sketches

class delivery

~ jim clayton ~ 4 Comments

You could write it out as a theorem:
The actual speed and simplicity of any given last job is inversely proportional to the stated degree of speed and simplicity.
‘Mr Harrison was discharged home late this afternoon, but he desperately needs a commode, zimmer frame, urinal and grabber. It’s on your way home. It’ll be a hi-how-are-you-here-you-are and away. Okay?’
‘Okay! Sounds great.’

I load up from stores and hurry out.

* * *

Another theorem:
The quality of any unadopted road surface and street lighting is inversely proportional to the monetary value of the houses either side.

Counter-intuitive, maybe, but I’ve seen it before. An unadopted road requires that every household contributes to its upkeep. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that rich people have access to whole stables of lawyers genetically bred to resist any payment by their clients into anything resembling a social enterprise – a position underwritten by the understanding that everyone who lives here will be driving around in gigantic four-by-fours, as insulated from the craters that pockmark the surface of the road as astronauts in moon buggies. If it tears lesser cars apart, so be it. It won’t be anyone they know, or have any financial exposure to. And it’ll discourage common access as surely as a stone lions and a spiked gate.

The road’s so horribly broken up it’s like I’ve been asked to deliver to a quarry. I find the Harrisons address only after a great deal of grinding and swerving, swearing and cursing. It feels like I should be driving a clown’s car, parping the horn when I finally pull up and all the doors and wheels falling off.

The Harrison’s address, La Repose, is a forbidding, floodlit, hacienda-style building, set back from the road at the top of a steep flight of steps. It’s like ascending to Heaven, if anyone ever made that journey burdened down with mobility and sanitary equipment, which I doubt, given that Heaven is a place where all those problems are taken care of, and the most you might need is a stand for your harp.

I’m out of breath by the time I reach the top. I remember seeing a Laurel & Hardy short once, where the two of them try to deliver a piano to a place very similar to La Repose. I remember one of them – Laurel, no doubt – letting go and the piano rattling all the way to the bottom. I’m tempted out of pure cussedness to do the same, although maybe a comic variation of my own, where I leave the equipment at the top and throw myself down.

I pull on a plaited iron cord. Somewhere deep inside something tinkles. Eventually, after a long pause, either because of the distance to be covered, or because she’s only just realised it’s the butler’s night off, or both, Mrs Harrison comes to the door.

She’s dressed in a bunch of chintzy, flowery wraps, or – if not dressed so much as covered in material that’s magically cinched itself around her as she floated through the boutique. I’m guessing she’s pretty exhausted after the day’s shenanigans, but allowing for that and for the effect of any medications she may or may not have been prescribed, still there’s an unfortunate haughtiness to her that her Romanesque features do nothing to underplay. Mrs Harrison out-Woolfs the Woolfs.

‘Ye-es?’
‘Hello. I’m Jim, from the hospital. I’ve brought some equipment for Mr Harrison.’
She sighs and steps aside – which I take as an invitation to enter, or – if not an invitation exactly, more a regretful accession to the barbarous necessities of the situation.
‘Thank you.’
At least the door’s wide, with plenty of room for me to struggle in with my load.
I set it down in the hallway and smile at Mrs Harrison.
‘Okay! Where’’d you want it?’ I say, suddenly sounding like a delivery guy in an Ealing comedy. If I had a flat cap I’d be taking it orf and scratchin’ me ‘ed.
‘You’ll find him upstairs,’ she says, pointing upwards, then turns and ghosts off through an arch.

Even though I want to be quick, I’m worried about knocking stuff over. The staircase is generously proportioned, but there are alcoves on each small landing, each one with a plinth and sculpture or vase. That, and the number of paintings on the walls make me hesitate before going up fully-loaded.

What the hell, though!

Just as I’ve balanced myself as best I can with the zimmer over my shoulders, the commode in front with the urinal, grabber and some other things balanced precariously on the seat, Mrs Harrison appears again.

‘I say! This needs to go, too’ And reaching over, with a fastidiously high-fingered gesture, she places on the very top of everything one small box of Lansoprazole.
‘Thank you very much,’ I say.
‘You’re welcome.’
And she stands aside to watch as I begin my ascent.

