by Alison Clink
*
By five, Adrian and John, who are coming for a late lunch, still haven’t arrived at the house. They text to say they are lost and have gone into the Masons Arms, a pub on our side of Frome. I drive over to the Masons to meet them. It’s good to see John. I haven’t seen him for years. He’s small built, with glasses, his hair totally white now. Engagingly bubbly he is good fun to be with. The last time I saw him, John Major had just become Prime Minister. As John had a look of John Major about him, he was being mistaken for the PM wherever he went. Like Major too, our John has an all-consuming love of cricket.
They follow me back home and we sit outside in the garden under the shade of the parasol. Adrian is relaxing in the sun with his Sunday newspaper, wearing his Panama hat. When the meal is served he eats quite a lot of the salad.
‘This is great, Ali. Thanks for doing this meal for us.’
‘I hardly did a thing. Jack and Willow prepared all the food. I just laid the table.’
‘Ha! Jack and Willow. Thanks guys. Great meal.’
He’s trying so hard, yet during most of the dinner I notice Adrian is solemn. He sits at the far end of the table, hardly joining in with the conversation, looking old and reminding me so much of Mum in her final months.
All the same, the occasion lifts my spirits. Adrian kisses me goodbye affectionately as he leaves, and when I wave the two of them off I feel satisfied with the day, thankful to John for taking over my role of carer, even if just for a few hours. John wants to come again, soon. Since Adrian is no longer contagious he’s able to plan more outings. John suggests they go to the races, or a cricket match. I really hope he does come again.
In the evening I speak to Kyria who is now home. She says they had a good time in Portugal but missed us. We vow to holiday together another time. She mentions Madeleine McCann. She says there were no pictures of her around, although they were very near the resort she vanished from. Why aren’t the police launching a big search for this child? Every parent in the country must be breathing a sigh of relief that they aren’t the ones going through this particular nightmare. I know I do, though my girls are much older.
As they approach one hundred days since she vanished, how can anyone come to terms with losing a little one? Surely we all hold ours tighter in response to their anguish.
When I go to turn out the kitchen light before bed I notice Adrian’s Panama hat on top of the television. He forgot to take it with him, so it sits in the kitchen all night. Next to Picasso’s Buste de Femme au Chapeau.
Monday 6th August 2007
The Portuguese police found nothing when they dug up the garden of the number one suspect in the Madeleine McCann case, which must be a huge relief for her parents. The suspect is an ex-pat Brit and if he is innocent then he must have suffered. He looked lots thinner on TV last night than he did when he was first interviewed.
But back to my own drama. Today has been set aside for visiting Sobel House with Adrian to decide if this would be a suitable place for him. Sobel House is the nursing home with the added attraction of a bar and so is a strong contender. It’s now the place Adrian is hanging his hopes on. However, when I ring him to arrange a time to go there, he says he’s too tired after yesterday. Actually, I’m relieved by this because I feel exhausted too.
I ring Sobel House to rearrange for Thursday and then, over coffee, study my map of Dorset. For some reason I’d thought it was near Sturminster Newton, but in reality Sobel House is nearer Weymouth. Practically on the coast.
*
We might not be doing the Sobel House recce, but I don’t want to leave Adrian without a visitor all day so I drive over there in the afternoon, arrive at St Vincent’s and park in front of the house. Usually only a few cars are parked on the gravel, Matron’s and some of the staff’s. Today a black limousine is parked directly across the main door and a stretcher is positioned across the bottom step. A nasty thought crosses my mind. My feet crunch on the gravel as I hurry around to the gate to have a quick look at the side of the house where Adrian usually sits. I can’t see anyone. I walk quickly back to the main entrance.
Both the front door and the inner door – which usually is only penetrable via bell ringing, knocking, phoning and the unlikely event one knows the entry code – are wide open. This I have never seen before. I make my way, past the car and the stretcher, and go inside, relishing my ease of entry. As I am about to walk into the main hall I pass two men in funereal suits who are carrying what I chillingly realise is a body bag. I don’t want to appear nosy but I glance desperately at the bag for any sign of a human frame. Beneath the cloth I can see only the slightest outline. Someone small and frail. Another resident? One of the Unseen Ones?
