EVERYONE LOVED LEANNE

PART ONE

Whistling does not necessarily indicate happiness, nor contentment, or peace of mind. Sometimes it is whistling, and no more.

The door to thirteen was still shut. I knocked and it opened enough for a hand to grab the drink. Not wanting to be seen hanging round I stood in fourteen for a moment looking out the window ready with an excuse if anyone walked in. The piles of laundry and shelves full of sheets seemed to soak up the noise and everything was pleasingly motionless and clean smelling. Sometimes I hid in eighteen but all the cramped wheelchairs and dusty furniture and things put me off. The three rooms in between were kind of cut off from everybody else and somehow the incredible noise of their three televisions remained in this corridor. 

This was the worst possible time to come along here. For some reason the signal found their televisions a fraction apart and this nanosecond of difference was enough to put the sound all out of whack. Watching the same thing and growing irritated by the out-of-synch voices coming from the next room the volume marker on each screen eventually reached the end of its scale until all three were as loud as they could possibly get. The noise seemed to dim the long fluorescent strip-light in the windowless corridor. Seemed to come together as an unbearable false echo, stretching and twisting words about, making my thoughts evaporate into a sort of humming vibration like that of the TV’s plastic casing. It was the particular tone of the programme at this time in the morning with its unmasked human hate that made things all the darker.

But I knew the trick to dealing with all of this.

I went and got his tea and headed to seventeen hoping by now he’d be dressed. The pictures hung crooked on the walls and my step became somehow pronounced and somehow joyous like walking with taller and taller legs. Staring violently at the stewed tea rocking closer to the rim I stopped to let it settle dead in the centre of the narrow corridor. I concentrated hard on not coming into contact with either wall – this was the trick - brushing either even slightly with an arm would spell the end almost certainly.

     He sat naked from the waist down on the edge of the bed with his dick showing just below the flap of his mammoth pale blue shirt, the buttons in all the wrong holes.

     “Tea.”

I couldn’t tell if he looked at me or the television or what. Both eyes went in different directions and one seemed to bulge out making him look crazy and out of it all the time. He said something and took up the remote control from the mattress and tried to turn the TV down but got teletext and then something else he didn’t want. I switched it off in order to breathe.

     “Christ! What did you do that for?”

     He boiled angrily whilst I went through the menu, shifting his swollen right leg fat and purple from the knee down and not able to bend, creating an arch of darker carpet. Reaching for his stick, he tried to put the television back on with the rubber end but missed the button repeatedly. I watched this for a while not sure what else to do. With one final angry jab into the air he accidently brought the tea down from the table. “Jesus Christ, man! I asked you not to turn it off.”

     “I’ll get you another tea don’t you worry.”

     “Forget the damn tea! It probably tastes nicer down there anyway.” His long nails tapped around the empty bedside table as he looked for something. “I told you not to turn it off, but you insisted. Now you’ll have to show me how to get the words back on the screen as I had it.”

     “Okay, no problem, I’ll just sort that mess out first.”

     Making no attempt to conceal his nakedness or give me any room, he watched with contempt one eye nearer my skull than the other as I pressed a towel into the large patch of liquid next to that leg and that dick. Sugar. That’s what he looked for just then. I had his little pot of sugar still on the trolley and no doubt he wished to make a point by taking a pinch and chucking it to the floor.

     “Oh I forgot to get your sugar I’ll ..”

     “Yes I noticed.” His voice gurgled at the back of his throat, making a noise after he stopped speaking like popping little bubbles of thick saliva amassing in his wordless throat - a determined spider’s web, disturbed before collecting again. Perhaps after the sugar a spoon would have followed to complete the statement. He managed to put the TV on but the pleased expression soon faded. He looked confused. I showed him which buttons to use on the remote control to get what he wanted but he didn’t really listen. He gazed about unhappily, unsure of something.

     I went back to the trolley for apple juice.

“Help.”

Thirteen’s door was open. Opposite, halfway up the stairs to the top floor Cynthia and Abs stood devouring someone. Eating them up only to spit them out again to look at the chewed mess a different way. Abs’s voice held its continuous jabbing pitch despite the confusing pauses, where Cynthia, a few steps further down, agreed and agreed but only to pass the time.

Someone had put a used breakfast tray on top of The Telegraph sports section Ellan Langer had given me before I went up a floor. Balled-up tissues attempted to conceal the untouched rubber-like porridge. Anyone leaving food went on a food observation chart for an unspecified period of time. Moving the tray I grabbed the paper just as Cynthia came out of room ten and the door slammed behind her and even though I expected it I still jumped at the bang.

Cynthia took this as a sign of wrongdoing. “Skiving Michael?”

I poured out the apple juice, slightly too much, slightly.

“Help.”

With swollen head I remembered his sugar still back on the trolley.

The half-open door hid most of her thin frame but it was always possible to see her propped up legs in thick stripy socks up to the knees. Her twitching feet turned into each other like a young girl relaxing but fidgety, like Esterva sat there perhaps, trying out the comfortableness of the chair. Remembering to study the wedding photo on the chest of drawers I just managed to stop my knuckle hitting the door, the day before yesterday she realised someone stood behind the door and called out. It was definitely her. The more I looked the more I could see it. Her husband the same height in a good suit sharp looking and handsome. A simple, elegant white dress came out at her feet and trailed neatly behind. She smiled less than her husband — he beamed at all the world. Standing serenely, an arm interlocking his and her hair done up nice, she smiled inwardly and let it out of her eyes.

