Crealy had never been an intellectual, and at eighty-one he found it difficult to move and think at the same time. So he remained stooped in the semi-light between kitchen and dining room, and he tried to remember what he had been going to do before he met Mrs Joyce.
He went into the pantry beyond the stainless steel moonlight of the kitchen, and lifted out a large tin of golden syrup. He took a thick crust from the toast drawer and, with his fingers as a ladle, spread golden syrup on it. The syrup lay dark in the tin, but silver in glints as it twined from his fingers.
Crealy replaced the tin, and stood with the bread and syrup in his clean hand, sucking his other fingers. He looked into the shadowed dining room: the identical tables, evenly spaced, and an oblong of light across them from the corridor. The golden syrup was rich and energy giving. Crealy began to wonder if Mrs Halliday was having one of her spells in the home. He made such demands on his old mind that his chewing slowly stopped, and his hand no longer held the bread level. He stood in the kitchen doorway as a Neanderthal at the entrance to his cave. The syrup made a silver necklace to the floor. Crealy couldn’t remember: couldn’t remember at all.
‘Bugger me,’ he said at last. He was unable to come up with anything, so he stopped thinking, allowed the motor-sensory centres priority again, and moved into the lino tubes which were the Totara corridors.
At the duty room, Crealy decided to check on Brisson in case he was doing the unexpected thing and actually making a round. There was no key for the duty room door, but when Crealy pushed lightly against it, he found that Brisson had set the end of the sofa hard to it. Then he heard voices. Nurse McMillan talked as she and Brisson made love, but her topic was dissatisfaction with conditions of service, not romance. Lovemaking altered the normal rhythm of her words so that odd, accentuated syllables were driven out of her. ‘God we’ve all thought of handing in our resignations,’ she said.
‘There’s nothing in all the world to match it,’ Brisson said.
The palm of one of Crealy’s large hands still rested on the door, though he pressed no more. He listened to a tune which mocked him, and his arthritis drove him on, shuffling and disgruntled, missing out as usual. Mrs Doone had finished putting up her Christmas decorations for the night, and the corridor was as bare as when she first began. Even Miss Hails was silent, but as Crealy passed Mr Lewin’s room he heard a talking clock. ‘It is twelve o’clock, midnight,’ it said. Like a fox at a burrow entrance, Crealy stood before the door, but the clock didn’t speak again, and blind Mr Lewin, who must have activated it, made no sound either.
As he neared his own room Crealy could hear Mortenson’s stricken breathing, and remembered with sudden vividness a time more than thirty years before, when he had been a cleaner at the Nazareth Hall and Mortenson had been president of a group that banqueted there. Crealy had looked out from the serving hatch, waiting to begin clearing up, and S. A. Mortenson CBE, barrister, solicitor, notary public, city councillor and party chairman, had been standing at the top table, standing in dinner jacket to give an erudite speech which was buoyed up constantly by delighted applause and laughter from the other tables. The recollection had such strength that Crealy felt again the flat ache of his own inconsequence, but it passed and he was aware of the cream Totara walls again, and the struggle Mortenson had to breathe.
Crealy laid Popanovich’s open bottle of lemonade on the bed so that it would wet the sleeping man’s feet, and plucked Jenny Pen from Garfield’s bed end and held her briefly aloft. ‘Wake up, Judge,’ he said, and took Mortenson’s nose between Jenny Pen’s hands.
Mortenson’s good side woke with horror. What time was it? ‘Let’s have poetry tonight,’ said Crealy. He made himself comfortable on the bed with his room-mate. ‘And I want to see you enjoying it, Judge, getting into the swing of it,’ he said.
And where the silk-shoed lovers ran
with dust of diamonds in their hair,
he opens now his silent wing
began Mortenson indistinctly.
Crealy put one of Jenny Pen’s fingers into the slack side of Mortenson’s mouth and pulled it into the image of a smile. ‘Let’s not be half-hearted about this. Try something else,’ said Crealy. Mortenson wished to disregard the setting his senses made for him, and the only escape was through the words. He did his best with a bit of ‘The Herne’s Egg’.
Strong sinew and soft flesh
Are foliage round the shaft
Before the arrowsmith
Has stripped it, and I pray
That I, all foliage gone,
May shoot into my joy.
