Chapter 6: Charabanc

Gala Opening

I had hoped that the newly modelled Glasgow home would have been ready for the fifth anniversary of Great Uncle Henry’s death, but it was better to wait until everything was right. After all, we take a great deal of money from our ageing clients, so they deserve the best from us. We waited until today to have our gala opening when the work is done, and the home is looking its best. The time is a quarter to one and there’s a gala dinner to attend at eight this evening. I’ve been here since six and my welcoming smile is beginning to feel rather strained.

If you’re thinking of having a big bash, my advice is to think again! We are on a busy main road, so I had to arrange for parking about a mile away with two coaches shuttling the guests to our door. The police have been very helpful, which is just as well since I underestimated the number of disabled visitors all of whom had to be dropped off at the front door. At one point there was a queue of wheelchairs waiting to use the ramp up from the pavement.

Standing on the third step of the sweeping marble staircase that dominated the front hal, l my first impression was of a packed mob but that soon resolved itself into little clumps of people with enough space between the groups to allow the waiting staff to circulate. The noise of more than a hundred people chatting at once has to be heard to be believed. We have civic and church dignitaries on our guest list as well as clients and staff from our other five homes.

I smiled to myself, pleased that I had yielded to the advice of others. I wanted the lunch to be self-service but without the nimble waiters and waitresses manoeuvring trays to the milling guests more than half would have gone home unfed. I had also wanted some bland music piped around the hall, but our visitors would simply have seen that as a challenge and raised their voices to a still higher pitch.

The noise was abating as the food was distributed. Pierre, our master chef, and Henri, who has joined us to run our new restaurant, had excelled themselves in the quality and variety of the buffet lunch. Agnes was at a table close to the door where she was taking bookings for the dining room when it opens to the public tomorrow. She caught my eye above the heads of the crowd and gave me a big ‘thumbs up’ so I guess she is selling a lot of seats.

She is engaged to Pierre, but she is still nursing Stephen Green who is sitting beside her in his wheelchair. I couldn’t spot Great Aunt Harriet in the crush but her faithful swain, Cedric, gave me a cheery wave so I assumed that she had taken to her bath chair, as she insists on calling it. At ninety-five she has earned the right to be cared for and Cedric has played the role of suitor and protector for longer than either of them will admit. Henry was her twin brother, and he left his stable of homes for the care of very well-heeled old folk to me and Kirsty, my wife.

Kirsty has just emerged from the scrum and is heading towards me. I still get a thrill when I see her even if we have only been apart for ten minutes. She has pretty well recovered her figure after the birth of our daughter Catherine four weeks ago. Her tummy and hips are back to normal, but she is a couple of bra sizes bigger since she is breast feeding. I thought we should have called the infant Katherine, but I had scorn heaped on my head.

“Kenneth, Kirsty and Katherine, I don’t think so! The name’s Winterton not Kardashian, you know!”

Our marriage had more or less healed a family rift, but the birth of Cate had stirred up a watchful rivalry. At the moment Kirsty’s dad and mine were chatting amicably in the same group as Cedric and Harriet. Our mothers are absent jointly minding the baby; they are at my mum’s home simply because it’s closer to Glasgow and means Kirsty can more quickly reunite her nipple with the grateful, greedy infant.

This evening all four parents will attend the gala dinner while Kirsty and Cate put their feet up at home. The other guests are mostly residents and staff in our homes with a scattering of civic dignities; a retired footballer and a television presenter will make the speeches. Both mentioned the possibility of a discount if they became guests in our homes but neither suggested reducing the fee they want for their appearance!

Kirsty and I were hugging on the stairs, but the lunch guests were too occupied in eating, drinking and talking to notice us. Dick and Babs McTurk did spot us and waved happily. They seemed to have resolved their differences and are back onto their planned course through life. He had worked on overseas contracts for years coming home for a couple of months between jobs when he devoted himself exclusively to his wife and three daughters. When he was away, Babs ruled the home and family.

Once the girls were grown, Dick came home for good giving rise to tensions that reached out to enmesh not only their daughters but also their two young grandsons. Kirsty and I had tried to help, and I got one of my better ideas: Babs had a local reputation as a landscape artist, selling to friends and friends of friends. I bought six of her canvases which are now decorating the dining room below me. No one would pay them any attention today, but they would be noticed by the diners.

Buying a few paintings was not a big deal, of course, but I did it at a time when the boost to Babs’ morale was important. I have to admit that Kirsty’s plain speaking to husband and wife probably did a lot more good. It wasn’t until the dust had settled that I learned that sex had played an important part in the reconciliation. While on leave, Dick was a dominant father and husband, especially in the bedroom. After a month of vigorous daily sex, he returned to the middle east leaving Bab’s alone.

