Chain Reaction

by Gillian White

  Generally speaking, thinks Miss Benson, of course. Everything is generally speaking.

  Greylands. Anyone can come in or out—burglars, rapists, swindlers—security is nil. She goes to the office at the side of the hall with the door marked: Matron—Miss Blennerhasset—and an impressive list of nursing qualifications set out below her name. Miss Benson, smart in her crisp white blouse this evening, her pale brown hair having flown into a kind of halo over her head in the wind, ignores the list and knocks politely.

  ‘Come!’

  Miss Benson’s timid head edges round the door. Everything in the room looks pink because of the subdued lighting, even the budgie which chirps from an elaborate cage. ‘Excuse me, I am looking for a Mrs Irene Peacock.’

  You can tell by Matron’s expression that Mrs Peacock is not her favourite resident.

  ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘No, I am just a neighbour.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve seen you here before.’

  The use of the royal ‘we’ does not phase Miss Benson, whose voice is naturally apprehensive. ‘I would have come before, but not being family I was worried about imposing. But now I have cleared it with Mrs Peacock’s daughter.’

  ‘Come in, come further in,’ says Matron, leaning back in her chair, putting her supper tray aside, and sensing an ally. ‘And take a seat.’ Matron considers what to say next, ever cautious. Visitors, in her experience, can be easily upset and troublesome. ‘I don’t know how much of Mrs Peacock’s circumstances you are aware of, Mrs…?’

  ‘Miss, and it’s Benson.’

  Miss Benson takes the soft chair offered, situated beside the unlit gas fire in Matron’s cosy office. On the glass coffee table lies an assortment of gardening magazines and one copy of The Lady. The remains on Matron’s plate are of egg and cheese pie; she has pushed the hard-boiled and blackening yolk to one side. The handmade rug has obviously been done by one of the more able residents and so has the embroidered cushion of a seagull coming in to land on which she settles.

  Miss Blennerhasset’s long-fingered hands are actively independent, picking up objects from her little footstool like a ball of wool, a pen, a diary, turning them over and over to examine them as she speaks. ‘Unfortunately, Mrs Peacock has found it hard to settle here, and we are quite concerned about her at the moment. It is important that both staff and visitors adopt an encouraging attitude, not too much impractical sympathy, if you follow my meaning. Listen by all means to what she has to say, but a gentle yet firm reaction is the best one to take.’

  ‘Poor Mrs Peacock,’ sighs Miss Benson unthinkingly, her memories going to her own mother’s plight.

  ‘There is nothing poor about her,’ Matron contradicts with a look of sad reproach, and Miss Benson wonders what it is about nurses that make them so unimaginative, what makes them so convinced that suffering must be endured regardless? Miss Blennerhasset, hunched a little in her easy chair (back trouble probably) does not look like an unkind woman. Indeed, her long, rather ponderous face and her broad forehead give the impression of a thoughtful person, but she is a woman without animation, someone who has, maybe, been sat on in childhood so she would always speak without inflection or raising her voice. Miss Benson sniffs, and over the scents of cheese and egg pie she can definitely smell mice.

  ‘No, of course not,’ backtracks the constantly apprehensive Miss Benson, eager to avoid the slightest confrontation.

  ‘She is in comparatively good health, has her eyesight and her hearing and a family who care about her,’ Matron goes on indignantly. ‘It is just that her mind is becoming a little enfeebled so it is all the more important not to put any ideas in her head.’

  Miss Benson has heard all this before. ‘So I believe.’

  ‘And unfortunately her recent behaviour is causing some nuisance not only to ourselves and her daughter but to the police and the ambulance service who have more to do with their time than rush around finding confused old ladies who are intent on making trouble.’

  Now Miss Benson is fond of Irene Peacock. She has known her for two years, since she arrived at Albany Buildings and moved into the flat below her looking rather dazed and bewildered. Cautiously, Miss Benson looked out over the road and watched the daughter, Frankie, a hard, bossy creature, and the grandchildren, Angus and Poppy, carting Irene’s bits and pieces from the hired van, across the pavement and up the steps into the foyer. No man then.

