“We like to think of ourselves as heaven’s waiting room,” Patrick Davenport, the home’s supervisor, explained pompously as he greeted Daphne at the front door on the previous Monday, like St. Peter with his arms wide in welcome.
“I see,” said Daphne, stepping into a dismal entrance hall with furniture as old as the inmates, and in similar condition.
“It’s a great comfort to know that all of our guests will soon be sitting beside the Almighty,” Davenport continued as he led Daphne past the common room where a dozen pairs of eyes looked hopefully her way. Was she a visitor? A long-lost relative? A saviour coming to take them to a better place?
It might be a comfort for you, thought Daphne as she peered at the expectant faces and wondered who they were before time took its toll. But how do they feel about it? Then she looked inwardly and wondered who she had been.
“This way,” said Davenport, guiding her into his piously austere office as her mind flashed through more than eighty years of snapshots, questioning which, if any, were real: the golden-haired schoolgirl; the clumsy ballerina; the lover; the traveller; the wartime parachutist; the saboteur; the artist’s model; the secret agent; another lover, and yet another; the police station’s tea lady; the aging adventurer; and the lonely spinster.
“You can keep a few personal things,” Davenport explained as he rummaged through her suitcase with the eye of a customs officer, while she scanned his framed collection of sacred quotes: “One book” — (his tone said “The Bible”) — “basic toiletries, family photos, and some pocket change.” Then he looked up. “We’ll take care of all your jewellery, money, and other valuables.”
“Isn’t that what they told the Jews?” mumbled Daphne acidly under her breath, and Davenport caught it.
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘What a lovely June.’”
“It’s August,” snapped Davenport viciously, then he softened. “I’m sure you will be very comfortable here, Miss Lovelace. Or may I call you Daphne?”
David Bliss also received a rebuke on Monday and has been fending off his ex-boss ever since.
“It was just a minor prang,” he said, shrugging off the accident involving the Queen’s car, but Michael Edwards steamed at his lack of concern.
“How do you know that? Got proof, have you? Got sworn statements from everyone involved? Grilled the clown who pranged her, have you?”
“No, but —”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, Chief Inspector. The Home Secretary is demanding a proper investigation, not some flim-flam f’kin …”
Edwards ran out of expletives, and Bliss realized that it wasn’t the Home Secretary demanding a full-scale inquiry. It was Edwards, protecting his own backside. He’ll be blamed if Philip gives her so much as a sore throat, Bliss thought with a degree of satisfaction as he promised to look into the matter.
“Now,” says Hilda Fitzgerald, leading Daphne back to her bed, “I’ll get Amelia to bring up your breakfast. We did tell you that we always hold Sunday morning service in the common room. I ’spect you forgot.”
“I did,” sniffles Daphne.
“It’s all right. Just dry your eyes and try not to upset Emily. And don’t forget, we have prayer meetings twice a day and Bible classes Thursdays at seven. It’s all on the notice board.”
Emily Mountjoy, a sunken-cheeked, wispy-haired skeleton, sits motionless in an armchair with her unseeing eyes glued remorselessly to the roof of the City Library, where she was the senior staff member for more than thirty years. She is, however, totally incognizant of the world and of Daphne’s desolation. She is beyond distress. Nothing that Daphne does, or says, will upset her. Her mind died long ago, and her body is finally catching up. However, in some ways, Emily is more advantaged than many of the other residents who are still fully sentient, watching in horror as their bodies head to the grave before they do.
Daphne tried communicating with Emily throughout the week but has drawn a blank.
On Tuesday, Daphne’s first full day at the home, she picked a family portrait of a couple and their three young children off Emily’s bedside table, asking, “Is this you?”
Emily didn’t answer; didn’t take her eyes off the library. But Daphne sank a little deeper when she returned to her own bed and looked at the bare table beside her. Where were her pictures of a smiling husband and a clutch of rascal-faced schoolchildren?
“So. You were never married then,” said Patrick Davenport later Tuesday morning when he escorted a paunch-bellied parson to Daphne’s room.
