by Nina Stibbe
Deb-on-Hair had done Sister Saleem a ‘Syreeta’ and it had taken till 10 p.m. I couldn’t take to it—the beads looked clumsy, all clacking together, and I suspected Deb-on-Hair had bitten off more than she could chew—and some of the pieces, round the back, were a bit on the thick side. Deb-on-Hair was proud of it, though, and according to Sister Saleem, had said she wanted to photograph it for a hair competition.
The only patient who’d not been done was Miss Boyd who’d had a headache while Deb-on-Hair had been there, brought on by the fumes of the Amami setting lotion. Nurse Eileen did it for her on the actual day, and gave her full Farrah flicks.
Carla B disappeared to put the decorations up in the hall and day room—and when she’d done it she called us all to come and look. We went into the day room first and it looked very pretty and festive and we all congratulated her and said what a very good eye she had for bunting placement.
Then we saw the hall. For this she had sewn some special bunting with the words: ‘PARADISE LODGE—Come Here to Live!’
And it was so moving and such an amazing thing to have sewn by hand we all just stared at it. Sister Saleem stood there with her mouth open.
And Eileen said, ‘Carla B, you genius, it’s gorgeous.’
And then, just when I thought I couldn’t love bunting more, Carla B unfurled a silver and white banner which read ‘THE HAPPY COUPLE’ and had wedding rings and horseshoes.
The plan was that the drama and musical entertainments (except for Mike Yu’s thumb piano demo) would take place outside on the patio with the audience either watching from the day room—through the French windows—or, for those wanting a closer view, seated around the patio in the garden furniture which had been tarted up by Eileen and Gordon Banks. The wisteria hung down around the ‘stage’ in pretty loops, like an alfresco theatre-set in a picture book. It was glorious and the weather was set fair.
Eileen and Miranda were to prepare the patients, and the cook and Gordon’s wife, Mindy Banks, had been in the day before and plumped all the cushions and sprayed a lot of Haze around. The umbrella-and-walking-stick urn was in place, with ladies’ and gents’ wellingtons, and there were assorted plants borrowed from Fresh Blooms—two cheese plants, a weeping fig and some African violets—dotted around, looking lovely. All on sale or return.
It should have been a morning of calm before the big day unfolded but it turned out to be quite strange and eventful in itself.
The owner appeared, which was miraculous, him having been in a coma for days—in mourning for his mother and still missing Matron. He even began picking at the leftovers from the heart-shaped sandwiches, which was unlike him. He said he’d woken up from an exciting coma-dream in which he was fighting with a badger.
He got hold of Sister Saleem to show us what he’d done in the dream and shouted, ‘You’re not stripy, you’re plain brown, damn you!’ Sister Saleem loved the attention and they had a right old wrestle that almost ended in a kiss, and actually the beady hair looked quite nice swishing about. Plus, it was really pleasing that the owner had come round from his coma and was going to join in the day.
Everyone started telling their dreams. Mr Simmons said he’d dreamt that a man had telephoned from a phone box in Market Harborough to say that he and his brother were on their way to visit him, and would that be convenient? Then the pips had gone and he’d woken up.
Eileen had dreamt that someone kept offering her Polo mints and when she put them into her mouth they’d turned out to be Polo fruits. I thought it was symbolic and horrible.
The owner went and changed into his riding togs and a few minutes later waved at the window as he clopped past on Daybreak. It was a big deal as he’d been too depressed to ride for weeks and poor Daybreak had been bored to distraction and had kicked at his stable door like a forgotten prisoner and only got one or two hacks out per week with the catering grocer’s wife—who liked lone riding.
Then the doorbell rang and it was two visitors to see Mr Simmons—it was the Attenboroughs (but we didn’t know that at the time). They explained that they’d tried to call ahead from a phone box in Market Harborough. Sister Saleem left them in the hall with Eileen and came back to the kitchen.
‘Quick, Nurse,’ she said to Carla B, ‘two visitors for Mr Simmons. Run up to his room, make the bed and clean the toilet.’