I knocked.

     “Come In.”

     “Morning Mrs Bower.”

     “Ah. Morning Michael.” Her soft voice was at the same time firm. Readjusting herself in the chair as best she could her thick tongue came out as if panting. Bits of newspaper were all about on the floor.

     “Shall I put it there?” I moved the glass slowly around the table as if looking for some clue through the magnified end.

     “Not there.”

     “There.”

“No.”

     “There?”

     “Just a minute.” Practically solid with arthritis and with branch-like arms losing another section of paper she bent forward with difficulty. With an unnerving, almost sexual gasp, she managed to place her lips on the straw in the small glass of water, lift it out and place it in the juice. “Yes.” She sat back in a red dress the same shade as the chair as though immersed in coloured bathwater with only head and arms and socked feet sticking out. “Thank you Michael. Can you pick up the bits of paper, and, put them back in here in the correct order please.”

     “Sure.”

     She asked for the time.

     “Yeah sorry I’m a bit late. It’s about ten-to-eleven.”

     “What is the time exactly?”

     I scrutinized her clock. We went through our usual routine. The same one she insisted upon each day but rushing a little, as if tired of this, I told her the lunch options in a strange voice and she listened politely, watching me, noticing the voice and shaking almost imperceptibly. After the main lunchtime meal she ate exactly the same thing every evening and drank the same thing. Impeccably mannered, she waited for me to list these things printed out next to her name unlike the blank boxes the others had. Each day she asked for small portions to be written down and if the pen didn’t move correctly she would ask to see the sheet. This fastidious manner sent the other staff out of their minds but the familiarity of almost every word and action in this room I found at first amusing then a sort of pleasure. I put the broadsheet paper in order and she thanked me again.

A muscle above my left eye began to twitch rapidly and I felt a bit giddy as I stood up.

“Okay thanks Mrs Bower.” I left.

“Michael,” she called furiously, “you haven’t said who’s cooking today or told me the date!”

She dunked her head in the red water until only her long white hair remained visible.

“Sorry Mrs Bower, I feel odd today. My eye’s a bit funny.”

Pressing the palm of my hand hard into my eye socket whilst searching for the answers somewhere behind other thoughts she ran out of patience.

“Is it Jan cooking today Michael, is it the twenty sixth?”

“It is Mrs Bower, you are right on both counts.” With her red face and hard glare fixed upon me, she leant forward and seemed to be working out if I was challenging her authority in this room. I freed my eye and stuck a thumb over my shoulder. “Is that you in the wedding photo?”

     Collapsing back in the chair she made a sound I didn’t recognise. Then regaining some of her pale complexion she said yes uncomfortably before immediately moving on to her usual final question in a gesture for me to leave. No. I will definitely not forget to come back for the glass. I couldn’t decide if she knew the answers or not. Most of the staff thought so and this added to the look they gave whenever her name came up.

Not once had I overheard her speaking about anything but the necessary components of the day. She would press the bell at the end of the long orange wire that stretched across the room to be fastened to the chair, or the blanket, or even clothing for easy accessibility, for assistance. Apart from John’s maybe, her bell rang out around the house more often than most. When checking the little screens fixed on many of the walls to see whose number flashed up 13 was often next to 19, wanting her paper from the floor or to go to the toilet or wishing to confirm something. Frustrated by the silent footsteps going by her door she would call out. She knew everybody’s routine to the minute. Elaine said the man beaming at all the world died young, leaving the young widow to bring up four kids alone with a growing discomfort already in her bones. I wanted to think more about the yes she gave and in particular the disarmed way she gave it - how much it suited her in that brief moment, but it got lost going back to the trolley for the beaker of tea.

     Mrs MacVicar’s door stood fully open. Sat facing the television she looked at some fixed point somewhere not quite at the screen or not anywhere in fact, talking to herself though not audibly, just a whisper on her lips. Surrounded by canvass pictures of amateurish sunsets and other scenes with at first bright colours fading the more I studied them, she tapped her fingernails on the arm of her wheelchair with occasional aggression. Hoping she wouldn’t notice my presence I stretched an arm into the room to put the beaker of warmish tea on the first surface available. Above the lamp hung the only photograph in the room greenish and spoilt by water or time or too many eyes. I decided finally that it probably was the lady in the wheelchair. But the expressionless woman stood alone in the stone archway of a large farmhouse door a bit away from the photographer looked nothing at all like the withered shape sat whispering to herself and I wondered if there was a point when we can no longer find even a trace of our youthful selves in the mirror. When pictures like these are of strangers even to the people within them.

I had grown fascinated by such photographs as these.

“Going through her knickers draw are yer?” Rose came along the corridor pulling a vacuum with UPSTAIRS written on it in black marker.

I pulled the plastic thing from my pocket. “Do you know what this is?”

     “Ooo I can tell you about that.” She took it from my hand and shrinking down inched her legs further apart, the toes following the heel until her black shoes almost touched the skirting board. “Yussee what they do is get this and put it up there,” she indicated it going up her vagina, “and then ..”

     “Rose, Rose, thanks for that, that’s enough with the details.”

     She stood up properly, blinking, a little perplexed that I stopped her demonstration.