‘Eh?’ said Crealy. He tired quickly of poetry, even when seasoned with humiliation. ‘Had enough,’ he said. His thoughts turned to Garfield. There were hours to go, years maybe, before it would be day again.
Blind Mr Lewin was guided by Mrs Munro to the sunroom in the east wing the next afternoon. Mr Lewin loved the warmth, and found that he could sleep easily during the day in full sunlight. Mrs Munro kindly led him down, and Lewin could feel the warmth even as they approached the end of the corridor. Mrs Munro’s head nodded companionably as she pulled a cane chair close to the large window: so close that Lewin was able to put out his hands and feel the glass while sitting comfortably. And she gave him his talking clock to cradle, so that he would not be anxious about his meals. Mr Lewin thanked her, and listened to the departing footsteps.
He had never seen the sunroom, and instead of the meek, faded place that it was, poking out over the crocodile paving and lawns in front of the cottages, he imagined it cantilevered high into the sun’s eye, and with only the yellow, benevolent furnace of the sun to be seen from the window. Lewin had known far worse times.
While Mr Lewin slept, Crealy elsewhere watched Mrs Halliday. Mrs Halliday was only in her sixties, but subject to Huntington’s chorea in recurring spells during which she often came into the Totara Home to relieve her family. Crealy always took a considerable interest in her visits, for her breasts were large, she still had firm flesh and, caught at the right moment, she could be used without much recollection of it.
Towards the end of the long afternoon she was at her most confused, and Crealy watched from outside the television lounge until he saw her talking to herself and constantly folding and unfolding her cardigan. He went in and firmly led her along the trail of mottled lino to the sunroom, which visitors or clergymen sometimes used to have their talks. ‘Has the family come? Has Elaine?’ said Mrs Halliday. Crealy was quite pleased to see blind Lewin there, close to the window, for he could pass as a chaperone at a distance, but not act as one on the spot. Crealy sat Mrs Halliday with her back to the window.
‘Your family are coming soon,’ he said, and opened the front of her dress.
‘Is that you, Mrs Munro?’ asked Lewin.
‘Shut up,’ said Crealy.
‘The family, you say,’ said Mrs Halliday. She allowed Crealy to unclip her bra at the back, and he scooped out her breasts so they made two full fish-heads in the flounce of her dress.
Lewin was still groggy from his sleep, but he didn’t wish to seem discourteous. ‘Where would we be without families,’ he said gallantly, and fingered his talking clock for reassurance. Crealy stroked Mrs Halliday’s breasts, and clumsily rolled the nipples between thumb and forefinger so that she pursed her lips and put her hands on his wrists.
‘You need to get changed for your family,’ said Crealy absently.
‘What time is it then?’ asked Mrs Halliday.
Lewin pressed his clock.
‘The time is four forty-two pm,’ it said.
Crealy took another minute of satisfaction in the sun, then refilled Mrs Halliday’s bra, and with some difficulty fastened it across her back. Matron Frew might come looking for her soon. ‘Stay here and talk to Lewin,’ he said.
‘Am I changed for my family?’
‘Good enough,’ said Crealy.
‘Who is that?’ said Lewin, turning an ear rather than an eye for bett
er comprehension.
‘Jenny Pen rules,’ said Crealy as he left.
The impartial sun that Mr Lewin blindly enjoyed shone on Mortenson who sat in his wheelchair on a landscaped hillock which looked over the SRA — the safe recreation area. Within it the bewildered or fretful, the complacent and serene, could be left in security. Only the staff could manage the latch. Crealy called it the zoo, but it was pleasant enough, more like a kindergarten. There were seats with foam cushions for thin flesh, and raised garden plots which keen Totarans could work on without stooping or kneeling.
The SRA was overlooked by the wide windows of the dining room on one side, but to the warm north side there was a view across the grass and gardens towards the cottages and the spires of the great world. Mortenson could see the goldfish pond in the zoo, and George Oliphant dolefully shaking the back of his trousers because he was in trouble again.
The Matron and Dr Sullivan stopped beside Mortenson on their round, but finished their conversation before greeting him. ‘I’ve no idea how Mrs Joyce managed to leave the block in the first place,’ said Matron.
