by Diana Finley
‘Er, excuse me, Mr Black, but some of the residents have particular dietary needs …’ begins Amina, one of the long-standing carers.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Cameron says impatiently. ‘We’ll check which are genuine dietary needs. Probably most are just plain fussiness, which costs us a lot of money. So normalising the menus will result in major savings.’ He looks round the room as if expecting applause.
‘We can then afford to give the entire care home a complete makeover: redecorate, smarten it up. Think how that will boost our residents’ morale! Quite clearly a more efficient use of limited resources.’
***
Many staff are let go, including me. Belle resigns.
‘I can’t work this way, Robbie,’ she tells me sadly. ‘All they’re interested in is outward appearances to impress shareholders. No thought for the lives of the poor old residents.’
And so I find myself jobless again, with no money coming in. Luckily, over the three years I’ve been working at Golden Days I managed to save a bit of my wages each week, never having been a big spender. I count it regularly, and amazingly, it’s now nearly three thousand pounds! I’ve put the cash in a large brown envelope and stashed it under one of the floorboards in my sitting room. It’s a bit of security for me while no money’s coming in; it enables me to pay the rent for a while – but it’s certainly not going to last for ever.
I go regularly to the job centre, but there’s not much on offer at the moment. I register with a home care agency, helping elderly or disabled people in their own homes, four days a week. Not having a car, I can only take on people who live fairly near to me, and not too far from one another. Between visits, I travel as rapidly as possible on foot, or occasionally a short bus journey. Most visits are strictly fifteen minutes; a few are twenty or thirty minutes. I rush about toileting and washing the client, preparing a quick meal, or putting them to bed.
In between tasks, I try to talk to them, provide a little window of company. Most live alone and are deeply lonely. I can give so little, yet the clients are pathetically grateful. I get paid only for the time actually spent with the client, not for travel between visits. It’s disheartening work, but I do my best.
One day a week I go back to visit some of the residents at Golden Days. I organise a little show for them to sing and act in, on a voluntary basis of course – that bastard Cameron wouldn’t dream of paying me for it. Anyway, the residents love it, and so do I, so I’m happy enough to carry on. At least it makes me feel that I’m making some small positive contribution to the world.
I met a young woman during my time at the care home. She’s called Tracy and works part-time as a cleaner at Golden Days. Tracy’s had some difficult times herself; she’s got a little girl of about three, who’s looked after by Tracy’s mam. I feel a bit sorry for the child; Tracy’s not exactly the maternal type. She seems happy to leave the little girl with her grandmother most of the time. Sometimes Tracy stays overnight at my place. Other nights I don’t know where she goes. I reckon she’d be keener on me if I spent more money on her – she’s often asking me to take her clubbing or out for a meal. Sometimes she’s asked for a loan to buy herself a dress or trousers. Well, I know I’d never see any of that so-called loan again. I feel a bit mean always refusing, but clubbing’s not my scene at all, and I never buy myself new clothes. If I really need something, which is rare, I head for the charity shop. Anyway I need to keep my float for the rent. Memories of sleeping rough haunt me constantly.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Tracy chucked me any time soon. It doesn’t really bother me; there’s no commitment on either side. Having said that, I do enjoy a bit of female company – I’ve had little enough of it over the years. Although I can’t pretend Tracy and I have anything much in common. She’s not interested in books, films, history or discussions – or any of the things I like, in fact. She enjoys going out for a drink (or five!), going clubbing if she gets the chance, watching stuff on television, and sex. The latter suits me fine, but I’m not in love with Tracy, nor, I have to admit, do I find her very interesting company. But she’s cheerful on the whole and seems good-hearted. At least, I thought she was.
Hoping to warm her heart, I take Tracy out to a film, despite her reluctance. It’s a well-reviewed film with good actors, and I hope she might be won over if she enjoys it. She doesn’t enjoy it.