 

means of access

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I look through the letterbox. A dark, trash-filled hallway. Bottles, newspapers, discarded wrappers, scattered clothing. A bare staircase rising steeply to the left, the treads I can see completely cluttered-up with junk. I shuffle up closer to the letterbox to shout through and then listen for a reply, mindful of the rotten sinkhole that undermines the threshold.

Hello? Edmund? It’s Jim – from the hospital.

Silence.

I straighten up and wonder what to do.

I’ve already tried calling Edmund’s mobile, but it cuts out, number unavailable. I’ve tried his next of kin, too, but no-one answers. The next step is to call the ward he was discharged from – but before I do, it occurs to me that Edmund’s flat is over a shop. Perhaps they know something. I gather my bags and folders and go inside.

The shop is a shadowy, corner-of-the-parade affair, grilles on the windows, just enough light to make you think it’s open, but not enough to make you feel easy about being there. Beyond the empty counter at the back there’s a corridor leading to a workshop of some kind. The whole thing goes back a long way – so far, in fact, I can only imagine it undermines the row, slowly dipping underground, like a burrow excavated by some giant creature who then turned round and hurried back to disguise the opening as an antique shop.

There’s a dull light in the workshop, but even though I say Hello? no-one answers and no-one comes. There’s no bell on the counter, no gong to strike. I say Hello again, then put my stuff down, and wait.

High up on two of the walls are rows of Victorian dolls, perished bisque faces and ropy wigs, pegged out like ghastly exhibits in a public mausoleum. Underneath their slippered feet are shelves of tobacco tins, garish porcelain animals, Pierrot clowns. There’s a glass cabinet freighted with tin robots, jewellery boxes, cards and tops. And then placed in whatever space is left, there are boards of old badges and pins, rusty tin adverts for Guinness and Chesterfield smokes, and ranging in untidy heaps across the floor, racks of comics and Picture Posts, and prints of Twenties’ film stars in fading, polythene wraps.

Hi…?

It’s so quiet I can hear the dolls blink.

Eventually I’m aware of a movement out back – or, if not exactly a movement, then a subtle stirring of the air, the kind of proof of life you might expect in a cave when the hibernating occupant’s disturbed.

Hello?

A man steps out into my line of sight and waits there a while. I wave. He puts his glasses up onto his bald head and slowly comes through to see what I want.

‘Hi. Sorry to bother you. My name’s Jim and I’ve been sent by the hospital to see how Edmund’s getting on. Edmund upstairs. I wondered if you knew anything.’
I point to the ceiling, the maisonette above our heads.
‘Edmund? He’s in hospital.’
‘I think he’s been discharged. That’s why I’ve come. To see what he needs. You know – carers, equipment, nursing and the rest of it.’
‘Edmund?’
‘Yes.’
‘But he hasn’t come home from hospital. I was there this morning. They’re keeping him in.’
‘Oh! They told me he’d been discharged.’
The man takes the glasses from his head and begins cleaning them on a corner of his shirt.
‘No, no – Jim, did you say? No, Jim. He’s definitely still there. And thank God, too. Have you seen how he lives?’
‘No. I’ve never met him.’
‘Well then, James,’ says the man, putting his glasses on again, carefully securing the wire arms left and right over the backs of his ears. ‘Follow me…’
He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a bunch of keys and shakes them in the space between us.
‘I have the means!’

too many tarzans

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It helps they have a picture of Tarzan on the wall.
‘Is that Ron Ely?’
‘Where?’
Brenda glances towards the door, but I point to the dresser, the side of it, and a rather tatty colour photo stuck there with tape. Brenda gets up stiffly and shuffles over to look.
‘Oh – him? No. That’s erm… that’s Lex Barker.’
‘Oh! I thought it was Ron Ely. The TV Tarzan.’
‘No. It looks a bit like Ron Ely. But it’s not. It’s Lex Barker.’
‘I’ve never heard of Lex Barker.’
‘You’ve never heard of Lex Barker?’
‘No.’
Brenda leans forwards and shouts in the direction of her sister.
‘Jean? Did you hear that? Jean?’

Jean has fallen asleep in the chair – although she’s so slumped forward powered-off might be a better description. Her chin is resting on her cardigan, and she’s breathing in slow, regular breaths that puff out her toothless cheeks and escape with a soft, soughing kind of noise through her lips.
‘What?’ she says, straightening alarmingly, paddling her arms and legs. ‘I must’ve dropped off.’
‘Never mind,’ says Jean, and painfully turns, and sits back down again.

