by Maeve Haran
‘Fine,’ Sal heard herself saying, though she was still reeling that Claudia’s mad scheme seemed to be becoming a reality. ‘I’ll do just that. Now, would you like a drink before we go and eat?’
Lou looked into her eyes. ‘There are other ways that occur to me of passing the next hour.’ He nodded towards the bed. ‘That is, if you were agreeable?’
‘Oh yes,’ Sal smiled, thanking the powers that be for sending this lovely man into her life, even if it was only for a while. ‘I’m definitely agreeable.’
‘Oh my God, what am I going to do now?’ Laura’s girlish good looks collapsed into tear-stained tramlines of mascara. ‘These buyers want me out and I’ve got nowhere to go! And Simon thinks I’m just trying to sabotage the sale!’
Ella put her arm round her friend and guided her towards a nearby cafe. Her instinct was to shake Laura and say, ‘Pull yourself together and forget about bloody Simon!’
But before she could, Laura seemed to wake up of her own accord. A sudden smile peeked through the tramlines of her distress. ‘Actually, I did think of sabotaging it. Sewing kippers into the curtains or blocking the loos so the whole place ponged. That would serve him right. But the thing is, I want to move now. That flat made me see how the future could be. I might even give everything in my house to charity and start again as a minimalist!’
Ella grinned, thinking of Laura’s house, stuffed as it was with pretty things, photo frames and candlesticks, fake flowers and colourful cushions, scented candles and gilded chandeliers. ‘Yes, Laura, of course you will.’
As they walked back to the tube with their takeaway coffees, Ella remembered the property developer she’d negotiated with about her own recent buy, and wondered if he’d be able to help Laura find something. She’d look up his email when she got home. ‘Come on, onwards and upwards. I’ll go back online when I get home. We’ll find somewhere else soon.’ But before they got to the tube station Ella’s phone rang.
‘Hello, Ella,’ a nervous voice informed her. ‘This is Mrs Gregory, your neighbour on the left. It’s bad news, I’m afraid. There’s been a flood.’
‘Oh my God.’ Ella felt panic rising. ‘I’ll come straight back. Thank you for letting me know.’ She turned to Laura. ‘Oh Jesus, that was my neighbour. The river must have flooded. Julia always said it would but I loved the cottage so much I wouldn’t believe her.’ She summoned a passing black cab. ‘I need to get back at once.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Laura insisted. Her job at LateExpress could wait. Mr and Mrs A were still deeply grateful for having Mrs Lal to stay.
They sat in silence, trying not to picture all those stories on the TV news of homeowners waist-deep in stinking water, trying to salvage their precious possessions from the engulfing mud and debris.
Laura reached out a hand and held Ella’s.
‘Thanks for coming,’ Ella breathed.
‘Having you help me with flat-hunting has made all the difference,’ Laura replied. ‘I was dreading it and you made it fun.’
‘If not exactly successful,’ apologized Ella.
After that they sat in tense silence until they reached their destination.
As they neared the river Ella leaned forward and spoke to the cab driver. ‘You may not be able to get right to my house. Apparently there’s been a flood.’
‘Can’t see any sign of it yet,’ he replied, slowing down and leaning out of his window. ‘River’s at low tide.’
Ella looked at her friend and shrugged. ‘Weird. He’s right. The water isn’t high at all. I was expecting the road to be impassable.’
Two minutes later they pulled up outside Ella’s cottage. There was still no sign of flooding, only a white Dyno-Rod van parked outside the next-door neighbour’s house. As they got out and paid, the cabbie laughed and said, ‘Maybe somebody was pulling your leg and thought it was April Fool’s.’
‘If they were, I’ll kill them,’ Ella replied just as her front door opened and a distraught-looking woman emerged. ‘Mrs Thompson,’ she blurted, ‘I’m so glad you’re back. It was my husband Bert who saw the water coming through your front door and all down the path here . . . and since you’d given us your key he went in . . .’
For the first time Ella noticed there was a stream of water covering her tiled front path. ‘What the . . .’ Ella remembered to mind her language just in time in front of the neighbour she knew was an enthusiastic Seventh-day Adventist.
