sketches

display purposes only

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Henry doesn’t come to the door so much as slowly coalesce from the shadows beyond the glass.

Henry is frail but not physically unwell. I know his story pretty well by now. He’d been living in Portugal for many years until things started to go wrong, his marriage ended, he was hit by severe financial problems, lived a while in his car, was sectioned following a suicide attempt. After a great deal of toing and froing, his daughter Diane managed to repatriate him, temporarily setting him up in a basement flat whilst she sorted out something more suitable and long-term. I’d spoken to Diane many times on the phone. She was bright and busy and supremely well-organised, but I knew she was struggling to cope with work and family as well as the traumatic fall-out of her parents’ separation. Diane knew as well as anyone that the basement flat wasn’t great. It had a set-aside feel, silent and secluded – not at all the kind of place you’d choose for someone suffering depression and anxiety. But even though it suffered from having the generic, impersonal feel of showroom flats the world over – blown-up photos of Times Square and a colourised London bus driving over Westminster Bridge in the rain; enormous, squashy leather sofas impossible to get out of once you’d sat in them; glass vases with white pebbles and a single, artificial lily; a flat screen TV; venetian blinds – at least it was warm and safe, and near enough to where she lived to make keeping a regular eye on her father vaguely feasible.

The good news is that Diane had managed to find a better, brighter place. Henry is due to move the following morning; my visit here this evening is to be the last in this place, a welfare check, to see he’s okay.

‘Hello,’ says Henry.
We’ve met a few times before, but he makes no sign he recognises me. He’s as still as a photograph, completely neutral, like it really makes no difference to him whether he shakes my hand here in the doorway or stands inside staring up through the casement window at the feet of the people walking by.

He lets me in. We relocate to the living room. Henry drifts over to the kitchen counter, next to a tall suitcase on wheels, all zippered up and ready to go. I have the eerie feeling that If I was an alien probe sent into the room to scan for life, I’d struggle to differentiate between them.

‘Have you eaten anything this evening?’ I ask, glancing around for clues.
He shakes his head.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No.’
‘Do you mind if I have a look and see if there’s something I can get you?’
He shrugs.
I go into the galley kitchen area, so pristine you can smell the caulking gun.
The fridge has nothing in it. I open the overhead cupboards, and I can’t help thinking of the old nursery rhyme: …but when she got there, the cupboard was bare, and so the poor dog had none.
The only food I can see anywhere are five Kilner jars of pasta lined up on a shelf, each one holding different shapes and colours.
‘I could do you some pasta…’ I say, wondering what on earth I’d use for a sauce.
He shakes his head again.
‘Display purposes only,’ he says.

dogs in hats

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Billy is as thin and white as forced celery, wisps of white hair streaming back from his chiselled forehead against all natural gravitational laws, his etiolated white hands clasping the armrests of the chair like roots he put out to suck the nutrients from the stuffing. He barely acknowledges me as I let myself in. Whether that’s because of a general remoteness, or because he’s drunk most of the various spirit bottles placed artfully around his feet, it’s hard to tell.
‘How come you didn’t answer your phone, Billy?’
He turns his sad blue eyes up to me.
‘Oh. Was that you ringing? I looked for my phone but I couldn’t find it.’
‘Shall I give it another ring and see where it is?’
He shrugs.
I go to recents in my phone, and call.
After a moment, a loud buzzing starts up on the cluttered table immediately in front of us. His phone is under a red reminder.
‘Found it!’
‘Great’ he says, in a whispery voice leached flat by long hours of nothing in particular. ‘Gis it here, then.’

It’s hard to know what to do about Billy. The best you can say is that he has a workmanlike approach to drinking himself to death. There’s no joy in it; no wild ride. For some reason he’s simply hitched himself to a slow and dreadfully monotonous kind of decline, like he’s found himself in an armchair that began sinking beneath a quicksand of liquor bottles. When the glass level reaches the bridge of his nose, I don’t imagine he’ll struggle at all. He’ll merely turn those eyes in the direction of whoever’s there to notice, and slide out of sight with a clink.

