Paradise Lodge (13 page)

I tried some but they were either too small or too big, and in the end I settled for a too big top and too short trousers. Miranda declined, saying one of the few nice things about working there was being dressed up as a nurse.

Next Sally-Anne tried on a trouser suit and, though it fitted well, I was dismayed to note that it looked all wrong on her. And I could see from the faces of everyone else that they thought the same. We didn't say anything until she was out of the kitchen and then we did. It was really sad, and I hate writing it, but Sally-Anne didn't suit trousers. It was to do with her stance (imagine an oldish man about to toss the caber). The trousers seemed to bunch up under her bottom. I felt so sorry for her—imagine not suiting trousers.

Matron said she would never fall for trousers. ‘You see them in the catalogues, looking reasonable on a model with a perfect trouser-figure standing in a cornfield, but the truth is, they're going to look ridiculous on anyone who doesn't have the posture of a semi-ape.' The patients agreed and were appalled by the proliferation. Miss Boyd said trousers caused diseases and Miss Tyler said they were for deviants. The owner said it was vexing to see the staff going about like the crew of the Starship
Enterprise
. I felt very happy, though, seeing most of my colleagues in the pale jade, it seemed modern and sensible. In fact, the trouser suits gave us the sense that the place was changing for the better.

Sister Saleem very quickly instigated some other simple changes—such as the habit of taking our coffee breaks sitting in garden chairs in the little orchard with our top buttons undone and a Labi Siffre cassette playing through the office window. Sister believed a lack of sunlight and decent music gave you the blues and that a dose of either perked you up no end. And some of the more daring nurses, including Eileen and a new nurse called Carla B (who I haven't mentioned yet), started wearing sarongs to go to the Piglet Inn and showing their tummy buttons. Not me, though—I went as far as a cheesecloth shirt with a tie waist but I was conservative when it came to clothing. I'm sorry to drop Carla B in like that. She was new around then, she had defected from Newfields and, though she had lots of gossip about it, was banned from sharing it with us for the time being. Nurse Carla was a year and a half older than me and seemed very grown up in some ways. She had a cowlick—and I felt it somehow unsuitable for a nurse to have a cowlick, the nurse's hats looking medically official but the cowlick looking like a disorderly little kid. Anyway, Carla B was there and she didn't mind showing her tummy button and tiny cleavage.

Sitting out in the garden was delightful and caused neighbours to wave and it helped us to appreciate our surroundings and Sister Saleem loved it. There were a few sunny days in a row and Sister Saleem commented on the patients not coming outside more often on warm days. It was true that when I first began at Paradise Lodge, back in May, the garden patio had been so pretty and inviting and a few of the patients did actually go out there and sit under a rug. But since then, the shrubbery had grown and become impenetrable, and it was true also that the patients couldn't see the bird bath from the windows—or the feeders, or the cows meandering along the lane back to Briars' barn.

Anyway, it was agreed that something must be done to make the garden more accessible to more of the patients. ‘If the staff can come and sit outside and hear the birds and feel the sun on their skin, I think the residents should, don't you?' Sister asked us. And, not really needing an answer, she ranted about it until I butted in and said I'd do it.

‘Ah, Lis, good.' She got up and announced to the patients in the day room that I was on the brink of renovating the garden and looking for volunteers to help. And I did do some gardening after that but it was too dull to describe in detail here, except to say it scratched my hands and, as with everything, it was the tidying up afterwards that took most of the time. And soon, thank God, Mr Simmons took over and seemed to love it more than anything else.

Talking further about the garden and the patients that lunchtime, I admitted that the patients weren't encouraged to sit in the garden due to the difficulty of getting them back inside in a hurry—to the comfort stations—should they need.

Sister looked up suddenly. ‘What do you mean?' she said.

‘It's tricky, getting them back inside, to the comfort stations,' I ventured.

‘The comfort stations?' said Sister. ‘What in the name of God Almighty are comfort stations, Lis?'

‘The conveniences,' I said, ‘the
WC
.'

‘I know. But please, if you mean the toilets, then say the toilets,' said Sister. ‘I can't keep translating.'

So I said, ‘Yes, the toilets.'

And Sister Saleem said, ‘Oh, if there's an accident—let the Lord judge us the way he sees fit.'

Sister Saleem's fury about the comfort stations/toilets provoked a rather aggressive and immediate ban on all euphemisms. You might imagine this was a good thing but it was unsettling and I actually thought it harsh.

‘We can't talk like this,' she said, ‘this is a medical establishment. We must call things by their proper name.'

