The Carer Read online

  So, one of her patients had expressed his gratitude. So what? Maybe the old chap had no family and Mandy was his only friend in the world. Maybe he had a family but he’d been forgotten and neglected, surplus to requirements, like so many old folk.

  No danger of that with Dad.

  Phoebe

  Phoebe was feeling guilty about her father. In the past year or so she’d only invited him over a couple of times. He didn’t live far away – an hour and a half – and it wouldn’t be too strenuous for him. After all, he and Mandy were always off on jaunts . . . retail parks, hedgehog sanctuaries. He’d even enjoyed visiting her mysterious flat in Droitwich. A fun day out, he’d said.

  There was no question of him staying the night. He was beyond hotels by now, and she couldn’t put him up at her place. It would just be a quick trip: lunch at the Myrtle Hotel, maybe a potter around its garden.

  In fact Phoebe was sitting in the garden now, having a glass of wine with Monica and her husband, Buffy. Apparently he’d been left the hotel in someone’s will – not a relative, just a friend. She would tell Robert this; surely it would allay his suspicions about Mandy. People were left things in wills, even large things like hotels and flats, when they had been good to the person in question. No doubt Mandy deserved her stroke of luck. She was good – kind and caring. Of course it was a paid job, looking after old people, but she went way beyond the bounds of duty.

  Phoebe still considered her a godsend. She liked her more than Robert did at this point. Maybe it was a gender thing. Mandy was so clumpy and sexless, so lacking in charm. She had no idea how to flirt with a chap, the way she spoke her mind, the way she sat there with her stout legs planted apart, those tartan tights and luminous trainers. The way she stuffed herself with Battenburg cake and called their father ‘Pops’. And she’d alienated Robert with her political views. It hadn’t been a good start, that suggestion about his wife’s job.

  It was a balmy day in June. The flowerbeds looked as regimented as a municipal park’s. Recently Buffy had run a residential course called Horticulture for Beginners and had got the guests to weed and re-plant his entire garden. He was a cunning sod. On his Basic Car Maintenance course he’d got them to repair his ancient Renault, and his Software for Starters guests had built him an entire website. And they paid him for the privilege.

  They were talking about the proposed supermarket and its threat to their local shops. Buffy had once been an actor and had played a fishmonger in an episode of Bergerac.

  ‘Had to sell John Nettles a pound of sprats,’ he said. ‘A pivotal moment in the plot, because I let drop the name of the murderer. I can still gut a mackerel like a professional.’

  ‘Who were you married to at the time?’ asked Monica.

  He thought for a moment. ‘Oh, I was vaguely with Lorna.’

  ‘Vaguely with Lorna?’ She glared at him. ‘Didn’t you have a child with her? Wasn’t she that one?’

  ‘I didn’t know that then. We split up, you see, and she never told me she was pregnant.’

  Phoebe liked Buffy. He was a big, bearded, amiable chap with a penchant for fancy waistcoats, a thespian through and through and now a gregarious hotelier. But his complicated past was a source of torment to Monica, wife number whatever. Phoebe had never quite worked it out. It was like the family tree at the beginning of War and Peace, which she couldn’t be bothered to understand before she gave up on the book entirely.

  ‘Wasn’t she the one with the newts?’ asked Monica.

  ‘She was, bless her.’

  He told Phoebe the story. Lorna lived near a wood that was going to be destroyed by a new bypass. So she’d collected some great crested newts and put them in the pond there. As they were an endangered species, the wood became designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest and the bypass was cancelled.

  This struck Phoebe as deeply cunning – as cunning as Buffy’s residential courses. He and this Lorna woman had a lot in common.

  It was then that she had the idea.

  ‘Isn’t there a pond on the factory site?’ she said. ‘Where they’re going to build the supermarket?’

  They looked at each other. From the kitchen came the clatter of dinner preparations.

  ‘There is,’ said Monica. ‘A small one, but it’s definitely a pond.’