I make my way down the little staircase and along the corridor to Adrian’s room. I open the door, having dispensed with the glove, apron and antiseptic gel routine since the all clear on the C.diff front. The room is deserted. Lots more thoughts go through my mind in a very short space of time, not least the image of Adrian lying under the sheet on his bed the other day. He really did look very small then. My God. Could he have died, the undertakers alerted, and been carted out of St Vincent’s within the space of a couple of hours? Could all these things have happened without my knowledge? I’m desperate to find him. I literally run to the back door leading to the terrace.
Adrian is sitting in his usual seat in the garden with his glass of wine and the Daily Mirror open at the racing page. He must have been in the loo when I first got here. I don’t think I’ve ever been more relieved to see anyone in my life.
He’s not alone. A shrivelled old lady is out there too in a wheelchair with a tray sporting today’s Daily Express. As I walk towards them I check a bit closer to make sure the old lady’s still breathing, the way I used to when the children were babies fast asleep in their cots. I see a flicker of life as her chest undulates slightly with a breath. At last, some sign of life here apart from ourselves and the staff. Although this poor soul is very thin, bent double and fast asleep, she’s living, and possibly even showing an interest in current affairs.
Adrian greets me with a wave of his hand.
‘Hi, Ali. Thanks for coming. It’s good to see you.’
I keep quiet about my disconcerting brush with the body bag. Instead I give him back his hat, and get out the map of Dorset which shows exactly where Sobel House is in relation to Frome. He’s still keen, especially as there’s a historical site nearby which he thinks he’s visited before.
How realistic all this is, we’ve yet to discover. Will Adrian be able to move to Sobel House, with its bar, its swimming pool and its proximity to historical sites? How often could I make the journey to Weymouth to visit him? We decide for today to take a trip out somewhere more local instead. Adrian wants to go into the town. He needs a haircut.
*
As we walk down the High Street I support him by his matchstick arm and we talk about the various possibilities to help him get around. I suggest a mobility scooter.
‘Yeah, I’d like one of those. How much are they, though? They probably cost a fortune.’ And yet again I think to myself, but he’s got money. Plenty of the stuff, all tied up in shares and ISAs and loan notes, building society accounts, and secret internet sites.
‘You could afford to buy one,’ I remind him.
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
The first thing Adrian wants is an extra hole in his leather belt which is struggling to hold up his many-sizes-too-big chinos. We go into a shoe repair shop and Adrian asks the man behind the counter to put two holes in his belt.
‘I’ve lost a bit of weight,’ he says with a dry laugh. The man looks like he might be thinking a whole lot more than he’s saying and takes the belt. When he’s made a couple of holes he looks at Adrian again and says, ‘no charge’. Adrian seems chuffed to get a freebie. He leaves his walking stick in the shop and I run back to retrieve it.
Next we find a hairdresser. Adrian greets all the women working in the s
hop cheerily, which is something I never do. I wonder if this is a characteristic of lonely people, or is he just more outgoing than I am? I leave him to get his hair cut while I go to the bank to move money to pay his bills. When I come back he’s thanking the young girl of about nineteen who has just done his hair.
‘That was great. Very relaxing. Thanks again.’
‘She’s nice, and she seemed friendly,’ he says as we leave. ‘And she’s recommended a good place to have lunch. A French bistro over the road.’
The French bistro turns out to be a quirky deli selling unusual crockery as well as food. We sit inside rather than out on the pavement Parisian style as the day is beginning to cool. The décor is stylishly continental. The floors are wooden and the tables and chairs wrought iron. A small child is playing on the floor in a passageway leading, presumably, to the kitchen. We are the only customers. We peruse the menu. Adrian asks the very attractive young woman behind the counter whether they have any wine.
