First Aid (13 page)

Jo's boyfriend had shifted a hospital bed for him. Delivered it to a couple outside Sittingbourne. He'd been obliging. He did removals – the sort that used to be called light but which as a term had gone, together with the Light Programme. Man with a Van it was now. Trevor had asked if he put No Job Too Small when he advertised. He said he didn't bother with advertising. One thing led to another, he said.

He was a nice enough fellow, the boyfriendo. Sweet pea with Jo. They seemed devoted. People were said to go for the same partner again and again and there was something about him that reminded Trevor of Jo's ex – a touch of the beseeching hound, though the breeds were different. He'd met the ex once or twice when he'd come to pick up the kids from the shop.
She
seemed to think she had branched out a bit and that was what mattered. Amazing that bed had been. He'd regretted accepting it from the widowed headmaster, but the first day he got it in the shop everyone wanted it – he could have sold it several times over. There was no point in asking why. If there was a craze in Kent for playing doctors and patients he didn't want to know about it. Lois had had a bit of an eye for that sort of thing. She read the posh magazines when she got a chance, knew whether chinoiserie or brass was making a comeback. His point was that it was all a mystery – what people wanted.

He skulked in the kitchen until the couple had got out of the wardrobe and left the premises. Then he felt free to come out of hiding. Only a few customers were left now: a woman leafing through old comics, another holding a satin lampshade up to the light as if it were a piece of fine china while her child drummed out a tune on a typewriter. He picked up a shiny teacup and examined the rivets that kept the handle on. Ugly, like metal fillings in teeth. He used to have a chap who could do little jobs like that but his hands got too shaky to carry on working. A lot of the junk had to do with tea and old-fashioned ways of drinking it that had passed away with the original owners. Slop basins, sugar tongs, tea strainers. They weren't fast-moving lines, unless some new illegal use could be found for them. They had that look about them which suggested medicine and decadence. Caught in the street with sugar tongs in your pocket: instant arrest on suspicion.

Eventually the shop emptied. The woman hadn't bought the lampshade but her boy had nicked a peacock feather. He waved it as he went out. Trevor took a couple of notes out of the tin box and locked it again without counting the money. He knew more or less what was there. A sheaf of tenners and fivers. Some loose change. A thirty-quid cheque for the lopsided airing rack. He had Francesca, the new care worker at Borrowdale, to ponder on. She was pretty enough, very pretty, in fact, in an East European sort of way. Different from the usual run. Though there was generally one presentable one per retirement home – usually a temp – who hadn't developed the optimistic facial expressions, or the hands atrophied by germicidal soap and hot water. Francesca had seemed encouragingly depressed by the ambience of Borrowdale, managing to smile at him in a different way from the sombre smile she gave the elderly. Her face was otherwise inexpressive and that, together with the nice bloom to her skin, made him think of an egg in a grey egg box. She had eyebrows that rose and fell like the eyebrows of a sad heroine in a silent film. Past thirty, a moderate showing of low spirits was a good sign, he always thought, promising worldliness and some experience with men. Scope for cheering up in the old style.

They'd had a nice chat over coffee and biscuits in the day lounge with the retired ones splayed out on the sofas. He'd found her voice restful. The way she said Borrowdale, with the accented first syllable and the rr like a cat purring – he kept hoping she'd repeat it. She was homesick, she said. He'd sympathised with that, having never left home himself for longer than a fortnight. When he had asked her what she was doing on Saturday evening she'd told him she was on duty, but that hadn't seemed to worry her and certainly hadn't worried him. They hadn't exactly made a date – but neither had she been actively discouraging. He had written her name in his diary.