I unzip my bag and loop the stethoscope round my neck. When I straighten I notice the four dog photos taped to the wall on his right. The photos have been printed A4 size with the colour running low, so everything’s a little fuzzy. You can see it’s the same dog, though, a lugubrious hound sitting in the same position in the kitchen, wearing four different hats: a fisherman’s floppy cap; a Norwegian style knitted hat with flaps; a panama, and then something from a fancy dress shop – a plastic policeman’s helmet fastened under its chin with elastic.
‘Love the pictures!’ I tell him. ‘Who’s dog is that?’
‘Karen, my carer,’ Billy whispers, sadly. ‘She knows I like dogs. And hats. So – there you go.’

captain! captain!

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The cluttered sitting room is dominated by a large, brightly lit vivarium along the wall and two ornate bird cages in the window alcove. The canaries in the cages hop and chatter wildly as I come into the room, but the vivarium seems empty.
‘Don’t worry. He died, he didn’t escape,’ says Malcolm.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
Malcolm sighs.
‘Tarantulas,’ he says. ‘Not the easiest.’

Malcolm’s wife Sara is sitting with her back to the vivarium – a weird contrast, not just because the fierce light on the stones and the stark blue background throws her into a kind of unbalanced neon shade, but because she holds herself so completely still, as motionless as the tank is empty.
‘Hello,’ I say, reaching out to her. She’s so fragile, if I shut my eyes I could imagine I’d shaken the wing of one of the canaries instead.
‘The doctor was round this morning,’ says Malcolm. ‘He did some tests so we’re waiting on them. He said you’d be coming round to see what else you could do.’
We go through the story, Sara nodding in agreement from time to time but not offering much else. She’s not in pain. She doesn’t feel unwell as such. She has a few, minor, long-running issues, but nothing’s particularly worse. She’s just lacking in energy and not feeling herself.
‘Six months ago everything was fine,’ says Malcolm. ‘Well – you know. We were taking the bus up town. Going to the garden centre for bird seed and crickets. Going on holiday. We went to Lanzarote. Here’s us on the Yellow Submarine,’ he says, handing me a photo.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘It’s a submarine, my friend. And it’s yellow.’
‘Like the Beatles?’
‘Who?’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No. Look. It’s a submarine! It doesn’t go down far, but you get to look out the window and see all the fish.’
‘Sounds great.’
I look more closely at the photo. They’re standing side by side, Malcolm with his arm round Sara. He’s looking red-faced, sunburned, the flash from the camera making his face greasy and over-inflated. Ironically, it seems to have the opposite effect on Sara, ghosting her out. Her eyes are dark, intense, like she’s focusing on the moment the submarine surfaces again, the hatch unwound, and she can step back out into the open air.
I hand the photo back.
‘Once or twice she’s gone off and been brought back by strangers.’
‘Oh?’
I smile sympathetically at Sara. She smiles back in an approximate kind of way, shrugs her shoulders.
‘If you say so,’ she says.

the feral dream girl

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‘Peter died six years ago, but it may as well be six minutes.’
‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
She shrugs and shakes her head.
‘Oh, well. I had a long time to get used to the idea. Poor Peter. He was a long time sick, you see. But that’s all in the past. D’you know what I miss the most? The conversations we had. About the silliest things, any time of the day or night. He was a fascinating man, Peter. That’s why I married him, I think. Or one of the reasons. He would always go to great lengths to understand the other person’s point of view. His hospital bed was just there, where you are now, and I was off to the side, reading or dozing or running backwards and forwards to let the carers in, the nurses and so on. The number of people who came and went through this room. I could’ve written a book. Should’ve. And now it’s just me, sitting on my own, staring out at the birds, thinking about not very much.’
‘Do you have family?’
‘No. Not really. All my brothers and sisters are gone now and we didn’t want children. There are some nieces and nephews dotted about. I see them from time to time, which is lovely, but they’ve got busy lives and what have you and I don’t want to burden them. I don’t mind. I’m perfectly content. No – we didn’t really want children, and I never gave it any thought. I did have a strange dream about it, though. I’d fallen asleep in this chair, and I woke up inside the dream, so to speak. I could tell, because even though everything was much the same, the light was different, more – I don’t know – electric. And there was a wild infant child standing to the side of me. A girl. She was standing right there, just about where you are now, rocking from side to side and staring at me. I wasn’t frightened or anything. I just held out my hand, and eventually she came forward, and let me stroke her hair a while. Then something startled her, and she ran out through the open window into the garden, which was so thick with trees it was like a tropical jungle. And she ran off into all that, and I watched her go. But I wasn’t worried for her, because I knew she would be safe out there, among all the animals, the bears and the wolves and so on. You read about those children, don’t you? The feral ones, the ones who run off into the forest and get brought up by animals.’
‘I remember something about that. It’s difficult to know whether it’s a story or just neglect. Probably a bit of both.’
‘Yes. There is that. People often make up stories when the truth is too painful.’

