by Frank Kusy
But maybe John was right. Maybe I did need a distraction.
‘I’ve never played before,’ I mumbled through one half-opened eye. ‘Is it easy?’
‘Well, it’ll certainly snap you out of your trance,’ grinned John. ‘I’ll meet you in the leisure room at six. Do not be late.’
I dutifully turned up at six sharp and saw why promptness had been of the essence. At one second past six, John opened the door to the leisure room and about thirty residents and friends piled in.
‘Hang on to your hat, Frank,’ John told me. ‘They take their bingo very seriously.’
How seriously they took it terrified me. ‘Get out of my seat!’ ordered an hysterical Mrs Caitlin. ‘That’s my lucky seat!’
‘Sit behind me, Frank,’ laughed John. There’s always a bit of a scrum to be in a good position to the caller.
‘Blimey,’ I said, backing away from the oncoming tide. ‘Are they all this superstitious?’
John’s grin widened. ‘You wouldn’t credit it. Last year, a woman turned up with an urn with her brother’s ashes in it for “luck”. We only turned her away with difficulty.’
As a bingo virgin, I had no idea of what to expect. All that I knew was that I had been given the job of selling the bingo cards. I was surprised to find most of the old folk wanted ten. Ten! How were they going to keep track of ten cards? Then I noticed the specialist equipment they had brought along...their brightly coloured bingo pens and the very large bags for taking home prizes.
I only had a pencil and had purchased just one card in my brave attempt to join in. ‘How hard can it be?’ I thought smugly. ‘All these old ladies who play, surely my reactions are quicker than theirs? Besides, it's just for fun, isn't it?’ How innocent I was, and how terribly wrong. That first evening I was like a child walking barefoot into a nest of vipers.
As soon as John called ‘eyes down’ silence fell over the room as patrons dabbed for a potential win. Heads lowered in fierce concentration, they looked like woolly-jumpered horses at the starting gate. Then John pulled the first numbered ball from the large fish bowl in front of him and they were off!
‘One little duck....number 2,’ he called, and half the competitors started quacking.
‘Burlington Bertie...number thirty!’ he said, and all the old ladies looked enviously at Betsy.
‘Eighty-Three...stop farting!’ A chorus of ‘Who, me?’ ran round the room.
I was finding this alarming. This bingo thing seemed to have a language all of its own. But the main thing that shocked me was how quick the old ladies were. They checked over their ten cards while I was still searching through my single one. I felt so stupid. Then there was the difference between a line and a ‘full house’. It sounded easy, but in the adrenaline rich atmosphere of the competition, I was finding it hard to remember if we were going for a full house or a line – something I found to my cost two minutes later.
‘I’ve got a line!’ I shouted in a nervous voice, and John stopped calling.
Thirty pairs of rheumy eyes tracked in on me. Then the mutterings began. I had dared stop the proceedings for a line when everybody else was going for a full house!
‘So sorry, everybody,’ John apologised for me as I went bright red. ‘It’s Mr Kusy’s first time. Let’s push on!’
After that, of course, I didn’t dare call out anything. But I was not the main offender that afternoon. One old lady called ‘House’ too early, an unforgivable sin, and all the others shifted their chairs and turned their backs on her.
Yes, this bingo was a very serious business. But John had been right – I got so caught up in the buzz and excitement of it, I forgot all about my rude treatment earlier on. Indeed, by the time I’d finished handing out the prizes, basking in the nods and thanks of the lucky winners, I was wearing a big smile on my face.
A smile that was about to get a whole lot bigger.
Chapter 12
Anna
As life in the home settled down and no more dramas were in the offing, my mind began to turn to romance. My relationship status had been single for close on two years now, and notwithstanding my brush with the teddy bear hugging nymphomaniac, I thought I might be ready for love again.
‘If even Bertie and Betsy can get it together,’ I told myself, ‘why not me?’