He went upstairs to shave and put a comb through his hair, maybe change his shirt. He felt slightly disconnected, almost reflective. It must be the heat, he thought. He opened his bedroom door and surveyed his upstairs arrangements. No one could call them domestic. Even qualified by chaotic or squalid the word had a solidity and cleanliness which shone through. The true junk ended up here, among his socks and wet towels and the Indian take-away packaging with slicks of sauce still clinging to the inside. These were the things that even he knew could never be sold and that would have turned to mush if he had left them in the yard at the back. The stained tea cosies and odd elastic stockings, the cushion covers and net curtains. He never knew whether they were included in the boxes because the clients thought someone would make use of them, or to pad out the breakables. The truss can't have been for that; it was a liability among the sherry glasses. They were on their way to the dump, he said, when Jo asked him what he planned to do with them. She had asked him where it was, the dump – only out of interest, she hadn't been offering to go – and he said he didn't have any idea, he would know it when he got there. She'd said he made it sound like heaven.

His love life was conducted off the premises. A week after his mother died, while the place was still orderly, he'd brought a woman back, but so soon after the cremation, the mood had left him. He'd tried once more a few days later with the same woman, and then with a different one a month or so after that. Nothing doing. He had given up on girlfriends for a while. Then he had met Buffie who was living on a permanent site behind the White Cliffs Country Trail. She hadn't wanted to leave the caravan empty at night. Squatters kept a look-out for empty property, she said. It had been a relief to him that his old form came back. Buffie had sugared off to the Isle of Wight to give seaweed treatments at a beauty salon her friend had opened. But then there had been others. There were always spare women at the seaside. Of course, it wasn't an ideal situation. He found it inconvenient not to wake up at his own place, especially in the winter when he had to turn out in the cold.

Beyond the foreground debris he could see the bed, a collapsed heap of sheeting and discoloured ribbon-edged blankets, which, because not tucked in, revealed the mattress with its ticking cover and felted buttons. It looked pretty rancid. He sniffed, in case it also ponged, and then shook his head at his own disquiet, as over a good pair of shoes that had developed a silly squeak. He focused on his essentials, plainly visible in the conventional place on top of the dressing table: brush, comb, nail scissors, electric shaver. This was the only square foot that was uncorrupted. He went across to pick up the shaver and the comb and left the room. There wasn't much else to the building. A few uneven steps led down to the landing and up again to the low cupboard in the roof space and the bathroom that smelled of river mud when the window was shut. He went up the steps, tripping over the top one in the darkness. The bathroom was rank – the fittings scabbed over with green-streaked lime scale. Jo never went there, he noticed. If she needed a wee, she waited until she got back home. She had a fastidious streak. From time to time he felt her disapproval. No Jo this morning. Something must have cropped up. No Ella either. It hadn't mattered. He had woken at twelve and opened up the shop himself.

He leant backwards, hollowing his lumbar, in order to look in the bathroom glass. He saw himself – not from the inside looking down, the landscape which began with glimpses of alternate sides of his nose and went all the way down to his feet and somehow translated itself into the fellow in the mirror – but as someone quite separate. He had the sun tan from the neck up and on the lower arms from lounging outside the shop – and Lois's good head of hair. He paid attention to his clothes, choosing what he hoped was a raffish style and incorporating this and that from the house clearance to keep the cost down. But it had to be faced that his body had lost its bowling-green flatness. He had had the best part of a week to whittle away the gentle curve to his belly before he met Francesca again but he had done nothing – unless he counted his walk with Ella on Thursday evening. He had nearly forgotten that. He had gone to The Dog and was sitting in his usual spot by the corner window. She had passed by looking a bit forlorn. He had bobbed up and hailed her. She'd glared until she realised it was him. She had a sort of force field of touch-me-not and touch-paper about her which was attractive if you didn't mind risking having your head bitten off. She'd said hullo through the open window and asked him if he had a spare cigarette. He'd offered her a drink but she had said she was going for a walk. He had asked if he could accompany her. He'd said they would have to stick to the level; he couldn't manage an ascent after work. They'd both had a cigarette and set off. She'd been good company. He couldn't remember what they'd talked about. But the flavour of it he retained – cheerful and friendly, mildly flirtatious. Remembering the taste of the butterscotch but forgetting it was called Something and Something – that's how it was when your memory was going. Who gave a toss about Something and Something? They'd covered about three miles over the dunes footpaths. When he stopped for a breather she'd said they could turn back if he liked, and that made him feel like great grandad. It was the first long walk he'd had in years. Callard & Bowser. That was it. What crap he remembered.