‘It can’t be helped.’
‘It’s a puzzle, though.’
‘I haven’t told her family the actual circumstances of the death, to minimise the trauma, you see. And how are you, Mr Mortenson?’
‘Mr Mortenson is brighter every day,’ replied Matron. Mortenson gave his half-smile. He could see the exquisite glow on the sunlit tulips, feel the sun’s goodwill on his faithful side, and hear Miss Hails practising her word for the day. The word was nell, or perhaps knell. How was anyone to know but her.
‘Nell, nell, nell, nell,’ said Miss Hails. Like a prayer wheel she gave a benediction over all the zoo, the lawn, the cottages, the totality of Totara and beyond. ‘Nell, nell, nell, nell, knell.’
‘Well, nice talking to you,’ said Dr Sullivan, and they went on their way. Mortenson felt an itching tic begin at the corner of his eye. In all that ground of apparent pleasure he wondered what Crealy was up to. What time was it? It came to Mortenson that his karma had been assessed; that from the best of lives he was in a spiral descent of reincarnation from which he would emerge perhaps a six-spot ladybird, as counted by Mrs Munro, and would clamp the stem beneath the wine glow of the sunlit tulip blooms.
What time was it? Dr Sullivan and Matron were trying to wake Popanovich. ‘It’s always the same. Ah, well, he seems healthy enough, and sleep can’t hurt him.’ Dr Sullivan smiled at the other three in the end room, while Matron moved Popanovich in the bed. The doctor was not a dour person. He believed in good spirits and optimism. He looked about for something that would provide an occasion for light-heartedness and rapport.
Matron sensed that the mood had abruptly changed, though at first she didn’t see that behind her Dr Sullivan had taken Jenny Pen from Garfield’s bed and mounted her on his hand. Garfield began to shiver, and put his hands out, palms uppermost, as if to play pata-cake. Crealy hung his head to one side like an old dog, while the whites of his eyes showed as he kept things in his view. Mortenson felt a sweat break out on his good thigh beneath the rug, and his smile was slow to form and slow to fade. He smiled as a Christian might smile who catches the Devil out walking in the daytime.
‘What a good life we lead at Totara,’ said Dr Sullivan in falsetto for Jenny Pen, and he jiggled her to emphasise his humour. The only responses were those of Matron Frew’s crêpe soles on the lino, and at a distance Miss Hails saying her catechism for the day. It drifted to them down the corridor.
‘Mi, mi, mi, mi mi, mi.’
‘Perhaps puppeteer isn’t my calling,’ said Dr Sullivan. He was disappointed by his reception and withdrew into professionalism. Matron knew how to keep that patter going.
Crealy’s arthritis was giving him gyppo again. To appease it he walked the maze of corridors, and watched from window after window the sunshowers above the grounds. Dramatic clouds were towed across the sky, and when they met the sun they were lit with red and orange embers, which glowed and shifted in the deep perspectives. From the dining room Crealy saw a travelling shower fracture the surface of the zoo pond, so that the goldfish lost their shape, and became just carrots in the shallow weeds.
On his second circuit Crealy noticed that Nurse McMillan had left the office, and that the morning’s mail lay partly sorted on the counter. He eased in, and his stiff hands found envelopes addressed to Mortenson, to Oliphant and Garfield. He pocketed them, and was cheered by the petty malice, even though he couldn’t see Mrs Halliday in the TV room as he went past. For the life of him he could not remember when he last had a personal letter. Garfield, on the other hand, received far too much kind attention from outside, and Crealy decided to give him a hard time until the weather improved. He began a search for Garfield, but George Oliphant saw him checking the TV room, and afterwards went to the window that could be seen by Mortenson and gave a warning by semaphore, which Mortenson passed on to Garfield.
Garfield began his slow but urgent escape down the corridors of hours towards the bedding storeroom. The door there had a plunger and cylinder to draw it closed without slamming. To Garfield the mechanism seemed to take an eternity to work, and the cylinder hissed as his view of the corridor and bathrooms narrowed. Garfield sat in semi-darkness, content with the little light entering from a glass strip above the door.
