sitting on the sofa, laptop on lap
wondering what to write a poem about
whilst over in her basket by the cupboard
her head resting on a cushion
that actually has a picture of her head on it
a lurcher version of the Turin shroud
Lola is giving me a look
so professionally woebegone
it would make a robot sob
so of course, what else could I do?
I think about moving my legs
Lola is up and on the sofa
before my feet are on the floor
turning round a couple of times
then slumping into place
running through such a repertoire of chop smacking,
backward glances and eyebrow raising,
it’s perfectly clear
how disappointed she is in my behaviour
but – of course – blessed as she is
with a limitless capacity to forgive
she somehow finds the strength to move on
and starts scratching her ear
with an elegant back leg
quickly building up speed and intensity
until it’s a terrifying whirling blur
like the release of an over-wound toy
and just when I think I should intervene
because she’s in danger of ripping her ear off
and sending it flying across the room
it strikes me (I mean a thought does,
not the ear, thankfully):
isn’t this a bit like me?
metaphorically scratching my head,
wondering what to write a poem about
and then – something else:
maybe I could write a poem about how writing a poem
is a bit like a dog scratching her head
but of course, she’s stopped now
and her ears have flicked up
she’s heard something interesting
that demands her complete attention
something coming in through the cat flap
It’s Solly, Lola
You know?
Solly – the other animal that lives here?
The cat?
Author: jim clayton
little red rookie
It’s too much of a coincidence. I’d put money on that ambulance car parked outside the block being for Adnan. When I buzz the intercom, the voice that eventually answers – not the patient’s – sounds very familiar to me.
‘Well, well! I thought I recognised the appalling handwriting!’ says Ryan, throwing the door wide and grabbing me to him in a great big uniformed bear hug. ‘How’re you doing, man?’
‘I’m good! I’m good!’
‘Yeah – you are!’
It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. Two years, in fact, ever since I left the ambulance service and made the sideways step into community health. I’d run into most of the other crews in that time; Ryan is probably the last.
‘I’d heard rumours,’ he says, showing me into the flat. ‘Tracks in the snow, that kind of thing. I have to say you’re looking well. Horribly well. It’s quite disgusting how well you look.’
‘No nights’ I tell him. ‘That and not having a radio on my belt.’
‘Damned right,’ he says, slapping me on the shoulders again. ‘Completely damned right. Well, well!’
He ambles back over to the sofa, sits down with a great, easeful sigh, as impressively as a tattooed Viking warrior asked to wait out the battle in a chintzy front-room.
‘What’s your involvement, then, Jimmy boy?’
I can tell from his demeanour he’s not worried about the patient. And it’s true – Adnan seems comfortable enough, in the same high-backed chair I’d left him in just that morning, his leg up on a riser.
‘Tinzaparin injections,’ I tell him. ‘A daily prophylactic dose, post knee op. And then just obs and generally making sure everything’s okay.’
I smile at Adnan; he nods and waves his hand in the air.
‘We used to work together,’ I tell him, by way of explanation, but I can see he doesn’t understand.
‘Where’s Rema?’ I say, turning back to Ryan.
‘The daughter? She just nipped out to her car to get her phone.’
‘So – what’s brought you over, then?’
‘It came through as a difficulty in breathing, but everything checked out and it looks more like anxiety exacerbated by abdo pain – which I’m guessing has something to do with Adnan not opening his bowels these past five days or so.’
‘Yep. That’s definitely a thing. The enema should be delivered early this evening.’
‘Great. Okay. So when Rema gets back, why don’t we all have a bit of a review and decide where to go from here?’
‘Sounds good to me. Meanwhile, I’ll do the Tinz.’
‘Excellent.’
And he carries on writing, stopping every now and again to chat and swap juicy bits of gossip.
It’s great to see Ryan again. I learned so much about ambulance work from him – how to take each job as it came; how to recognise when you had time to step back and think, and when you didn’t; how important it was to keep your sense of humanity, and humour, and how to conserve your energy for the long and relentless run of it all.
It was always such a comfort turning up on station for a shift to find out I was working with him. It would fill me with a great sense of security. I knew that whatever happened that day or night (and for some reason, particularly night) so long as I was with Ryan, I’d be okay, and everything would be fine.
