Whitethorn Woods

by Maeve Binchy

  They were perfectly happy with their little house up there instead of finding somewhere proper to live. Times had changed, people had moved on, they just didn’t realise it. If the world had been full of people like them we would still be living in caves.

  Linda’s face showed nothing. Normally she was animated and she agreed or she disagreed. But she sat there blankly and you know the way it is, the less somebody talks the more you talk? I heard myself telling about how my parents had thought chicken and chips was a great treat, how they put up big coloured paper chains all over the house at Christmas so that we could hardly move.

  And still Linda said nothing so I told her all about Mum working extra hours to get us new bicycles and awful Aunt Dervla coming to give us milk and biscuits. Little by little I saw Linda moving her feet down from the sofa and slipping them into her shoes, which was odd because we had the flat to ourselves and it wasn’t nearly time for her to go.

  And then she said she had to be off.

  And I said, ‘You can’t possibly go now – what about the guinea fowl I bought for us to eat with a bottle of really good claret?’

  And for no reason at all Linda asked me, had I ever cooked guinea fowl for my mother and father, and I explained that you couldn’t cook in their kitchen and anyway they liked such awful things that they would be sick if they had guinea fowl. Her face looked so different somehow.

  So I said stupidly, ‘What’s wrong, Linda? What is it?’

  And she looked really sad as she sort of touched my hand before she left. ‘Oh, John,’ she said. ‘Generous John, you really don’t know, do you?’

  And she left.

  And I didn’t know and I don’t know.

  I mean, that’s what’s so difficult about people – you never really know, do you?

  CHAPTER 13

  Going to the Pub

  Part 1 – Poppy

  When I was young our gran lived with us and we adored her. She was far more entertaining than our parents and she understood things. She was much more interesting to listen to, having been around for so long and having seen so much. She used to take Jane and myself on long rambles through Whitethorn Woods, always finding something interesting to show us. Like a treehouse built years ago by her brothers, or how to press flowers in a book, or best of all St Ann’s Well. She said we must never laugh at the people praying there because one day we would undoubtedly come here to pray ourselves.

  That’s what happened. When she was young she thought they were all mad to mumble and mutter and leave mementoes but oddly it became comforting once you got older. She taught us to listen to people. Well, she taught me anyway. That’s probably where I got the idea of working with older people.

  There wasn’t much enthusiasm at home.

  ‘You’ll have to get some kind of qualification first,’ my dad said.

  ‘Old people can be very demanding,’ my mum said.

  ‘You’ll never meet a fellow if you get stuck in geriatrics,’ said my elder sister Jane.

  Jane had turned out to be very different from me – she wore blusher and eyeshadow properly and had a steam iron for her own clothes. She took great care of her shoes, always stuffing them with newspaper, and polishing them with shoe cream. My friends and I used to call her Elegant Jane.

  So even though they were all against the idea at home I took no notice because to be honest they were pretty negative about everything. I trained as a nurse here locally in Rossmore in St Ann’s Hospital and I asked to work in the wards with older people.

  And there I met marvellous people and got huge advice about life from them all.

  One man taught me all about stocks and shares, another all about planting window boxes, one old lady who had had seven proposals of marriage told me how to attract men and another taught me how to polish copper. So I was well advanced in the ways of the world by the time I saw the advertisement for a matron in a place called Ferns and Heathers five miles outside Rossmore.

  It was an old house owned by two marvellous dotty old dears who were obsessed with gardening. When they died it became a nursing home. I was thirty-seven and I had put all the advice I got to good use. I had a small but satisfactory portfolio of shares. Men had certainly fallen in love with me, but unfortunately I had married a man called Oliver who fell in love rather too easily and too often, so I had actually left him after a year of marriage.

  I had copper saucepans that shone like jewels. I could make anything grow in a window box and had very successful year-round colour. None of these things were really qualifications for the job of matron at Ferns and Heathers, but I am a well-qualified nurse and enthusiastic so the four directors liked me at the interview and I got the job. A little cottage went with the post. A place with an entirely neglected garden but I’d soon sort that out.

  As soon as I was appointed I went to meet the staff and the people for whom Ferns and Heathers was home. They seemed a happy enough group. They had liked the previous matron who had left to work in television apparently.

  ‘I hope that you’re not going to use this place as a jumping-off ground to a media career like she did,’ grumbled Garry who, I could recognise in ten seconds, was going to be the mouthpiece of any discontent.

  ‘No. If I’d wanted to go that route I’d have gone it,’ I said cheerfully.

  ‘Or go away and get married on us?’ a frail woman called Eve asked fretfully. I put her down in my mind as a worrier.

  ‘Married? Oh no, I’ve been there and done that,’ I said.

  They looked at me open-mouthed. They had probably been used to a more genteel approach.

  I asked, would everyone mind wearing name badges for the first three days and that if I didn’t know everyone by then, well, it meant I wasn’t up to the job. I told them my name was Poppy. I agreed it was a deeply silly name but there’s a worse one on my birth certificate so, if they could get their heads round it, Poppy it would be. I said I loved to listen and learn and if any of them had any ideas to add to my store I’d be thrilled.