I started my search at a dating club called London Link Up, which held regular parties at a venue near Leicester Square. But this didn’t work out well. One night, I hooked up with a girl called Mary, who wore a lot of leather. I couldn’t remember what happened between us, I was so drunk, but I certainly did remember what happened the next morning. I walked into her kitchen, in search of a glass of water, and surprised her in the act of making a telephone appointment with a “client”. ‘Are you a prostitute, then?’ I asked her, and she said: ‘What are you complaining about? You’re getting it for free.’
I told Brenda about this and she just laughed.
‘If you want to change your relationship karma,’ she said, ‘you should become a group leader.’
I flinched. There was that word ‘should’ again.
‘What?’ I said, a look of horror on my face. ‘As in a Buddhist group leader?’
‘That’s right, silly,’ Brenda said with a giggle. ‘It will develop your caring, nurturing side. You do have one, don’t you?’
Yes, I did have a caring, nurturing side, but I had to confess, only when it suited me. I was a typical only child, everything on my terms. And the thought of having to look after a group of other Buddhists filled me with dread.
‘Look, I have to be honest,’ I said. ‘I’ve only just got used to the idea of managing the old people’s home. I really don’t think I’m ready for any more responsibility.’
Brenda’s eyes crinkled with amusement. ‘That’s what Dick Causton said when President Ikeda asked him to take charge of our Buddhist organisation for the whole of the U.K. And Ikeda came back with just three little words: “Responsibility needn’t weigh.”’
‘Yes, well,’ I replied. ‘From what I’ve heard, Causton was an army colonel before he became a Buddhist. He was used to man management. Me, I’m hopeless. I can’t even run the home on my own. I’ve basically delegated all the man management to my deputy, John Gray.’
But my protests fell on deaf ears. Brenda got together with her sister Anna, and a week or so later I found myself appointed leader of 16 Buddhist members in the Clapham/Balham area. I looked at the list of their names in dismay. I didn’t know any of them. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know any of them. All that I did know was that they were going to be a drag on my precious time. ‘Blow this for a lark,’ I thought to myself. ‘I’m knackered as it is, coming home every night after ten hours of work. I can’t be arsed to make 16 new friends.’
But then the monthly discussion meeting came around and although I hoovered my little flat and tried to make it look as welcoming as possible, only four people turned up.
Brenda was not impressed when she heard the news. ‘The monthly discussion meetings are the most important dates on our calendar,’ she scolded me. ‘Did you even bother to pick up the phone to anyone?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ I replied sulkily. ‘I’ve got a thing about telephones. I’ve also got a thing about talking to total strangers.’
‘Well, they wouldn’t be total strangers if you talked to them!’ sniffed Brenda. ‘Honestly, Frank, for a bright bloke you can be awfully dim at times. How can you expect to change your relationship karma if you can’t be bothered to make any new friends?’
She had a point of course. All my life, I had hidden away from people, much preferring my own company. Even as a child, if the occasional school chum turned up at my door asking if I wanted to come out and play, I would shout down the stairs to my mum: ‘What do they want to do?’ And if it wasn’t something I wanted to do, I would just leave them standing there while I returned the book or comic I was reading.
Now, as I approached my 28th birthday, I realised t
he need for change.
‘I’ve got to get out of my comfort zone,’ I told Brenda’s sister, Anna. ‘I haven’t had a relationship in two years.’
‘Neither have I’, said Anna glumly. ‘I know. We’ll do a tozo.’
‘A tozo? What’s that?’
That’s when, if you have a particular problem to deal with, or you want to shift a particularly large chunk of karma, you chant for a long time.’
‘How long a time?’
‘Oh, well, at least three hours.’
Three hours? I had never sat still for three hours in my life before. Even a visit to the cinema had me checking my watch every ten minutes to get out.
But it was strange. After the first half hour, with seven other Buddhists packed into my tiny flat a few days later, my mind settled down and stopped running around like a restless rabbit. I began to zone in on the heart shaped character of myo in the centre of the gohonzon. And then, without being even conscious of it, I began to reflect on my relationships.