‘Who is it?’ asked Mr Simmons.
‘I don’t know, they rang ahead from Market Harborough,’ said Sister Saleem.
Mr Simmons looked up in surprise and said, ‘Good heavens, my dream’s come true.’
‘Nurse Eileen will keep them talking in the hall,’ said Sister to Mr Simmons, ‘you go up the backstairs and get dressed.’
Eventually, the Attenboroughs were allowed up to see Mr Simmons in his room and Sister Saleem took a tray of tea and Lincolns up. The rest of us wondered who the visitors were while I plated up the array of cakes donated for the wedding (including a tin of sickly-looking butterfly cakes from Sally-Anne). I found I was a little afraid of Sally-Anne nowadays, when I put it all together—the twins, the uncut hair, the deadness inside, and now the lotus position with Mike Yu.
We knew the visitors were very famous but none of us could place them. I thought they might be local MPs. Sister Saleem sent Sally-Anne to get their autographs so we could analyse the signatures, but Sally-Anne chickened out just in case they weren’t famous—like all shy people, her main objective was not to seem an idiot.
The visit was brief because Mr Simmons wasn’t very good at being visited—which was a shame because he got all sorts of exciting visitors, being ex-BBC. When the Attenboroughs came back down to the hallway and Eileen was helping them into their rustly mackintoshes I was sent out to get their autographs. Nurse Eileen was telling them that she was an artist in her spare time and showing them a little oil painting (done by her) on the wall by the front door.
‘Tuscany?’ one Attenborough asked.
‘Kirby Muxloe,’ replied Nurse Eileen.
And I realized, for the first time, the painting was of a little house. Until that moment I’d seen it as an Aston Villa player (framed by an open goal). I was amazed and blurted this out to Eileen and the Attenboroughs. The Attenboroughs found this—me seeing the little house as a football player—more interesting than the painting itself.
‘It’s a fascinating yet common phenomenon,’ said the smaller one, ‘you perceive only one image at any one time.’ And he squinted at the painting. ‘Aha, I’m seeing the footballer—now I look away and look back and I’m seeing the house again—look again, aha, and there’s the footballer.’
‘Wittgenstein’s rabbit,’ said the taller.
‘It is whatever you see it as. You see a football player, who’s to say it isn’t a football player?’ said the smaller one, to me.
‘It’s a cottage,’ said Eileen, butting in.
‘Ah, but who’s to say it is?’ asked the taller one.
‘I am,’ said Eileen, ‘my Nan lived in it.’
‘He’s saying the painting, any painting, is whatever we see it as,’ I said, and surprised myself.
‘Precisely—it is what we see,’ said the smaller one.
Eileen seemed a bit hurt, but hung around while they peered at the picture, just in case they came back round to the subject of her (the artist).
The phenomenon happened to me a lot. I hadn’t even realized it was a phenomenon; I thought it was just me seeing the wrong thing. I supposed it was further evidence of my being an intellectual. But I didn’t dwell on it further—enough was enough.
As they neared the front door, the smaller one commented on my bridesmaid’s dress and the bunting about the place. I told them about the open-cum-wedding day and what a doubly huge day it was going to be and that in less than three hours my mother and stepfather would be man and wife and returning here for their party and so forth. I described all the wonderful entertainments on offer, including their friend, Mr Simmons, leading the Gilbert and Sullivan recital on the har
monica, Gordon Banks’ balloon header, the kung fu demo and dance, and Big Smig’s Barry Sheene lookalike act, and I firmly invited them to join us. They seemed pleased and said they’d try to pop back.
‘We’ll try to pop back,’ said the small one, who, it turned out, was a huge Bruce Lee fan and could do an impression. They got into their car and Eileen and I stood on the drive and waved them off.
The owner and Daybreak appeared at the cattle grid, having finished their hack just as the Attenboroughs’ Peugeot turned into the lane. ‘Who was that?’ he asked.