Dick had discreet liaisons while away from home, but he assumed that Babs would be as chaste as a vestal virgin. It was true that her primary need was for a man to change lightbulbs and escort her about. Lachlan filled that role, receiving in return an invitation to Bab’s bed when the master was away. Reading between the lines, it was her control over Lachlan rather than his skills as a lover that satisfied Barbara. She was in charge. Dick’s permanent return to residence upset the arrangement.

Babs could not fit Lachlan into her schedule since she had no idea when Dick would suddenly turn up. Her husband was equally stymied: his daughter shared the Falkirk factory making a discreet affair impossible. It wasn’t until he began work for me in Glasgow that he became available, willingly allowing himself to be seduced by Jenny. It was Kirsty who brought the facts to light, winning agreement from husband and wife that Lachlan and Dick’s femme de jour would be accommodated within their relationship.

They were now enjoying a second honeymoon. Their daughter Faith and the new man in her life are about somewhere and their youngest, Charity known as Charley, is one of the waiting staff.

I walked up to the first floor with Kirsty and saw her out across the new bridge to the mews where she had parked our car. It will probably be midnight before I can get rid of the dinner guests so I may stay tonight in the charabanc. This is the affectionate nickname for a very plush coach converted by Dick McTurk to provide the same quality of care on the road that we provide in the homes.

It can accommodate up to four clients and it has had a thorough shakedown during the time when the Glasgow home was closed for refurbishment. Four of our clients lived on the coach for a number of weeks although the trips were limited to short journeys about central Scotland. Next week it leaves for a two-week trip to Skye and Inverness. Three clients have signed up for the tour and a further four are on a waiting list.

The coach is a remarkable piece of design using space very cleverly. The upper floor is reached by a shallow escalator at the front beside the driver or by an enclosed lift at the rear. There are two fixed staterooms at the back and a suite at the front that can be adapted for single or double occupancy. Under the beds are cupboards accessed from the lower floor. At the front is a seating area giving panoramic views ahead above the driver’s seat. In normal use it has armchairs and coffee tables, but it quickly converts into a dining room for up to six diners.

On the lower floor there is a kitchen behind the driver’s cab where gourmet food can be prepared by Pierre. A door leads into the staff dining room and four bunks for the chef and nursing staff. Tomas, our driver, has built an ingenious room for himself above the escalator. Behind that is a small laundry and there is storage for baggage around the lift mechanism. Every inch of space is utilised.

Today, the charabanc is parked in the mews where Tomas, our driver, and Pat, one of our carers, are showing it off. They will be taking bookings for the next five planned holidays. The coach was my idea: many of our old folk were too busy earning to take proper vacations when they were younger and are now too old to face the rough and tumble of package holidays.

Once I had seen Kirsty on her way, I popped in to have a coffee with Pat. Tomas only had time to smile as he escorted one group of visitors from the coach and took another lot upstairs to view the facilities. Pat would serve coffee and sandwiches in the forward observation deck during the tour. Not that there was anything to observe today except the backs of buildings, but we had rigged a screen to show videos of Scottish scenery!

We had built the bridge from the mews’ flats to what had been my office. When they are finished, the flats will provide self-contained accommodation for couples. My office is now a library and reading room – what would have been a smoking room if such a thing was legal. The old boardroom is a clubroom for our seven residents and a limited number of non-residents.

I looked in there on my way back to talk to Karen our chief nurse. She is taking information from people interested in becoming club members and she was looking somewhat harassed.

“We could sign up a hundred! Are you sure it’s wise to limit the membership to thirty?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I told her. “We must be exclusive to justify our prices but once we have the staff trained, I think we could expand to fifty with another fifty country members that live well away from Glasgow and will visit rarely.

“Have you heard from Jenny recently?”

This was not the sudden leap to a new topic it might appear: she is my fiercest critic and had unsuccessfully opposed my plans for the developments we were celebrating.

Jenny is our company accountant, and she is in the Cayman Islands at present restructuring our financial systems. She could have done the job anywhere, but she and I are not the best of buddies, so it seemed sensible to remove her from under my feet at least until the Glasgow home has settled into a new routine. Henry used the profits from his nursing homes to give second chances to people who had a raw deal the first-time round. Jenny had been a dominatrix, and she was brought into Henry’s fold with Karen and others who had also suffered in the sex industry. I had not treated Jenny well and a working holiday in the Cayman Islands was in the nature of an olive branch.