Even though I’ve never heard of Lex Barker, he strikes me as a way in. Brenda and Jean have been struggling to get by the last few years, completely off the radar of health and social services. A paramedic has alerted us to their plight, and I’ve been sent in to see how things are and what could be done to help. So far Brenda has been pretty tight-lipped, offering nothing, answering my questions with a guarded yes or no, the smallest shake of her head. I wonder what’s happened in the past to make her so suspicious.

‘God! However many Tarzans were there? I mean – you’ve got Johnny Weissmuller…’
‘He wasn’t the first,’ says Brenda. ‘There was one just after the war. Elmo Lincoln.’
‘Who?’
Brenda shrugged.
‘I never saw it. And another one after that. It’s always been popular, Tarzan. For some reason.’
‘Johnny Weissmuller’ I say, struggling to think of something to say that’ll keep the momentum going. ‘Wasn’t he an Olympic swimmer or something?’
‘He was. He came over in thirty-eight, to open the lido in Saltdean.’ She turns a loose wedding band round and round on her finger. ‘Although how they persuaded him away from California I’ll never know.’
‘I remember Ron Ely’ I say, looking at Lex Barker’s picture again. ‘I remember they had stock footage of crocodiles thrashing around in the water and elephants rampaging, and they tried to crowbar them in every episode.’
‘Telly’s come a long way,’ says Brenda. ‘They were poorer times back then. No-one had the money for real crocodiles.’
‘Gordon Scott!’ says Jean, unexpectedly ‘He was my favourite!’
‘Gordon Scott? You’ve changed your tune!’ shouts Brenda. ‘I thought it was Lex Barker! We’ll have to get another picture!’
Jean doesn’t reply. Eventually Brenda relaxes back in the chair and picks some lint off her skirt.
‘I don’t know,’ she says after a while. ‘Too many Tarzans, that’s the problem.’

a gap in the curtains

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‘Terrible. I feel awful. It’s my breathing. I can’t get my breath. And there’s nothing worse, is there? Not breathing? I’ve been like it months. Ever since I come home. Ever since I had the fall. I was going out to the garage. I can’t think why. A slipper come off and I missed the step. Went backwards. Right over the mobility scooter. Pulled a ladder down on top. I was stuck there ages. Calling for help. Brian come out, eventually. When he was hungry. He’s no help. He’s got dementia. He just stood looking at me from the step. What are you doing down there? he said. Then he went back inside. Six hours I was out there. In the freezing cold. The paramedics had a hell of a job. They had to use special equipment. Special blankets. Took me up the hospital. Found I’d broke three ribs. Caught pneumonia. Shocking state. Couldn’t sleep. People dying all around. There was one on the right. I heard them work on her. I watched her legs kicking up and down. Course – it was no good. They called it a day and went. Only they didn’t draw the curtains properly. I could still see her head on the pillow. All that long grey hair. I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t help myself. Eventually they showed up. The men in green. I heard them zipping up the bag. Wheeled her off. Later on I told the nurse. Why didn’t you say anything? she said. We would’ve shut the curtains. But I didn’t say anything, did I? I just sat there, staring. The long grey hair, hanging off the pillow like that. I went home the day after. But I can’t stop thinking about it. The gap in the curtains. The hair on the pillow. I mean – what are you supposed to do with something like that?’