     “What’re you reading at the moment?”

     “The same thing.” I said. “I found a different translation and it’s made a massive difference, more conversational or something. I’m not even sure why I picked it up. I think I preferred the cover.”

     “Oh. I finished that book. I’m not really sure what it was all about, and isn’t it bloody boring.”

     I laughed and attempted to explain why I thought it wasn’t boring and she blinked some more.

     “You sound like my daughter, she’s got all these books and I want to have more in common with her so I pull one down now and again but she gets on my nerves. She’s in Glasgow.” She said with rising intonation and a look as if Glasgow meant something to me or was referring to some past conversation.

     Lowering my voice I asked if that’s the reason Mrs MacVicar hadn’t got any family pictures anywhere. Pulling the vacuum like a dog on a lead she stepped into the room and looked about with a wry smile.

     “Probably yeah, they hate each other. These pictures are good though aren’t thee, really beautiful?”

     I looked at Mrs MacVicar and back at Rose.

     “Don’t worry, Alice is deaf as a post.” Turning serious, away from the easily sweetly amused appearance she took about with her she continued, “You have to get up really close to her ear, and speak softly, not loudly, otherwise she still won’t be able to hear for some reason. Then she can hear. And she may even talk back!”

     I wondered why I hadn’t already been told this, noticing the face Rose pulled when saying something intended to be funny made the fat under her chin grow out. Like pressing her face to glass her appearance changed completely. A contractor in overalls passed us nodding his head politely with a wide-eyed intimidated expression that reminded me of my first few days going up and down these corridors, grateful it wasn’t my job to get too close to these frail strangers. I probably wouldn’t have acted upon the information about Alice MacVicar anyway.

“I find them a bit boring Rose.”

     “Oh.” She looked at the paintings as if looking for something else, then shrugged happily, much as she would to her daughter, I thought. She sprayed polish into a rag.

     Pretending to make notes, I lingered for a moment watching Rose on her knees remove dust from the skirting board whilst holding Mrs MacVicar’s hand. Noticing me still in the doorway she let go and stood back up.

     “So how is it in the kitchen now, okay, the chefs still getting you down a bit or?”

     “Nah, it doesn’t get me down I just ignore them and get on with my job.”

     She didn’t look convinced.

     “Which chef do you prefer working with then?”

     I shrugged irritably.

     “Do you know when I first started here I didn’t think I’d last two weeks. I thought bugger this for a game of soldiers I can’t work here, it’s far too bitchy! Have you been in that staffroom lately? What’s the point in all that moaning and bitchiness, dear oh dear?”

“Yep, negativity is a real currency in this place alright.”

“I’ll tell thee, get more than two women in the same room and somewhere in there you’ll have gained an enemy for life. Even on your day off!”

     She pressed her face to glass and our initial amusement grew at the sight of each other’s laughter until the laughter became the funny thing. Rose engaged everybody in conversation. Weeks later she recalled the slightest comment or concern said absentmindedly and picked up the thread, stopping what she was doing to concentrate. Maybe we had spoke about Glasgow at some time.

     I went back through the smog to the trolley with a sore eye careful not to come into contact with either wall in the listed manor house and certainly collapse to the floor in a confused heap with hands over my ears trying to block the mad enmity not quite at the same time. The pious crouching presenter looked on whilst the odd bout of mocking laughter from the audience broke out all tortuous and surrounding and in waves like overly strong acid peaking.

     “Help!”

     Fucking help.

“Cyn! Elaine! Esterva!”

I poured out a black coffee and took up the clipboard, put them back down to eat a Custard Cream biscuit, grabbed the things only to spill coffee onto the saucer. I noticed Mr Wells had finally pulled some trousers on and decided not to go in there tomorrow unless he was fully dressed. Although I couldn’t be sure, I thought that he took some pleasure in my noticing this and I wondered about never going back in there full stop. Maybe later I’d leave his food on the threshold so he had to crawl to it and eat like a fucking dog.

     Sat on the bed she had the door at just the right angle to see through the widest gap possible between door and frame. Her dark eyes always searched through to see first who knocked before inviting them in with pretend surprise.

“Come in. Good morning Michael, service with a smile that’s what I like to see. Is Rose about, I need to speak to her about some errands?”

     “She’s just in with um, probably Mrs Bower, I think, sorry I spilt some coffee round the edge.”

     We spoke about the weather. The heat. She had the window open day and night and now a wall-climbing plant grew in. She asked me to go over and look how wild the windowsill had become with a good laugh.

“At least I think its Virginia Creeper,” she said, “or maybe it’s the false one, I’ll ask my nephew the next time he’s here he knows about these things, there we are.” She laughed her short measured laugh that lit things up evenly almost regardless of anything, even after hello - though I discovered to my delight not for everyone, not just any words from anyone. “You see we’re just animals, never mind our buildings, the weather affects us all, our moods our behaviour everything you see? Anybody with a changing climate talks about the weather, out of necessity!”

She hadn’t quite drawn in her left eyebrow correctly and it spiked at the end nearest the bridge of her nose as though she had been disturbed finishing it off. This was the smallest of all the rooms and the one that cost the least. The sun came through the green mostly empty Gin bottle sat on the windowsill. I imagined I would drink until I fell into the walls in such a place as this. Dead drunk. Requiring the least care of all the long-termers she dominated her room entirely, not allowing the daily nightmarish scenes downstairs to stray into her own private space like the true or false Virginia Creeper.

