Facing the Tank (19 page)

Brooklea Rest Home nestled in the laburnum heart of Friary Hill, the suburban sprawl beyond the Roman Bridge. This district, which also held the crematorium and Garden of Remembrance, was named after the red-brick mansion built there in 1880 by the Prossers, a family of sanitary porcelain barons who had since moved south. The Prosser estate had been sold to developers after the last war. Its fanciful baronial pile had been converted into flats and now loured from the midst of a tangle of cul-de-sacs strewn with postwar villas, boat trailers and sunset gates. Brooklea was a four down, five up which had put forth bungaloid extensions to its rear and on each side. From the rockery on the front lawn a small motorized stream trickled into a lily pond. There were flowering cherries at war with a laburnum and a forsythia bush. Prison walls of leylandii to the sides and rear protected neighbours and inmates alike from embarrassment. The three steps up to the front door had been half-covered by a wheelchair ramp.

Obeying the polite request mounted above the doorbell, Fergus rang then entered. There were two sets of doors. The first let him into a glass-topped porch housing a rubber plant in rude health and an umbrella stand full of sticks, the second, with a blast of overheated air and disinfectant, let him into the hall. The Matron was waiting for him, a capable, sympathetic-looking woman, her well-coiffed brown hair surmounted by the white crown of her authority.

‘Mr Gibson?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hello. I’m Claire Telcott, the Matron.’

‘How do you do?’

Her hand was cold and no doubt often scrubbed. She led him into her study-cum-sitting room which abutted the porch and so had a view like any other house in the road, free of wobbling white heads.

‘Now,’ she said once they were seated on either side of her desk. ‘It’s your mother you wish to bring to stay with us?’

‘Yes. She’s only seventy-two and was perfectly fit and spry. She worked as a missionary in Africa, teaching in a bush school until last autumn. Then she had her first heart attack and had to come back to England. I thought it best to bring her down to live with me rather than let her go back to living alone in her flat in Scotland.’ Claire Telcott hummed and made a face to show that she thought this a wise and admirable action. ‘Then she had another attack soon after Christmas and her mind seemed to go.’

‘It happens.’ She sighed. ‘Can she walk?’

‘Yes, but she’s refused to leave her bed for any length of time since I brought her to live with me and frankly, with her … well, it’s very difficult for me to cope because I have to work and …’

‘I gather from Dr Morton she’s incontinent?’

‘Yes. And she’s very confused.’

‘The poor dear. Does she have many other relatives?’

‘Not now. My father died fifteen years ago. There are some cousins in Canada and nieces in Scotland but we’ve all lost touch.’

‘Fine. Did Nurse Drake mention fees?’

‘Yes, and I applied to my solicitor for power of attorney this morning.’

‘Super. Well what I suggest is that I give you a quick tour and show you the room we’d give Mrs Gibson and then, if you’re happy, you can move her in as soon as you like.’

‘Perfect.’

Fergus rose, his heart heavy, and tailed her from the room. The lounge, where a circle of old ladies and two old men sat watching
The Ten Commandments
on television, was even hotter than the hall.

‘The poor dears suffer terribly from the cold because they get so little exercise,’ Claire Telcott explained, ‘but we do our best to keep it nice and snug for them. As you see, we’ve invested in a video for them and Mr Horder from the video shop comes once a week to offer them a new choice – so much nicer than all that sport and violence.’

‘Quite.’

‘If you’d like to follow me …’

Fergus was shown a dining room with a large communal table and several objects like giant high chairs.

‘For the naughty ones, bless them,’ said his guide. ‘Quite like schoolkids they can be. We had trifle on the floor only yesterday.’

He was shown a typical bedroom in one of the bungaloid extensions. It was small and characterless, although it was emphasized that residents were encouraged to bring a few small items of emotional significance ‘to make it feel more like a bit of home’. Just a few. His mother was lucky enough to be filling a space in the main body of the house and so to have a slightly larger room with its own bathroom and a bay window.

‘Slightly more expensive, but it’ll be nice for her to feel a little distinguished, won’t it?’

They continued past a sky-blue shoebox of a chapel – ‘that nice Canon Wedlake comes in at nine on Sundays and of course he helps out with the sadder moments’ – and on to the pride of the institution. This was an old people’s gym. All the machines were specially adjusted for the weaker frame and were designed to ease joints and to prevent the ills of too sedentary a life. One of the home’s few men was puffing away at a rowing machine as they came in. Matron encouraged him till he was alarmingly red in the face.

‘Such a dear,’ she said as they headed back to the hall. ‘He used to play soccer for Barrowcester Wanderers before the club was amalgamated after the war. Very proud of his fitness, bless him.’

Fergus knew that his mother would take an instant dislike to Claire Telcott. She had always hated women in uniform, nuns included. Luckily the other nurses wore no signs of office other than the watches on their breast pockets.

‘We don’t want it too like a hospital, after all. And in their own clothes they’re just like dutiful daughters, really.’