‘It was dead boring,’ she complains. ‘Nothing fucking happened. It didn’t make sense. Why did she stay with him if she didn’t even like him? Seemed pointless to me. There might at least have been a murder or summat. I’d’a murdered him, no problem!’
Tracy’s in a bad mood for the entire walk back to the flat. She cheers up a bit when I offer her some vodka. She finishes the bottle and comes to bed in a much better mood. We make love and she goes straight to sleep. It takes me a bit longer to settle, but I’m tired from my work, and soon sink into a deep sleep too. At some point of the night I’m aware of her getting up.
She kisses me gently and whispers, ‘Toilet …’ I sink back to sleep.
A reluctant dawn is creeping through the gap in the curtains when I start to wake. I have a bad feeling, a sick feeling, deep in the pit of my stomach. I stretch my hand out towards Tracy, but she’s not there.
‘Trace?’
There’s no reply.
‘Tracy!?’ I call, much louder this time. Still there’s no reply.
I jump out of bed and run to try the bathroom door. It’s open and the bathroom is empty.
‘Tracy?’ I shout, my heart pounding.
I run to the sitting room and yank the curtains open. There’s no sign of her. I hardly dare look … But I have to. I see the floorboard is sticking up on one side. I know what to expect, but can’t believe it’s really happening. I don’t want to look. I kneel down and remove the floorboard. I screw my eyes tight shut and slowly push my hand into the hole, feeling all around. The envelope holding my three thousand pounds has gone, and Tracy with it.
Chapter 21
1999
Barry
Looking back on my life so far, I admit there are some points at which I may have made bad decisions. Of course Mother would say it all went downhill after I became so dependent on drugs, and to some extent perhaps she’s right. It’s true I’ve been using cocaine heavily recently. It eases some of the anxieties and depression, and still seems to allow me to concentrate on my work. At least none of the senior managers have noticed – they certainly don’t complain about the money I’m still making for the company.
What my mother has never appreciated though, is the extent to which she herself is to blame for all that went wrong in my life. Of course her strict Catholic upbringing created a potentially bottomless pit of guilt, but on the other hand, she has rightly had plenty to feel guilty about.
Instead of presenting herself as an innocent victim of our wicked father – a blameless child – perhaps she should have accepted that she alone was responsible for the decisions she made. Yes, she was ignorant and limited in many ways, but it’s not as if she was totally ignorant of the ‘facts of life’, for heaven’s sake. She grew up on a smallholding with sheep and cows. Reproduction was going on all around her. All right, she was young, but she wasn’t a child. She was a young woman capable of making a decision – capable of resisting his advances. But she didn’t resist, and the consequences were obvious and could have been foreseen.
In due course, my twin brother and I were the innocent and unfortunate results of her actions. Quite understandably, the staff at the mother and baby home where my brother and I were born advised Mother to put at least one of us up for adoption. She regarded that as a tragic choice she had to make, yet there was every reason to expect that Donal, as she had called him, would be well loved, nurtured and devotedly raised by his adoptive parents.
As it happened, the placement was not successful. We don’t know exactly what went wrong, but it must have been bad for the foster parents to give him up. Perhaps Donal was a
disturbed and difficult infant, perhaps he was resistant to the affection his adoptive parents tried to show him. Of course we knew nothing of this until many years later. Rather than feeling glad for him and the opportunities adoption might have offered him, and rejoicing that she still had one child, Mother spent years mourning the child she had given away, rather than focusing on and celebrating the one she still had.
In her circumstances, Mother is incredibly lucky to have found Auntie Erna by chance, and to have been, in effect, adopted by her. Without Erna’s help and support … well it hardly bears thinking about. Mother accepts Erna Goldstein’s support and generosity without question. Yes, she’s kind to Erna and is clearly fond of her. She is grateful for her generosity, always was, and tries to repay it by doing some work around the house, fashioning herself as a kind of housekeeper. But where is her personal ambition?
