Tread Softly (21 page)

‘Oh, please,' Frances looked dismayed. ‘Don't let me drive you away.'

‘It's lunch-time,' Clare persisted. ‘We're holding everyone up.'

‘No, really,' Frances assured her. ‘They've told us lunch won't be until two. It seems there's some trouble in the kitchen.'

Just as Lorna was wondering whether a single slice of luncheon-meat might somehow divide into four, Clare pulled the leeks out of her carrier-bag and brandished them in the air. With the other hand she held the honey jar aloft. ‘If they're desperate, they're welcome to these. Leeks with honey sauce.'

‘It's no laughing matter,' Anne said disapprovingly. ‘I consider it gross incompetence, messing the residents about like this.'

‘Ye gods! She's finally thinking about someone other than herself.'

‘
Clare
,' Anne all but spat at her, ‘I find that remark abusive.'

‘Me abusive? And what about your …'

Frances, caught in the crossfire of insults, hung her head in embarrassment. Then all at once both phones rang, affording a brief lull.
Very
brief. Anne pounced on her mobile and began an animated conversation, raising her voice above the shrilling of the second phone.

‘Blast!' Lorna muttered, not yet familiar with the buttons. ‘Ah – hello! … Ralph! Where are you? … Tewkesbury? … Stuck where? … Outside his house? But surely … No, of course I haven't got the address here, Ralph. They're on the database at home. Anyway it
is
Holly Tree House. I remember the name distinctly … Darling, I can't go home and look it up, not on crutches. Just a minute … Clare's offering to drive me. But there's no point, Ralph. I remember checking the address before you went. And we've no record of him moving …'

Ralph's next words were lost in a new spate of coughing from Anne. Undeterred by Clare, she appeared to be demonstrating the critical state of her lungs to yet another friend. Strange she
had
so many friends, Lorna thought uncharitably.

‘What, Ralph? I can't hear.'

‘Shut up, Anne, for Christ's sake!' Clare's patience had reached breaking-point.

‘Do you imagine I'm coughing on purpose?' Anne retorted, dissolving into further gasps and wheezes.

‘I'm sorry, Ralph, could you speak a bit louder? … No, it's
not
the woman next door – not this time … Why don't you ask in the Post Office? … Yes, do ring me back. It's worrying. Good luck!'

‘What's up?' asked Clare.

Before Lorna could utter a word, the door opened once again. This time it was Dorothy Two, armed with an ancient photo album. And Dorothy Two meant more trouble. She and Frances were almost as incompatible as Clare and Anne: Frances was cowed by Dorothy's abrasive manner, while Dorothy regarded Frances as weak-willed and eccentric. ‘I'll come back when you're free, Lorna,' she said, with a disdainful glance at the bald head.

‘No, it's OK, honestly. We're just a bit short of chairs. But sit here on the bed.'

Dorothy sat, stiffly, putting as much distance as possible between herself and Frances's fur coat (which had a distressing tendency to moult). As well as the photo album, she was holding a sheet of vellum notepaper covered with spidery writing. ‘I came to ask you, Lorna, if you would sign this formal letter of complaint. Someone needs to make a stand. It appears we're not going to eat today at all.'

‘Oh, we are!' said Frances earnestly. ‘At two o'clock.'

Dorothy ignored her. ‘It also happens to be my birthday, and I was promised a birthday cake. But of course there's no hope of that now. In fact I doubt if any more meals will materialize until someone gets to grips with the problems in the kitchen. No wonder all the chefs give notice, when the equipment doesn't work and they have an infestation of woodlice.'

‘Woodlice?' Frances cried.

‘
And
worse,' Dorothy added darkly.

‘Well, happy birthday!' Anne said, off the phone at last.

‘Anne, Clare, this is Dorothy,' Lorna mumbled, realizing she had neglected the social niceties in the general mayhem. ‘And Frances.'

Once greetings were exchanged, Dorothy took centre stage again. ‘I'm not concerned about the cake – it's of no consequence. People of my age shouldn't have birthdays anyway.'

‘The older you are, the more reason to celebrate,' Anne declared, herself approaching sixty.

‘It's just another year closer to death,' Dorothy countered morosely. ‘And death costs a fortune these days. It's a scandal. You can't even buy a plot in advance. I enquired about it recently, and it seems you have to wait until you're dead. A bit late then, wouldn't you say?'