‘It was coming down the stairs from the bathroom.’ Mrs Gregory pointed towards the house. ‘Bert used to be a plumber before he retired and he reckons whoever installed your bath didn’t put in an overflow pipe so when you accidentally left the tap on, it had nowhere to go but over the top of the bath . . .’
Ella ran up the stairs to find the whole of her lovely new beige bathroom carpet soaked and ruined.
‘I’m afraid the plaster’s fallen off the ceiling in your sitting room as well,’ apologized her neighbour, as though it were somehow her fault.
Ella stood, stunned. The flood hadn’t been caused by the Thames suddenly rising as her daughter had predicted. It had been caused by Ella forgetting to turn off the tap like some helpless old person who couldn’t be trusted to look after herself.
‘Come on, I’ll help you clear up.’ Laura could see how near to tears Ella was, something she’d never seen before. ‘We all do stupid things.’
Ella surveyed the mess. There was plaster all over the floor in the sitting room and the expensive new carpet she’d only just had fitted was stained all the way down the stairs.
‘Not as often as I seem to,’ Ella replied bitterly. She sat heavily down on the sofa, all her usual brisk decisiveness evaporating. To Laura’s horror, she suddenly looked old. ‘The thing is, Laura, this wretched tap isn’t the first thing I’ve forgotten. I keep forgetting things.’ She stared away from Laura into the distance. ‘I’m beginning to think there may be something seriously wrong.’
Laura struggled for something to say. Of all of them, Ella had always been the strong one. ‘Tell you one thing,’ Laura said, attempting a little joke to cheer her friend up. ‘At least Julia wasn’t with you.’
When she’d finished helping Ella clear up as best they could, Laura headed home feeling resentful that she would still find Mrs Lal there. There were limits to generosity and friendship and she’d reached them. Tomorrow when she went into work she’d grab Mrs A – no point telling Mr A since he was powerless in the face of his wife’s wishes – and insist they find her somewhere else, whether her guest wanted to move on or not.
But when she arrived the house was oddly silent. She wondered where Sam had got to, since he’d told her he was in tonight. She dropped her bag and coat in the hall, feeling suddenly exhausted, and headed for the tempting embrace of the sofa, planning to put up her feet and watch a box set with a glass of wine by her side.
Instead she halted, transfixed by the unexpected sight of Sam and Mrs Lal already occupying it. More extraordinary still, they seemed to be holding hands!
On further examination she realized that Mrs Lal was simply stroking his hand in what seemed to be a sympathetic and reassuring gesture, which was doubly astonishing since Sam normally shrugged off all physical affection as if he might catch bubonic plague.
‘The bitch has ditched him,’ announced Mrs Lal in funereal tones. ‘I have been explaining to your son the many reasons he is better off without such a shallow and unsuitable young woman.’
And the extraordinary thing was that Sam was listening to her.
‘I think Lalita’s right in the end, Mum.’ Laura’s eyes widened at the use of the terrifying Mrs Lal’s first name, which she’d never dared use herself. ‘She was just using me to try and pull that berk Stephen Steel. And she was a real culture-free zone too. You should have heard her boasting that she’d never read a book in her life as if that were supposed to be clever!’
‘Very stupid and shallow,’ repeated Mrs Lal. ‘And now we have to persuade your love
ly mother, who has so much to offer a man, that this Calum she is seeing is not free of his wife’s influence. It is bad enough when a man is under his mother’s influence – and obviously that is something I hold on to myself with my daughter – but his wife’s when they are no longer married . . . he can only be a pussycat with no strength of character.’
‘Oh, go to hell, Mrs Lal,’ blurted Laura, no longer able to contain the welter of emotions swirling round in her mind. ‘I’m going to bed!’
