The Rotting Spot

by Valerie Laws

  ‘I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,’ quoted Steve, obviously struck by the same thought.

  ‘In the rooms the women come and go, talking of…’ Erica began, ‘well, probably Michelangelo’s not a hot topic here. Maybe ‘Talking of how long they’ve got to go,’’ she finished. ‘They could call it the TS Eliot nursing home.’

  ‘What about the musical? ‘Memory’ would maybe not be the right song…’

  ‘Not many medics read Eliot,’ said Erica. ‘Lucy loved him though.’

  ‘Still does. That’s how I know it. And anyway, there’s that bit about ‘the evening is spread out across the sky like a patient etherised upon a table.’’

  God listen to us, thought Erica, embarrassed at being young and fit, exchanging pretentious chitchat in front of a woman who doesn’t seem aware of our existence. But who knows what’s going on in her head? Erica was ashamed, and went over to Lily. She took the soft hand in hers. ‘Hello, Lily!’ Steve approached the unresponsive woman. ‘Look, Lily,Toby has done a painting for you.’

  ‘Tommy painted a green rabbit.’ Lily’s remark was sudden and clear. She swung round, and pointed at the green painting already on the wall.

  ‘It’s Toby, his name’s Toby,’ said Steve.

  ‘Tommy can’t fly.’ Lily spoke to Erica. ‘Tommy can’t fly. Tommy died in the war, you know. Frank died in the war.’ The door opened, and Tracy came in with a cup of tea and biscuits. ‘Sure you two don’t want any? It’s no trouble.’ Erica longed for tea, and even more for biscuits, with an almost erotic passion, but she felt a primitive revulsion from ingesting anything in this place, as if she was Persephone and eating a few pomegranate seeds would condemn her to be stuck here. They both refused again.

  ‘Since young Toby came with Lucy, and gave her that painting, she’s been on about it all the time. Funny, isn’t it? She’s forgotten who most of the family is, but she remembers that picture and who painted it, even though she always gets the little lamb’s name wrong. Not here today, is he?’

  ‘He’s with my mum,’ said Steve.

  ‘Ahh, he’s such a sweet little thing, bright as a button, not surprising with two doctors as parents! Yes, I don’t know why she calls him Tommy, but I suppose a lot of boys were called Tommy in her day, Toby’s more of a modern name, isn’t it?’

  ‘She must have been a widow a long time, if her husband died in the war,’ said Erica.

  ‘’Cept he didn’t! Frank lived way beyond that! I don’t know why she’s started saying that, I really don’t. Look, dear!’ She put the painting in Lily’s lap. ‘Toby’s done you a nice yellow car! Isn’t that lovely, now?’

  ‘Tommy painted a green rabbit. Tommy died. Tommy can’t fly.’

  ‘None of us can fly, can we dear?’ She put the painting carefully on a table, and placed the tea in Lily’s hands. ‘She’ll need reminding to drink it,’ she remarked.

  ‘I need to get home to Mum!’ Lily said. She looked at Erica. ‘Lovely hair,’ she said. ‘I could sit on my hair when I was a girl.’

  ‘Tracy,’ said Steve. ‘Were you here when Lucy last came to visit? It was Father’s Day.’

  ‘Yes, I did hear she’d taken poorly and gone off for a rest cure, I think that’s what her auntie Peggy said. Worn out doing those horrible exams, she said. Poor Lucy, such a lovely girl too.’

  ‘Did anything happen, to upset her or anything, do you remember?’ asked Steve.

  ‘Well I wasn’t there all the time. I remember little Toby giving her the green rabbit, then Lily started going on about Tommy, just like you heard her just now. I left them to it. I did hear she’d called in on Lily’s old friend Violet, she generally did that you know. Very kind of her, Violet’s got no family left poor soul. She’s had a couple of strokes, she can’t move about much, but her mind’s as sharp as a needle. She always tells me when Lucy visits, it means so much to her. So I don’t suppose Lucy was upset, like, or she wouldn’t have gone to talk to Violet, would she? I know it is upsetting seeing Lily like this, but sad as it is, the family are used to it. So no, is the answer to your question. I expect it was the exams like her auntie said.’