  God knew where Torren found the newts. Stole them, most likely. Phoebe didn’t ask. She was just glad that he was involved in this mildly lawless adventure. Their connection was thickening up into something resembling a relationship. They had even gone for a spin to Llandrindod Wells on his newly restored motorbike and had lunch in a pub like a real couple. They were having more conversations and less sex, too – again, like a real couple. In fact Torren did most of the talking but that was her fault, for asking him questions. She liked hearing about his childhood, how he ran wild over the hills from dawn to dusk, castrating lambs and rounding up stampeding bullocks, just like the characters in Robert’s novel. How timid, by comparison, were their own summer holidays at Hafod!

  Phoebe had decided to combine the newt transplantation with her father’s visit. It would be a bit of a lark – a hoot – not too exhausting, and would appeal to her father’s subversive nature. When they heard about it, Robert and his entire family wanted to come.

  It had been months since they’d all got together. That the magnet seemed to be newts rather than Dad was something that she hoped would escape his notice.

  Her father and Mandy were the first to arrive. They were accompanied by a wheelchair. ‘Another coup d’âge,’ he said, as Mandy hauled it out of the Panda.

  ‘He’s getting a bit rocky on his pins,’ said Mandy. ‘Aren’t we, love? It’s on loan from the Day Centre.’

  ‘Wheelchair’s such a depressing word,’ said Dad. ‘I prefer chariot.’

  ‘We’re calling her Jezebel,’ said Mandy.

  ‘She goes like the clappers,’ said Dad. ‘And you can hang carrier bags on her, look, and there’s storage space below, and this nifty little brake. And you can go out in your bedroom slippers! Can’t imagine why everyone doesn’t have one.’

  Each time Phoebe saw him, he seemed to have diminished. A shrunken little man, his hair thinner, his hands somehow larger. He was in good spirits, however, though his cheerful voice was at odds with a new look in his eyes. He seemed to be gazing at something in the far distance, something invisible to the rest of them. She had seen this in her mother towards the end of her life.

  Don’t die.

  Did she say that aloud? She wasn’t sure. Maybe she was the one who was getting dementia.

  Just then Farida’s huge, shiny Range Rover appeared – an essential vehicle, no doubt, in SW19. Purring down the High Street, it dwarfed the mud-spattered old bangers belonging to the locals and came to a halt outside the hotel.

  ‘She’s had the manuscript for two months!’ said Robert. ‘I’ve emailed her twice and she just said it’s on her pile. Does she have no consideration?’

  ‘She’s busy,’ said Farida. ‘Some people do have a job, you know.’

  Robert shot her a look from under his thick black eyebrows.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone who’s written a book,’ said Mandy. ‘Where do you get your ideas?’

  They were having lunch at the hotel. A tartan shortbread biscuit tin sat on the table, holes drilled in its lid. Alice and Jack had squabbled like children over who should have custody of the newts and Alice – as always – had won.

  ‘Shouldn’t they have some weed with them?’ she asked, lifting the lid and peering inside.

  ‘They’ll be all right for an hour or so,’ Phoebe said. ‘Torren knows what he’s doing.’

  Torren had given them the tin and disappeared; presumably he didn’t want to intrude on this family gathering.

  ‘Who was that man?’ asked her father. ‘Was he some kind of tramp?’

  Buffy came over, carrying a wine bottle, in full Mine Host mode: paisley waistcoat, silk cravat. ‘Everything OK?’ he asked
, indicating the food.

  ‘Delicious,’ said Farida. ‘Is it locally sourced?’

  ‘You bet,’ said Buffy.

  Phoebe had seen the Morrisons bags in the kitchen but she kept her mouth shut.

  ‘If I may say, you’re even more thrilling in the flesh,’ Buffy said to Farida. ‘The TV doesn’t do you justice.’

  ‘I did like that blouse you wore on Thursday,’ said Mandy. ‘We always watch the news, because it’s you. We bring in our breakfast on our knees.’

  ‘That must be awkward,’ said Jack.

  Mandy frowned. ‘I mean, we watch it on our knees. I bring in our breakfast and we watch it with our trays. On our knees.’

  ‘What’s she talking about?’ said Dad.