a scarcity of goats

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‘Can I see some identification?’
‘Of course’
I pull my ID card as far out on its elasticated string as it’ll go; Maud grabs it and pulls it closer, and I’m forced to step forwards, caught off-balance, like a fisherman surprised by a particularly feisty trout. She presses the card to the end of her nose and scrutinises it with her eyes shut, squeezed so tightly in fact that a little tear appears in each corner. ‘Well. That all seems to be in order,’ she says, letting it go with a snap. ‘So sorry about all that,’ she says, flapping her hands and lifting her chin in the air. ‘But one cannot be too careful. Especially these days.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Please. Go through to the living room. And do excuse the mess. I’m not normally such a slattern.’
‘I wouldn’t call it a mess. Or maybe only a creative mess.’
‘You’re kind. But no – let’s face it. Let’s call a mess a mess. And if any creativity comes of  it, I’ll be the proverbial monkey’s uncle. Or aunt, in this case.’
Maud feels her way to the armchair and plants herself squarely into it.
‘There!’ she says. ‘Good. Lovely. Now then. What can I do for you?’

Maud is as sharp as you could want in a ninety-five year old. When I ask her to demonstrate how she’ll put the eye drops in after her cataract operation, she shows me a faultless technique, tipping her head back and using the bridge of her nose to brace her hand against.
‘There!’ she says, blinking hard and rolling her eyes. ‘Happy?’
I tell her how impressed I am.
‘I’ve never seen anyone use their nose like that. Just out of interest – what line of work were you in?’
‘Originally? Well – I started off as a goatherd!’ she says, carefully placing the tube of eye drops on the table next to her, then lacing her wrinkled hands together in her lap. ‘Not London, of course. Yorkshire. There was a scarcity of goats in London after the war.’

something good is just about to happen

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Harold doesn’t just suffer with anxiety – he’s anxiety incarnate. He is fret and worry and apprehension and dread, bound together with chains of despair. He is one hundred percent uneasiness, with a side order of foreboding. Anxiety has invaded his body, worn him thin as a pier post submerged by the tide, the black water rusting out the bolts, leaving just a pair of drilled holes for eyes.

‘But how do I know you’ll come?’
‘I will come, Harold. I promise. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.’
‘But what if you don’t? Who would I call?’
‘You could call the office. The number’s in the folder. But I should be there in twenty minutes, traffic permitting.’
‘What do you mean, traffic permitting? You mean you might not get here at all?’
‘Well – sometimes the traffic’s a bit sticky, Harold. But twenty minutes should do it.’
‘But it might not do it. It might not. And then where would I be?’
‘I think you just have to trust that things will work out.’
‘But you can’t guarantee it.’
‘No. I suppose when it comes down to it, I can’t.’
‘So you can’t promise me you’ll come?’
‘I can promise I’ll try.’
‘And you you’re not lying to me.’
‘No. I would never lie to you. I’ll always be honest. Even though it might not help sometimes.’
‘Because I don’t want to be told one thing and then something else happens.’
‘No. That’s not nice at all.’
‘So you’ll be here in twenty minutes?’
‘Twenty minutes. Try not to worry.’
‘But it could be longer?’
‘I’ll see you in a bit, Harold. Take care.’

