sketches

naturally three

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Gemma, the OT, is pregnant. So pregnant, in fact, she gets asked dozens of time a day how much longer she plans on coming in, as if the questioner thinks she’s slightly crazy, and they’re worried they’re going to find her conducting a patient assessment with a baby bumping along behind her, still attached to the cord.

‘Because you really are so big and out front,’ says Faith, stirring her hot chocolate slowly, before licking the spoon and then using it to trace in the air the generous arc of Gemma’s belly. ‘I imagine this means you will be having another boy.’

‘I don’t think so,’ says Gemma, leaning back against the sink. ‘The scan was pretty clearly a girl. But I’d be happy either way.’

‘Ah – you see! But these scans and things, they can be wrong. I had a friend back in Zimbabwe, she was forty-two years of age, and she had one more baby, and she decided enough was enough. So when the baby came she called him Finish, and she went straightaway and had her tubes tied. But then, you see, the next year, because of recanalization or something else I don’t know what – the very next year, she fell pregnant again. And she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. And do you know what they called this baby girl?’

‘Miracle?’

‘No. That would have been a good name. But no! They called this baby girl Stop!’

‘What were her middle names? Please Dear and God?’

‘I don’t know that she had any middle names. No – it was just Stop, I think. So then she went back to the surgeon, and he said okay, okay, and he tied the tubes a little tighter this time, and that was that. Six children, and hardly room to put four.’

‘I’ll be happy with three. I think three’s plenty.’

‘Yes. Three is a good number.’

Faith picks up her hot chocolate and takes a sip, then cradles it ruminatively beneath her chin.

‘But you know something, Gemma – I can’t think of anything in nature with three of anything. Can you? Four legs on an elephant. Four legs on a cat. Two on a kangaroo. But three…?’

‘I think an octopus has three hearts,’ I say, squeezing in between them to rinse my cup at the sink.

‘Ah! Well! There you go, then,’ says Faith. ‘You wouldn’t want to be like an octopus, would you? Although, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad idea. That’s one thing you definitely need more of with babies.’

‘What – hearts?’

‘No. Arms.’

technical glitch

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

The rush hour has a hectic, drawn-down feel, people hurrying home through the damp streets, clutching their collars against the rain, struggling with umbrellas, the headlights and brake lights of the traffic around them fitfully illuminating the wintry October night.

Arthur is our last assessment for the day. If we’re to be off on time we’ll need to be quick, but so far at least, the omens aren’t good.

To begin with, we just cannot find the damned house.

I’d spoken to his wife June just half an hour ago to let her know we were coming. But now when I try to call her to ask where on earth thirty-eight South Road is, the phone is permanently engaged. We park up outside the block which, on the Satnav at least, bears the flag. There’s a man sheltering in the doorway, smoking a fag. When I ask him for directions he shrugs and taps some ash off to the side, carefully holding the fag cupped in his hand to shield it from the rain.
‘Is that a flat somewhere, maybe?’  he says, shuffling from side to side, glancing beyond me down the street. ‘Dunno, mate,’ he says. ‘Can’t think.’
We go round him, into the offices of what turns out to be a parcel delivery company. The receptionist behind the desk is bright and helpful, determined to find out where number thirty-eight South Road might be.
‘Sorry to bother you..’ I tell her.
‘Not at all,’ she says. ‘Happy to help. One…. moment….’
She taps around on the computer.
‘Oh! Apparently this is thirty-eight!’ she says, setting back and blushing. ‘Sorry – I only started here yesterday.’
‘So – do they live upstairs, then?’
‘No. Maybe. I’m not sure. I thought that was just a storage area.’
The manager comes through – slowly, as if he’d been hiding round the side of a screen and was reluctant to reveal he’d heard the whole thing. He stares at us neutrally as the receptionist explains who we are and what we’ve come for. No, he says. This is sixty-eight. And no, there isn’t an elderly couple living upstairs amongst the boxes, not as far as he’s aware.
‘I’m sure I would’ve seen something,’ he says. ‘Some nibbled cardboard, maybe a hat. But anyway – let’s have another look on the computer.
We huddle round another laptop as he opens Google maps. It seems a bit weird, going into street view for what is effectively the area just beyond the window, but it’s nice of him to try, and so long as June isn’t answering, I can’t think what else to do.
‘Here we are…’ he says.
He zooms in, but unfortunately, a huge truck had been passing the day the Google mapping car drove down South Road, so we’re unable to get any further with that.
‘Not to worry,’ I tell him. ‘Thanks for your help.’
I’m aware of them standing side-by-side at the counter, following us with their gaze as we hurry out into the rain.