a question of time

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‘I was a clockmaker’
‘Horologist?’
‘Well – I was going to use the official name, but you see – I didn’t want you to think I was showing off.’
‘Fair enough. It’s just I don’t get to say the word horologist very often. And now here I am saying it twice.’
Ray turns his filmy gray eyes onto me.
‘Of course, a person can use a thing too much,’ he says.
I help him back into his favourite chair, and then re-arrange his blankets, hot water bottle and padded stool for his feet.
‘Restored!’ he says.
Whilst I finish writing out the paperwork I ask him about his work.
‘You must’ve had such a steady hand.’
‘Everyone says that, but it wasn’t something I thought about. You get used to these things. You adapt.’
‘I suppose you do.’
I write some more.
A clock on the wall sounds the hour. It has a dark and sombre look to it, reliable, relentless – the kind of thing I can imagine hanging on the wall in a Victorian station master’s office. And as if the chimes have prompted the thought, Ray says: ‘If you could go back in time – anywhere at all – where would you go?’
‘Me? Ooh – loads of places. The Aztecs? Dinosaurs? I’d love to see a dinosaur, although depends very much on the dinosaur. If I had a protective suit I’d feel happier. Or I was invisible. Erm – I’d love to see a Shakespeare play, with Shakespeare in it. Dunno. What about you?’
‘I would like to see Stonehenge. As it was.’
‘Now that would be cool!’
‘What were they doing there?’
‘Stonehenge. Definitely!’
‘I mightn’t like what I saw, though. One thing that’s always struck me – how cruel people can be.’
‘Absolutely. And it’s not something that’s restricted to one period of time. There’s no end to it. So I suppose what you have to take from that is that there’s always a potential for cruelty in humans, and the best you can do is take it seriously, and not get complacent.’
Ray adjusts his hot water bottle, drawing it up his body a ways, nearer to his heart.
‘Yes,’ he says after a while. ‘Stonehenge. Like an enormous stone clock. I think I should like to see that.’
‘Well if you go this afternoon, leave a note so we know where you are.’
He laughs.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, and then reaching out a hand, extra-warm from the hot water bottle, ‘…and who knows? Maybe I’ll send a cart back for you.’

the very hungry caterpillar

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

‘I’m sorry if I was snippy when I answered the door,’ says Marjorie. ‘I thought you’d come to read the meter.’
‘That’s okay. I’d be the same if someone knocked me up first thing on a Sunday. I did try calling you…’
‘Yes. Well. We don’t answer if we don’t know who it is.’

Marjorie is sitting one end of the table, her husband John the other, making me feel less like a clinician and more like a family counsellor. It’s John I’ve come to see, though. He doesn’t seem anywhere near as bad as the referral suggested. In fact I’d go as far as saying he looks perfectly fine, chomping enthusiastically through a small stack of jam toast, with occasional gulps of tea to wash it all down.
‘Ahh!’ he says, setting the mug aside, and then, after picking up another slice of toast and holding it in front of him for a moment with something like a lover’s gaze, begins again. It’s like watching a giant caterpillar methodically working round a leaf – a caterpillar dressed in an Arsenal bobble hat, fleece and jogging bottoms.
‘Mind your fingers’ says Marjorie.
He nods, his eyes closed.
‘He fell off a ladder, you see,’ sighs Marjorie, securing her dressing gown with a resolute tug of the cord. ‘A few years ago now. He didn’t fall that far, but it was down onto the patio, and all the pots. He was pruning the jasmine. I’d told him to wait till I got back so I could foot the bottom. But no – he’s always just carried on regardless. And now look. One leg shorter than the other. He wears an insert in his shoe, but it doesn’t make any difference. And of course, everything else gets thrown out of whack. He’s got permanent back pain.’
John finishes his toast with a sigh, pushes the empty plate forwards and leans back in the chair.
I ask him what he takes for the pain.
‘Paracetamol!’ he says, slapping his tummy. ‘Four times a day.’
‘You shouldn’t be taking so much,’ says Marjorie. ‘It’s not good for you to take it all the time.’
He shrugs.
‘The doctor says it’s okay. If the doctor’s happy, I’m happy.’
‘It’s bad for your liver.’
‘I don’t see what it’s got to do with you,’ says John. ‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Everyone knows paracetamol are bad for you.’
‘Are you a doctor, Marg?’
‘Doctors don’t know everything, John.’
‘I say again – are you a doctor?’
‘I’m not having this discussion.’
‘I’m happy with paracetamol. The doctor’s happy with paracetamol. Let that be an end to it.’
It’s obviously a sore point between them. I try to take a middle position.
‘It’s difficult,’ I say. ‘Chronic pain is different to acute pain. You handle it differently. I mean, if you get a headache, you take something to help with that. But if you have pain all the time, you need to take regular doses to keep yourself on an even keel. If you let the pain get too bad, it’ll take more of something to get you back into the okay zone. The idea is to maintain a good cruising altitude.’
To illustrate, I make a half-hearted rising and falling gesture with the flat of my hand. Marjorie watches me with a slack expression.
‘I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re on about,’ she says.
‘I do’ says John, sucking a glob of jam off his thumb. ‘I do.’

how far is anywhere

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

Derek is sitting on the sofa, both legs stretched out on a stool, a tartan throw neatly draped over his lap – so precisely aligned it’s like a draughtsman has lain a grid over the lower half of him pending further work. Derek is cradling half a mug of tea on his belly, only freeing a hand now and again to point aggressively, either at me, or at Mia, the nurse who’s come to do the assessment with me.

