by Nina Stibbe
Without eyelashes, tears look different. Mr Simmons’ tears started in the corner of his eyes and welled up in his baggy old eyelids and then they overflowed, in slow motion, on to his cheeks. He pretended it wasn’t happening, stayed calm and didn’t wipe or rub his eyes at all.
‘I dropped her,’ I said, ‘it was my fault.’
‘You did your best,’ he said, ‘you mustn’t blame yourself.’
To change the subject I asked about his book. He lifted it to show me the cover. It was a business book called The Naked Manager and, in spite of the sexy title, looked boring as hell.
‘Any good?’ I asked.
‘Very,’ he said.
On the way out, I popped into the ladies’ ward to pick up the dried-out triangle of bread and marmalade that we’d spotted under Miss Mills’ bedside cabinet. As I was under the bed, reaching an arm underneath, I heard footsteps. It was Matron, I could tell by her stupid little feet—size three, navy-blue Kickers.
‘I just heard about Emma Mills,’ she said. ‘I’m sincerely sorry.’
I stayed silent; I’d just managed to get hold of the bread between the very tips of my index and middle fingers.
‘You’re not to go blaming yourself,’ she said, bending down to look at me.
I looked up at her. ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘I blame you.’
Matron nodded and blinked for a while and then walked away.
I remained on that floor for a while, like a mad person. And then, because I couldn’t face walking through the kitchen, I crept up to Room 9 and told Lady Briggs all about it.
PART TWO
Paradise Regained
14. Fiscal Confidence
Sister Saleem blew in on an east wind. Her little yellow Daf stalled on the cattle grid because she’d had no experience of cattle grids and imagined it best to slow right down instead of speeding right up. None of us knew who she was or why she had come because the owner had forgotten to mention it, and his forgetting—and Matron forgetting as well, or not having been told—was all the more reason to celebrate her arrival.
Sister Saleem didn’t seem to mind having been forgotten, she just struggled along the narrow corridor with two suitcases, bumping the old paintwork, and a basket of fruit that her ex-colleagues had presented her with as a good-luck gift. She was all smiles and sweat patches. She’d come to make everything all right, but I was the only one who seemed to understand that then.
I began the introductions in the kitchen as if I were the oldest person there—everyone else was rendered speechless by her medical trouser suit (pale jade tunic and kick-slacks), her massive hair and the very fact of her.
‘Hello, I’m Lizzie Vogel,’ I said, holding out my hand, ‘welcome to Paradise Lodge.’
‘But you’re only a baby,’ said Sister Saleem, taking my hand in both of hers.
‘I’m an auxiliary nurse,’ I said.
‘I see,’ said Sister Saleem, and looked at the assembly.
And after each of us had said who we were and what we did, Sister Saleem took a deep breath and said, ‘It is very nice to meet you all. I’m Sister Saleem. I’m a trained nurse with a Masters in Business Administration gained at the European Centre for Continuing Education at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France.’ (I won’t do her accent.)
‘So, are you the new manager?’ Matron asked, a bit defensive.
‘Exactly, I am, and I have approximately three months to restore fiscal confidence and earn a loan from the Midland Bank.’
‘Brillo pads!’ said Sally-Anne—which she’d picked up from me and sounded wrong in her mumbly voice.
It did seem like mostly good news, even though the unfamiliar words sounded extra foreign because of Sister Saleem’s accent—which I couldn’t place but might have been Ugandan or could have been German but was probably Dutch.
Straight away she started calling me ‘Lis’. Not Lizzie, not even Liz, but Lis with an ‘s’. And I really liked it.
We all mucked in, getting Nurse Hilary’s ex-room ready for Sister Saleem. Nurse Hilary had left some books and a Goblin Teasmade. Sister Saleem said Matron could take the Goblin Teasmade if she liked but hung on to the books—two Agatha Christies, a book about owls and an illustrated book called Missy Maidens and the Masked Spankers with pictures of girls in stockings kissing each other while masked men with big hands stood by.