The broad shelves had stacks of sheets and pillowcases, and on the floor were piled blankets which rose like wool bales. Garfield sat on a half-bale to wait it out. He didn’t trouble himself with the metaphysics of his situation: what he had come to. The former Wellington fullback and general manager for Hentlings sat grinding his teeth in the bedding store-room of Totara Eventide Home, and listening to the perpetual echoing orchestration which his tinnitus inflicted on him.
Crealy found him there.
It was nearly four. The showers had become less frequent, and a rainbow stood clearly behind the cottages, fading up towards the sun. Yet Mortenson couldn’t concentrate on his history of Rome. He felt a helpless consideration for Garfield, and a fear of Crealy. He knew that where there are no lions, then hyenas rule.
His chair was very low-geared and, despite the busy noise of its motor, Mortenson moved only slowly along the corridors towards the bedding room. At alternate windows the day’s strange weather was displayed as sunlit promise, then skirts of rain from fiery clouds, then blue sky once again. The door took all the thrust his chair could manage and sank closed behind him, so that the failing light and hiss half hid Crealy’s torture of his friend.
‘Hello, Judge,’ said Crealy. Once he found that Mortenson had come alone, he was pleased. He had become almost bored with Garfield. Yet an advantage can be gained or lost quite unexpectedly, and with such an absence of drama that it is easy to miss the significance. Crealy moved to get a better leverage, overbalanced on the soft surface and fell backwards just a couple of feet into the comfortable crevasse fashioned by Mrs Munro between the banded blankets. His old arms and legs moved silently in the shadows, as if he were a beetle on his back there. He was too stiff to turn easily.
Mortenson took a pillow with his better arm and pushed it across Crealy’s face.
‘Come on,’ he said to Garfield. It was more a delaying tactic at first, with neither of them having much hope of success. Even Crealy gave a sort of grin whenever he managed to free his face, as if he recognised his temporary difficulty, but would soon pay them back all right.
But the more Garfield and Mortenson pushed, and the more Crealy twisted, the deeper his shoulders sank between the blankets. He began to pant and jerk. The others saw a chance indeed and their lips drew back in the dark and they pressed for all their lives. Crealy’s big arms and legs fell in harmless thuds against the embracing blankets. Mortenson felt strength and justice in his good arm, even though it trembled with exertion, and Garfield was on his knees to use his body weight upon the pillow.
‘Had enough. Had enough, Crealy old son,’ he kept whispering. The compet
itive urge in Garfield revived one last time. Crealy’s arms and legs moved less, but his body bucked.
‘Now let us play Othello,’ slurred Mortenson.
‘Had enough,’ sobbed Garfield.
For a good time after Crealy was still, they continued to hold the pillow over his face. Accustomed to such full tyranny as his, they could hardly believe that they had beaten him so completely. Even when they heard his sphincter muscles relax, and had the smell of him, they held the pillow down. ‘Had enough?’ said Garfield tenderly.
‘Put the pillow back,’ said Mortenson finally, and he wiped the tears from Garfield’s face. They didn’t look again at Dave Crealy, who was a big, stupid man lying well down among piles of blankets. Garfield opened the door a little and, when he saw that there was no one outside, he held it back for Mortenson’s chair, and the snake hissed behind them in the dark.
As they went home they met Mrs Munro guiding Mr Lewin to the sunroom. Mrs Munro delighted in being useful, and was thinking also of a nice cup of tea. ‘There’s a rainbow,’ she said, nodding. Mortenson and Garfield could see its thick, childish bands behind the cottage. At the same time the sun was strong enough to cast shadows from the benches in the grounds. Who knows what Lewin saw, but he could hear with them the piping of Miss Hails at a distance.
‘Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na.’
Mr Lewin pushed the button on his clock.
‘The time is four nineteen pm,’ the clock said.
309 Hollandia
Ruth had an understanding with Gordon at Reception, and he rang and said there was this older guy in 309 who wanted company. Gordon knew her style, and Ruth knew the hotel. She placed a good deal of reliance on the type of hotel she dealt with, because it was a way of saving hassles. So she had a shower, and put on her new yellow. She was able to wear the slingbacks with higher heels. She wouldn’t be on her feet much.
Owen Marshall Selected Stories Page 26
