“The woman was brusque. I felt I wanted to make an explanation, but my head was thick with fatigue. At least Cathy was out of my hands. I fell asleep on the couch in the living room.

  “The social worker was at the door by eleven o’clock that morning, a dark-haired girl in a black jersey and skirt, with a worn haversack over her shoulder and white trainers on her feet. ‘Jacky’ as she introduced herself, came in looking alertly about the hall and sitting room, perhaps trying to assess the kind of people she was dealing with. Mildred brought her a cup of tea. Mildred’s shift had expired, but she had stayed on for the meeting.

  “Jacky pulled a thick notebook and a ballpoint pen out of her bag, crossed her legs, and made herself comfortable, with the notebook on her knee.

  ‘Now then,’ she said with a formal smile, ‘We are thinking that Mrs Marsden should go by ambulance from the day centre today, without returning here. If Mildred could pack her bag. Denby Hall is where Mrs Marsden has been on respite care twice, and we think that is the right place. Our finance department will be in touch with you about costs later.’

  “The suddenness of it was both a shock, and a release. The words ‘without returning here’ were actually a blessed relief. They echoed in my head.

  ‘The doctor has seen Mrs Marsden, and she has … had a bad time,’ Jacky said.

  ‘So have I,’ I said.

  ‘Quite so. At this point, violence from both parties is perfectly understandable, Mr Marsden. I’m not being critical, believe me.’

  ‘But you are. I haven’t been violent.’

  Jacky nodded seriously. ‘I understand what you say. You see it one way. Mrs Marsden would see it another way. That’s natural.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, I haven’t touched my wife!’

  ‘She is marked, Mr Marsden.’

  ‘I didn’t put the fucking marks on her!’

  ‘Well, let’s not argue about that, at this point. I’m not here to accuse you. I’m only here to inform you of our decision that Cathy Marsden is at risk, and to make the necessary arrangements. That decision is also based on our observations over the last six or so months.’

  “It was true that there had been some physical violence between Cathy and me in recent times, but only those occasions that were so lunatic, that if I hadn’t restrained her, worse would have happened. I understood that the local authority must have been monitoring her condition at the day centre. But I wasn’t going to take the rap for last night. I turned to Mildred who was sitting straight-backed, as though the chair was alien to her.

  ‘Ask Mildred,’ I insisted.

  ‘Mildred’s explanation on the nightline was recorded.’

  ‘Good. Surely she didn’t suggest…’

  ‘Oh, no. She’s very loyal.’

  ‘That’s honesty, not loyalty!’

  ‘Calm down, Mr Marsden,’ Jacky said, putting aside her notebook and pencil, uncrossing her legs, and leaning forward, to hold me squarely with her eyes.

  ‘Are you going to tell me frankly, Mr Marsden, that in all this suffering, you’ve never laid a finger on your wife?’

  ‘No, yes, I mean…’

  Jacky gave a little dimpled simper, and resumed her pose, notebook and pencil poised.

  “David, no appeal from her judgment was possible. On top of this hell, I was a wife-beater as well!”

  25

  David retreated from Eccleston Street without much concern about Anita’s abuse. He thought that she was a deeply frustrated person, and he could see himself as the immediate cause of some of her annoyance. At the same time, he had no doubts about the merit of what he was trying to do for Cathy. A bruise on his arm, a few pains in his legs, and a conflict which unfortunately upset Anita, was a negligible price to pay.

  He was, however, extremely worried about his part in hurting Mr Temple. He had assumed that Mr Temple knew about the Desmond-Anita couple, just as Cathy did, and almost always had. After all, it was a friendship of many years. He lay on the bed in his room, and tried to work out what effect the knowledge of the existence of the Desmond-Anita couple would have on Mr Temple. Would he kick his wife out of the house? Murder Desmond? Commit suicide? David’s picture of the Anita-Graham couple, in Cathy’s terms, was that it was always a feeble and disorientated creature, and now had inside it a cancer that could be fatal. And he, David Thurgood, had unintentionally implanted that cancer, which would spread with fearful malignance.