I was only eighteen when Uncle Henry died but I was asked by Harriet to help her run the company. Two years later Kirsty and I followed clues left by our uncle that unearthed his Will leaving everything to us. I had only known him for a matter of weeks before his death, so his decision came as a total surprise. It was only recently that I had discovered why Kirsty and I were his heirs.

The key proved to be Karen. She had maintained her family by prostitution while she completed her nursing training. At that time Henry’s homes were expensive and very exclusive brothels and Karen was one of his girls. The sordid nature of the sex trade was brought home to him when one of the girls committed suicide. He decided to change the brothels to care homes and to use the profits to help people, especially those damaged by the sex business.

Karen became his trusted confidante and it had been his intention to leave the homes to her in his Will. With some justification, he considered his family to be greedy and ungrateful.

“I didn’t want the responsibility of running the homes,” Karen confided in me when I finally faced her with my doubts and suspicions. “I knew, though, that if I simply refused he would have gone out in the street and given the lot to the first passer-by he took a fancy to!”

She bided her time until first Kirsty and then I showed up at the nursing home. We belong to different branches of our warring family; close enough to keep an eye on each other but far enough apart to be free from the dangers of consanguinity. Henry liked us both and Karen judged us to be the right people to inherit the company. She managed to convince him that we should be given the chance, but he set us a puzzle: solve it together and we would be worthy of his trust.

Henry sent Karen to Switzerland with the new Will and his instructions to his Swiss lawyer. He also gave her very detailed rules about the way the company was to be run after his death. Although he was ninety, his death was unexpected and happened before he had put all the checks and balances in place. He had to come back and haunt me to pass on the hints he had not had time to tell me before his death.

I don’t know whether things would have been different if he had known me better or if his distrust of the family would have kept him cautious, but he set guidelines for my performance that put me in a straitjacket. One of the first pieces of advice I gave Aunt Harriet was that we should sell the Dundee home and develop another close to St Andrews. Henry’s great aim was to open more homes, but Karen was able to accept that the turmoil caused by his death allowed the unscrupulous director in Dundee to force the sale.

Things began to go wrong when I used my plans to improve the Glasgow home to gain petty revenge on my detractors. Instead of explaining my goals and seeking consent, I forced my ideas through in a way that must have seemed very high-handed. Much of the opposition came from Jenny, Karen’s friend.

I appointed her company accountant, but I didn’t understand the depth of the trauma caused by the events in her life before she was rescued by Henry. I completely mishandled Jenny in a way my uncle would have avoided. From Karen’s point of view, I was setting out to undo all the good that he had accomplished over many years. In fact, she was pretty sure that I didn’t know what Henry was really trying to achieve.

“I liked you right from the first time you visited,” she told me when I eventually forced her to meet me face to face. “I didn’t want to believe that you were the arrogant incompetent that Jenny thought you were – I kept telling her that you were making mistakes just because you’re young.”

“I asked for help with everything at first, but you and Aunt Harriet sent me away telling me to do what I thought was best. Then when I stopped asking you, I was accused of being arrogant. You ganged up on me and I decided to teach you all a lesson.”

“So, do you expect sympathy? You’re the boss and we need to know that your shoulders are broad enough to carry the whole firm. You have to find a way to blend our virtues and cover our faults so we all benefit. Maybe I should’ve been more help, but I couldn’t help wishing that Henry was still here running things.”

“Me too!” was my heartfelt response.

We were standing facing each other in the kitchen of the luxury penthouse flat that Karen and Jenny occupied after Kirsty and I moved out. I had climbed the back stairs and she let me in with, I thought, resignation. She had been standing with her arms folded under her breasts but when she talked about Henry she dropped them to her sides in a helpless, hopeless gesture. I stepped forward and put my arms round her. In response she laid her head on my shoulder and brought her arms up to hold me in a tight embrace.

How long we stood like that I can’t say but eventually her grip eased, and she lifted her face and looked into my eyes. We said ‘sorry’ at the same time and then she gave a rather hesitant laugh.

“Go in and sit down. I’ve got a bottle of wine in the fridge. Will white be Ok?”

I started to tell her what I was trying to do, and she told me that I didn’t have to explain.

“When Jenny started to get those big ideas for getting control of the whole company, I realised that you weren’t as bad as I thought. You deserve a chance to do things your way, Kenny”.

It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but it would do to be going on with.

“I want you to understand all my plans, Karen, because you know more about what Henry wanted than anyone else. All I ask is that you give me a chance to explain. And keep in mind that he did quite a lot of harm before he saw the light and began to put things right.”

