Paradise Lodge

by Nina Stibbe

  ‘I shall arrive afterwards,’ she said, ‘and Dad and I will probably go and have a cup of tea somewhere and then I’ll drive him back to Paradise Lodge.’

  ‘Just as long as you’re not going to kidnap him,’ I said.

  Miss Pitt laughed. ‘No, no, don’t worry, I shan’t kidnap my own father.’

  ‘Stepfather,’ I said.

  The concert was unexpectedly moving, due to it being partly like a very sad funeral—in which the songs were sad and slow and very affecting. The main female singer—dressed in black feathers and a black net veil—was not only a fantastic singer but a brilliant actor too and seemed to be singing about her own imminent death. And partly about the composer’s own life and his journey through it, including royal and sacred themes. The concert ended with these words, narrated by a young man from the choir:

  And in 1695, at the height of his fame, aged just thirty-five years, Henry caught a chill after returning home one night late from the theatre to find that his wife had locked him out. His body is buried next to the organ in Westminster Abbey and the music he composed for Queen Mary’s funeral was performed at his own.

  It was all quite heartbreaking (imagine being the wife who locked him out). Mr Simmons and Miss Boyd both clutched their handkerchiefs. I was already miserable at my treachery and churning in trepidation about what was going to take place after the concert. I regretted the whole thing and was on the brink of telling Mr Simmons to hide in the gents until I gave him the all-clear when I saw my Granny Benson ahead in a little gaggle of posh old women and I hurried my companions out of the foyer.

  ‘Let’s go for a quick cup of tea,’ I said, breezily.

  ‘If you like,’ said Mr Simmons, ‘but I have my flask so I’ll not need any.’

  And then, as we went to cross the busy road, Miss Pitt’s distinctive pale blue Dolomite pulled up at the kerb a few yards ahead of us. Two blokes got out, grabbed Mr Simmons by the elbows and marched him to the car quicker than his little feet could go. His tartan flask dropped to the ground and rolled away down the street.

  He struggled and looked round at me. ‘Nurse!’ he shouted.

  And I shouted, ‘Hey, no, let go of him,’ and pulled at the sleeve of the nearest bloke. ‘Get off him!’ I yelled again.

  But they pushed him into the car, jumped in themselves and the car drove off.

  In the taxi on the way home Miss Boyd kept mithering me about the incident. ‘Who was that? Why did they take Mr Simmons?’ and so on.

  ‘It was his stepdaughter,’ I told her, ‘she’s taken him for a cup of tea.’

  ‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said Miss Boyd.

  I had to keep my face turned away from her so she wouldn’t see I was upset, but when we got back to Paradise Lodge I collapsed into Sister Saleem’s arms.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Where’s Mr Simmons?’

  ‘We bumped into his stepdaughter and she’s taken him off—probably to try and keep him at home,’ I said.

  ‘Was she aggressive, unpleasant, violent?’ asked Sister. ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Well, she was quite assertive,’ I said.

  As soon as I could, I ran up to Lady Briggs and told her the whole awful truth—including my treachery. She didn’t seem surprised and wasn’t at all cross.

  ‘She’ll have taken him back to live at Plum Tree Cottage—what shall I do?’ I cried.

  ‘There, there, dear,’ said Lady Briggs, ‘let me see what I can do.’

  And though there was nothing she could do, I felt better for having poured my heart out.

  Mr Simmons still wasn’t back a couple of days later and though I was genuinely devastated, I had to face up to the truth that this was exactly what I’d planned to happen. Plus it occurred to me that should Miss Pitt successfully prevent Mr Simmons from returning to Paradise Lodge, then Mr Godrich, the imminent convalescent patient and his little dog, could have Room 8 and Lady Briggs needn’t move out of hers. On the other hand, Mr Simmons had been almost single-handedly running the place.

  I felt bad about it—and selfish and all those awful things—but I was more worried about Lady Briggs having to move into Ward 2 than Mr Simmons having to live with a controlling woman with bad taste.

  Then, as I was justifying myself (to myself), Mr Simmons appeared with a pot of cream in his hand.

  ‘You’re back,’ I said, ‘thank God.’

  And Mr Simmons said, ‘Yes, and I must apologize most sincerely that you were dragged into the incident at the Haymarket. I am sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said, ‘but how did you get away?’

