Rumpole and the Primrose Path (2 page)

By contrast, the Primrose Path Home was uncomfortably tidy. The atmosphere was heavy with the smell of furniture polish, chemical air fresheners and disinfectant. There was a constant hum of hoovering and the staff seemed to handle everything, including the patients, with rubber gloves.

‘What’s your favourite music, Rumpole?’

‘Music, Erskine-Brown?’

‘Schubert Trio? Mozart Concerto? We know you’re absurdly prejudiced against Wagner. What about “When I was a little page” from Verdi’s
Falstaff?’

‘I never was a little page! Don’t babble, Erskine-Brown.’

‘Or Elgar? Typically English, Elgar.’

‘When I sing to myself, which is only very occasionally-’ Poor old Claude seemed, for no particular reason, to be in some distress, and I was doing my best to help him out.

‘Yes. Yes!’ His nose twitched with excitement. ‘Tell me, Rumpole. When you sing to yourself, what do you sing?’

‘Sometimes “Pop Goes the Weasel”. Occasionally “Knock’d’em in the Old Kent Road”. More often than not a ballad of the war years, “We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line.” You remember that, don’t you?’

‘No, Rumpole, I’m afraid I don’t.’ Erskine-Brown’s nose twitched again, though this time it was a sign of displeasure. He tried another tack. ‘Tell me, Rumpole. Talking of the war years, did you ever serve your country overseas?’

‘Oh yes,’ I told Claude, in answer to his ridiculous question. ‘I flew Spitfires in the war. I shot down the Red Baron and was the first British pilot to enter Berlin.’

Claude looked at me sadly and said, ‘I only ask because Ballard wants material for his speech.’

‘His speech about me?’ I was puzzled.

‘About your life. To give thanks for your existence.’

It sounded extremely improbable. ‘Ballard’s going to do that?’

‘We shall celebrate you, Rumpole.’

‘You mean -’ I was hoping against all the probabilities that they were contemplating some sort of party ‘- a Chambers piss-up in Pommeroy’s Wine Bar? Drinks on the Soapy Sam Memorial Fund?’

‘Not exactly that, Rumpole.’ Claude glanced, nervously I thought, at his watch. ‘I’d better be getting back. I’ve got a rating appeal tomorrow.’

‘I envy you, Erskine-Brown. You seem to lead a life of perpetual excitement.’

‘Oh, there’s just one more thing.’ The man was already on his feet. ‘Do you have a favourite prayer?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘To help us, Rumpole, to celebrate your life.’

‘Then I pray to God to be left alone. So I can get out of here as quickly as possible. It’s all far too clean for my liking.’

‘I’m sure you’re quite comfortable here, Rumpole.’ Erskine-Brown gave me a smile of faint encouragement. ‘And I know they’ll look after you extremely well. For as long as you have left.’

At which he stood up and stole silently out of the room with the guilty look of a man leaving a funeral early.

 

When Erskine-Brown had gone, I watched morning television. A group of people had been assembled, having, it seemed, only one thing in common. They had each had sexual intercourse with someone who turned out to be a close relative. This incident in their lives, which many people might wish to keep discreetly under wraps, led them to speak out at length, as cheerfully as though they were discussing gardening or cookery, to the huge audience of the unemployed, the pensioned-off and the helpless in hospitals. As their eager, confiding faces filled the screen I began to doze off- the best way, I had found, of enjoying life at the Primrose Path Home.

Whoever had christened this place of eternal rest the Primrose Path betrayed insufficient knowledge of English literature. According to Ophelia in
Hamlet,
it’s the path of dalliance - and any dalliance in the home was confined strictly to the television. The porter in
Macbeth,
however, said that the primrose way led ‘to the everlasting bonfire’. This may have been a more accurate description. The inhabitants of the rooms down the corridor were given to disappearing quietly during the night and leaving the Primrose Path, I felt sure, for the nearest crematorium.