She claims to love children, so why didn’t she at least train to become a nursery nurse or teacher and gain some independence? If she loves me, as she constantly told me, why did she endlessly mope after Donal? Not that I’m jealous of Donal. How can I envy a faceless name, a shadow, a ghost?
Certainly my mother’s constant preoccupation with the absent brother (I almost wonder sometimes – did he ever even exist?) was an ongoing irritation to me growing up, even though I didn’t know at the time that I had a twin! It was Auntie Erna who really appreciated me, who tried to know and understand me as an individual, who took a genuine interest in me and truly valued me as a person. It was Auntie Erna too, who recognised the potential in me, despite having emerged from a gene pool of somewhat limited intelligence and ambition. It was Erna too, who determined that my brain should be encouraged to develop to its true capacity by arranging for me to attend a good school, a private school.
Though this generosity was well meant, it created another problem for me, one that Auntie Erna could not have been expected to foresee, but perhaps Mother at least should have – not only foreseen, but understood. Going to an expensive and prestigious school meant mixing with boys of very different backgrounds to my own: boys from high-achieving professional families, and those with a family history of moderate wealth.
Mother could never understand my reluctance to invite these boys back home. Well, was I to show them to our poky little flat (‘cosy’ she called it) at the top of the house, for my mother to appear in her ‘pinny’, and serve them with bread and butter or beans on toast? She never had the faintest idea how embarrassing – how humiliating – that would be. Of necessity I became a bit of a loner. At least it gave me plenty of time to concentrate on my schoolwork. I always did exceptionally well academically. Mother is pathetically proud of my achievements.
Back to the unfortunate choices … Almost everyone experiments with interesting substances in their youth; it’s part of natural exploration, part of growing up. Neither Mother nor Auntie Erna would have approved of that, let alone the harder stuff that rapidly followed, but it wasn’t until I was working in the City and had money to spare, that I moved on to cocaine and occasionally heroin.
It’s all perfectly civilised. None of that lurking in filthy back alleys to score, worrying if being knifed and robbed was part of the deal – I’m sure that’s what Mother imagines! No, my dealer wears a suit and tie – he looks more like a suburban bank manager than a dastardly crook.
I suppose like everyone else, at first I convinced myself that I was in control of my habit … I could stop any time if I chose to. It was just an enjoyable recreation like any other. Mother fussed tediously that I was looking frail and poorly. She offered to pay for me to go on holiday somewhere bracing and healthy. Not that I needed her money. But I did agree that a break might do me good. I arranged a week’s walking in the Cheviot hills in Northumberland. The first time was back in the early Nineties.
It was one of the best decisions I ever made. The peace in that rugged, unspoiled landscape restores my soul, while the wholesome food and vigorous exercise re-energise my body. That visit was the first of several expeditions I’ve made to that northern extremity of our country. Generally I even abstain totally for the duration of my trip, but my abstinence doesn’t last long once I’m back in the hectic, stress-inducing capital.
After Mother challenged me, having found my stash while secretly snooping around my flat, I did cut back for a while. She made such an almighty, ridiculous fuss about it all – calling me a junkie and all that overdramatic rubbish. Once an Irish peasant, never a sophisticate, I suppose. I think I’ve convinced her that my drug-taking is all in the past.
***
It was meeting Anaïs that really made me try to change my ways, take a more determined approach. In those first, early days of our relationship she was such a delight. Beautiful, charming, funny – I was crazy about her. So bright and lively, so warm and loving. I adored her.
She’s come to be a kind of drug to me herself, one I can’t get enough of. Maybe I have an obsessive personality, but Anaïs really gets under my skin. I think of her constantly, have done from the moment we were together. I admit I may be overly jealous, misguided at times. I’m constantly terrified she might leave me, go after another man. Well, she’s so attractive, so gorgeous, any man would want her.
