Douglas doesn’t seem able to work the door opening mechanism. I ring three times to ask him to buzz me in; each time he says Hello? like it’s the first time we’ve spoken; and each time he mumbles some stuff then hangs up without letting me through. In the end I have to ring the woman who lives in the flat next door.
‘Sorry to bother you,’ I tell her. ‘I’m from the hospital avoidance team. I’ve been ringing Douglas’ number but he doesn’t seem able to…’
The door buzzes before I can finish.
‘Thank you!’
She’s peering out of her door as I make the landing.
‘Thanks for letting me in,’ I say to her. ‘I think he’s been having a little trouble working the intercom.’
‘Douglas? I think he’s been having a little trouble with something else.’
She lifts her right hand to her mouth, gives a disdainful little drinking mime, then slowly closes her door.

Douglas is waiting just inside his flat.
‘Uh – oh! Hello!’ he says, almost falling over. ‘I … er… wha’ d’you want?’
‘My name’s Jim, I’m from the hospital avoidance team. I’ve come to see how you are and to do your blood pressure and whatnot.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Can I come in?’
‘Please do.’
He shows me into a small dining room, barely furnished, with a neglected and yellowing air about it. There are some reproductions of famous paintings on the walls: some women and a child in a poppy field by Monet, and one of some cypress trees by Van Gogh.
‘Nice paintings,’ I say to him, putting my bag down and getting the paperwork ready.
‘Not the originals,’ he sniffs, clearing some papers from a hard-backed chair and sitting down.
Illness and alcohol have ravaged his body. He’s quite emaciated, leaning back and slowly straightening, the prominences of his spine working on the wooden backrest to sit him upright like the teeth of a worn old cog.
‘How are you feeling today?’ I ask him.
‘How am I feeling? Bloody awful.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘I’m sorry to say it.’

His observations come back surprisingly normal for someone in such poor condition.
I write them down, making conversation as I go, finding out who comes in, does what, when and how often.
‘Did she let you in?’ he says, nodding towards the door and the neighbour across the way.
‘She did. You didn’t seem able to work the release.’
‘She’ll be proper made up about it,’ he says. Then leans forward and whispers confidentially: She’s a nosy old bag. He straightens again. ‘Until the screaming starts. As it will. She has dementia, you know.’
‘Oh?’
I listen to his chest. An interesting collection of clicks and rasps and wheezes.
‘I could hardly hear with all these clocks in the room,’ I say, taking the steth  out of my ears.
The room has at least a dozen clocks of different sizes – a pendulum clock on the wall, and then various novelty clocks, tin alarm clocks and smaller, travel sized efforts, all of them busily clicking away the seconds.
‘I couldn’t figure out which was your heart,’ I say.
He shakes his head.
‘See them there?’ he says, pointing to an identical couple of clocks, heavy, moulded, bright yellow plastic things, a vision of the future that seems so dated now. ‘Five pounds a pair. So I thought – okay then. Right! You’re coming home with me!’
I say some complimentary things about the clocks, then finish the paperwork and pack my things away.
‘There’ll be someone else to see you later on,’ I say. ‘Will you be all right till then?’
‘Yes, yes,’ he says, looking a bit lost.
‘It was nice to meet you.’ I shake his hand. ‘Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.’

As I hurry across the landing and down the stairs I check my watch – which strikes me as ridiculous, because haven’t I just been in a room filled with clocks, and still I don’t know what the time is.