I explained that the Owner's Wife had actually banned us from the real words and that it was the norm in England.

‘But it is ludicrous,' said Sister Saleem, ‘and confusing and unprofessional.'

And she told us of the wasted half-hour she'd had trying to help Miss Boyd find her bank book, because she was complaining of a problem with her ha'penny. ‘This isn't even modern coinage,' she'd said and laughed, even though she didn't seem to find it funny, overall, and it was the nearest I came to a proper argument with her.

That evening I made her a euphemism translation card—to make up for the row—in nice writing with tasteful but honest illustrations. It wasn't as easy as it sounds because some things I thought were proper terms were euphemisms and sometimes it was hard to find the real term.

Comfort station—toilet

Powder room—toilets

Cloakroom—toilets

Lavvy—toilet

WC
—toilet

Powder my nose—go to the toilet

Spend a penny—urinate

Tinkle—urinate

Wee wee—urinate

Number two—open bowel

Do business—open bowel

Pass away—die

Pass on—die

Gone—died

Fallen asleep—died

Taken—died

Ha'penny—vagina

Tuppence—vagina

Twinkle—vagina

Downstairs—vagina

Sweetie—vagina

Place—vagina

Soldier—penis

I gave it to her and she read with a serious face and then she laughed. I've never seen anyone laugh so much. I felt silly for a moment but she thanked me and said I'd made her day.

She kept it in her pocket.

‘Lis, this is wonderful,' she said, ‘I love it, thank you.'

While Sister Saleem was getting to grips with Paradise Lodge, a cloud on my horizon was the new school term and the question of ‘O' Levels. I decided that within the parameters of continuing to work at Paradise Lodge (to use Sister Saleem's parlance) I would do my utmost to attend school. With hindsight, that seems unrealistic but, to be fair to my younger self, I had every intention of keeping up with my academic work at home. I was easily bright enough to manage both and I knew it was achievable because our neighbour, Lynda Goodchild, had achieved a C grade in English ‘O' Level and a diploma in Number at night school—in a year—while working at the Leicester Building Society and all the while shopping and cooking her husband's tea with home-made gravy. And she'd re-curtained the whole house and planted a row of tiny privets, which would one day be a screening hedge. Plus being pregnant half the time with baby Bobbi—and she wasn't a genius or anything.

Anyway, that was my plan (not the hedge or the hot meals, but the working-while-studying aspect). However, Sister Saleem's programme of change had hardly begun and I'd obviously not got the school-to-work ratio quite right because Mrs Hargraves, the truant officer, pulled up beside me in the village on my way to work a late shift one day. School spent a lot of energy trying to keep pupils in school, such as sending Mrs Hargraves roaming the villages to pick up strays and bring them in—like the Disney dog-pound man.

I wasn't in school uniform but neither, thank God, was I in my nurse's dress. I told her I'd been to the dentist and that I hoped my mother had remembered to phone the school to report my lateness. Mrs Hargraves drove me home in her ugly white Ford and waited outside reading
Woman's Own
while I changed. Then she drove me to school. I was on her list of non-attendees, she told me. And could I explain my frequent absences? she asked.

I didn't tell her I had an important job and that I had no intention of going back to school full time, having become accustomed to a new standard of living. I said I'd simply been having the odd day off to help my mother who'd not long had a late baby and was finding it tough to manage everything since becoming addicted to short stories—reading them and writing them (which was true)—and it using up so much time she hardly got the baby fed. Which was half true. Mrs Hargraves responded sarcastically, saying she supposed we should be grateful it wasn't long stories my mother was addicted to.

At school, she walked with me to the Deputy Head's office, knocked twice and popped her head round the door. I could tell the two women were in bitchy cahoots. I heard a muffled conversation, including, ‘Ooh, well done! Top marks, Jill.' And a lot of sniggering. Then Hargraves reappeared and told me to wait for Miss Pitt there in the corridor.

‘Thanks for the lift,' I said.

‘My pleasure,' she said, and winked. ‘See you soon.'

‘Not if I see you first,' I said.

Miss Pitt called me into her office and had another go at me about my erratic attendance. Her hair was a bit matted at the back, as if she'd been rolling her head about in bed with a troubling dream and hadn't had a hairwash since. I felt different towards her since I'd seen her being rough with Mr Simmons.

I felt superior. I hated her. And I was not going to let her beat me.

‘So, Lizzie Vogel,' she said, ‘here we are again.'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘Tell me please, Lizzie,' she was reading the back of a paperback while she spoke, ‘that you do not have a burning ambition to wipe old people's backsides for a living for the rest of your life.'

