Mrs Greenfield arrived, clearly well informed. She said Kitty, the nurse, had been thrilled. ‘It seems that your grandfather and George were lovers.’
‘Kitty the nurse has jumped to her own conclusions,’ Patrick replied. They certainly knew each other at some stage in their lives, but I don’t know if it was in the biblical sense.’
‘But you can’t be sure?’ Mrs Greenfield smiled. It made her seem younger, Patrick thought, and he returned a smile.
‘No. But I suppose it’ll become local folklore, at least among the nurses. The Rose and the Aussie soldier.’
‘You wouldn’t mind, would you?’
‘Not in the least,’ Patrick said. ‘I just wish she’d been able to say a little more, but there’s been nothing since. Not a word, not even a physical response.’
‘Sometimes it’s like that. A moment or two, after weeks or even years. Some tiny trigger brings back a trace of memory. Do you think you resemble your grandfather?’
‘I’ve never thought so. But I’ve only seen one photo of him. He was about twenty at the time, and his digger’s hat covered half his face. I’m not sure how he looked when he was my age.’
‘Did she know him then — I mean after the war?’
‘Yes,’ Patrick replied, aware of the other’s eyes on his face, and her interest in his answer. ‘I think she did.’
‘I might be able to find you some photographs. George had a few when the niece brought her here. I seem to remember she came with little else: some clothes, hardly any possessions.’
‘How long ago was that, Mrs Greenfield? How many years has Miss Rickson been in this place?’
There was a pause. The other appeared uneasy. ‘I’d have to look it up,’ she replied, but Patrick sensed this was a prevarication.
‘How long?’ he repeated quietly, and this time her eyes did not evade his gaze.
‘Soon after I started here. Fifteen years ago.’ She paused, sighing. ‘Had we known the truth, I’m sure we wouldn’t have accepted her. And doubtless you feel she’d have been better off.’
‘I’d like to talk to you about that. Do you think it’d be possible to have her moved? I don’t mean to be offensive, but —’
‘You’re not being offensive. But I think it’d be difficult. You’d have Mrs West to contend with, and the problem of finding a new home at short notice.’ She shrugged and added, ‘I just work here, so there’s no self-interest. We’d easily fill the bed, but that’s not the point. Think about it. Do you imagine she’ll know the least difference? Will she feel any better?’
I know I will, Patrick thought, and felt she read his mind. ‘Think carefully, please, Mr Conway, before you broach it with the niece. We could discuss it more fully, if you’d like to come back to see Georgina again?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Patrick said, ‘with your permission.’
‘Tomorrow would be fine,’ the administrator confirmed. ‘I’ll ask the girls to check her locker. The photos should be there.’
Patrick thanked her. Before leaving he bent and touched his lips to Georgina’s shrunken cheek. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow,’ he whispered, but there was no response. No sign that she heard or felt anything.
To Patrick’s surprise, Claire supported Mrs Greenfield’s opinion. That night after she returned from work they walked through Hyde Park to the restaurant on the Serpentine. Below them on the lake families in rowing boats were making the most of the twilight. Claire and Patrick watched from a table on the terrace, where they ordered drinks while she listened to his denunciation of the place.
Not only was it a disgraceful dump that should never have been registered for aged care, but the administrator had confessed the owners kept her on a really tight budget, and they, Mrs Greenfield had reluctantly admitted, were a group of Harley Street specialists.
‘Rich bloody doctors!’ he exclaimed angrily, ‘what do you think of that?’
‘I think it’s deplorable,’ Claire said.
‘That’s too kind a word. It’s fucking outrageous!’ Patrick gave it emphasis by thumping his fist on the table. An adjacent couple looked across as if speculating on what was happening. A waiter brought their drinks as though nothing had occurred.
Claire waited until he had gone. ‘It is outrageous,’ she agreed, ‘but if you make a fuss, Mrs Greenfield probably gets the sack and it sounds like the place might be worse without her. As far as moving a patient in that condition, I think she’s right. Poor Georgina won’t have the faintest idea she’s in a better home. She may even feel unsettled.’
