Caring for cathy, p.15
Caring for Cathy, page 15
“A minute or so later, I looked up to see a blond woman a few years younger than me, about thirty, in a tan business suit, standing at the counter. Shapely. Smart. Stylish. Not one of the anorak brigade, like Cathy. A completely different sort of woman. She, too, had failed to see the sign. The waitress had now emerged from behind the counter and was sweeping the floor. I heard the waitress say to the blond woman, ‘You’re too late. We’re closed.’
‘Not in the middle of the afternoon, surely?’
‘We’ve been going since six this morning, and we have to clean up. We’re closed for an hour.’
‘I only want a cup of tea.’
“The blond woman was standing in front of an automatic dispenser.
‘Too bad,’ the waitress said, sweeping an ever increasing wave of litter, in a cloud of dust, towards the door.
‘I’m not asking you to do anything except take the money. I can work the vending machine.’
‘No. We’re closed.’
‘I’ll just put the money on the counter…’ the blond woman said, reaching for a cup and positioning it under the spigot.
‘Closed is closed,’ the waitress said, thrusting the pile of dust and biscuit wrappers threateningly.
“The blond woman rested her bag on the counter, her back to me. I heard the surprise announcement of the London train on the loudspeaker. It was actually an earlier train, which was late. I began to walk out of the cafeteria. As I passed the blond woman, I said, ‘Service isn’t a word in her vocabulary.’
“She turned to me, laughed, and we both walked toward the platform, commiserating on the well-known difficulties of buying a cup of tea, and a cake, on the railway. We both entered the same carriage, which was nearly empty, and it seemed quite natural to sit together.
‘Do you mind?’ I asked, and she could hardly say no, but I thought she was pleased.
“Our pleasantries could easily have ended when we boarded the train, or she or I could have shown the intention of taking a separate seat, but none of these things happened.
“I found out later that Anita had noticed me earlier with one of the city councillors, who happened to be on the board of my client company. He had given me a lift to the station in his car. This connection served as a reference for me. I wasn’t just any man Anita had met accidentally. I had connections with a respectable local politician.
“We were able to talk on the train as strangers sometimes do, rather distantly and objectively about our lives, laying out the big points. Anita told me she was married, and had her own business as an optician. She served on a trade association for opticians, hence her visit to London. Her husband was a history teacher, who was absorbed in collecting antiques and paintings. I explained that I was a design engineer, married for the second time with a wife in poor health, and two children from a previous marriage.
“What emerged from our mutual confidences, was the flavour that we each had marriages that were less than satisfactory. A commonplace situation, David. Perhaps even a stereotype. We were still talking as the train drew into Victoria, and it didn’t seem impertinent to suggest that we might meet at some time for lunch. I suppose my precise motive was to take this woman to bed. I didn’t think I was a womaniser, but I was sexually frustrated. Cathy’s sexual relationship with me had long since dwindled away. And I was disappointed in the way my marriage was working in lots of small, inexpressible ways. I didn’t understand what was happening. It might have been my fault. At that point, the really serious problems with Cathy were far in the distance. But that’s how my affair with Anita began; trivially. And it was I think for both of us at that time, merely an attraction between two slightly discontented people, which would flare, and fade, in weeks or months.
“But this feeble thread survived. Indeed, it has thickened over the years to become a veritable steel cable.”
27
When the expectation became an official reality, and it was confirmed to Cathy that she was going to another home, instead of the expected tantrum, she took the news quietly. The understanding might have seeped into her consciousness over a few days.
Cathy had a visit by two strange nurses from the new home, a man and a woman, to assess transport problems. Keith said ‘they stood over her as though they were measuring her for a coffin.’ Rose made encouraging remarks to Cathy about how ‘lovely’ the new home would be. Helmut told Cathy that he wanted her to stay, but there was nothing he could do. When Keith asked Cathy if she understood she was going, she simply nodded, and gave a quiet groan.
Cathy’s manner, and even her appearance, changed in this period. She became withdrawn and stony. Even the prospect of playing the Freddie Mercury disc received no visible acknowledgment. She held on to Poppy more tightly when David was wheeling her in the grounds. He noticed that her neck had shrunk, and become veiny. The skin on her face was grey and drawn, emphasizing the squareness of her forehead, and the hollows in her cheeks. Her clouded eyes were yellow.
The doctor, nurses, and care staff, were very pleased with Cathy’s lack of reaction, but David thought that she looked shocked, so shocked that she couldn’t give a sign.
Keith made an announcement about Cathy’s departure, in the dining room, when all the residents were seated before lunch. He stood on a chair, and hushed everybody.
“I’m sorry to tell you, Cathy’s going to be moved to another home in the next couple of weeks. We’re all going to miss her, and we’re going to send her off after a big party.”
The residents were delighted at the prospect of a party, and there were genuine murmurs of regret from the less introverted. Cathy’s dignity had earned her respect, despite her inability to communicate, and there were still a few residents who remembered the time when she could talk, sing, and play the piano, and who held one-sided conversations with her, filling in her answers themselves.