I have one particular memory. It was early on in my time as an EMT, and I was still in that phase when every job that came through filled me with horror. We’d been called to an unconscious patient in a pizza restaurant. When we got there the place was in uproar. A gang of drunk teenage boys had gone in for something to eat, and one of them had passed out on the floor. Whilst I tried to figure out whether he was actually unconscious or not (he wasn’t) the others were jumping around, tipping oregano on his head, laughing, swearing, play-fighting and generally getting in the way. I’d tried to be as commanding as I could, but nothing worked. (I can’t remember where the restaurant staff were, and the police certainly hadn’t pitched up yet). Ryan had hung back for a moment, just to see what I could do for myself. When it was clear I’d lost control, he waded in.
‘Right. You, you and you – OUT!’ he’d thundered. And although I admit my memory of the whole thing is probably unreliable, still I think I see him striding out of the restaurant, kids hanging off his arms and neck like rangy dogs round the arms and neck of a gigantic bear, before being hurled off into the night with yelps and barks.
If there was ever a paramedic who deserved his own graphic novel, it was Ryan. I would certainly have bought a copy (and got him to sign it, too).
Rema hurries back into the flat, and smiles when she sees me.
‘Oh – hi! How are you?’ she says, finishing the call she was making.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ says Ryan. ‘Jimmy was doing his best, but the only Arabic word he knows is habibi.’
And they all laugh so much – even Adnan – I can’t help blushing.
pushed for time
I have an appointment at three o’clock, a double-up with an occupational therapist at the house of a patient discharged from hospital that day. But so long as everything falls into line, and the traffic is only slightly north of reasonable, and I manage to pare each visit down to the barest and most pragmatic interaction permissible by law, three o’clock is perfectly achievable.
Of course, it doesn’t work out that way.
The ECG machine decides to play up, in that almost supernatural way electrical equipment has sometimes of sensing your impatience and transforming it into pure cussedness. And when I try to draw blood from the second patient, I have as much luck as if I’d staggered out into the garden and jabbed the old apple tree. That, plus running into a horrible thickening of the traffic heading west, so inexplicably and uncharacteristically bad it makes me think I’’ve missed an emergency radio broadcast telling everyone to drop everything and clear the hell out of town – all this means that by the time I’m pulling up outside the house, half an hour late.
‘I -am-so-sorry!’ I say, piling in through the door with all my bags.
‘That’s okay!’ says Rick, the OT. ‘We’ve just been taking our time, going through a few things. It’s alright.’
Gil, the patient, is sitting forward on the edge of a sofa. His hair is dyed crow-black, back-combed in Gothic style, which only seems to accentuate the extreme pallor of his face, and the dark hollows of his eyes. Shaking his hand is like scooping a fragile bird into my fingers.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise’
I sit down on a low stool as Rick brings me up to speed. He gives me the discharge summary to look over, too, and I glance at it from time to time. I’ve already been told the basics – the alcoholism, self-neglect, the concerned neighbours, the intervention of the social work team and so on – and the fact that a deep-clean company had been brought in whilst Gil was in hospital. What I hadn’t been told though was the seriousness of his situation now. The discharge summary lays it all out in dry and technical language; beyond it, like seeing a dark and formidable landscape through a formal window, is the hard truth of the thing. Gil has come home to die.
‘If you want to get your bits and pieces out of the way whilst I finish this bit of paperwork…?’ says Rick, as I hand the summary back.
‘Sure! Why not?’ I say, grabbing my kit and going over to kneel by Gil. ‘Is that okay?’
He accedes to it all with a measured kind of passivity, smiling often, but in a gentle way, like someone who’s decided the only thing he can change about the destination is his understanding of the journey.
I don’t push anything. Just the basics. And when I’m done I shake his hand again, gather my things together and leave Rick to finish off.
Back outside, I’m throwing my bags in the boot of the car when an elderly man in a flat white cap, anorak and check shirt stops right by me. He holds a map book almost to the end of his nose, looks up and down the street, lifts his tinted glasses, presses the map book closer, squints, looks up and down the street again, and then takes his cap off and scratches his head. It’s all pretty emphatic, like watching a modern clown doing a skit called Lost.
‘Are you alright there?’ I say.
‘Me? No. I’m late and I can’t be.’
‘Where’ve you got to get to?’
He brings the map over, hands it to me, then takes an envelope out of his pocket – something formal, a legal appointment.
