Serenity House

by Christopher Hope

  Now, the ranks of the elders had thinned considerably. But tradition endured in Serenity House, even if Denis and Petal did the rounds in no time at all.

  Pat Dog Day greatly impressed Dr Tonks. ‘It reduces blood pressure, stimulates interactional relationships in people who may have no one to love and pet. Studies were conducted in the States with men in gaol. Prisoners related far better to others when put on a pet programme. I’m all for it!’

  For once he was more or less alone in his enthusiasm. Mr Fox, who detested dogs, locked himself in his study on Pat Dog Day. Even the dogs disliked it. Denis the Rottweiler gave a perplexed frown when elderly hands descended on his brow and his bloodshot eyes focused hungrily on the fluttering fingers. His neck muscles inflated like bicycle tyres and he began to growl somewhere deep in his throat. Denis had been muzzled ever since Major Bobbno had a go at him with his hand-reacher. ‘Take that, you big black brute! Down, sir!’ Petal the Corgi had a habit of shaking herself irritably after each patting session and scattering far and wide a snowstorm of fine fur.

  ‘I find dog hairs between the sheets for days on end!’ Day Matron lamented.

  At the end of this unusually brief Pat Dog Day, Denis and Petal were locked in the luggage depository to await the return of their owners.

  Max, for his part, ignored the visit of the dogs. He refused to pat them and returned to his room content to note to himself: ‘Camp authorities ordered dog patrols stepped up after recent escape attempts.’

  He was having increasing difficulty telling the difference between sleep, waking dreams and fragmentary memories. Surely the driveway of his old prep school, at Churtseigh, curved left past the big house and down to the woods where those lovely cedars stood? Perhaps seven in all? But now he wondered if indeed that driveway had not curved to the right? One wished to consult with young von F. He would certainly have remembered.

  Max watched his diet. No meat. Certainly not. One was well aware that thievery was always a problem in special treatment facilities. Meat was regularly stolen by the very people who were supposed to guard it. No wonder some doctors were forced to use human flesh instead of animal tissue for their cultures. The flesh of inmates pressed into the service of science. A terrible thing, but hardly surprising, when the guards were stealing the meat supply.

  No meat then. Fruit and chocolate – and patience. For ever since his steely encounter with the boy Jack, Max had been formulating his little plan. He had seen something in Jack’s eyes. Something, that is, besides the intricate network of blood-filled canals which reminded him vaguely of old photographs of the canals of Mars, back in the days when eminent astronomers still believed in life on Mars and scorned the idea of man-made space-flight; and supported their scorn with the numerate speculations by which scientists like to bolster and dignify their prejudices. That he now knew Jack’s head – or capitation unit he would call it – to be as devoid of intelligent life as the canals of Mars, did not prevent Max from drawing a sudden and brilliant conclusion from the gleam, or say at least from the small, muddy, rather dirty light, doomed and dull, which appeared in Jack’s eye when they met in the corridor after the stabbing incident and Jack turned tail and fled! Fear…

  Jack would follow Max to the end of the world because he very sincerely wished to kill Max Montfalcon. Like Americans sincerely wished to be very rich. He would follow him because he was sure the old man had something to do with the recent disappearance of Innocenta. He would follow him because otherwise how would he know the old bastard wasn’t lying in wait for him? Ready to do him in. Once bitten, twice-shy Jack!

  Over at Greyacres Lizzie Turberville would say to her visitors as they sat drinking tea in the room above her father’s old apartments: ‘What was that? Did you hear a sound?’ And she and her guest would place their teacups silently on their saucers and listen carefully. And if they were very lucky they would hear, seemingly a long way off, a kind of scratching, as if there were mice behind the skirting boards. Or sometimes the murmurous sound of a voice humming low and long and soft, like a distant singing sea. And the guest and Lizzie would lift knowing eyes to each other and nod over their teacups. ‘Yes, there he is,’ their looks said. Jack. Of whom they’d heard from Lizzie but never seen. Somewhere down below, in Max’s old apartment, rolling his dice across the green baize, staking everything on another win like this one. Or pressing his eyes to the columns of eyes, which so dreamily eyed him back, and looking forward to more delights in the room of the tall old man with the locked oak cupboard and the disturbed nights.