‘So I shouldn’t do anything?’ Patrick hadn’t expected this.
‘I’m sure you want to,’ Claire answered, ‘but apart from anything else, Helen West is bound to kick up an almighty stink.’
‘Mrs West,’ he retorted, ‘might get a very nasty shock.’
‘Patrick, she’s a relative. What standing do you have?’
‘None. But how would Miss Rickson’s lawyers feel, I wonder?’
‘Her lawyers?’
‘Peacock & Marsh, in Epsom. The firm who handles the Rickson estate. What happens if I blow the whistle, and tell them of the conditions their client has been living in for fifteen years? Filthy, revolting, third-rate, third-world conditions. All to save money so Mrs West gets a bigger payday from the inheritance. The tabloids would kill for that kind of story.’
Claire stared at him. ‘They would,’ she granted.
‘So what does a respectable old firm of solicitors do about it, confronted by that? Don’t they have some duty of care?’
‘You’ve been thinking about this ever since you left there.’
‘Look, I don’t blame the staff. I blame Helen West, and a mob of bloated Harley Street quacks. The thought that a bunch of doctors own that shit heap is disgusting.’
‘Patrick, I know you’re angry —’
‘Bloody oath I am!’ he said heatedly, almost banging the table again, until he caught a glint of amusement in her eye, sensed the interest of neighbouring diners and restrained himself. ‘Truly, I’ve never felt like this,’ he continued more quietly, ‘Georgina Rickson may be ninety-seven or eight, very frail and unable to remember her life, but she has some rights. She shouldn’t be in a place that looks like a derelict army camp. That woman in Esher… the nasty, greedy bitch… I’m sorry, Claire, if I’m making us the floor show, but yes, I’ve never felt this angry about anything.’
‘Don’t be sorry for that,’ she said and took his hands, ignoring another waiter alongside them, his pad and pencil poised hopefully for their order.
‘I’ll come back,’ the waiter said, but they barely heard him.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ Claire repeated and kept holding Patrick’s hands while gazing at him. She wished she’d been there today. She wanted to share his anger, this deep concern at the way an old lady he’d never met before had been treated. She could think of many people who’d walk away, uncaring. But not this man.
It happens to me across restaurants tables, she thought: if the dinner table in Belgium had begun something, what the hell was happening here tonight? It’s too soon to feel like this, she tried to tell herself, but knew exactly how she felt.
‘I wish you’d been with me today,’ Patrick said, echoing her thoughts. ‘Tomorrow, if I can’t get her out of there, at least I’m going to somehow try to improve the way she’s treated.’
‘How, Patrick?’
‘I don’t know yet. If all else fails, maybe try the lawyer blackmail. Use Peacock & Marsh as a bargaining chip. Anything, just to get her a clean, decent bed — and a bit of personal space.’
I’m in love with you, Claire wanted to say, but knew she couldn’t. Instead she asked, ‘Can I come with you tomorrow?’
‘What about work? Can you spin your boss another story?’
‘I’ll think of something,’ she promised with a smile. ‘I’m good at that. And I want to meet Georgina.’
… And spend every minute of each day together with you in the s
hort time we have left, she could have added, but did not say this either.
They stayed late, drank a second bottle of wine and walked back arm in arm and slightly unsteadily across the park to the hotel. The desk clerk gave them the key with his practised smile and a sly look that undressed Claire. The lift grumbled its way upstairs. There was a message on the mobile from Joanna.
‘I’ll have a shower,’ Claire quickly said, and left him alone.
‘Hello, darling!’ Joanna’s voice sounded excited. ‘We wrapped last night. Great fabulous piss-up party, and everyone’s mad about the movie. We’ll have a rough-cut edited and ready to show the studio nabobs in a week.
‘Now, big news. I’ve found us the apartment. Don’t complain you hate moving until you get a load of this place. Tomorrow expect an email with photos. You’ll love it, and you can either sell Neutral Bay or keep it and use it as your office. My accountant says hanging on to it might make sense, because he’s sure property will go gang-busters after the Olympics.
