The Uncommon Life of Alfred Warner in Six Days

by Juliet Conlin

  Alfred turned his head to the side.

  So this is it.

  Day Five/Six

  I woke with a start. I must have had a bad dream, but try as I might, I couldn’t remember the content. It was one of those awful dreams that bleed out into consciousness and leaves one with an indeterminate feeling of dread. It took a moment to shake off the anxiety it caused.

  The room was pitch-black, but I got out of bed quietly and put on my dressing gown. I opened the bedroom door and crept through to the living room to check on Alfred. He was lying on his back, perfectly still, and for a moment I was overwhelmed by a sudden fear that he might have died in his sleep. I tiptoed over to him, but saw his chest rise and fall in slow, even movements. A momentary, urgent desire washed over me for the day to pass by quickly, so that tomorrow morning I could wake him with a cup of tea and say, ‘You see? You’re still here. You and your silly premonitions!’

  2005

  The worst thing about Gladstone Court Care Home was the smell. But it was also the best thing, because it was only a matter of days before Alfred’s nose no longer detected the eye-watering stench of stale urine, disinfectant and boiled vegetables. When any visitors came to the home, the assault on their senses was immediately visible, by the flared nostrils and the way they switched to breathing through their mouths. Soon, Alfred realised that he might well smell bad himself, although he couldn’t tell, which was comforting and discomforting at the same time. But because he had no visitors, it didn’t much matter to him. And the olfactory system, it turned out, was highly adaptive. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said about the permanent semi-darkness; for reasons unknown, the nurses insisted on keeping the curtains drawn all day, and the low-watt light bulbs hardly gave off enough light to mimic daylight. It was something he never got used to.

  If this is a nice home, I wouldn’t like to see the alternative.

  The food’s all right, though.

  That’s because Alfred’ll eat anything, won’t you, Alfred?

  It was true. Although his appetite seemed to decrease steadily with each week that passed, he enjoyed the soft, gummy food that was easily masticated and allowed no sores to develop beneath his false teeth.

  ‘I’m not a fussy eater,’ he replied. ‘I make no excuses for that.’

  Yes, the food was fine. But the perpetual twilight – it sucked any sense of time passing out of him

  That is, of course, the whole point . . .

  and often he would fall asleep in an armchair and wake up, not knowing if it was morning, afternoon or night, or whether, indeed, he had really woken up at all. Such was his loss of temporal orientation, that he was astonished, one day, to find two of the nurses draping silver tinsel over the reproduction oil paintings in the common room.

  ‘Christmas already?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, not quite,’ one of them said, a young Irish woman with a mess of ginger hair and a pierced eyebrow. She winked at him and clicked her tongue. ‘It’s only November, but it’s nice to have a bit of cheer around the place, isn’t it?’

  Alfred gave her a smile. She was one of the nice ones, although he could never quite remember if her name was Mary or Michelle. The other residents liked her too. The nurse helping Mary/Michelle was another of the residents’ favourites. Her name was Magdalena, from Poland, and she looked as though she had just walked out of some women’s high fashion catalogue, with a tall, slender body, pronounced cheekbones and a round pout of a mouth. Her only flaw was a gap between her top front teeth that showed when she smiled, which she did often. She knew each resident’s preferred brand of biscuits – in Alfred’s case, these were ginger snaps, which he would dunk into his tea until soft enough to munch without too much chewing.

  When she had finished putting up the tinsel, Magdalena wheeled the tea trolley into the middle of the room and began serving tea and biscuits.

  ‘Chocolate digestives, today, I’m afraid, Alfred,’ she said, rolling the ‘r’ in his name. Her accent was strong. She placed a mug of tea on a table beside him and put one biscuit beside it. ‘And only one. Otherwise Jocelyn will – how do you say? – get my goat?’

  ‘You mean, it will get her goat if she sees you giving me two biscuits,’ Alfred replied. Since they found out about his diabetes, his sugar consumption had, unfortunately, been reduced to almost nil. And Jocelyn, the head administrator at the care home, seemed to take sadistic pleasure in monitoring his diet.