‘Listen to me… just for one second,’ he says, in a hoarse and curiously fractured way, zoning in and out, soft one moment and aggressively emphatic the next, as if he’s speaking from a great distance and the signal keeps getting distorted, ‘I do not appreciate… I do not appreciate…yeah? All this, what you are doing. It irritates me, high up, in here…’ slowly transferring the pointing finger to his right temple and tapping, firmly, twice. I wonder if that’s the side he had the stroke, and I make a note to ask his wife Sandra about it. ‘I do not appreciate  this,’ he says. ‘I do not want it. Let me tell you something. I have been round the world. A few times. I’ve walked it. The entire world. And I’ve seen things. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve seen. I’ve seen people killed. Yeah? You cannot imagine…’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ says Mia. ‘I can’t. But – if I could just explain why we’ve come here today…’

Mia is unflappable. She wears her long years as a community nurse lightly, but with great warmth. It’s impressive to see how patiently she’s able to maintain her focus in the face of Derek’s behaviour, not rising to his challenges, progressing the meeting as best she can, slowly and neutrally, her clinical objective always in mind. I feel like a naturalist taking notes on a species of big cat, stalking its prey on the prairie. It’s instructive to watch her work, to see how she continually makes tiny adjustments to her approach, the way she sits, the way she puts her notes to one side, the way she holds him in her attention. If she had a tail it would be switching, infinitesimally, at the tip.
‘No! Now – wait!’ says Derek. ‘Let me tell you something.’
‘Please let them help you,’ says Sandra.
‘It’s okay, Sandra,’ says Mia, reaching over to touch her on the arm. ‘We’ve got time.’
‘And you!’ says Derek, stabbing the air in the direction of his wife. ‘You I’ll deal with later.’
‘Oh, Derek,’ says Sandra.
‘You know what you did. You let them in. You know I didn’t want them.’
‘But you’re ill.’
‘You I don’t mind’ he says, turning his attention back to Mia. ‘‘I don’t … have trouble with women. And I’ve known a lot of women in my time. You would not believe. But men? I’m a fighter. I’ve always been like it. Him,’ he says, flashing a sideways glance at me. ‘Him I would’ve had outside in a second. In a second.’
‘I’m sorry you feel like that,’ says Mia, smiling at me. ‘Now – look. it’s important that I explain to you why we need to see you today.’
‘No. Wait a minute. Listen.’
‘Derek! They’ve got people to see. They’ve got lives of their own.’
For the first time in the visit Sandra looks utterly forlorn.
‘I do not want a thing,’ says Derek, adjusting his position on the sofa with an uncoordinated lurch and slopping tea onto his t-shirt.
‘Oh now look! I’ll go and get a cloth,’ says Sandra, taking the mug from him. ‘Would either of you like a cup?’
‘That’d be great. Thanks.’
Sandra hurries into the kitchen.
‘Derek. We think you have an infection and we’d like to do something about it,’ says Mia, taking advantage of the distraction to strike the point home. ‘If you don’t let us help you it’ll just get worse and you’ll end up in hospital. Again. We respect your decision to say no, and we certainly wouldn’t go against that. But you have to understand what’ll happen if you don’t accept treatment.’
Derek closes his eyes, compresses his lips into a ghastly smile, and slowly shakes his head from side to side.
‘Just you listen a minute to me,’ he says. ‘You’ve had your say. Now it’s my turn.’
‘Okay.’
Weirdly, he almost seems to go to sleep, but when no-one speaks he suddenly opens his eyes again and points at Mia.
‘I’ve been round the world,’ he says. ‘I’ve seen people killed. I’ve seen people kill themselves, but it’s worse when they get killed. Can you – appreciate – what it is I’m trying to say to you? The whole world? Because I do not appreciate …. it gets me irritated …. up here. You do not get what I am telling you. I have been round the world, I’ve seen it…’
Sandra comes back in with a tray of tea.
‘There!’ she says, handing me and Mia a cup. ‘Although what I think you really need is a medal.’
‘I’ve been round the world. I’ve seen it,’ says Derek.
‘I know darling. And got the t-shirt.’
‘What?’ he says. ‘What t-shirt?’
‘Never mind, never mind,’ says Sandra, ‘I’m sorry.’ And sinking back down into the chair facing her husband, she straightens her skirt and takes a breath. ‘So. How far did we get?’ she says. ‘Anywhere?’

