Next day, she still hadn’t rung, so I tried Social Services again.
“Elder-lee!”
“Could I speak to Mrs Bad Eel please.”
“It’s Muz. Not Missis.”
“Well, can I speak to her anyway?”
“Hold on a minute. (‘Eileen, where’s Muz Bad Eel?’ ‘She’s just ‘ere. ‘old on. Who is it?’)
“May I ask who’s speaking please?”
“It’s Georgie Sinclair. I rang about the old lady going into a home.”
(‘It’s that woman about t’ old woman.’ ‘She says she’ll ring back in a minute.’)
“She’s just in a meeting. She’ll ring you as soon as she gets out.”
“No—please tell her it’s urgent. I need to speak to her now.”
There was a lot of muttering and crackling in the background, then a new voice came on to the line—a low, smooth, sultry voice with a slight drawl in the vowels.
“Hello-o. This is Cindy Bad Eel.”
“Oh, hello Mrs Bad Eel. Muz. I really need your help—I mean, a friend of mine needs your help.” I was gabbling, fearful that she would hang up. “Mrs Naomi Shapiro. She’s in hospital. She broke her wrist. Now they won’t let her go home. They want to put her in a home.”
“Slo-ow down, please. Who am I speaking to?”
“My name is Georgie Sinclair. I left a message for you.”
“So you did, Ms Sinclair. Slow down. Take a deep breath. Now, count one, two, three, four. Hold. Breathe out. One, two, three, four. Rela-ax! That’s better. Now—would you describe yourself as her carer—an informal carer?”
“Yes—yes, a carer. Informal. That’s definitely what I am.”
Waves of calm engulfed me. I suddenly felt very caring.
“How old is the lady?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know exactly. She’s quite elderly, but she was getting along fine.”
“But you say she had an accident?”
“The accident was in the street, not in her house. She slipped on the ice. It could have happened to anyone.”
“And you say she had a home circumstances assessment visit?”
“It was someone from the hospital. Mrs Goodney. The house was a bit untidy, but it wasn’t that bad.”
There was a long silence. I started to anticipate her response, her stock of excuses for doing nothing. Her phone-answering track record had not been impressive. Then she spoke again, slowly.
“It isn’t for us to judge another person’s lifestyle choices. I will visit the house, but I need her permission. Which hospital is she in?”
As soon as I’d put the phone down, I ran into my bedroom and stuffed a few things into a carrier bag—Stella’s old dressing gown, a spare pair of slippers, a hairbrush, a nightie—and set off for the hospital. I wanted to forewarn Mrs Shapiro, and make sure she said the right things. I didn’t want her to blow this chance on another bout of cussedness.
§
The rain had stopped, but there were still puddles in the road as I raced to the bus stop, and big damp clouds were hanging just above the rooftops like billowing grey washing. I was the only person on the top deck of the Number 4 bus as it lurched and swayed along the now familiar roads, brushing against the dripping trees, so close to the houses I could see right into people’s bedrooms. I recalled my lonely afternoons wandering the streets peering enviously into other people’s lives. What had all that been about? It seemed an age ago. Now Mrs Shapiro and Canaan House were keeping me so fully occupied I hardly had time to think of anything else.
In the bus shelter outside the entrance to the hospital there was the usual little knot of people huddled over their cigarettes. I’d passed them before without really noticing, but this time, a voice called out to me.
“Hey! Georgine!”
I had to look twice before I recognised Mrs Shapiro. She was enveloped in a pink candlewick dressing gown several sizes too big for her, and so long that it trailed on the ground. Beneath it, just peeping out in front, was a pair of outsize slippers—the sort that children wear, with animal faces on the front. I think they were Lion Kings. Ben has a similar pair. Her companion was the bonker lady with whom she’d been arguing last time. Now they seemed to be getting on like a house on fire. They were sharing a cigarette, passing it between them, taking deep drags.
“Mrs Shapiro—I didn’t recognise you. That’s a nice dressing gown.”
“Belongs to old woman next to me. Dead, isn’t it?” She grabbed the cigarette from the bonker lady, who’d had more than her fair share of puffs. “Cigarettes was in the pocket.”