  Save that he would tell nobody in the meantime, he could not decide how to deal with his responsibility towards Mr Temple. It was a nagging worry. And he remained as determined as ever to find some way to enable Cathy to see Poppy regularly. His scheme of basing this on a solemn promise by Helmut had never yet been put, and he did not intend to abandon it. He still believed that, in the end, Anita would be gracious enough to agree.

  Cathy had had her assessment which, as usual, took place in her absence. David wanted to know the result. He found Keith poring over books in one of the empty meeting rooms. When he butted in, Keith pushed his glasses up to rest on his hair, glad to be interrupted. It was unusual to see Keith sitting down.

  “What are you doing?” David asked.

  “Reading. Management and stuff.”

  “But you’re already the manager.”

  “Yes, but I’d like the title, the money that goes with it, and not to have to do night shifts.”

  “Where does this new manager fit in?”

  “Helmut’s new regime. A full-time manager, as well as the two shift managers.”

  “Will you get it?”

  “I’ve got hopes, David. I want to marry my girlfriend, and settle down.”

  “How was Cathy’s assessment?”

  “Not so good for us.”

  “You mean, Cathy’s going to move?”

  “I’d bet on it, but the Funders never let on. Maybe they have a view, but it has to be ticked off by a dozen big bosses up the admin pyramid first. Helmut’ll probably get a call eventually, and then there will be contract negotiations…”

  “What’s that?”

  “The Funders trying to wriggle out of their contract with us.”

  This didn’t mean much to David, so he tried a different angle. “Why would Cathy be going?”

  “Too expensive here.”

  David knew that Cathy required a lot of extra services. “But I thought it was about her needs.”

  “It is, and it isn’t,” Keith said, in the light way that he had of underlining what was meaningless, or paradoxical.

  David thought that Cathy’s needs were overwhelming, far greater than most, but not all other residents. She was really a patient rather than a resident.

  Cathy moved a lot, but was immobile in any rational sense. She needed a bed that could be raised and lowered, to enable staff to access her. It also had to have soft sides to stop her bruising herself in the night, or falling out. She couldn’t use a shower trolley like most disabled people, where a patient sits on a plastic seat, and is wheeled under the faucet. This would be dangerous, as Cathy, whose movements were often involuntary, might fall off the seat. Instead, she had to have a shower-tray, a padded table, with slightly raised edges upon which she could lie, while an attendant bent over her with a hose. The space required for a shower tray meant that the small ensuite shower-room in her bedroom was useless. A special tiled and drained cubicle, the size of a small bedroom, was necessary for Cathy’s shower. Cathy was also doubly incontinent, and it took two, or even three people, to toilet her every few hours.

  So many people were necessary for Cathy’s safety. And the safety of the carers was also an issue. Cathy could not assist the movement process, and very frequently struggled against it, putting a variety of sudden and unexpected stresses and strains on her helpers. Once awake, Cathy had to be moved to meet the needs of daily living. Her ‘transfers’, as they were called, were accomplished by an electric hoist, manned by three people, the operator and a helper on each side of Cathy – bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to toilet, toilet to wheelchair, wheelchair to shower, shower to wheelchair, wheelchair to bed. Cathy was lifted up in a sling, like cargo being swung ashore to the wharf, from the deck of an ocean freighter. In addition, Cathy needed skilled hand-feeding, and dietetic supervision, because she was in danger of choking at any time. She had to have constant physiotherapy to keep her muscles in use, as a result of her bed and chair existence. She needed psychiatric observation to determine the appropriate treatment for her subterranean rages, psychotherapeutic help, and twenty-four hour availability of qualified nurses and doctors, in case she harmed herself in a screaming fit. Even occupational therapy was given by a serious young man, who also attended to David. He spent a lot of time trying to get Cathy to use her hands for a meaningful action, to no avail.

  David thought of a whole nation, where the flame of life was held sacred, where the elderly and the sick, like Cathy, could only be kept alive by legions of health care professionals, equipped with complicated machinery. So many healthy people could become engrossed in keeping the unhealthy ones alive. The endeavour seemed to tip over into futility, as more and more people became old or sick, and required more and more helpers, to operate ever-developing and more complicated machinery.