There’s a framed picture of Sonia on the wall. It’s an unusual black and white shot, taken when she must have been in her late twenties. I wonder if Sonia was in the theatre or vaudeville or something, because the picture is so bold and strange. She’s leaning forwards in an off-the-shoulder gown, her eyes crossed, laughing. Either that, or she was a debutante at a studio session where she goofed-off for a moment and it gave them the image they liked the best, the one that conveyed the essence of her. Either way it’s a good picture.
You can still see the young woman in the ninety year old busy eating porridge on the opposite sofa. She’s a formidable presence, and I don’t feel able to ask her if she was on the stage or not. After all, I’m here to see her husband, not her, and anyway, I’ve got so much to do this morning I don’t really have time.
‘Just a couple more things and I’ll leave you to it,’ I say to her husband Oscar.
‘Hah?’ he says, turning his face in my direction. ‘Wha’dya say?’
I lay my hand on his and speak a little more slowly.
‘Pah!’ he says. ‘Leave me to what, exactly?’
‘Oh now don’t start off on that,’ says Sonia, laying down her spoon and studying us both with equal frostiness. ‘Give the man what he wants and we can all get about our business.’
The TV is on. A Spanish tenor performing arias with the Los Angeles  philharmonic.
‘It’s lovely, being serenaded whilst I work,’ I say. Although the truth is it makes taking a blood pressure much more difficult.
‘Yes? Well, don’t get used to it,’ says Sonia, scraping the last of her porridge from the bowl.

When Roy’s son-in-law Malcolm comes home it’s like a bull that’s learned to walk, striding proudly in the front door on his back legs: Arsenal cap, t-shirt, shorts.
‘All right?’ he says, tossing the cap to one side. ‘Who’ve we got here? The SAS?’
A light switches on in Roy’s face. The absence of his dementia suddenly doesn’t count for anything; instead, he’s a loving father welcoming home his favourite son.
‘Here’s Malcolm, Roy,’ says Steph, Roy’s daughter, Malcolm’s wife. Roy waves his stick in the air and makes a toothless welcome.
‘All right, pops!’ says Malcolm, throwing himself down in a chair, planting his arms and legs left and right. ‘What’s going on, then?’
I tell him what I’ve found, what I think we can do to help.
‘Yeah?’ says Malcolm. ‘I thought you’d be coming round with a big mallet. Clang! Pow!’
Roy laughs.
‘No, seriously. We appreciate you taking the time,’ says Malcolm, affecting a degree of seriousness. ‘I hope old whasisname there hasn’t been too much of a problem.’
‘Not at all. He’s a model patient.’
‘A model patient! Hear that, Roy? Mind you – no offence – but I think I’d rather have an actual model, if you don’t mind.’
Steph puts the kettle on.
‘Now don’t start,’ she says to Malcolm. ‘We’ve got enough problems without you sticking your oar in.’
‘That wasn’t my oar, love!’ he says, lacing his hands together in his lap and distributing his bonhomie about the place. ‘Is that an oar in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
He garks, like some giant species of bird.
‘Someone’s pleased with himself,’ says Steph.
‘If I’m not, who will be?’
‘You see what I’ve got to put up with?’
I finish my observations.
‘That’s all fine,’ I say. ‘I’ve just got to write it all up.’
‘A job’s not finished till the paperwork’s done,’ says Malcolm. ‘Hey?’
Malcolm watches Steph fuss around Roy for a while, then changes his position in the chair and chats to me.
‘I’m in a five-a-side football team,’ he says. ‘I bet you can’t guess who we played the other day?’
I look up.
‘Don’t know. One Direction?’
‘Who? Nah – there aren’t enough of them girls. No – we played that open prison.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah! It was weird. I got sent off for a dodgy tackle and I thought they were going to put me in solitary.’
‘You should’ve played Holloway,’ says Steph, rinsing up some cups. ‘You’d have loved that.’
‘We’ve played quite a few prisons,’ he says, matter-of-factly.
‘Really? Why’s that? Are you in the business?’
‘Me? No. I’m an electrician. I couldn’t really tell you why. You’d have to talk to the manager. We were at this one place, once. It was a really old prison, one of the oldest in the country. The man in charge, he says “See that block over there? That’s where they used to hang people”.’
‘Cheery conversation for your father in law,’ says Steph, coming in with a cloth and wiping Roy’s chin.
‘I’m just saying,’ says Malcolm. ‘It’s interesting, history.’
He leans forward and taps me on the knee. ‘Between you and me,’ he says, lowering his voice, ‘I’d rather that than all this malarkey.’ He makes the universal sign of the rope – a jerky motion off to the left – then nods at Roy and winks at me. ‘Know what I mean?’