  She tried to concentrate on Wildlife on One but could not get the newcomer’s face out of her mind—there was something so tragic about it all. After everyone had gone there was such a silence from the flat underneath her that Miss Benson, not normally one to push herself forward, went downstairs in some trepidation and rang Mrs Peacock’s bell. She still doesn’t know what impelled her to do this, something so way out of character. She took a packet of Earl Grey tea and some M&S shortcake biscuits.

  Miss Benson knows what it’s like to be frightened and lonely, and early evening is the part of the day she hates most. Early evening, and Sundays. You could talk about this with people and they would say they understood but they didn’t, not really, not unless they’d been through it themselves.

  After a longish pause during which Miss Benson wondered if the newcomer might be deaf, there was a nervous rattle of locks and a sobbing, a muttering under breath.

  ‘Yes?’ The red-veined cheeks hung loosely from the bones of a face which must have been pretty once, the shape was still there. The eyes that fixed on Miss Benson’s were bright and incredibly blue and wisps of grey hair escaped from the hairnet round the base of the old woman’s neck.

  Miss Benson looked doubtful. ‘My name is Miss Benson and I live directly upstairs. I watched you move in today and I thought I’d pop down and introduce myself. I know what it’s like—’

  ‘I don’t hold with neighbours. Never have.’ All the aggressiveness of the insecure.

  ‘I understand, but perhaps you would accept this little gift…’

  A scrawny hand shot out and took the tea and the biscuits. The old body took time to straighten. ‘I have all I need. My daughter makes sure that my cupboard is well stocked, though it’s going to be difficult without a pantry. I always had a pantry before, and an airing cupboard.’

  Miss Benson, flushed after a few more futile attempts at conversation, remembered how words like ‘loony’ and ‘old crone’ had been flung at her mother when she found herself toothless and living alone behind locked doors in the village where she grew up. She’d been driven into a home in the end, by lack of Social Services and a shortage of good neighbours. Nobody knew her any more; the entire population had changed in one generation. Constantly alarmed by reports of high crime levels and police dramas on the TV, the old woman was firmly convinced that someone was out to get her. She refused to open her door. She was starving slowly to death. They took her away in the end. They did not contact Miss Benson because nobody knew her address and there was nothing to be found in the cottage that might reveal her whereabouts. Later it was discovered that old Mrs Benson had deliberately disposed of any clue to her daughter’s existence, so convinced in her mind was she that these imaginary villains would threaten her, too, if they only knew where Emily was. Emily hadn’t known for months. When she finally tracked her mother down she discovered her unable to walk and rendered incontinent and totally senile by the sterile regime at The Cedars. The mother no longer recognised the daughter. But standing there on the landing, facing a silent Mrs Peacock, Miss Benson couldn’t for the life of her think of anything useful to say. She wasn’t going to be invited in, she had done her best so she added lamely, ‘Well, I’m just upstairs if you need anything. Don’t be afraid to call me.’

  Mrs Peacock cast a grim look at the cold concrete stairs leading up from the hall and huffed before closing the door, and the echoing sound of the locks and chains shooting home was definite and terrible like fear. Oh yes, Miss Benson recognised Mrs Peacock and the calls for help she had not heard as an u
ndutiful daughter only a few years before.

  Today Miss Benson goes upstairs nervously and opens Mrs Peacock’s door with a fair degree of anxiety.

  To her relief the room is fresh and sweet-smelling. Mrs Peacock sits in a flowered nightie with her bag clutched in her lap and her head bowed but she fumbles impatiently with the new packet of cigarettes she is offered and lights one happily before she starts to grumble. ‘So this is what it’s come to now, Miss Benson, I’m afraid. Look! Look at this! They say they have no option but to sell my flat to pay the fees for keeping me here, but I’m not an invalid, I was coping until I broke my leg and now that’s mended I just don’t know what makes them think they need to keep me here locked up like a prisoner. I can get along quite well with only one stick.’