party line

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When Agnes finally reaches the front door, she looks so beautifully turned-out in her vintage, poppy-print housecoat it’s like she set off from the back kitchen sometime in the nineteen fifties.
‘Hello!’ she says, through a crackle of thick, coral pink lipstick. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’
She leads me slowly through into the lounge, and after gesturing to the sofa, perches herself on the edge of an armchair and fixes me with a bright smile.
‘Now. What’s this all about?’ she says.
I explain that her doctor has made the referral, but as I carry on talking I can’t help wondering if I’ve got the right address. Struggling with ADLs the referral said. Recent UTI. Needs TDS care & help with meds. Really? The room’s as perfect as Agnes. No sign of dust or disorder; nothing out of place; a clock and two porcelain clowns equally spaced on the mantelpiece; a TV remote symmetrically aligned with paper, pen and reading lens on a discreetly placed, Moroccan side table.
‘How are you feeling today?’ I ask her, opening the yellow folder.
‘Oh. You know,’ she says, smiling even brighter. ‘Annoyed with myself. I took the Christmas decorations down yesterday and now I can’t find them.’
‘I’m sure they’ll turn up.’
‘I hope so. Some of them were very old. Falling to pieces, but – well – you get used to these things.’
I know what you mean. My favourite decoration is a snowman playing the violin. He’s looking pretty shabby these days, but it’s nice to see him every year.’
‘I bet!’
‘I’m sure your decorations will turn up.’
‘I hope so,’ says Agnes. ‘I feel so cross with myself.’

-oOo-

After the examination I review the facts. All Agnes’ observations are normal. Her medication is nicely ordered in a dosette box that her son, Barry, organises at the beginning of each week. She is perfectly able to wash and dress herself; before her recent illness she was driving once a week to bridge club.
‘Shall I ring Barry and see what he has to say?’
‘That’s a good idea!’
‘Do you mind if I use the landline? Only – if I ring using the work mobile, the number won’t show and he might think it’s a sales call.’
‘Of course! Please – help yourself…’
Barry is on the address function. I press call – and it’s immediately apparent that the phone is on loudspeaker.
‘How do I take it off?’
‘Oh – it’s always like that’ says Agnes. ‘Don’t worry. Barry won’t mind.’
The phone keeps ringing – extremely loudly – and I’m still trying to figure out how to mute the thing when he picks up.
BARRY MOSS says Barry, in a voice so thunderous and sharp I want to hold the phone away from my ear.
‘Hello Barry. My name’s Jim. I’m a nursing assistant from the hospital…’
YES. UR-HUM.
‘Barry? The doctor’s asked that we come round to see your mum’s alright – to do her blood pressure and so on….’
YES
‘…but before I go on, can I just say… you’re on speakerphone at the minute and I don’t know how to take it off’
I smile and nod at Agnes; she smiles back.
YOU CAN’T. IT’S LIKE IT ALL THE TIME.
‘Would you like me to call you back on my work mobile?’
NO. IT’S ALRIGHT.
‘Okay. Agnes is sitting right here with me…’
I can’t make it any clearer that he’s being overheard, but if Barry’s understood, he makes no sign.
HOW IS SHE?
‘She’s fine. Aren’t you, Agnes?’
‘Absolutely!’ says Agnes, shaking her head and smiling. ‘Never felt better!’
YOU CAN’T TRUST A WORD SHE SAYS, YOU KNOW.
‘Oh, now – I don’t know about that…’
Agnes straightens in the chair. Although her smile doesn’t falter, I can see her fingers whiten round her knee.
Because I can’t immediately think of a way of stopping him saying anything else, I look to buy myself some time.
‘Let me hand you over so you can have a quick word with your mum,’ I tell him. ‘Then we can all have a chat about what to do next.’
HAND HER OVER, THEN
‘Hello darling!’ says Agnes.
HELLO MUM shouts Barry. WHAT’S ALL THIS? A PARTY LINE?

strange dreams in a blue house

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To paraphrase a movie tagline from the seventies: Rich means never having to say your address.

