We’ll probably have to give this place a lick of paint before it can go on the market,” Viola said. “But the estate agent said it should sell quite easily.” (She had talked to his estate agent? Behind his back?) “And then you’ll have a bit of an income to live out your days on.” That’s what he was doing from now on, wasn’t it? Living out his days. That’s what he’d always done, of course, what everyone did, if you were lucky.
“New home,” Viola said. “A fresh start. It will be…” She sought a word out of the air.
“Challenging?” Teddy offered. “Distressing?”
“I was going to say energizing.”
He had no desire for a fresh start, and he doubted that Fanning Court was ever going to feel like a home. It was still a new building, still smelling of paint and fire-proofed furnishings. The flat that Teddy had bought was one of the last in the complex to be sold. (“You were very lucky to get it,” Viola said.) At least he wasn’t moving into a flat where someone had just died and been shipped out. These places were “one out, one in,” weren’t they? “No, this is just a staging post, Teddy,” one of his (few remaining) friends, Paddy, said. “The stations of the cross.” Teddy had tipped the balance, he knew more dead than living now. He wondered who’d be the last man standing. He hoped it wasn’t himself. “Next stop’s the nursing home,” Paddy said. “Me, I’d rather be put down like a dog than go to one of them.” “Me too,” Teddy agreed.
The public spaces of Fanning Court were decorated in a bland palette of pinks and magnolias and the walls of the corridors were hung with inoffensive Impressionist prints. It seemed doubtful that anyone ever looked at them. Art as wallpaper. “Lovely, isn’t it, Dad?” Viola said to him with a forced kind of optimism when they were first shown round. “It feels a bit like a hotel, doesn’t it? Or a cruise ship?” When had Viola ever been on a cruise ship? She was grimly determined that he was going to like Fanning Court.
The tour was conducted by the warden, a woman called Ann Schofield, who said, “Call me Ann, Ted.” (Call me Mr. Todd, Teddy thought.) “The Warden,” like something from Trollope. And now he was to be a bedesman in Fanning Court—an almshouse for a new age. Not that Ann Schofield bore any relationship to Septimus Harding. Busty and bustling, her slow Midlands accent (“a Brummie and proud of it”) belied a determined kind of energy. “We’re a happy family here,” she said, rather pointedly, as if Teddy might turn out to be the black sheep.
She led from the front. She had an enormous backside and Teddy chided himself for his lack of gallantry but you couldn’t help but notice. “The Fat Controller,” Bertie called her when she first visited him in Fanning Court. She had loved the Thomas the Tank Engine books, loved all books. She was in her first year up at Oxford, at the same college that Teddy had attended—co-educational now. Studying the same subject too. She was his legacy, his message to the world.
They went first to the residents’ lounge, where a little knot of people were playing Bridge. “See, Dad,” Viola whispered. “You like playing cards, don’t you?” (“Well…” Teddy said.)
“Oh, we have every kind of activity here,” Ann Schofield said. “Bridge—as you can see—dominoes, Scrabble, carpet bowls, amateur dramatics, concerts, a coffee morning every Wednesday…” Teddy tuned out. His leg was getting crampy, he wanted to get home, have a cup of tea and watch Countdown. He wasn’t a big TV watcher but he liked quizzes—decent ones with quiet, middle-aged audiences. He found them comforting and challenging at the same time, which at his age was more than enough.
The tour wasn’t over. Next stop was a hot, damp laundry room full of huge machines and then the (rather smelly) “refuse store,” with its industrial-sized bins that could have swallowed an “elderly person” whole if they weren’t careful. “Lovely,” Viola murmured. Teddy glanced at her. Lovely, he thought? She looked slightly manic. Then a “kitchenette” where they could make themselves “hot beverages” when they were “socializing together” in the residents’ lounge. Wherever they went people smiled and said “Hello” or asked him when he was moving in. “New friends for you,” Viola said brightly.
“There’s nothing wrong with my old ones,” Teddy said, his feet beginning to drag.
“Well, apart from the fact that most of them are dead.”
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“All right?” Ann Schofield said, glancing back at them, sensing dissension in the ranks.