The room smells of haddock.
Friday is haddock. Thursday usually involves some type of pasta, and Saturday is anybody’s guess. The smells knit themselves into the walls, and swing from the curtains. You can work out what day it is just by sniffing the air. Even the carpet smells of haddock. The smell seems to have become worse the longer I’ve been lying here, or perhaps it’s because there’s nothing else to think about, and so my nose has started making all my decisions for me.
It’s not as though I feel hungry, although I should do, by now. I blame the BBC. They need a letter, the BBC, and I’ve a good mind to send one off. Programmes about food, each time I turn the television on. You fill your eyes with so much of it, it’s no wonder your stomach loses interest. I thought the BBC was meant to cater for everybody, and you haven’t got much of an appetite when you turn eighty. I read about it. In a magazine. Miss Ambrose was supposed to get me the address. Director General, I said, no point messing about with secretaries. I’m still waiting, of course. Elsie said I shouldn’t get myself in a state about it if I don’t get a reply, but it’s a public service and I’m the public, so they’re obliged to. I wouldn’t mind, but I don’t even like the television. I only switch it on to fill up a room.
If I hadn’t turned the television off before I fell, perhaps they’d notice. No one at Cherry Tree makes any noise after ten o’clock, and someone might wonder what I’m up to. There isn’t any noise out there now, except the traffic, although I keep thinking I can hear music. My ears must be playing tricks on me. It can’t be that late, although the clock’s too far away to see, and so all I can do is listen to the ticking. Soothing, a clock ticking. Reassuring. It tells you nothing ever really changes. ‘Just listen to the clock,’ Elsie would say. ‘Don’t get yourself in a state, Florence. Someone will be here soon.’ She always knows what to say, Elsie does. To make me feel better.
Perhaps it will be Miss Ambrose who finds me. Perhaps she’ll come over early for our weekly chat, and she’ll worry when I don’t answer the door. She’ll knock a little harder, to make herself heard over the bypass, and she’ll glance over her shoulder at the cars while she waits for me to answer. She’ll have to use her keys in the end, but she’ll struggle with the lock, and the keys will drop to the floor, because she’s rushing so much. When she gets inside, she’ll say, ‘Florence, whatever have you been doing?’ I’ll put her mind at ease straight away. ‘Don’t worry about me, Miss Ambrose,’ I’ll say. ‘I just had a little tumble. I’m as right as rain.’ She’ll hold my hand whilst we wait for the ambulance. She’ll keep looking at the window, for the blue lights. She’ll say, ‘I hope you haven’t been cleaning again, Florence. Cleaning is our department,’ and I will tell her about all the nonsense under the sideboard. She’ll smile down at me and say how worried everyone will be when they hear what’s happened, and I will smile back and say how nice it is to be worried about.
Even though she’s busy, she’ll come with me to the hospital.
‘Nothing is as important as you, Florence. Everything else can wait.’
She will sit with me in a cubicle that smells of hand-sanitiser and other people’s despair. When the doctor finally arrives, he will be unshaven and exhausted, and his eyes will be filled with all the other lives who have sat in front of him that day. But he will still care. He will still listen to what I have to say. After he has left, Miss Ambrose will get us cardboard teas from the machine. We will try to sip them without burning our lips, and as we do, I will look over at Miss Ambrose, and I will wonder if I can share my secret with her. I try to imagine the kindness in her eyes. I try to think what she might say. But lying here, choosing the cast to play out the end of my story, I’m not sure even Miss Ambrose would really understand.
FLORENCE
We were all sitting in the day room when Miss Ambrose told us. I didn’t have any desire whatsoever to be over there, but Elsie insisted and I wasn’t going to be left on my own staring at four walls. I knew Miss Ambrose had something to say for herself, because I could hear her throat clearing as she walked across the room. Simon was about three feet behind, but he left her to it and leaned against the wall.
‘A rather exciting announcement,’ she said, when she got to the middle of the carpet.
Not another one, I thought. I could have sworn I kept the words in my head, but I must have said them out loud, because when I looked around, Elsie’s gaze was on the ceiling and Jack was hiding his laugh in a chesty cough.
‘A rather exciting announcement,’ she said again, only she didn’t take her eyes off me this time, and said it a bit more quietly. ‘I know how you are all very enthusiastic fans of What’s It Worth?’
A few people glanced up, and even Mrs Honeyman looked interested for once. I’ve never been very big on it. People raiding their lofts to find out how much money they think they’re entitled to and pulling a face when it turns out to be a lot less than they expected. Although it’s more entertainment than the food programmes.
‘Well,’ said Miss Ambrose, ‘I’m delighted to announce that the makers of What’s It Worth? have decided to set one of their episodes here, at Cherry Tree. They’re rather taken with the ambience of the courtyards.’
Even I looked up then.
‘Well, that’s marvellous,’ said Jack. ‘There you go, Florence. That will take your mind off things. You’re going to be on the telly.’
‘Well …’ Miss Ambrose stretched out the word whilst her face rounded up some more to add to it. She also did a little bounce in her knees, just for good measure. ‘We think, perhaps, it would be best if the residents stayed out of the way. For a bit.’
‘For a bit?’ said Jack.
‘For the whole time, really,’ she said. ‘In their flats would be ideal. Of course, as soon as the television people have gone, you can all come back out again.’
‘Very kind of you,’ said Jack.
‘It’s just that there will be a lot of valuable antiques on the premises. Some very old items. We need to be careful with them. The last thing anyone wants is any of them getting damaged. It would be unforgivable.’
‘Of course,’ Jack said.
‘Some of them might even be priceless.’
‘Priceless indeed,’ he said.
I saw Simon look at the floor and push at the carpet with the edge of his training shoe.
Three days later, they arrived. I opened my curtains and the courtyard was full of people and vans. They were just like the vans you see criminals being taken to prison in, only they didn’t have the little bars on the side.
‘Would you look,’ I said to Elsie. ‘All that just for one television programme.’
The courtyard was unrecognisable. Lengths of cable twisted all over the grass and along the footpaths, and people marched up and down with clipboards and boxes, scattering gravel all over the place and treading mud everywhere. By eight o’clock, people had started to queue. There was a whole ribbon of them, stretching around the main building and on to the driveway. They were gripping all manner of things to their chests. Paintings and doll’s houses, Toby jugs and candlesticks. There was even a woman carrying something that looked suspiciously like a lavatory seat.
Jack had arrived, and he joined us at the window. ‘They’re all hoping they had a fortune hiding in the cupboard under the stairs.’ He leaned against the radiator with his arms folded.
‘I don’t even own stairs now,’ I said. ‘Let alone a cupboard underneath them.’
We stood in silence.
I was going to make us all a cup of tea, to pass the time a bit, but then Jack started talking about the bus that pulls up at the bottom of the drive every quarter to the hour, and how he thought we should all get on it and have a little day out instead.