  Wasn’t it a coincidence, her Living Will filed away in the office of Matron Two, that Lady Divina should one evening, quite of her own accord, leave her room at about nine (dressed in her pink dressing gown and a long white chemise upon which were embroidered several blue sheep grazing beside a red haystack set about with green daisies) and make her way to Bathroom Three, on the second floor? She carried a sponge-bag and a shower cap. (This item was to prove an unexpected boon.)

  At approximately nine fifteen, having run herself a deep warm bath, Lady Divina had stepped out of her gown, removed her chemise, pulled on her shower cap (thank heavens) clunked on to her pink bathability chair and sank slowly beneath the waters.

  Who knows what had made Lady Divina set out on this journey without warning and without proper nursing attention? She who had declared wild horses would never get her into a bathroom or shower ever again? A mystery: a miracle. A blessing in disguise, said Mr Fox.

  Still locked in the luggage depository Denis and Petal lifted their heads and howled when she was found which, Matron Two said, was very touching, her being such a friend of nature.

  Lady Divina lay several inches below the surface of the water, still ensconced in her bathability chair, looking, except for her shower cap, a little like an elderly Ophelia. No resuscitation was possible, although Matron tried artificial respiration for a while, simply because that was what she was trained to do. Lady D’s Living Will required that everything be tried but it was too late to try anything.

  Cause of death, as Matron had correctly predicted, was not drowning, but heart failure. How lucky that Lady Divina had kept her hair so beautifully dry by tucking it up neatly within her shower cap. All they had to do was put on her nightdress, slip her back into bed and send for Dr Tonks. One could always depend on Doctor Tonks. ‘A beautifully clean departure,’ he said, with his puppyish smile. ‘Smashing stuff!’

  Running scared, was Jack. And hopping mad, his arm throbbing under the bandage. Popping grandad, that’s what his head hurt for. Getting him a piece of beef. And doing what you got to do. Right? Home would be easy. Home would be Guns ’n’ Gold on Orange Avenue. A good piece. And bingo! Another one bites the dust. How many a year – twenty-four? twenty-five? thousands. What was one more?

  But this was England. The old boy was crazy. Jack was jumpy. He didn’t feel too good. He was off his food. Was there something in the water? He should never have drunk the fucking water. England was an old country. It had old water.

  A call one night, around nine, Max, soft in voice, almost apologetic: ‘Lizzie? A bit of a problem. Are you there, my dear? Can you hear me? The police have been here, Lizzie. For some silly reason they’re interested in my old war mementoes. Don’t ask me why. Of no possible interest to anyone except me. But they want to see them, Lizzie. Embarrassing thing is that I can’t find them. I’m sure I’d brought them when you and Albert so very kindly arranged for my transfer to Serenity House. In my old carpet bag. Remember? The blue one? Well, I don’t have it any longer. Can’t find it anywhere. Unless of course, I never brought it with me. Left it behind. No – not my place. Your place, now, Lizzie. Remember? Would you have a look for me? Should be easy to spot. The old blue carpet bag – and two small parcels wrapped in pink tissue paper. Possibly in my chest of drawers. You know the one. It’s a bore I know. If you’d rather not, just say so. Then the police can do the looking themselves. After all, that is their job. Isn’t it?’
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  It did not take her long. Innocenta’s room had been stripped bare. It was as if she had never been there. In fact Lizzie began to wonder if she had not imagined the whole thing. Jack’s room showed only slightly more signs of human habitation. A line of empty polystyrene boxes built diagonally across the room and the pervasive, slightly mildewy odour of old prawn crackers. In the chest of drawers she found the parcels. Beneath the bed was the old blue carpet bag.

  The micrometer screw in its leather case and the two syringes meant nothing to her. At least not at first. But what she found in the blue carpet bag made her scream and scream until her daily came flying downstairs to find her hysterical, surrounded by pink parcels, a cigar box, a leather bag and what looked like a bottle of boiled sweets.