‘
I'M NOT GOING
to The Dog,' Ella said.

‘Suit yourself. Where do you want to go?' Vince said.

‘Round here. Not back my way,' Ella said.

‘That should be interesting.' He stopped.

They had been walking slowly through the recreation ground and had reached the main road. The temperature had hardly dropped, though the sun had gone from the sky.

‘Well, there's The World's Your Oyster. That's where Dad goes. Have you been there?' he said.

‘No.'

‘I thought not. You'd have to be seriously into sociology. Then there's The Duke of Edinburgh. Plate glass and swimming in bleach. I've never seen anyone in there, ever. In fact, it could be the mortuary. And the Sandrock Hotel. That's it.'

‘Do they check up on how old you are?'

‘Which one?'

‘The last one. The sand something.'

‘No, not as far as I know. I've never had any trouble.'

‘Let's go there.'

‘Don't say I didn't warn you,' Vince said.

The sole advantage of the Sandrock Hotel, and one that didn't matter to Ella and Vince, was the car park. It was the size of a small airfield. A concrete expanse without marked spaces. You could park in its furthest corners and be sure of privacy. You could park in the middle to the same effect, but the clients felt more comfortable tucked round the edges. Theft, vandalism and illicit dealing were a problem, but the landlady had a way of evading the crime prevention officer, who came round, at least once a month, with brochures full of pictures of exterior lighting. She knew what she was doing. Everyone was marooned on a separate Windsor chair, with low tables at knee level. (Ring marks etched into the dark veneer.) It was impossible, therefore, to lean on or across the table, make covert approaches under the table or cuddle up next to someone. The moment of needing to go to the car park was delayed by several hours and she sold a lot of drink.

It was funny in a cheerless way, but not that funny.

‘So, what happened yesterday after you left?' asked Vince, shifting around to find the least tortured position in relation to his pint.

‘Nothing. I walked along the beach. Then I went to Lois Lucas's,' said Ella. ‘It wasn't eventful. Just a night.'

‘Are they usually?'

‘What?'

‘Eventful.'

‘No. Should they be?'

Vince shook his head.

‘Just seemed to me you probably went out a lot,' he said.

‘Not particularly,' she said.

The conversation at the next table encroached.

‘I looked at my hand and it was all red and puffy with this thing on. My sister said it was a ganglion. It's disgusting isn't it? She said I should go to the doctor.'

‘What did he say?'

‘The receptionist thingy woman asked me to be there for eight. I couldn't believe it. Fucking liberty. You know me. I'm not a morning person, never have been.'

‘Weird, the way people say that,' Ella said.

‘Say what?' Vince said.

‘Never have been,' she said. ‘As if it wasn't enough just to be.'

‘What are you on about?'

‘You know. I am this consistent person. Cut me wherever you like and I'll still say Folkestone Rock.'

‘Or Frying Tonight,' Vince said.

‘It wouldn't say that.'

‘No, I suppose not. It was the smell made me think of it. But you're like that.'

‘What?'

‘The same, through and through,' Vince said.

‘No I'm not,' Ella said.

The Sandrock Hotel was filling up. The atmosphere had turned to smoke. There was no air conditioning, just a small electric fan that pointed towards the bar staff. It was standing on-a beer towel to stop it walking off the edge of the counter top. People who hadn't had a cigarette for years went to the vending machine and bought a packet and were grateful. They weren't regulars, or, at least, not regulars from nearby. Couples came here from towns along the coast, confident they wouldn't meet anyone they knew. A man standing behind Vince had struck unlucky and was laughing too loudly and failing to introduce his woman. Ella seemed transfixed by them. Vince, hearing the laugh, looked over his shoulder to see what she was looking at. When he turned back she was gone.