The residents began to work in the art class on the preparation of personal cards, and one huge best wishes card, eighteen inches high, which everybody would sign, or make their mark on. The selection of presents for Cathy began. These would be small, soft toys from the personal collections of the residents; sweets and chocolate (although Cathy could not eat them); scarves and small broaches, badges, and strings of beads. A special menu was to be prepared in the kitchen by Sally, and a cake with icing, and four candles to show the years Cathy had been at the Hall (it was nearly four). A whole programme of songs, speeches, and personal items began to be rehearsed. John Murdoch and Marlene, one of the care assistants, were coordinating all the efforts, and rehearsing the participants.
David expected to play the piano for a sing-song, but other than making a personal goodbye card, he avoided the enthusiastic preparations. He was cast into gloom by the prospect of Cathy’s departure, although he concealed his feeling from her. He promised Cathy that he would get leave from Denby Hall, and bring Poppy to London to see her, as soon as he could.
When Desmond was recounting to David his life with Anita, he was rueful, not in the sense that he regretted the relationship, but as a man who now had a wide overview of it, and could see its inevitable failings, and what it might have been.
“Several years ago, Anita and I thought we should establish our own home. Somewhere we could be, other than hotels, seaside cottages, and on trips abroad. We were like gypsies, always on the move, always in strange beds in unknown places. Anita is a homely woman, and her head was full of plans, colours, and furnishing materials for our nest. She had a dream of cooking exquisite meals, which we would have tête à tête. We’d be cabinned up together in warmth and security. We might invite the odd friend, to whom we felt we could disclose our relationship, but that part of the dream was more hazy.
“We chose Horsham because it was conveniently between London and Brighton, and equally accessible to us both. We arranged to spend a weekend there, looking for a house or apartment to buy. We had booked the Charters Hotel which wasn’t cheap, a supposedly comfortable, and quiet lodging, according to a tourist office brochure. As soon as I saw it, my spirits sank. It was on a backstreet, but a very busy one, thundering with traffic noise. The front of the building was almost unrecognisable from the elegant Victorian structure in the brochure. On a closer look, it was the same building, obscured by a clutter of signs and notices, and covered with a heavy pall of dust.
“Anita and I, arriving from different towns, met in the car-park, and I could see that she was glancing about, having doubts too. We checked in together. Perhaps the interior would be better. We had travelled so much together, that we had an automatic check-list of the items which can go wrong and make a stay miserable. Like being next to the machine room, or being kept awake by the airconditioning fans.
“We found that our room was on the rear ground floor, looking out on to the garbage bins. The room was dark and deep, and had a brass, four-poster bed. The rudimentary bathroom hadn’t seen redecoration in perhaps fifty years. A new, plastic shower cabinet stood in a corner, like a telephone kiosk. The bedroom was filled with large pieces of unmatched Victorian furniture, a frowning mahogany wardrobe, a walnut dresser and a sprawling dressing table. Framed prints of faded girls in floral dresses were on the walls. The four poster bed had a pink and white floral cover, with piles of matching cushions. The floor had two different carpets with busy, unmatched designs. It was all pretentious, woefully shabby, and a disappointing backdrop for a weekend which might redefine our lives.
“Anita looked at me, and without speaking, we were communicating a reluctant agreement that the room was awful, and we never would have chosen it, had we known, but it would have to do. The effort of changing the room, which might lead to something worse, or finding another hotel, wasn’t worth it. We didn’t want our important mission sidetracked.
“Anita is the organiser, the maker of lists, and the keeper of schedules of activity. I willingly fit in. We decided to have another fifteen minutes in bed, and then go out for afternoon tea, or a beer, and finally to business, a tour of the estate agents’ offices.
“After we left the hotel, we found our way along several blocks to the town centre. I saw nothing attractive in our short walk. A core of buildings went back a hundred years, the church, civic buildings and banks. The rest was shops, offices and department stores. The place was jaded, and sent no signals announcing itself as ‘our’ town.
“We went into a pub, and set up a couple of lagers by the fireplace. The pub smelled of dogs, but the beer was good. We had been talking a lot with our eyes, and were both left rather flat. In half an hour, we were outside again, moving between the windows of estate agents’ shops. Sometimes we went in to enquire about properties displayed in the windows. I was more reticent than Anita. She questioned those agents we talked to, closely. But eventually we accepted that there wasn’t a house that we want to look at more closely.
“We changed our tack, and walked around the perimeter of the town by the river, or was it a canal? One or two new blocks of apartments had been built here, and there was a large complex under construction. We wandered though a show-apartment, and studied the blocks from outside.
‘One of the third floor apartments might be OK,’ Anita said.
“I agreed. OK. Merely OK.
“We wanted to set up our own little cabin, and OK wasn’t good enough. Anita felt the same. She didn’t have to say it. We trudged on, trying to find a good position. We talked of views, of light, of storage space, of service charges, parking facilities. We found nothing interesting. The highest accolade was ‘OK’ and that wasn’t high enough.
