sketches

back into spit

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

It’s a difficult situation. Everyone’s tried persuading Edward to go to hospital. The manager, another resident, the domestic – even Ray, the gardener, standing in the doorway with a lawn rake in his hand.
‘Why don’t you just do like the gentleman says? He knows what he’s talking about. I should hope. What’s to be gained, hanging on like this?’
‘I am NOT going back into spit and that’s that,’ says Edward.
Ray looks at me and shrugs.
‘It’s a free country,’ he says. ‘‘I’ll be outside if you need me.’

Edward was only discharged a few days ago following a spell in hospital with pneumonia. Now it seems as if the infection is back and more widespread. All the red flags associated with sepsis are fluttering loudly around his bed: temperature, tachycardia, low blood pressure, low SATS and so on. The trouble is, Edward hated it in hospital. He couldn’t get any sleep. The nurses were forever bothering him. The bed was uncomfortable. It was too bright.
‘Well – no-one would book a holiday there,’ I tell him.
‘They certainly would NOT.’
‘But sometimes hospital is the only place to be.’
‘No, no, NO.’
I can see I’m going to be here a while.
‘I can’t just leave you, Edward.’
‘Why not? I’ll be fine.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘What’s the worst that can happen?’
‘You could die, for starters.’
‘Nonsense! I’m fine. I’m a hardy old soldier, you know. I’m perfectly able to look after myself.’
‘When did you last get out of bed?’
‘A few days ago.’
‘So you haven’t been to the loo since you came back from hospital?’
‘Not really, no. But then I haven’t been drinking much, so there you are.’
‘Except a little wine, I see.’
‘Only a snifter. But one thing’s for damned sure, I am NOT going back into spit.’

I call Edward’s daughter, Jenny, using his ancient phone with the rotary dial. I explain the situation to her, then pass the handset over. He holds the phone slightly off to the side, staring at me as she speaks, shaking his head sadly.
‘It’s no good you keeping on,’ he says. ‘I’m not going back to that dreadful place and that’s that. I’d rather expire here in bed, in comfort.’
He hands the phone back to me. I try to reassure Jenny that I’ll do my best, and promise to call her again with an update.
‘Sorry’ she says, sounding tearful. ‘He’s never been what you might call easy. And to cap it all, our dog died this morning.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
She pauses to blow her nose.
‘Sorry,’ she says again. ‘But Dad’s got to understand – we can’t go on like this.’
The phone pings when I put it down.
‘Jenny says you’ve got to go.’
‘Does she?’
‘Yes. She told me she’s at breaking point.’
‘Breaking point!’ says Edward. ‘Women don’t break.’

Antoni the cook comes in, a huge figure in black and white check trousers, enormous rubber shoes and a blue plastic cap.
‘Oh – what now?’ says Edward.
‘My man!’ booms Antoni. ‘Mister Edward sir! What is this I am hearing? You are very very sick and you will not go to hospital? What is this nonsense?’
‘Why would I go back to hospital? I’ve only just come from there. They wouldn’t have let me out if they didn’t think I was well enough.’
I shake my head.
‘These things can happen quite quickly. You were okay then. You’re not now. That’s it.’
‘Can’t you just get the doctor out? I’m sure he could give me something?’
‘Yes he definitely can!’ says Antoni, putting two fingers to his temple and triggering his thumb. ‘This is what they do to stubborn old men who won’t do as they’re told. They shoot them like the sick horses.’
He looks at me and laughs.
‘I am not going back into spit and that is final,’ says Edward.
Antoni leans in to me and speaks in a lower voice.
‘What is this spit? To what is the meaning, please?’
‘I’m not sure. I think it’s an old army term for prison.’
‘Ah! I see! This is the brave soldier on the beach who carry his leg in his arms and he shoot with it.’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘Well good luck to you sir!’
He pats me on the shoulder with a vast, floury hand, then taps the side of his nose a few times, and winks.
‘Come see me in the kitchen,’ he says.