Back in the car I try calling June again. This time she answers.
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Everyone has this problem. I bet you followed your satnav, didn’t you? What the machines don’t seem to realise is that South Road actually starts beyond the traffic lights.’
‘Does it?’
‘Yes! We’re tucked away up here, but that’s how we like it.’
We leave the car parked where it is, because to move it would mean driving all the way round the one way system, which at this time of day would take forever. By the time we reach the front door, we’re both soaked through.
‘Oh dear!’ says June. ‘Is it raining?’
She shows us in to the narrow hallway, where we take off our coats and shoes and go through to a modest sitting room. The house has electric lighting, the sockets and switches so old the electricians who screwed them into place were probably tutting about the Suez crisis.
June is content, though. She sits by the fireplace, as immaculately pearled, coiffed and cardiganed as a minor royal.
‘He’s upstairs in bed,’ she says. ‘Although I don’t suppose he’ll be terribly pleased to see you. What exactly is it that you want to do with him?’
‘We’ve been asked to come in by the care agency to do a bed assessment,’ says Beatrice, the OT leading the assessment. ‘The carers say that the one Arthur’s in is too low, especially with his reduced mobility.’
‘He can hardly stand,’ sniffs June. ‘He’s pretty frail, you know.’
‘Exactly. We want what’s best for Arthur, but at the same time we have to be mindful of the health of the people looking after him.’
‘I know that,’ says June. ‘I know that very well. I’ve got arthritis as it is. It’s not doing me any good, bending down all the time.’
‘Absolutely.’
‘It’s just he’s such a stubborn old so-and-so. I can’t see him agreeing to a hospital bed.’
‘I think we have to try, though, June. Otherwise we’ll just run into more problems further down the line.’
‘Well. If we do, we do.’
‘Shall we go up and introduce ourselves?’
‘I’ll show you the way,’ says June, getting up with some difficulty. ‘Just don’t expect me to run there.’
The staircase rises steeply, past the first floor landing, winding on and up into the gloom of the upper storeys. I’m glad Arthur’s bedroom is on the first floor though, as getting this far has taken a fair while, June struggling to make the climb, putting her good left foot up first, then hobbling up with the right, sliding her hand along the rail, pausing for breath, and then repeating the process again. The nearer we get to the landing, the more distinct is the noise of Arthur’s oxygen machine, whirring and clicking beneath a large, foxed print of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.
‘He’s through there,’ puffs June. ‘You go on.’
The notes had described Arthur as a palliative COPD patient, not quite end of life. The ‘not quite’ is a surprisingly optimistic qualifier, certainly from where I’m standing. The ravages of his respiratory illness combined with his extreme old age have left him cruelly stripped of anything resembling flesh. His hands lie outside the covers, and it’s astonishing to see their complex mechanism laid as bare as an anatomical model: the tendons, the ligaments, the veins.
It’s a shock to see him open his eyes.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘And what do you want at this ungodly hour?’
‘It’s half past six, Arthur’ says June, finally making it into the bedroom and sitting down on a rattan chair that creaks dangerously.
‘Yes. I know. Half past six in the morning.’
‘In the evening’
‘The evening? Have I really been sleeping all day?’
‘Yes, Arthur. You have’
‘Well, I humbly beg your forgiveness, one and all,’ he says. ‘I find my rather straightened
circumstances are not conducive to keeping a proper track of the time.’
‘No worries!’ says Beatrice.
‘I have this marvellous electronic watch, d’you see?,’ says Arthur, slowly lifting up his left arm.  An old Casio digital watch slips down almost to the elbow.
‘Unfortunately it seems to have stopped working,’ he says, gathering it back up to his wrist, and then relaxing his hands back on to the covers. ‘Once upon a time it used to beep’
The business with the watch seems to have exhausted him. His breath comes in and out through his slack mouth, making a dull whistling noise.
The carers were right to be concerned. Arthur is more or less bed-bound, on a low single divan in the corner of the room. I can’t imagine how you would go about washing and cleaning him, creaming his pressure areas, changing his pyjamas. Even sitting him up to drink would be a struggle. When we’ve roused him again, Beatrice explains the situation with great courtesy and clarity, gently steering him in the direction of a hospital bed.
‘They’re very comfortable,’ she says. ‘You can change the position at the touch of a button, sit up to eat or watch telly, raise the mattress at the knee to ease the pressure on your legs, go up and down – whatever! They’re brilliant, really. And then your carers won’t have to worry about hurting their backs. Because if they do, Arthur, they won’t be able to come in and help you, or any of the other patients on their books. And I know you wouldn’t want that, would you, Arthur? Hmm?’
He slowly shakes his head from side to side, the oxygen tube riding up over his ears and back down again. Someone’s put a little scrap of tape on top of his left ear, to stop it rubbing.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I completely understand what you’re saying, and I thank you for coming here and saying it. But I’d really rather not be moved. I’d rather just be left here in peace for now, and everything else can wait. Thank you.’
We try a little while longer to persuade him to change his mind. In the end, though, the best we can manage is to arrange to come back the following day.‘It’s been lovely meeting you,’ says Beatrice, taking his hand in hers and giving it a squeeze.
‘Likewise,’ he says. ‘Only – when you come back – please, don’t make it quite so early in the morning.’

little red rookie

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

It’s too much of a coincidence. I’d put money on that ambulance car parked outside the block being for Adnan. When I buzz the intercom, the voice that eventually answers – not the patient’s – sounds very familiar to me.
‘Well, well! I thought I recognised the appalling handwriting!’ says Ryan, throwing the door wide and grabbing me to him in a great big uniformed bear hug. ‘How’re you doing, man?’
‘I’m good! I’m good!’
‘Yeah – you are!’