‘The Blue House, Ocean Rise’ isn’t much to go on. It sounds distinctive, though, and as I have some time before the appointment, I take a chance and drive straight there, figuring I’ll spot a blue house easily enough, especially on Ocean Rise, where all the houses are a transcendent white, following a brutalist style of architecture that’ll one day be known as ‘bunker chic’.

Ocean Rise is a grand, slow ascent of the cliffs to the east of town, an eclectic throw of old and new money, each house with a panoramic view of the sea, secure gates, and landscaped gravel drives leading to doors wide enough to walk through with a saddlebag of gold over each shoulder.

I’ve driven up and down the road twice when I admit defeat and pull over to call for directions. Even doing this gives me a prickly feeling, security cameras zooming in on the small, suspiciously old car as the driver flips through a diary and glances anxiously through the window. With any luck they’ll see the NHS lanyard and reassuring blue of my uniform and put the phone back on the hook. I mean – this isn’t the US. The worst you see here are signs that say: No Hawkers or Canvassers. In the US it’s Armed Response.

– Who is this?
Hello Mrs Shand. It’s Jim, from the hospital. I’ve come to see Mr Shand, to check his blood pressure and so on.
– Well where are you, then?
I’m on Ocean Rise.
– That’s it. That’s where we live.
I’m afraid I don’t have the number.
– We don’t have a number. We’re The Blue House.
I haven’t seen any blue houses.
– You won’t see it from the road.
No?
– No. We’re set back. On a hill. Behind a hedge.
Where on the road?
– (Oh for goodness sake) You know the new block? Moana Heights?
Yes.
– Turn in there, and then sharp left. It’s not signposted, but that’s where we are. Got it?
Yes. Thanks. See you in five minutes.

She hangs up, saying either Good, or possibly Good God, the ‘god’ part truncated.
I spin the car round and head in that direction, half a dozen outraged CCTV cameras capturing my registration plate.

-oOo-

Luckily, Mrs Shand is sweeter than her phone voice suggests. I can see that the stress of the situation is beginning to tell on her, giving her the alarmed and dangerously taut look of frayed rope.
‘He’s upstairs,’ she says, turning round in the hallway, bending down to pick up the post and in the process dropping half of the clothes and folders she already has in her arms.
‘Here. Allow me,’ I say, helping her sort things out.
‘He’s not well at all and I don’t know what to do,’ she says. ‘He’s leading me a merry dance, I can tell you.’
I follow her upstairs to a bedroom that’s like the deck of a ship, one great window stretching entirely across one end of it, the ceiling low, the only furniture in that vast space a simple double bed, an elderly man with wild, white hair lying placidly on top, both hands behind his head.
‘Hello?’ he says, stiffly pushing himself up on an elbow. ‘Who’d we have here, then?’
‘For goodness sake, Alfred! It’s the nurse!’ says Mrs Shand, trotting round the far side of the bed and fussing with some pillows. ‘You see what I mean?’ she adds, as if I’d just witnessed some outrageous display. ‘You see what I have to put up with?’
‘How are you, Alfred?’ I say, putting my bags down and then reaching out to shake his hand. His fingers are long and cool and frail, with so little pressure to them that if I closed my eyes it would be like shaking hands with a shadow.
‘I was having such a dream!’ he says, laying back down again and lacing his hands across his chest. ‘All those people! Coming out of the walls!’
He closes his eyes, then opens them again with a start, and looks straight at me, as if I was part of the same, ghostly parade.
‘Who did you say you were?’
‘Jim. From the hospital. Come to see how you are.’
‘Ah!’ he says, and then turns his pinched face up to the ceiling again, and closes his eyes.
‘Not good, Jim. Not good at all.