“Nice slippers, too.”
“Nurse give them to me.”
“She give me these,” said the bonker lady, lifting up the hem of her dressing gown to show off a pair of fluffy powder-blue wedgie-heel mules. Her toes were protruding out of the ends, with the most horrible thick crusty yellow toenails I’d ever seen.
“Them should heff been for me,” said Mrs Shapiro sulkily.
We left the bonker lady to finish the cigarette and made our way back to the ward, where I handed over my carrier bag of things; she took only the hairbrush, and gave the rest back to me.
“I have better night doth-es in my house. Real silk. Not like this shmata. You will bring one for me, next time, Georgine? And Wonder Boy. Why you didn’t bring the Wonder Boy?”
“I don’t think they’d let him in. He’s not very…”
“They heff too many idiotic prejudices. But you are not prejudiced, are you, my Georgine?” she wheedled. “You are so clever mit everything. I am sure you will find a way.”
“Well, of course, I’ll try my best,” I lied.
The ward was busy with visitors, so I pulled two chairs by the window in the day room. It was a square featureless room near the entrance to the ward, with green upholstered chairs dotted randomly around, a television fixed too high on the wall, and a window that looked out on to a yard. It smelled of disinfectant and unhappiness.
“Mrs Shapiro, I’ve asked for another assessment from Social Services. Someone’s going to come and visit you. She’s called Ms Bad Eel.”
“This is good. Bed Eel is a good Jewish name.”
This surprised me, but what did I know? We didn’t have any Jewish people in Kippax.
“Tell her I’ve got the key and I’ll meet her there to show her around. She has my phone number but I’ll write it down for you again.” I wrote my number on a scrap of paper, and she stuffed it into the pocket of the candlewick dressing gown. “If anyone says anything to you about going into a residential home, just tell them you’re having another assessment. That should keep them quiet.”
She leaned across and clasped my hand.
“Georgine, my darlink. How can I thenk you?”
“There is one problem. She’s certain to ask how old you are.”
She looked at me—a clear, canny look. She knew I knew she wasn’t ninety-six.
“What I should say?”
“Mrs Shapiro, I’ll help you if I can. But you have to tell me the truth.”
She hesitated, then leaned up and whispered close to my ear, “I am only eighty-one.”
I didn’t say anything. I waited. After a moment she added, “I told them I am more older.”
“Why did you tell them that?”
“Why? I don’t know why.” She shook her head with a stubborn little flick. “I heff never met anybody asking so much questions, Georgine.”
“I’m sorry—it’s because I come from Yorkshire. Everybody’s nosy up there.”
I tried to recall the picture of the two women in front of the house. Highbury 1948. I did a quick calculation She would have been about twenty-three when it was taken.
“So do you know your date of birth?” I probed. “She’s bound to ask you that.”
“Eight October nineteen hundert twenty-five.” A quick, precise answer. But was it the truth?
I wanted to question her more, but I didn’t want to confess that
I’d already searched beyond the bureau in the study and that I’d found the photos in the Harlech Castle tin hidden in the workshop. I had questions to ask about Lydda. Who was she? When did Artern marry her? What had happened to her? And I was aching to know who’d hidden the tin, and from whom.
We were the only ones in the day room, but the television was blaring away in the corner. I looked for a remote control to turn the volume down, but I couldn’t find it, so I switched it off and settled myself into an armchair in listening mode.
“You didn’t finish telling me about Artem”
“You heffh’t told me about your running-away husband. Why he was running away?”
“It’s your turn, Mrs Shapiro. I’ll tell you my story next time.”
“Ach, so.” She laughed. “Where heff I gotten to?”
“The pony…”
“Yes, the pony that was trotting on the ice. But you see it was not a pony, it was a reindeer. The reindeer people took him away mit them.”
§
The Sami men who had hitched up Artem’s sleigh were from Lapland. Part traders and part bandits, they made forays down across the ice to exchange smoked fish, reindeer meat and furs for wheat or tobacco or vodka or whatever they could find. When they discovered him under the wolfskins, they debated whether to kill him; but as he opened his eyes, he smiled to find himself still alive, and started to sing a Russian peasant song.