‘What?’ she says with a French accent. She looks confused.
She’s French. This is a French restaurant. She must know what wine is. Still, Adrian’s voice is croaky and she might not have understood him.
‘Du vin?’ I try. My A level French, after thirty-seven years’ hibernation, swings into action. She points to a bottle of wine on a shelf behind her.
I ask about the soup du jour which is listed at the top of a menu on a blackboard. ‘Could you tell me what the soup of the day is, please?’
She smiles, goes away to a room at the other end of the shop and returns with the answer.
‘It’s musher room.’
‘Oh, mushroom. My favourite! Is it homemade?’ I ask.
‘What?’
‘Homemade.’ I make a stirring action with my hand. ‘Made here. Not tinned…’
‘What?’
‘Tinned!’ we say in unison. Adrian points at a tin of sardines to illustrate the word. The woman still looks confused.
‘Is it homemade?’ I try again.
‘Or is it tinned?’ Adrian joins in, still pointing at the sardines.
‘Oh, no!’ she replies.
‘So it is tinned?’ I say to clarify in my mind the status of the soup. ‘Great! Heinz,’ I mumble under my breath.
‘I’ll have the soup,’ Adrian unexpectedly pipes up.
What the hell, I think to myself, and decide to go with the flow. ‘Two mushroom soups, please.’
‘Does the soup come with bread?’ Adrian asks, I fear somewhat optimistically.
‘What?’
‘Bread,’ he says. ‘Does it come with bread?’
‘Avec du pain?’ I suggest.
‘Non!’
‘But I’d like some bread with mine,’ Adrian persists.
‘Non. We don’t have the bread.’
‘You don’t have bread?’ I ask. ‘Pas du pain?’
‘Non.’
‘What about toast?’ I enquire somewhat illogically.
‘I will ask,’ she replies equally illogically, and disappears towards the back of the shop, past the small child who is still there playing with a plastic train.
She returns. ‘Non.’
‘No bread,’ I say.
‘Non.’
‘But there’s a bread shop a few doors down. Couldn’t you get some there?’
‘Non. Too late.’
‘Or the supermarket – there’s a Tesco’s near here.’
‘Non. I cannot leave the shop and go to the Tesco!’ she says glancing towards the child.
‘Let’s go somewhere else.’ Adrian begins to stand up. I sense his frustration and try to gloss over my own disappointment. We’ve failed to do something as basic as enjoy lunch together in a café.
‘You no want the musher room soup?’ the woman asks, as if this is one of the bigger disappointments in her life.
‘Non…er, merci…beaucoup. Au revoir.’
A restaurant sans food. Another phenomenon to add to Adrian’s list of things lacking in Somerset – a nursing home with no ice or daily papers, a restaurant without bread.
*
Still feeling peckish we decide to try a hotel I’ve noticed near St Vincent’s. The hotel is called Thurlstone Lodge (four star) and the building is similar in character and style to St Vincent’s. The two houses were probably designed by the same architect, and would have been next door neighbours once. A hundred years ago one might have popped over on the horse to borrow a sack of sugar.
In the opulent library of Thurlstone Lodge Adrian orders a glass of Pinot Grigio whilst we study the menu. A waiter approaches with a pad and pen. We order soup. Soup! Will we never learn? We sit twiddling our thumbs only to be told twenty minutes later that the soup is off. In other words – no soup. Pas de soup. Encore une fois.
Adrian changes his order to cucumber sandwiches and I order a mustard ham sandwich on brown, which, when it arrives, is a ham sandwich on white. Oh well, at least one out of three ingredients is correct. Adrian eats his sandwiches and then explores the afternoon tea choices and enthusiastically orders scones. These arrive but are rock hard and burnt.
We complain about the scones, which Adrian has tried in vain to nibble and because of our complaint he is awarded a second glass of wine for free. Result. Despite my feelings about his drinking, I’m relieved by this. I don’t want him to be let down time and again in the county I’ve brought him to. The county I now own as mine.