I ring off. Take a breath.

Take care? Why did I say take care? It sounds too final – the kind of thing you say when you don’t think you’ll see someone for a while. Certainly longer than twenty minutes.

Even over the phone I can feel the glittering mycelia of anxiety reaching out to me. I shake them off. Take a breath. Drive more positively than normal. Get there in ten.

*  *  *

When Harold comes to the door it’s like someone throwing a curtain aside on a  monologue.
‘I was worried I’d caused a stain on the road.’
‘A stain Harold? What do you mean?’
‘A stain. I could see a black patch on the road outside, and I was worried my milk had leaked from the bottle. There was a workman outside and I asked him about it.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said it wasn’t the milk, it was the repairs they’d made to a hole. He said if it was milk it would’ve dried by now. But it could’ve been the milk, couldn’t it? The milk could’ve leaked and caused damage to the road? And then what would I have done?’
‘It definitely wasn’t the milk.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Positive. There are many things I’m not sure about, Harold, but I can absolutely guarantee your milk hasn’t leaked and damaged the road surface.’
‘But it was all black and shiny.’
‘That’ll be the bitumen.’
‘Bitumen?’
‘Yep. I would think.’
‘What’s bitumen?’
‘It’s a tarry substance they use to resurface roads.’
He frowns.
I take the opportunity to redirect his attention.
‘Would you mind if I came inside, Harold? The doctor wants me to take a little sample of blood…’
His round eyes deepen.
‘Blood? What on earth for?’
‘Let’s go inside and I’ll tell you all about it.’
‘But why does the doctor want you to take my blood? Am I ill?’
‘It’s nothing to worry about, Harold…’

It carries on like this all the way in to the living room. I put my right hand lightly on his shoulder, hoping the human weight of it might reassure him a little. When we reach the living room he hitches up his trousers, lowers himself with enormous care into a ruined armchair, then sits with his hands gripping the armrests, his spindly legs close together, his slippered feet flat on the floor. Only when all this is safely done does he turn his drilled gaze onto me.

I try the usual tactics. I ask him about his family, what job he used to do. I ask casual but specific questions about his daily routines. What he eats. How he sleeps. I ask about his bowel habits. How he’s managing. I make banal comments about the weather. I make him tea, and so on. But despite adopting the conversational profile of a pebble, every last thing gets turned into evidence of imminent ruin and disaster.

I settle back.

The walls are covered with pictures: kitsch, mini motivational posters, one of a kitten in a boot saying I hate Mondays; some with blocks of text saying stuff like Only I can change my life… or something good is just about to happen – but the one that really catches my eye is a copy of the Mona Lisa with a photoshopped spliff in her hand.

I look back to Harold and smile.

‘Am I ever going to be well?’ he says. ‘And don’t lie to me.’

where’s pepper?

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If I hadn’t looked at the notes and seen it written in black and white that an ambulance had been called and taken Maria into hospital where she’d stayed a few days, I’d swear she hadn’t moved since the last time I saw her. The only difference is that her little dog Pepper isn’t leaping around the place in a twitching fury, wondering whether to bite me or throw himself through the window.
‘Where’s Pepper?’ I ask her.
‘He’s sleeping next door with Theo,’ she says. ‘They’re both exhausted. We were all up late last night. Theo came round, for a social. He only popped in to say hello ‘cos I was back and everything, and he ended up staying all night.’
There’s half a chicken leg on the ash strewn table in front of her. ‘I’m sharing that with Pepper,’ she says, as if I’m hungry and on the take. She hides it under some newspaper.

Walking down into Maria’s basement flat is like walking down steps into an Egyptian excavation – except, this isn’t the lavish tomb of a pharaoh, filled with gorgeous sarcophagi, wrapped cats, miniature wooden carts and dishes of carbonised grain. This is the urban degradation version, piles of red reminders, missed hospital appointments, bags of medication, discarded asthma pumps, magazines, grimy throws and crochet blankets, inco sheets, elbow crutches. And the door isn’t protected by an unbroken seal and a curse, but a CCTV camera, securely wedged into the top corner of the hallway like a nuclear bunker for a spider.