“Married?” Daphne questioned, with a look on her face that said she was trying hard to recall.
“This is the Reverend Rowlands of St. Stephen’s-in-the-Vale,” Davenport continued, already knowing the answer, and he carried on talking while the red-faced vicar was in the background having a coughing fit as he tried to recover his breath after climbing the stairs. “He takes the service here on the fourth Sunday of the month, except when it falls on Christmas or Easter.”
“Or one of the other special days,” chimed in Rowlands, once he had loudly blown his nose. Then he looked at Daphne and said, “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”
Daphne wrinkled her brow. “Have we?”
“Yes. Weren’t you making inquiries about the Creston family awhile ago?”
“Was I?”
“Miss Lovelace is having a few problems with her memory, aren’t you, dear?” said Davenport.
“Am I?” replied Daphne, looking quizzical.
“The reverend will visit your family or friends if you’d like him to.”
“Will he?” inquired Daphne, but when it came to giving names she balked.
“Is there anyone at all whom we should contact?” queried Rollie Rowlands as he gently clasped her hands. “Any friends or relatives. Who’s looking after everything for you at home?”
“Home,” repeated Daphne, as if the memory of her neat suburban house was already fading. Then she shook her head. “No one, I don’t think.”
David Bliss is one person who could be looking after Daphne’s affairs. She has taken care of him often enough in the past. But he was in Scotland on Tuesday, having a clandestine meeting with the Duke of Edinburgh’s protection officer.
“The old boy has no idea what the problem is,” the seconded Metropolitan inspector told him over a beer and pork pie in the corner of a pub on the outskirts of Aberdeen. “He doesn’t remember getting dressed that morning. Doesn’t have a clue about the sword incident. It’s like it never happened.”
“Why didn’t anyone stop him putting on his uniform?” asked Bliss.
“He’s not a kid,” shot back the inspector. “And by the time anyone spotted him it was too late.”
“Good mornin’, Miss Lovelace,” calls a perky voice as a bright-eyed youngster bustles into Daphne’s room with a breakfast tray. “I poached you an egg ’specially,” adds Amelia Brimble, and Daphne’s face lights up.
“Thank you, my dear.”
Amelia pulls a sympathetic face. “Mrs. Fitzgerald said the service was a bit much for you this morning.”
“Was it?”
“And she says I gotta make sure you take your pills.”
“I already did …” starts Daphne, then she pauses with a thought and squirrels a five-pound note from the inside of one of her slippers. “Amelia, dear,” she whispers, “this is for you for being so nice to me.”
“I’m not supposed …”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul. Only I haven’t got any children to leave it to, so you might as well have it.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Oh. I am, dear,” she replies as she runs a gentle finger down the girl’s cheek. “You’re a lovely girl. If I had a daughter I’d want her to be just like you. How old are you?”
“Sixteen and a half next month.”
“Well. One of these days you’ll make some nice young man a wonderful wife.”
“Oh, Miss Lovelace …you are
a one,” giggles the young girl as she pockets the cash.
The question of Daphne’s lack of progeny also arose on Wednesday when Doctor Williamson visited.
“You can have your own doctor if you really want,” Patrick Davenport made clear when he signed her in. “Only Doctor Williamson is here most days, so it’s easier.”
“She’s in good shape physically,” Geoffrey Williamson reported following his examination. “But her mental condition is worrying. She doesn’t even remember if she has any children.”
“The doctor wants you to take these for your memory,” Hilda Fitzgerald told Daphne later as she handed over the first of many tablets, but Daphne looked confused, insisting, “There’s nothing wrong with my bloomin’ memory.”
Wednesday was also the day Tony Oswald, the social worker, tracked down Mavis Longbottom.
“I had no idea,” she cried, without admitting that since she started experimenting with Internet dating she has hardly seen her old friend. “But she did seem very confused a couple of weeks ago.”
“Really?”