After that we had a coffee break and the owner joined us. Sister Saleem talked us briskly through her planned rehabilitation of the business as we leant over plates and ate the pineapple from her fruit basket—which she’d cut up with a meat cleaver. The owner’s eyes were droopy and his nightshirt open to the navel; he didn’t attempt the pineapple but smoked Gitanes to keep himself awake.
There were going to be different phases, Sister Saleem told us—probably five in all—and the phases would entail different remedial action, and by the end of the phases Paradise Lodge would be in better shape (she kept saying ‘phases’ but, as with my name, pronounced it not with a ‘z’ sound but an ‘s’—‘faces’).
‘And after twelve weeks, we might not be making a huge profit,’ she said, ‘but the downward trend will be corrected and there will be a solid base on which to build the future.’ This is how she spoke. It was quite exhilarating but tiring as well—all the thinking you had to do.
On her first official morning Sister Saleem spent some time in the owner’s nook going through the patients’ medical notes.
The staff were called to a short meeting, before coffee, in which Sister Saleem berated us (Matron in particular) about the medical notes, which she declared ‘inadequate and unhelpful’ and gave us a short lesson in the management and use of these important documents.
Then, at coffee time, when the patients were sipping their morning beverages and murmuring among themselves, she appeared in the day room.
Ideally, Eileen or Matron would have issued a little warning beforehand but they hadn’t known and Sister Saleem was suddenly there—in front of the fireplace—chin up, smiling, legs apart. No one—neither the staff nor the patients—had seen her enter the room and every single one of us jumped out of our skins when her voice boomed out: ‘My Name is Sister Saleem.’
There were gasps and the sound of coffee being spat out, and chinking crockery as cups were hurriedly dropped on to saucers, and various coughing and choking and a sense of slight panic.
Sister wandered around the room, shaking hands and squatting in between the easy chairs to chat with the patients, and after lunch she had a series of more detailed interviews with selected patients—in a side room. And then, after tea, she went round the room and cut out every single foot corn with a sharp potato peeler. This was Sister’s single most celebrated act and, if you’ve ever had a corn, you’ll understand—and if you haven’t, lucky you.
I can’t deny that to begin with many of the patients were troubled by her foreignness. Mr Blunt said something out loud about the Foreign that wasn’t very kind and Eileen reminded him that Sister Saleem had left abroad to live here in England so she wasn’t as bad as any ordinary foreign person (who just stayed abroad). Mr Blunt disagreed and said he’d prefer them to stay wherever it was they came from.
Miss Tyler asked Sister Saleem, out loud, what tribe she was from and everyone held their breath. Sister Saleem’s reply sounded like elaborate tutting but was probably a joke because she doubled up laughing at herself.
It wasn’t long, though, before the patients began to appreciate having a caring, intelligent, authoritative person in charge—they were dismayed by the ongoing chaos—and her qualities became the main thing about her. But however much they liked her, almost all of them disliked her trouser suit. Some said they couldn’t even look at her bottom half.
At staff teatime on that first official day, Sister Saleem told us she’d had a ‘super dooper day’ and was very much on target. But then, after a few slurps of tea and the clearing of her sinuses, she shared important news about two of our gentlemen. Firstly, Mr Simmons had asked us to refuse
any attempts by his stepdaughter to visit him—and, should he relent, Sister Saleem said he must be chaperoned.
Secondly, Mr Merryman, the convalescent patient in Room 7 would be leaving Paradise Lodge within the next few days. Nurse Eileen asked for an explanation in a slightly confrontational way—she was confused to hear that the upshot of Sister’s first apparently triumphant day was the loss of one of our most profitable patients who had an en-suite bathroom and a subscription to two magazines.
Sister Saleem explained calmly that Mr Merryman wasn’t happy at Paradise Lodge. ‘Something has unsettled him and he is going to move on,’ she said. That was all.
Matron hid her disappointment well but I knew it was a strike against her.