I’ve been in to see Maria a few times before. There’s always someone sleeping in the next room. Sometimes it’s Theo, sometimes it’s Clancy, sometimes Giles (none of them sounding like real names at all). But it’s only now I’ve been given the heads up about what’s really going on.

The scheme manager had sounded annoyed on the phone.
‘She’s breaking the terms of the tenancy,’ he’d said. ‘We’ve got vulnerable people living in that place. This can’t be allowed to go on.’
‘What’s going on exactly?’
‘She’s being cuckoo’d.’
‘Cuckoo’d?’
‘You know – when someone moves in and takes advantage. Except it’s a little complicated in Maria’s case, because I think she likes the company.’
‘D’you mean Theo and Clancy and the rest?’
‘Whatever they’re calling themselves. They’re using her flat to sell and smoke drugs, heroin mostly, but other stuff, too. The police have thrown them out of there before. There shouldn’t be anyone else staying. We’re trying to get an injunction to stick on the grounds that she’s breaking the terms of her agreement, but these things are always more tricky than they sound. She’s definitely got capacity. But she’s a vulnerable person, though. No question.’
‘Do you think it’s safe for carers to go in? Because Maria is pretty self-neglectful.’
‘I would think so. I mean – it’s not the nicest environment in the world. But during the day it’s fairly safe with regards to ne’er do wells hanging around. And if they are around they’re unconscious.’
‘Not terribly reassuring.’
‘No. But what can you do. I know it sounds harsh, but I’d like to forcibly take Maria out of there, find her somewhere secure, out of the reach of these people, and then maybe she’d come to see how awful they really are. At the minute, they buy her food and keep her company, and I suppose that’s something. If only they wouldn’t deal drugs, though. Or keep a dog. Pets aren’t allowed.’

I decide to be perfectly open with Maria about the concerns that have been expressed about Theo and the rest.
‘I’m always perfectly open and straight with people because I think in the end that’s the best way,’ I say, by way of introduction. Maria looks worried.
‘It’s about Theo, isn’t it?’ she says.
‘Yes. There’ve been reports that Theo and some of the others are smoking heroin and using you and your flat for a base.’
She’s instantly furious. I’m amazed that Pepper hasn’t rushed in to see what the matter is, and can only think he’s in an opiate haze as well.
‘I know what’s happened!’ she says. ‘And it’s not what you think. There was a man round here a few months ago. Xavier his name was. Said he was my friend and everything, but turns out he wasn’t. Oh no! Tried to sell my dog at one point. So Theo turned up and kicked him out, and now Xavier’s got the hump, going around telling everyone lies about what goes on round here.’
‘He tried to sell Pepper?’
‘Yeah! To Theo. That’s the kind of low life he is! I mean – who’d sell someone else’s dog?’

making it back

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The Telegraph is too big for Martha. It’s like watching a duvet blown into a small tree.

‘I don’t know why I read it,’ she says, finally giving up, bundling it into an approximate mess and dumping it on the sofa next to her. ‘It’s not like I understand what they’re on about.’
‘You’re not alone in that, Martha.’
‘Wha’ d’ya say?’
‘I say I’m with you on that!’
‘Good!’ she says, but I know she hasn’t heard. I’d love to talk to her about politics and what she thinks of the world, but Martha’s so deaf now you have to put your lips to her ear and shout. And even then the best you’ll get is a smile and a chuckle and a knowing kind of ye-es. Any important questions or requests you have to write on a pad. Maybe there’s some telepathic component to all this, though, because after all the smiles and nods and eyebrows and complicated mimes, I always come away thinking I’ve had the liveliest conversation.