  And yet, wasn’t the spark of life infinitely precious? His own life, a bit bent and broken, was a good life. Cathy’s small light was precious. Just that morning, he had found a spider on his towel, in his bedroom. He had taken the towel down two flights of stairs, and outside, to let the spider escape in the bushes. He couldn’t kill a spider. It seemed that the spider’s life was valuable too. It was in relation to these confusing thoughts, that David considered Cathy’s enormous needs.

  “It is, and it isn’t about her needs, David. At the Hall, we don’t specialise in cases like Cathy. We can handle her, but we’ve had to take on extra staff, get more help from specialists, and buy a whole lot of new equipment. There are other places that can do Cathy more cheaply.”

  “But she still needs things like the hoist and that, wherever she goes.”

  “Yeah. The place I think she’s going, they kinda operate in a different way. They’re specialised. Really ga-ga cases. They get them up in a wheelchair in the morning, sedate them, and stick them in front of the television. They let them mess at their own pleasure, and clean them up once a day, in the shower, unless they’ve got bed sores.”

  “Is that all they do?”

  “Pretty well. No rides in the grounds, because there aren’t any grounds. No rides in the park, because there’s no minibus for these patients. No music evenings. No wheelchair dancing. No calming room. No aromatherapy. No society. No trimmings. Probably on the sixth floor. Low maintenance. And relatively el cheapo.”

  David could see Cathy lying in a chair, with her head back, in a kind of broken-necked posture, her mouth open, staring at the ceiling of a solitary sixth floor room, a prison cell that was many times more chilling than her own personal prison cell inside her head.

  “It’s not that bad,” Keith said, seeing David’s repulsion. “High calorie pulp feeding, plenty of protective pills. These patients don’t get ailments like people in the street you know, influenza, chills, coughs, lung infections. They could live to be a hundred, although their brains have turned to custard years before.”

  David remembered Cathy telling him about the sea cucumbers, living alimentary canals.

  “Didn’t Desmond try to keep her here?”

  “No way. He’s a hundred per cent in favour of the London home. He was very clear about that.”

  “But you told me his views wouldn’t count that much.”

  “Ah, they do if they’re the cheapest. That’s when you hear officials beating the tub about being inclusive, and consulting the family.”

  “So it’s all about money.”

  “David, you’re so delightfully naïve. Of course it is!”

  “But you told me it was also about Cathy’s needs.”

  “I said, it is and it isn’t. Don’t you get it? The amazing coincidence between the two, cost and needs?”

  “But there isn’t a coincidence.”

  “Oh, yes there is. That’s what the assessors, the panels, the husbands like Desmond, work on, making Cathy’s needs fit the budget, refining them down to a beautiful ‘coincidence’.”

  David decided to say nothing to Cathy about his conversation with Keith. Events were taking their expected course, and Cathy would realise that, while at the same time hoping it might not be so. He had thought of reminding Desmond that Cathy did not want to move, and even asking him why, if it wasn’t about money, he had pressed for the move. Cathy wasn’t short of money; enough, he guessed, to see her through. But there was a certitude in all of Desmond’s positions. He had clear reasons for what he did. Desmond would shelter behind the mantra of Cathy’s ‘best interests’ as everyone did ‘out there’ – always claiming to be an arbiter of what her best interests were. Just as the doctors and nurses, and welfare officers, and therapists, said that they were trained to know what was best, Desmond would say that, as a husband who had lived with this case for many years, he knew what was best. David knew he could never win the ‘best interests’ argument with Desmond or anybody else. If he asked Desmond why what Cathy wanted could not be considered part of her best interests, he would only elicit an unpleasant, curling lip.

  Two days later, David was in the drive when Desmond pulled up in his car. David was enjoying the burst of colour from a row of freshly planted red geraniums. Desmond slammed to a halt in front of the porch. Poppy – of all animals – was in the back, jumping, and barking loudly. Desmond got out, and opened the door for Poppy, who leaped up at David.

  “Here’s the bloody dog, David! Look after it, while I see Helmut.”

