by Nina Stibbe
By the time the official open day meeting came we had a thousand wonderful ideas between us. Some of the best things were rejected for safety or financial reasons, including the donkey derby and the hot-air balloon. Sister Saleem had to keep emphasizing and re-emphasizing how little cash we had to spend and that the entertainments must be home-made, and she reminded us that the whole point was to showcase the home and the idea of living there. By the end of the planning meeting everyone had been given their duties and jobs in the run-up to the event and for the actual day, and we had a provisional schedule including the following:
Gordon Banks to head a balloon
Guests welcomed in with a glass of sherry or squash
House tours offered throughout the afternoon (guided by the owner and Carla B)
Talks entitled ‘My Life at Paradise Lodge’ (Miss Tyler and Matron)
Hand and foot care, nail cutting and hand cream application (Deb-on-Hair)
Talk entitled ‘Constipation: Causes, Cures and Common Sense’ (in a side room with Nurse Eileen)
Afternoon tea
‘Young Hearts Run Free’—dance on the patio (Miranda Longlady)
Sue the dog
The thumb piano demonstration (Mike Yu)
‘I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls’ (Lady Briggs)
‘Wings Of A Dove’ sung by Wesley Banks
Sketching lesson (Nurse Eileen)
Chairobics session
Miss Tyler’s ‘Oh! Oh! Antonio’ (which no one had actually heard but she’d do on the day)
Kung fu demonstration and The Weaver Girl and the Cowherd story-dance (Mike Yu and Miranda Longlady)
Barry Sheene demo on gravel path (Big Smig)
We spent a good many team talks focusing on the open day—the activities, talks, tours and entertainments. Also, what refreshments? Sister had wondered about roasting a kid but we all agreed that the patients and guests would prefer egg and cress sandwiches and cakes.
Sister Saleem was keen to have a leaflet in time for the open day, and there was much talk about what to feature in it. And once we’d decided between us, Sister Saleem and my sister made a rough and took some photographs and hired Mr Costello—of Costello & Son Printers from Northampton—to produce a trifold advertising leaflet.
And then one day, at coffee break, Mr Costello called in and delivered five fat bundles of leaflets, and they looked wonderful. They weren’t as glossy and thick as the Newfields brochure but they were a start and Paradise Lodge already felt better and improved.
The words across the front read: ‘Paradise Lodge—Come Here to Live’.
‘Come Here to Live’ had been Nurse Eileen’s idea. She’d said it to Mr Godrich’s relatives when they’d wanted him to be admitted too soon, before he was well enough, and it turned out they couldn’t stand looking after Rick the dog.
‘Come Here to Live’ implied you’d have a fun time and that you hadn’t just been dumped there to die. Even though you probably, eventually would.
There were three colour photographs on the leaflet. One was of Miranda in her white dress, smiling at Miss Tyler in her turban. There was a fold across Miranda’s face, which gave her a big chin. Another was of Mr Simmons’ hand—with clean, short nails and a signet ring—resting on the arm of Mr Freeman’s corduroy Parker Knoll with just a hint of a garden view. The last was of Rick the Yorkshire terrier sitting in Miss Boyd’s lap and Miss Boyd laughing but looking dignified in a smart blouse. It was only right that Rick should feature, him being a dog and us having a ‘well-behaved dogs welcome’ policy and him indirectly causing the slogan ‘Come Here to Live’.
There was also a small extra bundle of leaflets which advertised our Open Day with a trendy ‘stop press’ stamp, as if we’d just remembered it. ‘All Welcome’, ‘Refreshments’, ‘Entertainments’, ‘Talks’, ‘Games’ it said, and it listed all the fun things on offer. The date was Saturday the 15th.
What? Hang on!
I was stunned to see the date was Saturday the 15th. I almost choked. The 15th was the date for my mother and Mr Holt’s wedding day. I froze with confused and troubled thoughts. I checked the date. It was the 15th, both things were happening on the 15th, and neither could be changed.