  Magdalena waved a hand across her face. ‘Her goat, my goat. Well, it’s a silly language, with all the goats and such.’ She laughed, and he could see a moist sliver of pink tongue between the gap in her teeth.

  Steady on there, Alfred.

  Ah, if you were ten years younger, eh?

  ‘Make it twenty,’ he said out loud.

  ‘Twenty what, Alfred?’ Magdalena asked.

  Alfred smiled and shook his head slowly. (Over the past few months, his head had taken to shaking involuntarily, so he took care to make slow, deliberate movements whenever he was negating something.) ‘Just talking to myself, dear,’ he said.

  At this point, he no longer cared who heard him, or what they thought of his conversations with his voice-women. Half of the other residents were dotty, anyway, and it was only Jocelyn who ever seemed bothered by his conversations. In addition to scrutinising the residents’ diets, she was always on the lookout for signs of dementia. It seemed to terrify her, as though it might be contagious.

  It was Mary/Michelle who brought Alfred a letter on the last day in November.

  ‘Rosemary, another two for you,’ she said, handing a couple of envelopes to a very old woman with a spectacularly bent spine. ‘You’ll be winning our Christmas card competition, at this rate,’ Mary/Michelle continued with a wink. Then she looked down at the letters still in her hand. ‘But, oh, not so fast. Here’s one for Roger, and – ’ she peered at the last letter closely, as if she were finding it difficult to read the handwriting on the envelope. ‘Fancy that. One for Alfred.’ She handed it to him. ‘Now. Who’s for a cup of tea?’ Several trembling hands went up. ‘Right you are. And if any of youse needs a hand with reading, give me a shout.’

  Alfred looked at the letter and let out a quiet gasp. It was, in fact, not addressed to him at all, but to Isobel. The letter was postmarked Berlin, Germany, and it had been sent originally to the house in Checkley, with a Post Office sticker on the front informing him that it had been forwarded to Alfred’s new address. He didn’t stop to wonder who from Berlin might be writing to Isobel and carefully tore it open. The letter was written on lined paper and less than a page long.

  Dear Isobel*,

  I hope this finds you well. My name is Brynja, and I am your granddaughter. My father was John Warner, but he died a long time ago. I was very young at the time and can’t remember much about him. Sadly, my mother also passed away two years ago. This upset me terribly, and it took me a long time to gather the courage to go through her stuff. When I did, I found a letter addressed to my father (I don’t know why my mother kept it; but then, she was always a bit of a hoarder!), written to him by you in 1987. I thought it was a very sad letter, but also very loving. I’d be happy to let you have it back. Anyway, the letter had a return address, and this is the one I’m sending this letter to. I have no idea if it will reach its destination, but it would be nice to think you are reading this now. It would be lovely to hear from you. I have no other family.

  Love,

  Brynja x

  *Should I call you that? I’d rather call you Granny or Grandma, but then again, we’ve never met so perhaps I should stick with Isobel.

  Alfred didn’t hesitate. He asked Mary/Michelle for sheet of writing paper and a pen.

  A week later, Brynja had responded. She expressed her condolences over the death of Isobel (‘How I would have loved to meet her!’), but had been ‘overjoyed’ to receive Alfred’s response. This letter was much longer than the first, the handwriting more erratic, and it took Alfred a while t
o decipher. In it, she wrote briefly of her early childhood in America, her move to Berlin, the death of both her parents. She also wrote that she would love to meet him, but that

  it’s hard to explain, I’m not I get what you might call anxiety attacks sometimes. You know what that is? It’s when Doesn’t matter really. What I want to say is I can’t handle flying because do you think there’s any way you could come here and visit me? For Christmas? Plane tickets are fairly cheap, and I can organise everything from this side. I really need Oh please say you’ll come, Grandad!

  All my love,

  Your granddaughter Brynja xxxxx

  Alfred folded the letter and placed it neatly back into the envelope.

  ‘Oh dear, Alfred, bad news is it?’ It was Magdalena.

  He raised his head, although it felt impossibly heavy, and looked up at her.