15. Eight Anadins
In spite of having settled into the chaos of Paradise Lodge, the arrival of Sister Saleem came as a relief to me. Things seemed exciting, on the up, and though there were some challenges—such as actually having to do some work and do it properly—I knew it to be necessary, and I’d been through this kind of change before when my stepfather, Mr Holt, had moved in with us and had insisted we clean our shoes and flush the toilet and so forth. And though these things had seemed like a faff at the time, we’d soon got used to them. Sister Saleem was having the same effect and we all knew that patients and staff alike would benefit and that things would be better. Things would be as wonderful as they’d been before the Owner’s Wife had left. Maybe even more so.
Phase One began properly the following morning and entailed Sister Saleem sitting in the owner’s nook and looking carefully at every single piece of paper in the building. The point being to gain a clear picture of the financial situation.
‘I’m going to pick up the cat by its tail,’ she said, meaning she was going to start with the paperwork, but the others didn’t all get it and looked around on the floor for a cat.
For three whole days she sat on the owner’s office chair reading paperwork in the semi-dark. Sometimes she swivelled right round and yawned out loud. They were authentic yawns, though, not the little fake yawns that Miranda used to do whenever she was showing off or lying. Sister Saleem’s yawns were probably a consequence of her having entered a state of shallow breathing—probably out of boredom—and needing to get a blast of oxygen into her lungs. I knew all this from biology lessons and because I’m interested in the truth about yawning.
It was so bright outside that Sister Saleem had to have the blinds down with only slits of light coming through. We took turns taking her drinks of tea and coffee and lime cordial with ice cubes. One time she asked if I’d be so kind as to get her a milk and rum.
‘Not the Bacardi rum,’ she specified, ‘use the Myers’s from my basket.’
Cigarette smoke hung in the hot air. Paper dust and the smell of ink drifted through the house and reminded me of sitting against a radiator as a child in the Pork Pie Library, reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum, which was marvellous and took me one whole winter and I’d recommend to anyone, whether or not you like the film. Well, especially if you don’t like the film.
At teatime on the third day Sister informed us that Mr Merryman’s taxi was due. I was instructed to collect his cases and help him make his way to the hall. The car arrived to take him to Newfields. Matron didn’t say goodbye.
By the end of day four—or was it day five?—Sister had taken eight Anadins (four doses of two) and three rum and milks and she’d gone into spectacles. And we’d all had a glass of rum and milk—except Miranda, who didn’t drink rum or milk (copying Mike Yu).
Sister Saleem had shown her stress via insulting the owner’s Rembrandt self-portrait. ‘Why would anyone want that puffed-up idiot hanging there?’ she wondered. Eileen came to the rescue and draped it with a souvenir tea towel from a shopping centre in East Kilbride, where Matron had a pal.
Sister Saleem emerged from the nook briefly, from time to time, to telephone her cousin in private from the owner’s sitting room. And one time she asked Matron to accompany her back into the nook. As you know, the nook wasn’t very private and it was easy to lurk nearby and hear exactly what was being said. And that’s what we did.
Sister’s concerns about Matron were manifold. Firstly, she’d had numerous complaints—from staff, patients and the general public—about the inappropriately physical nature of Matron’s conduct towards some of the male patients.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Matron. ‘Who, where, when?’
‘Mr Merryman, the Café Rialto in Leicester, where you had a three-course lunch at his expense, and former resident Mr Greenberg, robust cuddling in the car park at the Weetabix factory,’ Sister went on, obviously reading from her notes, ‘and Mr Freeman at a Gilbert and Sullivan concert at St James the Greater Church. Shall I go on?’
‘No,’ said Matron.
‘I will tell you that I have had to let a patient go,’ said Sister, ‘for legal reasons, before his relatives involve their solicitor.’ (Miranda mouthed ‘Merryman’ to the rest of us.)
Sister moved on. She told Matron she had searched the staff files with a fine-toothed comb and found absolutely no evidence whatsoever of her being qualified in any way whatsoever (she said ‘whatsoever’ twice). And, as far as Sister could tell, Matron had been recruited by the Owner’s Wife in 1969 as chief bottle-washer. There was a pause then—when Matron might have defended herself—but she stayed quiet, which meant to us that she was guilty as charged. And though we weren’t actually that surprised, we looked at each other—at first shocked, and then sad.