‘Nothing much else, sweetie. Oh yes, I’ve definitely decided to trade in the car for something a bit more up-market. Send you a photo of that tomorrow too. Hope you’re all geared up to take on the BBC. I’m feeling a bit lively tonight, spring is in the air, you know the feeling. Pity you’re not here. Just keep thinking amoroso, darling, but save it strictly for me. Love you. Call me when you see the pics of the fabulous joint we just have to live in.’
They made good time along the motorway, and this time left it at the M25 interchange. Although Patrick had prepared Claire for the nursing home to some extent, he was aware of her shock as they drove into the grim institution that made such a mockery of the name Clarendon Palace Gardens.
In the hall they were met by Mrs Greenfield where Claire seemed to pass scrutiny. It was that sort of day, Patrick thought, something to do with the more clement weather. A real September day: vivid blue skies with wisps of white cloud drifting overhead. There was even an improvement in Block 24. The bed linen had been changed, and a screen placed around Georgina’s bed. She had been bathed and her hair washed. She wore a fresh nightgown, brightly patterned instead of yesterday’s drab calico.
‘She woke this morning and asked if Stephen was here,’ Kitty the nurse told them. ‘It’s brilliant!’ she confided to Claire. ‘Not a peep since last Christmas, and today she spoke about somewhere called the Lodge. Even said she might go home there soon.’
‘It was pulled down years ago,’ Claire explained, and Kitty shrugged and said well, it was still progress — of a sort. They all knew it was a bit optimistic to expect miracles at this stage.
She brought an extra chair for Claire, and they sat either side of the bed. The day that had begun so well became one of gradual frustration. Patrick talked softly, he stroked her frail hands, but she remained unresponsive. Her eyes, when they opened, studied him blankly as if he was some puzzling stranger. At times they moved to Claire with a look of equal bafflement. After an hour of this they began to wonder if they were frightening her.
Mrs Greenfield came to ask how they were getting on.
‘Not too well,’ Patrick said.
‘I might be upsetting her,’ Claire added quietly, ‘I feel she keeps wondering who I am.’
‘I think she’s just tired out,’ the administrator replied. ‘She was so alert for a moment this morning. We all got excited, and what with the bath and having her hair washed… perhaps we overdid it. Why not get some fresh air, and let her sleep a while?’
They went outside with her. She asked if Patrick had any further thoughts about trying to move Georgina.
‘I talked it over with Miss Thomas, but she doesn’t think it’s a good idea. She agrees with you it’d be too stressful.’
Mrs Greenfield nodded with renewed approval at Claire. ‘If she was younger, in a less advanced stage, it might be worthwhile. But I suspect a row with Mrs West might be the only outcome.’
‘Nobody wants that,’ Patrick said. ‘But can I talk to you about shifting her to a small ward? Something more private. Is that possible, without us bothering Mrs West?’
The administrator said it would be possible. A single cubicle was more expensive, but she felt it could be arranged without additional payment. The least they could do for someone who had nursed the wounded in France, and lived through an entire century.
‘And I haven’t forgotten the photographs,’ she added. ‘I’ll have the nurses check her locker when they’ve finished lunch rounds. If you’re wishing to leave, I could post them.’
‘I thought we’d have a snack at the village pub,’ Patrick told her, ‘and after that, if you don’t mind, try another visit. Just a few moments, in case she remembers.’
They drove through narrow lanes fringed by hedgerows, and found a small pub opposite a village green. There were tables in the shade of a big oak tree. Sitting there, Claire watched as Patrick carried out their pints of lager, reflecting on how much her life had changed in little more than a week. Almost too rapidly, she thought, but after all, lives can alter in a few moments, or a single glance… If not, then what on earth would songwriters do for romantic lyrics? ‘Enchanted evenings’… ‘My heart stood still’… all that sort of stuff.
‘You’re smiling,’ Patrick said. ‘Secret thoughts?’