  When the shaking had stopped she phoned Albert.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ her husband said. ‘Eyes?’

  ‘And heads. Skulls. Albert! Bare and grinning skulls. And a box of teeth. Still with their fillings. This is what the police must be looking for. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Do? For Christ’s sake, Lizzie! We’re going to get rid of them. Take them back to the old bastard!’

  ‘But how did they get here? Do you think Jack took them?’

  ‘What does it matter? Perhaps they grew legs and walked. Perhaps Max came one night. Just get in the car and take them round to Serenity House.’

  ‘Jack says Daddy stabbed him with a duelling sword.’

  ‘Believe that and you’ll believe anything. Your father might have been up to that sort of thing in the past, Lizzie, but his killing days are over. I don’t believe Jack. It’s damn Americans all over. Hot air.’

  ‘Daddy says the police have been around to see him.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. The superintendent in charge of operations has already put on a fine burst of speed. All over the country certain elderly gentlemen of – what shall I say? – European extraction, from the Ukraine, the Baltics and Belorussia, are waking to a loud knock on the door. I warned Max, but I don’t think they’ll cart him off yet. Not till they get the Polish reports. Allegations are one thing. Proof may be more difficult to come by. That’s why we must get these things back to their rightful owner. We may be the family of a mass killer, Lizzie, but do we also want them saying we hid his loot?’

  ‘I’d still like to know how they came to be in his old apartment?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Albert replied gloomily. ‘Perhaps he got someone to plant them there. Maybe the old bastard was trying to frame us.’

  She sat facing her father in the same little reception room in Serenity House where, what seemed years ago, she and Albert had left him when the grand bargain failed. Once again Max sat with the blue carpet bag cradled in his arms.

  ‘I put on my coat. See? I can go out if I wear my coat. You always said so.’

  Yes, he had worn his coat, the horrid green hairy coat she so disliked. And that appalling pointed yellow woollen hat, yanked over his ears. His face was pasty, grey, and he was blinking furiously, a shining drop of moisture hanging from his nose, a few flecks of tobacco clinging to his lower lip. He had not shaved. And all that she could think of saying was, ‘I shouldn’t be here.’

  Max sat in his chair, his large hands in his lap, holding the bag. She had loved those hands as a child, their broad palms and long tapering fingers with shining nails. Max had always been very particular about his nails. The only man she’d known who had a regular manicure. He went to Herr Otto Kelner, who ran a small salon in Euston. Otto Kelner . . . Her father kept his own manicure set above his shaving mug in the bathroom. A soft black leather case in which reposed in snug scarlet velvet beds his clippers, trimmers, scissors, nail-files, emery boards and cuticle creams. Otto Kelner, a German – only now did the significance of this occur to Lizzie. She hugged herself and shivered.

  ‘Is it true what they say? That you were one of those doctors or scientists in the camps? That you were responsible for making people go to the gas chambers? That you stood by the ramp when the Jews arrived in cattle trucks. Is it true? And these injections? With – what was it? – phenol? You injected them with phenol, that’s what they say. Sometimes as many as thirty or sixty a day. Week after week. Tell me!’

  Max stopped shaking his head and looked up at her. ‘Not on Saturdays. Not on Saturdays or Sundays.’

  ‘Why not? Why not on those days? Are you saying that you had the weekend off? You could all go home, to your first wife, Irmgard? You never told me about her. Your wife before Mummy. Is that what you did on Saturdays and Sundays? You went home to Irmgard?’

  ‘One is attempting to measure, to compare, to make notes. But one had no say in the choice of material. One simply took what they gave one. As for saving anyone. Well, what does that mean?

  ‘All I remember young von F saying is that when he began work in the Hygienic Institute on Block Ten he had just one assistant, a complete fool named Behrens. When he left there were seven. Did he save anyone? As these few treasures signify, he did not. He kept them to remind himself of his failure. When he died they came to me.’

  ‘Why did people take the weekends off?’

  ‘It’s perfectly normal. Time with their families. Or maybe they go to the football. Even doctors and nurses need some time off. The staff will occasionally dwindle to just a handful – Matron, and a little skeleton staff. Even Mr Fox slips away for a weekend, from time to time.’