‘I only hope they don't cremate me,' Frances put in nervously. ‘It's so upsetting, isn't it, when those velvet curtains come across?'

Dorothy gave her a look of contempt. ‘You'll hardly be aware of it, in your coffin.'

Frances shuddered. ‘It's not natural, being cremated. Jesus wasn't cremated.'

With an imperious gesture, indicating that the subject was now closed, Dorothy handed the vellum sheet to Lorna. ‘Could you please sign your name just there, under mine.'

‘Er, I'm not sure that …' Lorna was ashamed to realize that in a conflict between principle and personal convenience it was principle she would sacrifice. If she made trouble she might be turfed out, and she wasn't ready to face the brisk, pitiless pace of the able-bodied world. Oakfield House, whatever its deficiencies, had become a sort of refuge. With a look of entreaty at Clare, she mumbled something about not having a pen.

Before Dorothy could produce one, Clare evinced a sudden curiosity in the contents of the photo album. ‘Wow! This looks fascinating. May I have a peep? I adore old family photos. Oh, it's holidays – even better. Where's that? Hawaii?'

‘Yes. Honolulu.' Dorothy was gratified by Clare's interest. ‘I brought them to show Lorna, but you're welcome to look at them too.' She positioned the album for Clare and Lorna to see, excluding Frances deliberately. ‘I don't think we got round to these last time, did we, Lorna?'

‘No.' Lorna had, however, seen the whole of Dorothy's extensive family, stretching back three generations (plus their various servants, houses and assorted dogs and cats). She had been saddened by the thought that the once attractive Dorothy, with her big house and garden and busy social life, should now be cooped up in one room for much of the day, with little diversion beyond the occasional game of darts or visit from the mobile shop.

‘Some of these are spectacular.' Dorothy sighed nostalgically as she leafed through the pages. ‘Especially the world cruises.'

‘Oh, do you like cruising?' Anne chipped in.

‘I did, in the old days. I'm afraid I'm past it now. My husband and I went winter-cruising for many, many years.'

‘We love it too,' Anne enthused. ‘Have you been on the
Oriana
?'

‘Yes, a beautiful ship. Although Henry and I did find the cabins marginally better on the
QE2
.'

Clare and Lorna were displaced as Anne and Dorothy vied in superlatives, comparing exotic destinations, exquisite six-course meals, bewitchingly handsome captains, and sensational sunsets, seascapes, scenery. Which meant that the letter of complaint was conveniently forgotten – much to Lorna's relief.

The relief was short-lived, however, as Oshoba put his head round the door and she blushed scarlet in confusion. She knew he wasn't on duty and had come specifically to see her, to hold her hand, flirt with her outrageously. And as he met her eyes she felt sure that all her visitors could see into her mind, where he was naked and gloriously rampant. Such fantasies had become her nightly fix, but she hardly dared imagine what the racist Dorothy might say about them, or censorious Anne, or lifelong celibate Frances.

‘You're busy,' Oshoba said, in his thrilling basso-profundo voice.

Yes, she thought, busy with you, ecstatically entwined … ‘Mm, I am a bit.'

‘I come back later. OK?'

‘OK.' Fortunately Clare alone seemed to have witnessed the exchange. Dorothy and Anne were still in the South Pacific.

‘Isn't Easter Island out of this world?'

‘Yes, absolutely divine. Did you visit the moai statues?'

‘But of
course
. And our next stop was Papeete. Mount Orohena just took my breath away.'

Poor Frances looked mutely on, quite out of her depth –
her
travels were confined to brief shuttlings between mental institutions. However, Dorothy's account of an active volcano on Bora Bora was cut short by a rather different kind of eruption: Arthur, bursting in with his flies undone.

‘I want to go home,' he wailed. ‘Can somebody please take me home?'

‘This
is
your home,' Dorothy said sharply, annoyed that her tropical odyssey should be disrupted in full flow.

‘No it's not, it's not. Me and Winnie live in Cranbrook Close.'

Clare patted the old man's arm. ‘Why don't I take you back to your room instead?'

Thus encouraged, Arthur suddenly thrust a hand up Clare's skirt, using the other hand to manoeuvre his limp and shrivelled member out through his open fly.