And I told him all about the Attenboroughs and that they were going to try to pop back for the open day. And then I went back inside to put the parsley garnishes on my sandwich platters. Soon I’d fully prepared the tea and there were sixteen Bacofoil-covered plates. The balloons and bunting were up and the patients were all in their nicest clothes and looking forward to lots of fun. Miranda was going to be in charge of music and Sally-Anne was going to make sure the kettle went on in time—it taking almost a half-hour to come to the boil.
Then Mike Yu arrived to reheat a stew for lunch and to fill the air with wholesome smells. And, presumably, to see Sally-Anne, or Miranda—or both. I didn’t care.
I hated Mike Yu now, even though he was still wonderful, sweet and kind and just about the most beautiful person you’d ever see.
32. The Battenberg Heart
The Snowdrop van clattered over the cattle grid mid-morning and I shuffled out in my ballet shoes. It was time to go with my family to the registry office. Carla B beat me to the van and quickly strung some white ribbon across the windscreen and laughed and ran away again. Mr Holt got out of the van and rearranged it.
My sister had got our mother ready and she was wearing the lily dress that had come from War on Want. She looked beautiful with soft, wavy hair and greeny-blue eyeshadow. She was wearing flip-flops but hadn’t painted her toenails, which I thought a shame. Mr Holt had on a brown suit that I’d seen a couple of times before, and he couldn’t help himself but push the sleeves up. Danny was in a cowboy suit and Jack was in jeans and black sweater and looked like a Frenchman.
My sister looked much nicer than I did because she’d had the guts to reject Carrie Frost’s grotty bridesmaid’s dress and had worn a wraparound silk thing and had her hair all swept up and dangly earrings. She’d spent quite a bit of time on herself, hence my mother’s lack of toenail paint.
Anyway, we were a well-dressed family off out to get married and it felt very nice. It was a sunny autumn day, as previously noted, and winding through the villages on our way to Market Harborough registry office, I felt the countryside must surely rival New England for leaf colour. Not that I’d been there.
My mother had wanted Jack to give her away but it wasn’t that kind of wedding and in the end she just went and stood beside Mr Holt and they nodded at each other as if they’d bumped into each other outside Wilkinson’s hardware. The registrar droned on and it was dull until the couple faced each other and tried to repeat what the registrar had told them to say regarding marrying each other. My mother said it a bit wrong and giggled and tried again and giggled again. And Mr Holt, when it was his turn, said it perfectly, but very cautiously—and that summed the two of them up. That was when I felt emotional and so glad about Mr Holt. I mean, my mother was my mother and that was that but we’d somehow got this man, this unusual man who was never going to say the wrong thing. Who was going to slow everything down and get it right. The antidote.
We arrived back at Paradise Lodge a bit later than expected because we hadn’t factored in needing some lunch, Danny falling asleep, and having to collect Sue the dog so that she could come and jump out of the window.
And by the time we got there, the open day was in full swing and going well.
We’d missed Gordon Banks heading the balloon. But Mr Simmons was playing a doleful tune on the harmonica with his mouth and hand. The French windows were open on to the stage—as planned—and the big umbrella was up and there were jugs of drink everywhere with cucumber bobbing about. And although it was October and only a few days after the anniversary of the saddest day in our lives, everything was perfect—apart from the Mike thing, Matron not being there and Lady Briggs being dead and unable to sing ‘I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls’. Apart from all that, it was very nice.
Sister Saleem dazzled in a bright yellow two-piece and Eileen was in the pale jade uniform (which had been optional for the day). Carla B was in check capri pants and a bra-top and I can’t even remember what Sally-Anne wore except she looked grim and strange and I hated her.
I thought we’d slipped in unnoticed but Sister Saleem suddenly shouted, ‘The bridal party!’
And the staff and some of the patients made an archway and whooped as we all came underneath. The official wedding guests—the Liberal couple, Miss Kellogg, Deano the van boy and Carrie Frost—were already there. Jeff and Betty from Snowdrop had been and gone and were probably at the depot working on the autumn stocktake.
The owner played the piano rather beautifully in honour of our arrival but ruined it at the end by calling out, ‘Are the fucking Attenboroughs here yet?’