Which was more important—the open day or the wedding? The wedding, of course, but somehow the open day was important too. Privately, secretly, the open day was much more important to me. The open day was a huge thing for me. I was involved. It had been my idea. I had suggested Mike Yu perform on his thumb piano and do a kung fu story-dance and it was me who’d planned Marguerite Patten’s skyscraper club sandwiches and two types of tea in separate catering teapots, which were big but had two handles and were easy to carry, even by a steady eighty-year-old (Mr Simmons).
Now it was all going to happen without me there. Mike Yu would do his kung fu while I was stuck at my house, wearing culottes and borrowed high sandals or a home-made bridesmaid’s dress (if I let Carrie Frost twist my arm) eating mini cheese flans and sipping a home-made punch and making small talk with two Liberals, two laundry workers and my overexcited mother in a War on Want dress.
I ran up to my sister who was giving a patient a bath. I apologized and interrupted with the bad news. And I gabbled on and on about the social clash. She thought as she rinsed the patient’s hair with a jug and then shampooed again.
‘You rinse and repeat?’ I said.
‘Sometimes,’ she said.
‘We can’t miss the open day,’ I said, wanting some wisdom and guidance from her.
‘We can’t miss the wedding,’ she said, which was what I was expecting.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But what about the open day?’
She thought about it. I could tell she was thinking because she rinsed the patient’s hair again and shampooed again (a third time). And as she let a thin trickle of water fall gently on to the patient’s waxy head she said, ‘The wedding party could take place here—at the open day.’
‘Oh, God,’ I said, ‘I mean, gosh.’
And the patient said, ‘Amen.’
I ran down the stairs and found Sister Saleem in the owner’s nook.
‘I have a huge favour to ask you,’ I said.
The Paradise Lodge open day was going to appeal to the whole community. Mainly, though, to middle-aged people who might want to have an elderly relative housed there. In addition to that, it was going to be the venue for my mother and Mr Holt’s wedding tea because Sister Saleem had been thrilled at the idea.
This combining of private and community events was perfectly normal where Sister Saleem came from and since it suited us, no one mentioned it being slightly unusual here. Sister Saleem had only stressed that my mother should wear a proper dress and at least hold a bouquet—knowing how unorthodox she could be at times.
I was to be in charge of the tea—the planning and serving on the day—even though I was also second bridesmaid. I had asked various reliable people, and my mother, for cake and tart donations.
My mum was very pleased to be involved and promised an almond cake which was extremely tricky to make but looked nothing—even though it would be in the run-up to her wedding day and she’d be busy doing what brides do in the run-up. I wondered if she might be better off making something easy that looked stunning—like when you buy a cake and tinker with the icing and pass it off as home-made—but she was adamant the almond cake was the best-tasting cake ever made. It was strange to hear her talking like that about cakes, her being borderline anorexic and never touching a crumb since piling on three stone during her pregnancy with baby Danny due to denying herself drugs.
Mrs Longlady was going to bring the famous secret recipe, Longlady Chocca-Chocca cake, which I knew the patients would hate. They weren’t as keen on chocolate as the next generation and they hated silly names. Gordon Banks had promised a Dundee and I was going to buy some mini Bakewells.
The improvements and the open day—and in fact everything Sister Saleem had been striving for—were all abou
t happiness, she told us one day.
‘It’s all about happiness,’ she said, with her arms outstretched.
This was a Sunday and she always talked like this on a Sunday because she’d have been to church and it was her way of spreading the Lord’s joy. Not to miserable St Edmund’s or St Nicholas in the next village—where you’d be gloomy as hell afterwards and just relieved to have it over with for another week—but a happy-clappy church by the brook where they sang modern songs and acted out being happy for an hour, even though they’d made total idiots of themselves, grinning and waving, clasping each other’s hands, clapping and singing childish songs. We knew all about it because one by one she’d asked us to go. ‘Just see what it’s like,’ she’d said. And we had and none of us had ever returned.
It was nice to hear, though (that everything we were striving for was about making the patients happy), it made sense and seemed the right thing and better than it just being a business to make money for the owner and his nieces—or whoever would inherit.
‘I want to see the ladies and gentlemen laughing and singing and never, never crying,’ said Sister Saleem as she tucked into her roast lamb that day. The roasts had been reinstated due to the cook agreeing to come in on Sundays to do them—on the condition that she was paid up front and got to take the leftovers home for her husband who’d got a disease and couldn’t digest shop-bought food.
