Chain Reaction (7 page)

Returned to her little room once again, back safely among the aproned professionals, Irene Peacock refuses to accept that it is County Council policy to force their senior citizens to sell their homes when they need permanent care.

‘But how can that be, Frankie?
I have paid.
Me and William have contributed towards our old age every week of our lives, in his pay packet. That’s what those taxes were all about, surely—health care, pensions, roads, hard times…’

Frankie attempts to quell her own annoyance. It stems from a sense of guilt, of course, and she is well aware of that. She can still hear her own strident voice, ‘You have surpassed yourself this time, Mother,’ when they discovered the fugitive hiding in her flat, and Frankie’s teacher training doesn’t help her naturally imperious manner. It’s too easy to slip into the classroom role. ‘I know that, Mum, but back then no one envisaged the rise in the elderly population and the few people left at work to pay for the care of those in residential homes.’

‘Rubbish, Frankie. You sound like one of their forms, the way you speak. We have already paid and anyway,
I do not need care.
I hate it here, waiting to leave in a box with a spray of flowers on top. I’d be perfectly safe in the flat now and you know that very well. They hide my cigarettes. And anyway, how is it that nobody needs my consent?’

Frankie sighs, noticing how trembly-nervous her poor mother is. Many more adventures like this and they’ll kill her. She sits stiffly on the edge of the bedside chair, the bad daughter, the infected seed, and she can see what this situation would look like to a stranger. ‘That is because I took power of attorney over your legal affairs and I did that, if you remember, Mum, because you were getting very confused, forgetting to pay your bills, going about wearing odd shoes, leaving your purse lying around and giving money to beggars as if you had any to spare!’

Mother’s bony face takes on that rigid, stubborn look. ‘I only did it the once and just because old mother Blennerhasset happened to be passing by, and that toffee-nosed little nurse Jenkins, they jumped to the conclusion that I was always at it. But that does not mean you can sell my flat over my head without my permission.’

‘Well yes, it does, I’m afraid…’

‘William would turn in his grave.’

‘There’s no need to bring Dad into it. Anyone would think it was me going to benefit from this sale. In fact, the opposite is the case.’ A legacy of £45,000 some time in the future would have come in incredibly handy, helped to relieve the stress and go towards setting the children up. But by the time Mother dies this will all be gone.

‘Bullying me like this! My mind is crumbling by the hour and I don’t need you scolding me as if I’m a retarded child. This is the last time I will listen to you and your silly advice, Frankie.
You have no right…
and I want my own bedroom back!’

And on she goes, berating her daughter and blaming her for every single thing that ever went wrong in her life, and now they seem to be lurching from one petty crisis to the next, with Mother’s behaviour worsening all the time.

‘A Garibaldi or a Rich Tea, dear?’ asks an assistant, popping her head round the door.

‘Oh, go away and leave me alone,’ snaps Mother. ‘They have lost my mirror with the cross-stitch pattern on the back.’ And then she gets into tolerance and how, in her day, when Swallowbridge was but a village and not an ugly, expanding suburb of Plymouth, the old and the odd were accepted as part of the rustic scene. ‘That’s why you’re all turning into clones nowadays,’ says Irene testily. ‘Terrified to be different. All wearing the same clothes with the same disgruntled looks on your faces. Why, I remember the days when old Warty Nosworthy would jump out at us from the bushes and everyone just accepted him…’

Frankie tries to kiss her but is pushed angrily away.

In Matron’s office… From the smell you could tell there was steamed fish for tea. Matron’s Vauxhall Astra was scented by a vanilla tree. It swung beside the driving mirror along with the miniature lucky pixie. Picking up the odd absconding resident, frightened and in distress, perhaps Matron needed an over-riding perfume to cover a multitude of sins. The large bathrooms at Greylands are sanctified by cleanliness and the smell of pine disinfectant. They are hung about with tortured hoists and sparkling metallic rails. The bathroom mats are fluffy and clean as if they have never been used.

‘Mrs Rendell,’ says Miss Blennerhasset, while Mother is being bathed and changed into her nightie, ‘I think it is time your mother was put on something to calm her down, because, as I warned you last time this happened, we are a residential home not a hospital trained to cope with the demands of the demented.’