  ‘Here, wait, I’ll get you a tissue.’ She pronounced it ‘tissue’ rather than ‘tishue’.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Alfred said, but gratefully accepted the tissue from her and wiped his eyes. When he next spoke, his voice was thick and heavy. ‘My granddaughter wants me to come for Christmas. But I’m just too old. I’m just too – ’ He stopped when he noticed that Magdalena had walked over to Frank Martins and was now wiping Ribena off the man’s chin.

  You’re not too old, Alfred.

  ‘Far too old. Too tired.’

  Ah, come on now. Besides, you don’t really have a choice.

  ‘My hip.’

  Oh nonsense. Your hip’s right as rain now. Titanium. Unbreakable.

  At the far end of the room, Magdalena was handing over the shift to Jocelyn. The cheap plastic clock that hung above the door read six o’clock. A dark gravy smell unfurled from the direction of the kitchen, but it did little for Alfred’s appetite. He didn’t feel hungry in the slightest.

  You have to tell her.

  ‘Tell her what?’

  There was no response.

  ‘Tell her what?!’ he repeated, in a louder voice.

  ‘Alfred Warner!’ It was Jocelyn. She was standing right next to him. ‘I have told you before. Just . . . stop it!’

  She glared at him briefly and walked off.

  Stupid cow. Kssss.

  Alfred let his head fall forward again and closed his eyes. His chin was almost touching his chest. His Brynja. His little Brynja. After all this time, she was finally . . . real. But out of reach.

  Oh stop feeling sorry for yourself, old man.

  ‘I’m not, I’m – ’

  Shall we tell him? Do we tell him now?

  He opened his eyes. ‘Tell me what?’

  Never a good time. But he has to know. They all have to know sooner or later.

  He was about to say ‘Know what?’, but changed his mind. He didn’t really care. There was a stain on his trousers, something hard and crusty.

  All right, I’ll do it. Here goes . . . oh no. I can’t. You do it.

  No. You do it. I did it last time.

  For crying out loud! He’s seventy-nine! He knows it’s coming. Right, Alfred. Listen up. You have exactly – blast, what’s the date?

  Tuesday the thirteenth.

  Right. Okay Alfred. You have exactly two weeks left. Not our decision. Just the way it is.

  Alfred tried to scrape off the stain, but bits of whatever-it-was were stuck in between the ribs of the corduroy.

  Are you listening to me, Alfred?

  Of course he’s listening. It’s a lot to take in. Goodness me, you are rubbish at this, if I may say so. I’ll do it next time.

  ‘I am listening,’ Alfred said.

  Good. I thought so. Now, the thing is, with only two weeks left, I’m afraid you have no choice. You have to go and see Brynja. You have to tell her.

  ‘But why? Tell her what? I’m too old. Leave me alone! Let me just die in peace!’

  But before he’d finished his sentence, Jocelyn was upon him again, hands on hips. ‘Okay. You’ve left me no choice. I am issuing a second warning, Alfred Warner.’ Then she turned and stomped out of the room.

  That evening, Alfred wrote back to Brynja, telling her he would love to come for Christmas.

  Brynja’s next and final letter contained a photograph of herself. He stared at this for a long time, over and over, studying it for features she might have inherited from him, from Isobel, from John. She had Isobel’s slight build, and his mother’s blonde hair, and – yes – there was John’s smile, the hint of a dimple on her left cheek. But the longer he stared at picture, the more blurred it became. Eventually, she became a stranger again.

  The letter also contained a sheet of paper with lots of things printed on it, and Alfred had to ask Magdalena to explain to him what it was. She laughed and told him it was his boarding pass for flight EJ 6341 to Berlin-Schönefeld.

  A week later, Alfred went to see Jocelyn. The door to the office was open, so he walked in without knocking. Jocelyn was typing something into the computer, her mouth set in a straight line as she concentrated on placing her fingers on the correct keys. Alfred cleared his throat to announce his presence.

  ‘Have you never heard of knocking?’ Jocelyn asked with a sigh.

  ‘The door was open,’ Alfred said, ‘so I – ’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you don’t have to knock.’