“Ochi chornye, ochi strastnye…” Mrs Shapiro’s voice quavered. “It is a beautiful song about the loff for a woman mit black and passionate eyes. He used to sing it often.”
The song saved his life. The faint croaky voice of the wounded soldier made the men laugh, so they took him with them to their settlement in a vast snowy wilderness beyond the Arctic Circle, where the white horizon merged into the long pale sky. He was treated first as a prisoner, then as a curiosity, and finally as a great source of entertainment.
He stayed with them for several months living on a bed of skins in the corner of a fishy, smoky, snow-covered hut, eating reindeer meat and drinking some horrible herbal concoction which they also poured on to his wound. When he had drunk a few cupfuls, he would start to sing—Jewish songs from his childhood in Orsha, partisan songs from the time in the woods, Russian folk songs, even a few arias. The men slapped their thighs and threw their heads back with laughter. The women giggled and retreated into their furs, watching him curiously with their strange cat-like eyes. At night he studied the mysterious coloured lights playing across the sky and tried to work out his position from the stars. When he was fully recovered, and smudgy light broke into the sky on the southern horizon for a few hours each day, the Sami people offered to take him back to Russia. He explained with gestures that he wanted to go the other way, towards Sweden. So they took him to a place where he could see the next Sami settlement over the Swedish border, gave him a small sleigh and a bag of dried fish, and sent him on his way.
“He was looking for his sister. But she was already gone. Maybe she never was there. In that time Sweden was full of Jews who were running away from the Nazis. Everybody was looking for somebody or passing on the news of somebody.”
“So when did you meet him? Did you go to Sweden, Mrs Shapiro?”
She started to say something, then stopped. A sad-looking lady attached to a drip tube had just walked into the day room, trailing her bag of fluid behind her. We watched her for a few moments in silence, then Mrs Shapiro whispered, “That is enough for today. Now is your turn, Georgine. This your husband—why he was running away? There was another woman?”
The drip lady was searching for the television remote control. I hesitated. I didn’t want to go into details about the rawplugs and the toothbrush holder, but I found myself saying, “I don’t think so. He said there was no one else. He was too obsessed with his work.”
Mrs Shapiro was looking at me quizzically. She obviously preferred the ‘other woman’ hypothesis.
“Why you think this?”
“He was always full of big ideas. He wanted to change the world. I think he was just bored with domesticity.”
There, I’d said it. Even putting it into words made me feel better. Mrs Shapiro wrinkled her nose.
“Ach, so. This is a typical story. He wants to change the world but he doesn’t want to change the neppies, isn’t it?”
“Sort of. The children were already out of nappies.” I wanted to explain that it was the same roving, inquisitive spirit that had brought him to me in the first place. “When we met, I was different to the other people he knew. He used to call me his rambling Yorkshire rose.”
“Don’t worry, my Georgine.” She grinned merrily. “When I am mended we will go rembling again.”
The drip lady had slumped into an armchair and was gazing mournfully at the fluid in her drip bag that looked like watered-down tea. Mrs Shapiro threw her a contemptuous look.
“Too many krankies in here,” She sniffed. “So this husband—when he is finished mit the rembling, you think he is coming back?”
“I don’t think so. I threw all his stuff in the skip,”
“Bravo!” She clapped her hands. “So what he said then?”
“He said…,” (I put on a hoity-toity voice.) “…why are you being so childish, Georgie?”
She rocked back in her chair and shrieked with laughter. “This running-away husband is quite a schmuk, isn’t it?” It was such a jolly, raucous laugh that I found myself laughing, too. Our laughter must have carried right down the ward, for a few minutes later the bonker lady came waltzing in to see what was going on, dancing around and lifting up the hem of her dressing gown to flaunt her new slippers. She winked at me, pulled a cigarette out of the pocket, and waved it under Mrs Shapiro’s nose.