It’s been a while since I’ve seen him. Two years, in fact, ever since I left the ambulance service and made the sideways step into community health. I’d run into most of the other crews in that time; Ryan is probably the last.
‘I’d heard rumours,’ he says, showing me into the flat. ‘Tracks in the snow, that kind of thing. I have to say you’re looking well. Horribly well. It’s quite disgusting how well you look.’
‘No nights’ I tell him. ‘That and not having a radio on my belt.’
‘Damned right,’ he says, slapping me on the shoulders again. ‘Completely damned right. Well, well!’
He ambles back over to the sofa, sits down with a great, easeful sigh, as impressively as a tattooed Viking warrior asked to wait out the battle in a chintzy front-room.
‘What’s your involvement, then, Jimmy boy?’
I can tell from his demeanour he’s not worried about the patient. And it’s true – Adnan seems comfortable enough, in the same high-backed chair I’d left him in just that morning, his leg up on a riser.
‘Tinzaparin injections,’ I tell him. ‘A daily prophylactic dose, post knee op. And then just obs and generally making sure everything’s okay.’
I smile at Adnan; he nods and waves his hand in the air.
‘We used to work together,’ I tell him, by way of explanation, but I can see he doesn’t understand.
‘Where’s Rema?’ I say, turning back to Ryan.
‘The daughter? She just nipped out to her car to get her phone.’
‘So – what’s brought you over, then?’
‘It came through as a difficulty in breathing, but everything checked out and it looks more like anxiety exacerbated by abdo pain – which I’m guessing has something to do with Adnan not opening his bowels these past five days or so.’
‘Yep. That’s definitely a thing. The enema should be delivered early this evening.’
‘Great. Okay. So when Rema gets back, why don’t we all have a bit of a review and decide where to go from here?’
‘Sounds good to me. Meanwhile, I’ll do the Tinz.’
‘Excellent.’
And he carries on writing, stopping every now and again to chat and swap juicy bits of gossip.

It’s great to see Ryan again. I learned so much about ambulance work from him – how to take each job as it came; how to recognise when you had time to step back and think, and when you didn’t; how important it was to keep your sense of humanity, and humour, and how to conserve your energy for the long and relentless run of it all.
It was always such a comfort turning up on station for a shift to find out I was working with him. It would fill me with a great sense of security. I knew that whatever happened that day or night (and for some reason, particularly night) so long as I was with Ryan, I’d be okay, and everything would be fine.
I have one particular memory. It was early on in my time as an EMT, and I was still in that phase when every job that came through filled me with horror. We’d been called to an unconscious patient in a pizza restaurant. When we got there the place was in uproar. A gang of drunk teenage boys had gone in for something to eat, and one of them had passed out on the floor. Whilst I tried to figure out whether he was actually unconscious or not (he wasn’t) the others were jumping around, tipping oregano on his head, laughing, swearing, play-fighting and generally getting in the way. I’d tried to be as commanding as I could, but nothing worked. (I can’t remember where the restaurant staff were, and the police certainly hadn’t pitched up yet). Ryan had hung back for a moment, just to see what I could do for myself. When it was clear I’d lost control, he waded in.
‘Right. You, you and you – OUT!’ he’d thundered. And although I admit my memory of the whole thing is probably unreliable, still I think I see him striding out of the restaurant, kids hanging off his arms and neck like rangy dogs round the arms and neck of a gigantic bear, before being hurled off into the night with yelps and barks.

If there was ever a paramedic who deserved his own graphic novel, it was Ryan. I would certainly have bought a copy (and got him to sign it, too).

Rema hurries back into the flat, and smiles when she sees me.
‘Oh – hi! How are you?’ she says, finishing the call she was making.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ says Ryan. ‘Jimmy was doing his best, but the only Arabic word he knows is habibi.’
And they all laugh so much – even Adnan – I can’t help blushing.

pushed for time

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

I have an appointment at three o’clock, a double-up with an occupational therapist at the house of a patient discharged from hospital that day. But so long as everything falls into line, and the traffic is only slightly north of reasonable, and I manage to pare each visit down to the barest and most pragmatic interaction permissible by law, three o’clock is perfectly achievable.

Of course, it doesn’t work out that way.

The ECG machine decides to play up, in that almost supernatural way electrical equipment has sometimes of sensing your impatience and transforming it into pure cussedness. And when I try to draw blood from the second patient, I have as much luck as if I’d staggered out into the garden and jabbed the old apple tree. That, plus running into a horrible thickening of the traffic heading west, so inexplicably and uncharacteristically bad it makes me think I’’ve missed an emergency radio broadcast telling everyone to drop everything and clear the hell out of town – all this means that by the time I’m pulling up outside the house, half an hour late.