  David was physically overwhelmed by Poppy, and by the oddity of Desmond himself bringing her to the Hall.

  Helmut had already seen Desmond, and came out on to the porch in a pool of sunlight.

  Desmond launched in before Helmut could speak.

  “I’m giving the dog to you, Helmut, and good riddance!”

  He spoke with irritable humour.

  “But Mrs Temple?”

  “I’ve taken it back from her. Given her a Labrador pup, instead.”

  “Ah, yes, but how much are you asking for Poppy?”

  “It’s a gift.”

  “This is very generous.”

  “It’s not. I’m glad to get rid of the beast.”

  “Cathy will be so pleased.”

  “I haven’t done it for Cathy. She’ll be out of here soon, and the dog can’t go with her. Not to London. She won’t miss it anyway.”

  “Still, she’ll be very happy at being able to see Poppy regularly … while she’s here,” Helmut said diplomatically, not wanting to open a disagreement with his benefactor.

  “I’ve done it because the dog’s a pain in the neck. It’s caused me no end of trouble. I’m sick of it. I thought I was doing the animal a favour in letting Mrs Temple have it. Since then it’s caused nothing but complaints and arguments. If it wants to live here, let it!”

  David could hardly grasp that his biggest problem could be solved so easily, and in a way that he would never have thought remotely possible. This solution was overshadowed by Cathy’s imminent departure – everybody seemed to take it for granted that she would be going – but at least there would be a short period when Cathy and Poppy could enjoy each other. And his mind raced beyond this point. There might well be ways, particularly when he had greater freedom, to get Poppy to London, to see Cathy.

  “Is Mrs Temple happy with … this?” David asked Desmond.

  “David, she suggested it. Not the new Labrador puppy. That was a separate present from me to her. She said she’d been overwrought about the dog, and a bit mean, and she asked me to give it to Denby Hall.”

  David wanted to know what made Anita change her mind, but it was such an intimate question that he could only put it if he and Desmond were alone.

  As Desmond handed Helmut an envelope containing Poppy’s papers, he said, “You’ll have noticed what a nauseatingly doggy bunch the English are, Helmut. We love the beasts. Beat your patients, by all means, but don’t try beating the dog! Ha, ha!”

  “I assure you, Poppy will be adored,” Helmut said gravely, not seeing anything funny.

  After lunch, David pushed Cathy along the cliff path with Poppy. The vast white sky seemed to touch the cliff edge. They were walking along the edge of the earth. The southerly wind, strong and warm, flattened the wild flowers in the tussock. David told Cathy she could see Poppy on most days, because Helmut had promised to bring Poppy with him, whenever he was working at Denby Hall.

  26

  Knowing that David now knew who Anita was, Desmond explained how he had met her. He seemed to realise that he had presented his ties to Cathy as though they were exclusive, and in doing so, had created a misleading picture.

  “It’s strange how friendships start, David. Friendships can lead us into chains, or into delights. I know you and Cathy were new kids, thrown together at Denby Hall. Your relationship is a happy accident.

  “With Cathy and me, it was me pursuing Cathy. I did a little work in an advice centre in Camden, for a charity, ‘sort out your life’ advice – if only I’d known how screwed up my own would become! Cathy was doing her community work. The tenants she worked with were my customers, when their affairs were in a sufficient tangle. I saw Cathy at work. I liked her style. She was intelligent, talented, gentle, refined and quite classy, even with her McFisheries jacket. I chased her. There wasn’t much of an element of chance in it. I made it happen.

  “Now, the start I had with Anita was quite different, and entirely a matter of chance. The thread of us getting to know each other was spun so thin it could have parted at any point in the first weeks, or months, or even the early years.

  “Anita and I were brought together twenty years ago, by a waitress in a railway cafeteria. I had been to visit a factory in Brighton, owned by a client. I had a few minutes before catching the train to return to London. It was about 4pm, and I walked into the cafeteria at the station to get a cup of tea. I was served reluctantly by the waitress who banged the cups and muttered about closing. I realised I had overlooked the ‘closed’ sign partially hidden at one side of the doorway. I apologised, and took my cup to one of the nearby tables.

 

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