What did the women in my life so far have in common? Well, for one thing they all were more than slightly unhinged: from the predatory Liz who seduced me at university and then kicked me out of bed when she found I was a virgin, to the sweet but silly Lucy who liked baby talk and who had an annoying laugh, to the cold and hysterical Barbara who stopped her car on the fast lane of the M25 motorway and demanded a £900 engagement ring, and of course to the sex mad Christine who dumped me in favour of someone with a more proactive Percy. Not to mention the bubbly fatling Sue whose father was a famous film director and who flew in with his helicopter every weekend with bags of sweets and treats for his favourite daughter.
And herein lay the second common denominator. All of these women had serious daddy issues. They were all prima donnas who had been spoiled rotten when young and who still wanted, no, expected to be looked after by someone else. I hadn’t felt half of a couple at all.
As the tozo entered its third hour and I achieved a state of total concentration, I was able to put my ‘self’ aside completely and feel ‘all that’ out there in the big, wide world and not be distracted by anything. I lost all sense of time. And at the end, all I could see was just the characters on the gohonzon, and a sort of gold blur in the background. I wasn’t aware of thoughts per se at all.
But one thing I was aware of. My relationships with women had been based on fun and sex, and that simply wasn’t enough. What I needed now was someone in my life who would be a rock, who would be a real friend and a true ‘equal’ partner, not just in this existence but in all existences to come.
And who did I get?
I got Anna.
The tozo group moved straight on to a party at a mutual friend’s place. The mutual friend was called Carol and she had just got together with another mutual friend, Graham. And it was here, during a particularly vigorous jive dance with Anna that we lost a grip of each other and went flying into Carol’s record player. I don’t remember much of what came after, only that the record player cut a deep groove into my arm and Anna drove me straight back to her place and put me to bed and started dressing it.
Then, as she finished administering to my wound, something happened. There was a moment’s pause as she leaned forward to inspect the bandage, and in that moment – as our eyes met and the heat unexpectedly rose between us – I drew her down and kissed her.
‘What do you think you are doing, Mr Frank Kusy?’ she murmured huskily.
No more words were spoken.
I woke the next morning feeling more relaxed and content than at any time in my life. The sun was streaming in through the window, bathing the tidy pinewood dressers and wardrobes – and even tidier collage of blue and white plates on the wall – in a warm, rosy glow. Downstairs, I could smell eggs cooking. My stomach gurgled. I hoped some of those eggs were for me.
‘My arm’s feeling a lot better,’ I said as I drifted down the stairs in one of Anna’s much-too-small dressing gowns.
‘I’m guessing the rest of you feels a lot better too,’ she replied, an amused smile playing across her small, pretty features. ‘Do you mind telling me what happened back there?’
It was a good question, and one for which I had no easy answer. We had been friends for three years and in all of that time neither of us had evinced the least romantic interest in each other. In fact, we had had trouble even being friends. I found Anna too serious – my humour fell flat on its face with her – and all through our days at the Financial Times, where she had been my direct line editor, she had found me too ‘bouncy’. Imagine our surprise when we found that we were perfectly suited in the bedroom department. Seriously bouncy, indeed.
‘I don’t know,’ I ventured hesitantly. ‘But I tell you what, those tozos work a treat. When can we do another one?’
Anna’s dimpled smile deepened. ‘Let’s take it slow, sweetie,’ she replied. ‘But get this. I’ve been on the phone for the last hour, and it turns out that all eight of us who did that tozo got off with someone at that party. In fact, we all got off with each other!
‘Even John, that gay guy?’
‘Yes, even him. Who knew that Stewart, that new member who turned up late, was gay too?’
Anna’s house was actually half a house, the top half, and it was beautifully decorated and very, very clean. She also had two cats – Bitsa, a very affectionate tortoiseshell and Isis, a rather more aloof black cat. For someone like me, who loved cats but had never had one of my own, it was paradise. I stroked and fussed over those cats like nobody’s business and Anna, bless her, never got jealous. She understood a man with cat deprivation issues.