  ‘That’s the curious thing, the milkman called at the cottage and said he’d heard I needed a lift back here—so I just walked out and got into the float.’

  ‘How marvellous,’ I said.

  I couldn’t work out where this left me, ‘O’ Level-wise. I guessed the deal was off.

  Mr Simmons made himself two rounds of bread and butter and a cup of tea.

  Matron watched him eat it, smiling. ‘Thank God you’re back,’ she said.

  Later I spoke to Matron. ‘Don’t pin your hopes on Mr Simmons,’ I said. ‘You won’t beat the Deputy Head.’

  ‘No, no, indeed not,’ she said. ‘I’m hoping to leave with this fella Mr Godrich, when he’s ready.’

  ‘Fantastic,’ I said, wearily.

  ‘Have you told Lady B that he needs her room yet?’ asked Matron.

  It was true I did know Lady Briggs a bit better than the others but only because every single break time, every lunchtime and teatime and many times in between, her bell would ring and ring and everyone would ignore it—except to call out, ‘Lizzie, her ladyship’s ringing.’ And I’d go up.

  Occasionally Lady Briggs’ bell-ringing would be to ask for one of her stationery boxes to be lifted out of her tallboy and given to her. She had work to do, she claimed, but mostly it was that she needed the commode, and then, nine times out of ten, there’d be nothing in the pot at the end of it—even though she’d make a point of visibly ‘trying’ which involved tensing up, holding her breath and bearing down and sometimes asking you to whistle.

  There was no point leaving and coming back, her room being at the end of the corridor and miles away from everything else. So I’d stay and we’d chat about the goings-on at Paradise Lodge and she’d feign an interest in the administrative side of things just to keep me there. And then she’d say, ‘Oh, I give up,’ and I’d sometimes say, ‘There you sit, broken-hearted, paid a penny but only farted,’ and she’d laugh.

  It was during one of those five-minute interludes—her on the commode, trying to go—that I was supposed to introduce the idea of her leaving the quiet and pretty solitude she loved, and moving downstairs to a shared, rather chilly ward with a bunch of lunatics and a hospital bed with a chipboard cabinet beside it and no space for her nice bevel-edged nightstand and Chinese ablutions jug and basin.

  But there was no immediate rush. Mr Godrich wasn’t due for a week or two.

  I began to enjoy chatting with Lady Briggs about Mike Yu. Her memory was poor enough not to worry overmuch about her bringing it up again. And I couldn’t stop being impressed that she’d quite rightly known I was in love—before I even had.

  One time I’d gone up there determined to tell her about the room move but ended up confiding in her my concerns about Mike and Miranda’s zodiacal compatibility—Miranda having been born in the Year of the Ox and therefore being either a perfect match for him or, more likely, a sworn enemy in the long run and might even murder him. The thing was, I was an ox too and so the same applied to myself and Mike. But I just knew which one of us would be the perfect match (me) and which one would end up stabbing him to death over a minor disagreement (Miranda).

  Mike Yu was much more my type than Miranda’s. I have to be quite honest here, Miranda was shallow. Openly shallow. She didn’t even want to not be. She liked Mike because he was a company director and had a car and was attentive. It was annoyin
g because she pretty much admitted it. I said she had a father who ticked all those boxes (and hoped she’d see what I was getting at).

  And I was much more Mike’s type than Miranda. Mike was strange and beautiful and born in the Year of the Rabbit like his gentle grandfather—who he’d jointly nursed to death with his strong-bonded family. Even though both Miranda and I were oxen, we were different types of oxen. She seemed to have the most disadvantageous traits in oxen e.g., poor communication skills and stubbornness.

  I had a feeling Mike Yu and I would end up together and that I would probably have to face Miranda in some kind of fight. I didn’t want a physical fight because I knew she’d win—she’d do anything to beat me—but I couldn’t think of any other fight where I’d win. My only hope was that she would dump Mike Yu and break his heart and then I could come in as a soothing friend and one thing could lead to another. I knew one thing; I wanted to lie down and go to sleep with Mike and wake up before him and look at his face. I’d imagined it so many times, it was almost as though it had already happened.