Anyway, I’ve left poor old Keith to rent our shared flat on his own. He can afford it. Meanwhile, thanks to Auntie Erna, as usual, I found a much better apartment in the posher part of Putney. It wasn’t long before Anaïs moved in with me. It means that earning more money is absolutely essential. I work long hours, but she earns much less, teaching French part-time in a school, and giving some private individual coaching lessons. It’s the only drawback to our relationship. I can’t see any likelihood of her bringing significantly more money into our household any time soon. Anyway, despite being financially stretched, it’s worth it. I’m so in love with Anaïs, and besides I have hopes of more money coming my way from Auntie Erna in time, maybe quite soon. She’s seriously getting on – not very far off a hundred after all!
Unfortunately, what with working such testing hours, anxieties over money, and fear that I might risk losing Anaïs – the stress started to oppress me. Inevitably, the drugs have gradually taken over again, as they always do eventually, I suppose. I’ve been kidding myself that I could control them, just take them occasionally. What a fool. It appears that my drug habit has had some effect on my health. My GP has referred me to a kidney specialist, as he suspects there are some problems. I’m waiting for an initial appointment.
Chapter 22
1999
Marie
In recent months – all through this difficult time in fact – Erna Goldstein is getting older day by day. I’m starting to wonder if she’ll even make it to her hundredth birthday. She’s such a positive person. She talks of having a family (in which she sweetly includes me and Barry) celebration party. Yet I can’t help noticing the signs of ageing, despite my preoccupation with Barry. There’s no denying it any longer. For some time, Erna has found walking more difficult, especially the stairs.
Luckily, there’s scope for alterations in the large house to make life easier for her. We’ve had the smaller downstairs sitting room converted into her bedroom. I sewed her some fresh bright curtains in her favourite deep apricot colour, and made a matching duvet cover for the bed, although she always tells me not to go to so much trouble. Of course I always reply – truthfully – that it’s a pleasure to do anything to help, and no bother at all.
It pains me to see my dear friend grow thinner and more bent. I make her all her favourite foods to try to tempt her to eat more, but increasingly, her appetite grows smaller. A few of her very elderly friends still come to visit. They sit in a huddle with Radio Three playing in the background as they chat. I bring them little china cups of coffee or tea, and sometimes small pieces of the lemon or marzipan cakes Erna loves, or some light vanilla biscuits I’ve made, making sure they’re crisp and light, but not too hard for their old teeth.
These last month
s too, Barry has largely cut himself off from me. It causes me terrible pain. I know the revelation about his twin brother has been a huge shock for Barry, one he hasn’t been able to deal with. I know too, that he’s depressed and that always leads to him taking more drugs than ever. I can see it in the shadows under his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. I see the tremor of his hands and hear it in his voice. Perhaps he believes it’s the only way he can cope with his confusion and resentment, but I’m so afraid for his health.
Barry is still fond of Erna. He comes by regularly, and generally, after greeting me briefly, he hurries to her sitting room. They sit together for an hour or two talking, listening to a piece of music and discussing it afterwards, or occasionally playing a game of chess. I don’t begrudge these visits – they are one of Erna’s greatest pleasures – but I am so sad to feel the gulf between Barry and myself. He’s hardly spoken to me since I told him about Donal. Whatever Erna’s increasing physical frailty, her brain is as alert as ever. Her sharp mind is not oblivious to the changes in Barry either.
‘Is he quite well, my dear? He looks so gaunt and haunted at times. I wonder if they are working him too hard at that job of his? Perhaps he could do with a holiday?’
I try to reassure her. ‘You’re right, Erna … you’re right he’s not been quite himself lately. Too many late nights perhaps. But don’t you fret yourself; he’s on the mend. I’ve made him promise to eat better and to get himself out of doors regularly for some fresh air and exercise. He’s going on one of his visits to Northumberland shortly, and he’s promised to take himself in hand …’
‘Hmm …’ She looks at me doubtfully.
***
In her declining years, Erna has depended more and more heavily on my support, and I’m so glad I have been there to give it to her. As she grows more frail and infirm, I care for her needs as best I can. I feel it is a privilege, and never a chore to help her. Erna is always appreciative.