“Anita had been really excited when we set out from the hotel, the prospect of buying our own home, and ending this succession of foreign beds. And she had so many ideas for furnishing. She said her thoughts had been keeping her awake at night, and when she wanted to escape the cares of the day, she concentrated on the pleasure of creating our own space. Anita said that Eccleston Street, elegant as it was, wasn’t her home; it was her husband’s home, full of his antiques and paintings, positioned just as he wished.
“Our search that day was a cold, and tiring experience. The chill seemed to come up through the pavement. We decided to have dinner and talk it over. We canvassed the main streets, but found only fast food shops. The only restaurant we could find with tablecloths was closed. We settled for the Slug and Lettuce, a pub that promised a food menu, and chose soup of the day, and lamb chops, as the least repulsive items.
‘Have we made a mistake in coming here?’ Anita asked.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I think we have.’
‘But it’s not only this place, Desmond, horrible as it is, it’s …any place.’
‘I didn’t think about it very clearly,’ I said, but the insight Anita had, was floating at the back of my mind too. ‘We’re not going to be able to see each other any more than we do now, even with an apartment or house here’
‘Or somewhere else,’ Anita added.
“In all our discussions, David, the importance of this obvious point hadn’t come through, or had we pushed it aside, not wanted to recognise it? We’d both been yearning to make an imagined future into the present. We hadn’t thought how valuable the real present was, limited as it was. Horsham’s inhospitability had cleared our minds. Now, both of us were moving against anything that abridged the kind of present we shared.
‘It’s true,’ Anita said. ‘We meet on every opportunity we have already, and now I think of it, I don’t want to limit our weekends in France, and our walks in the Dales, in favour of sitting in front of the television in a miserable little town somewhere…however snug our bolt hole.’
“Anita had injected, rather late in the day, the sharp dose of practicality we needed. The planner in her was overruling the homemaker. We both escaped our other lives as often as possible. But we did what we saw as our duties. We were both duty-ridden. As the years had passed, it was less and less thinkable that we could cut and run together. The cords which bound us to our spouses, had tightened rather than slackened. Up to the time Cathy went into Denby Hall, her need for my attention increased enormously. I couldn’t devote less time to her. And how could Anita, by absenting herself from home more often, threaten her own carefully constructed small town reputation, and the placid and protected world of her husband? For her, the task of changing, or demolishing her marriage relationship became all the more awesome with every year. In any responsible sense, we were locked into a kind of quadrangle. Time together was a scarce commodity, and one that could not be enlarged.
“We finished the evening at the Slug and Lettuce with a second bottle of watery Cotes du Rhone. I felt a numb resignation as we walked back to the dingy hotel room, and the four poster bed.”
28
Cathy’s going-away party was held on Monday, at lunchtime. Lunch was the main meal of the day. The tables in the dining room were rearranged to make a u-shape, with a seat of honour for Cathy in the centre. They were set with coloured cloths, table napkins and a paper hat for every place. Streamers and paper lanterns were hung across the room. On one side, a table was piled with brightly wrapped presents from the staff and residents, and the giant best wishes card, made by two of the residents and signed by everybody. The old piano had been pushed in from the sitting room, and stood against the wall.
The lunch started with a toast in rasberry juice by Helmut, made in an atmosphere of suppressed excitement.
“Cathy, I vant to say, on behalf of staff and residents, that we are sorry you are leaving. We know that you will be well looked after in your new home, and we wish you every happiness there. You have been with us more than three years, and we have come to know and love you. To Cathy!”
Helmut raised his glass high, and those who could stand, sprang to their feet. “To Cathy!”
Cathy sat imperiously in her privileged seat, while one of the carers gave her sips of juice from her non-spill mug.
John Murdoch remained on his feet when the others sat.
“I want to add a few words to those of our esteemed managing director,” he said, pulling a sheaf of notes from his waistcoat pocket, and squinting at them. “Cathy, we know that the bosses have ordained that you must go, against your will, to a place that must, by definition, be inferior to the perfection of this establishment…”
Ian, the duty shift manager stood up clapping, “Thank you, John, thank you. Speeches and personal items will come later. Cook’s ready to serve.”
Amid a small spray of clapping, Ian put his hand on John’s shoulder, and pressed him gently back into his chair. Helmut left the room with a wave of his hand, as the volume of the babble began to rise.
“Come on, everybody,” Rose shouted, putting on a paper hat.
The residents put on their paper hats. Carrot soup was served, followed by roast chicken with roast potatoes, pumpkin, cabbage and thick gravy. The food was consumed with noisy gusto. The last course was jelly and ice-cream. Cathy’s pureed version of each course was spooned into her mouth by Rose, who never usually did such tasks. Sally the cook, and a helper, carried in two huge rainbow sponges with vanilla icing, and one had four candles. There were loud cheers, while Rose neatly performed the trick of asking Cathy to blow out the candles, and then blew them out herself. Cream sponge was a special treat, and there were only a few crumbs left when it had been shared out.
While the staff discreetly cleared the tables, Ian took the floor to hand over the goodbye card, and preside over the unwrapping of the presents, one by one, with announcements of the names of the donors, usually to much whistling and hooting. Cathy appeared to watch, as a pile of soft toys, costume jewellery, and toiletries grew on the table in front of her.