The parking attendant – a guy who’d make Vin Diesel blush – was doing his rounds. Everyone dashed out to move their cars, including me. I jumped in and sped off to find a spot out on the road.
When eventually I’d parked up and was walking back, I saw a bumblebee lying on the pavement with its legs in the air. I didn’t want anyone to step on it, so I thought I’d pick it up with whatever came to hand and move it to the grass verge. I crouched down and began gently poking it with my diary. Whether the bee was sick or stunned I don’t know but it just lay there, buzzing furiously, waggling its legs, trying to buy enough of an angle to sting me.
A kid passed by. He had an odd expression on his face, and suddenly I saw how it must have looked to him: a nurse, kneeling down in the middle of the pavement, resuscitating a bee with the point of his diary.
He hurried on.

Margaret’s basement flat is as deep and sombre and lightless as a mausoleum with TV and en-suite. The shadows in the corners have been undisturbed so long they’ve thickened and taken on an independent life of their own, rustling in the corners; I imagine when she dies, someone will have to tempt them outside with scraps of black cloth.
‘You have an interesting last name,’ I tell her, struggling to make conversation as I run through the basic obs.
‘Scotch-Irish,’ she says. ‘On my Dad’s side.’
‘Really? I love all that family tree stuff. I looked into it once, but then I got put off when I read somewhere we’re all related to Charlemagne. I mean – what’s the point?’
I write down her blood sugar level.
She stares at me.
‘It was quite interesting finding out about my grandparents, though,’ I flounder on. ‘What they did in the war and all that. But you don’t have to go back very far before you start getting overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. It all gets a bit dilute.’
‘I did the family tree once,’ she says.
‘Really?’
‘But I started turning up stuff no-one wanted to know about. Bad stuff. So I had to stop.’
‘Bad stuff? Like what?’
‘Just bad stuff, you know. And everyone started to go a bit funny, like they really didn’t want to know about it. You see, I’d started doing all this work. Digging around, bringing things to light. But what I didn’t know was how uncomfortable it would make everyone.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘I don’t know. The kind of stuff no-one wanted to hear about. It made them feel bad or something. I don’t know. So I stopped.’
‘Wow! I wonder what it could’ve been?’
She doesn’t rise to the bait.
After a moment or two I wrap a cuff round her arm and put my stethoscope to her vein.
‘So what was it you found out?’ I ask, trying the innocent busy doing something else not really paying attention approach. ‘The mind boggles!’ I say.
‘When I started telling people about it they got all funny like they really didn’t want to know,’ she says. ‘So I put it all away, ‘cos I thought – I’d better not do this. People are getting quite upset. They really, really don’t want to know.’
‘Blimey!’
I flip the stethoscope back over my shoulders.
‘That’s all fine!’ I say, ripping the Velcro and freeing her arm. ‘Family trees, hey? Who knows what you’ll find!’
She grips the arms of the chair, and stares at me whilst I write.