‘I -am-so-sorry!’ I say, piling in through the door with all my bags.
‘That’s okay!’ says Rick, the OT. ‘We’ve just been taking our time, going through a few things. It’s alright.’
Gil, the patient, is sitting forward on the edge of a sofa. His hair is dyed crow-black, back-combed in Gothic style, which only seems to accentuate the extreme pallor of his face, and the dark hollows of his eyes. Shaking his hand is like scooping a fragile bird into my fingers.
‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise’
I sit down on a low stool as Rick brings me up to speed. He gives me the discharge summary to look over, too, and I glance at it from time to time. I’ve already been told the basics – the alcoholism, self-neglect, the concerned neighbours, the intervention of the social work team and so on – and the fact that a deep-clean company had been brought in whilst Gil was in hospital. What I hadn’t been told though was the seriousness of his situation now. The discharge summary lays it all out in dry and technical language; beyond it, like seeing a dark and formidable landscape through a formal window, is the hard truth of the thing. Gil has come home to die.
‘If you want to get your bits and pieces out of the way whilst I finish this bit of paperwork…?’ says Rick, as I hand the summary back.
‘Sure! Why not?’ I say, grabbing my kit and going over to kneel by Gil. ‘Is that okay?’
He accedes to it all with a measured kind of passivity, smiling often, but in a gentle way, like someone who’s decided the only thing he can change about the destination is his understanding of the journey.
I don’t push anything. Just the basics. And when I’m done I shake his hand again, gather my things together and leave Rick to finish off.

Back outside, I’m throwing my bags in the boot of the car when an elderly man in a flat white cap, anorak and check shirt stops right by me. He holds a map book almost to the end of his nose, looks up and down the street, lifts his tinted glasses, presses the map book closer, squints, looks up and down the street again, and then takes his cap off and scratches his head. It’s all pretty emphatic,  like watching a modern clown doing a skit called Lost.
‘Are you alright there?’ I say.
‘Me? No. I’m late and I can’t be.’
‘Where’ve you got to get to?’
He brings the map over, hands it to me, then takes an envelope out of his pocket – something formal, a legal appointment.
‘Well don’t worry. You’re almost there,’ I tell him, handing the map book back. ‘Are you walking or driving?’
‘Driving? Me? No! I came by bus. The man there, he said get off here. He said here was where I had to be. So that’s what I did. And now I wish I hadn’t.’
‘He wasn’t wrong, though. You’ve just turned down too early. You want the one parallel to this, over there. You can cut through that little alley if you’re pushed for time.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yep. Absolutely.’
‘I can’t afford any more mistakes.’
‘You’re good,’ I say. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Righto then. Thanks for your help.’
He gives me a broad, quick smile that seems more like a mechanical expression of the tipping back of his head, then taps me once on the shoulder with the map book, and strikes out for the alley.

musetta

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

‘Mexican liqueur. Seven letters. Beginning with T.’
‘Tequila?’
‘Is that a liqueur?’
‘It’s made from a cactus. Does that count? Anyway, I can’t think of any other specifically Mexican drinks. Apart from Dos Equis.’
‘What on earth is Dos Equis?’
‘A beer. I think.’
‘Well. Let’s go with tequila then, shall we? And see how we get on…’
Marilyn had a fall in the early hours and tore her arm. She’s busy filling in the crossword whilst I’m delicately cleaning the wound, soaking it in saline, gently replacing the skin flap as best I can, then patting the area dry ready for the steri-strips. Her version of events was that she stumbled over some shoeboxes – no mention of the copious amounts of whisky she’d put away in the hours leading up. If she sees the irony in our conversation about booze, she doesn’t show it.
‘Oh I’m terribly sorry. I misread the clue,’ she says. ‘It actually says Mexican liquor. These glasses are absolutely no damned good at all.’
‘Definitely tequila then.’
‘…which makes one down agora. Which fits! Well done!’
Marilyn is a high-functioning alcoholic. She has a beautiful house in the centre of town, filled with paintings and books, sculptures and peculiar antiques, everything brilliantly lit by the sunshine that positively bounds in through the open patio doors.
‘You have a lovely house,’ I tell her, applying the first layer of dressing.
‘That’s sweet of you,’ she says.
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Too long. But you know, when Teddy and I moved here in the seventies, it was a different street altogether. Everyone knew each other. It was all terribly friendly and interesting. But now it’s simply overrun with cars, no-one has any time for anything, and the only contact you have is with the postman. Speaking of which…’
Keeping her bad arm as still as she can, she rummages around the clutter on the table and produces a Royal Mail missed delivery card.
‘Look at that!’ she says. ‘Sorry we missed you! What on earth do they mean? Sorry we missed you! I’ve been in all blessed day! I simply fail to understand how they could have crept up the front steps and dropped that through the letterbox without me hearing a thing. Honestly, they must be employing cat burglars or something. Or maybe he ties rags round his boots. It’s enough to drive you absolutely insane!’
‘You’d think he’d want to drop it off, though, just to lighten his bag.’
‘Lighten his bag! I’ll lighten his bag when I get hold of him.’
‘Almost done’ I tell her.
‘Smashing,’ she says, lowering her glasses from the top of her head back down on to the tip of her nose, as she goes back to the crossword.
‘Fifteen across. Famous Bohemian. Beginning with M.’
She snorts.
‘Well – I’d be very tempted to write Marilyn – but unfortunately it ends in an A’

the people upstairs

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

It’s a long time since Eric managed to paint anything. Years, I would guess, judging by the fine layer of dust on the stack of drawings and sketches on the workbench. But his pens and brushes are still waiting for him, standing in a bunch with their bristles-up, all-angles, in an old chipped mug, souvenir of Barcelona, by a gently composting heap of pastel crayons, charcoal blocks, pencils and a paint-splodged rag.