  ‘Should I put the new picture up?’ asked Erica. She was feeling very twitchy with the enforced inaction and the hothouse atmosphere was stifling her. She wanted to take off her top layer, but felt absurdly self-conscious about baring her arms and stomach in front of Steve. Her usual feeling of unease about flab was reversed: now by contrast with her surroundings she felt toned and muscular in the Lycra top, and it seemed somehow tactless in this place of softened and decaying tissues. She went over to the wall and arranged the picture beneath the last one, using some bluetack which was stuck there. She looked at Toby’s previous picture. It might be a rabbit, and it was undeniably green. In spidery pencil, some spindly letters presumably traced out by the bright-as-a-button Toby with some help from Lucy, spelt out ‘Peter’. Something tugged at Erica’s memory.

  ‘Well, must get on,’ said Tracy. She had been helping Lily to drink, and now took the cup and left with cheerful goodbyes.

  ‘Nice lass.’ Steve remarked. ‘Almost makes it worse. For Lily I mean. Being in a place like this. I mean, having to rely on the niceness of the staff. Must be even more shitty for the ones with active brains. Don’t fancy specialising in Psychiatry of Old Age and so on.’

  Erica didn’t answer. She gazed at the picture. ‘Steve.’ The sudden change of tone alerted him to a change in her mood. She looked serious. ‘Why is the rabbit green?’

  ‘Why? Well Tobes is only three … what’s it matter anyway?’ He pointed to a cerise alligator on Lily’s bed, another of Peg’s productions. ‘And growing up surrounded by things like that…’

  ‘Yeah, I know Peggy makes lurid toys, but I’ve seen Toby’s Peter Rabbit. Remember? It fell out of his bed at your house when I was there. It’s a proper shop-bought toy, isn’t it? It’s light brown, like a Beatrix Potter rabbit. So why did he paint it green?’

  ‘Come on Erica, it’s no biggie. What’s it to you anyway?’ Steve’s tone was becoming defensive.

  ‘Is Toby colour blind?’ Erica asked bluntly.

  ‘He might be.’ Steve was a little defensive. ‘Well all right, he is. Lucy and I have been sure for a while now, but we don’t want to put any pressure on the lad. It’s not like it’s a serious disability is it? It makes no difference anyway. He tends to mix up green and brown, red and green, blue and brown, certain shades of them at least. Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I don’t know, it just seemed odd. The green rabbit. It certainly seems to set Lily off.’

  ‘Well it doesn’t matter. As I said to Lucy, not unless he grows up wanting to be an airline pilot that is. It’s not really relevant…’

  ‘Not a pilot. Tommy can’t fly. Tommy died in the war. Tommy painted a green rabbit.’ Lily’s voice broke in, animated now. She was looking at Steve directly. ‘Not a pilot. Tommy can’t fly.’

  Steve and Erica looked at Lily and then at each other.

  ‘Lily knows,’ said Erica. ‘She knows Toby’s colour blind. That’s what she meant, ‘can’t fly’. He can’t be a pilot if he’s colour blind. She must be more on the ball than she gets credit for. Well done Lily!’ Erica crossed over to the old woman once more, and saw a single tear roll down her papery cheek.

  ‘What’s the matter, Lily?’ she asked softly. She took hold of the dry old hand. Lily flinched.

  ‘Cold hands,’ said Lily. ‘Is it my fault, your hands are cold?’

  Erica felt almost tearful herself. What must it be like, to no longer expect anything to make sense, to constantly have the feeling you’ve done something you shouldn’t, but be unable to remember what it is? But before she could reassure Lily, her next words showed that particular window had closed.

  ‘Lovely hair. I could sit on mine, you know.’

  Steve had been staring at Lily and the green rabbit in turn, not listening. ‘That’s amazing,’ said Steve. ‘The Seatons hadn’t noticed T
oby’s colour blindness, until Lucy asked them about it. Weird, a consultant not realising, and an Alzheimer’s patient spotting it. Look, Erica, I think we can go now. There’s obviously nothing here to tell us what made Lucy change her plans.’

  ‘Yeah, ok,’ Erica got up. ‘This place creeps me out anyway.’

  They said goodbye to Lily.

  ‘Has me mam come for me yet?’ was her parting shot. The tear had dried up, if indeed it was anything more than a watery eye. Erica and Steve left amid a general exodus of visitors, almost sprinting as they neared the door and the outside world once more.

  ‘Er, look, Erica, sorry to be snappy about Toby’s colour blindness, it’s not that I’m ashamed of it or anything, it’s just…’ Steve faltered.

