‘Of course she can’t. If she ends up in there she won’t last five minutes.’
‘Yes. I mean, I’m sure it’s fine and they do their best, but they seem overstretched. And it was very … tired.’
‘She’d hate it.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’ll have to talk to her social worker. See if there are any other places available or if we can get some home help. I’ll see if I can rejig things at the salon so I can get some time off. Or get Kim to come over from Oz – but that would cost a fortune.’ She fiddled with her car keys. ‘I’m not prepared for this. I suppose I thought Mum would go on for ever.’
‘I know. You forget how old she is.’ Kanga grimaced. ‘How old we are.’
Beverley bent her head and turned away from Kanga so she wouldn’t see the tears glistening in her eyes.
‘I really appreciate your support,’ said Beverley softly. ‘This is so hard.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Kanga. ‘Please don’t cry. Things will sort themselves out. They do have a way of doing that, you know. If my age has taught me anything it’s not to give up hope.’
As soon as Kanga got in the car, she had a little weep herself.
It took a lot to make her cry these days. But she sat in the car park of the care home and wept for Ivy. She wept for her plucky and funny and unashamedly flawed friend, who had shown her unflagging loyalty for the best part of a century. She wept for a country that had fought the bitterest of wars but now couldn’t afford to look after its own with a modicum of dignity.
Then she picked up her phone and dialled her financial adviser. He had looked after their money when Jocelyn was alive, and did an excellent job of making sure Kanga got the best return on her investments.
‘I want to cash in one of my ISAs,’ she told him.
Of course, he wasn’t happy to hear that.
‘Whatever for?’
‘I need funds. Straight away.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘I have a friend who needs to go into care. She’s broken her hip and she needs looking after while she recuperates.’
As she expected, he grilled her further and protested and tried to persuade her that what she was about to do was not her responsibility. She remained steadfast.
‘It’s not my responsibility but it is my duty. I am paying her back for years of friendship. And, as you know, Jocelyn left me very well provided for.’
‘Yes. But you’ll be eating into your capital. And you may need that money for your own care one day. We’ve planned for it. Very carefully.’
Kanga could hear panic in his voice.
‘I may not. And I’m prepared to take the risk. Ivy needs looking after right now. I might never need that money. It’s what I want to do.’
Her adviser sighed. He knew there was no point in arguing with that generation once they had made up their minds.
‘Very well.’ It was the expression people used when they were being forced into something they didn’t agree with. ‘I’ll arrange to have the money transferred to your current account immediately.’
The next day Ivy seemed a little brighter, and lit into the box of Lindors that Kanga had brought her, unravelling the bright red twists of paper as fast as her fingers would allow.
‘I’ve had enough in here,’ said Ivy. ‘When can I go home? They’re being very funny about it. They keep fobbing me off. I know when I’m being fobbed off.’
‘Well, it’s difficult,’ said Kanga. ‘Beverley’s trying to make arrangements. And you need to stay here a bit longer. We don’t want you falling again.’
‘I’m sick of having to watch everyone else’s rubbish on the telly. Beverley said she was going to bring in an iPad but she keeps forgetting.’
‘No, I do not,’ said Beverley, who had appeared at the bedside. ‘It’s here. I’ve even remembered the charger.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Ivy, reaching out for it. ‘Earphones?’
Beverley rolled her eyes. ‘Old people today,’ she said. ‘They are so demanding. I forgot earphones. But I can probably get you some from the hospital shop.’
‘Grand,’ said Ivy, popping another Lindor into her mouth. ‘There’s racing at Ascot this afternoon. I don’t want to miss that.’
‘Have you put a bet on?’ asked Beverley, suspicious.
‘How would I do that from here?’ demanded Ivy, eyes wide with innocence. ‘I’m not a bloody magician.’
They left Ivy later that afternoon, plugged into the iPad and scoffing the rest of her Lindor.
‘She seems much brighter,’ said Beverley.