“Yes. The neighbour’s dogs were getting to her, so I took her to the labyrinth at the cathedral hoping she might sort herself out.”
Daphne is still walking the labyrinth. She has been walking the labyrinth all week, although not the one at the cathedral.
“You’re free to leave the grounds at any time,” Davenport pointed out when she first arrived, but he quickly stomped on the idea. “Though not without a good reason and not without permission.”
“Auschwitz,” she silently muttered under her breath, but each day she has paced out the loops and whorls of a labyrinth on the parched lawn at St. Michael’s.
“That’s all she does most of the time,” Amelia explained to Tony Oswald when he wondered how Daphne was settling in. “Round and round she goes.” The young attendant chuckled. “Hour after blinkin’ hour. Nattering away ten to the dozen. Like a little clockwork mouse.”
Mavis Longbottom has called each day since she heard the news on Wednesday, saying, “I feel so bad. I really should visit.” But Davenport persuaded her otherwise. “Not until she’s properly settled in,” he advised. “It would just upset her even more.”
However, Mavis found Samantha Bliss’s phone number in her address book — Daphne had once given it to her as someone to contact in case of emergency — and she gave the young lawyer a call.
“I’ll let Dad know,” Samantha quickly said. “Only he’s in Scotland at the moment.”
Bliss was in Edinburgh on Wednesday with Michael Edwards, meeting Prince Philip’s psychiatrist. Edwards chose the restaurant — the Wichery, just outside the castle’s gates. “Home Office perks, old boy,” he explained with a grin and a wink when Bliss whistled at the prices.
“Amnesia of the whole day — blotted it all out,” Professor Peter Morteson informed them over the lobster-topped seafood platters, and Edwards questioned whether or not Prince Philip might have deliberately wiped his mind.
“It’s possible, Michael,” said Morteson, making it clear by his tone that he would need to do much more research before committing himself. “There’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that people can black out horrendous memories — selective amnesia.”
“But getting dressed wouldn’t have been traumatic,” suggested Bliss. “Why wouldn’t he remember putting on his uniform? And why did he put on his uniform in the first place?”
The psychiatrist shrugged. He only asked questions. He didn’t have answers.
Tony Oswald visited Daphne on Thursday. “Just to see how you’re doing,” he said, but she eyed him as a complete stranger, wrapped her housecoat tightly around her bosom, and steeled herself to run.
“Her mental capacity seems to be deteriorating quite rapidly,” the social worker pointed out at the patient evaluation meeting afterwards, although Paul Davenport had an answer.
“We don’t know how long this has been going on, Tony. Most people cope if there’s no one to notice when they cook dinner at three in the morning or put their pants on back to front.”
“True,” Oswald replied, then Amelia chipped in.
“She seems quite upset about her cat.”
“We don’t allow pets …” jumped in Davenport, but Oswald laughed.
“It’s all right. She doesn’t have a cat.” Then he explained how Daphne had rambled to the arresting officer about the cat’s collar, adding, “But I had a good look around and couldn’t find anything. And the neighbours said they’d never seen a cat.”
“I’ll talk to her about it,” said Davenport. “It was probably a childhood pet. It’s amazing how the early memories seem to stick when everything else goes.”
Samantha Bliss is someone else worried about the failing memories of the aged.
“You’re fuckin’ useless, Dad,” she complained bitterly Thursday evening when Bliss admitted that he had forgotten to telephone St. Michael’s to check on Daphne.
“Language!” he retorted, then protested that between the Queen and Daisy he already had his hands full.
“What’s happening with Daisy?” Samantha wanted to know, but Bliss was evasive.
“We’ll probably sort something out,” he replied, without admitting that Daisy was still being cagey on the phone and insisting that she would only talk face to face.
“Daavid. Zhis is very difficult for me,” she’d whimpered when he called back as promised on Monday evening, and he sympathized. After all, she’d stood by him when he was driven off the rails by the reignition of an old flame — a woman of such beauty that he even changed his novel, and the course of history, in an effort to win back her love. But when his scheme backfired and he was badly burnt, Daisy was there to salve his wounds.