  They seemed to like that. I could hear them saying that I was unusual anyway, as they went off to their tea. I looked around the place that was going to be my new home with some pleasure. It was going to be a real home for me, I realised. The home that I grew up in was becoming ever more remote.

  I realised this when I didn’t feel any need to ring my dad and mum about the new job. I didn’t feel like listening to all the negative things they would say. They would tell me what a huge responsibility it all was and that if any of these people broke their hips it would be my fault.

  I certainly didn’t ring my sister Jane because she would tell me yet again that there was nothing wrong with Oliver, who was handsome and wealthy, and that I had been foolish to throw him out, and that I should take on board the fact that all men wandered a little. It was in their nature.

  I didn’t ring Oliver because I never rang him.

  I rang my best friend Grania who was also my lawyer who had helped me do the contracts, and I told her that the place was fine and she must come and see me.

  ‘I might be coming sooner than you think,’ Grania said. ‘My dad has been told he can’t live on his own.’

  Grania’s father, Dan Green, was a marvellous man. I had always enjoyed going to their house. He was unfailingly cheerful with a big red face and a loud laugh.

  ‘I would love to have him in Ferns and Heathers,’ I told Grania. I said I’d make a room ready for him as soon as she wanted.

  ‘That’s the problem,’ she sighed. ‘He says he hasn’t a notion of going into any kind of home, he’s staying put and going to the pub every night for a pint. The problem is that he can’t do it any more. That’s the problem, Poppy.’ She sounded very upset.

  ‘There’s got to be a way round it,’ I said. Grania’s father couldn’t be abandoned but then he must not be harassed either. ‘Invite him here for tea some day – I won’t do the hard sell,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll try.’ Grania didn’t have muc
h hope.

  One of my first acts at Ferns and Heathers was to reclaim the garden. It had been very neglected.

  ‘A happy matron is a good matron,’ I told them. ‘And I am deeply unhappy with our garden. I’m getting in a few raised flower beds but I need help planting them.’

  Garry said that they paid good money to be in this place and he had no intention of working with earth and dirtying his hands. So I said, fine, of course he must do as he pleased. But when he heard all the laughter and the reading of seed packets and examination of bedding plants, not to mention the glasses of iced tea I prepared for the gardeners, he changed his tune.

  As a reward I gave them each a window box and supervised their planting. It became highly competitive and they all asked their visitors to bring them something exotic from the garden centre. By the time the board had its first visitation we were seriously discussing a little fountain which we called a water feature. It was all going very well.

  Then Grania brought her father to visit. He was still a jolly happy man, Dan Green was.

  But he had been weakened by illness and he was not a fool. He realised that he couldn’t live alone for much longer, though he couldn’t live with Grania and her big family. We walked together, he and I. I showed him all the planting and said that when the winter came we were going to have painting classes and maybe an exhibition of our work.

  ‘You want me to come and live here, Poppy, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t be able to swing it for you – it’s very hard indeed to get in here, Dan,’ I said regretfully.

  ‘I can read you like a book, you’ve been Grania’s friend since you were ten. If I were to go anywhere it would be here but I can’t. I really am not able to give up what I like best in life: going to the pub for a drink every evening.’

  ‘You can drink here, Dan. I do, believe me, you could come and have a glass of wine every evening.’

  ‘No, it’s not the same,’ he said, really testily as if this was an argument he had fought many times before. ‘Women never understand about going to the pub. It’s the beer, the draught beer, the whole ritual of the thing.’

  And he was right, you know. I don’t understand it. I don’t get this thing of going into a place where you might be bored to death by people telling jokes, or wearied by the barman mouthing clichés at you, or regulars telling endless tales, where you might be assaulted by drunks or feel lonely and isolated because everyone else has a gang and you are on your own. Why not get a few drinks and go to a friend’s house or invite them to yours? But it wasn’t the time to argue this down to the bone with Grania’s father.

  I moved to safer waters. I told him about the new big flat-screen television we had and how we were going to make a room into a real old-fashioned cinema, with popcorn and one of the staff with a torch showing people to their seats. I told him how we had set up the library with a huge notice saying ‘Silence’ and the daily papers laid out there for all to read. People’s relatives and friends brought books of every kind and they were properly catalogued too.

  I explained that every week a minibus came and took us up to Whitethorn Woods and how I told them my gran’s tales, and those from round here shared their own memories, and we collected bark and leaves and flowers. I introduced him to Maturity, the marvellous shaggy dog that had been given to us by Skunk Slattery who had needed to find a home for the animal. Maturity was the perfect old people’s home dog, allowing everyone to fondle him and pat his head equally, favouring nobody above anyone else.

  I showed Dan the hens in the backyard which were my pride and joy – seven White Leghorns each with a name and a laying record, clucking about happily in a coop. He was quite interested in all this but still he assured me that no inducement would work – Ferns and Heathers was too far from a pub. Nothing wrong with the place apart from its location. It was five miles from Rossmore and civilisation.

