Paradise Lodge (11 page)

Mike Yu answered. ‘Good Luck House,' he said, in a busy voice.

I stayed quiet.

‘Good Luck House,' said Mike again. ‘Can I help you?'

I hung up, replaced the phone and listened at the sitting-room door. My sister was awkwardly talking to the relative about her various holiday jobs.

‘I worked on Easter Day this year,' she said, chirpily, ‘but Christmas Day is more important than Easter, so I didn't mind.'

‘Whaaat?' said the relative, laughing. ‘More important?'

‘I mean, in terms of having to work,' said my sister, now uneasy.

The relative laughed more and louder. ‘Christmas Day is more important than Easter, is it?' he said. ‘Try telling that to Christ!'

I burst in.

‘Telling what to Christ?' I asked.

‘Oh, hello, Lizzie,' said the relative, startled.

‘Try telling what to Christ?' I said again.

‘That Christmas is more important than Easter.'

‘No one gives a shit about Easter round here,' I said.

My mother gasped (not at my swearing, at my anger). ‘Are you all right, Lizzie?' she asked and put her palm to my forehead, pretending to be concerned.

‘I just miss the elm trees,' I said. I hung my head and stood there in the middle of the little room. The relative coughed and said he'd better be off and I didn't even look at him.

When he'd gone I apologized. My mother said it seemed as if I'd gone insane. My sister said it was as if I'd turned into my mother. My mother had to agree. I told them about Miss Mills. My mother told us about the time she'd helped at a donkey derby and the donkey she was in charge of had gone berserk and kicked the Lord Mayor's wife in the head and it had ended up in the
Mercury
.

‘Did she die?' I asked.

‘No,' said my mother, ‘but she never liked donkeys after that.' As if that was almost as bad.

The seriousness of Miss Mills' accident caused the owner to give one of his pep talks. Attending pep talks was always awful. It was like watching a foreign film and being obliged to respond normally to abnormal, confusing things. This pep talk, however, was more straightforward than usual. He told us we must be careful not to injure the patients and that losing Miss Mills really would be the last straw.

‘We must make every effort to prevent losing the patients,' he said. ‘Quite apart from the unpleasantness and suffering caused to Miss Mills, frankly we cannot afford it.'

He paused as if he'd only just thought of it himself and was taking it in for the first time.

‘The death of a low-maintenance patient who might very well have years more,' he said, ‘is terribly vexing.'

‘She's not dead yet,' said Matron.

‘True,' said the owner, ‘but she's no longer here at Paradise Lodge and in all honesty we have to accept that we have—in effect—dropped below the bank's required minimum income. And, unless Miss Mills returns within a week, I think I will have to contact her solicitor and have her fees frozen.'

He was looking at me as he lectured. I didn't flinch or say, ‘What you looking at me for?' as I would have at school or home. It would have been inappropriate in the circumstances.

Nurse Eileen spoke up and said that Miss Mills' accident was a result of the staff shortage and under-trained auxiliaries basically running the place. She told him it was now time to face the music and take on a senior nurse.

The owner said he'd asked Nurse Gwen to come back but she'd got a job working for his wife at Newfields and was doing a further diploma in palliative care just to add to the home's catalogue of wonderful features.

The owner told us that the two prospective convalescent patients who'd been to look round earlier in the week had decided to go to Newfields.

‘So, please, let's all pull together and try to keep our existing patients alive,' he said, finishing up, ‘and let's hope Miss Mills is back with us soon.'

I nodded along with the others and puffed away on Nurse Eileen's duty-frees, but in all honesty I couldn't have sworn I'd do anything differently. The owner then launched into a lecture on money-saving and was commending Mr Simmons (who had joined us for the pep talk) for making trips to the wholesale grocers where he had discovered boxes of oatmeal soap which worked out at a staggering 3p per bar and a perfectly good sherry that was less than half the price per bottle of Tio Pepe and certainly more than half as good. Just then Lady Briggs' bell went and everyone looked at me. I excused myself and trotted upstairs.

‘What's going on downstairs?' Lady Briggs asked.

‘Nothing, we were just having a pep talk from the owner,' I said.

‘But you look so upset—what's it about?' she said. And I told her about the accident with Miss Mills. Lady Briggs seemed shocked and angry. It was a strange thing—telling an old lady I was about to help on to the commode that I'd dropped and seriously injured another old lady doing that exact thing.

‘It was an accident, she was very heavy,' I said, ‘I shan't drop you.'