‘I might,' I said.

‘A clever girl like you?' she said. ‘Don't you think you should be aiming a bit higher than that?'

‘I want to do my “O” Levels,' I said, ‘if that's what you mean.'

‘Oh, good. So how about we help each other?' she said.

‘What do you mean?' I asked.

‘I agree to your coming back into the “O” Level group and you help me with my stepfather.'

‘How?' I asked.

‘Let me know what he's up to… when he's going to be in or out, or… at a concert,' she said, ‘that kind of thing, just so I can keep tabs.'

‘But he doesn't want to see you,' I said. ‘You're barred from seeing him.'

‘He says that, Lizzie, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't make an effort,' she said.

‘Mr Simmons barely knows you. But he knows you well enough to know you just want to control him,' I said.

I could see fury burning in her little eyes and though I felt strong, I blushed.

‘Very well, Lizzie. Go back to your class now,' she said, ‘and let me know if you come to your senses.'

I walked out of the office, out of the building, out of the school grounds and phoned Paradise Lodge from a tiny phone box near the Esso garage to apologize for being late. ‘I've had an emergency dental appointment,' I said. ‘I'm on my way.'

And then I jogged and walked and jogged again along the canal towpath. I walked past a pretty boat called
See More
and saw a kingfisher skim the water. And then, on the last bridge before mine, I saw Mike Yu standing, pointing things out to an old man leaning on the bridge. I waved.

‘Lizzie!' he called, looking down at me.

‘I've just seen a kingfisher,' I told him. I knew he'd be pleased.

And he turned straight away to the old man and said in a loud voice, ‘
Pootong kew neow
.' And the old man looked out on to the water, breathing heavily through his mouth, and stared up and down. And then he looked down at me and smiled and bowed and thanked me with his eyes.

Mike began to help his grandfather into the passenger seat of the car. I called goodbye to them and walked on. Mike called out, ‘Wait, Lizzie!' He spoke softly to his grandfather for a moment and joined me down on the towpath. We walked along and I asked how he was. ‘I'm fine, thank you, Lizzie. How are you?' He was so polite and correct.

‘I'm fine,' I said. And we walked in silence for a while.

We passed another boat, even prettier than
See More
. This one was called
Harmony
. Mike pointed to it. ‘Harmony,' he said. We said how much we liked the boat, how smart the paintwork and how pretty the shutters, and how well-kept it was. And I said I'd love to float along in
Harmony
for a few days and forget all my cares and he said he would too and he wished we could.

‘Harmony,' I said.

‘Harmony,' he said.

And we smiled.

How could this day—that had started out so badly—suddenly be so nice? I wondered. How could I be watching the same dragonfly as a boy as lovely as Mike Yu, touching arms on the narrow towpath and talking about floating carefree in a boat called
Harmony
?

‘Is your grandfather all right?' I asked.

‘No, he's very unwell, I'm afraid,' he said. ‘It has been most pleasant for him to come out here.'

‘That's good,' I said.

‘But I must go back to him,' he said. ‘Thank you, Lizzie.' And he rushed back to the Datsun on the humpback bridge.

I reached Paradise Lodge and made my apologies for being late and in school uniform. I whistled as I worked. Miss Brixham complained and said I was no better than a crowing hen. But I couldn't help it. I was happy.

It had been a hot summer and was still hot. Though all of us liked the sunshine, we were all still a bit raw after the year before, when we'd been through the famous heatwave that people have never stopped talking and writing about. And though you'll be sick of hearing and reading stories built around it, I'll just tell you it was the year Mr Holt moved into our house and became our man at the helm and the heatwave caused no end of worry. It really started at the end of June and Mr Holt hadn't liked it. It wasn't so much the having to work in ridiculous hot weather but the frustration that he couldn't clean the Snowdrop Laundry vans due to the hosepipe ban that was soon in force. He liked things squeaky clean but he also understood the necessity for the ban. He said so and he'd never cheat it, like some neighbours did. As the heat continued, there was talk of extreme water conservation methods, which worried him even more, with laundry not being classed as essential. We'd had the elm trees chopped down earlier in the year and that had seemed symbolic, and now the freak weather made it seem that nature had turned against us.

And I was privately fretful, that hot summer, that being a step-parent was turning out badly for him, that somehow we three children were like the dusty vans he couldn't clean, the lawn that had perished away to hay and was then nothing but hard mud, and the beautiful, tall elm trees he couldn't save, and now the worry about future drought measures might be slowly tipping him over the edge, worry-wise. Mr Holt might leave, I thought, and we'd be back at square one, fatherless, which isn't as great as it sounds—back then, anyway.