the sarcophagus in the room

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I knew I’d seen him before. He’s the father of someone I used to work with in the ambulance.
‘How’s Gracia? It’s a shame we lost touch.’
‘Fine,’ he says. ‘Same as ever.’
‘Tell her I said hi.’
‘I will.’
So how’s her daughter, Lily?’
‘D’you mean Sofia?’
‘That’s it. Sofia. How’s Sofia?’
‘She’s fifteen now.’
‘Is she? Fifteen! Where does the time go?’
‘If I knew I’d go there, too.’
‘Is Gracia still in the ambulance?’
‘Nah. She works in a surgery. She’s a practice nurse.’
‘A practice nurse! That’s great!’
‘She likes it.’
I close the yellow folder, put it to one side, then pause a moment to chew the fat, hooking my hands around my knee, rocking forwards and back.
‘That must’ve been when I met you for the first time. Fifteen years ago, at Sofia’s first birthday party.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘In a function room over a swimming pool.’
‘I think it was at the Buddhist centre.’
‘Was it?’
‘I think so.’
‘Maybe I’m thinking of someone else.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Didn’t Gracia’s husband work in the fashion trade? Wasn’t he a buyer or something like that?’
‘He’s a dentist.’
‘A dentist?’
‘But they’re not together any more.’
‘Oh. Sorry to hear that.’
He sighs and pulls his cardigan more tightly around him, even though the room is stiflingly hot.
‘I’m glad I’m on the mend,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a cruise coming up in a couple of months.’
‘Have you? How lovely! Where’re you going? Somewhere warm?’
‘Egypt.’
‘Great! I’d love to go to Egypt. The Valley of the Kings and all that.’
‘I’ve always been fascinated by the Ancient Egyptians. As you probably guessed when you walked in the door.’
I glance round the room – mostly at a well-stocked bookcase to his left, crammed with Egyptian art and history books, each shelf lined with a selection of soapstone figurines, cats and bulls and miniature obelisks, and on the very top shelf, either end of a row of smaller books with golden and black hieroglyphs on the spines, two pharaoh head bookends cast in resin.
‘I see what you mean!’
‘Not that,’ he says, ‘That!’ and nods to my right.
And for the first time I see it – a life-size replica of King Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus, standing floor to ceiling, brilliantly lit by four spots.
‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Wow! I totally missed it!
‘He takes a deep breath, sighs and shakes his head.
‘Well. Hidden in plain sight, then,’ he says. and folds his arms. ‘All done?’

head to head

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‘Shall I take my shoes off?’
‘No! Why? Why would you take your shoes off?’
‘I don’t know. It’s what I’d do at home…’
‘Are you at home?’
‘No.’
‘Is it raining outside?’
‘No.’
‘Then leave your shoes on and stop making such a fuss.’
‘Okay.’
Masha turns round in the narrow hallway and shuffles ahead of me down the hallway. I feel uneasy, like I’m being led into a cave by a ferocious old bear I’ve accidentally woken from hibernation.
‘Where shall I sit?’ I ask her, stepping into a bright and clinically tidy room.
‘Not in my chair!’ she says. ‘The sofa – perhaps.’
I put my bags down, take my jacket off.
‘There!’ I say. ‘That’s better!’
Masha sits on the edge of her armchair. She’d be an extraordinary figure in any circumstance – her hair dyed a rich, autumnal red and swept back off her head into something like a horn; her face slack and mournful – but illuminated as she is by the sunlight sparkling in through the window behind her, she seems hardly real at all, more like a brilliant, cartoon illustration from an article about a lonely clown. She reaches for a box of tissues, takes one out and starts folding it on her lap, over and over and over, into a tight little pad. I half expect her to reach for a pair of scissors, make a few adept snips, and unfold it to reveal a chain-word. грустный, perhaps. несчастье
‘How are you today?’ I say, throwing my hands wide, smiling as warmly as I can.
‘How do you think I am?’ she says. ‘Terrible. I am terrible.’
‘Oh! I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘You’re sorry. Everyone is sorry. But no-one does a thing to help. So I am left here on my own, with nowhere to go, and nothing to do.’
And now I learn what the pad is for. She starts to cry – not an open sobbing so much as a discreet overflow of tears, oozing out through the myriad folds of her face, like her sadness was a water table of misfortune, high after a particularly long and inclement season.

