Time Out of Mind

by Ruth Hay

  Caroline was intrigued by this statement as her recent communications with the manager had been mainly about schedules and permissions.

  “For example, I saw you looking at the photographs one of the students has been taking for us. You might have noticed the elderly gentleman with the big smile on his face as he stroked the golden lab. That was the first time Robert has smiled or spoken at all since he arrived here.”

  Caroline was pleased to hear this, as the pet visit had occurred in the morning before she had arrived that day.

  Eva continued, “So many of our residents have benefited from the fresh air in the garden. They have learned, or re-learned, the names of common plants and taken a real interest in the herb garden. We cook their meals using the fresh herbs, and appetites have improved as a result of both these initiatives.”

  Eva turned to Caroline directly as she recounted the effect of the night monitoring equipment.

  “You can’t have known how successful that idea has been, Caroline. Two nights ago, the cameras picked up an incident where a senior was sleepwalking in his room and trying to open the window to escape. Staff got there in time to move him gently back to bed but he could have been seriously injured if he had managed to open the window just a little wider.”

  The safety implications of this story were not lost on either Caroline or her mother. Both thought at once of their own family member who was so vulnerable.

  “That makes me wonder if there have been any developments for those residents, like my own grandmother, who are mostly confined to their rooms and not so responsive?”

  Caroline was pleased to answer her mother’s query and proudly stated, “I was concerned about Gigi right from the beginning, Mum, and I puzzled over what we could do for her and others like her. Well, the individual music on iPods has been marvelous. People just can’t help moving hands, arms and legs when they hear music they really love and remember. It seems to bring them back to life again.”

  As Sarah smiled to think of her grandmother moving about to music, Eva added her appreciation for the live music supplied by the college choir and musicians.

  “Once they started to take requests, enthusiasm just grew tremendously. The piano in the corner there, that had remained closed for years, has had a real workout since that amazing lad, Zak, from the choir group, took it over, and one of our men has started to play a few minutes of classical music in the evenings before supper, which everyone enjoys.”

  “So, you would declare the Community Connections project a success?” asked Sarah, with a twinkle in her eye and a confident grin she shared with her daughter.

  “Absolutely!” responded Eva. “And I want you both to know that Caroline’s efforts will not go

  unnoticed. A reporter from the Sussex Gazette is coming to interview me tomorrow for an article about how young people can work together with the aged in places like this. With a growing population of elders, there is a lot of interest in ways to capitalize on community resources such as the college. I will be sure to mention the fund-raising the college swim team will be attempting this weekend.”

  Sarah looked surprised by this idea. “What’s that about, Caro? I haven’t heard about this one.”

  “Adam’s been looking after this, Mum. We thought a warm, shallow swim pool would be excellent for encouraging seniors to get exercise, particularly in the winter. We don’t expect to raise all the funds needed at the Regional Championships, but we thought it could be a start and let the public know they could contribute. The article in the local paper will really help us, Ms. Singh. I’ll tell the swim team. They’ll be pumped about this.”

  “You are more than welcome, Caroline. I am almost as proud of you as your mother seems to be.” Eva smiled and headed back to the office, leaving Caroline to be caught up in a hug from her mother that almost cracked a few ribs.

  “Easy there, Mum! I need my lungs for swimming!”

  She was very pleased despite her complaints. Suddenly all the planning and the hours of work seemed worthwhile, and she knew she would have enough energy to make it through the last few days of the month.

  “Let’s go and see Gigi before we head home!” suggested Sarah. “I haven’t seen her for weeks now and I have something to bring to her.”

  “What?” asked Caroline in surprise.

  “Well, your Gran Lynn told me about the torn photograph. She had it repaired and copied and asked me to place it back in the drawer in the bedside table so that it would be near if Gigi wanted it, but not on display in case it upset her to see it.”

  “Good idea, Mum! I’ve been worrying about that.” Secretly, Caroline was glad her mother was with her. She was reluctant to be alone with her great-gran since the episodes that disturbed her seemed to happen whenever Caroline was in her room, and it was beginning to weigh on her mind that she might be the trigger for those episodes.

  Gigi was sitting in her chair by the window again and she did not express any interest when Caroline and Sarah entered. She continued gazing out of the window in a passive way.

  “Let’s hope she’s admiring the lovely flowers,” whispered Sarah, as she slipped the photograph into its frame and softly closed the drawer. “We’ll stay for a few minutes then we’ll go home. I think an Indian meal is called for as a celebration tonight.”

  * * *

  I never know whether to be happy or sad at this time of year.

  There were spring flowers on the grounds of the nursing college that year, but for me they signaled danger. I had made it through the winter months without anyone noticing that I was pregnant, but I did not know how much longer I could disguise my shape in outsized wool jumpers. Fortunately, fashion was the last thing on my fellow students’ minds as final exams loomed. My strange attire was overlooked. Few students had money for new clothes in the war years.