  Phoebe interrupted them. ‘Now, here’s the plan.’

  She was interested to see how Farida would react to this newt business. She was so very London. Today she wore white jeans, a cream jacket and a silky top. It was hard to imagine her squatting on her haunches beside a smelly little pond, newt in hand, in a wasteland of cracked concrete and discarded rubbish out beyond the council estate.

  Just now she was talking to Mandy. They were discussing their parents. Farida, not surprisingly, had a beautiful voice. It softened when she spoke about her father and how proud she was of him. Proud of her mother, too, who had looked after the home while her father worked hard to give the children a good education, never a word of complaint, that sort of thing.

  Mandy said the same. Her face glowed as she described her mother getting up before dawn to make tea for her husband before he went off on his rounds, how she devoted herself to him and her daughter. How, though money was tight, Mandy never lacked for anything, how her mother was always there for her. ‘My mum used to say, Best decision I ever made, to give up work and look after you. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, women’s libbers.’

  ‘So was ours,’ Phoebe snapped. ‘Our mother was there every day, too.’

  She didn’t know why she found this parental love-in annoying. Was their family so dysfunctional?

  She remembered it later, however; every word. The way Mandy took off her specs and polished them on her napkin, her eyes suddenly naked, and pink-rimmed with emotion.

  Something unsettling happened after lunch. Mandy and Alice disappeared to the loo and after a few moments Phoebe followed them.

  The Ladies consisted of two cubicles. When she arrived, both doors were closed. Mandy and Alice were in each of them, talking through the partition. She heard the stealthy trickle as they peed.

  ‘You must have seen a lot of dead people,’ said Alice.

  ‘Some, love.’

  ‘What’s it like when they die?’

  ‘You can tell when it’s going to happen.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Some of them get agitated,’ said Mandy. ‘Some of them don’t, it depends if they’re in pain. But there’s one thing that happens to all of them.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Their feet start tingling.’

  ‘Tingling?’

  ‘Like, twitching and restless. Like they’re getting ready for a journey.’

  ‘Wow!’

  ‘One of my old ladies said exactly that word.’

  ‘What, wow ?’

  ‘No, journey,’ said Mandy. ‘ “I’m getting ready for my journey.” ’

  The canisters rattled as they tore off toilet paper.

  ‘Do some of them ask to be helped on their way?’

  ‘You mean what, exactly?’ Mandy’s voice was sharp.

  ‘You know, helped to die. Like with pills or something.’

  There was a silence, then the flush of a toilet. Mandy came out and bumped into Phoebe.

  ‘Pardon.’ The room was too small for someone her size. She squeezed past Phoebe, stepped to the basin and turned on the tap. Phoebe caught her eye in the mirror.

  They both paused for a moment. Then Phoebe turned away.

  There were five newts in the tin, nestling in damp cotton wool. Phoebe found them unexpectedly thrilling, with their dinosaur crests and orange spotted bellies. She hadn’t seen a newt for years; the jolt brought back her childhood, the joy of it.

  They gathered at the edge of the pond, her dad leaning forward in his chariot. Jack and Alice tenderly lifted the newts out, one by one, and placed them in the water. With a sassy little wriggle of their hips they propelled themselves into the weeds and were gone.

  The little band of saboteurs were alone in the wasteland. The sun beat down on the rubble-strewn expanse of concrete. It was cracked open by buddleia bushes; Phoebe could sense, in her bones, the force of nature beneath the surface. Their branches were bowed down with cones of mauve blossoms, dancing with butterflies.

  It was a moment of pure happiness. For them all; she felt it. Even Farida started laughing.

  Jack and Alice wiped their hands on their jeans. ‘Good work, children,’ said their grandfather. ‘Bugger off, Lidl. Vive la révolution.’

  ‘I thought you liked Lidl,’ said Phoebe.

  ‘Not really.’ He leaned back in his wheelchair and closed his eyes. Far off, in the housing estate, an ice-cream van played its tinny tune. ‘If only one could choose when to die.’

  ‘Don’t, Granddad!’ said Alice.