Frankie flinches and widens her eyes. Her chestnut hair hangs neat and straight to her shoulders. She wears jeans and a black sweater with marigolds emblazoned upon it. Matron is in her plaid skirt with a white blouse under her stiffly over-washed Aran. It is essential that Frankie remain solicitous and agreeable; she is more than grateful that Greylands have agreed to take Irene back. God knows where she would have to go if they expelled her, but Frankie is trained to remain calm and reasonable under difficult circumstances when you think what sort of parents she has to deal with at school. ‘Calm her down?’

‘For her own sake, Mrs Rendell, as well as for everyone else’s. We can help her be more at peace with herself. Less dazed. We haven’t the staff to keep watch on your mother twenty-four hours a day, especially as she seems to be so determined to leave us.’

Of course Frankie can understand why her mother hates it here; she is not entirely insensitive. Some of the residents have given up and gaze into space waiting for death, but Irene is nowhere near ready for death. ‘She hasn’t settled yet,’ she says, defending the cross old woman upstairs. ‘I mean, she’s only been here for three months and that’s no time at all.’

‘You could well say that,’ says Miss Blennerhasset, ‘but I can only report to you that her attitude towards the staff is at best surly, at worst downright rude. This does not endear her to anyone.’

You have to be liked to survive, thinks Frankie. When you are old and vulnerable, or sick, or smelly, or just lonely. Most of us learn that, but Mother, at seventy-five, is too old to learn anything and those rules have never applied before in her sheltered existence. The only real relationship in her life has been with William. Her reason for living has been William and since his death she has gradually mentally evaporated.

Sinking sinking sunk.

Seeing this, observing this from as far back as she can remember prevented Frankie from following her mother’s example when she married Michael Rendell twenty years ago. She felt lucky to have escaped her childhood whole and functional. Her mother’s subservient behaviour made Frankie feel sick. Irene even cut the tops off her father’s boiled eggs. She kept house compulsively, made friends with no one. She was always jumping at sounds, waiting for Father’s key in the door, or the phone which might be him. And Frankie was brought up as a second devoted fan of the man until she grew old enough to understand and detest the calculated way in which William allowed Irene to adore him.

He was her love, her treasure.

She was his spare rib and contented with that.

A human being should not be at her happiest when thinking of somebody else, should she?

Frankie asked her mother once, ‘What would you do if Daddy left home?’ Irene reached forward and slapped her daughter’s face.

Mother tried to discuss his work. She responded over-eagerly to his long and distracted stories. She laughed over-loudly at his jokes. Oh, he was nothing special, a skinny, tall, glaring man with a bald head and a bristly moustache. He invariably wore a beige anorak and spent his whole life in the competitive world of insurance.

‘We’ll have lamb chops with new potatoes tonight, Frankie, seeing as how it’s your father’s favourite.’

‘We are having a golfing holiday this year. Now don’t look so grumpy, dear, it’s your father who needs the rest, not you.’

‘Not that chair, Frankie, Daddy will be home in a minute. Hop on to the stool, there’s a good girl.’

‘No, dear, no, you are quite wrong. I don’t think the green looks so good. William hates green, the blue suits me far better.’

‘We will stop at the services when your father feels ready to stop and not before. Stop scratching.’

And, ‘Smile for Daddy, Frankie, smile!’

When Frankie got into university it was, ‘Oh Frankie, your father will be so proud.’

A good woman and look where it got her. Irene was not a victim, she was a fool. Her long and patient subservience should have received some lasting pay-off, but look what happened. William turned up his toes one morning and left her.

It was unforgivable of him to die first.

And now Irene is enraged and turning her anger on everyone else.

But drugs?

Frankie knows very well that in days gone by she would have had her mother at home with her. That was the accepted behaviour until a generation ago. She wonders what communal understanding suddenly changed that noble concept.