‘Steady on, old chap!' Clare said, showing remarkable equanimity in the circumstances.

Dorothy, however, sprang to her feet with a yelp of alarm. ‘The man should be locked up! We're all in danger of our lives.'

‘I quite agree.' Anne rallied to the support of a fellow cruise-enthusiast. ‘He should at least be reported for sexual harassment.'

‘Come off it, Anne. He's ninety-six and he's just lost his wife. I'd say a little TLC would be more in order.' Clare coaxed the recalcitrant member back into the folds of Arthur's baggy white underpants, then deftly zipped up his fly. Whereupon he, possibly seeing her as Mother, clung to her pathetically, reiterating his former pleas.

‘I must go home. I must go home. There's things need doing there. The gas man's coming to see about the boiler.'

‘I'd better ring for a nurse,' Lorna said. But, before she could press the bell, her mobile shrilled again. ‘Oh, Ralph! Have you had any luck? … But surely someone must know? What about the next-door neighbours?'

‘I want to go
home
.' The word became a howl of pain.

‘What, Ralph? … No, I'm OK. It's just someone who's … I'm sorry, I don't know what to suggest … Why don't you cut your losses and come home?'

‘Home. Please take me home.'

‘Ralph, can I ring you back? I can't hear a word you're saying. Shit! Who's this?'

Yet another knock, heralding the return of the yellow frills. ‘Oh, Val … Hello. Just a sec … Ralph? Are you still there? … Fuck! The phone's gone dead.'

As ‘Fuck!' succeeded ‘Shit!', Anne and Dorothy turned to her with deeply shocked expressions. ‘Sorry,' she murmured wretchedly.

‘Take me home!' Arthur quavered.

Val seized his arm with unnecessary force. ‘That's quite enough from you, Arthur! Now, Lorna,' she said, trying to make herself heard above his sobs of protest, ‘lunch has been postponed again, till three. So we're starting darts early – in five or ten minutes. I wondered if you'd changed your mind about coming?'

Lorna surveyed the assembled company: Arthur cringing and weeping under Val's Gestapo grip; Clare spitting invective at such crass bullying; Anne and Dorothy combining in righteous indignation about tardy meals and sexual perversion; Frances apologizing to all and sundry for being in the way. A game of darts suddenly seemed a most inviting prospect. ‘Yes,' she said, ‘I'd love to come.'

‘Ah, Mrs Pearson – do come through.' Mr Hughes stood smiling at the door of his consulting-room. ‘How are you?'

‘Fine,' she lied, hobbling in. It was essential that he saw her as attractive, not a mass of blisters and bedsores.

But, as usual, he was interested only in her feet. ‘You don't seem to have got the hang of walking on those crutches. Didn't the physio show you?'

‘Well, yes, but –'

‘You appear to be holding your toes up rather stiffly. Are you in pain?'

‘Mm. Quite a bit, actually, but I suppose that's only to be expected.'

He frowned. ‘Not at this stage, no. And the foot's been bandaged incorrectly, I see. The big toe should have been held away from the others with adhesive tape.'

She doubted if Oakfield House could run to anything as arcane as adhesive tape. Just asking for a safety-pin was a severe test of their resources – and of Antonio's English. In fact the pin had never materialized, and two hours later, when her bandage unravelled itself completely, Antonio's nursing skill proved to be no better than his linguistic ability.

‘Would you sit up here on the couch, please.'

Oh
yes
, she thought, but lie beside me. Hold me. Stroke me. Baby me.

She met his disturbingly dark eyes and looked away in confusion. Her
father
– alone with her and loving her, his face taut and finely chiselled, his hands cool on her throbbing foot.

She had become blasé about the sight of the foot: still swollen like a boxing-glove, but gradually turning from puce to yellow, and mottled with dull reddish-purple streaks.

Mr Hughes was examining the third toe, which, she now noted with alarm, was not only blood-encrusted but oozing a sort of pus. He shook his head in concern. ‘I don't like the look of that. It appears to be slightly infected.'

‘
Another
infection?' She had only recently finished the antibiotics for the first one.

‘I'm afraid it's a pin-tract infection this time, Mrs Pearson.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘The toe's infected around the tip of the wire.'