Serenity House

by Christopher Hope

  *

  After his drive with Albert and Lizzie he felt really good. He slipped into the house. He really was as quiet as a mouse, was Jack. He surprised Innocenta leaving his room. Didn’t say anything, did Jack. Smiled wide and bright. Ran his hand around Innocenta’s neck and said, ‘Well, babe, still looking for that chessboard?’ Increasing the pressure of his grip, until tears of pain welled up in Innocenta’s eyes.

  How very happy Jack was! To have all this and to have it for real. Jack needed to watch people being killed. He didn’t mind much how it was done, as long as he got to watch it being done. Regularly. Snuffed out. He needed it as much as his diet of Chinese food.

  True enough, most snuff movies were still in the silent age. But rapid miniaturisation was bringing big advances within the reach of even the most modest killers and soon one would expect to see the age of the talkies arrive in snuff movies. So the wise killer got himself one of those nifty camcorder jobs. There were lobbies prepared to defend to the death Jack’s inalienable right to watch real people being done to real death on Marta’s Panavision back in the trailer in the Tranquil Pines Mobile Home Park, back there in Orlando in what now seemed to him to be almost prehistorically early times, where the more advanced video chains were already supplying a useful service to grateful customers.

  Now Jack was in England. He wasn’t watching snuff movies, yet he didn’t feel too bad. How to explain that? Sure, from time to time, he’d get a little bit of news from home. Some guy killed a load of people and was eating parts of them. He kept their livers and hearts in the fridge. But he didn’t really miss it. Point was, he didn’t need the other, not now that he had Serenity House. Serenity House and the elders supplied his every appetite – except for Chinese. They cried, they died, they loved him.

  Now he was being asked by people he barely knew to put Grandpa to bed for them. All this way to get so lucky. All those years consuming the product, and Jack was being offered a franchise. He felt damn proud.

  But not yet. Not yet. Jack knew something in his heart and in his head, knew from a long way back, knowledge he got maybe from Marta and her stories of human fat that fed the fires in the flaming pyres of Hungarians. Or perhaps even further back, tales he had heard at the knee (over long white leather boots) of his real mother who had run away to join a country and western band. From the tales his mother told him he knew a single, serious, fairytale truth: you do not kill the giant while he continues to lay golden eggs. Or should that be the goose that laid the golden teeth? Well, whichever.

  He was still waiting to see what Max had left in his cupboard. There was more to Max then met the eye. And Jack had grown greedy for more. Max’s big cupboard was like heaven, everything good came from it. He thought from time to time of Mr Kaufmann’s face back there in the Kissimee Flea Market when he produced his treasures. ‘Well, Jack, and what have you brought me today?’ Sure he had had a good offer from Mrs T to pop off her old man. But there seemed no good reason why Jack should not get all he could for Mr Kaufmann from that cupboard, then pop the old man and collect the reward from the Englishwoman. That was only right. Jack was out to improve himself. Poor boy makes good. That was the American way. You can bet your – what was it? – seven-league boots on it!

  It was all very satisfying. Not once since his job began at Serenity House had he felt the need to run a video through his head. Jack watched Max. Watched him from the second-floor window as Max practised on the front lawn, trying to remember how to run. Watched Max on the closed circuit television screen from the little locked room on the third floor. Scotch and a teacup. A few drinks. A tear or two. He watched Max leave the table and go to his cupboard and he saw Max lift this flask to the light and there, swimming, were what Jack thought at first were small fish. Perhaps swimming marbles. He moved in closer.

  Neither fish nor marbles. Swimming in a bottle of preserving fluid were twelve human eyes. Max had put his own eye close to the glass – resting his cheek on the table and staring at the swimming eyes. Max laid his head down again on the table and pressed his eyes to the glass. Jack stared at the eyes staring into Max’s eyes, and life seemed very good indeed. Jack had not heard about the American Dream. But who needed to hear about it when you were having it?

  Then he’d see Max reach for his cigar box, heavy with stained molars, grinders, incisors. Solid with something that glittered – gold! He’d roll them on his bedside table like the croupier in some smart casino. Ivory dice, golden nuggets. And what was to come next from Max’s cupboard, with the superior locks, beside his bed? Six round skulls. Heads! Sightless eyes and fixed smiles, tumbling from a leather bag on to the Formica of Max’s table, and rolling free. An ivory bowling alley. Oh, boy.