The ladies did seem happy. They laughed a lot and they never cried, even when they were sad. You sometimes wished they would. I mean, even as Miss Mills had lain on the linoleum with a fractured femur saying, ‘I’m a goner, Fanny-Jane,’ she wasn’t crying, as such. She was just saying. And Miss Geltmeyer hadn’t cried when the chiropodist slipped off his stool and almost had her toe off.
Matron was the one female who seemed unhappy—even Sally-Anne had a bright future, albeit with twin-shaped ghosts forever lurking. Matron was the most likely to cry. She’d often hark back to her childhood or early adulthood and tell all sorts of sad tales and quite often she’d cry, even when the others had stopped listening. She’d be telling a story in which she was the victim of an injustice—from 1920-something—and she’d have to go scrabbling around in her pocket for her handkerchief at the memory of it. She’d made me cry once. Her mother had forgotten to pick her up from the dentist, or never intended to. Matron (though she wasn’t a matron then—not even a bogus one—being only seven or eight years old) had caught a horse and cart into the nearest town, which I think might have been Dublin or Limerick, and had had a whole load of teeth taken out by a cruel old dentist who just pulled out people’s teeth for money and didn’t even try not to. She’d been given the cocaine gas and was all woozy and upset and walking home with bloody dribble on her chin. She’d had enough money for the horse and cart but was too woozy to be sensible. The memory made her lips tremble and her hand came wavering up and she dabbed her hanky under her spectacles and the whole thing was too sad to watch. A dalek would’ve cried.
It was difficult to tell with the old men, crying-wise, mainly because the obvious ones always had watery eyes all the time and the less obvious ones were just lying there not awake enough to be crying or not crying. The only unhappy male was the owner, who had been diagnosed with a sprained heart (and alcoholism). The owner having a sprained heart proved the theory I’d heard a few times—that a break is better than a sprain. A sprain leaving a weakness forever, whereas a break mending and leaving only a hairline scar—imperceptible except by X-ray. A sprain just keeps spraining, just as you trust it to be strong and you put weight on it, it goes again and you’re on the floor (that’s a sprained ankle, but it must be the same with a sprained heart). Unlike Matron, though, the owner would never dream of crying. He was one of those posh folk who speak in slurred baby talk and pretend everything’s jolly and walk around with ice cubes clanking around in a chunky tumbler. Like my mum used to be, except she never had ice cubes.
We talked about crying at the kitchen table over the roast. Nurse Eileen told of her aunt who had never let herself cry, even when awful things happened, which they did a lot, but the aunt just got on with life and in the end she’d exploded with pent-up grief. Not exploded like a bomb but like a rancid Kia-Ora carton. And had ended up in The Towers for a spell. She was taught how to cry after that, by a special crying therapist who would shout at her, ‘Cry Nora, cry!’ And the aunt (Nora) would cry. And she became like any normal person, crying at the Hovis ad and so forth, and when very good or very bad things occurred in life or on telly.
26. Baby-Face Finlayson
My wedding present to my mother and Mr Holt was that I was turning over a new leaf attendance-wise at school. I hadn’t told them about it in case it came to nothing. Anyway, I’d gone into school with a clean shirt and even had my sister’s smart satchel-type bag. I looked as if I meant business.
My first lesson was double French but I was advised by Madame Perry to go instead to the European Studies class—the CSE alternative.
‘Quoi?’ I said.
‘Tu es dans la classe inférieure,’ said Madame Perry, looking sorry.
I went to see Miss Pitt.
‘I seem to have been moved into the CSE classes,’ I said.
‘Yes, correct, you have been,’ she said. ‘You can move into the “O” Level groups as soon as I’ve had another meeting with my stepfather.’ She said it straight out.
‘But I arranged a meeting—it wasn’t my fault the milkman brought him back to Paradise Lodge.’
‘Ach!’ she clicked her fingers. ‘It was the milkman, was it?’
‘Well, I don’t know, I heard it was,’ I said, kicking myself.