‘Well don’t worry. You’re almost there,’ I tell him, handing the map book back. ‘Are you walking or driving?’
‘Driving? Me? No! I came by bus. The man there, he said get off here. He said here was where I had to be. So that’s what I did. And now I wish I hadn’t.’
‘He wasn’t wrong, though. You’ve just turned down too early. You want the one parallel to this, over there. You can cut through that little alley if you’re pushed for time.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yep. Absolutely.’
‘I can’t afford any more mistakes.’
‘You’re good,’ I say. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Righto then. Thanks for your help.’
He gives me a broad, quick smile that seems more like a mechanical expression of the tipping back of his head, then taps me once on the shoulder with the map book, and strikes out for the alley.
on the stump
so let’s have a standing ovation
a generous pause for applause
from the thousands of windows and doors
overlooking this particular operation
okay
are you ready?
for the one, the only
the Original of the Species
the divine old timer
with the snappy one liner
the blade in the brocade
waving from the cock-end of the motorcade
the gorgeously adorable
uproariously deplorable
spray-can orangutan,
mr muscle in a suit
the man who put the F in faith and the T in truth
he’s so outrageous he’s IN
he didn’t begat he begin
Your leader!
you sir? yes, you.
glad you picked him?
give us your number, we’ll send you a pic of his dictum
how’d you like ten minutes on the dark side of the man
with a steady-cam, following him to the can and back
no? doesn’t float your stack?
Suit yourself. Go ahead. Re-boot yourself.
we’ve got time to kill and the hearts to do it
you had a vote and you blew it
accept it, it’s destiny
anything else is mutiny
yeah? you think
I’m sorry you feel that way
(hey! Hades in the shad-ees
whyn’t you help our friend here see the error of his ways
maybe some mindfulness technique
give his timeline a tweek)
dr google will see you now
that’s a good one
but let me tell you
it’s not all disney princesses and military successes
sometimes you just gotta take stock, you know?
have some time out,
see what all the screaming’s about
all those hilarious failures
the love affairs, mail scares and hail mary’s
the half-witted, two-faced, congressional fairies
why’n ya take a look at this sometime?
know who that is?
little jack horner, crawling back to his corner
thumb dripping plum juice and crack
having a happy-hour heart attack
waking up on the mortuary floor
tip-toeing to the back door
denying all knowledge
hey jack? where d’ya learn to act like that?
ronald mcdonald college?
okay, so
take a moment
and breathe
you don’t need to tell me which way up is,
I’ve been around the block a few times
I’ve kissed a kennel load of puppies.
I know which way the wind’s blowing
I’m tired of all this bitching and moaning
and by the way, just so you know
I’ve been following you from the get-go
man – you’re in so deep
you’ll need a submarine to get to sleep
you’re sub-prime, all the time
you’re turkey without stuffing
you’re ninety-nine percent of nothing
so suck on that for a minute whilst I get myself ready
and you – hold the camera good and steady
people? you never get a second chance to make a first impression
the rest is strictly for confession
musetta
‘Mexican liqueur. Seven letters. Beginning with T.’
‘Tequila?’
‘Is that a liqueur?’
‘It’s made from a cactus. Does that count? Anyway, I can’t think of any other specifically Mexican drinks. Apart from Dos Equis.’
‘What on earth is Dos Equis?’
‘A beer. I think.’
‘Well. Let’s go with tequila then, shall we? And see how we get on…’
Marilyn had a fall in the early hours and tore her arm. She’s busy filling in the crossword whilst I’m delicately cleaning the wound, soaking it in saline, gently replacing the skin flap as best I can, then patting the area dry ready for the steri-strips. Her version of events was that she stumbled over some shoeboxes – no mention of the copious amounts of whisky she’d put away in the hours leading up. If she sees the irony in our conversation about booze, she doesn’t show it.
‘Oh I’m terribly sorry. I misread the clue,’ she says. ‘It actually says Mexican liquor. These glasses are absolutely no damned good at all.’
‘Definitely tequila then.’
‘…which makes one down agora. Which fits! Well done!’
Marilyn is a high-functioning alcoholic. She has a beautiful house in the centre of town, filled with paintings and books, sculptures and peculiar antiques, everything brilliantly lit by the sunshine that positively bounds in through the open patio doors.