Masha has a chronic condition that surgery hasn’t helped. She’s been in and out of hospital over the past few years, enduring several interventions that haven’t worked. This would be hard enough in itself, but the way Masha describes her experiences, it’s difficult to resist the feeling that her rather blunt way of talking has only made things worse.

‘…. an Asian consultant, he appeared at the bottom of the bed with a nurse, and he talked and talked without looking at me once, and at the end of all this nonsense he said Does that answer your question? So I said no it does not answer my question. I did not understand a single word you said. And I looked at the nurse, and she just clamped her mouth shut, like this… and shook her head from side to side, like this… and then they both went away. Later on I could hear them all talking about me in the office, because my bed was at the end of the ward. When the nurse passed my bed again I called her over. I told her I heard everything she said, and how she was a disgrace to her profession, and if I was in charge she could be sure I would throw her out, and good riddance. And she cried then, and everyone made a big fuss about it, but I’m not afraid of saying when something is wrong. Like yesterday, when I telephoned the hospital to find out why I had been forgotten, and the woman who answered the phone, she asked me what my problem was, and I told her I would not talk to her about it because what was she? A doctor? No – she was a silly little taker of messages who had no business asking intimate questions about someone’s health. And please would she fetch a manager, because I would not be spoken to in such a manner….’

And all the while Masha talks, she punctuates her sentences with a little dab of the tissue to the end of her nose.

She talks at great length. Her tone is curiously unsettling – self-assertive to the point of hostile, but with the occasional upward inflection that’s pitiful, almost childlike. She lists all the dreadful things that have happened to her, from rude reception staff and patronising community nurses to incompetent paramedics.

‘My sister said to me before I came to this country, she said Masha? You will find yourself in trouble over there. But I have never been afraid to speak the truth. I will not dress a thing up just so that people can feel okay.’

Masha pulls a fresh tissue from the box, and I take advantage of the pause to ask if she has any family nearby. She nods to a framed photo on the sideboard. It’s a photo of a young woman, forehead to forehead with a horse. On the left of the picture is the enormous eye of the horse; on the right, the young woman, her eyes closed, her left hand pressed affectionately to the angle of the horse’s jaw.

‘My niece, perhaps,’ says Masha, smoothing out the tissue on her lap and starting to fold it as meticulously as the first. ‘But she is busy.’

annie and the clocks

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It’s hard to ignore the ticking of the clocks. Annie’s back room is crowded with them – a longcase over in the corner, something like a rickety old school clock on the wall, an ornate mantel clock on the sideboard, and an alarm clock on top of the fridge. I’m even conscious of the ticking of my fob watch, the smallest component in this dizzying syncopation of tocks and clicks and ticks. It feels as if I’m not just marking Annie’s pulse, but the passage of Time itself.
‘Alright?’ she says.
‘Fine’ I reply, releasing her wrist. ‘So far, so good.’

There’s a line of toys on the chair facing us: teddy bears of varying heights and condition, a rag doll, and squatting at the front, the monkey from the PG Tips adverts.
‘Quite an audience,’ I say, writing down the results.
‘Keeping an eye on you,’ she says, rolling down her sleeve. ‘So watch out!’

‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Seventy year or more. We came just after Lily died.’
‘Oh. Sorry to hear that. Who was Lily?’
‘Lily was our little girl. She died just before her seventh birthday.’
‘That’s awful. What happened?’
‘We couldn’t wake her up one morning. I knew something was terribly wrong, so I scooped her up and ran with her to the hospital. There was nothing they could do, though. We were too late.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘They didn’t say.’
‘Didn’t they do a post mortem?’
‘No. We never did find out. But now I know what it was. I’ve watched enough of them real-life hospital programmes. She died of a bleed on the brain.’
‘Had she had a fall or banged her head?’
‘No. Not that we ever knew. It was probably just something she was born with.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Well.’

Annie reaches forward and sets the monkey a little more upright, arranging his arms neatly in his lap, and patting his head.

‘We had to move,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t have any more children. But we did alright. Eventually. And now Harold’s gone I don’t know what to do with myself.’

She smiles.