Martha’s been on our books for a while now. Initially we were called in by the doctor to keep an eye on her after a recent chest infection. But then she knocked her leg somehow – probably going downstairs to fetch The Telegraph – and it morphed into wound care. I’ll be sorry when she’s finally discharged, though. She’s such good company. A hundred years old now, she segues naturally from story to story without any prompting, like Time is a screen she can see through when the light falls in a certain way.

‘We were married seventy years,’ she says as I kneel on the floor dressing her leg. ‘Seventy years! Mind you – I didn’t see him the first three. I almost didn’t see him at all. He was in the RAF. A navigator. In a Blenheim bomber. Terrible planes. Dreadful. I think the Germans liked them, though. For target practice. How poor Tommy got through it all I don’t know. One night they were hit very bad – very bad – and they almost ditched in the Bay of Biscay. But the pilot kept ‘em going and they made it back somehow. Skipping over the waves like a stone, Tommy said. Skipping over the waves like a stone.’

morag’s bad dream

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Jack’s directions to the block are a strange mixture of precise and vague.
‘We’re the one with the flapping green canopy,’ he says. ‘The last brick building on the right as you head up from the sea. No – wait a minute. What am I saying? Second to last. But hang on – there are lots of brick buildings between us and the top road. But anyway. Flapping green canopy. Look for that.’

He’s right about the canopy. I can only think that all the recent bad weather has partially torn it from its fixings. I locate Jack and Morag’s flat among the forty or so others, press the buzzer, and wait – for so long I wonder if it’s working. Just before I press it again a voice crackles on the speaker.
‘Hello, Jack,’ I say, leaning in, struggling to be heard over the wind and the canopy. ‘It’s Jim. From the hospital.’
‘Right you are, Jim. Come on up.’
He buzzes the door and I push through.

Just as I turn to close it I see a woman walking up the path. She’s zippered to the chin in a metallic blue anorak with just her face showing from the hood of it, carrying a cat patterned shopping bag in one hand and a Cornish pasty in the other. I hold the door for her and wait. She doesn’t acknowledge me at all, just walks and eats, walks and eats, dividing her attention equally between the pasty and the pavement. She’s so methodical about the whole thing she reminds me of a cartoon robot, analysing a sample of human food whilst she makes her way back to the mothership.
‘There you go!’ I say, as she plods through the door. ‘I can see you’ve got your hands full.’
She walks past me without making the slightest acknowledgement – so ruthlessly I imagine she would have simply smashed through the door if I hadn’t been standing there to open it – scattering pastry crumbs as she heads for the lift, which happens to be  ready waiting. By the time I’ve picked all my bags up, both robot pasty woman and lift have gone.

I walk up.

Jack looks exactly as he sounds: pressed trousers, green cardigan, small check shirt and tie, silvery hair flowing backwards like the ripples in a crinkle cut chip.
‘Found us alright?’ he says, silently closing the door. ‘Morag’s in the sitting room. Last door on the left. Sorry – my left. As you look at the window.’

You would absolutely match them if they were playing cards. Morag is a watchful, bird-like woman, perfectly turned out in a silk blouse and tartan skirt, with crinkly hair that goes side to side rather than straight back.
‘Who is it, Jack…?’ she says, gripping the arms of the armchair.
‘Just a nurse from the hospital, darling,’ he says. ‘No need to be alarmed.’
She turns her clear blue eyes on me and waits to see what I’ll do.

‘So – how are you feeling, Morag?’
‘How am I feeling?’
‘Yes. In yourself.’
She frowns at me, as if that’s the most extraordinary thing anyone’s ever asked her.
‘I know you’ve had quite a day of it,’ I say.
‘Have I?’
‘Well – coming home from the hospital. After a long stay. Must be nice to be home.’
She shakes her head, sharing her bewilderment between me and Jack.
‘It’s alright, darling,’ he says. ‘Nothing to worry about. You’re home now.’
‘I am, aren’t I?’
‘Yes. And it’s lovely to have you back.’
Jack smiles at me with a level of control as perfect as his hair.
‘I’ve been sent by the hospital just to make sure you have everything you need, Morag,’ I say. ‘And to see what we can to do help. By way of equipment, physiotherapy, nursing – anything really. We want to make sure you’re safe, that’s all.’
‘I have everything, thank you,’ she says, with great caution.