‘You have a lovely house,’ I tell her, applying the first layer of dressing.
‘That’s sweet of you,’ she says.
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Too long. But you know, when Teddy and I moved here in the seventies, it was a different street altogether. Everyone knew each other. It was all terribly friendly and interesting. But now it’s simply overrun with cars, no-one has any time for anything, and the only contact you have is with the postman. Speaking of which…’
Keeping her bad arm as still as she can, she rummages around the clutter on the table and produces a Royal Mail missed delivery card.
‘Look at that!’ she says. ‘Sorry we missed you! What on earth do they mean? Sorry we missed you! I’ve been in all blessed day! I simply fail to understand how they could have crept up the front steps and dropped that through the letterbox without me hearing a thing. Honestly, they must be employing cat burglars or something. Or maybe he ties rags round his boots. It’s enough to drive you absolutely insane!’
‘You’d think he’d want to drop it off, though, just to lighten his bag.’
‘Lighten his bag! I’ll lighten his bag when I get hold of him.’
‘Almost done’ I tell her.
‘Smashing,’ she says, lowering her glasses from the top of her head back down on to the tip of her nose, as she goes back to the crossword.
‘Fifteen across. Famous Bohemian. Beginning with M.’
She snorts.
‘Well – I’d be very tempted to write Marilyn – but unfortunately it ends in an A’
going viral
Is a virus a living organism?
A living organism is supposed to have the following seven characteristics: Movement, Sensitivity, Respiration, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion & Nutrition.
On the face of it, a virus seems to be more passive and more dependent than that. The only thing a virus does from the list is reproduce – but it needs a living host to do it. Does that mean you couldn’t describe it as ‘living’?
If you ignored the structural differences between the two things – between single or multi-cellular organisms and the viruses that infect them – wouldn’t it be true to say that they’re both driven to do the same thing, which is to make more of themselves? In such a way that responds to changes in the genetic environment, making them more resilient and more likely to thrive?
To put it another way, maybe it doesn’t matter how you get there, so long as you get there. And on those terms, maybe the virus could be seen as the more successful organism, living or non-living, because it’s managing to ‘get there’ with far less complication?
I’ve seen viruses described as ‘organisms at the edge of life’ – which seems to acknowledge the extent of the problem apprehending these things. And virology as a science only dates from the beginning of the twentieth century, so there’s a long way to go.
None of which is helping with my cold. But as Sun Tzu once said: To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.
And if I was a virus, I’d definitely have that tattooed on my capsid.
latest poem
This one’s a riff on corporate culture, with a rap-style rhythm (which I suppose makes it a riff-rap). There’s no image with it, so I’ll just casually drop the link in here.
Thanks for reading!
company rap sheet
Let me do the introductions.
The Supervisor: Sure – okay – just your average kind of Visor, day to day, but hey! you’ll soon see the light, especially when they shine it over the city tonight. You’ll see what he’s capable of when he pulls on his cape, tears off his moustache and glasses and makes a couple o’ low, valedictory passes on his Supervisory way to whipping your worthless asses
The Manager: He manages. End of. Not someone you’d necessarily wanna make a friend of. I saw him manage a man from the chair he was sat on. He could fart a hurricane and keep his hat on. We were riding the sideline one time and he came sliding over, casual as a virus, got right up inside us, sunny and shiny as an anti-personnel mine. Man – I was so impressed I was de-pressed. But that’s my Manager, three parts mano a mano, four parts challenger. I hear the Devil came on a visit. Knocked on my Manager’s door, he said Who is it? The Devil, said the Devil, making a collection. But I don’t want no flotsam and jetsom. I want quality souls and they said you can get some. I’ll see what I can do, the Manager said. Went straight back to bed. Unbelievable, the Devil said. Who the hell is he – King Priam? This motherfucker’s even worse than I am.
The Chief: He’s a hustler, a player, a teamster in a tux. He’s mean as a monk on junk, crashing the party in a monster truck. He’s got a bunch of those vital signs you’ve been looking for all this time. He’s got the stance of a lion, the mane of a lion, hell – the mind of a lion, which I’ll admit’s a liability given the fragility of all the paws he panhandles these days, the international scandals, the jackboots, jockstraps, the saintly sandals. But hey! Them’s the breaks, my friend. Like my ol’ man Morrison said. This is the end. Take it or leave it. No-one cares if you believe it.