‘The thing is – I’m tired and I just want to go n’all. I’m ninety-four and not a sausage out of place. My nephews and nieces, I know what they’re thinking. They see me shuffling around this empty old house and they think what a waste! Not that I blame them. Truth is – I completely agree! It’s all gone on too long. If you ask my honest opinion, it’s high time I went!’

a pocket full of pits

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Jack is sitting at the kitchen table, the bright morning sunshine intensifying the yellows and greens of his tracksuit, and the silvery lustre of his magnificent, Edwardian, handlebar moustache.
‘You don’t look ninety-five’ I tell him. ‘If you’d have said seventy-five, maybe’
‘Who do I make the cheque out to?’ he asks, then takes a sip of tea. ‘No – really – that’s most awfully kind of you to say so,’ he adds, carefully sweeping his moustache for drips, once to the left and once to the right.
There’s a helium balloon tied to the corner of his chair.
‘Happy Birthday for the other day!’ I tell him.
‘Thank you,’ says Jack, closing his eyes and nodding. ‘D’you know – the funny thing is – I never really celebrated birthdays. They used to pass me by, quite unnoticed.’
‘That’s a shame’
‘It just never seemed that important to me. Perhaps that’s why I’ve reached this preposterous age. I lost track of how old I was sometime around thirty.’
‘Well – whatever the reason, I’m very impressed. I hope I’m as good when I get to ninety-five. If I ever do.’
‘Oh – you’ll be fine,’ he says, finishing off the tea and wiping his moustache again. ‘Of course, there are no guarantees.’
‘Did you score any good presents?’
‘Do you know I can’t remember!’ he says, then folds his arms and leans back. ‘I tell you one birthday present I do remember, though. The best one I ever had. No doubt you’ll think me quite daft.’
‘What was it?’
‘It was nineteen-forty one. I was eighteen or thereabouts. On a warship somewhere in the Atlantic. Well – one of the chaps got wind of the fact it was my birthday. Why didn’t you tell us he said. We’d have made a fuss. And he hurried off. The next thing I knew, he’d come back with an enormous tin of plums. Greengages, in syrup. He’d been to the kitchen, you see, and made a fuss about it being my birthday and so on, and that’s all they had spare. So we took the plums up on deck, to the sunniest spot we could find. And we sat down and we ate them with our fingers, one after the other. It doesn’t sound like much, but it meant the world to me.’
‘I like plums.’
‘Yes, well, there were rather a lot,’ he says. ‘You’d have been alright.’
‘That reminds me of a story about my Uncle John,’ I tell him. ‘He’d been fighting in Italy when he got captured and thrown in a POW camp.’
‘That’s a shame’ says Jack. ‘Was he a marine?’
‘No. Regular army. Anyway, the story goes he escaped from the camp and fought with the partisans.’
‘Good man!’
‘Yeah – but the thing is, when I asked Auntie Ollie about it, she said that wasn’t what happened at all. She said he shacked up with a farmer’s daughter and finished the war picking peaches. It’s a shame I don’t get the chance to see her more often. She’s all the way down in Exmouth.’
Jack looks startled.
‘I heard the exact same story!’
‘Did you?’
‘Yes! My wife comes from Devon. One of those villages where you can’t walk five paces without bumping into a second cousin or what have you. Now, Rachel’s brother – one of her brothers – he disappeared in the war and they all thought the worst. But then he turned up in the Woolpack with nothing more than a grin and a pocket full of peach pits.’
Jack strokes his moustache, then slaps the table.
‘I’ll bet you a pound to a pinch of snuff it was the same farm!’ he says.

sold

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Rachel brings her tea over and sits with me.

‘What’ve you been up to?’ I ask her.

‘House hunting’ she says.

‘How’s that going?’

‘Terrible. I had the worst day the other day. I saw nine houses.’

‘Nine?’

‘I know. I just booked out the entire morning and went’

‘Did Ben go?’

‘Ben? No! He can’t stand it. But you play to your strengths. I’m what you might call the triage nurse in this relationship, especially as far as houses go. I sift out the crap. Which is all of them.’

‘It’s a thing, that’s for sure.’

‘I had the weirdest estate agent show me round. She was only young. About twenty, I’d guess, her hair all piled up. And she had this heavy makeup that stopped at her chin, circling her features, which made her look a bit like a giant egg. I couldn’t help asking about it. I do it like that so I don’t get raped she said’

‘What a thing to say!’