Of course the very idea is right out of the question. Poppy and Angus would not tolerate that notion for a second—and rightly so. They are studying hard at the moment. Poppy, a troublesome adolescent, is struggling with her A levels and Angus is at the new university training to be a computer technician. They have their own rooms. They need their own rooms and Frankie certainly needs hers. They also all need their space, and peace and quiet in order to get on with their lives. Mother, with her demands and her confusion, would soon put paid to all that. Poppy and Angus were both taught from an early age never to disturb their grandfather, to tidy up after themselves whenever they went to Granny’s house, not to make a fuss if the sport was on all afternoon or when Grandpa told them to keep off his precious lawn. No, no, she cannot come home, there’d be no one around to look after her. Frankie’s first responsibility, especially now Michael has left them, is to her children.

Matron is right: it will have to be drugs.

‘But nothing too rigorous, Matron, please. Nothing that might change my mother’s personality.’

‘But of course not, Mrs Rendell,’ says Miss Blennerhasset sensibly.

They have drugged her and they have taken away her shoes.

Frankie is going to have to press on with the sale of the wretched flat. She has no option. So far there’s been little interest, although the agent tells her this will take time. On top of her other responsibilities Frankie has to pop round occasionally to give the place the once over, to make sure it is spick and span for any viewers. Life is such a rush these days. Her eyes turn in on her problems as she fights for a parking space,
bumps into people along the High Street dodging between parked vans and buses and even missing a turning in her haste. She has thirty essays to mark tonight and she doesn’t get enough sleep as it is, thinking of Michael and his moll. Twenty years and it’s suddenly over, the destruction of love, a wilderness complete. But she was the one who demanded separate lives, separate holidays, separate interests, separate friends—well, she is certainly separate now all right. She dusts. She hoovers. She wipes the surfaces over and sprays a little fresh air. All her mother owns in the world, these precious, pitiable things. How little they matter in the end. Disposables. They will have to sell them when the flat goes, or get the Council to take them away. Funny how flies like to congregate in deserted places. Where do they all come from? Do they make nests in the winter?

‘How is Mrs Peacock, Mrs Rendell?’

Frankie starts and turns. But it’s all right. The head round the door is drab and benign with a genuine enquiry into her mother’s condition.

‘Not good, I’m afraid, Miss Benson. She came back here again yesterday.’

‘Oh dear, not again,’ says Miss Benson with feeling, stepping into the room, a tall young woman with fly-away, pale brown hair. She looks as if she works in a bank. Nervously she clears her throat. ‘I am so sorry. It must be such a worry for you, and with the main road, too.’

‘It
is
a worry,’ admits Frankie, stretching upright while kneading her back, glad of a rest, glad of an opportunity to discuss this pressing problem with an impartial stranger. ‘And my mother is very angry with me.’

‘She is bound to be,’ says Miss Benson, dismayed to hear it. ‘It is all very sad. She was just getting used to life here, too, after the move.’ And can those be tears in Miss Benson’s eyes? Surely not! ‘I wondered if a visit from me might help to cheer her a little.’

‘Oh, would you do that? Would you really?’

Miss Benson seems like a lonely soul, at home most evenings, according to Mother, always time for a chat, even inviting Irene in for tea and a piece of Marks & Spencer angel cake at her first-floor flat on occasion—unusual in a young person these days, unusual to bother like that. ‘But of course. In a funny way I miss Mrs Peacock. You really would think there would be a way that society could look after her at home. I mean, she’s not—’

Gaga? Miss Benson shrinks from the word and leaves an empty space while fiddling with the shoulder strap on her cheap black bag. ‘Well, there isn’t, I’m afraid,’ says Frankie. ‘We have been through all that. Apparently that sort of care would cost more than Greylands.’ Frankie looks suddenly doubtful. Will Mother be rude to Miss Benson, too, upsetting the woman, perhaps, with her tall stories of conspiracy and unkindness? She is now convinced that someone is stealing her things. Probably not. Miss Benson, so mild, so obviously kind and good, is nothing to do with Mother’s present predicament. She might even be able to talk some sense into Irene, make out she is on Mother’s side.

‘I will go on Friday evening, if you don’t mind then,’ says Miss Benson with pity in her voice. And then the rather surprising addition, because she doesn’t look the type to offer such sinful gifts: ‘And I’ll take her some cigarettes along while I’m at it.’