This company’s a ship going nowhere, lickety splicket.
C’mon over here, I’ll sell you a ticket.
the people upstairs
It’s a long time since Eric managed to paint anything. Years, I would guess, judging by the fine layer of dust on the stack of drawings and sketches on the workbench. But his pens and brushes are still waiting for him, standing in a bunch with their bristles-up, all-angles, in an old chipped mug, souvenir of Barcelona, by a gently composting heap of pastel crayons, charcoal blocks, pencils and a paint-splodged rag.
Alcohol abuse has left Eric with Korsakoff syndrome, amongst other things. At the moment he’s living in supported accommodation, although I learned from the warden that he’s been approved a place in a new facility with higher levels of care – something Eric urgently needs. The opening has been delayed, though. Last minute snagging, she said. Which means Eric will have to struggle through the next six months with carers going in three times a day, and various health teams, the District Nurses, the ambulance and so on – everyone doing their best to help him through the inevitable falls, infections and other crises.
I’ve met Eric before so I know what to expect. He’s difficult to handle, lurching from moments of great anger and anxiety to brief periods of something approaching lucidity. He doesn’t cope with novelty well, gets upset easily, has no short term memory. Despite the best efforts of the carers, the flat always looks ransacked. In fact, the only tidy thing about it is his old workbench, which maintains an eerie and almost magical detachment from the general chaos.
‘They’ve been coming downstairs! Four of them!’ he shouts, slapping the side of his face like a man desperate to wake himself up. ‘In the middle of the night, torturing me!’
‘Who have? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know perfectly well what I mean! What d’you think that is? Hey?’
He waggles a finger in the direction of his workbench.
‘They creep down here in the middle of the night, they cut my paintings into tiny squares, and then they stitch them back together so you wouldn’t notice. But I do! Of course I do! And they steal things, too.’
‘What things?’
‘Like this. I mean – for goodness sake.’
He dabbles around on the over-chair table, and finally lands on a pair of nail clippers.
‘I bought these new. I was looking after them. And they’ve taken them away – and they’ve brought them back like this. Well I can’t use them now, can I? They’re disgusting…’
I need to calm him down before I’ll be able to do any obs, so I try to distract him by talking about art.
‘I love your paintings’ I tell him, slowly and innocently preparing my kit. ‘They’re so bold and full of life. Did you go to college?’
He stares at me, breathing heavily – then crosses one leg over the other and laces his fingers in his lap.
‘Yes, actually. Leeds.’
‘Wow. Great.’
‘Do you paint?’
‘Me? No – I do the odd bit of printing sometimes. Linocuts, you know. That sort of thing. I’d like to do more, but any spare time I have tends to be given over to writing.’
‘It’s none of it easy. Look – I’m sorry if I’ve been a little short-tempered today.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Eric. You’ve got a lot on your plate. It’s always nice to see you.’
‘Is it?’ he says. ‘Is it really?’
‘Yes! Now then – can I be a real nuisance and do your blood pressure?’
But just as I move towards him with the cuff, as stealthily as a butterfly collector with a net, Eric changes again.
‘Never mind that!’ he says, leaping up and almost pitching head first into the bathroom. ‘I want you to get me something – oh you know what it is! That thing! That thing that goes between my legs…’
waiting for janice
A nondescript semi.
So nondescript, the estate agents probably made a point of it.
This charming example of a nondescript house is pleasantly situated at the end of a row of equally anonymous dwellings, all with a clear view of the busy main road. Generously provided with four metres of all-weather, low maintenance AstroTurf, front and rear, and ample off-road parking for one, small red or blue car. Railway station five minutes. Hospital, ten.
I ring the bell and wait.
After a while I walk round the side, in case the front door’s out of commission for some reason. It’s only then that I notice a key safe, tucked away behind a down-pipe, like a giant mussel stranded at low tide. Luckily, amongst all my papers, I find a record of the number, so I open the safe, take out the key, and let myself in.
‘Hello? Mrs Rudd? It’s Jim, from the hospital…’
The first thing to hit me is the absolute certainty that Mrs Rudd is not at home.
The second is the alarm.
Not just any house alarm. This is a whole new species, a terrifying, weaponised hybrid Mrs Rudd must have stolen from Porton Down.