  ‘I don’t want to be a vegetable.’ He turned, squinting at her in the sunshine. ‘If I could choose, my darling, it would be now.’

  Later, when they’d gone, Phoebe drove up to Offa’s Dyke. Sitting on the grass, she watched the sunset. The hills rolled away towards the west, piled up higher and higher, mistily morphing into the clouds themselves. The sinking orange globe of the sun was companioned by a sliver of moon, waiting to take over. It knew its place, and just for this evening, so did she. Wales had drawn her back to her past and she had made it her present, here, now, amongst the harebells.

  If only one could choose when to die.

  Before they left, she’d taken Alice aside.

  ‘That was a funny conversation in the loo,’ she’d said. ‘You and Mandy.’

  ‘She told me how to do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘It,’ said Alice. ‘When we were walking back to the car. How to stockpile the morphine, even if there’s a round-the-clock nurse. They watch it like a demon, apparently, but even they have to have a night off. There’s a little pump thing and you just fill it up with a triple dose.’

  ‘Heavens. Has Mandy done that?’

  ‘Of course not. She wouldn’t be telling me all that stuff if she’d actually done it, would she? She just said it was the best way to go. Peaceful. Stoned. Happy.’

  Robert

  Robert had always been there for his children. It was one lesson he had learned. Not for him, those broken promises. If he said he’d come to sports day, he came to sports day. Even in his high-rolling years he made sure he did, though it could be touch and go. He remembered white-knuckle taxi rides across London, sitting there drenched in sweat, the minutes ticking by.

  And it had paid off. His children were a good deal less fucked-up than he and Phoebe. Yet they’d had it so much harder. For what a world they’d been bequeathed. Sky-high rents, global warming, no jobs to be found and robots taking over anyway, species wipeouts, nowhere to park.

  Yet they remained optimistic, kind to their friends – much kinder, he was sure, than he was to his. Loyal, non-judgemental, thoroughly decent human beings, the world was lucky to have them. He and Farida had done at least one thing right.

  Jack, a.k.a. Javed, had the advantage of his mother’s good looks. Skin the colour of caramel and pale grey eyes, great bone structure, glossy black hair. Since his teenage years he’d been something of a pussy-magnet – not his phrase, needless to say. Robert was used to girls flirting with him, simply to get his son’s attention. Jack was far too modest to consider himself a catch, which of course was part of the attraction. And he designed school playground equipment! What was not to like?

  They met for lunch
in a micro-brewery in Kentish Town, where Jack lived. He said how much he’d enjoyed the visit to Knockton.

  The conversation turned to Mandy.

  ‘She’s well nosy, isn’t she?’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She asked me a lot of questions about you and Aunt Phoebe.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When we were alone in that shop, that funny old one.’

  ‘Audrey’s.’

  ‘Buying Granddad a vest.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Stuff about the past, about you lot. Granny and Granddad, the family.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘It’s just the way she did it . . . I dunno.’ He pulled the crusts off his sandwich and put them on the side of his plate. He’d always done this. Then, at the end of the meal, he ate them anyway. ‘Sort of casually, but sort of sharp.’

  ‘She can be a bit abrupt.’

  ‘Then she asked about money.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She asked how you and Aunt Phoebe managed to live, when you hardly made any.’

  Robert stared at him. ‘I hope you told her to piss off.’

  He shook his head. ‘I was so surprised I just blurted out that you had, like, a private income. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Robert nodded.

  ‘From some family trust thing,’ Jack said. ‘And anyway Mum earns lots.’

  ‘What did Mandy say?’

  ‘ “Lucky them.” ’ He popped a crust in his mouth. ‘Then we bought the vest.’

  Robert felt a strange, queasy sensation. At the very least, it was impertinent. And why prod his son with questions? Why not ask him ? It seemed so furtive. Then there was the mysterious rootling around amongst his father’s papers, if indeed that was what Mandy had been doing.

  Maybe she was just harbouring some sort of class resentment. That would be more understandable. To someone like Mandy, he and his sister led a pretty cushy life. But it still made him uncomfortable that under Mandy’s cheery exterior, hostility might be lurking.