I asked how she felt about cottage pie.

“That’s fine. I just cannot sleep in this heat! I was up at three O. Clock - wait, is it Jan on today? Yes that’s fine. Three o’clock! I shall be exhausted by supper.” Laughter.

“I’ll try and bring it up nice and early.”

“Okay.” Laughter.

“Tomato soup and cheese perhaps?”

“Oh yes I should think so, you know what I like in the evening very boring I’m afraid. My sister-in-law ate tomatoes everyday of her life she told me, and she lived till a hundred and six, so there you are, you see, tomatoes everyday and maybe I’ll be so lucky.” Laughter. “Right, Okay, thank you Michael.”

“I’ll let Rose know you want her. Oh, you’ve got someone moving in next door today,” I looked at the sheet, “another Lady. Lady um, Dryden.”

Her expression changed completely. A new neighbour was a serious business.

“Ah, that’s why I can smell fresh paint about the place. Oh well, at least Helena will have someone to talk too, not that she makes the least bit of sense of course. Dryden? I think I remember that name?” Pulling a tissue out of her pocket she dabbed the saliva at the sides of her mouth and looked away with a sombre expression.

Most of the staff called her aunty. She drank in the evening and slept early. Awake early she listened to the regularly broken silence gradually turn into an accumulation of wakefulness that brought the inevitable drone of impatient bells. The rush of the breakfast round in full swing and water rushing through pipes meant the beginnings of another near indistinguishable day. By now she longed for hot black coffee and waited anxiously on the edge of the bed. After the correct modifications on her home were in place she moved back as planned and in the first week left the gas on and nearly blew the whole house. I imagined the same solemn silence that mostly occupied the dining room occupied the car when driven back here. Her family refused to buy the alcohol she required so she asked Rose to get it instead.

The night staff told the day staff that lately Mrs Miller took the lift down around five in the morning with her two sticks to sit in her plastic chair positioned close to the stream at the bottom of the garden without any eyebrows, her thin hair wild she smoked two or three cigarettes straight off. Hours later I sat in the same chair with a coffee on my break watching some crows. Something seemed to be happening. They seemed incredibly angry with one another. One would jump out from the cover of greenery and hop about screeching. Others would appear and do something similar and then disappear. All seemed irate. Other birds flew by and filled the trees overlooking the scene. More and more crows came out into the open ground and screeched and in the trees the distant birds felt the menace in the air and became affected by it, flying about haphazardly trying to get a better sight. Just as suddenly they took to the air and flew off panicking the rabbits near the fence back into the ground. There were holes everywhere, but for some reason I hadn’t ever seen a single rabbit emerge from one only vanish back into them.

Almost lunchtime I had set things up with some time to spare somehow. Feeling drained I needed to steel myself with strong coffee and yesterdays cake away from everybody trying to think of things more draining than other people. Then I got caught up studying the old tin can used as an ashtray rusted into shades of ochre and some silver still next to the liver-spotted tubular legs of the chair. The chair stood in a long patch of grass where the gardener going over the lawns hadn’t bothered to climb off the mower to move it, circling it instead, making it appear an almost permanent and immovable feature.

I passed Jan on her way back to the fag shed.

“There isn’t anybody in there yet, the carers are running late, as ever.”

“Okay, no problem.”

Donna followed after not far behind, Jan must have been unaware of this, she looked ahead at Jan and I wondered whether she heard or not. It was difficult to tell from her expressionless face. Like an animal with sad eyes.

Through the narrow window of the unswinging door I looked into the dining room. Most of the residents were there, only Mona and Dereck to come down separately in the tiny lift. Not wishing to wake, Dereck spent most of his time trying to sleep. At the request of his family he was brought down into the dining room to eat with the others. In response he simply pretended to sleep the whole time, barely lifting his head to put a few bits of food in his mouth before pushing the plate away then asking to be taken back to bed. Elaine pushed him into position at the men’s table, his fist on his cheekbone barely propping his head up. He didn’t look up to acknowledge anyone at the table. Charlie took him in with a long curious look before drinking wine. Geoff attempted to reach his glass of sickly strong orange squash next to the small vase of flowers in the middle of the table. Seeing this, Charlie, opposite, pushed it closer to him with a genial look and pointed at the air to accept his gratitude. I had overfilled it. He tried to lift it toward his mouth but it suddenly slipped from his grasp and somehow managed to stay upright on his lap against the side of the wheelchair. He darted his eyes about to see if anyone had noticed. They hadn’t. I grabbed the brown sauce from the shelf and pushed the door open. Placing the bottle next to Dereck I put the glass back on the table and gave him his napkin. Like some others, he found it difficult to speak but managed to push out a thank you.

“Michael, could you get me        some water please.”

“Of course.”

 Most watched my every movement from their given position at the different tables glad to have something to focus on. The talkers at their two tables pushed together, a long immaculate white tablecloth making it look whole, grew impatient about the delay in food but were far too polite to say anything. They could no longer think of things to discuss and sat quietly along with everybody else. Unable to converse at their table next to the huge Yucca in the corner, Lady Helena leant in an odd position with chin on thumb and forefinger on the table, as did M. next to her with interlocking fingers, peering through the extra magnification at the bottom of her glasses. They each looked on at my twists and turns as if judging a contest.