  For his part, Max watched the boy watching him though, in all the months Jack had been working in Serenity House the two had exchanged hardly a word. Max became increasingly agitated about security. He got Edgar the chiropodist to go to the local blacksmith to change the locks a second time on his old oak cupboard, for very advanced technological marvels which the locksmith assured him only a safe-breaker could get past.

  He was increasingly convinced that someone was going through his things at night. Locking his door was out of the question. It was against house rules. Staff must have access to elders at all times. Old people might be young people who have lived for a long time, as Mr Fox never tired of claiming, but they had to be looked after. A nice balance had to be struck between the elder’s rights to privacy and the nursing staff’s need to tend to their charges.

  There was another reason why Max could not go unobserved. The hours of darkness see most deaths, particularly the small hours after midnight. As if, at this time, the spirit is at its lowest ebb. The staff of Serenity House knew this and were trained to be ready for it. Just as they knew that deep depression is something the elderly frequently endure. They often take action. A spate of hangings a few years earlier had deeply embarrassed the management. Suicide rates actually increase with age, shooting up after sixty-five, hitting a peak around the age of seventy-four. Who would have thought it?

  ‘Not the world at large,’ Cledwyn Fox taught his carers. ‘The world thinks the long-lived are no more a part of it. It’s inconceivable that they should make love or kill themselves. But they do it with just as great a passion as younger people.’

  Dying was an ever-present reality among the elders. They did it in the way younger people catch colds. Of course, in death, as in so much of modern life, science helped to set the standards. As Dr Tonks, who had spent time studying the forms of dementia, liked to say: ‘My ideal patient is playing golf in the morning, dead that afternoon.’

  How often they fell short of the standards set by science. Try as they might, most of the elders in Serenity House took a long time dying. Some had been doing so, by slow painful degrees, for years. Others had been known to take weeks over it. A death, rather like making a soufflé, or composing a poem, or having a baby, always takes its own time. Long or short, always it seems to take for ever. And even when it comes with the suddenness which the medical profession increasingly recommends, it is never over and done with in an orderly, professional way.

  Jack was very much present for the death of old Maudie Geratie. She began fading on a Thursday afternoon and was put to bed by the day staff. When Jack clocked on she was unconscious, clammy to the touch and breathing noisily. This symptom is one which carers are warned about but the reality is still sometimes very distressing. Jack, however, was a model of patience, tact and bravery. He sat beside her and remembered not to talk too loudly, and least of all to talk about the dying person. For although they may often appear unconscious, they can hear what is being said. And it must be an added agony for the dying to hear that it’s all over bar the shouting. Maudie was a little feverish and talked, in a slurred way, of her long-lost love Arnaldo, the baritone. It was all rather beautiful, and just before she died, she opened her eyes and looked imploringly at Jack. She didn’t say anything, per
haps she couldn’t say anything. But Jack felt he knew what she wanted. And without a word he went out of the room and came back carrying his Mouse head. A small light danced in Maudie’s eyes, much the same light that was to be seen there when she caught sight of Edgar the chiropodist’s nose-ring. In any event she died smiling, did Maudie Geratie, with the Mouse sitting beside her.

  Jack, as he had been taught to do, set a screen around her bed. Then he called Night Matron and together they washed her, and remembered to close her yes. ‘So many people forget that,’ said Night Matron approvingly, ‘and it sets the relatives off so terribly to see the departed staring back at them. Poor things. Not that they can help it.’ When they had finished, Jack turned off the radiators, opened the window and left the room, locking the door behind him.

  The following evening the toast of the Stroke Club took to the floor: Jack Mouse and Imelda Duck doing a lively foxtrot. Wasn’t everybody having a lot of fun?

  But you always get a party pooper. Just as the elders were clapping in time to the music of Joe Loss, played rather loudly on young Agnes’s Sony, who should stride into the room – waving his arms, treading down the sides of his old leather slippers – but Max Montfalcon.