  Only one person at the college knew my secret. One of the servers in the cafeteria had seen me snatching leftovers from plates as I passed empty tables. I knew it was risky behavior but I had such a hunger that I could not resist the scraps of pie crust or cold chips. I spent every spare moment in the cafeteria as it was warm and quiet, except during meal breaks.

  Eventually, the girl, whose nametag announced she was Margie, drew me aside one day and asked if I would like an extra sandwich. I was so ashamed that she knew I was too poor to pay for food that I blurted out my condition then dissolved in tears at the relief of confessing my predicament.

  She pulled me into the store room behind the service counter, dried my tears and made me drink a glass of milk to calm myself. She did not appear to be surprised by my confession. She must have been watching me for some time.

  “Look, hen,” she said in a rough Glasgow accent. “Ah’ve a good idea what ye’re goin’ through.

  Ah’ve been in the same position, mair’s the peety. Ah can help ye, but you’ll hiv tae make up yer mind aboot whit ye want to dae. Are ye efter an abortion, an adoption, or dae ye want to keep the kid?”

  I was shocked to hear these alternatives in such blunt speech but it made me respond emotionally in words I had not dared express until that moment.

  “I don’t want to lose this baby. I won’t give it up!” I exclaimed.

  “Weel then, ye’ll hiv tae think fast. Ye’ll be showin’ soon. Ye’ll no’ be able tae hide it ony longer. Think on, lassie, think on.”

  I fled from the cafeteria in anguish, knowing Margie was right, and despairing of an answer.

  My parents would disown me immediately if they knew my situation. It was a family disgrace to be pregnant out of wedlock. I could not face that confrontation. There was no one I could go to for help.

  In the end, it was Marion who precipitated the solution. She had noticed my changed attitude. For months now, I had turned down invitations to dances and films. She had wondered about my untidy clothing and finally she cornered me after class and accused me of carrying some grudge I was unwilling to discuss. I cringed inside at these words since what I was carryin
g was much worse than she could ever imagine.

  At first I tried to divert her with a tale of a falling-out with Kyle. She declared that to be a lie since she had already tackled Kyle to see what he knew.

  I made feeble excuses about the pressure of exam work and trouble at home with my parents, but Marion would not let it go. She kept on and on, insisting that I tell her what was wrong, until my vulnerable emotions overflowed and I yelled at her, “Go ask Gus, if you want to know what’s wrong with me!”

  Marion stopped dead and looked at me with a puzzled expression. I wanted to snatch back the cruel words as soon as I had said them, but it was too late.

  “What do you mean, ‘ask Gus’? What does he have to do with this?”

  I was afraid to say more, so I escaped into a crowd of students erupting out of a nearby lecture room, leaving Marion standing stock still with a confused look on her face.

  Of course, it wasn’t long before the inevitable happened. I had tried to keep out of her way, but two days later Marion found me, huddled in the cafeteria, and one look at her clenched jaw told me it was, as they say, “all over bar the shouting.”

  She began in a low, controlled voice. “You dirty wee bitch! How could you say those things to my boyfriend? I knew you liked Gus but this is an outrageous lie! Gus would never touch you. What were you thinking would happen? Gus will never leave me.”

  So Gus had denied everything. I was not surprised. That dream had shattered long before.

  I reached into the satchel on the chair beside me and pulled out the silver flask, laying it on the table in front of her. She looked at it and turned it over to find Gus’ father’s engraved initials.

  “Where did you get this? What does it mean? Why…..” I did not let her finish.

  “Look, Marion, I am more sorry about this mistake than you can ever know. I have let you down. I have let myself down. Gus was not to blame. I made him drunk that night and he scarcely knew what was happening. How do you think I got this flask from him?”

  Marion’s pretty face paled as she absorbed the implications of my confession. Her voice raised a notch and she leaned forward to spit her words at me. “You are lying, Isobel! Tell me you are lying!”

  I reached over and grasped her hand. Her fingers were as cold as my own. “You can feel the baby kicking if you don’t believe me,” I said. This was my last card to play and it worked, but not as I had hoped.

  Marion jerked back in shock and stood up so fast, in an attempt to get far away from me, that she knocked over the chair. The clattering noise as it hit the floor drew the attention of every person in the cafeteria, and made me shrink down with shame.

  All eyes followed Marion. She blundered her way to the exit and stumbled blindly through the swing doors.

  I was never again to see her, face to face.

  I sat there, like a frozen block of ice, until everyone else had left the cafeteria.

  I was incapable of movement, but the tiny being in my belly was kicking madly at that moment.

  I swear my heart had stopped, and the child within had decided to fight for life for both of us.

  I became ‘we’ then and there. We were alone in the world and I had decisions to make.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Your father and I really think you need to get away for a while, Caro.”

  Her mother’s disembodied voice floated up from behind the shrubbery and reached into Caroline’s lazy, sun-baked mind.

  She sat up and waited till her mother emerged onto the tiny patch of lawn in the back garden that was all her father would allow to remain unplanted.

  “Away? Why?” Caroline rolled over on her blanket and made a space in the sun for her mother and the tall pitcher of lemonade she was carrying. Sarah refilled her daughter’s glass and settled a pillow at her back as she continued with the theme she had discussed with her husband late last night in bed.