‘I know! She was wearing an extraordinary outfit. White fur jacket split at the sides, bright pantaloon trousers and leather boots. Although she was barefoot when I met her at the office. She was sitting on a chair digging her toes into the carpet. Mmm she said. Feel that!’

‘Weird!’

‘That’s not the half of it. When we got into the car she said she knew right off we’d get along because she gets a feeling about people. She said she thought I was a florist, and when I said I was a nurse, she said yeah, I’m not surprised, because you totally look like one. And anyway, she said, I’m just glad you’re not like the usual stiffs I have to show round.’

‘Wow!’

‘And then there were the houses. Honestly, Jim – it was like a roll call for the damned. The first one was a bungalow right the other side of town, down by the river. I mean literally by the river. On the flood plain. Don’t worry, she said. It only floods when it’s tidal. What – you mean like twice a day? I said. You’re up some steps so you’re good, she said. Anyway, it’s an unadopted road, which people love. It means you can do what you want with it. I reckon it’s more that the council know it floods and have washed their hands, I said, but she ignored that and showed me round. A dismal, lightless hole that should’ve been condemned, let alone put on the market. No? she said – okay – I’ll show you some more.

The next one was worse. It had this terrible atmosphere, creepy and sad, like someone had died or been murdered. I asked her if anyone was living there at the moment because I couldn’t tell. There was a mattress on the floor, and the sheets were thrown back, odd things scattered about. She said yeah, a woman and her kid. She’s getting divorced or something. Honestly, Jim – I wanted to start taking some details so I could call social services. I mean – it was getting a bit like work. Anyway, that was no good, so we drove over to the next house and out of the blue she asked me if liked macaroni cheese? I said yep, love it. I said we’re vegetarian, so we have macaroni cheese quite a lot. Have you tried it with bacon on the top? she said, because that is the absolute nuts. And I said well…no, because we’re vegetarian. So she said did I know why Muslims don’t eat bacon? I said I thought there was something in the Quran about it, and she said yeah – it’s because they eat their own shit.

The next house she showed me had an enormous crack right down the middle. I mean huge, like if you slammed the door it would fall apart in two halves. Oh that? she said. That’s just subsidence. I sold a house exactly like this the other day for four-fifty. Then she laughed and said there’s no way they’ll be able to resell. I wanted to say to her – you do know that’s not a good story to be telling me in this situation, right? But what was the point?

The last house she showed me belonged to this elderly couple. The estate agent stayed outside stomping up and down having some huge argument on her phone whilst I looked round. It was run-down, like all the others, but of course I was going through the rooms making lots of encouraging noises like you do. Oh – I love what you’ve done in the bathroom. Those brown tiles are really so, I don’t know, quirky – kind of thing. The elderly guy followed behind me the whole time, breathing down my neck, which was unnerving. Every time I turned round he was right in my face, smiling. I went into the bedroom and there was this enormous cactus in a pot. I mean gigantic – the same height as me. I turned round and there he was, smiling away. I can see you like my phallic cactus he said. And that’s when the estate agent came in. What d’you think, she said, clapping her hands. Sold?’

one for the vault

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It’d been a year since I last saw Vera. I remembered her clearly, though. A bracingly independent woman in her nineties, Vera had been non-compliant with everything – meds, treatments, appointments – and so utterly resistant to any offer of help she’d physically ripped up the paperwork in front of Marion, the physiotherapist, and handed back the empty folder. Reports were that Vera had declined a great deal since then, unfortunately. Several admissions to hospital with falls and so on. A recent stay for increased confusion, reduced mobility. Ill health had softened her up a little; she’d accepted a couple of care calls a day, and we were in the process of ordering a hospital bed, and doing whatever we could to set up a micro-environment so she could stay at home.
‘The doctors are saying palliative, not quite End of Life phase, but not far off,’ says Marlene, the lead nurse. ‘See what you can do.’

As soon as I let myself into the flat I know something’s wrong.
‘Vera? Hello? It’s Jim, from the hospital.’
A muffled voice from the bedroom.
I’m on the floor.

