’

  ‘Oh dear. That’ll be Arthur. He’s ninety-six and his wife’s just died. They brought him here against his will.’ Lorna had stumbled upon the poor old man herself, wandering around in a daze and desperately repeating, ‘I want to go home. Please take me home.’

  ‘Heavens, there’s my phone again! Hello? … Barbara? … Good – I was hoping you’d ring … No, I’m dead at the moment. The asthma’s worse. In fact they’ve made me an appointment with a lung specialist – best in the country, they say.’

  Clare shut the window with a bang. ‘You’d better get his name, Lorna. You’ll need it if she’s given you pneumonia.’

  ‘… well, Harley Street, naturally. He got an OBE last year. And he’s frightfully well connected. He’s married to the Duchess of Kent’s second cousin. And his son-in-law’s the …’ Anne momentarily halted her name-dropping to call out, ‘Come in!’ in response to a knock on the door.

  ‘Bloody cheek,’ Clare muttered. ‘Does she think she’s taken up residence here?’

  ‘Get rid of her,’ Lorna mouthed.

  ‘Gladly. Just give me a gun.’

  ‘Come in!’ Anne carolled again.

  And in came bald, fur-coated Frances with the twitch. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lorna, you’re busy.’

  ‘No, please stay!’

  Lorna had been touched at how gratefully, even joyously, Frances had greeted her return to Oakfield House. Some of the others, too, had welcomed her back with genuine warmth. They had become her friends, in a sense – Frances especially. ‘Sit here, Frances,’ she urged, patting the bed and wishing (not for the first time) that there was more than one chair – which Anne, of course, was monopolizing. Clare, meanwhile, stood leaning against the wall, bemused by all the comings and goings.

  ‘Barbara, I’ll have to ring off – I can’t hear myself speak … Yes, I’ll keep you updated, darling, but prepare yourself for the worst. He’s already said my lungs are in a shocking state.’ Anne coughed again, authoritatively.

  ‘Good gracious!’ Frances clucked. ‘You do sound bad.’

  ‘Yes, I was plagued with bronchitis in childhood. And now’ – Anne adopted a wistful, consumptive tone – ‘my lungs are affected.’

  ‘How dreadful. Poor you.’

  Lorna fumed silently. If anyone deserved compassion it was Frances, who since her early twenties had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals where the regime was not only ineffectual but brutal into the bargain. Anne, however, revelling in the sympathy, continued to elaborate on her parlous condition. ‘I can’t breathe at night,’ she confided. ‘And’ – lowering her voice – ‘I’m going through the change, which is a nightmare, I can tell you.’

  Frances doesn’t need telling, Lorna wanted to shout. Some cretin of a doctor yanked out her womb when she was only twenty-nine, as a cure for her depression. And when she complained about hot flushes they silenced her with years of electric-shock treatment. That’s a nightmare, Anne.

  ‘I get these fearful sweats. Sometimes I have to change my nightie half a dozen times a night.’

  Gingerly Lorna tried to ease her own nightie away from the blisters. The honey had made it stick, while doing nothing to alleviate the itching. Yet, whatever her problems, talking to Frances had made her realize what a lucky escape she’d had. In her twenties she, too, had been unstable and depressed and might well have been incarcerated like Frances in some horrendous institution, had Ralph not come along and saved her.

  ‘It’s been going on for years. My GP can’t understand it. He says most women of my age –’

  ‘Anne,’ said Clare with undisguised hostility, ‘I’m sure Frances would like a private word with Lorna. I think it’s time we left.’

  ‘Oh, please,’ Frances looked dismayed. ‘Don’t let me drive you away.’

  ‘It’s lunch-time,’ Clare persisted. ‘We’re holding everyone up.’

  ‘No, really,’ Frances assured her. ‘They’ve told us lunch won’t be until two. It seems there’s some trouble in the kitchen.’

  Just as Lorna was wondering whether a single slice of luncheon-meat might somehow divide into four, Clare pulled the leeks out of her carrier-bag and brandished them in the air. With the other hand she held the honey jar aloft. ‘If they’re desperate, they’re welcome to these. Leeks with honey sauce.’

  ‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Anne said disapprovingly. ‘I consider it gross incompetence, messing the residents about like this.’

  ‘Ye gods! She’s finally thinking about someone other than herself.’

  ‘Clare,’ Anne all but spat at her, ‘I find that remark abusive.’

  ‘Me abusive? And what about your …’

  Frances, caught in the crossfire of insults, hung her head in embarrassment. Then all at once both phones rang, affording a brief lull. Very brief. Anne pounced on her mobile and began an animated conversation, raising her voice above the shrilling of the second phone.

  ‘Blast!’ Lorna muttered, not yet familiar with the buttons. ‘Ah – hello! … Ralph! Where are you? … Tewkesbury? … Stuck where? … Outside his house? But surely … No, of course I haven’t got the address here, Ralph. They’re on the database at home. Anyway it is Holly Tree House. I remember the name distinctly … Darling, I can’t go home and look it up, not on crutches. Just a minute … Clare’s offering to drive me. But there’s no point, Ralph. I remember checking the address before you went. And we’ve no record of him moving …’

  Ralph’s next words were lost in a new spate of coughing from Anne. Undeterred by Clare, she appeared to be demonstrating the critical state of her lungs to yet another friend. Strange she had so many friends, Lorna thought uncharitably.

  ‘What, Ralph? I can’t hear.’

  ‘Shut up, Anne, for Christ’s sake!’ Clare’s patience had reached breaking-point.

  ‘Do you imagine I’m coughing on purpose?’ Anne retorted, dissolving into further gasps and wheezes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ralph, could you speak a bit louder? … No, it’s not the woman next door – not this time … Why don’t you ask in the Post Office? … Yes, do ring me back. It’s worrying. Good luck!’

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Clare.

  Before Lorna could utter a word, the door opened once again. This time it was Dorothy Two, armed with an ancient photo album. And Dorothy Two meant more trouble. She and Frances were almost as incompatible as Clare and Anne: Frances was cowed by Dorothy’s abrasive manner, while Dorothy regarded Frances as weak-willed and eccentric. ‘I’ll come back when you’re free, Lorna,’ she said, with a disdainful glance at the bald head.

  ‘No, it’s OK, honestly. We’re just a bit short of chairs. But sit h
ere on the bed.’

  Dorothy sat, stiffly, putting as much distance as possible between herself and Frances’s fur coat (which had a distressing tendency to moult). As well as the photo album, she was holding a sheet of vellum notepaper covered with spidery writing. ‘I came to ask you, Lorna, if you would sign this formal letter of complaint. Someone needs to make a stand. It appears we’re not going to eat today at all.’

  ‘Oh, we are!’ said Frances earnestly. ‘At two o’clock.’

  Dorothy ignored her. ‘It also happens to be my birthday, and I was promised a birthday cake. But of course there’s no hope of that now. In fact I doubt if any more meals will materialize until someone gets to grips with the problems in the kitchen. No wonder all the chefs give notice, when the equipment doesn’t work and they have an infestation of woodlice.’

  ‘Woodlice?’ Frances cried.

  ‘And worse,’ Dorothy added darkly.

  ‘Well, happy birthday!’ Anne said, off the phone at last.

  ‘Anne, Clare, this is Dorothy,’ Lorna mumbled, realizing she had neglected the social niceties in the general mayhem. ‘And Frances.’

  Once greetings were exchanged, Dorothy took centre stage again. ‘I’m not concerned about the cake – it’s of no consequence. People of my age shouldn’t have birthdays anyway.’

  ‘The older you are, the more reason to celebrate,’ Anne declared, herself approaching sixty.

  ‘It’s just another year closer to death,’ Dorothy countered morosely. ‘And death costs a fortune these days. It’s a scandal. You can’t even buy a plot in advance. I enquired about it recently, and it seems you have to wait until you’re dead. A bit late then, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I only hope they don’t cremate me,’ Frances put in nervously. ‘It’s so upsetting, isn’t it, when those velvet curtains come across?’