I suppose it was when I started doing a monthly magazine for the old people’s home that Anna took an interest in my work. Her skill set was print and design and she was using it to good effect for a well-known charity in central London. ‘Okay, I’ll help you with your magazine,’ she said one day. ‘But first, let me see what we’re dealing with – I’d like to visit the home.’
Looking back on it, she may have regretted that decision. The day I chose for her visit was the home’s annual Garden Fete, and no sooner had we arrived than Old Bill kicked off in best belligerent form.
‘I’m not drinking this,’ the truculent troublemaker was howling down the corridor. ‘It’s got bromide in it!’
The object of his derision was a cup of tea, which he was brandishing in the air like an Olympic torch. And as soon as he caught my eye, he advanced on me, his hands shaking and the tea slopping all over the floor.
‘What’s the story here?’ I hurriedly enquired of Matron, who had just turned up. ‘And what’s bromide?’
‘They used it during the war, dear,’ said the Matron. ‘For the soldiers in the army, to control their sexual appetites. That’s what’s got Bill going. He’s sure we’re putting bromide in his tea.’
‘I know it,’ proclaimed Bill, coming to a stop about three feet away from us. ‘I can taste it!’
Matron eyed the tea-slopping rebel dubiously, and decided she’d had enough.
‘Now, come along, dear,’ she told him. ‘If you’ve got bromide, so has everybody else, because everybody’s tea is poured from the same pot!’
‘Well, there you are, then!’ crowed Bill triumphantly. ‘They’ve all got bromide! But you know what that lot are. They won’t talk. They wouldn’t even notice the difference. But I do. And I’m not having it!’
Matron didn’t see the white stick coming. It whistled past my ear and into her perfect pile of tightly permed hair with a loud thonk! As she let go a light moan and fell to the floor, I looked across nervously to Anna. How was I going to protect her from the craziest old codger in Clapham?
But she didn’t need my protection. With Bill still raging: ‘Yes, as soon as my gammy leg’s better, I’m going to take this cup of tea over to the chemist and have it analysed for bromide!’ she stepped forward and gave him a big hug.
Everything stopped. Bill stopped ranting and looked over her shoulde
r with a look of surprise. Matron stopped scrabbling around on the floor and regarded Anna with an even bigger look of surprise. And I stopped reconsidering my career in elderly care and wondered why none of us had thought to do this with Bill before.
‘He just needs a bit of attention,’ Anna whispered to me. ‘That’s all he wants.’
*
Out in the garden, the fete was in full swing. Mr Parker was manning the book stall, Miss Sherring was handling the guess-the-weight-of-the-cake stand, and over in the corner Betsy and Bertie were running the tombola.
I wasn’t sure where to take Anna first, but then Bertie spotted me and summoned us over urgently.
‘Oi, Mr Kusy, come over here! Me and Betsy’s getting married. I just called the Pope in Rome, and he’s flying over to do the honours.’
‘Pope John Paul II?’
‘Yerse, that’s the one. He’s on his way over right now. Me and Woj – that’s Wojtyła to you – go way back. He was a pretty nifty footballer in his day. I used to peel his oranges for him at half time.’
Anna and I shared a secret smirk. She’d heard all about Bertie and his fanciful imaginings.
‘Is that your young lady?’ intervened little Betsy, peering at Anna through her dark glasses. ‘My, but she’s a pretty one!’
‘Yes, she is,’ I said proudly. ‘And she’s pretty smart too. She just shut down Bill in the middle of one of his rages.’
‘Hmphh,’ muttered Bertie. ‘What that Bill needs is a tot of rum. That’d make a man of him.’
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying this,’ said Betsy, grabbing one of Anna’s hands. ‘But if was 30 years younger, I’d make a man out of Mr Kusy. It took me ten minutes to do up the buttons on my blouse this morning. He should have been there!’
Anna laughed and sat herself down next to my aged groupie. ‘No, of course I don’t mind. But tell me, Betsy – I’ve heard so much about you – how did you feel when you first came into the home?’
