They gave him a sheet of photographs, for ID purposes. The only problem was, the residents spent so long trying to find themselves, the whole escapade took twice as long as it had before. In the meantime, all the other jobs piled up.
‘I shan’t be responsible for the grouting,’ he said to Miss Bissell, as they met in the corridor, but she just sailed past in a cloud of indifference.
He was getting the hang of it, though. They were creatures of habit, the elderly. They frequented the same rooms, and ate the same meals at the same times. They watched the world from an identical view each day, and had the same conversations in the same corridors, with the same people. He knew exactly where to find them. Some, however, were trickier than others. Florence Claybourne, for example, busied about so much, you never knew quite where she’d be.
‘I don’t know why you waste your time,’ she said, when he found her. ‘There are people missing off that photographic sheet, and my picture isn’t anything remotely like me at all.’ She jabbed at the ID page. ‘I look like someone dug me up.’
Simon stayed quiet. He had learned, with Florence, that it was much easier to let everything come out in its own time, like drawing a boil.
‘There are leaves gathering in that guttering,’ she was saying, ‘and if someone doesn’t top up the lavatory paper in the ladies’, we’ll have a mutiny on our hands.’
‘I’ll see to it later, Florence.’
‘Why don’t you see to it now? Instead of standing here gossiping with me?’
‘It’s one o’clock,’ Simon said. ‘I always go to the staff room and sit by the window at one o’clock, and eat my Pot Noodle.’
The staff room wasn’t the best place to find sanctuary. It was an afterthought at the end of the main corridor and, like a giant fruit bowl, it had become a magnet for all the things nobody knew what to do with. There were piles of empty folders and coats people had stopped caring about enough to wear, and in the corner was a tower of back issues of Dementia Now! because no one knew how to cancel the subscription. Even the furniture was confused. It was a melting pot of leftover chairs and tired sofas, and Miss Ambrose had swathed everything in crocheted blankets, which various residents had constructed, usually on their deathbeds.
‘Heart failure,’ Miss Ambrose would say, as she held up a mixture of pinks and purples. And another. ‘Cellulitis of the left leg.’
Simon sat back on a nasty case of pneumonia and waited for his Pot Noodle to take. The only other person in there was Gloria from the kitchens. She was perched on the sill blowing Lambert & Butler out of a narrow gap in the window.
‘Aren’t you a bit too old to be smoking behind the bike sheds?’ he said. He stirred his chicken and mushroom. ‘You’ll cop it if Miss Bissell catches you. She’ll have you on a disciplinary.’
‘I’m fifty-two, old enough to make decisions for myself, and she won’t catch me.’ Gloria flicked the end of the cigarette on to the gravel, where it joined its friends. ‘She’s halfway through tai chi in the car park.’
‘I don’t know where all that nonsense comes from.’ Simon prodded at his Pot Noodle.
Gloria sank into one of the chairs. ‘China, mainly.’
‘No, I mean why do it here?’
‘Because it flushes your mind of toxins, Simon. It unburdens your soul. Does your soul not need unburdening?’
‘Not currently,’ he said. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’
She tutted. ‘Everyone’s soul is clogged up with something. We collect it as we travel through life.’
‘It’s the residents who should be doing it then, not the staff. Most of them have got eighty-odd years’ worth of clogging.’
‘Health and safety, Simon. She’s worried someone will twist their knee warding off a monkey. You’ve got to be careful with energy flows. They’re not a laughing matter.’
‘So why aren’t you out there, keeping yourself young and unburdened?’
‘I was gagging for a smoke,’ she said, ‘and besides, my dad says ageing is all in the mind. We only age because we expect to.’
‘Your dad’s a proper loony tune.’ Simon brushed at his trousers, started to say something else, changed his mind and had another brush at his trousers instead.
‘Don’t go asking me out again, Simon. I’ve said it before: I’m too old for you.’
‘Only ten years, and I thought ageing was all in the mind.’
‘That’s not the point. There’s plenty of young ladies out there, why don’t you ask one of them instead?’
Simon wandered Cherry Tree in his mind. There were lots of women, but they all seemed to be collected by husbands at the end of each shift, or drove themselves away to semi-detached houses and semi-detached lives. ‘There’s Denise on reception, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go there.’ Gloria heaved herself up, went over to the sink and rinsed her coffee cup. ‘Her back bedroom’s full of real-life dolls and her mother took a day off work to give them all a bath.’
Simon gazed at the ceiling. ‘What about Lorraine in housekeeping?’
Gloria turned from the sink with her mouth open. ‘You can’t ask Lorraine.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because chances are she’s a lesbian. And I can say that, Simon, because I used to be one.’
He stared at her.
‘Don’t look so shocked. It’s a big world out there. You want to get yourself inside it and have a look around.’
The thing is, he would. If only he could find the way in.
‘Do you fancy a drink after work?’ he said. ‘I mean as friends. People. People having a drink together after work?’
‘Can’t.’ She pulled the tabard over her head and the static pulled at her hair. ‘I’ve got to go round to my dad’s. He’s re-enacting the Civil War on Saturday afternoon and I promised I’d sew his doublet.’
‘He’s eighty-two, Gloria.’
‘All in the mind,’ she mouthed, and tapped the top of his head as she squeezed past. ‘And your Pot Noodle’s going cold.’
The door slammed behind her and Simon looked out into the gardens. One of the residents sat alone on a bench in the courtyard, and he watched as they had a small conversation with themselves. And Simon wondered where his life ended and their life began, and how we could all be stitched so tightly together, yet the threads between everybody still go unnoticed.
FLORENCE
‘It hasn’t changed, has it?’ I said. ‘It looks just as unpleasant as it always has.’
I hadn’t seen Greenbank for years, and yet as we turned into the driveway, it felt as though I’d just looked back at it after glancing away. It’s the kind of stout, Georgian house that never seems to change. Whilst the rest of the world decays and rebuilds and reinvents itself, places like Greenbank watch and wait, and gather up memories.
There were four of us. Me, Elsie, General Jack and Jack’s son, Chris, who’d been persuaded by his father to chauffeur us on our little outing. Chris underwent deep interrogation by Miss Bissell. She walked around him a full three hundred and sixty degrees with her clipboard, and asked enough questions to satisfy two sides of A4. We watched through the chessboard glass, Jack leaning on his walking stick as though we were at a sheepdog trial.
Chris was the only hope we had. Miss Bissell would never let us escape into the world on our own.
When he left the office, Chris had acquired a layer of sweat and a new set of creases in his forehead, but he gave us a sideways thumbs-up and bobbed his knees.
‘He’s a maths teacher,’ said Jack.
We sat in the back of the car, Elsie and I. Chris was driving and Jack shouted instructions from the passenger seat at the top of his voice. I became a child on a seaside holiday, and read out all the road signs as we passed by.
‘Give way, two hundred yards,’ I said. ‘It’s a red triangle.’
‘Shall we just let Chris do the driving?’ Elsie pointed through the gap between the front seats. ‘I’m sure he’s more than capable.’
‘Toilets, two hundred metres. Ladies and gentlemen.’
She lowered her voice. ‘Do you want the toilet?’