  ‘I’ve been robbed!’ He pointed a finger at the Mouse. ‘The rat did it. I smell a rat!’ He reached out and threw a punch at the Mouse and promptly fell over. He lay on the ground still flailing away. Of course the dancing had to stop. ‘I’ll tear him to pieces. I’ll rip the living flesh from his bones. I’ll send his skin to the tanners and his bones to the grinders. I’ll feed his flesh to the pigs!’

  Thank heaven for Night Matron. Tough as an old boot, perhaps, and certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but pure gold in a crisis. Single-handed she lifted Max into a nearby wheelchair instructing Imelda in a firm voice – ‘Off with your head, girl! Blanket for Mr Montfalcon, and then beddy-byes. Don’t stand there goggling – jump to it!’

  Matron wheeled Max back to his room. He smelt heavily of whisky. Not for nothing had Night Matron grown up across the road from the public bar of Meikle’s Hotel, Salisbury, Rhodesia, all those years ago, when drinking yourself into a stupor was the outward sign of inward male colonial uncertainty. It tended to be followed by a lot of shouting.

  Max Montfalcon was, Matron decided, as pissed as a newt. Matron’s professional eye noted that his incontinence had been unable to cope with the dual strains of anger and alcohol. ‘Upsy-daisy, Mr Montfalcon.’

  She lifted him out of his chair, slung his arm around her neck and helped him over to the bed, where he sat heavily. She rang for little Imelda and when the girl arrived, ordered: ‘Squeegee and bucket, chop-chop!’ She pulled off his wet nightclothes. He sat there, pale and silent, as she helped him on with a fresh pyjama top. It was only when he lifted his eyes to hers that she realised how angry he was. His look was the dark, baleful, bruised stare of a wounded buffalo. Imelda returned with sponge and basin and began swabbing.

  ‘It smells,’ Max said in a puzzled and rather distant voice. Then he lifted his nose and sniffed the air.

  ‘What does?’ Expertly she eased him out of his trousers and handed them to Imelda.

  ‘Monosodium glutamate.’

  ‘Is he drunk?’ the girl whispered. ‘Is Mr Montfalcon really drunk?’

  Max seized Matron’s arm. ‘Can’t you smell it too? It’s still in the room.’

  ‘What is it you smell – gas?’ Matron asked him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is it gas you smell?’

  Max lifted large stricken eyes to her. ‘What gas? I was sitting here at my table, perhaps I dozed off. But I had them with me, right here. And now they’re gone. I can’t find them anywhere.’

  ‘What has gone, Mr Montfalcon?’

  ‘My bottle. He’s taken my bottle. And my bag and my box.’ Max clung to her hand like a child. ‘You must get them back for me. Please, you must help me. My bottle and my bag and my box. All gone!’ And he began to weep, iron, rusty sobs.

  Night Matron lifted a significant glance at the half-empty bottle of whisky. ‘Your bottle is exactly where you left it. Over there on the table. But there’s no more for you tonight, Mr Montfalcon. You’ve had quite enough. I really don’t know what I shall say in my report. You know that house rules forbid drinking in the rooms. Where did you get it from? There, Mr Montfalcon. That should hold you for a while. Now, into bed with you. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. You’re going to get two of my little bombs, I think you need your sleep.’

  But Max sat there stubbornly, lips pressed tight, shaking his head.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mr Montfalcon. Look, if I have one, will you have one? We’ll put them in a spoon, see?’ Matron pretended to feed herself from the teaspoon. ‘One for Matron – and one for Mr Montfalcon! Mouth open – that’s better! And now some water to wash it down. Into the mouth, over the gums, look out, tummy, here it comes!’

  Max swallowed. Some water ran down his chin and Matron wiped it. Then he allowed her to push him back gently on to the pillows and tuck him into bed. ‘It’s of no worth to anybody else.’ Max spoke slowly but clearly. ‘Towards the end, things were finally falling apart and von F had a Polish assistant. One remaining of sixteen, you must remember. That’s how it all went you see. In the beginning he had just one. Poor Marta. Later had sixteen assistants on his Block. One by one they dwindled. However hard he tried to help them. Until, in the end, he had just one again.’

  ‘Poor Marta?’ Night Matron looked sympathetic. ‘When I was a little girl my nanny was called Marta.’