marvellous in moustaches

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘Call me Ellie. Everyone does.’
La Contessa is sitting in her riser recliner, one hand clapped over the business end of a cordless phone, the other held out to me – whether to shake or kiss, it’s hard to tell.
Are you still there, Doctor? she shouts into the phone, flapping her free hand for me to come in and sit down somewhere, anywhere. Hello? No – that was the nurse. Come to sort me out, I should think. I should HOPE. Now – this really is the most awful bother I’m in. Those pills you gave me aren’t doing the trick and I need something stronger. Something with a bit more of a kick. Mildred my domestic was telling me about the lovely liquid morphine she was given for her knee. She said she took a slug of it every time she had a twinge and it sorted her out nicely. I rather like the sound of that. So I’d be awfully grateful if you could see your way to organising that for me…….. Well, I’m hardly like to do that, am I? I haven’t moved from the chair in the last day or so…..No, not even for that….. which is why I’m rather hoping this kind nurse may have brought a special something to help with that aspect. (She glances over at me, raises her eyebrows, and nods.) Yes, she says into the phone, he just made a gesture to indicate that he HAS brought something…….Okay Doctor? Thank you Doctor. I’ll say goodbye for now, and I look forward to seeing you soon. Lovely. Cheero.

She presses the phone off in an overly forceful way – more like she’s grinding out a revolting bug with her thumb – then places it on the table of things next to her chair, and turns herself to address me.

La Contessa isn’t all she appears to be. Her fingers may be extensively knuckled with an array of decadent rings; her neck hung with impressive ropes of pearls and pendants, blue and white enamelled things reminiscent of medals, or obscure orders; and she might be surrounded in the room by Regency furniture and paintings of haughty relatives posing in country settings, with featureless children and bug-eyed dogs – but there’s something about the place, a junk-shop utility, that’s difficult to take seriously. I’m tempted to screw a loupe in my eye and hold her hand up for a closer look, but instead I unpack my bag and get ready for the examination.

The referral doesn’t say anything about any of this, of course, but Rae gave us the heads up. Rae is a physio. She came to see La Contessa earlier in the day, and was sufficiently impressed by everything she said about her life as an actress and scriptwriter, and her relation to half the royal family in Italy, to look her up on imdb. When that failed, she turned to Google, and came up with a much richer vein of information, which seemed to show that the only role La Contessa Eleganza di Dramamine had ever played in her life was La Contessa Eleganza di Dramamine. A role she plays to perfection.

‘Now look,’ she says – but then instantly appears distracted, tipping her head to one side like an inquisitive bird and scrutinising my face. ‘Have we met before? On a film set somewhere? What do you do when you’re not nursing? What d’you get up to?’

I’m always a little reluctant to tell anyone I’m a writer. Especially of a blog. It would feel like a duck hunter standing up in the reeds with a whistle, gun and hat with a duck on top. But I’m instinctively honest, and besides, I want to feel like I am actually a writer, and declaring it might go someway to making that happen, even if the next step would probably be to go to a support group, Writers’ Anonymous, and stand up when it’s my turn, and say Hi. I’m Jim, and I’m a writer.
‘I write,’ I tell her, a little forlornly.
‘Fabulous!’ says La Contessa. ‘Look in the drawer to my right, would you?’
The drawer is filled with business cards. I’m tempted to shuffle through them and see if they all say the same thing, but instead I take the first one I lay my hands on, and hold it up. A fancy gilt affair, curly lettering, La Contessa’s name followed by a long line of acronyms.
‘Send me some of your work,’ she says. ‘It’s all about the contacts, you know.’
‘Great! Thanks!’ I say, putting it in my pocket.
‘This back pain really is the most dreadful nuisance. I’m halfway through a project and it’s cutting across everything like mad.’
‘What’s the project?’
‘Oh – you’d love it! It’s called The Heart is Another Country. It’s about a Mata Hari figure in World War One who has to choose between duty to her country and this rather scrumptious German general she falls in love with. It’s in pre-production, but not quite cast. Darling Judi is frightfully keen to play the mother. Do you know Judi?’
‘Dench?’
‘That’s the one!’ says La Contessa. ‘Stephen wants to play the general, but I don’t know how to put him off. He’s frightfully brilliant, of course, and he looks marvellous in moustaches, but I’m just not sure I could take him seriously.’