  ‘There must be a social worker who would listen to you and help you…’ starts Miss Benson, appalled to see her neighbour here in this little room, like a child’s, with a single bed along one wall and a fitted wardrobe along the other, hardly room to take a full stride before you bang into one or the other. The floral nightie they have put her in, communal, Miss Benson is sure, reveals the chickeny skin of her throat. She sits on her day clothes that seem to have been thrown down in a careless heap, and the old lady was always so fussy about her clothes. Remembering Matron’s warnings, Miss Benson attempts to be positive. ‘The view from the window is lovely. The garden looks nice.’

  ‘Matron’s a keen gardener. The social workers are the worst of all,’ snaps Mrs Peacock impatiently. ‘Left-wing do-gooders, just out of college with filthy hair and sandals and silly ideas. And anyway, I’ve never needed the services of a social worker in my life and I don’t intend to start now. They sent me a man with a beard.’ The eyes that lift towards her are opaque and dull—a look she has never seen in Mrs Peacock before. She reminds Miss Benson of her mother. Have they put her on drugs?

  Mrs Peacock is sitting in her bedside chair, the visitor has to sit on the bed. ‘At least they let you have a few of your own personal things, I see.’

  ‘Yes, everything else I own will be sold when they get rid of my flat.’ And then she adds musingly, ‘I thought you’d have come to see me before, Miss Benson. I’ve been stuck here for three months now.’

  ‘I just didn’t know if I should. I worried about your daughter. I don’t want her to think I am interfering.’

  Mrs Peacock stubs out her cigarette into a floral-shaped soap dish. Then she wraps it up in a tissue, riffles through a drawer and hides the last sign of her habit in a carrier bag before dropping it into the wastepaper basket. With fierce blue eyes she glares at her visitor. ‘Whose side are you on anyway, Miss Benson? I thought you were my friend, not my daughter’s.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not a matter of taking sides, it’s a matter of doing the best for you.’

  Mrs Peacock snorts and says nothing.

  ‘Perhaps you should see a solicitor?’

  ‘And pay him with what—moth balls? And anyway, they have taken out power of attorney over me. I no longer count as a person. You can’t even choose what you watch on TV. They probably won’t even let me vote although I could still play a pretty fair hand of Canasta or Rummy.’

  This is awful, for what can Miss Benson do? She feels guilty as if this is her fault which is very silly because this really is no business of hers. She wishes, now, that she had brought Mrs Peacock gin as well as cigarettes. If she visits again she will make up a hamper and fill it with various little treats.

  She tries to lighten the conversation by bringing up the subject of Frankie, but she should have remembered that this is one topic very likely to distress Mrs Peacock. In earlier confidences the old woman admitted how her daughter always came second after William. ‘And she’s never forgiven me for that—with reason, I suppose. It is fashionable today to condemn your mother or your father. Sometimes I feel that Frankie would have been happier if she’d been abused, something firm to get a grip on. She was always a sulky child. And demanding. Is that bad, is that wicked, Miss Benson, to love your husband better than your child? And I’ve always come out straight and admitted it.’

  Miss Benson, who had been slightly shocked to hear this at the time, had to confess that she just didn’t know, never having been married herself, and of course the last thing she wanted to be was judgmental. ‘I’m sure Frankie didn’t even realise,’ she’d suggested comfortingly. ‘As long as a child is happy and loved, she’s unlikely to feel jealousy because her parents adore one another.’

  There was a long pause before the answer. ‘You don’t know Frankie,’ said Mrs Peacock grimly. ‘She even blames me for the failure of her own marriage.’

  So now she moans on. Mentioning Frankie’s name when Mrs Peacock is so upset was a fatal mistake, opening up a whole new can of worms. The old woman’s eyes keep shutting as if she is already exhausted but it’s not yet eight o’clock. ‘And they never invite me out of here to go to Frankie’s house. You’d think I was incontinent already. They lead such busy lives, you see, Frankie, Angus and Poppy, so full of other people. You should see their notice board in the kitchen, little flags on every day, a different colour for each of them. Frankie is such a capable, organising person. Well, she’s a teacher, isn’t she? But there’s no room for me any more.’