I woke up, it seemed hours later, to my untouched lunch, a tray mainly loaded with a plethora of paper napkins, much unwelcome salad and a glass of orange juice. I was searching for a mouthful of edible cheese under the stationery when I caught a sound, unusual, even unknown in the Primrose Path. A woman was sobbing. People died there, but you heard no cries of agony, no angry slamming of doors, or wailing of relatives. The sobs I heard were restrained, but they were undeniably heartfelt. I abandoned my lunch, switched off the television and moved, as quietly as I could manage it, into the corridor.

At the end of the passage, with its linoleum shining like polished shoes, a woman was sobbing as she watered a bowl of hyacinths. She was, perhaps, in her late forties, her chestnut hair fading a little, but with high cheekbones, usually amused eyes and a generous mouth. She was Nurse Albright, my favourite member of staff, known to me as Dotty Dorothy, owing to her habit of occasionally promising to dust off my aura by polishing the surrounding air. She also brought me an assortment of roots, herbs and leaves, which, if added to my tea, she promised, would soon make me fit to run a mile, spend a day defending in a murder trial and learn to tango at evening classes. She was, above all, cheerful and unfailingly kind, and we would sing together songs we both loved, songs I had kept from the prying ears of Erskine-Brown, such as ‘Night and Day’, ‘That Old Black Magic’ and ’Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’, which I had danced to in a far-distant time, before Hilda’s and my fox-trotting days were over.

Dotty Dorothy’s singing, her use of herbs and strange roots, and, on many occasions, her kindness got her into frequent trouble with her boss, Sister Sheila Bradwell, who ruled the Primrose Path with the kind of enlightened and liberal principles which guided Captain Bligh when he was in charge of the Bounty. Sister Sheila recognized no superior being, except for one called Nanki-Poo, an evil-tempered, spoiled and domineering Pekinese whom I had seen the Sister kiss, fondle, feed with chocolate biscuits and generally spoil in a way she would never treat a patient. Like many of the inhabitants of the Primrose Path, Nanki-Poo suffered a degree of incontinence which littered the garden and added some significance to his name. He would also, when out walking, sit down if a leaf attached itself to his trailing hair, and yelp until a nurse came and relieved him of the encumbrance.

It was the sudden appearance of the powerful Sister Sheila, with or without her pet, that Nurse Dotty Albright feared as we stood chatting in the corridor.

‘Get back into your room, Mr Rumpole,’ Dotty swallowed a sob and wiped an eye on the back of her hand, ‘before Sister spots you.’

‘Never mind about Sister Sheila.’ I had grown impervious to the icy disapproval of the Head Girl. ‘Tell me what’s the matter.’

‘A terrible night, Mr Rumpole. It’s been the most ghastly night ever at the Primrose Path.’

‘Tell me what happened.’

‘Poor Mr Fairweather... He passed away during the night.

They took him away. It was my night off and they took him away without even telling me.’

I had caught a glimpse of Fairweather - Freddy, Dotty often called him - a short, beady eyed, bald-headed, broad-shouldered man in a dressing-gown being pushed in a wheelchair to his room down the corridor. He was recovering, Dotty told me, from a massive heart attack, but she brought him roots and herbal remedies and he made jokes and flirtatious suggestions. Freddy and I, she assured me, were her two favourite patients.

‘Can you imagine that?’ Dotty said as she took out a crumpled handkerchief and blew her nose gently. ‘Sister let them take him without even a chance of saying goodbye. Freddy would have hated that. He was full of rude suggestions, of course he was. He was a bit of a jack the lad, we know that, even in his condition of health. But underneath all that, he had the most perfect manners. Even if he’d gone, even if it was too late, he’d have liked me to be there to hold his hand and say goodbye before he passed away. But she wouldn’t have that. She has to know best, always.’