I drop him back at St Vincent’s. The men with their body bag are long since gone. Forgotten. I watch from the car as Adrian painfully climbs the five steps up to the front door looking like a skeleton dressed up in another man’s clothes. He leaves the outer door open behind him and eventually, once I’m sure someone has let him in, I drive home.
Tuesday 7th August 2007
It’s time for Adrian to move on. He bears no similarity to any of the other few inmates of St Vincent’s I’ve seen, who all look the wrong side of ninety. Surely a nursing home is not for him. As he again turns down my offer to come to our house, I suggest Bradford-on-Avon as a possible place to rent a flat. Last night on the internet I found an idyllic-sounding ground-floor flat to rent there overlooking the canal. Bradford-on-Avon is on the agenda today.
When I arrive at St Vincent’s Adrian is in bed.
‘I feel really bad about that little nurse,’ he says. ‘I’m worried in case she thinks I’ve been rude to her. I don’t want to upset her. But she brought me the same aspirins again even though I’ve told them I have to have the coated ones because of my stomach. This is what annoys me about this place. Because the prescription doesn’t say coated aspirins they won’t take any notice of what I say to them. They can’t do anything here without consulting the fucking Department of Health and Tony Blair.’
I understand his frustration, but now he’s snapped and upset Aniela. I’m sorry about this too as she is very sweet. Despite his anger, I can tell he’s warming to her.
‘I’ve asked one of the other nurses to ask her to come back so I can apologise to her. But she hasn’t.’
*
In Bradford-on-Avon it’s clear Adrian can’t walk far but he’s enchanted by the place and says he’d definitely like to live here.
‘Peter brought me here for a drink in a Young’s pub many years ago. That was really nice of him. I’ve never forgotten it.’
‘It is a lovely place but I doubt there will be many one-bedroom flats in the centre of town.’ Because of his lack of mobility he’d have to be near to the shops. Even then he’d need transport but I think he’s coming round to the idea of a mobility scooter, despite the cost.
We stop at a bench on the riverside. He sits down while I carry on along the river bank in search of a restaurant for lunch. Adrian has his carrier bag full of bits of paper with him. He says he’ll get on with his paperwork, which means filling in his application for Disability Living Allowance, as well as a list he’s making up.
When I come back I realise with a mixture of curi
osity and discomfort that this list is the one he mentioned before. The list of people I am to invite to his funeral. He’s busy transferring their addresses and contact numbers from his address book to his list.
He bundles all this away and we amble slowly along the riverside to a shabby pub where we embark on yet another attempt to order refreshment. I ask for orange juice but they don’t have any. He orders cold wine. The barman says someone has just gone to the Cash and Carry and will be back in half an hour with both wine and orange juice. Then they unexpectedly find a single stray bottle of Pinot Grigio. I plump for Orangina – but it’s warm and so I ask for ice.
‘We don’t have any ice until the manager gets back from the Cash and Carry,’ the barman says.
Is there perhaps a general shortage of ice in the West Country? An ice crisis? A frost famine? A glacial dearth? Not surprisingly, we are the only customers there.
‘Another fucking place that doesn’t have anything,’ Adrian remarks once we are out of earshot of the barman.
Our food arrives and he eats half a sausage and a few chips but downs a pint of Special and a glass of the Pinot. Afterwards we drive to look at The Maltings which is the address of the riverside flat I’d seen on the internet. It looks promising. A newly built block with an attractive archway and lots of garages. But although the flat is described as ‘ground floor’, the garages are on the ground floor whilst the flats are built above the garages, so are at least twenty steps up. All the same, the location is stunning. Right next to the canal where all the houseboats are moored.
Having made the journey I want to get out of the car to take in the view over the canal. Adrian gets out too, but falls in a heap at the entrance to the garages before I can get round to his side of the car. He’s crumpled like a marionette with broken strings, but still has hold of his walking stick and has managed to keep his Panama hat on. I want to help him up but I know he’s too heavy for me to lift.