  Dorothy gave her a look of contempt. ‘You’ll hardly be aware of it, in your coffin.’

  Frances shuddered. ‘It’s not natural, being cremated. Jesus wasn’t cremated.’

  With an imperious gesture, indicating that the subject was now closed, Dorothy handed the vellum sheet to Lorna. ‘Could you please sign your name just there, under mine.’

  ‘Er, I’m not sure that …’ Lorna was ashamed to realize that in a conflict between principle and personal convenience it was principle she would sacrifice. If she made trouble she might be turfed out, and she wasn’t ready to face the brisk, pitiless pace of the able-bodied world. Oakfield House, whatever its deficiencies, had become a sort of refuge. With a look of entreaty at Clare, she mumbled something about not having a pen.

  Before Dorothy could produce one, Clare evinced a sudden curiosity in the contents of the photo album. ‘Wow! This looks fascinating. May I have a peep? I adore old family photos. Oh, it’s holidays – even better. Where’s that? Hawaii?’

  ‘Yes. Honolulu.’ Dorothy was gratified by Clare’s interest. ‘I brought them to show Lorna, but you’re welcome to look at them too.’ She positioned the album for Clare and Lorna to see, excluding Frances deliberately. ‘I don’t think we got round to these last time, did we, Lorna?’

  ‘No.’ Lorna had, however, seen the whole of Dorothy’s extensive family, stretching back three generations (plus their various servants, houses and assorted dogs and cats). She had been saddened by the thought that the once attractive Dorothy, with her big house and garden and busy social life, should now be cooped up in one room for much of the day, with little diversion beyond the occasional game of darts or visit from the mobile shop.

  ‘Some of these are spectacular.’ Dorothy sighed nostalgically as she leafed through the pages. ‘Especially the world cruises.’

  ‘Oh, do you like cruising?’ Anne chipped in.

  ‘I did, in the old days. I’m afraid I’m past it now. My husband and I went winter-cruising for many, many years.’

  ‘We love it too,’ Anne enthused. ‘Have you been on the Oriana?’

  ‘Yes, a beautiful ship. Although Henry and I did find the cabins marginally better on the QE2.’

  Clare and Lorna were displaced as Anne and Dorothy vied in superlatives, comparing exotic destinations, exquisite six-course meals, bewitchingly handsome captains, and sensational sunsets, seascapes, scenery. Which meant that the letter of complaint was conveniently forgotten – much to Lorna’s relief.

  The relief was short-lived, however, as Oshoba put his head round the door and she blushed scarlet in confusion. She knew he wasn’t on duty and had come specifically to see her, to hold her hand, flirt with her outrageously. And as he met her eyes she felt sure that all her visitors could see into her mind, where he was naked and gloriously rampant. Such fantasies had become her nightly fix, but she hardly dared imagine what the racist Dorothy might say about them, or censorious Anne, or lifelong celibate Frances.

  ‘You’re busy,’ Oshoba said, in his thrilling basso-profundo voice.

  Yes, she thought, busy with you, ecstatically entwined … ‘Mm, I am a bit.’

  ‘I come back later. OK?’

  ‘OK.’ Fortunately Clare alone seemed to have witnessed the exchange. Dorothy and Anne were still in the South Pacific.

  ‘Isn’t Easter Island out of this world?’

  ‘Yes, absolutely divine. Did you visit the moai statues?’

  ‘But of course. And our next stop was Papeete. Mount Orohena just took my breath away.’

  Poor Frances looked mutely on, quite out of her depth – her travels were confined to brief shuttlings between mental institutions. However, Dorothy’s account of an active volcano on Bora Bora was cut short by a rather different kind of eruption: Arthur, bursting in with his flies undone.

  ‘I want to go home,’ he wailed. ‘Can somebody please take me home?’

  ‘This is your home,’ Dorothy said sharply, annoyed that her tropical odyssey should be disrupted in full flow.