Alcohol abuse has left Eric with Korsakoff syndrome, amongst other things. At the moment he’s living in supported accommodation, although I learned from the warden that he’s been approved a place in a new facility with higher levels of care – something Eric urgently needs. The opening has been delayed, though. Last minute snagging, she said. Which means Eric will have to struggle through the next six months with carers going in three times a day, and various health teams, the District Nurses, the ambulance and so on – everyone doing their best to help him through the inevitable falls, infections and other crises.

I’ve met Eric before so I know what to expect. He’s difficult to handle, lurching from moments of great anger and anxiety to brief periods of something approaching lucidity. He doesn’t cope with novelty well, gets upset easily, has no short term memory. Despite the best efforts of the carers, the flat always looks ransacked. In fact, the only tidy thing about it is his old workbench, which maintains an eerie and almost magical detachment from the general chaos.

‘They’ve been coming downstairs! Four of them!’ he shouts, slapping the side of his face like a man desperate to wake himself up. ‘In the middle of the night, torturing me!’
‘Who have? What do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know perfectly well what I mean! What d’you think that is? Hey?’
He waggles a finger in the direction of his workbench.
‘They creep down here in the middle of the night, they cut my paintings into tiny squares, and then they stitch them back together so you wouldn’t notice. But I do! Of course I do! And they steal things, too.’
‘What things?’
‘Like this. I mean – for goodness sake.’
He dabbles around on the over-chair table, and finally lands on a pair of nail clippers.
‘I bought these new. I was looking after them. And they’ve taken them away – and they’ve brought them back like this. Well I can’t use them now, can I? They’re disgusting…’
I need to calm him down before I’ll be able to do any obs, so I try to distract him by talking about art.
‘I love your paintings’ I tell him, slowly and innocently preparing my kit. ‘They’re so bold and full of life. Did you go to college?’
He stares at me, breathing heavily – then crosses one leg over the other and laces his fingers in his lap.
‘Yes, actually. Leeds.’
‘Wow. Great.’
‘Do you paint?’
‘Me? No – I do the odd bit of printing sometimes. Linocuts, you know. That sort of thing. I’d like to do more, but any spare time I have tends to be given over to writing.’
‘It’s none of it easy. Look – I’m sorry if I’ve been a little short-tempered today.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Eric. You’ve got a lot on your plate. It’s always nice to see you.’
‘Is it?’ he says. ‘Is it really?’
‘Yes! Now then – can I be a real nuisance and do your blood pressure?’
But just as I move towards him with the cuff, as stealthily as a butterfly collector with a net, Eric changes again.
‘Never mind that!’ he says, leaping up and almost pitching head first into the bathroom. ‘I want you to get me something – oh you know what it is! That thing! That thing that goes between my legs…’

waiting for janice

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

A nondescript semi.
So nondescript, the estate agents probably made a point of it.
This charming example of a nondescript house is pleasantly situated at the end of a row of equally anonymous dwellings, all with a clear view of the busy main road. Generously provided with four metres of all-weather, low maintenance AstroTurf, front and rear, and ample off-road parking for one, small red or blue car. Railway station five minutes. Hospital, ten.

I ring the bell and wait.

After a while I walk round the side, in case the front door’s out of commission for some reason. It’s only then that I notice a key safe, tucked away behind a down-pipe, like a giant mussel stranded at low tide. Luckily, amongst all my papers, I find a record of the number, so I open the safe, take out the key, and let myself in.
‘Hello? Mrs Rudd? It’s Jim, from the hospital…’

The first thing to hit me is the absolute certainty that Mrs Rudd is not at home.

The second is the alarm.

Not just any house alarm. This is a whole new species, a terrifying, weaponised hybrid Mrs Rudd must have stolen from Porton Down.
‘Jesus Christ!’
I put my things down, run into the hallway, flip the lid on the alarm console and press any button that looks useful. But of course, I know even as I’m doing this that any alarm you could simply turn off when it was tripped wouldn’t be any kind of alarm at all.

I see Mrs Rudd’s yellow folder on the hall table. With the shrieks and hysterical klaxon blasts of the alarm resonating through the house and neighbourhood, I scramble through the folder desperately trying to find a number – anything, any sign or marking that might suggest how I might turn the thing off.
I become aware of a figure on the threshold of the door – an elderly woman, both hands pressed to her ears, either a smile or a rictus of pain it’s hard to tell.
‘DO YOU KNOW HOW TO TURN IT OFF?’ I shout over to her.
She can’t hear me, so I get closer.
‘I’M JIM. FROM THE HOSPITAL. DO YOU KNOW HOW TO TURN THE ALARM OFF?’
But after some elaborate miming and lip-reading I figure out that she’s only come round to ask me to turn the alarm off, so I turn my attention back to whatever the hell else there is to be done.
The folder mentions a friend, Janice, in the Next of Kin section, but there’s no contact number written down, so I have to ring the hospital to see if they can find out. Eventually when I speak to the coordinator, she says yes, Mrs Rudd was taken to hospital that morning, and no, she doesn’t know why I wasn’t told, and what the hell is that dreadful noise? She says she’ll do her best to find a number for the friend, and get back to me.
It feels as if the alarm is invading me, running through me in a horribly invasive way, like when trees grow into metal fences and the iron enters their heartwood. This is probably a pre-terminal sign. Followed by fits, unconsciousness. Death by Sonic Puddling.

