Today was a good day. But the term was only relative. No day now was truly good. The best that Eunice could hope for were a few bewildered smiles, an occasional recollection of who she was, and most of all, no tears from the man she had spent most of her adult life in love with. She strolled arm in arm with Bomber around the bleak patchwork of bare earth and concrete paving slabs that the officer-in-charge of the Happy Haven care home grandiosely termed “the rose garden.” The only trace of the roses were a few bent, brown sticks poking out of the earth like the detritus of a bushfire. Eunice could easily have wept. And this was a good day.
Bomber had wanted to go to Folly’s End. Before he was too often lost in random bouts of oblivion, but knew that to be his inevitable fate, he had made his wishes clear. He had always intended to give Eunice his power of attorney when the time came, and thus salvage whatever scraps of dignity and security that could be wrung from a future as bleak as the one he faced. He could trust Eunice with his life, however worthless it might become. She would always do the right thing. But Portia got there first. Armed with ridiculous but omnipotent wealth and next-of-kin affiliation if not affection, she tricked Bomber into seeing a “specialist,” who, no doubt with her financial encouragement, legally declared him to be “no longer capable of making rational decisions” and turned his future welfare over to his sister.
The following week Bomber was installed at Happy Haven.
Eunice had fought his corner as hard as she could; she had argued ferociously for Folly’s End, but Portia was unmoved. Folly’s End was “too far away” for her to conveniently visit, and in any case, she claimed, with astonishing callousness, it was only a matter of time before Bomber wouldn’t have a clue where he was anyway. But for now, he did. And it was killing him.
Surprisingly, Portia did visit him. But they were strained, uncomfortable encounters. She veered wildly between bossing him about and cowering fearfully away from him. His reaction to both approaches was the same; painful bewilderment. Having deprived him of the one thing he wanted, she showered him with expensive, often pointless gifts. He had no idea what the espresso machine was, let alone how to work it. He poured the designer aftershave down the toilet and used the fancy camera as a doorstop. In the end, Portia spent most of the time during her visits drinking tea with Sylvia, the sycophantic officer-in-charge, who was a devoted fan of the Harriet Hotter books, of which there was now, regrettably, a trilogy.
Eunice did her best to make Bomber’s room a little piece of home. She brought things from his flat, and put photographs of Douglas and Baby Jane on every shelf and table. But it wasn’t enough. He was drifting away. Giving up.
Eunice and Bomber were not alone in the garden. Eulalia was feeding a magpie with bits of toast she’d saved from her breakfast. She was an ancient, wizened husk of a woman with skin the color of stewed prunes, wild eyes, and an alarming cackle. Her clawed hands clutched knobbled walking sticks that she used to anchor and propel her jerky, shuffling gait. Most of the other residents avoided her, but Bomber always greeted her with a friendly wave. Round and round they walked, like prisoners in an exercise yard; mindlessly walking. Eunice, because she couldn’t bear to think, and Bomber just because, most of the time, he couldn’t. Eulalia threw her last piece of toast at the black-and-white bird, who snatched it from the ground and gobbled it down, never taking his bright, elderberry eyes off Eulalia. She shook her stick at him and squawked
“Off with you, now! Away, before they put you in a pot for dinner! They would, you know,” she said, turning to Eunice and screwing one of her eyes into a grotesque wink. “They feeds us all kinds of shit in here.”
Judging by the smell from the kitchen, which was wafting into the garden through an open window, Eunice had to concede that she might have a point.
“Him nuts, that one,” said Eulalia, waggling a hooked claw at Bomber while somehow still managing to keep hold of the walking stick. “Mad as an ant with his arse on fire.” She planted her sticks onto the concrete and began her painful, awkward shuffle back to the house.
“But him a lovely man inside,” she said to Eunice as she passed. “Lovely, but dying.”
Back in Bomber’s room, Eunice threw back the curtains to let in what little light the pale winter sun could spare. It was a nice room on the second floor; clean and spacious with rather grand French windows and a pretty balcony. Which Bomber wasn’t allowed to use.
“Health and safety,” the officious care assistant had spat at Eunice as she banged the windows shut and locked the key in the medicine cabinet on the wall in Bomber’s room. Eunice had opened them the first time that she had visited Bomber. It was a sultry summer day and the room was hot and stuffy. The key had been left in the lock, but after that day, Eunice never saw it again.
“Let’s watch a film, shall we?”