Sal blocked off a couple of hours to begin her online search for a convalescent home in Surrey for Rose. She soon found that convalescence was now seen as a practice run for a permanent stay and offered mainly by care-home chains. There seemed to be two kinds – the much more affordable charity-run homes, reasonable in price but where they expected you to make your own bed and join in with everyone else, or the posh country-house hotel kind where you could order yourself a G&T and stay permanently in your room if you preferred. She suspected Rose wouldn’t last a week if she was expected to join in communal sing-songs and do her own laundry, but the cost of the posh kind was staggering. No wonder there was a national crisis in paying for these places!
‘I don’t give a damn where I convalesce,’ Rose insisted when Sal laid out the options. ‘As long as I don’t have to wear an incontinence pad and I have a room with a big TV, it’s all the same to me. My real problem is what I do afterwards. I don’t think I could bear to have someone living in who I didn’t get on with, treating me like a five-year-old and helping themselves to my wallet while I wasn’t looking.’
Sal sighed. ‘Maybe Lou’s right and you should talk to my mad friend Claudia about this crazy anti-retirement scheme of hers. Lou is actually investing in it!’
‘Not the one in Murdo Binns’ hotel?’
‘The very same.’
‘Will they have sex and drugs and rock’n’roll?’
‘I very much doubt it. Claudia’s taste runs to easy listening and her husband Don likes folk music with those things you put in your nose.’
‘Jew’s harps? Good. I’m far too old for sex and drugs but I like a bit of “Hey Nonny Nonny”. Maybe I should think about it. I’d love to see Murdo’s face if he knew I was moving into his property.’
‘Come on, Rose,’ Sal demanded. ‘Tell me the story of this mysterious Murdo.’
‘He thought he was in love with me when we were silly young things but I really didn’t think I’d make a Lady.’
‘And certainly not if it was Lady Binns!’
They both laughed so loud that the nurse came in and adjusted Rose’s drug line as if, after all she’d been through, laughing might finish her off.
As Sal got up to go, Rose caught her hand. ‘Thanks for doing all this for me. And I’m really sorry about selling the magazine.’
Sal tried to smile. ‘I know now why you’ll need the money. Care homes cost a fortune.’
‘Tell Lou he can drop my name if it helps his negotiations with Murdo.’
She waved to Rose from the door, but Rose was looking out of the window, with a smile of such intense satisfaction on her face that Sal wished she could be there if Lou did mention her name to the curiously named Lord Murdo Binns.
Claudia sat with her A4 pad trying to decide how to approach the meeting with Igden Manor’s owner. Her husband Don was still angry and disbelieving about the whole idea, and kept on making such sarcastic comments that frankly she wouldn’t care if he went and lived in a cave.
She picked up Douglas’s rough sketches of how the space could be used and couldn’t help smiling. The central block – with the current hotel reception and bar – looked much the same but he had cleverly divided up the cottage wings to create separate dwellings with their own private gardens. The overall effect struck Claudia as being like a medieval hamlet, with both privacy and a sense of community. The gatehouse had three bedrooms, two on the ground floor, which might suit her parents.
Claudia took a deep breath. It had taken so long just to get to this point and yet there was so much negotiating ahead! No wonder lots of people talked about living together as they aged but few of them actually did it. Courage, she told herself, this is a dream. Let’s try and make it real!
She grabbed her pad and headed for the manor, passing her parents’ house on the way. The door to the shed was open and she could hear her father and Hiro chatting away. Maybe Hiro could come and live with them too!
Lou Maynard was driving up just as she arrived.
‘Claudia, good to see you.’ Lou looked round at the quintessentially English scene with its hollyhocks and delphiniums swaying gently in the morning breeze next to a white dove cooing in its dovecot. ‘This place blows my mind,’ he grinned. ‘It looks just like a cookie tin of olde England. So what do we know about this old boy, Lord Binns?’
‘He’s the major landowner round here. He owns half the county.’
‘So money isn’t his major motivating factor?’
‘I imagine his good name matters more. But you never know with the British aristocracy. They can be rich as Croesus and mean as Ebenezer Scrooge both at the same time.’
‘Hah. Just like John Paul Getty?’
‘Who was he?’
‘Maybe the richest man in the world and he had a payphone installed in his lobby. Come to think of it, he lived in Surrey too.’
He opened the door to the reception area. ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friend . . . to paraphrase the bard.’