The soles of my shoes on the highly polished parquet floor made the only sound in the room making the dreadfulness all around seem more apparent. The floor sometimes looked like a pool of water disturbed in its middle and rippling a perfect geometric composition. Something had to be added to the polish to make it non-slippy which may have added to the effect. I poured the water out and took it back over to the feeders table where Mrs MacVicar sat motionless in her giant throne on wheels. It kept her in a kind of pushchair position so she could fall asleep for hour’s right there and not be uncomfortable. Anyone who could not put food in their mouths sat at this table next to the monster Ficus. All the plants in here thrived, with the south facing double aspect windows and tall ceilings suiting them.

“Water. Here we are, is it okay there?” I realised I forgot to go back for her empty glass earlier.

“No, a little closer.”

“There?”

“No.”

“There?”

“Yes. Thank you Michael.” She didn’t say anything.

Watching this with a faintly amused smile Charlie gulped back his wine and held the empty glass in the air. I filled it almost to the top.

“Hello, excuse me.”

“Yes Lady Helena.”

“Could you tell me, do you know if they’re here, yet?”

I realised Mrs Langer wasn’t here yet.

“Sorry Lady Helena I don’t know but I could find out, I’ll .. I’ll try and find out.”

“Oh. Thank you, if you don’t mind awfully, because you see, I’m waiting.”

An empty wine glass went back into the air and Mrs Miller laughed. She knew Charlie took advantage of the fact none of the carers were on hand to advise him against another glass and take water over instead.

“Right you are.”

“Thank you, kind sir.”

I went back into the kitchen and the door flapped about before coming to a standstill. Jan was busily crushing lumps out the custard.

“Why don’t we have music on out there so it isn’t so, you know, quiet?”

She gave a distracted, impatient shake of her head without looking up. The new highlights in her short brownish hair gave the intended impression of someone young before breaking the illusion when looking up to turn the gas hob down, her heavily lined smokers face cross and concentrating. Realizing I was still in the same position staring at her she looked at me. Donna and Elaine, wearing throwaway plastic aprons in case of cross contamination from bedroom to kitchen, complimented her hair and both times she said really instead of thanks.

“Right, we ready to serve?”

“Not quite, we’re still waiting for Mrs Langer and, oh, she’s there now, and um ..”

“All the feeders there?”

All white with white hair and those skinny colourless lips, Mrs Laws saw me peering into the dining room and gave me a slightly indignant look as though I was gawping at them all as a curiosity. She often looked up as I gazed through my narrow little window, there to see if anyone was coming in the opposite direction but mostly serving as a viewing gallery from the relative comfort of the kitchen. Mrs Laws sensed this. She seemed to be in the perfect position to catch anyone appearing in that window looking out. The RGN came in with her little tray of white liquid in small paper cups so they could all shit properly, checked her upside-down watch and called out into the corridor. Care staff filed in along with Mona wheeled into position with the rest of the feeders always served first so the care staff could go on their lunch break all the sooner. Cynthia smiled at something Mona said and lent forward to kiss her on the forehead. She noticed me in the window. Jan appeared next to me with a displeased look and made a point of opening the door to look out to see if everyone was ready.

“Right, they’re ready then.”

I did up the straps on my faded blue apron tightly about my waist. Jan handed me two plates of shapeless food with only colour to distinguish each splodge from the next. I went out and put the plates down in front of Mrs Bower and Mrs MacVicar. Sat in-between, Donna sat texting someone on her phone. With a smile in my direction Mona looked at the food and asked Donna to order her something from the Chinese. I brought out Mona’s plate and saw her quickly put the phone away when the RGN walked back in with more paper cups.

I went out the door with plates for Lady Helena and M. just as Geoff dropped his drink to the floor. It smashed. Jan came out and asked me to clear it up straight away with a loud stiff voice.  

“Are they here yet, is Stephen here, I’m waiting?”

I went back into the kitchen to get the dustpan and brush feeling I’d said the wrong thing and when I came back out Dereck had been sick onto his lap.

With snot running down his face and glass around his shoes Henry turned to me, “I made a mistake earlier, I have read one of the Russians’.”

“Ah, right. Which?”

The Parkinson’s had a good control over his hands, he needed a plate guard to not spill the food all over but like Geoff he was determined to do as much for himself as possible. They all studied the feeders table with quiet unease. Henry shook a fraction when trying to speak and the drugs he needed made him hallucinate wildly but he kept all this to himself.

“War and Peace.”

“Wow, Tolstoy, how long did that take you?”

“Six months. I read it in six months.”

I swept up the glass around his feet. I was almost never below their eye line. “That’s pretty good going I’d say Henry.”

“Apparently his wife, Sofia Tolstoy, apparently she was a good writer. She kept diaries. But she found that when she finally had time, after, after taking care of the children and her husband and things, she no longer had the energy to do anything with her talent. She said something interesting about this, but, I can’t remember what, exactly.” He spoke with great care and concentration, enunciating each word sometimes with painful slowness. Sometimes I accidently finished the sentence off for him. He looked across the table and spoke without any noticeable change in expression or any variation in the tone of his voice, “He stuck his fingers down his throat.”

“Sorry Henry?”

“He stuck his fingers down his throat.”