Helen has lived in this house ever since she moved here in the seventies. It’s a tall, elegantly proportioned, sparsely furnished Victorian town house,  a neatly organised kitchen, a roll-top bath on bare boards in the bathroom, pale green shutters on the windows, a lush patio crowded with  jasmine, vines, hydrangea, everything to hand, everything in its place.
‘It’s jolly nice of you to come out like this and see me,’ she says, re-positioning herself on the armchair. ‘I hope you didn’t get caught in that shower of rain. Where’s your brolly?’
Her osteoarthritis has severely affected her spine now; despite the morphine, and despite her efforts to hide it, you can read the pain in her face.
‘It really is most disagreeable,’ she says, looking momentarily as if the whole thing is going to overwhelm her finally. But she takes a breath or two, finds her focus again.
‘I’ve been reading Candide,’ she says at last. ‘Or re-reading it, actually. It’s a favourite of mine, a wonderful book. I’d lend it you but I’m rather attached to this copy. The best of all possible worlds. That’s the way to look at it!’
Helen is perfectly frank about her situation. The fifty years she spent as a nurse has left her with no illusions.
‘I’ve lost a good deal of weight but I’m sure it’s not cancer,’ she says. ‘It’s just that one’s taste for food rather declines the older one gets. And of course, I’m not doing anything much these days, just sitting about reading and so on. It’s not as if I’ve worked up an honest appetite. But there you are! The trials and tribulations of Helen!’
She submits to all the observations I’ve come round to take, doing as much as she can to help.
‘I used to worry I didn’t know enough,’ she says, watching me unclip my stethoscope and put it away. ‘But eventually I realised I knew even less. I’d barely scratched the surface. But that was comforting, somehow. Do you see?’
I tell her everything’s fine, her blood pressure and so on.
‘Marvellous, darling,’ she says. ‘That’s splendid.’
I write out the report.
‘Have you been to Lisbon?’ she says.
I tell her I haven’t, but I’d really like to go.
‘Well you simply must! It features in the book, of course. The terrible earthquake they had there in seventeen fifty-something. It must have been a dreadful scene – fires, rioting, a tsunami. Thousands died, I think. The place was absolutely flattened. But they rebuilt it, marvellously, which just goes to show what you can do when you put your mind to it.’
She waves the book in the air.
‘The best of all possible worlds!’
She shifts her position on the cushion, rides the pain, then puts the book back on the table.
‘Well,’ she sighs, ‘It could be worse, I suppose. Although it’s come to a pretty pass when you have to draw comfort from an eighteenth century catastrophe!’

As distances go, it’s not all that.
Certainly not as far as Dunkirk to the Middle East and back via the deserts of North Africa.
‘Churchill didn’t believe in time off’ he says, grinning toothlessly.
We’ve done as much as we can to make it easy. We’ve put the commode up close to the side of his chair and his zimmer just in front; if he shuffles to the edge of the cushion and takes a good hold, weight bears on his left leg, he should be able to skooch across. But whether it’s his chest infection, the pain in his right leg, a lack of confidence after a recent bout of falls, or simply a function of his ninety-four years, he just can’t manage it.
‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute,’ he says, casting his massive hands right and left for any kind of purchase.
‘The thing is, Len, it’ll be easier to manage things if you’re in bed and not in the chair,’ I tell him.
‘No! I don’t want to be one of them bed-bound people,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to be a burden.’
‘You’re not a burden. It’s a pleasure to help you. Come on, look. We’ll show you what we mean. It’s only temporary – to get you over this hump. When you’re feeling better you’ll be up and about again.’
‘Wait a minute,’ he says. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again – and if you still can’t do it, take a handful of pills and end it all.’
He reaches for his wife’s hand and squeezes it.
‘I don’t want to be a burden, love.’
She strokes his hand but doesn’t say anything.
After a moment he lets go and grabs hold of the commode and zimmer frame again.
‘Come on, Len!’ he says to himself, shuffling forwards. ‘Now then. If at first you don’t succeed…’

Gladys is sitting in her chair, one arm out so I can take her blood pressure. Her son Phil is on the sofa opposite, along with Derek, her next door neighbour. Phil’s wife Susan is clearing up in the kitchen. Every now and again she stands in the doorway and looks in.