Back in the study, Fergus filled out a form with his mother’s particulars and special needs and/or dislikes. Then he paid the first month’s bill in advance, arranged to bring her round on Thursday and left. He had been purposefully unspecific on the subject of her lavatorial obsession, saying only that she was prone to incontinence and confusion.

Since yesterday’s disaster, when Harpy had been such a help, his mother had been calm, reticent almost. The problem of packing her clothes and fetching her with them into the car with the minimum of explanation was one which he had barely faced. Perhaps Harpy could help him. If he could bring his mother down to the sitting room and get her all excited about going on an expensive cure, Harpy could do the packing upstairs. He could not see Mrs Gibson leaving her bed simply at the behest of a nurse, so she was unlikely to need many clothes other than nightdresses and her dressing gown. Seeking to dull his mind to the shame of the treason he was about to perform, he whistled as he strode over the Roman Bridge and back on to the spine of the hill.

He had invited Emma Dyce-Hamilton to tea to show her his plans for renovating her terrible house and dropped in at Hart’s on his way up the High Street to buy something to give her. It was very boring of Lydia to invite them to supper on the same night. Quite apart from Lydia’s cookery, one of the great pleasures of dining with the Harts was the standard of their gossip. Emma Dyce-Hamilton was sweet enough, but something about the cardigans she wore and the fact that she taught scripture to little boys made Fergus suspect that she would not be a party to malicious chat.

Lydia was not in Hart’s – she rarely was. He bought a bag of florentines and asked one of the pretty girls behind the counter how their boss was, and so heard all about Saturday’s quiet wedding. Cynically amused at the thought of the notoriously fey Tobit Hart leading such a beauty up the aisle, he must have left the shop with a smile on his lips for a tramp stumbled up to him and said,

‘You’re a happy man; spare us fifty pee?’

There were always tramps in Barrowcester in the warmer months. They arrived with the swallows and camped out on a small piece of common at the end of Bross Gardens. They sat drinking around bonfires by night and came up to haunt shoppers and tourists by day. This one stank and the skin of his face was scaly and brown. Fergus always felt that gypsies would curse him if he failed to buy their lucky heather and he harboured a similar superstition about tramps, as if destitution were catching.

‘Of course,’ he said, feeling in his jacket pockets. He had used most of his change buying the cakes however. What remained was so small that it would certainly enrage the tramp. ‘Look, I’m really sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing but my handkerchief, but why don’t you take these?’

He held out the florentines. Emma Dyce-Hamilton would have to make do with whatever remained in the biscuit tin at home.

‘Wonderful!’ exclaimed the tramp with what might have been a hint of sarcasm. ‘You’re a real gentleman, Guv’nor!’ and he took the cakes and bit into one with a show of relish.

‘Hope they won’t rot your teeth,’ laughed Fergus and continued, relieved, on his way.

However the tramp was not going to let a benefactor go without accepting something in return so he hurried forward into Fergus’ path and launched into a wild jig of thanks, waving the bag of cakes in the air and shouting,

‘Thank you thank you thank you!’

Because an amused circle of shoppers had formed, Fergus was forced to stay where he was and watch the dance to its hectic close.

‘Thank you,’ he muttered in return once the tramp had done and he dived into the crowd.

A party of pigeons leaped out of Emma’s path like so many tossed-up books. She thrust forward the little gear lever and felt the pedals turn with more resistance as the bicycle doubled its speed. As she flew, straight-backed, towards Drinkwater and Gibson Design Consultants, the currents around her played with her newly washed hair and she had to keep patting a hand to her knee to control the flapping of her dress. She had put on an old dress of her mother’s. Fifties clothes were meant to be back in fashion now. When Fergus had telephoned to say that his plans were ready and should he drop in on her or, only if it were convenient of course, would she like to drop in on him, her throat had dried with pleasure.

‘Oh, it’s such a heavenly day, and I’d enjoy the ride,’ she had heard herself enthuse. ‘Let me come to you.’

So he had invited her to tea. A working tea, he had called it and she had been effortless and laughed. She had started to dry her hair when she had caught sight of her mother’s old dress glowing from the wardrobe. It was the only garment of her mother’s which she had kept, partly because it was exactly her size and had come from a real Parisian designer, partly because it was the dress her mother wore in the photograph of her holding Emma as a baby. It was in a thick cotton, brilliant white with fat red flowers, somewhere between peonies and poppies. There were no sleeves, the waist was thin as her own and the skirt was flatteringly full. It smelled pleasantly of the pomander which dangled from its coathanger. She could tell from the glances she was getting as she rode through the Close that people thought she had made a mistake, that the dress ‘wasn’t her’, but it was.

‘This is me,’ she thought as she tossed a radiant smile to Clive Hart. ‘This is me and teaching scripture to little boys is not me and neither are pruning roses or camel-coloured cardigans or sensible heels.’