‘Yes,’ said Kanga, wondering how best to approach a delicate subject. As they reached the exit, she decided she would take the plunge, and stopped by the automatic doors. ‘Beverley, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but I’d like to pay for Ivy’s care. I’d like to find her somewhere lovely where she can recuperate in comfort.’
‘What?’ Beverley looked astonished.
‘Jocelyn left me fairly well-off. He had quite a few properties around Bath which he sold off before he died. And I’ve got everything I need at Acorn Cottage. The interest on the savings more than covers my living costs.’
Beverley was silent as she thought. Eventually she turned to Kanga.
‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that? She’s not your relative. It’s going to cost you a mint.’
‘Ivy was an incredible friend to me. She got me through the darkest time of my life. I would never have managed without her. Every day, she found a way to make me laugh and see the light. I never thought I would be able to repay her. This is the very least I can do. She is my friend and I love her. That’s the reason.’
‘What will Laura say? She won’t be happy, surely?’
Kanga imagined Beverley picturing her own family’s reaction to a gesture that would eat into their inheritance.
‘Laura will be delighted. I promise you.’
Kanga could see that Beverley was overwhelmed by her offer. They stood in the entrance as the doors opened and closed, letting patients and visitors in and out, the light outside starting to fade.
‘But what if …’ Beverley looked away, awkward. She couldn’t voice what she was thinking. ‘I mean, you said yourself, you’re the same age as Mum …’
‘What if I die?’ asked Kanga, gentle. ‘I will make provision for the fees in my will.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s just I know we couldn’t afford it. If you stopped paying.’
‘Beverley, it’s fine. I understand.’
Beverley looked out of the doors, at the street lamps coming on and the headlights of the cars flashing past.
‘I don’t know how to thank you. That’s the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever done.’
‘I can never repay what Ivy did for me as long as I live.’
Kanga and Beverley spent the next week looking at potential homes. Talking to managers and cooks and helpers and nurses. And patients. And relatives. It was the homes with transparency that they were drawn to. The ones with an open-door policy, who welcomed them with a smile.
In the end, it wasn’t the most beautiful home they went with. And some of them were stunning, in gracious buildings with extensive grounds. The setting wouldn’t matter to Ivy. It was the people who would matter. She needed kindness and caring and warmth. Not to be made to feel like a nuisance or just another set of fees.
Amhurst House was a nondescript building, purpose-built about twenty years before, but inside there was an energy to it, a sense of life. There was chatter and laughter and camaraderie among the staff and the patients. A feeling of trust and respect. It even smelled right: of fresh air and flowers and newly baked cakes.
‘It’s so difficult, this choosing process,’ said the sympathetic manageress. ‘And care homes have such a bad reputation these days. Which is why we try to be as open as we can. Yes, we make mistakes from time to time, but we keep the lines of com
munication open. If there’s an issue, we deal with it. You are the client.’
A private ambulance moved Ivy to Amhurst House later that week. As she was settled into her room, with its jolly yellow walls, a jug of bright flowers on the windowsill, Kanga felt a huge sense of relief. She rearranged some of the things Beverley had brought Ivy from home on the dressing table – several flagons of expensive perfume, silver-framed photographs of her grandchildren in Australia, her hairbrush and comb. It was a very pretty bedroom, she thought. Like a country-house hotel room, but with discreet additions – a bell for emergencies, the en suite done out with handrails and an easy-access shower, an electric bed so the patient could be moved regularly to avoid bedsores.
‘Who’s coughed up for this then?’ said Ivy, nestled inside a mound of comfortable pillows and covered in a pink velvet bedspread. ‘This isn’t council run.’
‘I think it’s overspill. There weren’t any local authority places.’
Ivy looked at her beadily. ‘If I find out you’ve got anything to do with this …’
‘Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just visiting. I’ve got no idea what the arrangements were,’ Kanga said airily. She knew perfectly well Ivy would kick up a fuss if she knew the truth.