‘But you shouldn't have been alone,' said the sensible Lady Briggs.

‘I know, but I was,' I said.

‘This place is going to the dogs,' said Lady Briggs, which had been said many times before but sounded strange and serious coming from her.

‘We're doing our best,' I said.

It was Mike's birthday. Miranda had handed him the birthday card that she'd done all in bubble writing and Mike had seemed really pleased. I wished Miranda hadn't given it to him in front of me—it seemed a bit intimate. They kissed on the lips but hardly touched lips. It could not have been more sexual but gave me no pleasure at all. I just felt a wave of nauseating jealousy and wanted to punch Miranda in the face.

Many evenings after work I got a ride home with Miranda and Mike Yu in his Datsun Cherry. Knowing how private he was, I felt a bit uneasy knowing so much about him—his kissing skills, hand-holding eroticism and the size of his feet etc.—I felt guilty, looking at his eyes in the rear-view mirror as he checked for vehicles behind before indicating to turn or pull in and stop. I felt sleazy. But it was better than walking.

Mike and Miranda often stopped in a lay-by on the way home before he dropped Miranda off at home because of her mother not approving. Usually they'd do that barely-touching kissing—unless I was there, in which case they'd just chat and maybe kiss once or twice while I had a cigarette outside the car and monitored the progress of various hedges. And I'd puff away and make up names for a pop band or my children or imagine what I'd do if I won the pools.

I went into town as planned with Miranda and her egg-twin, Melody, on the Saturday morning. They were going roller-skating first and then to look at clothes and lipgloss. My plan was to visit Emma Mills at the Royal Infirmary while they skated and meet them for shopping afterwards (I was thinking I might look in C&A at macs and berets). I'd got with me Miss Mills' little crocheted blanket in a carrier bag and, though I knew hospitals were like furnaces, thought she'd like to have it. And I'd taken her teeth wrapped in damp kitchen paper to avoid shrinkage.

When we got off the bus near Granby Halls the Longladys got into the queue for a skating session and I jogged across to the Leicester Royal Infirmary.

On the way in, on the bus, I'd not believed in Matron's words. Emma Mills wouldn't be dead; it was the sort of deliberately unsettling, ghoulish thing she liked to say. She'd be on the mend and pleased to see me, and she'd hold the blanket to herself and ask if I'd brought any New Berry Fruits. But entering the hospital I started to think the worst, that she would be dead and she'd had no one there to speak soothingly in her last hours and minutes. I cursed myself for not coming before.

I went to Odames Ward and spoke to the nurse in charge. She was pretty with red hair and blue mascara.

‘Miss Mills, Emma Mills,' I said, ‘she came in on Wednesday evening.'

The nurse in charge leafed through a book and looked up at me.

‘Are you a relative?' she asked.

‘Yes,' I said.

‘What relation?' she asked.

‘Friend,' I said.

The nurse stood up straight then and closed the book. I had to be related, she said, before she could look at the book for me.

‘But I'm a good friend, I'm her only friend,' I said.

The nurse shuffled papers and looked at her upside-down fob watch.

‘I mean, not everyone has relatives, so does that mean they can't have visitors?' I said. ‘Or people knowing how they are or if they'd like a blanket or fucking something?'

I shouldn't have said ‘fucking' because then she slammed the desk with her hand and said she wouldn't be spoken to like that.

‘The thing is,' I explained, ‘I work at Paradise Lodge where Miss Mills lives and she thinks I'm her sister and she'll be wondering where I am—I've got her teeth.' I held out the little pink pot to prove it.

‘Oh,' she said, softening right down, ‘you're Fanny-Jane?'

‘Yes, yes I am!' I said.

‘Hold on here a minute,' she said and clipped off.

Soon a different nurse popped her head out of a doorway and peered at me as if the other nurse had said there was a clown in the corridor.

‘Are you Fanny-Jane?' she called.

‘Yes,' I said.

The new nurse came out and walked towards me, lips pressed together.

‘I'm afraid Miss Mills died yesterday afternoon,' she said.

‘Oh,' I said.

‘I'm terribly sorry,' said the nurse, ‘she did ask for you, but, I, we thought–'

‘It's
OK
,' I said, ‘I've got to go.' And I strode out into the street. I put Miss Mills out of my mind. Gone. Dead. Over. No one would be surprised. Matron had predicted it. There was no need to think about it again.