  ‘Grania could drive you to one when she comes to see you,’ I heard myself begging.

  I would love to have had her father here. But no, apparently Grania didn’t understand the psychology of a pub either. And a man needed to be able to wander in when it suited him, find his own level. He seemed almost regretful as he was leaving. He had got a smell of some interesting food from the kitchen.

  On Thursdays we had a cookery class and a different group each week prepared supper. Tonight it would be nasi goreng after the basic Indonesian food lesson in the afternoon.

  So anyway I was very busy, it’s always busy here. I didn’t think of Dan for a couple of weeks until Grania told me that he had had a bad fall and when he came out of hospital he would need looking after. Please, Poppy, she begged me, would you take him? Just for a couple of weeks until she could see what could be done.

  There was only one big corner room available. I had been going to make it into a music room. So now I fixed it up for Dan when he arrived. He was very down, and he showed no interest whatsoever in meeting any of his fellow residents at Ferns and Heathers. There was no sign of his loud laugh and his big red face seemed smaller and more grey. But as it happened I couldn’t give him much attention anyway, I didn’t have time to worry about these changes in a friend’s once happy father. There was too much else happening.

  Garry, the voice of any dissident opinion, had led a protest against Dan getting a bigger room than anyone else. Eve who worried about everything said that some of the new books for the library included real hard-core pornography. Oliver my ex-husband said that on mature reflection he had decided that women didn’t understand about being free souls and he was happy to return to me on a strictly monogamous one-to-one basis. My sister, the very elegant Jane, said that I was of course insane not to take him back. But that it was clear I had never made a wise decision in my whole life. The board of Ferns and Heathers announced that one of their number was going to cash in his shares and they needed to do a detailed examination of the home in order to establish its worth.

  So I sent Garry in to talk to Dan face to face. I knew Dan would explain very forcibly that he had no intention of staying permanently and that this would calm Garry down.

  I went to the library with Eve and examined the hard-core pornography, which turned out to be a few innocent bodice rippers. I wrote to Oliver and said that I wished him well in his insights and spiritual journeys but that I would not contemplate a reconciliation. I reminded him politely of the various barring orders that prevented him from visiting me to discuss the matter any further.

  I told the board that I would be very happy to bid for a quarter-share in Ferns and Heathers once they had done their valuation. I also said that they were free to come and look at any time just so long as they didn’t disturb the residents. And that they would see a fair picture. After all I might want to make the place look rundown so that I could buy the shares cheaply, but then I had to make it look good otherwise I would not keep my job as matron.

  It all worked really well. Dan and Garry became fast friends. Eve started a feminist group in Ferns and Heathers to see could anyone understand the psyche of men since they were basically decent, just confused.

  Oliver went to my sister’s house and droned on and cried on her shoulder so often and for so long on each occasion that far from telling me that I had been idiotic to throw him out she remained fairly wordless about the situation.

  And the board came on a secret inspection to see Ferns and Heathers one day when we were out at the woods and pronounced themselves very pleased and asked me for an enormous sum, for twenty-five per cent of the business.

  But I was ready for them.

  I explained that my buying into it would ensure my continued presence here. I listed the improvements I had made and hinted at further planned developments. I asked them to speak freely to the residents to enquire how they would view continuing to live here if I had moved on. Grimly they agreed that as I had contributed so much already to the whole project, my financial input would be considerably less than they had origina
lly suggested.

  ‘You are quite unorthodox, Poppy,’ they said. ‘Just make sure that Ferns and Heathers keeps its licence, that it doesn’t break any of the rules.’

  I didn’t think we had broken any rules. The hens were very hygienic, there was no pornography in the library. But there was something niggling at the back of my mind.

  It had to do with Grania’s father.

  Dan was somehow too cheerful.

  I would keep an eye on him.

  There was no way that he could go out to a pub. The nearest pub was four miles away and if he were to take a taxi I would have known in ten seconds. And yet he had returned to his previous good form and florid complexion.

  When he had decided to stay he had gone back to his own place for his possessions.

  We had offered to help him install them but he had said no. If he were to have any dignity he must be allowed to put his own few bits and pieces around the place himself.

  His new friend Garry would help him, he said.

  We believe strongly that our residents should indeed have as much independence and dignity as possible so of course we agreed. There was a bit of hammering but nothing seemed to have knocked down the walls. He had an old sideboard with a mirror at the back of it, some hunting prints, a notice board, a dartboard on the back of the door. Some vague furniture shapes covered with rugs and velvet cloths. Cupboards, chests of drawers possibly?

  But his room was so big there was plenty of space for them all. And he said he had brought a few folding chairs in case he invited people in to his room, and two high stools which he used as stands for vases of flowers. I noticed that before lunch several people would drop in to Dan’s room for half an hour, and again in the evening.

  The women had started to dress slightly better. They had their hair done more regularly by our visiting stylist, even put on jewellery and perfume. The men wore cravats sometimes and slicked down their hair.

  Something was up.

  It took me longer than it should have to work out that Dan had set up a pub in his room.