  There was only one thing I didn’t love about Mike Yu and that was his strong family bond. I didn’t mind that we were going to have his elderly parents living with us in 2020 when they reached eighty-five and needed live-in care. I was anxious that they might expect me to pamper Mike in the years between now and then, and I wasn’t that kind of girlfriend/wife. I was going to expect certain freedoms and wanted to be able to go pony-trekking and generally do lots of things with my sister and I’d be happy for him to go on long holidays to China and Hong Kong and go pony-trekking or whatever with all the Chinese cousins that he was bound to have. I’d pop over for a week just to see his heritage and see the sights, and then I’d leave him to it. But I didn’t want his closely bonded parents thinking badly of me.

  I told Lady Briggs snippets of this and though she was very kind about it—saying I mustn’t worry about the oxen or the rabbits and that she was certain they’d sort it out between them—I could tell she didn’t really get it, so I changed the subject.

  Then one day Lady Briggs almost dropped me in it with Miranda.

  Lady Briggs suffered with crusty blepharitis and Miranda and I had been asked to give her an eyebath before bed—and run a bicarb-soaked cotton bud round her lashes. It was a horrible job because the person whose eyes they were would always flinch away and you needed a second nurse just to hold the patient’s head still. And it was all too easy to jab them in the eyeball because telling an old lady to hold still is like telling a canary. Anyway, suddenly and apropos of nothing and in front of Miranda who was gripping her head, Lady Briggs grabbed my arm and said, ‘Are you still in love with that beautiful boy from the next village?’ and I said, ‘Wah? No, who, me, no?’

  And she continued, ‘The one who comes into the drive in his car with the music playing?’

  And Miranda butted in and said, ‘Oh, yes, that’s me, he’s my boyfriend. Lizzie hasn’t got a boyfriend.’

  ‘And are you in love with him?’ asked Lady Briggs.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miranda.

  After the eyebath Lady Briggs blinked a lot, took hold of Miranda’s hand and turned it over and looked at her and beckoned her closer. ‘Let me see you, dear,’ she said, and stared Miranda full in the eyes. ‘But you’re not in love, my dear, you’re not in love at all, with anyone.’

  After her mental collapse after the camping trip my sister needed to patch up her ruined life and, with absolutely no encouragement from me, she presented herself at Paradise Lodge and offered to become a full-time volunteer with a view to gaining experience before embarking on nurse training at Leicester Royal Infirmary.

  And, to my annoyance, she was snapped up by Sister Saleem and came in slightly above me as ‘Nursing Carer’. Which meant that while I’d be hoovering the stairs or lumbering around with the mountains of laundry, she’d be doing something more skilled, like cutting toenails or applying egg white and oxygen to a bedsore.

  Sister Saleem was thrilled, of course, to have another whole extra pair of hands—for free—and she thought my sister commendable and Christian.

  My sister didn’t seem to be suffering with a ruined life. She seemed fully on top of everything and turned up at Paradise Lodge on her first day with a box of mini-rolls for the staff and a bunch of wild flowers for the patients. They were just grasses really with the odd flower but they did look nice in the jug and she was straight into their good books, unlike everyone else who arrived and had to slog at it for weeks.

  She straight away began doing what older sisters do. She became quite popular with the staff and told funny stories about me. About my romantic correspondence with Dave Cassidy of Alice Springs and my brief belief in ghosts and the time I winded myself on a steep slide and couldn’t speak for a day. And the time I rescued a kitten from dogs on one side and a swimming pool on the other and it scratched me half to death. And the time a handsome Spanish man offered me a puff of his cigarette only to turn it round so that I closed my lips on the burning end. And an awful story about the time we ran out of toilet paper.

  None of these stories were particularly funny or interesting, I’m only writing them here to illustrate how and why I came to dread coffee breaks. My sister wasn’t trying to undermine me. She really wasn’t. She was the new girl and was trying to squeeze into a space that wasn’t actually there and join in a world which wasn’t as she’d imagined it—partly because I’d not explained it properly. It’s a thing friends and siblings do—either that, or they’re all reserved and coy (and that’s worse because you’re embarrassed about them)—I have been guilty of it myself.