I’m forced outside for respite.

People are coming to their front steps, frowning, shaking their heads, folding their arms to emphasise their biceps, staring at me as if they can see the noise swirling out of my eyes and mouth like swarms of infernal bees and why the hell would anyone DO that? It strikes me that this has probably happened before, in which case I’m definitely in trouble. To add to the horror, dozens of school kids have begun streaming past the garden fence.
‘Ahh!’ shouts one kid, putting his hands flat across his ears and bending forwards as if he’s being shot at ‘What the fuck’s that?’
‘It’s an alarm,’ I tell him.
‘Make it stop!’ he says.
‘I’m trying.’
Wha’did he say? shouts his friend, shoving him hard from behind.
He says it’s an alarm.
Haa-haa! laughs the friend, like Nelson in The Simpsons, stopping to point at me. He set the alarm off! He set the alarm off!
I nod and smile – and then, looking up at the alarm box on the outside wall, phone the company.
When eventually I get through to someone, she tells me they only fit the thing.
‘Who they give the code to is their own affair,’ she says. She doesn’t sound that bothered, even though she must be able to hear the alarm in the background.
‘What am I supposed to do then?’
‘I don’t know. Shoot it?’
But she does come up with a better solution.
‘Or you could just try retracing your steps, locking the doors in sequence as you go. It might be one of the old ones that resets.’
‘Brilliant! Great! Thanks!’

I do as she suggests, scooping up my bag, locking first the inner and outer doors in turn, and then waiting on the front step. The alarm changes pitch, dropping fifty decibels to something like a grouchy kind of wail, then drops some more, and then finally – mercifully – falls quiet, a deep and unearthly silence that for a second feels almost as loud as the alarm itself.

I stand there, catching my breath.

The next door neighbour is standing the other side of the low wall, smiling at me in a slightly more relaxed way.
‘Well done!’ she says.
‘I’m sorry to have been such a nuisance!’
‘Ah!’ she says, patting the air. Then goes back inside.

It’s only when I turn to go that I realise I’ve left my diary in the house.

I go through my options, but really – there’s nothing else for it.

I unlock the doors and hurry back inside, rushing through the double doors as quickly as I can.
I grab the diary – just as the alarm kicks in again, a little differently it sounds to me, even more violent, with a new, wounded note in its belly, something like outrage.
And this time, even though I do that thing of retracing my steps and locking the doors in sequence, the alarm does not reset, but actually redoubles in volume (although that could just be tinnitus from the first assault).

The neighbour has come back out into the garden and is standing staring at me over the wall with a look of utter confusion.
Smiling and shrugging, I ring the office again.
Luckily, the coordinator’s been able to find a number for Janice.
‘Thanks!’ I say, my fingers shaking as I redial.
There’s a long pause before Janice answers. I’ve barely managed to say hello before she speaks over me.
‘You’ve set the alarm off.’
‘Yes! I’m so sorry.’
‘I was only there an hour ago.’
‘Yes…’
‘They took her to hospital.’
‘Yes. I know. But unfortunately they didn’t tell me and I used the key in the keysafe to let myself in.’
‘An hour ago! And now I’ve got to come all the way back there’
‘I’m so sorry. If you tell me the code…’
‘In my slippers.’
‘Yeah, but – if you just …’
The phone goes dead.
I put it back in my pocket.
‘What are you doing?’ shouts the neighbour.
‘Waiting for Janice!’ I shout back.
Then waving to the school kids passing by the garden gate, I sit down on the front step, and as calmly and innocently as I can, do just that.

a job lot

~ jim clayton ~ 2 Comments

It’s already late when I get there, the sun low on the hills, shreds of pink cloud against a deepening sky.
Roy answers the door with a tea cloth in his hands.
‘Come on in!’ he says, flipping the cloth over his shoulder, shaking my hand warmly and ushering me in. ‘Jean’s just through here. She will be pleased to see you.’
He follows me into the living room, dragging his left foot a little, like his hips are starting to go.
‘What a pair we are!’ he says. ‘A job lot. Aren’t we Jean? A job lot?’
Jean is sitting by the patio window in a high-backed armchair, smiling at us both with as much of a delighted expression as her stroke will allow. She tries to speak, too, and though it’s incomprehensible, Roy seems to know what she means, and fills in the gaps.
I’ve come to change the dressing on her arm. For some reason she can’t help picking and scratching at it, and the wounds have become infected.
‘I did clip the nails on her hand,’ says Roy, ‘but she was still finding a way through it all. Weren’t you, Jean?’
He strokes her hair. ‘Thanks again for coming out. We do appreciate it.’
‘It’s no trouble.’
He stands over me whilst I prepare the dressings.
‘I have to apologise if I smell a little – you know.’
‘I can’t smell anything,’ I tell him. ‘Why – what have you had? Garlic sausage?’
‘Me? No! A little glass of whisky.’
‘I think you’re more than entitled to a glass of whisky. What sort is it?’
‘Famous Grouse.’
‘That’s a good one,’ I say, sounding as if I know about these things. To back it up, I tell him about a job I used to have a few years ago, working for an company that maintained intranets. ‘One of the clients ran a gin distillery,’ I tell him. ‘They showed us round once. It was amazing! These gigantic stills, filling the place, right up to the roof, like giant copper onions.’
Roy laughs.
‘I wouldn’t mind seeing that,’ he says. ‘Mind you – I’m not really a gin man.’
I start cutting off the old bandage. Jean watches me with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open.
‘Alright?’ I say. ‘I’m just going to use a little bit of sterile water…’