‘Jesus Christ!’
I put my things down, run into the hallway, flip the lid on the alarm console and press any button that looks useful. But of course, I know even as I’m doing this that any alarm you could simply turn off when it was tripped wouldn’t be any kind of alarm at all.
I see Mrs Rudd’s yellow folder on the hall table. With the shrieks and hysterical klaxon blasts of the alarm resonating through the house and neighbourhood, I scramble through the folder desperately trying to find a number – anything, any sign or marking that might suggest how I might turn the thing off.
I become aware of a figure on the threshold of the door – an elderly woman, both hands pressed to her ears, either a smile or a rictus of pain it’s hard to tell.
‘DO YOU KNOW HOW TO TURN IT OFF?’ I shout over to her.
She can’t hear me, so I get closer.
‘I’M JIM. FROM THE HOSPITAL. DO YOU KNOW HOW TO TURN THE ALARM OFF?’
But after some elaborate miming and lip-reading I figure out that she’s only come round to ask me to turn the alarm off, so I turn my attention back to whatever the hell else there is to be done.
The folder mentions a friend, Janice, in the Next of Kin section, but there’s no contact number written down, so I have to ring the hospital to see if they can find out. Eventually when I speak to the coordinator, she says yes, Mrs Rudd was taken to hospital that morning, and no, she doesn’t know why I wasn’t told, and what the hell is that dreadful noise? She says she’ll do her best to find a number for the friend, and get back to me.
It feels as if the alarm is invading me, running through me in a horribly invasive way, like when trees grow into metal fences and the iron enters their heartwood. This is probably a pre-terminal sign. Followed by fits, unconsciousness. Death by Sonic Puddling.
I’m forced outside for respite.
People are coming to their front steps, frowning, shaking their heads, folding their arms to emphasise their biceps, staring at me as if they can see the noise swirling out of my eyes and mouth like swarms of infernal bees and why the hell would anyone DO that? It strikes me that this has probably happened before, in which case I’m definitely in trouble. To add to the horror, dozens of school kids have begun streaming past the garden fence.
‘Ahh!’ shouts one kid, putting his hands flat across his ears and bending forwards as if he’s being shot at ‘What the fuck’s that?’
‘It’s an alarm,’ I tell him.
‘Make it stop!’ he says.
‘I’m trying.’
Wha’did he say? shouts his friend, shoving him hard from behind.
He says it’s an alarm.
Haa-haa! laughs the friend, like Nelson in The Simpsons, stopping to point at me. He set the alarm off! He set the alarm off!
I nod and smile – and then, looking up at the alarm box on the outside wall, phone the company.
When eventually I get through to someone, she tells me they only fit the thing.
‘Who they give the code to is their own affair,’ she says. She doesn’t sound that bothered, even though she must be able to hear the alarm in the background.
‘What am I supposed to do then?’
‘I don’t know. Shoot it?’
But she does come up with a better solution.
‘Or you could just try retracing your steps, locking the doors in sequence as you go. It might be one of the old ones that resets.’
‘Brilliant! Great! Thanks!’
I do as she suggests, scooping up my bag, locking first the inner and outer doors in turn, and then waiting on the front step. The alarm changes pitch, dropping fifty decibels to something like a grouchy kind of wail, then drops some more, and then finally – mercifully – falls quiet, a deep and unearthly silence that for a second feels almost as loud as the alarm itself.
I stand there, catching my breath.
The next door neighbour is standing the other side of the low wall, smiling at me in a slightly more relaxed way.
‘Well done!’ she says.
‘I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance!’
‘Ah!’ she says, patting the air. Then goes back inside.
It’s only when I turn to go that I realise I’ve left my diary in the house.
I go through my options, but really – there’s nothing else for it.
I unlock the doors and hurry back inside, rushing through the double doors as quickly as I can.
I grab the diary – just as the alarm kicks in again, a little differently it sounds to me, even more violent, with a new, wounded note in its belly, something like outrage.
And this time, even though I do that thing of retracing my steps and locking the doors in sequence, the alarm does not reset, but actually redoubles in volume (although that could just be tinnitus from the first assault).
The neighbour has come back out into the garden and is standing staring at me over the wall with a look of utter confusion.
Smiling and shrugging, I ring the office again.
Luckily, the coordinator’s been able to find a number for Janice.