Claudia laughed. ‘Olde England is definitely getting to you.’
‘Can I help you?’ asked the receptionist, the same one who had told her mother about the hotel’s problems, Claudia noted. How fitting.
‘We’ve come to see Lord Binns.’
‘Yes, indeed. He’s in the library.’ She abandoned the reception desk and led them through the bar, out onto the sunny terrace and into a small room at the end of the building. ‘Your guests, Lord Binns,’ she announced.
An elegantly suited man of about eighty with a languidly fashionable air rose from a wing chair and walked towards them. He made Claudia think of those black and white photographs of the fast set who surrounded Princess Margaret in the fifties. He certainly didn’t fit into the usual plus-fours and shooting stick image of most country landlords.
‘One of our American brethren?’ was his somewhat dampening response when Claudia introduced Lou. She could feel Lou’s irritation beginning to rise and shot him a look. Lord Binns looked from Claudia to Lou. ‘Right, who’s doing the talking?’
‘Over to you, I think, Claudia,’ prompted Lou.
Both men listened as Claudia explained her vision of the best of both worlds, young and old, friends and family all living harmoniously together in this glorious setting. Not on top of each other, but there to help and share when needed.
‘Bloody barking, if you ask me,’ was Lord Binns’ sardonic response. ‘But then my friends are all dead and I loathe my family. Why should I agree to this tempting utopia?’
This time Lou took up the argument. ‘There’s only thirty years on the lease. The place needs an update. Trip Advisor keeps harping on about your lack of facilities and how expensive the rooms are. We save you the embarrassment of the manor going out of business. Instead a new venture takes over, burning with the zeitgeist of the times. A new concept for ageing! The young helping the old! Everyone is impressed with your foresight. Articles are written. Local radio reporters flock.’
‘And how is this retirement Garden of Eden going to be funded?’
Claudia gulped.
‘Through a trust,’ Lou replied smoothly. ‘Funded by the residents. Administered by lawyers expert in this area.’
‘No doubt the bloody local council would love it,’ Lord Binns commented. ‘Always banging on about social care and how no one’s ready to pay for it.’
‘Would you like to see a sketch?’ Claudia produced her son-in-law’s drawing from her bag. ‘Of course it’s only very much a first stab.’
&n
bsp; He studied the charcoal sketch with interest.
‘Whole thing sounds precarious to me. What if everyone hates each other?’
‘Oh no, we’re all old friends.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Lou intervened. ‘I believe you know one of the people who’s declared an interest.’
‘I very much doubt it.’ Claudia and Lou could see they were losing his interest. Any moment he’d tell them their time was up.
‘Rose McGill, she owns a number of magazines.’
‘I know who Rose McGill is,’ he almost snapped. For an instant he looked away, a small smile twisting his lips. ‘I haven’t seen Rose for a very long time. And you say she wants to come and live here?’
‘Absolutely,’ lied Lou.
‘Thank you both. You’ve certainly given me food for thought.’
‘Lou!’ Claudia berated him as soon as their host had left. ‘The poor woman hasn’t even seen the place!’
‘Lord Snooty doesn’t need to know that, though, does he? Besides, I think Rose would enjoy knowing she was stirring up old memories. Didn’t she tell you I could use her name if it helped?’
‘Yes,’ conceded Sal. ‘But not actually say she’d agreed to live here. Well, we’ve done our best. Now we just have to wait and see.’
‘How about a little glass of something?’
They were the only people in the bar even though it was almost lunchtime. Lou ordered champagne and refused to accept a glass from a bottle that looked as if it had been opened in 1964.
After the satisfying pop of a new one being opened, Lou raised a toast. ‘To Rose McGill. In Rose we trust! Even if she has never been here!’
Twelve
The phone was ringing when Laura got home and there was no sign of Sam or, thankfully, Mrs Lal.
‘Mrs Minchin? It’s Stuart from the estate agent’s here. Good news. Your buyers are happy with the survey. They’d like to complete as soon as possible and move in in three weeks.’
‘But is that really feasible?’ Laura tried not wail.