With lips out far from his face, Charlie looked up briefly from the intense study of his open white napkin on which he projected his thoughts to confirm this with a deeply melancholic look, before watching the blue uniformed shape of the RGN breeze in. She wheeled Dereck away and the room listened to her always sympathetic, soothing tones fade down the corridor. Charlie darted suddenly wide eyes at his empty glass and I filled it up as Mrs. M. began to cough fiercely, turning red with the strain. Lady Helena asked if she was alright and closed her eyes in a flinch when the cough came in her direction. Mrs Haugh said how trying it must be for her in a small sweet voice at the opposite end of the room, but the rest of the talkers couldn’t bring themselves to offer any response.

“Take your time Bea, drink water and take your time.” Donna said.

“Mrs M. coughing away already poor thing. She coughed so much the other day she made herself sick, I was even asked to clear it up! No fear! I left it for Rose it’s not my job.”

“Why does she cough so much?” I said already knowing the answer, slightly taken aback by Jan speaking to me like this.

“Some problem with her throat, which of course is why she’s sat next to Lady Helena who aint gunna remember a thing about it by evening.”

I told Jan what Henry had said about Dereck.

“He doesn’t want to be here.” She confirmed with a nod. “He eats the tiniest amount with that brown sauce and claims to be full. What can you do, you can’t force them to eat?”

“You mean he just wants to die, or?”

“Of course! Trip to Switzerland if he was one of my family, I tell you.”

Donna came in with the jug of orange squash.

“So Dereck’s up to his old tricks again?” Seeing no immediate response Jan added, “Making himself sick?”

Donna opened the cupboard and turned to look at Jan half bending. “Mona says the orange is too weak.” She put the jug down carelessly on the side with a long sigh and poured out the CATERER’S KITCHEN concentrate until the colour in the jug became almost electric.

The door swept in and out of the kitchen.

I took the rest of the plates out and without rushing, breathing in the still air and calm, I headed up the narrow workers stairs to Peter on the top floor. Talking without expecting an answer and stroking his arm, Mrs Pansill sat beside his bed. She met my entrance with relief, smiled and complimented the food and thanked me over and over. This type of reaction came about through guilt, Elaine said. In the hope it bought a degree of warmth for the handed over loved one, the families were often so anxious to please every member of staff that they tired themselves out with smiles and gratitude. Or at the very least, she added, it’s in the hope a pillow isn’t used on the wrong side of the head.

His collarbones grew out through the shirt. Peter turned his long grey face and eaten away cheeks in my direction to say something. His mouth hung open a long way and neither of us understood. His neat thick hair parted carefully in the middle somehow made the rest of him look even more shrunken and pathetic. Losing patience she picked up a forkful of food and told him not to worry. He’s obviously busy, she said.

I felt the muscle in my eyelid begin to twitch again and I covered it with the fleshy palm of my hand and thanked them. Whistling came from Dereck’s room. I stood and listened for a moment, trying to think what it reminded me of. It came to me. I listened for a moment to see if it was simply a bad rendition, but it was something else. I collapsed on the new oxblood Chesterfield armchair just to listen and became struck by how comfy the Chesterfield was and wished to buy one exactly the same but maybe in green. I resented having to get up and go back down.

In the kitchen Jan said “Right, fifteen’s ready.”

I knocked and Rose answered. I put the food on top of her Sun newspaper turning the tray through my fingers smoothly, hand to hand in a graceful pleasing manner so that the plate and not the bowl of hardened custard and cake sat nearer Mrs Johnsons’ slumped body in the chair. Rose didn’t notice the way I put the tray down either.

“She’s fast asleep poor bugger.” Rose went into the toilet. “Have you been in to that new ones room yet?”  

“Lady Dryden, why?”

“Be careful when you do. She’s been in before.” She popped her head round the door. “She’s a hundred and four!” She tried to gauge how impressed I was before calling for Emily to wake.

I checked in the dining room to see if anybody needed anything or was finished as Jan asked. Everybody was silent, with only the scraping of cutlery on plates and the dreadfulness and awfulness in the air. Making sure they looked as though they were eating in case their plate disappeared before they knew it and a bowl of thick yellow put in its place without even a pause.

I had the compulsion to talk to Jan, the same strange compulsion that made me sit in the staffroom to eat my lunch.

“Right, anyone ready for pud, let’s get it out?”

“No no, no. Not yet. Why does erm, what’s his name in thirteen always yell for help?” These types of questions pleased her because they could always go somewhere profitable and I knew this. But I felt a simple yearning to talk. These scenes weighed upon my senses, but anytime I mentioned something I thought interesting it became a cul-de-sac of one word answers with nowhere to go. To begin with a small misery opened things up with no end in sight. Sometimes she looked as though she enjoyed speaking to me.

“Because he’s used to it!” She flicked a hand to emphasise her point. “He just wants attention is all. He came from twenty-four hour care to this. And he don’t like it. That’s why he wants a cooked breakfast of a morning, he’s not hungry after the porridge he just wants someone in the room,” she tried to put a stiff but humorous face on, “so muggings here has to do it.”

“Mm. He’s got motor neurons hasn’t he?”