  ‘Some hung on. Nordic longheads amongst the sixteen lasted longer. Blood Group A was also a help. East Baltic and Ostisch elements dwindled fast.’

  ‘Ostisch?’ Matron looked puzzled.

  ‘Easterners,’ said Max dreamily. ‘Urslav types, those who transgressed the biological boundaries.’

  ‘We’ll hear more of Urslaus tomorrow,’ said Matron, ‘time now for beddy-byes.’

  ‘The waste was everywhere. Good material dwindled. Tailors, plumbers, vital craftsmen. Von F pointed out that executing craftsmen actually harmed the war effort. It did no good. The man sent to fetch the eyes was one of the last remaining among von F’s assistants. He was a Nordic longhead type. Blood group A. Still, he was nervous. Someone interested in genetic research in the genes governing eye colour had ordered him to prepare a sample.’

  Matron began taking off his jacket. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Fresh material, he was told. Six of each. Half a dozen brown, half a dozen blue. But all he could find were six brown and five blue.’

  ‘One short?’ Matron unlaced his shoes.

  ‘One blue short.’

  ‘Well, he did his best,’ said Night Matron.

  ‘Von F found another to complete the set.’

  ‘All’s well that ends well.’ She slipped his incontinence pad into his underpants.

  ‘In the end they were never used,’ said Masx. ‘The Institute for Racial Hygiene changed its mind.’

  ‘Typical,’ said Matron. ‘A lot of fuss for nothing.’

  ‘But the man was absurdly grateful. He presented the collection to young von F. The poor fellow was convinced von F had saved his life. What he didn’t know was that no one could save his life.’ Max began weeping. His tears rolled off his cheeks and burrowed their way through his wispy chest hair.

  ‘But he tried. Didn’t he?’ Night Matron led Max to his bed. ‘That’s the main thing. Now off to sleep, Mr M. And let’s have no more talk about thieves. Nobody is stealing anything around here. Not while I’m in charge. Not in Serenity House.’

  ‘Then where are my eyes?’ Max demanded from the darkness. She did not reply. She heard him, of course, but she chose not to answer. ‘In your head,’ seemed altogether too obvious and sarcastic a thing to say.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Problems

  They always came for him at night. That was to be expected. They came from God knows where. You had no control over
them. But you fought back, threw them out. Still they returned. Some came in the forms of smoke, flames, wheels, screams. Some came wearing striped pyjamas. Worst were arithmetic dreams from which, somehow, you never seemed to awake. You always seemed to be wrestling with numbers. Solving problems.

  Ten thousand problems in a single night. And when you woke in the morning and picked up your copy of Fowler and went down to breakfast with the others, something followed you, like a smell.

  Edgar the chiropodist tried to explain it: ‘One’s got no responsibility for one’s dreams, Max. They come and go. Can’t blame yourself for those.’

  That was true. Dreams will not stand up in a court of law. After all, if we were all judged by our dreams – who would escape the gallows?

  Sheer numbers. Confusion and technical problems. One who was not there could understand how difficult it was. Even one who was there could understand it. Young and old problems. Old ones were sent away. It might take no more than five minutes. That was all, at the ramp. Someone nodded. ‘You left, you right.’ Young problems were sometimes solved by mistake. Wander off among the old or pregnant. And look like one of them.

  You got to recognise this and attempted, tried very hard, to warn those arriving not to assume anything. You did not perhaps say as much to them but wished it very devoutly on their behalf. You longed to say: ‘Look – you are all problems here.’

  For example, it was a mistake to assume that all intellectuals were destined for treatment. Indeed, around about ’forty-two, it became policy to preserve wherever possible scientific personnel, including doctors, nurses, engineers. Skills were in short supply.

  Then there was the business of the trucks. A profound misunderstanding. Those selected for trucking to the depots were assumed by some, such was the contagion of fear and hysteria which gripped the new arrivals, to be heading for some better place. In fact the opposite was the case. Yet you had to stand by sometimes and see otherwise perfectly healthy, highly skilled problems, well deserving of preservation, chasing after the trucks as they pulled away carrying the old, the halt, the lame, the young and the pregnant problems, and literally forcing the officials to take them aboard.