‘Get me that meeting, in church, at a concert, in a tea room, it’s up to you. Just do it, and then you can move groups, do you understand, Lizzie?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’ll try.’
On Miranda’s sixteenth birthday Mike gave her a C60 cassette of himself singing Paul McCartney’s ‘Silly Love Songs’. It was the most wonderful, romantic, heartbreaking thing I’d heard, sadder even than the Purcell. Miranda played it on the owner’s Panasonic at coffee break. I felt she should have kept it private.
I gave her a card and a bamboo back-scratcher that I’d got from the Very Bazaar on Silver Street. Everyone had a little go with it. It was generally agreed to be blissful and everyone wanted one.
Sister Saleem gave her a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank which, she said, every teenager in the world should read and ponder on their good fortune. (Unless they lived under siege or hostile occupation.) Miranda was thrilled to get The Diary of Anne Frank. She turned it over and over in her hands.
I could tell she’d never even heard of Anne Frank because she said, ‘I can’t wait to read Anne’s adventures.’ And when she got some looks she deflected them by saying, ‘Bloody hell, Anne Frank’s the spitting image of Lizzie.’
And that caused everyone to look at the photograph of Anne Frank and then at me and then back at Anne Frank. It was awkward because no one wanted to agree—because of her tragic fate and not wanting to seem shallow talking about Anne Frank’s looks—but it was undeniable.
I regretted giving her the back-scratcher and wished I’d only given her a card.
Sally-Anne came looking for me one day. I was in the laundry folding ladies’ dresses. She told me Matron needed me urgently in Room 9—Mr Godrich’s room. I trotted up there hoping they were going to tell me the three of them—Matron, Mr Godrich and Rick—were planning to run off together at the end of his convalescence. But when I got there Matron was clanking about with ghoulish instruments and a kidney dish, in desperate tears. She needed me to help her lay out Mr Godrich, she said. I wasn’t sure what it meant.
‘What do you mean, lay him out?’ I asked.
‘I mean, he’s dead, he’s gone and fucking died,’ she said, pointing to the bed, ‘look.’
And there he was—dead.
‘So, we’ve to lay him out,’ she said.
‘I don’t think
you should carry out this procedure in your current upset state,’ I said, firmly. Also, I didn’t want to do it. I’d never laid out a dead body before (and don’t even know if it’s laid or layed) and I really didn’t want to do it or be part of it—even under normal circumstances.
Soon Matron was sitting on the bed—squashing the deceased—and telling me all about how she and Mr Godrich had been planning to move out to his home in Stoneygate where she’d be his companion-cum-cleaner-cum-cook-cum-dog-walker. And it had been thoroughly thrashed out and they’d been on the brink of telling Sister Saleem and the owner and handing in her notice when she’d got the call from Nurse Carla B that Mr Godrich looked funny and she’d dashed up the stairs and into his room to find him dead and with his little travel case packed and Rick the Yorkshire terrier trying to revive him with little yaps and digging frantically at his bed sheets. She said it in one long breath and then collapsed down beside the dead man.
‘He died, Lizzie,’ she said, all muffled.
Rick lay on a cushion in the window seat with his frilly little ears pricked up, alert.
‘I know,’ I said, of course I knew. To be honest I was worried about poor Rick but knew not to say so.
‘And now I’ve to lay him out,’ she said.
The thing was, Matron usually quite liked laying people out. It was a known fact. Not that it was morbid (apparently), she felt it was one of life’s rituals and an honour and all of that kind of thing that people might have actually thought in olden times. The staff used to call her ‘Mrs Gamp’ behind her back. To begin with I thought it was because she always carried an umbrella—even in drought weather—but I found out later it was because she had a penchant for laying out the dead like the grim midwife from Martin Chuzzlewit. Anyway, however much of an honour and a privilege the laying out was under normal circumstances, Matron was very sad at this particular laying out and could hardly keep her composure. But she began it anyway. She seemed bad-tempered and it felt wrong. It’s best that I don’t go into detail except to say that Mr Godrich’s mouth wouldn’t stay closed and Matron got very cross and swore at him and in the end she put a bandage round his head and tied it under his chin in a great big bow. He looked like Baby-Face Finlayson.