I crossed the road and stood at the entrance to the Granby Halls where I could see Miranda and Melody and a few others skating anti-clockwise, laughing, shrieking, red-faced. The song, ‘Sugar Baby Love', and the thumping on the boards were so loud you couldn't hear the laughing and shrieking, you could only see it. They looked wonderful, they were good enough skaters to move along quite nicely, and they knew the song and mouthed the words and did a kind of routine.

I waited at the bus stop on Welford Road for the County Travel to take me back to Paradise Lodge. I didn't feel like trying on macs and berets after all.

I wish I could say I went to Miss Mills' funeral and tossed the crocheted blanket into the grave. But I didn't—we never went to the patients' funerals. I don't know why we didn't, we just didn't. It wasn't the done thing.

I found Mr Simmons reading in the owner's conservatory. He was engrossed and didn't notice me. Strictly speaking, the room was out of bounds for patients because there were no bells out there and, in theory, the staff weren't able to properly look after the patients out of bell reach. But he was there and I sat down opposite him.

‘Hello,' he said.

‘I've been to visit Miss Mills,' I said, ‘at the Royal.'

He shifted round to look at me full on and the wicker squeaked horribly. ‘How is she?' he said.

‘She died yesterday,' I said.

‘She died?' he said.

‘Yes,' I said and I did a bit of sniffly crying. And he blinked rapidly and shed a few tears.

Without eyelashes, tears look different. Mr Simmons' tears started in the corner of his eyes and welled up in his baggy old eyelids and then they overflowed, in slow motion, on to his cheeks. He pretended it wasn't happening, stayed calm and didn't wipe or rub his eyes at all.

‘I dropped her,' I said, ‘it was my fault.'

‘You did your best,' he said, ‘you mustn't blame yourself.'

To change the subject I asked about his book. He lifted it to show me the cover. It was a business book called
The Naked Manager
and, in spite of the sexy title, looked boring as hell.

‘Any good?' I asked.

‘Very,' he said.

On the way out, I popped into the ladies' ward to pick up the dried-out triangle of bread and marmalade that we'd spotted under Miss Mills' bedside cabinet. As I was under the bed, reaching an arm underneath, I heard footsteps. It was Matron, I could tell by her stupid little feet—size three, navy-blue Kickers.

‘I just heard about Emma Mills,' she said. ‘I'm sincerely sorry.'

I stayed silent; I'd just managed to get hold of the bread between the very tips of my index and middle fingers.

‘You're not to go blaming yourself,' she said, bending down to look at me.

I looked up at her. ‘I don't,' I said. ‘I blame you.'

Matron nodded and blinked for a while and then walked away.

I remained on that floor for a while, like a mad person. And then, because I couldn't face walking through the kitchen, I crept up to Room 9 and told Lady Briggs all about it.

Sister Saleem blew in on an east wind. Her little yellow Daf stalled on the cattle grid because she'd had no experience of cattle grids and imagined it best to slow right down instead of speeding right up. None of us knew who she was or why she had come because the owner had forgotten to mention it, and his forgetting—and Matron forgetting as well, or not having been told—was all the more reason to celebrate her arrival.

Sister Saleem didn't seem to mind having been forgotten, she just struggled along the narrow corridor with two suitcases, bumping the old paintwork, and a basket of fruit that her ex-colleagues had presented her with as a good-luck gift. She was all smiles and sweat patches. She'd come to make everything all right, but I was the only one who seemed to understand that then.

I began the introductions in the kitchen as if I were the oldest person there—everyone else was rendered speechless by her medical trouser suit (pale jade tunic and kick-slacks), her massive hair and the very fact of her.

‘Hello, I'm Lizzie Vogel,' I said, holding out my hand, ‘welcome to Paradise Lodge.'

‘But you're only a baby,' said Sister Saleem, taking my hand in both of hers.

‘I'm an auxiliary nurse,' I said.

‘I see,' said Sister Saleem, and looked at the assembly.

And after each of us had said who we were and what we did, Sister Saleem took a deep breath and said, ‘It is very nice to meet you all. I'm Sister Saleem. I'm a trained nurse with a Masters in Business Administration gained at the European Centre for Continuing Education at
INSEAD
in Fontainebleau, France.' (I won't do her accent.)

‘So, are you the new manager?' Matron asked, a bit defensive.

‘Exactly, I am, and I have approximately three months to restore fiscal confidence and earn a loan from the Midland Bank.'

‘Brillo pads!' said Sally-Anne—which she'd picked up from me and sounded wrong in her mumbly voice.