‘Song lyrics.’ She smiled again. ‘Silly thoughts,’ and touched her glass against his in the way they’d done since the first evening after the Menin Gate. She had something she wanted to broach, and right now seemed as good a time as any.
‘Patrick, any idea how long before you go home?’
‘Depends on the meeting next week. Maybe ten days. Or less, if things go pear-shaped.’
Such a short time, she thought, but she kept her smile in place. ‘Are they paying for your hotel, or are you?’
‘They won’t pay a cent till everything’s settled. I cover all expenses and my hotel. Which is why it’s such a crappy place!’
‘It is a bit,’ she agreed, ‘and not especially cheap.’
‘Nothing is in this city. But I can claim it against tax. Or pay myself back from the budget if I get the show on the road.’ He smiled at her. ‘It’s a risk any dumb TV writer who gets ideas above his station and wants to be a film producer has to take.’
‘I have an idea — nothing to do with tax deductions. Why not check out of that flophouse and stay at my place?’
‘Because —’ he paused, realising it would be a big step and might presage a big commitment. He took a sip of beer to delay replying.
‘Because you don’t want to be tied down?’
‘You didn’t mention tying down. Is that included?’
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘Be serious. It’s such a brief time, and I’d like us to spend it together. No desk clerks, no sly looks from the cleaners, just us. Fulham’s a fun place. We could stroll down to the World’s End and have a jar. Do you know the pub at the World’s End?’
‘One of my favourite watering holes when I lived here.’
‘So… will you come and stay with me?’
‘Claire, I’d like to. I’d really like it very much.’
‘Thank you,’ she said softly, ‘you’ve just made my day.’
He felt a strange warmth at this, a rush of such affection that it took him by surprise. He reached for her hand and held it to his lips. A boy running past at the time stopped to gaze at this.
‘I’ve seen ‘em do that stuff on the telly,’ he called out. ‘Is she your fancy woman?’
‘On your bike, sport,’ Patrick retorted, and as the boy ran to tell a group of his friends Claire laughed happily and they touched glasses again.
They shared a ploughman’s lunch. When the boy and his friends left, waving to them and making extravagant hand-kissing gestures they cheerfully waved back then lingered over coffee. There was no rush. The sky was clear, even the wisps of cloud had vanished as they drove back to the nursing home.
An ambulance was parked at the entrance to the main hou
se. Kitty, the young nurse, was in tears. Paramedics came past with a body on a stretcher. Kitty told them that George had passed away; it must have been only a few minutes after they had driven off. It was very peaceful; she had shut her eyes and died so quietly that for a long while no one even noticed.
Mrs Greenfield was genuinely upset. She told them she found it so difficult, these sudden deaths. Although you were surrounded by people so old and infirm that death was expected, when it came it was always sad, often devastating. Most particularly Georgina, who had been a woman of some station in life, wrongly abandoned here, with only two perfunctory visits by her niece in fifteen years until Patrick’s arrival. It was doubly sad, because they had prepared a nice cubicle room, clean sheets and a more comfortable bed. And it seemed desperately unfair she should die just when fragments of returning memory might have given, if not a new lease of life, then at least a few precious moments of recollection.
She spoke for the nurses, she told them. It was more than the end of one life. A piece of the past had gone today. Their Rose of No-Man’s-Land was now dead, and they all felt the loss. Those young women, Mrs Greenfield said, were so brave, quite unique. From a country that didn’t even allow its women the vote at that time, leaving their middle-class and sheltered lives, they had gone willingly to France as volunteers. They went to care for the wounded and the dying; they lived in tents and were often in the front-line under shellfire. Some were killed, most came home damaged by the frightful experience. They were a special kind of young woman: very gallant, and she had been greatly privileged to know even one of them.
After this moving eulogy, Patrick had no wish to disillusion her that the older sister had been the Rose and Georgina herself still a schoolgirl at the time. So he remained silent, while Mrs Greenfield produced a cardboard box of photos the nurses had retrieved. There were a number of Rickson family snaps, including the two sisters as young children which revealed the six-year age gap.
Barbed Wire and Roses Page 17