Whilst the laptop warms up, and to keep the conversation going, I ask Morag if there’s anything troubling her.
‘There is, actually.’
‘Oh yes? What’s that?’
‘I’ve been having bad dreams.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Morag. What kind of bad dreams?’
‘There are these people. Young people. And they keep wandering in and out. Sometimes they look at me. Sometimes they don’t. Sometime they walk straight past, carrying things. Pushing things. And I haven’t the faintest idea who they are or what they want.’
‘That was the hospital, darling,’ says Jack, patting her on the hand. ‘That was the hospital.’

one hundred and two minutes

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Harry’s wife Jean has everything written down. She shows me her notebook – covered in tiny block capitals: one page for the dates and times of appointments, one for the names and dosages of drugs, another for all the names and times of the various clinicians who’ve visited over the last few months, and on the inside back cover, a list of all the important phone numbers, family included, some underlined, some with asterisks.
‘You’re pretty organised,’ I tell her, handing it back.
‘You’ve got to be,’ she says, carefully putting it away on the trolley she’s set aside for meds, dressings and everything else – a hostess trolley for the home nurse.
She’s even taken care of me. I came in with a cough, excusing myself, blowing my nose – an inauspicious start.
‘Oh dear!’ she said. ‘Are you alright?’
‘I’m fine. It’s this cold. Still hanging on even though it’s been three weeks now.’
‘Have some of this’ she says, plucking a bottle of cough mixture out of the air, like a magician. ‘It’ll blow your socks off but it’ll stop the cough.’
She pours ten mil of the gloopy brown mixture into a plastic measuring cup and hands it to me. I hold it up to the light like a fine brandy, and then throw it back in one.
‘Wow!’ I gasp, handing back the cup. ‘That’s potent!’
She raises her eyebrows and smiles.
The cough has gone.
‘I should definitely get some of that,’ I say.
‘Maybe you should. I’ll write the name of it down for you. Do you want to see Harry now?’

Harry seems much better. He’s sitting on the sofa sawing away at a fried egg on toast.
‘Sorry to disturb your breakfast,’ I say. ‘Good to see you eating, though.’
‘Pull up a plate!’ he says, gesturing with his eggy knife.
‘You’re alright, thanks, Harry. I’ve eaten already. Besides…’ I say, smiling at Jean, ‘I don’t think I’ll be tasting much for a few hours.’
‘The mixture? Aye – it’s strong stuff is that,’ he says, directing his attention back to the egg. ‘Kill or cure.’

Harry is an old tank soldier. He tells me about his life in the army whilst I finish writing up the notes.
‘I loved it,’ he says. ‘Signed up for five years. Made it ten. Came out for two weeks, turned round went straight back in for another ten. It’s been my life, man.’
‘You know – I remember, when I worked on patient transport there was this patient we saw a few times. He was a hundred and two or something, and he was a tank soldier in the First World War.’
‘Was he? Well – hats off. That was a tough business alright. I mean – it was never a picnic in the old Centurions. It was no Ford Fiesta, if y’know wha’ I mean? But those early tanks, they was regular death traps, man. I had a look in one once, in the museum. And I tell you what, I wouldn’t have driven it to Sainsbury’s, let alone the Somme.’

I have a sudden clear image of that old tank soldier, shutting his front door, carefully pocketing his keys, and then walking entirely freely and unaided down his front path to the waiting ambulance. I was struck then not just by how tough and wiry and cheerful he seemed, cap pulled down, a glance up at the sky, a cheery thumbs up before he grabbed the handles and pulled himself up the steps – but also by how bent forward he was, by age of course, a marked curvature of his spine, and something else, the posture and demeanour of a man who was used to squeezing himself into small spaces, resolutely getting into position for whatever lay ahead.

‘A hundred and two?’ says Harry. ‘Hats off. A hundred and two minutes and you’d a’ been doin’ well.’