It did seem like mostly good news, even though the unfamiliar words sounded extra foreign because of Sister Saleem's accent—which I couldn't place but might have been Ugandan or could have been German but was probably Dutch.

Straight away she started calling me ‘Lis'. Not Lizzie, not even Liz, but Lis with an ‘s'. And I really liked it.

We all mucked in, getting Nurse Hilary's ex-room ready for Sister Saleem. Nurse Hilary had left some books and a Goblin Teasmade. Sister Saleem said Matron could take the Goblin Teasmade if she liked but hung on to the books—two Agatha Christies, a book about owls and an illustrated book called
Missy Maidens and the Masked Spankers
with pictures of girls in stockings kissing each other while masked men with big hands stood by.

After that we had a coffee break and the owner joined us. Sister Saleem talked us briskly through her planned rehabilitation of the business as we leant over plates and ate the pineapple from her fruit basket—which she'd cut up with a meat cleaver. The owner's eyes were droopy and his nightshirt open to the navel; he didn't attempt the pineapple but smoked Gitanes to keep himself awake.

There were going to be different phases, Sister Saleem told us—probably five in all—and the phases would entail different remedial action, and by the end of the phases Paradise Lodge would be in better shape (she kept saying ‘phases' but, as with my name, pronounced it not with a ‘z' sound but an ‘s'—‘faces').

‘And after twelve weeks, we might not be making a huge profit,' she said, ‘but the downward trend will be corrected and there will be a solid base on which to build the future.' This is how she spoke. It was quite exhilarating but tiring as well—all the thinking you had to do.

On her first official morning Sister Saleem spent some time in the owner's nook going through the patients' medical notes.

The staff were called to a short meeting, before coffee, in which Sister Saleem berated us (Matron in particular) about the medical notes, which she declared ‘inadequate and unhelpful' and gave us a short lesson in the management and use of these important documents.

Then, at coffee time, when the patients were sipping their morning beverages and murmuring among themselves, she appeared in the day room.

Ideally, Eileen or Matron would have issued a little warning beforehand but they hadn't known and Sister Saleem was suddenly there—in front of the fireplace—chin up, smiling, legs apart. No one—neither the staff nor the patients—had seen her enter the room and every single one of us jumped out of our skins when her voice boomed out: ‘My Name is Sister Saleem.'

There were gasps and the sound of coffee being spat out, and chinking crockery as cups were hurriedly dropped on to saucers, and various coughing and choking and a sense of slight panic.

Sister wandered around the room, shaking hands and squatting in between the easy chairs to chat with the patients, and after lunch she had a series of more detailed interviews with selected patients—in a side room. And then, after tea, she went round the room and cut out every single foot corn with a sharp potato peeler. This was Sister's single most celebrated act and, if you've ever had a corn, you'll understand—and if you haven't, lucky you.

I can't deny that to begin with many of the patients were troubled by her foreignness. Mr Blunt said something out loud about the Foreign that wasn't very kind and Eileen reminded him that Sister Saleem had left abroad to live here in England so she wasn't as bad as any ordinary foreign person (who just stayed abroad). Mr Blunt disagreed and said he'd prefer them to stay wherever it was they came from.

Miss Tyler asked Sister Saleem, out loud, what tribe she was from and everyone held their breath. Sister Saleem's reply sounded like elaborate tutting but was probably a joke because she doubled up laughing at herself.

It wasn't long, though, before the patients began to appreciate having a caring, intelligent, authoritative person in charge—they were dismayed by the ongoing chaos—and her qualities became the main thing about her. But however much they liked
her
, almost all of them disliked her trouser suit. Some said they couldn't even look at her bottom half.

At staff teatime on that first official day, Sister Saleem told us she'd had a ‘super dooper day' and was very much on target. But then, after a few slurps of tea and the clearing of her sinuses, she shared important news about two of our gentlemen. Firstly, Mr Simmons had asked us to refuse any attempts by his stepdaughter to visit him—and, should he relent, Sister Saleem said he must be chaperoned.

Secondly, Mr Merryman, the convalescent patient in Room 7 would be leaving Paradise Lodge within the next few days. Nurse Eileen asked for an explanation in a slightly confrontational way—she was confused to hear that the upshot of Sister's first apparently triumphant day was the loss of one of our most profitable patients who had an en-suite bathroom and a subscription to two magazines.

Sister Saleem explained calmly that Mr Merryman wasn't happy at Paradise Lodge. ‘Something has unsettled him and he is going to move on,' she said. That was all.

Matron hid her disappointment well but I knew it was a strike against her.