Vera’s lying so close to the door it’s tricky getting in. I have to take my jacket off, put my bag down, cheat a gap just wide enough to squeeze through sideways, and then reach back through for the bag.
‘Have you hurt yourself, Vera?’
‘No. But I can’t get up.’
‘Let’s just have a look at you.’
Vera has slipped off the bed, dragging the quilt down with her and landing semi-recumbent on the carpeted floor with the quilt rucked-up behind her back. As landings go, pretty neat. I check her over, just to be sure. She has no power in her legs, and she’s too big for me to help up on my own.
‘I’m going to have to call the ambulance, Vera.’
‘Look – never mind that. Just listen closely. There’s a leather suitcase over by the window. I want you to take it to the bank. To the manager. The manager will then lock it in the vault. D’you understand me? A leather suitcase! For the vault!’
‘Okay – but – first things first, Vera. I’m just going to call for an ambulance along to help with the lift, and when we’ve got you up and everything, we’ll think about the rest.’

The ambulance call taker goes through the usual triage algorithm, as tedious as ever, but I understand the reason behind it. Except – this particular call taker has an unfortunate tone, robotic and quite aggressive.
‘How long has the patient been on the floor?’ he says.
‘It’s hard to say. Vera’s not a particularly reliable witness, I’m afraid. But the flat’s nice and warm, she’s comfortable and not in any distress, so I don’t think any of that’s a problem.
‘Can you place your hand in the middle of the patient’s chest and tell me if they’re cold or not.’
‘I’ve got a thermometer in my bag. I could do a temperature if you like.’
He simply repeats the question, a little more slowly.
‘Look,’ I tell him, feeling riled, ‘I’m sorry but I’m not going to be placing my hand on her chest or anywhere else.’
‘Are you telling me that you’re refusing to carry out my instructions?’
‘I just don’t think it’s necessary.’
‘In that case I shall be making this case a higher priority.’
‘Great. Suits me. I don’t particularly want to be waiting here for hours.’
‘The patient has now been triaged as a Category Red 2 response: possible hypothermia.’
‘Fine. She’s not, but – whatever.’
I feel like telling him I used to be an EMT, but I don’t. It’ll probably make him worse.
He carries on with the algorithm, even though I offer to do a set of obs for him.
‘An ambulance will be with you shortly’ he says, giving me some worsening care advice and a reference number. ‘Thank you for your assistance,’ he says, coming to the end of the screen, and then adds, with a little shiver of personality: ‘Have a nice day,’ and rings off.

I’m halfway through my examination when the buzzer sounds. Five minutes later two paramedics come through the door – the lead one, Chloe, an old workmate of mine I haven’t seen since starting the new job. We kiss and hug and how are you and everything.
‘This is Prina’ says Chloe, introducing me to her colleague. We shake hands.
‘Me and Chloe go way back,’ I say to her, blushing slightly.
‘I didn’t think you were strangers’ says Prina.

I show them into Vera, who’s so comfortable on the floor she’s virtually asleep. I tell them the story of the fall and as much background information as I have. Between the three of us getting her up is easy. She has to go in to hospital, though. She’s not safe to be left at home – and really, shouldn’t have been discharged in these circumstances. Still, it’s always a difficult judgement call, complicated by issues of mental capacity and the incessant demand for beds.

Vera seems happy to go in – or if not happy so much as passively accepting. She’s cocooned in a couple of cell blankets on the paramedics’ carry chair, her frosty white hair spiking up out of the top, making her look like an enormous alien chrysalis retrieved from a glacier.
‘Don’t forget that suitcase!’ she says to me, suddenly perking up and wriggling dangerously from side to side on the chair like she’s about to break out and spread her wings. ‘It has to go to the vault!’
‘What suitcase?’ says Chloe, resting a hand on her shoulder. ‘What vault? Sounds intriguing.’
‘There’s nothing intriguing about it,’ says Vera, desperately chinning enough of a gap in the blankets so she can glare at Chloe. ‘It’s where I keep my manuscript!’
Chloe laughs.
‘I miss working with you,’ she says, smiling at me. ‘There’s always something – I don’t know…’ But then she straightens up and nods to Prina. ‘You’re great, too,’ she says.
‘Oh – get a room’ says Prina.

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

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

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

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

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.’