Roy helps out where he can, passing me things, comforting Jean, keeping her distracted. It’s all pretty straightforward and I’m done in a few minutes.

‘Good as new!’ I say, peeling off my gloves and starting to clear up.
‘Here! You might be interested to see this..’ says Roy. He unhooks a framed, black and white picture from the wall. A man in overalls, neckerchief and peaked cap standing on the tracks beside an enormous steam engine.
‘I used to work the locomotives. A fireman to begin with, until I made driver. It’s funny to think of it now, y’know, but on an early turn I used to stop off on the way into the yard for a pint of Guinness. Not for the alcohol, y’understand. For the oomph. I tell you what – it was hard work, shovelling coal, keeping it going. But it was the best job in the world. You got into a sort of flow after a while, and there was nothing you couldn’t do. I’d be all the way to Newcastle and back, and I’d suddenly think hang on a minute! I haven’t had a wee since breakfast! But that’s how it was.’
We both look at the picture for a moment. Roy has one hand on the rail of the cab, one foot on the plate, and he’s standing looking at the camera with such a strong and confident gaze you’d think for tuppence he could pick the whole thing up and wave it over his head.
‘These days the only exercise I get is wheeling Jean along the front,’ he says, wiping the glass with his elbow and then carefully hanging it back on the wall. ‘But we do alright, don’t we Jean? Hey?’
He bends down to give her a kiss on the cheek, and she gives him a big, adoring smile in return, before turning her attention to the new bandage, looking for any weak spots with her other hand.

a view of the sea

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

There’s a three-quarter length, black and white portrait of Madeleine on the shelf behind her: a young woman in her early twenties, I’d guess, in a French beret and raincoat, sitting in the driving seat of an open-topped sports car. She’s resting her left elbow on the door, right hand on the steering wheel, staring at the camera in a wry and open-faced way, as if she knows – and the photographer knows – that any moment now she’ll be tearing off that beret, throwing it aside and racing off down the road in a scattering of gravel.
Seventy years have past, and much has changed, but Madeleine is looking at me with exactly the same expression.
‘I suppose you’ve come to jab me again,’ she says.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Let’s get on with it, then.’
She watches me whilst I fill in the Tinzaparin chart and check the syringe.
‘Married?’ she says.
‘I am, yes. Eighteen years.’
‘Marvelous,’ she says. ‘I was married twice, you know.’
‘Really?’
‘Both times for exactly thirty years. To the day.’
‘That’s – consistent.’
‘My first husband was alright, I suppose, but I think essentially we just didn’t mesh.’
‘Thirty years. That’s a long time not to mesh.’
‘One put up with these things. Unlike today, of course. Today it’s like cancelling the papers. George was terribly romantic to begin with, but that petered out and in the end we were more like brother and sister. Until he went bankrupt, and started to drink an awful lot more, and then life became rather sticky.’
‘In what way?’
‘He became bitter about everything. The fact we never had children. The constant moving about. He didn’t like what I had, you see, which is a very strong sense of self. I think he was really rather threatened by that, and I’m afraid he became something of a bully. He hit me, you know.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘’The first time I said to him George. You do that once more and I’ll be off. And although he did make an effort to change his ways for a week or two, the writing was on the wall in jolly big letters. He hit me again. Hard, across the face. So hard in fact that I fell backwards into a rose bush. Scratched my stockings and my legs. I was in a frightful state. Anyway, I picked myself up with as much dignity as I could muster, walked myself back into the house, packed a suitcase, and I left him, and I never went back. And there! That was the first thirty years.’
‘So then what happened?’
‘I thought that was that, of course. I was off men for good. But actually what I was off was marriage. And I started to have quite a nice time of it. No responsibilities. I like to think of that time as my golden period. Then I met Pierre. Lovely, sad Pierre. French, y’know. From Paris. I told him I didn’t want anything serious, but he kept on and on in that terribly sad and attractive way he had, and eventually I said Look. We can live together if you like. But that’s as far as I’m prepared to go. So that’s what we did. We lived together for a year or so, and then I thought, well – what the hell? Why not? And we were married, and everything changed again. You see I’d been worried I’d end up with someone like my first husband. What I wanted was someone who was so unlike me there wouldn’t be any clashes. And Pierre and I were certainly different. He was from a terribly poor background, you see. During the war he’d lived out in the mountains, with the resistance. They didn’t even have any shoes, and had to tie newspaper round their feet, creeping into the valley at night to scavenge whatever they could, and lay traps for the Germans. He was captured, I’m afraid, and ended up in a concentration camp. And that was a frightful business. I’m certain it was the source of all his sadness’
‘It’s hard to imagine how awful it must have been for him.’
‘Pierre didn’t ever talk to me about it, though, and I think in the end that was the problem. One day he came home, and instead of walking through to give me a kiss, he went into the bathroom and locked the door. Well I knew straightaway something was wrong, because we didn’t ever lock the door if it was just the two of us. So after a while I went to the bathroom and knocked. He wouldn’t answer, but I kept on and in the end he told me to go away. I did – for as long as I could bear. Then I went back to the bathroom and I knocked again. Pierre? I said. What on earth’s the matter? And he didn’t answer, and he didn’t answer… so I just kept knocking, and I said if he didn’t let me in I’d break the door down. Which sounds pretty hot stuff but it was only a token kind of lock. So that’s what I did. I pushed the door in, and there he was, sitting on the toilet, his head resting against the wall, looking into space. You’re scaring me I said. What’s wrong? But he couldn’t or wouldn’t say, so I called the ambulance. They took him away, and he died three days later.’
‘That’s awful! Do you know what the problem was?’
Madeleine slowly gathers her blouse an inch so I can inject her in the abdomen.
‘They were never terribly specific and I was too upset to inquire. Men’s trouble, something of that nature,’ she says, flinching as the needle goes in. ‘So there we are. That was the end of it. Thirty years to the day. And now here I am, an old woman being jabbed in the tummy, wondering what on earth all the fuss was about.’
She lowers her blouse and settles herself in the chair again.
‘But there are always compensations,’ she says.
‘I suppose,’ I say, posting the used syringe into the sharps bin and peeling off my blue gloves. ‘That’s a very balanced way of looking at it. What sort of compensations?’
‘Well – in my case, a simply marvellous view of the sea!’