“I’ll come as soon as I can,” he’d told her, but was mindful of the stern warning he’d received following his late arrival in London that morning. “Don’t you dare leave the country again without permission,” Commander Fox had barked, and he made it clear that any future absences would be treated as a serious disciplinary matter.
Winifred Goodenow, Trina Button’s mother in Vancouver, is also under notice.
“If you run off just once more …” Trina angrily warned when Inspector Mike Phillips brought Winifred home on Monday evening minus her slippers, but the elderly woman’s only concern was her footwear.
“I want my pumpkins … I want my pumpkins …” she moaned constantly until Trina bought her another pair on Friday.
Friday was the day that David Bliss’s daughter visited Daphne and found the old soldier steadfastly slow-marching the invisible labyrinth on the lawn at St. Michael’s.
“Round and round she goes,” explained young Amelia Brimble to Samantha as they watched from the sidelines. “Nattering away to herself like a little clockwork mouse.”
“Daphne was quite shitty with me,” Samantha told her father, calling him from her cellphone. “I said I’d look after her affairs pro bono — as a friend. But she got quite snotty and said she already had a lawyer, thank you very much.”
“Judging by what she did to get nicked, I’m not surprised,” said Bliss, and he promised to visit on Sunday afternoon — Edwards permitting.
Sunday lunchtime comes early at St. Michael’s.
“We give the most of the staff the afternoon off,” Patrick Davenport explained to Daphne on her first day, and now, as twelve o’clock approaches at the end of her first week, Daphne shuffles back along the sterile corridors to the common room where meals are taken by residents fit enough to leave their beds.
The altar and the tableau of death have been stored away for another seven days, and Daphne spots an opening alongside a wheelchair-bound resident she befriended yesterday.
“Worn those feet out yet?” laughs the man as Daphne sits, and she gives him a smile of recognition.
“John Bartlesham,” he introduced himself after watching Daphne’s two-hour stint on Saturday, then he joked, “You’re not Scotch, are ya?”
&nbs
p; “No,” replied Daphne frostily. “Why?”
Bartlesham laughed. “The way you were goin’ round and round with yer head down I thought you were a Scotchwoman who’d lost a penny.”
John is still very much alive, but he is trapped in a body broken by his years as a demolition contractor.
“Eighty-two years and a few months, that’s me,” he told Daphne proudly from his wheelchair as they sat together under the shade of a knobbly oak of similar age. “Three-quarters of a million hours, give or take a few thousand,” he detailed, having had plenty of time for calculations. “Seven hundred and fifty thousand hours of living and learning, eating and drinking, blowing stuff up and ripping it down. Now my turn’s come.”
But unlike the buildings he has demolished over the years, John is going neither easily nor with a bang. He is weathering slowly like a farmyard’s massive old barn — built to withstand a century of storms — whose cornerstones are slowly buckling under the weight.
“Mince and mash,” says Hilda Fitzgerald as she slaps plates onto the table in front of the two seniors.
“That makes a nice change,” sneers Bartlesham, then he takes out his dentures for inspection before cheekily asking, “Any chance of watery rice pudding for dessert?”
Daphne eats in silence as her mind traces and retraces the labyrinth while she seeks answers. Then Amelia Brimble appears in the doorway and sings out, “You’ve got a visitor, Miss Lovelace,” as if the elderly woman has won the lottery.
“Really?” says Daphne with little enthusiasm, but she has only completed the first week of a life sentence and has yet to grasp the fact that getting a visitor is winning the lottery.
chapter eight
“Chief Inspector …?” queries Daphne, pulling up short as she shuffles into the visitors’ room.
“It’s David,” corrects Bliss with a warm smile as he puts down a bag of grapes and advances with his arms out. “How many times have I told you? You’re not on duty anymore.”
“Oh. Yes … silly of me,” she replies, but she dithers and shies away as he tries to enfold her. “I keep forgetting things,” she admits as her face flushes.
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