  Alfred took a step back and rapped the open door with his knuckles. ‘Knock, knock,’ he said.

  She didn’t find it funny. ‘So, Alfred. What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to speak to my solicitor,’ he said.

  Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Oh? And this would be with regard to what? You agreed to our Terms and Conditions when you signed the contract, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Alfred replied slowly. ‘I wish to speak to my solicitor regarding my will.’

  The effect of these words was almost cartoonish. Jocelyn’s facial features relaxed immediately, an unfamiliar smile crept onto her face and her voice softened. ‘Oh, of course, Alfred. Shall I call him now? We have the details in your file, don’t we?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, why don’t you pop to the common room and I’ll call him right away.’

  Not five minutes later, she came to the common room, where Alfred was setting up a game of backgammon with a fellow resident.

  ‘Alfred, I’ve just spoken to Mr Wilson, and he can come in on Tuesday. I hope that’s okay. I told him three o’clock, so you’ve plenty of time for lunch and a nap.’ She smiled – it was a touch grotesque. ‘Now, how about a cup of tea?’

  ‘Thank you, Jocelyn, that would be lovely.’

  She leaned over him, and he could smell her deodorant. ‘And shall I bring a couple of chocolate digestives with that?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve already had a slice of cake,’ Alfred replied truthfully, upon which Jocelyn gave him a playful nudge and said, ‘Well, I won’t tell anyone.’

  On Tuesday, in the presence of his solicitor Mr Wilson, Alfred wrote a will, naming Brynja Warner as his sole heir and benefactor. Mr Wilson seemed pleased – it was not an unsubstantial amount of money, and he said he had hated the thought of it going to waste (by which he meant the Crown).

  ‘Alfred! Phone call for you!’ It was Mary/Michelle.

  Alfred made his way to the reception desk in the main hall and took the receiver from her.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Grandad! It’s Brynja!’ She sounded bright and excited. ‘It’s so nice to hear you, your voice, I mean. In person. I hope this is a good time to call?’

  Alfred didn’t quite know what to say.

  Brynja continued. ‘So you got the ticket? You’re really coming?’

  ‘Yes, yes, day after tomorrow.’

  ‘God, that’s so – ’ she paused. ‘That’s so cool. I really can’t wait to meet you.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it, too.’

  ‘I think I mentioned in my letter – did I mention it? – that, well, I can’t really handle a plane journey right now. I get kinda . . . I mean .
. . you know, a bit anxious. I did mention that, didn’t I? Otherwise, I’d be coming to see you.’

  Alfred didn’t like to tell her that he had never flown in an aeroplane before and that the thought of it terrified the wits out of him. But his voice-women had given him little choice. ‘Yes, you mentioned it.’

  There was a short pause.

  ‘So anyway, Grandad,’ she continued. ‘God, that sounds so weird. I never called anyone that before. I mean, my mom’s parents died before I was born, so I never got to call her dad Grandad. And he was German, anyway, so I guess I’d have called him Opa or something. But then,’ she paused, ‘but then you’re German too, so . . . ’

  She was rambling. Alfred couldn’t tell if this was nerves, or excitement, or just the way her mind worked. ‘You called me about something, Brynja,’ he said gently.

  ‘Oh, of course. Actually, I just wanted to say I’m so sorry, but I won’t be able to pick you up from the airport. I have an appointment I just can’t miss.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ she repeated. ‘But there’s a train that takes you from the airport right to Hauptbahnhof. Takes about half an hour. I’ll be there on the platform to meet you. Two o’clock. Promise.’

  Alfred’s heart began thumping in his chest. Don’t be stupid, he told himself. You’ve taken trains before, there’s nothing to be nervous about. ‘All right,’ he said finally, easing as much confidence into his voice as he could. ‘Hauptbahnhof.’

  ‘It’s easy to find, Grandad,’ she said. ‘Just take the regional train all the way from the airport. You can’t get lost. Wow, I’m really excited about it!’ She laughed. It was an unusual laugh – sweet, childlike and it made him smile. He was looking forward to meeting her.