  ‘No it’s not, it’s not. Me and Winnie live in Cranbrook Close.’

  Clare patted the old man’s arm. ‘Why don’t I take you back to your room instead?’

  Thus encouraged, Arthur suddenly thrust a hand up Clare’s skirt, using the other hand to manoeuvre his limp and shrivelled member out through his open fly.

  ‘Steady on, old chap!’ Clare said, showing remarkable equanimity in the circumstances.

  Dorothy, however, sprang to her feet with a yelp of alarm. ‘The man should be locked up! We’re all in danger of our lives.’

  ‘I quite agree.’ Anne rallied to the support of a fellow cruise-enthusiast. ‘He should at least be reported for sexual harassment.’

  ‘Come off it, Anne. He’s ninety-six and he’s just lost his wife. I’d say a little TLC would be more in order.’ Clare coaxed the recalcitrant member back into the folds of Arthur’s baggy white underpants, then deftly zipped up his fly. Whereupon he, possibly seeing her as Mother, clung to her pathetically, reiterating his former pleas.

  ‘I must go home. I must go home. There’s things need doing there. The gas man’s coming to see about the boiler.’

  ‘I’d better ring for a nurse,’ Lorna said. But, before she could press the bell, her mobile shrilled again. ‘Oh, Ralph! Have you had any luck? … But surely someone must know? What about the next-door neighbours?’

  ‘I want to go home.’ The word became a howl of pain.

  ‘What, Ralph? … No, I’m OK. It’s just someone who’s … I’m sorry, I don’t know what to suggest … Why don’t you cut your losses and come home?’

  ‘Home. Please take me home.’

  ‘Ralph, can I ring you back? I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Shit! Who’s this?’

  Yet another knock, heralding the return of the yellow frills. ‘Oh, Val … Hello. Just a sec … Ralph? Are you still there? … Fuck! The phone’s gone dead.’

  As ‘Fuck!’ succeeded ‘Shit!’, Anne and Dorothy turned to her with deeply shocked expressions. ‘Sorry,’ she murmured wretchedly.

  ‘Take me home!’ Arthur quavered.

 
; Val seized his arm with unnecessary force. ‘That’s quite enough from you, Arthur! Now, Lorna,’ she said, trying to make herself heard above his sobs of protest, ‘lunch has been postponed again, till three. So we’re starting darts early – in five or ten minutes. I wondered if you’d changed your mind about coming?’

  Lorna surveyed the assembled company: Arthur cringing and weeping under Val’s Gestapo grip; Clare spitting invective at such crass bullying; Anne and Dorothy combining in righteous indignation about tardy meals and sexual perversion; Frances apologizing to all and sundry for being in the way. A game of darts suddenly seemed a most inviting prospect. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’d love to come.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Ah, Mrs Pearson – do come through.’ Mr Hughes stood smiling at the door of his consulting-room. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ she lied, hobbling in. It was essential that he saw her as attractive, not a mass of blisters and bedsores.

  But, as usual, he was interested only in her feet. ‘You don’t seem to have got the hang of walking on those crutches. Didn’t the physio show you?’

  ‘Well, yes, but –’

  ‘You appear to be holding your toes up rather stiffly. Are you in pain?’

  ‘Mm. Quite a bit, actually, but I suppose that’s only to be expected.’

  He frowned. ‘Not at this stage, no. And the foot’s been bandaged incorrectly, I see. The big toe should have been held away from the others with adhesive tape.’

  She doubted if Oakfield House could run to anything as arcane as adhesive tape. Just asking for a safety-pin was a severe test of their resources – and of Antonio’s English. In fact the pin had never materialized, and two hours later, when her bandage unravelled itself completely, Antonio’s nursing skill proved to be no better than his linguistic ability.

  ‘Would you sit up here on the couch, please.’

  Oh yes, she thought, but lie beside me. Hold me. Stroke me. Baby me.

  She met his disturbingly dark eyes and looked away in confusion. Her father – alone with her and loving her, his face taut and finely chiselled, his hands cool on her throbbing foot.