Having a step-parent is stressful to start with—you always worry that the step-parent might change their mind and leave. If your real parent could leave and start again with another family, then why not the step-parent. That was how I saw it. But Mr Holt never did leave us and actually we stopped worrying after Danny was born because if he'd coped with having a surprise baby he was going to be fine with most things.

That's not to say there weren't problems and difficulties from time to time. And just about then—when Danny was around a year old and Sister Saleem was beginning to improve the situation at Paradise Lodge—my mother had a big argument with Mr Holt that she felt she'd never get over. She'd clipped a bollard at a complicated junction on the by-pass, and to keep things simple she'd tried to make out that someone had hit the car while it was parked at Woolco. The problem being, a colleague of Mr Holt had seen her clip the bollard. In the row arising Mr Holt had called her a ‘serial fantasist and compulsive liar' and then after that he'd said things that apparently couldn't be retracted.

She gave me the whole unabridged story as I washed out my new drip-dry uniform. It was so convenient—almost dry straight from the wash and not at all crumpled and no need to iron and such a fresh colour.

I felt strongly that the situation my mother found herself in was entirely her own fault and she'd made it worse by provoking Mr Holt into saying these non-retractable things. By saying, ‘I suppose you regret taking up with me?' and that sort of thing. Anyway, she was going to leave, she said, if that was how he felt. Her plan was to go and rent a maisonette in town, near Gropecunt Lane so Danny could attend a Montessori nursery and become a better person than the rest of us. Not that that was how she put it, but that was the plan.

I was irritated by the whole thing. My life was here—a walkable distance to Paradise Lodge—and I didn't want to have to leave just so my mother could make Mr Holt regret being honest. And have Danny become a better person than me into the bargain (the fate of the children of the first/failed marriage—constantly having to do things in order that the new, proper children can become better than their half-siblings).

‘I'm not going with you,' I told my mother.

‘Well, you can't stay here,' she said, ‘not without me.'

Mr Holt was reasonable about it. He said we were welcome to go or stay as we pleased but that he'd like us to consider common sense and our mother's feelings—which, to be honest, was a tall order.

So she went. Not to a rental maisonette near Gropecunt Lane but to sleep on a Zedbed in Carrie Frost's titchy little flat near Leicester racecourse. Carrie wasn't a friend—as such—but actually an ex-employee. She'd been an au pair for us years before when she'd been gearing up for art school, and had taught us how to sing
London's Burning
in the round, which we still enjoy to this day. Anyway, my mother, Danny and Sue the dog went and we all just got on with our lives with Mr Holt. And though we missed her horribly, we didn't worry, as we might have, had she gone for the rental maisonette, which would have seemed permanent.

I was getting ready for work in the morning. Our mother had been gone a day and a night and the house didn't feel quite right. And though I wasn't desperately worried about her, I still had a nervousness in my throat that reminded me of all the awful things the world had done to her. All the men who'd had sex with her twice, even though she'd sobbed the first time, the man who'd punched her in the face with his elbow, the one who'd stolen all her money and the woman driver who called her a sissy because she daren't step on to the zebra crossing because a great fear had got hold of her. And the close relative who pretended he was going to strangle her when her mother wasn't looking, and called her an idiot because she'd believed him and cried.

Miranda appeared in the street opposite my house. We often found ourselves walking to and from Paradise Lodge together. I hated telling her anything personal. She had such a warped sense of things and might say, ‘Typical of Mr Holt,' when she had no right thinking anything was typical of him because she didn't even know him. She had a way of extrapolating that was distorted and wrong.

I really didn't want to talk about my family with her, especially then. So, as usual, I brought up Mike. To be honest, if someone talked about my boyfriend as much as I talked about Mike Yu to Miranda, I think I'd feel a bit territorial or possessive. But Miranda didn't. She loved talking about him and suspected nothing.

I said, straight out, ‘How's Mike Yu?' and that set her off on a wonderful ramble and I knew I needn't worry about it slipping out that my mother had run away with our baby and our dog.

That morning she told me that they'd been to see
Smokey and the Bandit
and how they'd devised a method of holding hands in a highly erotic way, squeezing and moving and wriggling and holding a single finger, touching finger-tips on finger-tips, stroking the other's palm with fingernails etc. Miranda said it was wonderful because no one could tell they were being erotic, and although it was unbelievably erotic she could still watch the film and take most of it in and eat sweets with her free hand.