“Yes,” she studied my face with suspicion, “they can’t have whatever they like it’s not a five star hotel. And what’s wrong with just porridge nobody else complains? Right this tray can go up now, she likes her food at one o’clock exactly. She’s been in before. She might be asleep though, I’m told she’s exhausted. Wait. You might as well take seventeen’s sandwich with you.”

I headed back for the luxury of the wide and carpeted main stairs and began to whistle the tune I had been reminded of with a kind of demented precision all the way up and along until I knocked on the door.

Greenish-yellow piss soaked the toilet paper in the open commode in the middle of the room. Foggy with sleep she looked up and gave a simple expression of tiredness and amusement, of bafflement and recognition at the incredibly bizarre and incredibly sad nature of all things. Through her eyes I could see a young man with a cheery unshaven demeanour holding a tray of food.

She pulled herself up onto her arm and the strap to her nightgown fell from her shoulder revealing some of her long breast.

“Oh, okay.” She reached forward to turn the radio down on the bedside table and resting back on her arm the breast came out. She looked at me with a sharp eye, unmoved, leaving the breast where it was.

I guessed the radio station she was listening too.

“Sorry? Oh. Yes. That’s right, yes. What a clever young man you are.”

I moved the table that hung over the bed closer, “Okay, look, I’ll just make some room and leave it here. Move this a bit closer there we are. Thank you.”

I pulled the door closed and went back up the corridor to Wells just as he was coming out of his room without his walking-frame.

“Ah, there you are. Is that for me?” He said pointing to the sandwich on the tray.

I said yes and he answered that he would no longer take lunch in his room like some sort of cripple, he would now take it in the small sitting room between Mrs Bower’s and Mrs MacVicar’s room.

“I also want you to show me how to get the words on the telly in there before you go, and, oh - you put it back on the wrong channel earlier - I knew something wasn’t right! And I want more tea than you’re giving me, much, much more tea. How much do I have to pay in this goddamn place to get sufficient tea!”

“Okay, I’ll just. Okay.”

He had a tie and jacket on and brown leather shoes and had the look of a grizzled professor who enjoyed lecturing to an audience of any size.

Two men in light coloured suits were already sat in the room and they looked up at me with amusement as I entered.

“Oh. Sorry.” I turned back to see him slowly advancing, growing more annoyed. “Sorry Mr Wells two gentlemen are already using the room you’ll have to eat ..”

“They’re my guests, you idiot!”

Laughter erupted from behind.

All the way looking at the floor I put the sandwich on the neat little coffee table grabbing the remote control from it, the two men, comfortable in their chairs and overjoyed at my presence watched with a detached glee. Mr Wells stood in the doorway with his weight on his good leg all hunched over. He did not move in any further and looking at him standing there completely filling the entry I felt a brief wave of claustrophobic panic the same as I felt in the lift occasionally when it made unfamiliar noises. They all gawked at me intently as if studying something endlessly interesting and odd.

By the weight of the remote control I realised it had no batteries inside and said so with a straight look at Mr Wells, coming up close to him to get by, looking down at him with my own crazy eye. He moved, without saying another word.

Needing the space of the main stairway again I realised John hadn’t called out either time I passed his door. Situated at the top of the stairs his call for help usually carried around the house. These cries quickly became like the loud televisions before midday - a quirk of the job that nobody seemed able to notice. I hesitated near the bottom wondering if he was alright and crept back up to glance around the door. He lay staring at the ceiling shaking from head to foot with a thin cotton blanket over his useless body seeped in sweat. His large fan stood over the bed blasting away whilst Sherlock Holmes came from the stereo.

“Afternoon Michael.”

“Oh. Afternoon, John. One of the girls will ..”

“Are you well?”

“Good thanks, John. You?”

Trembling all over he pulled his eyes from the ceiling to look at me, his feet had worked their way from under the blanket and were exposed. Soon it would drop away through the gap of the bed frame and safety bar leaving him practically naked whilst listening to the fourth and final instalment of THE ADVENTURE OF THE FINAL PROBLEM.

“We all have things, we     have to, put up with don’t we Michael.” He said stutteringly through convulsions.

“Some more than others John. Your lunch will ..”

“Was that you whistling, a moment ago?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Satie?”

“Ha, yes, it was yes.”

“It’s my wife’s favourite piece of music. When we got married she wanted to walk down the aisle to it. Not walk, it’s like a dance, it’s      like dancing. She used to do performance art. So, she had this movement that she worked out to perform down the aisle and I said no. I said it was   too bleak. She frowned, and said how can something beautiful be bleak? I said of course it could angrily, and she just gave me this look, this was in the kitchen. Well never mind about that, we hadn’t been together that long, and this look worried me, so, so I said well what will your father do during this time, dance about with you? And this struck a chord in her. I could see she began to doubt the idea. But I wasn’t concerned about         that         really. I despised the man. I don’t know why I made a fuss at all I guess I was just, I guess I was worried because it wasn’t the usual thing and that I would look stupid just standing there. I mean what should I have done, clap? Stamp my feet?” He paused and moved his eyeballs to gauge how interested I was in the story and in a near mesmerized state I missed the opportunity to laugh. “I don’t know. But I seized on the doubt and made her think it wasn’t a good idea. Afterwards I felt pleased that I managed to talk her out of it. I also had the sense that I had set the tone for our marriage and this made me feel good. I felt good. I couldn’t have been more pleased with     with the whole thing. Then she walked all the way down that aisle without looking at me even once. I panicked, Michael. I could feel myself shaking. And then, I saw the look he gave me, not proud or displeased just doing what he was asked walking his daughter down the aisle. But it was the same look she gave me in the kitchen, the exact same! It was the look of doubt and I suddenly realised she didn’t doubt the performance idea at all she doubted me. I knew I’d made a mis         take, a mistake. Stood next to me I knew I’d made a big mistake. I offered to remarry her later on and the rev looked at us. I wanted to tell him to fuck off, to tell everyone to fuck off I was really angry and desperate. Do the whole thing properly as she wanted. She said no, of course, what with everybody there, I suppose. And of course now I can’t think of anything more beau      more beautiful than my wife coming down the aisle like that. So you see, Michael, now that music is bleak. I didn’t really think it was, not then, I just said it was.”