She locked her bicycle to a lamp post. His house was a model of early nineteenth-century delicacy, compensating for its bulk with large, thin-framed windows and a pretty Classical portico. It was a large house for a single man. There was a garden hidden behind a high wall to one side and jasmine had been trained up the bricks from tubs on either side of the entrance. The tubs had been painted dove grey to match the front door, however, which Emma thought a bit much. Like many Barrowcester houses it still had a functioning bell pull. She gave this a gentle tug and heard distant jangling. Mrs Merluza’s shop was closed, she noticed, so the poor woman must still be trapped in her house. She wondered whether, although this was a working tea, she should none the less have brought a cake with her.

‘Hello, Miss Hamilton.’

‘Hello. Please call me Emma. It’s less of a mouthful.’

‘All right, but only if you call me Fergus.’

‘Certainly, Fergus.’ She laughed as he stood aside to let her in. She was flirting. She was astonished.

He led her swiftly through a hall where she caught a glimpse of a grandfather clock and prints, to a broad sitting room whose windows gave on to a well-ordered garden centred round a walnut tree.

‘How lovely,’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you get anything off it?’

‘Lots, but it’s never hot enough to dry them without them turning mouldy. I made the mistake of pickling some the first summer here, though, and there are still jars of the things.’

‘Like my green tomato chutney.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. I felt I ought to make it because there was so little sun last year and I was left with bowls of green tomatoes, so I made it then realized that I
hate
chutney!’

‘I’ll swop you some for my walnuts.’

They laughed together. She assumed his offer was not serious, and disliked pickled walnuts, so she made no reply. This seemed to bring things on to a suddenly professional level.

‘Now,’ he said. ‘I’ve set the samples out for you here where you can see them in the light. I think you’re living with far too many colours at the moment, so we should start by calming down the hall and stairs with one of these. You see? The ivory or the slightly creamier one.’

For nearly forty minutes she sat at a table in one of the windows with him standing at her side like a teacher, picking over an assortment of fabric pieces, colour cards and strips of wallpaper that looked almost hand-painted. His eyes lit up as he shared his ideas and his enthusiasm was infectious. He wanted to make her house more feminine, though stopping short at the right side of fussy. At first she was almost scandalized at the boldness of his suggestions – a cerise study, a French pattern of china-blue swallows to replace the fudge-brown curtains in the bathroom, Provencal tiles in place of the mosaic-pattern lino in the kitchen – then she saw that his proposals were no more outrageous than her mother’s old dress. Emma became more and more animated as she envisaged the new setting Fergus had planned for her – for of course he had planned it with precisely her character in mind – and even dared to make a few suggestions of her own. Why not this pattern repeated in the upstairs lavatory, only in a yellow to tone in with the little carved bookcase he had suggested she move to the landing outside? And yes, he thought this a splendid idea.

‘At this rate you won’t really need me at all,’ he said.

‘Oh but nonsense,’ she gushed. ‘I wouldn’t know where to begin.’ She felt herself redden and dropped her eyes back to a sample of curtain material she was twisting in her hands.

He seemed to have forgotten all about tea when there was a furious beating on the floor over their heads and a hoarse woman’s voice called out wildly. Emma heard,

‘Leave her to get on with it herself,’ but the rest was an angry mumble.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said as Emma rose in alarm.

‘You mother …?’

‘You’ve heard. Yes.’

‘It’s my fault. I’ve kept you chatting far too long.’

‘No. It’s only that she …’

‘Yes I have and I must rush anyway.’

‘But I promised to make tea. I am hopeless.’

He wanted her to stay!

‘Nonsense.’ She took the lead and walked to the hall.

‘Stay here,’ he told her. ‘I won’t be a second.’

He ran up the stairs. His hair was thinning but he seemed fit enough. Upstairs Mrs Gibson called again, barking his name as if he were still a child. Emma stood for a moment in the hall then quietly let herself out and unpadlocked her bicycle. She remembered how sometimes she would think to dart up to her father’s sickbed for only five minutes then be kept there an hour. Poor Fergus. Perhaps, once work had started on the house and the workmen were able to find coffee and tea for themselves, she could offer to sit with Mrs Gibson in the afternoons. She could take her marking and sit, placid but industrious, in a chair near the bedside. When he came home from visiting clients and checking up on builders she could slip down to greet him and together they would have tea at the table in the sitting room window. Maybe, when the weather was warmer, they could sit on the bench under the walnut tree.

Then she had to brake suddenly to avoid a car’s opening door and she remembered that walnut trees dripped poison or skin irritant or something unpleasant. She rebuked herself for foolish daydreaming and decided to buy the cake she might have taken to Fergus’s and call on the poor, besieged Merluzas. If she were nice to Madeleine, something pleasant might happen to her in return. She headed back into town to buy one of Lydia’s sinful chestnut and chocolate cakes, reminded herself on the way that she also had to leave a postcard for Evan Kirby inviting him to tea with her before he left and that there was a parents’ evening at the choir school that night. Duties in Barrowcester came stuck together like the strands in a monstrous spider’s web. For once she found she could scoop them up without repugnance.