As Dotty went on talking, it appeared that the sad death of Freddy Fairweather wasn’t the only disaster of that long, eventful night. A certain Michael Masklyn, high up on the list of unpopular patients, had, in Dotty’s words, ‘done a runner’ and strayed from the Primrose Path under the cover of darkness. Masklyn was an unknown quantity; he seemed to have few friends and no visitors except an older woman who had visited him once and, as their voices were raised in a quarrel, was heard to vow never to come near him again. He’d been transferred from a hospital which had, as might be expected, run out of beds, and found a place in the Primrose Path under some sort of government scheme. He had, Dotty assured me, a vile temper, was thankful for nothing, and had once thrown a glass containing his urine sample at the head of a trainee nurse who would do no harm to anybody.

‘I never thought he was well enough to get out of here.’ Dotty had stopped crying now and her voice was full of anger. ‘Sister’s security’s just hopeless. His clothes were in his room, just as yours are, and Gavin was fast asleep at his desk downstairs. So Mr Masklyn just walked off and left us. I hate to say this to you, Mr Rumpole, but there’s just no organization in this place. No organization at all. It’s all rules and no practice. Not the place for either of us really, is it?’

 

Strangely enough, after that sad and eventful evening, the Primrose Path became, in some elusive and quiet way, more interesting. I tried to discuss the break-out of Michael Masklyn with Sister Sheila, but was met with pursed lips and the shortest of possible answers.

‘He was an impossible patient,’ Sheila Bradwell told me. ‘In one way we were glad to get rid of him. But of course we had our duty of care. You can’t keep an eye on everyone twenty-four hours a day.’

‘Do the police know he’s gone missing?’ I felt a stirring of the old need to cross-examine the witness.

‘We reported it, naturally, Mr Rumpole, if you’re so interested. There was no sign of him at his last known address.’

‘Did he have a family?’

‘Someone he said was his sister came once. No one’s been able to track her down either.’

‘My friend Dotty says his door was locked in the morning when she came on duty.’

‘Your friend Nurse Albright says a lot of things we don’t have to take too much notice of. Of course the door wasn’t locked at night. We locked it in the morning, until the police came to see if there were any clues to where he’d gone. You don’t want the evidence disturbed. You know all about that, don’t you, Mr Rumpole?’

‘I suppose I do. All the same, it must have been a terrible night for you. I was sorry to hear about Mr Fairweather.’

Sister Sheila Bradwell stood looking at me, a straight-backed, straight-haired woman, born to command. I thought I saw in her eyes not sorrow for the passing of another patient, but a faint amusement at the fact that I had bothered to raise the subject.

‘These things happen, Mr Rumpole, at a place like this. They’re very sad, but they happen all the time. We’ve got used to it, of course. And we deal with it as kindly as possible, whatever your friend Nurse Albright may say about the matter.’

‘She said she was very fond of Mr Fairweather. He was kind to her, and she enjoyed looking after him.’

‘And did your friend tell you that dear old Mr Fairweather had also said he’d left her money in his will?’ Sister Bradwell was smiling as she said that, and it came as something of a shock. After being clearly disapproved of for asking impertinent questions, it suddenly seemed as though I was being drawn into an argument from which, for the moment, I retreated.

‘She never said anything like that. Only that she was upset because he died so suddenly.’

‘Well, it’s nothing for you to worry about, Mr Rumpole, is it? You can concentrate on getting a good rest. Shall I switch your telly on for you?’

‘Please don’t.’

‘Very well then, Mr Rumpole. And if you take my advice, you’ll steer very clear of your friend’s herbal remedies. Some of them may have unfortunate results.’

In the days that followed, Dotty seemed unusually busy, but late one afternoon, as I woke from a light doze, I found her sitting by my bed with a surprise present. It was half a bottle of claret she had managed to get opened in an off-licence and smuggled in under her mac. We shared a toothglassful of a wine in the same humble class as Château Thames Embankment, but none the less welcome to a palate starved of alcohol. So the old friendly Dotty was back, but quieter and sadder, and I didn’t dare suggest even a muted rendition of ‘Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered’.

‘They don’t want me to go to the funeral,’ she said.

‘Who doesn’t want you to? The family?’

‘No, Sister Sheila. And Freddy’s special doctor. Freddy wouldn’t see anyone else.’