Stood at the end of the bed, close enough to pull the blanket properly back over his body, I had wondered about turning the stereo down as a sign I hoped he would interpret as my interest in his story. I wanted to let him know that I wasn’t simply sticking around out of politeness, anxious to get away. I wanted to say something to show some kind of appreciation and understanding of pig headedness. The narrator concluded the story and the CD stopped.

“It played at my Nan’s funeral.” I said by way of humorous exoneration at last. He returned his eyes to me from the ceiling. I felt utterly exhausted, that I couldn’t talk properly to anybody today and that I didn’t want to speak anymore.

“What did you say about my lunch, Michael?”

“I think one of the girls are on their way with it.”

“Good.”

“Do you want me to put CD one back on or are you sick of it?”

“No, I’m not sick of it. If you could do that for me please.”

“Of course.”

“Thanks Michael, you’re very          kind.”

I couldn’t bring myself to correct the blanket.

In the dining room, for some reason without putting the empty plate down to make it easier, I unscrewed the top and poured out the wine one-handed. I thought about putting the plate down as I took over the glass but it now seemed not worth it. Donna watched the knife slide and clatter about the floor with a long scornful look and wringing the most out of it shook her head a while. Watching this from her position at the head of the silent talkers table, Mrs Haugh commented to Ellan Langer as loud as she could in her tiny voice what a hard job I was doing going up and down the stairs and still keeping everybody happy in the dining room and the awfulness briefly lifted. Mrs Haugh sat in every staff meeting as a representative of the residents. I saw immediately that in her quiet watchful manner she absorbed a great deal of whatever happened within the home. Her room next to the lift everybody on the middle floor stopped to speak to her as they waited for it to arrive. She understood a lot of things, like the silences and hesitation, awkwardness and strain in people’s voices whilst doing their best. That the staff worked incredibly long hours and still kept smiling despite clearing up sick and piss and confusion. I took their empty plates away and sensing something from the head of the table they each thanked me with eye contact. It amazed me how polite and good humoured the residents were on the whole, no matter what and despite the huge amount of money it cost for one of these rooms. Each member of staff boredly threw different sums about but I knew Mrs Miller paid the least. Sitting on her bed she poured over her finances on a regular basis. She told me that eleven hundred quid a week bought you very little these days. And like pretty much everyone, even those who couldn’t talk, displayed genuine appreciation for the smallest kindness.

Mrs Miller leant in and agreed long after the point had been made. “Oh yes. He does work hard.”

I already knew the reason music was not allowed in the dining room. I just wanted Jan to talk to me. To hear something other than the dogs barking and the giant extractor suck out dirty air and vegetables overcooking and water gushing about fiercely in the dishwasher. Mrs Miller wanted conversation. She could listen to music in her room or go to the lounge to hear Barbara Streisand. She spoke to Mrs Haugh who agreed and then brought it up at the next staff meeting. Realising the dining room stereo went unused I asked if I could bring it into the kitchen but both chefs said no without hesitation explaining that they liked to hear the food cooking. I wondered if either truly believed this and who’d said this first. Which of them overheard the other saying it and thought it came across as professional? Noticing Jan, at the end of her shift, put her initials next to jobs she hadn’t done on the DAILY JOB SHEET in a bid to look conscientious, I went with her. Picking it up from Christine on the rare occasion they worked together to discuss future menus and such things. Deaf to the food she liked the sound of the words. In response, I did all the work and ignored the sheet week after week and seeing this Jan would hesitate with the pen, perplexed.

In the hallway next to the water-cooler the phone rang. Still with half a plate of pureed food to go Mrs M. began to cough with the strain of swallowing. Lady Helena asked if she was alright. Elaine told her to take her time and not to rush. Donna got up to take Mona’s empty bowl into the kitchen but was called to the phone before she got there. She went out annoyed. Mona took out her teeth and put them into her glass of water. Almost immediately Donna began to argue loudly with the person who’d called saying she hated her life and she slammed the phone down at exactly the same time as Geoff’s drink once again slipped his grasp. Instead I imagined a shattered glass phone with bits of it in Donna’s hand now pouring with blood. She came in as though nothing had happened with that same face still holding Mona’s bowl. She looked down at the broken glass on the floor, fixed Henry’s collar so it sat correctly, and gave a long look to the other care staff. The next day I watched through the window as he was wheeled into place between Mrs Bower and Mrs MacVicar and opposite Mona’s teeth with an entirely new expression on his face.

                                                                                                                                           PART TWO

“It was a talk. I went with Leanne..