News Where You Are

28

He could never reconcile the interior with the exterior of Evergreen. The corridors inside seemed to stretch too far and in too many directions to fit inside the visible shell of the building. He sometimes wondered if the disorientation was a deliberate effect intended to match the residents’ internal confusion with a wider sense of the dreamlike and unreal. The corridors were thickly carpeted and as he walked along an apparently empty stretch he would often be alarmed to turn and find some diminutive figure had appeared behind him, shuffling silently in his wake. Perspective seemed skewed in the long hallways; bedroom doors stretched ahead of him on both sides, diminishing in size towards a vanishing point that retreated at his approach.

Today he and Andrea made slow progress down the corridor, caught behind two women he didn’t know haltingly moving themselves and their Zimmer frames to some assignation.

Andrea looked at the shelves next to every resident’s bedroom door: ‘Do you think we ever really change?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean,’ she lowered her voice, ‘look at these two ahead of us. Do you think in their minds they’re still the same teenage girls they once were, walking up the street to call on their mate, hoping she won’t be wearing the same cardigan as them?’

‘Is that a big worry for teenage girls?’

Andrea ignored him. ‘This place reminds me of school. The shelves outside each room where everyone puts their personal trinkets out on display — framed photographs or ornaments or dried flowers or whatever — everyone’s trying to show who they really are. Just like at school — all of us having to wear school uniform but doing everything we could to show something else, to say “this is the real me”.’

‘Did you do that? I find it hard to imagine you at school.’

‘Of course I did. I’d wear my tie backwards — with the thin bit at the front and the shameful fat part tucked into the shirt. Then there were the badges on my blazer and most importantly the bag. I’d spend hours copying the typeface from albums — like some medieval monk, painstakingly inking “PiL” onto my canvas bag.’

Frank shook his head. ‘You sound like the kind of girl who used to stand at the bus stop and laugh at me when I walked past.’

Andrea was, in fact, already laughing in exactly that way. ‘Why? What did you have written on your bag?’

‘Nothing. Obviously. You know I was clueless. I really had no idea what was going on. I think I was still wearing flares in 1979. I had a nice sensible haircut — a big wiry helmet, eyebrows that had reached adulthood ahead of the rest of me and taken over most of my forehead, plenty of spots, brutal dental brace, obligatory bumfluff on the upper lip. I’m pretty sure I would have worn my tie the right way round, being unaware of just how sickening that was to everyone else. I wrote Supertramp on the front of my homework diary in pencil — I thought that was pretty wild.’

Andrea was laughing gleefully now whilst singing about kippers and breakfast.

Frank looked at her and shook his head: ‘You’re such a bully.’

She tried to stop laughing. ‘Sorry.’ She regained her composure. ‘But the reason we used to do all that was to attract boys or girls or whatever.’ She dropped her voice to a whisper. ‘Do you think maybe that’s what the trinkets are for? I mean maybe it’s a highly evolved coded language. Maybe a clown with an umbrella means “enjoys bridge” or a rabbit pushing a wheelbarrow means “I’m free”.’

‘Please stop.’

The two women with Zimmer frames had pulled over and knocked on a door with a toby jug outside. It was opened by an elderly man with a cravat. Andrea widened her eyes at Frank as they passed by and said nothing.

Halfway along the next corridor they finally came to Maureen’s room. Frank pointed to the empty shelf.

‘Mom’s, of course, is bare.’

‘Well, she’s not the only one — there are some other empty ones.’

‘No, they’re outside unoccupied rooms. She’s the only one with nothing. I suppose the absence says “this is the real me” better than any ornament.’

There was no answer to his knock, so Frank opened the door gently to find his mother dozing in her chair with a newspaper open on her lap. He and Andrea sat on chairs next to her for a while in silence, listening to the gradual escalation of her snores until a particularly violent one woke her up:

‘Oh!’ She always smiled when woken by her own snores. A mixture of embarrassment and humour. It seemed to Frank like a glimpse of her true self, before the veil of melancholy was drawn up again.

‘How long have you been there?’

‘We just arrived.’

‘Hello, Andrea darling. You must think I’m terrible, sleeping in the day.’

‘I do it myself whenever I get the chance.’

Maureen looked around. ‘Where’s little Mo?’

‘She’s at a friend’s party this afternoon.’

‘Oh, that’s good. That’s where she should be. Having fun, not stuck here in this necropolis. Is it still freezing outside? I looked out of the window this morning and I could just tell that it was a bitter, bitter day. Where on earth are your coats?’

Andrea smiled. ‘It’s quite warm out, well, warm for October. You should go outside for a walk in the garden. The trees look naked and beautiful.’

Maureen sat forward. ‘Ooh, now that reminds me of something. Could you just take a look out of the window for me, dear?’

Andrea got up and walked towards the window. ‘What is it? What do you want me to look at?’

‘Can you see that small fir tree towards the right? The one that they’ve squared off at the top?’

‘Yes.’

‘Aha! Now — what do you think of that?’

Frank joined Andrea at the window. ‘What do we think of what?’

‘Look at it! Can’t you see it?’

‘See what?’ said Frank, but then Andrea laughed.

‘Oh — do you mean the face?’

‘Yes. The face.’

‘Yeah, I see it. Look, Frank — there are two holes in the foliage like eyes, and just there, level with the birdbath, that’s the mouth.’

Frank squinted: ‘Oh … yeah, I suppose.’

His mother exclaimed in triumph. ‘Now you see it! The death’s head skull! Grinning at me day after day.’

Frank muttered to Andrea. ‘Of course, “the death’s head skull”. Couldn’t just be a smiley face.’

Maureen continued. ‘Oh yes, he’s there every day baring his teeth. Well, we’re old friends now. I get up in the morning and I look out of the window and say, “Not this morning, my friend, but it won’t be long.” Oh, he’s patient; he’s waiting for me.’

Frank chose not to engage with this. ‘So what have you been up to? Have you been to the lounge at all? Spoken to anyone else?’

‘Who is there to talk to? None of the staff speak English. On Wednesday one of them brought me an absolutely frightful cup of tea. Dark brown, the teaspoon virtually standing up in it. So I said, “I like my tea weak.” Well, she frowned at me, obviously without a clue as to what I was saying, so I said it louder: “Weak! I like my tea weak.” And the light bulb finally goes on and she says, “Ah! Week. Week. No every day. Too many tea!” And she’s off laughing away and I haven’t had a cup of tea since, the silly woman. I’m living my life trapped in some ghastly farce.

Andrea said: ‘Oh dear. I’ll go and talk to someone and explain.’

She left the room and Frank stood with his back to his mother, looking out of the window.

‘Why are they knocking it down?’

He turned to see his mother looking directly at him for the first time since he’d arrived.

‘Walter showed me the article in the paper. Why are they knocking it down?’

Frank saw now the report about the demolition of Worcester House lying on her lap. He went over and sat by her. ‘I don’t know, Mom. The owners want to build apartments there — they think they’ll get more revenue. They got an immunity from listing and there was nothing more we could do about it.’

She said nothing for a while and then, ‘How many are left in Birmingham now?’

‘After that one, just one.’

She smiled sadly and looked at Frank. ‘If only he’d known. We’re going to outlive them all.’