the miserable moo

~ jim clayton ~ Leave a comment

Vera is as formidable as an oak tree. An ancient, wonderfully craggy version, a boundary oak, maybe, with a disposition of knots and old storm wounds that give her a ferocious but at the same time peculiarly forbearing and kindly expression.
‘How did I get like this?’ she says, approximating a walk by rocking from side to side in her vast, rose-pink slippers, pulling the chord of her dressing gown so tight I’m worried her curlers will fly off. ‘Dear oh dear. Sad, innit?’
She stops and gives me a baleful look.
‘Don’t get old’ she says.
‘What’s the alternative?’
‘What’s the alternative? Switzerland.’
She shakes her head and carries on into the living room.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she says, waving dismissively at the sofa, then slowly lowering herself into a well-worn armchair. ‘Mind you, I’ve lived here sixty year and I still ‘ain’t managed it.’
‘I don’t know. Seems like a nice place.’
‘You make the best, d’oncha?’ she says, putting her feet up with an expressive range of ooh-ooh-ooh’s and aah’s.
‘All right?’ I ask her. ‘Do you need a hand?’
‘I need more than a hand,’ she says. ‘What else’ve you got?’
Before I manage to do anything, the phone rings. Vera mutters a great deal as she picks up the phone from the side table, holding it to the end of her nose to scrutinise the number, then making a great fuss of holding it at arm’s length to press the ok button, frowning at the same time, as if she was being asked to do something outrageous, then cautiously and slowly putting the phone to her ear. I can hear the voice on the other end shouting as the phone travels through the air – a man’s voice, saying Nan, Nan, It’s John. Nan?
‘21364’ she says, in a strangely formal voice. But that only lasts as long as it takes to establish it’s John on the other end, and she immediately slumps back into normal Vera again. I prepare the paperwork and get my obs kit out, whilst Vera sighs and tuts and does her best to reassure John she’s all right, and no, she’s all right as far as shopping goes, she’s got enough to last her till Christmas, and yes, she’ll let him know how the appointment goes, and no, she doesn’t want anyone to worry, she hasn’t lived till ninety without learning a thing or two. There’s a moment towards the end of the conversation when John’s seems to be telling her something about himself.
‘Oh? …. What’s that, then? …. You what?…. I thought that was cows…?’
She looks at me, raising her eyebrows and shaking her head, then refocuses her attention on what John has to say.
‘Righto,  then, John. You get better soon, love. And love to the kids. All right? All right? Bye bye, John. Bye bye.’
She thumbs the phone off with the same pantomime of attention as the answering of it, then drops it back with the TV guide on the side table.
‘That was John,’ she says.
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. He’s always ringing me up to ask how I am and then telling me he’s got it worse.’
‘Why? What’s the matter with him?’
‘Foot and mouth, he says. I thought that was something cows got.’
‘He probably means hand foot and mouth. It’s a viral thing…’
‘Oh. I see,’ she says, but I can tell she doesn’t. ‘That’s all right, then.’
She pats her curlers and rearranges her dressing gown whilst she gets her thoughts in order.
‘Only John!’ she says at last. ‘He’s a bloody postman! Although saying that, maybe they give him a new round that takes in a farm somewhere.’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
She sighs and shakes her head.
‘Hark at me!’ she says. ‘I’ve turned into a right old miserable moo!’