‘Well, I shan’t be here long, anyway. I intend to be home by Christmas.’
‘Then I’m sure you will be,’ Kanga told her. ‘But for the time being, it looks as if you’ll be well looked after here.’
She felt a wave of emotion as she remembered how Ivy had looked after her, all those years ago, when they were still running scared, when something had happened to turn her world, already upside down, into even bigger confusion.
20
1942
The Baedeker Raids, they were calling them. After the Baedeker Guides used by tourists. They said the Germans had got hold of them and were picking out the five-star towns as targets, bombing the heart out of them to lower morale. Bath had five stars, and was paying for its beauty: nearly four hundred dead and a chastened population working overtime to restore order, no longer complacent enough to think they wouldn’t be hit.
There was a mass burial for the dead: a silent congregation lined the edges of a hastily dug grave that stretched as far as the eye could see. Everyone knew someone who had died. Doctors, firemen, the elderly, a pregnant woman, babies, teachers, schoolboys, shopkeepers – no strata of society went unscathed. The only good thing was the Germans hadn’t come back since that weekend. They’d done their worst. Bath could get back on its feet, although it would never feel safe again.
Jilly was lucky to have the money and the contacts to pay for a private funeral for her parents, two weeks after they died. The undertaker had removed their bodies from the morgue and had spared Jilly some time to arrange the ceremony: he was overworked and traumatised even though he was used to death. He had never seen anything on this scale or dealt with the logistics of so many corpses. Of course, he had known Dr Wilson through work, and expressed his sincere condolences.
Jilly was gratified by how many mourners were there. They held the service at St Stephen’s, the church round the corner from Lark Hill at the top of Lansdown Hill. Despite everything that was going on, people still had time to come and honour her parents. It was a bright day in May, and she pulled the most gaily coloured blooms from the garden to make a wreath, with fat peonies and ranunculus and apple blossom from the trees in the tiny orchard at the very bottom of the garden. There were patients and former pupils and colleagues and, of course, her parents had had many friends.
Jilly chose the most uplifting hymns she could. Everyone needed to feel cheered. And although a tear trickled down her cheek when everyone burst into ‘Glad That I Live Am I’, she felt it was suitably rousing, the perfect riposte to all that had happened. ‘After the rain, the sun …’ She wasn’t sure about growing nearer to God on high, not at all, but the spirit of the hymn was in keeping. She wanted everyone to leave with a spring in their step, not sombre and downhearted.
She stood on the steps outside the church as everyone came out. It took two hours for them all to leave. Each one said something heartfelt, about her father or her mother or both. Each comment lifted her heart a little, and she felt proud, and determined to be as kind and wise and thoughtful as her parents before her. She knew they were good – of course she did – but not everyone was, in this life. If the funeral showed her anything it was that her mother and father had made a difference to a lot of people.
Afterwards, she and Ivy went to the churchyard where her father had judiciously bought two plots long ago. They watched, arms linked, as the coffins were lowered into the ground. That part didn’t seem real; Jilly found little comfort in the ceremony. It didn’t seem as if it was her mum and dad in the pale oak boxes. As the clods of earth went in on top of them, she tossed the apple blossom from her wreath into the grave: a symbol of hope and a reminder of their home. She left before the hole was filled, tears streaming down her cheeks.
She had been left plenty of money. Her father had had a good income and her mother’s had been a bonus on top of that, and they were never spendthrifts. They had what they needed for a comfortable life, and had put plenty to one side. It seemed, for the time being at any rate, that Jilly would not want for anything, according to Mr Kettle, the family solicitor.
‘It’s no consolation,’ she told Ivy, looking at the savings books piled up on her father’s desk.
‘Yes, it bloody is,’ said Ivy, fierce. ‘This would be much worse if you didn’t have any money, I can tell you. You don’t know what it’s like to scrat around for pennies.’