Little Jack welcomed Mr Holt to our family, which he’d seen various in-laws do at family weddings, and Mr Holt nodded and thanked him. My mother said she’d intended to read a poem by John Keats but now the moment had come she wanted to talk briefly instead about my sister. She started by saying she’d taken her ‘A’ Levels a year early (which I thought tactless), and then that she’d been brave enough—in spite of a life-changing anxiety attack—to enrol for training at the Royal. And that we should all take care of ourselves, our hearts and minds as much as our bodies. This went on for about two minutes. Most of the gathering had no idea what she was on about. Then, when it ended, Miranda Longlady did a short dance routine to ‘Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel’. My sister looked horrified but held up well considering.
Truthfully, the rest of the day was partly spoilt by what was going on in my heart and mind. I’d been fine during the preparations and the actual wedding, having been occupied and busy. But once we’d settled into the ‘open day’ part of the day, especially with Mike actually being there and Lady Briggs not, I grappled with notions of truth and understanding—what is the truth? And how do you know?
Should I have known Lady Briggs was the owner’s mother? Did it matter that I didn’t?
If Lady Briggs hadn’t intervened, would I now be limbering up to do the kung fu dance with Mike? What made Mike assume the nurse who liked him was Sally-Anne, when it should have been obvious it was me?
And, on a grander scale, what actually makes a thing true or not true, and can you believe a thing into truth? All the kind of things my sister had been so keen on before her camping collapse. At one point I approached her and tried to start a conversation about it all.
‘What’s bothering you?’ she asked. ‘Mike Yu or Lady Briggs?’
‘Both—shattered illusions have made me doubt myself,’ I told her. ‘I’m in turmoil.’
I told her I’d not only been robbed of my reality but also forced into an ongoing hunt for retrospective meaning in every past exchange. And that every brief comment that had seemed at the time to offer a hint of romance to come (Mike) or of senile dementia (Lady Briggs) was actually a clue to a different truth, a truth in which I was a tiny player. It was a troubling and time-consuming realization.
My sister couldn’t have been less interested or curious and her response was as sad and perfunctory as a lazy vicar addressing a group. ‘Peace will come with acceptance, Lizzie,’ she said, ‘we only know what we know, and the rest is anybody’s guess.’
And then she asked if I’d liked the dainty buttonhole corsages she’d made from sprigs of fern and tiny autumn daisies.
I didn’t want the peace that comes with acceptance, I wanted the ongoing chronic joy that came with ignorance and fantasy—I’d rather go back to not knowing about Mike and Sally-Anne, and thinking that
Lady Briggs was just a weird recluse.
I felt better when I was busy; rushing around offering newcomers a heart-shaped sandwich, topping up teacups, guiding Miss Brixham to the toilet or fixing a fallen stocking.
The Vicar ignored everyone and sat with a glass of Winfield sherry, reading the Leicester Mercury classifieds. He was looking for a second-hand hostess trolley, he told my mother, it being a long way from the kitchen to the dining room at the vicarage. ‘I’m fed up with lukewarm béchamel on cold plates,’ he said.
‘Ooh, how very Barbara Pym!’ my mother chuckled.
Mr Holt tapped me on the shoulder and said he was going to have to leave now, to finish the paperwork for the autumn stocktake.
‘But you’ll miss seeing Sue jumping out of the window,’ I said.
‘I’ve seen it before and I dare say I shall see it again,’ he said, and it was true that there’d be many opportunities, Sue being our dog.
‘Happy Wedding Day,’ I said and gave him a pat on the arm.
‘Thanks for everything, love,’ he said.
Mrs Longlady arrived with her secret recipe Chocca-Chocca cake and, to my surprise, I saw it was decorated with tiny bride and groom figures and had ‘Mr & Mrs’ piped in curly white letters across the top—as if it were THE wedding cake, which it wasn’t (my sister having fashioned a heart out of four Battenbergs). My mother came over and was suitably grateful and Mrs Longlady seized the agenda and invited her to cut the Chocca-Chocca cake and make a wish for the future.