  “Well, we think you deserve a break after all the work you have done this term. You have been looking exhausted ever since the graduation party.”

  Caroline could not argue. She had made it through the Regional Swim Competition and celebrated with the team when they won the college trophy. They managed to place second in the region, but a better reward than the trophy in the display case, was the sum of money they had collected for the future Mayfield Manor therapy pool.

  Ashley and Janine’s vest designs were so bright and eye-catching that spectators were coming up to the community college swimmers, and to Coach Lawson, asking where they could make a donation.

  Subsequently, another article about the Community Connections project appeared in the local paper and the southern counties TV station interviewed Caroline and Adam for a ‘Youth of Today’ spot after the evening news. It was all very exciting but a little nerve-wracking also.

  The interviewer asked an unusual question which made Caroline think. She wanted to know what the students who took part in the project had gained from the experience.

  Adam started with comments about links that had been established between local businesses and the student helpers. Some students, himself included, had found summer jobs with these businesses since they had demonstrated the qualities of perseverance and compassion that made good employees.

  When it was Caroline’s turn to answer, she spoke about how much the students had learned from the elderly residents of the nursing home.

  “We started out thinking we would be teaching them,” she stated, “but the unexpected part was the way we learned to appreciate their lives and skills.”

  Caroline went on with passion. “You know, many older people don’t have visitors and they love to have someone listen to their stories. I think it makes them feel as if they still have something to contribute, even at their age. I know I will be returning to Mayfield Manor to see my new friends there, and I am sure other students in the project will be going back there also.”

  It was clear to Caroline that the Community Connections project she had initiated should be only the start of an ongoing involvement between the college and the nursing home.

  In the month in which the students had been working there, many changes had occurred. The trial CCTV cameras were now installed in several corridors and Mr. Thomson’s firm had made advertising videos to promote future commercial uses.

  Eva Singh had found a supplier who rescued battery chickens and she had employed a builder to structure an enclosure where five hens and a cockerel were now happily pecking away in the garden of the nursing home, to the delight of the residents, who competed for the honour of feeding them each day.

  The Heathfield Council members were so pleased with the positive publicity they had received, that they put forward finances to install more benches in the garden, and extend pathways so that wheelchairs could be accommodated more easily, and residents could enjoy the outdoor area whenever the weather permitted.

  Caroline and her Gran Lynn had tried to involve Gigi in the new activities. They did manage to wheel her around the garden, and she seemed to be looking at the plants, but it was a sadness for Caroline that the project she had started in order to help her own relative, had done very little to change that situation.

  Caroline was relieved there had been no further disturbing outbursts while she was in the building. She admitted to herself that, on more than one occasion, she had avoided her great-gran’s room with the excuse that she had other things to attend to.

  And now it was all over.

  The excitement and uncertainty of the beginning and the frantic worry about the day to day that had absorbed her every thought for close to two months, was gone.

  The grad party had come and gone as if in a dream. Caroline had no energy left to enjoy it the way the others in her class did. They had all danced in a group, switching partners every time they turned around and judging from the arm-waving, singing, and closed eyes as they swayed to the rhythms, a good time was had by every one of her classmates.

  Caroline had looked ar
ound the hall from the sidelines and recognized that she might not see most of the students again. Many were heading to university in the autumn. Others were travelling to far-off places in a gap year adventure. It was the end of an era for all of them.

  “I don’t fit in any more,” she realized with a pang of fear. “I have no plans made. I just don’t have a clue what I want to do, and, what’s worse, I don’t care.”

  The thumping beat from the hard rock music of the Brighton band had given her such a headache, she had slipped away early and called for a ride home.

  That was the point at which her mother began to worry.

  * * *

  David Fenton had groggily opened his eyes and found his wife trying to slip out of their bedroom in the middle of the night.

  “All right!” he murmured, “That’s it! Come back here Sarah and tell me what’s on your mind. You haven’t been sleeping well lately. Is it the travel business again?”

  Sarah reluctantly turned back from the door and sat down wearily on her husband’s side of the bed. She knew she couldn’t hide her concerns any longer. David was tenacious when he sensed something was wrong with her. It was one of his finer, if occasionally annoying, characteristics.

  “I’m sorry to wake you, sweetheart” she answered softly. “I was going to talk to you tomorrow about this, and I suppose, working out what I was going to say to you, must have kept me from sleeping.”

  “Well, I’m thoroughly awake now, Sarah, so ‘fess up, as you say to the kids. What’s the trouble?” David turned his bedside lamp on at a low level and sat up to give his wife his full attention.

  “It’s Caroline.” As her husband’s forehead wrinkled in surprise, Sarah forestalled his protests by launching into the catalogue of observations that had disturbed her recently.

  “She’s so tired and lacking in energy lately. At first I thought it was a natural reaction to the efforts of the last months in school, but she is not recovering. She isn’t spending time with her friends, either. She mopes around the house and isn’t interested in anything. She doesn’t even tease Mike any more, and her room is a tip!