News Where You Are

8

‘ “Call the banker! Call the banker!” ’ cried Henry, his eyes shining. ‘Is that it? Did I get it right?’

Frank shook his head. ‘Sorry, no, that’s someone else.’

Henry punched his open palm. ‘Ooh — you’re good. You’re too good for me. Give me another go. Here we are now, how about: “It’s good but it’s not right!” ’

Frank shrugged his shoulder. ‘No, sorry. Wrong again.’

Henry looked shocked. ‘Balls! I was sure I had you then. Oh, wait there, wait there: “Hello, good evening and welcome.” Eh? Eh?’

Frank wondered how long this might go on for. Every time he visited his mother, he spent some time in the residents’ lounge. The manageress thought he lifted their spirits. Andrea thought it was more likely that he drove everyone to their rooms for a nap. Henry recognized Frank from TV but could never place him, or possibly pretended not to. There was a diabolical glint in Henry’s eyes and an edge to his grin that led Frank to believe that Henry knew very well who Frank was and was mercilessly mocking him.

‘Oh God. Oh no. You’re not that insufferable little prick, are you?’

Frank looked apologetic. ‘Possibly.’

‘Oh Christ. “Remember, don’t have nightmares.” What an utter shit! Is that you?’

Henry was interrupted by Walter’s approach.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Henry, leave the man alone and give it a rest, will you.’ Henry immediately sidled off. Walter shook a box of dominos at Frank. ‘Fancy a quick one?’

‘Why not?’ Frank pulled up a chair to their usual table by the window. Walter distributed the tiles and hummed ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’ with gusto. Sometimes Frank wondered if this was how it might have been had his father lived to old age. A quiet game of dominos, small talk about the weather, an easy companionship, but the image never quite rang true.

His father had died at fifty-one in a room full of people. Standing in front of a screen, illuminated by the glow of a projector, he was pointing with a fine baton at his design for the headquarters of a legal firm when his arm suddenly jerked towards the upper part of the plan. The assembled partners focused their attention at the baton’s end and squinted to see what was now being called to their attention. They jumped in shock as the gentle whirring of the projector’s fan was abruptly drowned out by Douglas’s roar of pain, and he collapsed sideways, crashing through the screen, the pale blue lines of his design momentarily framing his stricken face before he hit the ground. He was dead before the ambulance arrived.

Frank was eleven when his father died, but in truth Douglas had been absent throughout much of his life, his passion for his work taking up most of his time and energy. Frank and his mother stayed on in the house that Douglas had built for them, a modern two-storey flat-roofed home set on a gentle slope in Edgbaston.

Even before his father’s death, Frank had noticed the way Maureen often seemed elsewhere in her thoughts. He had become aware as a young boy of days when his mother would watch the television without seeing anything, would ask him where he was going without listening to the answer or open cupboards and stare into them for minutes at a time. Some days she would be fine, but on others he would return from school to see her at her bedroom window, looking out at the sky, an expression of terrible loss on her face. As he grew older, he began to suspect that his mother was doing all this for his benefit — that he alone was her intended audience. Sometimes friends or work colleagues would visit and she seemed a different person with them, laughing and chatting. Whilst he believed she often was unhappy, and could even see that she perhaps had grounds to be so, he also felt that she wanted him to see her that way. It was a feeling he could never quite shake.

Walter was winning as always. Frank wasn’t sure what Walter got from playing against someone so weak at the game, maybe just the novelty at his age of anything being effortless.

‘I saw your mother in here the other day.’

‘Oh, good. She does leave her room occasionally, then?’

‘Oh yes. She’s not in here all the time, but she comes down every now and again, and it’s always a pleasure when she does. She has such a sense of humour.’

Frank had heard this many times. ‘Apparently yes.’

‘Yes, oh, she makes me smile. Very quick witted. Very dry.’ Walter laughed to himself. ‘You should hear what she says about the management here. “The Cabal” she calls them. I know she has her blue days. We all do. But on her good days she’s like a crisp, clean gin and tonic.’

Blue days. Frank had always thought of them as purple. He smiled at the thought of the gin and tonic; it was a good description — sparkling and fresh. He saw that side of her very rarely now, but he knew what Walter meant.

After Douglas’s death Maureen continued to work parttime at the local doctor’s surgery and had many friends and colleagues around her, but despite this she often spoke as if her life was almost over — referring to herself as old as far back as Frank could remember. At times her melancholy bordered on self-parody, descending into Eeyore-like gloom. Andrea asked Frank not long after they married if he thought his mother was depressed and Frank had said: ‘She’s not depressed; she’s just miserable.’

But after retirement, whatever constituted Maureen’s condition — grief, depression, loneliness or just a predisposition to melancholy — was exacerbated by an increase in her alcohol consumption. Late in the evening, after she’d had a bottle of wine, Frank would receive phone calls from Maureen telling him that she didn’t think she’d live much longer, or that she wanted to be cremated not buried, and he would find himself ensnared in her circular monologues.

Gradually the house became too much for her. She no longer had the energy or the will to keep the large windows and the parquet floors clean. More of Frank and Andrea’s visits were taken up with cleaning and shopping for food. Maureen started to lose weight and never seemed to know when or what she’d last eaten. One day Frank received a call from the newsagent near his mother’s house, telling him that Maureen had tried to pay for her paper with a bus ticket.

The doctor didn’t rule out Alzheimer’s but diagnosed Maureen primarily as depressed. Frank asked her to come and live with his family, but Maureen refused point blank. She said she would rather he smothered her with a pillow than become a burden on him. And so after much investigation and thought, aged just sixty-seven, Maureen moved into Evergreen Senior Living.

Evergreen had started off in the States before importing their variety of deluxe privately run care homes into the UK. Maureen’s home, by virtue of being in the Midlands, had been branded Evergreen Forest of Arden. It was a vast purpose-built facility, with over one hundred permanent residents and more making brief stays for respite care. The home was divided into two zones. Maureen, Walter and Henry were in ‘Helping Hands’, whilst those with more advanced dementia or greater dependency were housed in a separate, secure area called ‘Golden Days’, inevitably referred to by residents as ‘Gaga Days’.

For some historical reason never explained to Frank the home had always attracted a significant proportion of residents retired from the entertainment business. Frank had first heard of Evergreen through Phil Smethway, who had himself heard of it through someone else, word of mouth being the way that most people came across the home. Retired magicians, dancing girls, musicians and technicians now found themselves all at the same endless after-show party, drinking tea and trying to identify the latest presenter of Countdown.

Once a month a cabaret night was staged by the residents. Maureen had attended one once and told Frank it had all the charm and entertainment value of being buried alive. Frank noticed the poster for the next one on the wall:

The Great Misterioso

(aka Ernie Webster)

will be presenting a dazzling array of his greatest tricks in

THE MAGIC NEVER DIES

Saturday 24^th 4 p.m., Shakespeare Lounge

‘ “The magic never dies”. Are you going to that, Walter?’

‘No, it’s been cancelled.’

‘Why?’

‘He died.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Frank.

Walter broke into a wide grin. ‘So that proved that bugger wrong, didn’t it?’