  ‘Something to do with two doctors having a child with some sort of genetic dysfunction? Or maybe you didn’t notice it as soon as you might have? Sorry, it’s not my business. Are you colour blind yourself?’

  ‘No. Lucy and I haven’t been able to find out for sure who he gets it from. There doesn’t seem to be anybody in her family who was known to be colour blind.’

  ‘It’s usually carried by women and comes out in men, right?’

  ‘That’s right. Women are only colour blind if both their parents have the gene. Men are colour blind if they inherit the gene from their mothers. So it can’t come from my family, or I’d be colour blind myself. Seymour’s not colour blind so it can’t come from his side of the family. Liz and Peg couldn’t think of anyone. Lucy’s interested in genetics, she was quite annoyed she couldn’t trace it.’

  ‘There haven’t been any boy children in Lily’s family for generations though, have there? Lily had two girls, Peg and Liz had a girl each. So it wouldn’t be able to come out if they were carrying it.’

  ‘Yeah, we assume Lily’s a carrier of the gene; she must have got it from one of her parents. Apparently Lily’s dad was a keen amateur painter, so it’s not likely to be him. Lily’s mother must have been a carrier, but we can’t go any further back.’

  ‘Or Peg and Liz’s dad, Lily’s husband, what was he called, Tommy?’

  ‘No, Frank. Frank was her husband, Tommy’s what she calls Toby, remember? Frank was in the RAF in World War Two, he was aircrew in fact, so he couldn’t have been colour blind.’

  They’d reached Steve’s mum’s cheerful yellow Honda by now. Steve reached down to unlock the car, Erica waited with her hand on the door handle, breathing in the fresh air gratefully. He got in, and shouted to Erica, ‘it’s open!’, but she still stood there. She could see it now, all fitting elegantly into place, like a beautiful equation.

  21

  She opened the door and leaned in. ‘Steve, I need to ask Tracy something. I won’t be long.’ She shut the door and jogged back against the tide of visitors towards the door. Sighing, Steve unfolded his long limbs and got out again, locking the car door. Erica had disappeared inside when he got there, but he caught her up in the corridor outside the dining room, where staff were already decking the tables for tea, dinner, supper, or whatever they called the constant procession of meals that punctuated the days at Point View.

  ‘Tracy,’ Erica was saying, ‘did Lily always talk about Tommy, green rabbits, not being able to fly, dying in the war, has it always been one of her obsessions?’

  ‘No, funny really, it all started when Lucy brought that painting of Toby’s. She’d never mentioned Tommy, or flying, it was the green rabbit that set her off, and she’s been on about it ever since.’

  ‘OK, thanks. Did she not call Toby Tommy then?’

  ‘I don’t remember her calling him anything. She can’t take in new names. They tend to remember things from the past.’ Tracy hurried off and Erica grabbed Steve’s arm, not even noticing the intimate contact. ‘That could be it!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That day, Father’s Day, three weeks ago, when Lucy came. It’s something different that happened, isn’t it? Lily said a whole lot of stuff she’d never mentioned before. About colour blindness. We need to think about it. Could that have upset Lucy? Was she very sensitive about Toby?’

  ‘Not really, not as much as me to be honest. The only thing that bugged her was the fact she couldn’t trace the gene in the family.’

  ‘Steve, how likely is it that Lily would recognise Toby’s colour blindness from his green rabbit painting? She didn’t even know his name, for god’s sake.’

  She paused, thinking. ‘Steve! Tracy just said, dementia patients tend to remember things from the past. Isn’t it more likely, Lily was remembering someone from her past, maybe a family member, who was colour blind? Someone called Tommy, who couldn’t fly, who did die in the war, who painted rabbits green and grass brown, whatever?’

  ‘Could be. I wonder if Lily had a colour-blind brother, or an uncle or something. God, it’s frustrating, we can’t find out any more from Lily. Poor old dear’s not going to tell us anything new.’

  ‘Steve!’ Erica sprang up again. She was excited, her small energetic frame looking strangely dynamic in this place of armchairs and day rooms. ‘What about Violet? You know, that old friend of Lily’s, Tracy said Lucy called in to have a chat with her that Sunday. We could ask her!’

  ‘Hell yes.’ Steve was getting excited too. ‘She said Violet’s sharp as a needle, thank god.’

  Erica was already at the reception desk. She came back a few moments later. ‘Violet’s in room 23,’ she announced. ‘This way!’ Erica looked into Steve’s brown eyes. ‘We might be about to find out why Lucy went back to Stonehead, and why she disappeared!’