  ‘Mr Fox? Daddy, what are you talking about?’

  ‘He has a cottage, I believe, somewhere in Wales.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Wales. I’m talking about Germany.’

  Max got up, walked to the window and peered cautiously into the street. Then, appearing satisfied that he was not under surveillance, he turned on his daughter his sweet, untroubled smile, a smile so genuine she had to guard herself against falling beneath its charm.

  ‘We must remember, Lizzie, the incredible strain. Especially when people are dying. Everybody is trying so hard to work in impossible circumstances. Everyone feels a sense of responsibility. It’s pleasing the doctors that patients care about most. Let a couple of GPs arrive for an inspection and everyone tries to stand up a little straighter, to cough a little less. The Incontinents – and we all have a bit of a drip problem, Lizzie – try to discipline their bladders as best they can. Little miracles occur. What one wants above all is to avoid medical disappointment.

  ‘Between you and me, this puts the dying in a pretty uncomfortable position. When Dr Tonks asks them how they feel, they know that he doesn’t want a straight answer. They want to give him the answer they hope he wants. The wrong answer is fatal. A little movement of his hand to the pens in his top pocket and they live or die. Red means life – blue and they are finished. A whole series of supplicating, mute little signals of the eyes. The dying try to signal to Dr Tonks that they’re making the best job of it they can. People are always trying to placate their doctors. They try to do it by getting well – if that’s what the doctors expect. Or they apologise for taking such a long time to die, or doing it so messily or so painfully. And all the time they’re hoping of course to be told that perhaps they don’t really need to die. But no one’s left Serenity House alive, ever. We all go down the ramp.’

  He got up then and to her horror crossed the room with his carpet bag. He tried to lay his head on her lap. ‘Save me, Lizzie! Don’t let me die! I’ve got my coat on – take me away. Please!’

  She pushed him away. She ran to the door. She never looked back. Her father’s voice reached her as she fumbled for the car keys. ‘Watch out for Jack, Lizzie. He’s going to want to kill somebody. Soon!’

  Mr Fox summoned Saul Tusker’s boys from Doves to collect Lady Divina at the ramp. Surprisingly, Mr Tusker found himself unable to do so. “Fraid this is an American job,’ Mr Tusker said. ‘We’re being gazumped by the damn Yanks!’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’ asked Mr Fox.

  Then Mr Middler arrived. Backing
up to the ramp in a big white Jeep with red decals on doors and bonnets, a cruciform design combining the latest in Red Cross imagery and the sensation of speed and efficiency.

  Mr Middler, all in white, a black string tie with brass clasp in the form of a charging buffalo, with a pristine skull cap and PVC boots, pulling off his skull cap, scratching his grizzled locks and saying, ‘Jeez, buddy, have I got the right place, is this Serenity? Where’s the power points?’ Then seeing Mr Fox at the foot of the ramp, striding forward, hand outstretched: ‘Jesse Middler, Eternity Inc., Cola, South California. Pleased to meet you.’ Looking at his inventory. ‘Where’s our member? Lady – would I be right in pronouncing her name Dee-vee-na? Is she a real lady? Wow! OK. Let’s go. No time to lose. Would you have our member stretchered down the ramp?’

  ‘Your member?’ Mr Fox enquired politely.

  ‘Sure. Signed up to Eternity, oh, a year back, I guess. We stretcher said Divina to the collection vehicle. Give her a preservation spray. Short term but enough to keep things humming till we get to the depot at Gatwick Airport. Ready to fly.’

  ‘You fly her out of the country?’

  ‘Not immediately. Once in the depot at Gatwick we begin the cryogenics. The member is injected with preserving fluids. Then frozen. It takes about three days to freeze a member adequately. Once frozen we slide the member into a tube.’

  ‘Into a tube?’ echoed the fascinated Mr Fox.

  ‘Yeah. A steel tube. A bit like a Thermos flask, but made of stainless steel. Then it’s off to storage in Cola, South California. Liquid nitrogen, in a special rack, against the day when we’ve got the technology to rouse our members for repairs.’