‘So I’m not dead yet, then?’
‘No, Gladys. So far so good.’
‘Hear that, Phil? He said so far so good!’
‘That’s a relief!’
‘You can say that again.’
She looks at me and smiles.
‘I’ve got a wonderful family. I don’t want to be a burden to no-one.’
‘You’re not a burden, Gladys.’
(Susan, folding a tea towel in the kitchen doorway). ‘We’d tell you if you were.’
‘I bet you would n’all.’
I unwrap the cuff.
‘That’s all fine, Gladys. Better than mine.’
‘Better than mine he says! I like that!’
She watches me wrap the cuff away, then looks across at Philip.
‘When’s Pete coming to see me, then?’
‘Pete’s dead, mum.’
‘Oh he never is! Oh don’t say that! When did he die?’
‘Seven years ago, mum. He died of cancer. You just keep forgetting.’
‘Oh don’t, Phil. Don’t say that! He never is dead!’
‘I’m afraid so, mum.’
Her face crumples up, and it looks as if she’s going to cry. But her attention’s caught by the TV guide precariously balanced on the arm of the chair. She carefully puts it on a side table, then looks around at everyone and folds her arms.
‘What’s all this about, then?’
‘The man’s come from the hospital, mum. He’s just giving you a bit of a check-up.’
‘A check-up?’
‘Yes. An MOT.’
‘Oh, right. An MOT. And have I passed?’
‘With flying colours.’
‘Well that’s nice. So I’m not dead yet then?’
‘No. Not dead yet. Fit as a fiddle.’
‘Fit as a fiddle? I don’t know about that.’
‘There aren’t many ninety-five year olds carrying on like you do.’
‘Who’s ninety-five?’
‘You are.’
‘I’m not!’
‘’Fraid so.’
‘That’s a shame. Well – what can you do about it? Not much, I ‘spect!’
She folds her arms and looks round the room.
‘When’s Pete coming to see me?’

Alf and Audrey have been married sixty-odd years.
‘You should’ve seen her when she was young. Blimey O’Reilly, she was hot stuff. Fantastic at tennis, running – you couldn’t keep up with her.’
He shakes his head.
‘You can’t go on what you see now,’ he says. ‘You gotta think back a’ways. And it weren’t that far back, neither.’
He’s struggling to cope. Audrey’s dementia has reached the point where she leaves the house at night, sits in the armchair, crying, or talking to people who’ve long since died.
Alf is mentally intact but physically failing. He’s lost a lot of weight, keeps falling, can’t keep on top of things.
‘I don’t want her in a home,’ he says. But other than a live-in carer, which they couldn’t afford, it’s hard to know what to suggest. The wider family aren’t in a position to help.
Alf nods towards the mantelpiece.
‘That was us when we got married,’ he says.
It’s a double-framed affair, each photo behind a heart shaped mount, The World’s Greatest Grandparents in cut-out lettering between. In the first picture, Alf and Audrey are just married. They’re both squinting and smiling in the bright sunlight. Audrey has one arm hooked through Alf’s; in the other she holds a bouquet of roses so large and vigorous I half expect to see roots. In the second picture, the two of them are elderly, face to face, holding hands, probably in the same garden though it’s hard to tell.
‘I’m the handsome one on the left,’ says Alf, then leans forward. ‘D’you know what? We had our great-granddaughter  over the other day, and she was looking at that picture. She’s a funny little thing, very serious, very solemn. She was frowning away at them pictures, looking from one to the other and back again. And eventually she looks up at me and she says: ‘What happened?’
He laughs, settles back in the chair.
‘What happened? she says. Just like that, straight out with it, no messing.’
He sighs, watches me put the picture back on the mantelpiece.
‘Life, mate. That’s what happened,’ he says.

Ralph is sitting on his bed, watching ‘The Warrior’ whilst unsuccessfully trying to roll a cigarette. There are five flies cutting backwards and forwards through the smoky fug above his head. One of Ralph’s legs sticks out from under the duvet. It looks more like a weirdly shaped red-skinned potato than a human limb, pitted with the multiple scars of old ulcers, infections from his long years of drug use.

‘Have you seen this film? You can borrow it if you like. It’s pretty fucking amazing. Like dancing.

Do you know much about the Ming dynasty? That’s when it all takes place. Kind of like the Middle Ages, only in China. Those geezers are protecting the princess from the Mongols. That one’s pretty handy with a lance. He’s gonna go in a minute. Watch out! And that’s the princess. Man, she’s just perfect. So beautiful. And she can cut it up pretty rough when she wants. You just wait.

Have a seat. What’s the rush?

But keep your voice down, yeah? Some of the guys are outside drinking and I don’t want them to know I’m here. They think I’m dead and I want to surprise them later.’