  Steve knocked on the door of Room 23.

  ‘Come in!’ A clear loud voice above a murmuring of voices.

  They entered the room, a carbon copy of Lily’s but in shades of pink.

  ‘Oh!’ A small woman with a white bob, sitting in her armchair, looked in surprise at two unknown visitors.

  ‘Thought you must be the staff! Can I help you? Lost your way?’

  In her lap lay an embroidery kit, a cross-stitch picture of a Yorkshire terrier, which she was working on, her hands busy and her glasses perched on her head. The murmuring voices came from her TV, which she switched off with a decisive finger on the remote. ‘Just catching up with me soaps!’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘Erm, we’d like to talk to you if that’s alright.’ Erica closed the door. ‘This is Steve, he’s Toby’s dad. You know, Lily’s great grandson Toby. And I’m Erica, an old friend of Lucy’s.’

  ‘Course I know who Toby is! Lucy often calls in with him when she’s visiting her nana. Come in and welcome, have a seat. I’m afraid there isn’t a lot of room.’

  Steve perched on the only other chair, Erica on the edge of the bed. On the bedside table, framed photos of smiling families, which Violet noticed Erica looking at. ‘My family,’ she said. ‘One lot in Canada, the other lot in Australia.’

  ‘It must be difficult,’ said Erica. ‘Them living so far.’ Poor old soul, she thought.

  ‘Well it would be nice to see them close to,’ said Violet, briskly. ‘But we talk online, of course.’

  ‘Oh!’ Erica was a bit taken aback, brought face-to-face with her own outdated stereotypes.

  ‘Oh yes, we’ve a computer room, the girls wheel me there every day, and we’ve got a webcam set up so we can see each other as well.’

  ‘Wow!’ Steve was impressed. Violet turned to him.

  ‘Steve, isn’t it? Oh, I can see where young Toby gets his good looks from, as well as his lovely colouring.’

  Steve grinned rather bashfully.

  ‘Never too old to flirt with an attractive man,’ Violet told Erica.

  As a homeopath, Erica was used to drawing people out and learning all about them. Steve was more goal -oriented, and started to fidget a bit as Violet went into every detail of her grandchildren and greatgrandbairns. From there they went back to Violet’s long dead husband Jack. It was clear there was nothing wrong with her memory. At long last, Erica prodded a bit. ‘So yo
u and Lily are friends from way back?’

  ‘We went to the village school together. Poor Lily, she doesn’t remember me now. Mind quite gone. Clever woman she was once. With me, it’s me legs. Me legs and me innards. Twinges something cruel…’

  After a bit, Erica prodded again. ‘So did you and Jack, and Lily and Frank double-date?’

  Violet’s face changed. She stiffened. ‘Sometimes, I can’t remember so well now, getting old you know.’

  Erica didn’t believe it. She changed tack. ‘Steve and I have come to see Lily because Lucy is away,’ she began.

  ‘Oh yes, I heard she’d gone for a rest cure after her exams.’ The official Seaton line. At least in Point View. ‘Lovely lass, Lucy is. But I don’t know, we didn’t get rest cures in our day, worked a twelve-hour day in war time and firewatching after it…’

  So much for not remembering, thought Erica. There was definitely something here. She looked at Steve, her green eyes burning into his. She felt it was time to go for broke, and wanted his permission to mention Toby and his colour blindness. He looked back, puzzled. Pity he’s not a woman, thought Erica for the first and only time. Have to spell it out.

  ‘Steve and I have been with Lily, talking about Toby and his green rabbit painting,’ she began. Steve’s face cleared.

  ‘Yeah, Lily seems to realise he’s colour blind,’ he put in. ‘Like somebody called Tommy.’

  ‘Who couldn’t be a pilot, and died in the war,’ Erica plunged in.

  Violet pulled her specs down onto her nose and lowered her gaze to the embroidery on her lap, suddenly feverishly sewing but with fingers that were suddenly clumsy.

  ‘Can’t believe a word poor Lily says now,’ she said. She looked up again. ‘Has Lucy really gone for one of them rest cures?’

  The directness of the question startled both the young people. Erica felt bad lying to Violet, and she realised they’d have to give in order to get information. Erica felt more than ever they were about to find out something important. She didn’t bother looking at Steve this time, to hell with it.