  I did one time retaliate and told about the time my sister had run away from the dentist because she was scared of the little mirror. And Sister Saleem had said, ‘Your sister is a good Christian and a very caring girl.’ And I said, ‘No, she’s only here because she had a faked mental breakdown in Scarborough so she doesn’t have to leave home.’ And I felt the whole room turn against me.

  22. ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls’

  I had a lot on my mind. Mr Simmons and Miss Pitt, for a start, and Matron’s pill-stealing. But I worried most about telling Lady Briggs she was going to have to move from Room 9. I worried about that so fiercely that sometimes I’d have to go to the bathroom for a cry. And I’d not get to sleep at night.

  It got ridiculous. I was dreading it so much, I considered leaving Paradise Lodge completely and becoming a dedicated scholar who only reads and studies. Or, getting a job in Saxone. I even wondered briefly if the whole ‘moving rooms’ thing hadn’t been cooked up to get me back to school, by my mother, in cahoots with Sister Saleem.

  It was time to speak to my mother—who knew all about dealing with problems, and was as kind and compassionate as you get in an English person.

  The thing about having a flawed but kind mother is that you don’t have to be afraid to tell them things. You can be yourself and everybody else can be just as they are. And you don’t owe them anything, you just love them and they love you and you’re in it together—for life. That’s how it’s always been with mine anyway.

  First I told her I had some worries and began with Matron and the patients’ pills. I thought she might be a bit cross (you know, an old bitch like Matron nicking the pills out of the old people’s mouths etc.) but she wasn’t. She was deeply sad and affected. Sad for Matron.

  ‘Christ, Lizzie, that could be you,’ she said.

  ‘Me?’ I asked.

  ‘Taking them for me!’ she said, referring back to her years as a prescription pill addict.

  And I said, ‘I suppose so.’ But I didn’t think I’d have stooped that low, even for her.

  ‘The thing is, should I tell Sister Saleem?’ I asked her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said my mother, ‘maybe you should tell Dr Gurley.’

  Dr Gurley being the local doctor who’d helped my mother stop being such a prescription pill head and throwing her life away. And we had great faith in
her. ‘Yeah, maybe I should,’ I said, knowing I never would.

  My mother settled down then, in the nicest chair in our sitting area, as if everything was sorted out. But I’d hardly begun.

  I let her have a moment then told her how worried I was about telling Lady Briggs. Though she felt negotiating with a reclusive almost-ninety-year-old over accommodation was a tough assignment for a fifteen-year-old, she used the situation to serve her own agenda and asked whether I ever spent a fraction of this energy on my schoolwork or worrying about my own future.

  She could see I was genuinely anxious, though, and after a short discussion about getting one’s priorities right, we examined the Room 9 situation and looked for the best way forward. Best for Lady Briggs and easiest for me. We decided I should focus on the convenience aspect of being downstairs—it being the main concern for the elderly (inconvenience could be lethal). I would tell Lady Briggs how very convenient being downstairs would be—for the toilet and for meals and for any kind of attention—and it would be true.

  I’d tell her that the distance, the stairs, the corridor all made the coming up to her a real pain in the neck and that she’d be much better attended to downstairs and, more to the point, she’d be able to sit in the day room with all the other patients and gaze out of the window at the bird table and birds in general, which she didn’t get to see upstairs, apart from birds flying around, which weren’t so appealing and charismatic as the ones fluffing their feathers in a shell-shaped bird bath. And she’d be taken to the toilet in the main sluice on the comfort rounds and be part of the great toileting half-hours—when everyone went to the toilet and talked about going to the toilet and there was much talk of the toilet (the successes and the failures, the issues, the related medication and symptoms)—and she herself might offer her new neighbours nuggets of her own wisdom and tricks pertaining to the whole prickly subject (from the whistling of ‘To Be A Pilgrim’ to the little puffs). She’d be able to wave goodbye to the old commode and become acquainted with Thomas Twyford’s grand old porcelain and rediscover the charms of beautifully crafted Victorian plumbing—the old chain flushes, the cascading of the water from the elevated water cisterns and the much-admired wall tiles which, according to the owner, rivalled the ones in Grand Central Station. Here, also, I was going to give her a toilet tip of my own which she could share with her new friends and neighbours to prevent needing the toilet again soon after going. Toilet Tip: just when you’ve finished weeing, turn as far as you can to one side and then to the other and then do two big coughs.