Jilly felt chastened. Ivy was right. Of course she had no idea what it was like to be desperate for money, to scrabble for food, to live in poverty. She sometimes forgot her friend’s circumstances, because Ivy rarely pointed out the difference in their fortunes. Jilly knew that Ivy paid for the clothes on her siblings’ backs from her wages, that she was the provider of hot food and little luxuries, and went without herself as a result. Ivy looked like a good-time girl, but she was a grafter underneath.
Jilly turned away. It was so hard to keep your spirits up when your heart was aching, but she had no choice, and what was the point in wallowing? There were people worse off than her. She had a beautiful house and a bountiful garden and the opportunity to help people.
‘This too will pass,’ she whispered, and tried to ignore the pain of loss that felt no nearer to healing. It was something her mother used to say to her, when she was feeling dejected, and she knew it to be true. Although her childhood dejection had been trivial in comparison: silly little schoolroom injustices and adolescent frustrations. But somehow her mother’s voice sounded in her head and she clung to it for comfort and put on her brave face, yet again. She feared she might wear it out before long.
At Number 11, the strange little household fell into a routine as they headed towards summer. Ivy went back to work at the hairdresser’s, and Julie and Colin went back to school, so it was just Jilly and Helena and Baby Dot in the house during the day.
It soon became apparent that Helena had no idea how to cook. Her understanding of basic nutrition was sparse and she watched in wonder as Jilly plundered the garden. It was starting to offer up more bounty, enabling her to make meals from scratch from their own fresh fruit and vegetables and their combined rations.
Jilly wasn’t an adventurous cook, but she had learned all the basics from her mother and was going through the recipes in her little box, looking for inspiration. Her mother had written in lots of tips she had gleaned from snippets of newspaper articles and listening to the radio, about how to make food go further and how to cheat. She had been a genius with leftovers. Helena was fascinated, watching in awe as Jilly produced bubble and squeak to go with a small side of bacon.
‘How did you manage if you don’t know how to cook?’ asked Jilly.
‘I don’t know. I just opened a tin. We eat a lot of bread.’
‘Well,’ said
Jilly. ‘I’d better teach you how to cook properly. It’s actually jolly good fun, once you put your mind to it.’
She was shocked that Helena barely knew how to peel a potato. She held the knife awkwardly and peeled off thick strips of skin.
‘That’s a terrible waste,’ said Jilly. ‘You’re throwing away all the goodness. Look, keep the knife very close to the surface. You should almost be able to see through the skin when it comes off.’
Eventually Helena became more accomplished. Jilly taught her to make pastry and Yorkshire pudding and dumplings, how to eke out a sponge pudding with mash and bulk out stews with parsnips and turnips and swede. When Helena made her first pie – rabbit mixed with onion and apple and celery – she brought it to the table with pride. Even Ivy pronounced the pie delicious and asked for a second helping. She and Helena were rubbing along, though there were still moments when Ivy was sharp with Helena if she thought she wasn’t pulling her weight, but all in all it was as happy a household as it could be, given the circumstances.
As May came to an end the weather got hotter, and as the temperature rose, Jilly felt more and more limp. She could barely get through the day. An overwhelming fatigue dragged her under. She wondered if she was sickening for something. She took her temperature and felt her glands but could find nothing wrong.
Then one morning she took a sip of her tea and was overcome with nausea. There was nothing she could do to stop herself: she ran to the sink and vomited, retching until she was empty.
‘Perhaps that ham was a bit off,’ she said, clinging to the edge of the sink, looking down at the yellow bile.
Ivy was eyeing her thoughtfully.
‘There’s another reason I can think of. But that’s impossible.’
Jilly felt sick again. A chill crept over the back of her neck. It suddenly made sense.
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘What?’
‘If you mean what I think you mean, it’s not impossible.’
Ivy frowned. Then gave a half-laugh.
‘Don’t be silly.’
A Family Recipe Page 19