  Miss Benson knows all about this from sad and worrying personal experience. ‘It’s easy, sometimes, to pretend to ourselves that everything is all right, especially when we feel powerless to change things. I’m sure Frankie would like you at home, I’m sure she worries about you terribly in here, but it seems that her lifestyle makes this impossible. Especially with no man to support her.’

  Mrs Peacock’s wedding picture stands beside her bed. Next to William she looks tiny but oh so blissfully happy. ‘Huh, I should know,’ she says dryly, lighting her second cigarette. She notices how Miss Benson is staring at the picture. ‘I loved him, you know, and I still miss him.’

  ‘I know,’ says Miss Benson.

  ‘So let that be a warning. Never get married, Miss Benson. Never depend on somebody else, it’s just too painful when it ends. And I can’t even read any more because I’ve sat on another pair of glasses.’

  Back safe to Albany Buildings at last.

  She has promised Mrs Peacock that she will visit again next week. She has also promised her a day out at her flat. Miss Benson will pick her up in her car and take her for a little outing, maybe a meal out at a pub before they return to Albany Buildings. These promises were the only things that seemed to cheer Mrs Peacock up. Somehow Miss Benson couldn’t leave her in the same despairing state in which she had found her. She just couldn’t bear it. But perhaps Miss Benson should have cleared all this with Matron first, or her daughter, Frankie Rendell. The last thing she wants is to cause trouble and make poor Mrs Peacock’s situation even worse. I mean, perhaps the old lady is ill and they are keeping it from her. There could be all sorts of reasons why it might be considered inappropriate for her to leave Greylands.

  ‘I think we have sold the flat,’ says a pleased-looking Frankie when Miss Benson meets her in the hall, on her way out with a bucket of cleaning things. ‘The agents seem to think there’s this couple who are very interested. Fingers crossed,’ she smiles at Miss Benson and then thinks to ask, ‘Oh, how was Mother this evening?’

  ‘Pretty depressed, I’m afraid.’

  Frankie Rendell removes her Marigold gloves and sighs. ‘I hate to visit, she’s always so unhappy. And there’s nothing anyone can do! We have to sell the flat in order to pay the fees and that’s that.’

  She might as well grasp the nettle. ‘Oh, Mrs Rendell, I hope I haven’t gone and put my foot in it, but your mother was so low I suggested I might take her out for the day, give her an airing, bring her back here for a cup of tea…’

  ‘That would be very good of you, Miss Benson,’ but Frankie’s voice is cold, she senses some blame in Miss Benson’s suggestion. She can’t be bothered to take her own mother out herself and yet here is this neighbour
…

  The over-sensitive Miss Benson sees and hurries to put this right. ‘You see, I have no responsibilities like you have. My social life is very routine, I’m afraid. I spend most weekends either cleaning my flat or walking, if it’s fine, and if you think your mother might benefit from a few hours away from Greylands it really would be no trouble. She seemed so thrilled…’

  ‘I am quite sure she did. My mother can be a difficult woman, Miss Benson.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that.’

  ‘Not many people warm to her.’

  ‘No, I suppose they don’t.’

  ‘She is also manipulative and vengeful. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she tries to work one of her dramas again. She’s there all day with nothing to do but to plot and plan.’

  ‘She is old, Mrs Rendell. And she has broken her glasses.’

  That was definitely the wrong attitude to take. ‘Well, if you think you have more rapport with her than her own daughter…’

  Miss Benson rushes to her own defence. ‘Oh really, it was just the same with my own mother, Mrs Rendell. We found things difficult as she grew older and I remember thinking that most of the nurses managed to communicate with my mother better than I did. She was senile, by then, and unable to recognise me but I still feel I should have got through. Somehow. It’s this mother and daughter relationship which can be so severely tested when age turns the relationship the wrong way round. I don’t see this as anyone’s fault…’

  ‘Well, I am glad to hear that,’ says Frankie coldly, rattling the Jiffy mop in the plastic bucket. She brings her own mop when she comes to the Buildings to clean the flat because Mrs Peacock only has a squeegee and they are too much hard work. ‘For a moment there I thought I was in for another telling off and I’m getting a bit pissed off with the image of grabbing, greedy, selfish daughter at the moment, I can tell you. At least Matron understands.’