Matron was to be relegated to auxiliary—with immediate effect, Sister Saleem told her. Matron’s response to that was a placid little, ‘Right you are.’
She was no longer Queen Bee.
Shortly afterwards Matron joined us in the kitchen. She sniffed and, taking her tiny china teacup from its hiding place, helped herself to a measure of Myers’s rum, drank it down quickly and said, ‘C’est la vie,’ in French.
Matron wasn’t as devastated as you might think. The only noticeable difference in her demeanour being that she pontificated less. She continued to wear the Matron’s dress and belt—and no other outfit. She did drastically and symbolically change her hair colour from obviously dyed black to a more natural (looking) straw colour. She did it herself in the staff bathroom using L’Oréal Preference, which I knew to be a good brand, and went from Gypsy Queen to Doris Speed in a matter of two hours.
One day soon after the relegation, as we were doing the beds in the ladies’ ward, I mentioned it. It was an elephant in the room and I hate elephants in rooms.
‘You seem to be getting on OK with Sister in spite of—everything,’ I said.
‘Yes, well, she has a job to do,’ said Matron.
‘And what about you—you know, your plans?’ I asked.
‘I’ll have to try harder,’ said Matron, and that could have meant a number of different things.
I shared the exciting developments with my family. My mother was most annoyed that I couldn’t tell her where Sister Saleem was from (geographically). I explained that none of us had liked to ask—as if to ask such a question was rude. That made my mother even more annoyed.
‘It’s not rude to ask,’ yelled my mother, exasperated, ‘it’s rude not to ask—she’s your new work colleague, your boss, not a person in the street.’
My mother’s world was part sonnet, part Bob Dylan song and part boarding school dormitory. She thought everyone should share everything. She thought it was OK to buy a beggar a sandwich. She thought it was normal to jump into a river with nothing on and to chat to the girl on the checkout about instant mash and having better things to do than peel potatoes. She believed people should celebrate each other’s exuberances and joys and stay up till midnight to share their pain. I think it came from being a certain age at a certain time in the 1960s and it feeling so wonderful to shake off the doom and gloom and disregard the rules. And she thought it was going to be like that forever.
Anyway, she considered it right and proper and absolutely imperative to ask a middle-aged black person where they came from—as if it had nothing attached.
I never did ask Sister any questions about her heritage or why she didn’t eat certain meats or beetroot. And, apart from a few anxious enquiries from the most neurotic patients, neither did anyone else. No one asked which country she’d grown up in that had given her such a deep, Hitlerish accent and a love of cheese. No one asked about her family, her past or her friends. No one even liked to mention the weather—in case it led on to talk of hot countries. No one had asked if they could help her with the excruciating English on the medical notes she’d had to plough through. It seemed touchy and awkward—as if we were highlighting a defect, like Nurse Hilary’s cow-hocks and pitted teeth, or a tragedy, like Sally-Anne’s given-away twins.
Strangely, though, we all thought it perfectly acceptable to touch her bouncy hair. She told us it was water-repellent like a duck’s feathers. But when we arrived for Gordon and Mindy Banks’ charity fund-raising barbecue and dip she was already in the water, clinging to the ornamental bridge, and wearing a swim cap. So we were denied the chance to see it in action.
We thought it fine to look at her face preparations and discuss the pros and cons of differing nostril size. And to ask about the skin on her legs, which was shiny one minute and dusty like scorched earth the next.
All through Phase One, we came to dread Sister Saleem coming out of the owner’s nook. Partly we wondered who’d be next for the chop, but also she kept noticing examples of bad practice. For instance, on the way to telephone her cousin in private she walked into a glass door that she hadn’t realized was there and bashed her nose. She was furious at the lack of safety manifestations on the glass. She said even a dot of paint would be better than nothing.
Nurse Eileen took it personally and told her that no one had ever walked into the door before and maybe her eyes were unfocused due to being in the nook in the half-dark.