“Look what one of the porters give me. Mind, I ‘ad to drop my knickers down for ‘im inve lift. I says if yer give me the packet you can ‘ave yer wicked way wiv me. ‘E says no thanks, missis, I’ve seen better onve mortuary trolley.”
Mrs Shapiro let out another shriek, and that set the bonker lady off, cackling and walzing around and flashing her appalling toenails, and that made me laugh some more, and even the sad drip lady managed a dribbly chuckle. We were all clutching our sides, screeching and hooting like a flock of mad geese, when the ward sister came along and ticked us off. On the bus on the way home I felt a strangely pleasant aching sensation in my chest. I realised I hadn’t laughed as much as this since…since Rip had left.
15
The Bad Eel
The Bad Eel phoned me back a couple of days later. We made an appointment to meet at the house. As before, I went an hour earlier, with some cleaning things. The Phantom Pooer had been at work again; there were two fresh macaroon-shaped deposits in the hallway. I cleared them away and did a quick round with a duster and a brush, paying special attention to the bedroom and bathroom, though the latter was really a lost cause. I did what I could and sprayed the air-freshener around liberally. Although the weather was dry, I couldn’t feed the cats by the back door because I didn’t have the key, so I fed them in the kitchen, and counted them again. There were only five. Wonder Boy was in there, right at the front, batting the Stinker out of the way. Borodin crept in, his belly low to the ground, snatched his food and disappeared. One of the pram babies, I noticed, had a weepy eye. Mussorgsky and Violetta were missing. Violetta appeared at the front door a few moments later, her pretty tail swaying as she walked, and behind her was a person who could only have been the Bad Eel.
The first disappointment was that she didn’t look at all like an eel. In fact she was uninhibitedly exuberantly plump, with curves that bulged in soft roly-poly layers beneath a tight stretchy blancmange-pink outfit which revealed each elastic-line of her startlingly skimpy underwear. She held her hand out to me. Each finger was like a meaty little chipolata sausage.
“Hello, Mrs Sinclair. I’m Cindy Baddiel.”
She stressed the second syllable. That was the next disappointment. She wasn’t a bad eel at
all. Her honey-gold hair fell in loose curls from two large butterfly clips above her ears. Her eyes were the colour of angelica; her skin was like peaches; she smelled of vanilla. Despite my disappointment, there was something very edible’ about her.
I must have been staring rudely. Violetta broke the silence between us with a chatty miaow. We both bent to stroke her at the same time, our heads touched together, and we laughed, and after that, everything was easy. She strolled around the house. (“Lo-ovely. Pe-erfect.”) She greeted the Stinker like an old flame. (“Well, hello-o, boy.”) She did flinch for a moment in the bathroom, but her only comment was, “There’s no accounting for cultural diversity.”
“One thing surprises me,” she remarked, as we were walking back down the stairs. “She doesn’t seem to be getting support from the Jewish community. Usually they’re good at looking after their elderly.”
The same thought had once occurred to me, but I understood now that Mrs Shapiro was, like myself, someone who’d come unstuck.
“I suppose it’s her personal choice.” She’d taken a little notebook out of her bag—it had a picture of a floppy-eared Labrador puppy sitting on a cushion—and a biro with a very chewed end, and was writing something down.
At the end, when we were standing in the hall, I asked her the question that had been pressing at the back of my mind since my meeting with Mrs Goodney.
“What would happen to her house, if she had to go into a home?”
“Oh, I don’t think it’ll come to that.”
“But if it did, would the Council take it from her?”
“Oh no, we don’t do that! Where did you get that idea?” She shook her golden curls. “If someone goes into a care home, we assess their financial situation. If they have assets of more than twenty-one thousand pounds, then they have to pay the full cost of their care.” She was still scribbling in her notebook as she talked. Her voice was so soothing that I found it hard to concentrate on what she was saying. “Below that, the council picks up the bill. It can be quite expensive—four or five hundred pounds a week—so we try to maintain people’s independence in their own home. It’s usually what they prefer, too—familiar surroundings—chosen lifestyle.” She gave me a peachy smile.
2009 - We Are All Made of Glue Page 10