‘Thanks!’ I say, my fingers shaking as I redial.
There’s a long pause before Janice answers. I’ve barely managed to say hello before she speaks over me.
‘You’ve set the alarm off.’
‘Yes! I’m so sorry.’
‘I was only there an hour ago.’
‘Yes…’
‘They took her to hospital.’
‘Yes. I know. But unfortunately they didn’t tell me and I used the key in the keysafe to let myself in.’
‘An hour ago! And now I’ve got to come all the way back there’
‘I’m so sorry. If you tell me the code…’
‘In my slippers.’
‘Yeah, but – if you just …’
The phone goes dead.
I put it back in my pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ shouts the neighbour.
‘Waiting for Janice!’ I shout back.
Then waving to the school kids passing by the garden gate, I sit down on the front step, and as calmly and innocently as I can, do just that.
a job lot
It’s already late when I get there, the sun low on the hills, shreds of pink cloud against a deepening sky.
Roy answers the door with a tea cloth in his hands.
‘Come on in!’ he says, flipping the cloth over his shoulder, shaking my hand warmly and ushering me in. ‘Jean’s just through here. She will be pleased to see you.’
He follows me into the living room, dragging his left foot a little, like his hips are starting to go.
‘What a pair we are!’ he says. ‘A job lot. Aren’t we Jean? A job lot?’
Jean is sitting by the patio window in a high-backed armchair, smiling at us both with as much of a delighted expression as her stroke will allow. She tries to speak, too, and though it’s incomprehensible, Roy seems to know what she means, and fills in the gaps.
I’ve come to change the dressing on her arm. For some reason she can’t help picking and scratching at it, and the wounds have become infected.
‘I did clip the nails on her hand,’ says Roy, ‘but she was still finding a way through it all. Weren’t you, Jean?’
He strokes her hair. ‘Thanks again for coming out. We do appreciate it.’
‘It’s no trouble.’
He stands over me whilst I prepare the dressings.
‘I have to apologise if I smell a little – you know.’
‘I can’t smell anything,’ I tell him. ‘Why – what have you had? Garlic sausage?’
‘Me? No! A little glass of whisky.’
‘I think you’re more than entitled to a glass of whisky. What sort is it?’
‘Famous Grouse.’
‘That’s a good one,’ I say, sounding as if I know about these things. To back it up, I tell him about a job I used to have a few years ago, working for an company that maintained intranets. ‘One of the clients ran a gin distillery,’ I tell him. ‘They showed us round once. It was amazing! These gigantic stills, filling the place, right up to the roof, like giant copper onions.’
Roy laughs.
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing that,’ he says. ‘Mind you – I’m not really a gin man.’
I start cutting off the old bandage. Jean watches me with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.
‘Alright?’ I say. ‘I’m just going to use a little bit of sterile water…’
Roy helps out where he can, passing me things, comforting Jean, keeping her distracted. It’s all pretty straightforward and I’m done in a few minutes.
‘Good as new!’ I say, peeling off my gloves and starting to clear up.
‘Here! You might be interested to see this..’ says Roy. He unhooks a framed, black and white picture from the wall. A man in overalls, neckerchief and peaked cap standing on the tracks beside an enormous steam engine.
‘I used to work the locomotives. A fireman to begin with, until I made driver. It’s funny to think of it now, y’know, but on an early turn I used to stop off on the way into the yard for a pint of Guinness. Not for the alcohol, y’understand. For the oomph. I tell you what – it was hard work, shovelling coal, keeping it going. But it was the best job in the world. You got into a sort of flow after a while, and there was nothing you couldn’t do. I’d be all the way to Newcastle and back, and I’d suddenly think hang on a minute! I haven’t had a wee since breakfast! But that’s how it was.’
We both look at the picture for a moment. Roy has one hand on the rail of the cab, one foot on the plate, and he’s standing looking at the camera with such a strong and confident gaze you’d think for tuppence he could pick the whole thing up and wave it over his head.
‘These days the only exercise I get is wheeling Jean along the front,’ he says, wiping the glass with his elbow and then carefully hanging it back on the wall. ‘But we do alright, don’t we Jean? Hey?’
He bends down to give her a kiss on the cheek, and she gives him a big, adoring smile in return, before turning her attention to the new bandage, looking for any weak spots with her other hand.