We finished the bottle of white and made serious inroads into a bottle of Chianti before I had outlined my plans for the future of the Black Sheep group of companies. Karen listened carefully and put some searching questions, but in the end she nodded and promised her full support. When I left, we were back on terms of friendship but without the easy mutual regard that had marked our earlier relationship.

Now I watched her charming prospective members of our social club in what had been the boardroom before I brought in my wrecking ball. She looked up and smiled at me, so I waggled my fingers in farewell and went along the corridor to Aunt Harriet’s suite. The door was open, and she was being helped onto the bed by Cedric and Dani, the nurse she had inherited from La Bouchard.

While Henry was running brothels, his twin was making a fortune as a call girl in London. She had taken Cedric’s virginity when he was an undergraduate and he had been her devoted slave ever since. The family acknowledged Henry because he was rich, but they had ostracised Harriet for fifty years. While the Glasgow home was being refurbished, she and Cedric had moved in with my parents occupying the rooms vacated by my sister and me.

“They would have been happier if Harriet had been willing to say she was a governess or a companion,” Cedric told me with a grin. “The best we could manage was that Harriet would describe her encounters with the nobility as if they had been tea parties rather than orgies!”

I left them to get the old lady settled and went downstairs where the crowd was thinning probably because the bar was closed and the food eaten. In the kitchen everything looked chaotic, but Pierre assured me that it was all under control:

“This is the way a kitchen should look six hours before an important meal!” he grinned.

Agnes had her mouth full mopping up the left-over food, but she pointed to what seemed like a great many bookings for the restaurant over the next week or two. When I took over the company the entrance hall had been a huge empty space from which rose two marble horns forming a magnificent staircase. Now the waiters were setting out tables and chairs to transform it into a splendid dining room. We had splashed out on drapes giving an opulent feel to the place. Babs McTurk’s landscapes looked really well against the pale walls.

The kitchen occupied the space between the two halves of the sweeping staircase. It would be presided over by Henri who had, Pierre assured me, learned his lesson. His restaurant in London had been closed by Health and Safety for serious hygiene breaches and he had been unable to get a job on a burger stall since. Pierre is our company chef and dietician for the group and if he says that Henri is Ok then I’ll risk employing him.

I was looking for something to worry about by this time. The opening of our home near St Andrews had been a big success but the formalities had been in the hands of the managing director; I was little more than a guest. The re-opening of the Glasgow home, our flagship, would be a major test of my competence as chief executive of the six nursing homes under my control. Everyone else was smilingly confident that everything was under control, but I was ready for a great pit to open up at my feet.

I was still standing in the kitchen at a loose end amongst the bustle when Karen came in and diagnosed my problem as hunger. It was true that I hadn’t eaten anything but toast all day but, in the first place, I wasn’t hungry, and, in the second place, it was plainly ridiculous to think that food would ease my tension. Twenty minutes later, having wolfed a plate of pasta and meat balls, I had to admit that I felt much more optimistic!

The dinner was a big success. I don’t remember what I ate but the other guests raved about the food. The dignitaries were suitably impressed but it was the reactions of the family – both my families - that pleased me most. Karen, Pierre and Agnes, brought into the company by Uncle Henry, showed their pleasure in the success of my initiative; I felt for the first time that they had transferred their loyalty from him to me.

I could not sit together with my own relatives since I had to entertain the important guests, but we had set aside one table for Kirsty’s mum and dad and mine. Aunt Harriet joined them and looked better than I had seen her for some months. She is ninety-five and has been looking rather frail recently, but she rose to the occasion. Cedric tried to get her to leave before the speeches, but she waved him away with her old imperious manner.

The television presenter tried to be funny, but her sense of timing was very poor - she got away with it because we had been generous with the wine. The football manager had consumed enough during the meal to make him lose the thread of his prepared speech and he reminisced about some of the great players and managers he had known. Many of the tales would have been slanderous if his audience had been sober enough to remember them.

I got a tear in my eye when Harriet finally departed when the last speaker sat down. Kirsty’s dad and mine stood up when Cedric brought her wheelchair forward and clapped. As if it had been rehearsed the rest of the guests stood and applauded her until the lift doors closed behind the old lady. It was a moving moment even if half of them didn’t know who she was!

Making a new Mould

Kirsty had missed dinner to stay at home with Cate. She would have looked absolutely stunning in an evening dress that subtly emphasised her enhanced boobs. She was so different from the bedraggled figure with sweat gluing her hair to her face that had thrust our daughter out into the world just a few weeks before. During her labour I was apologising for doing that to her, but I changed my mind when my perfect little daughter slid out into the competent hands of the midwife.

Once the head appeared the birth went rapidly, and I remember being surprised at how much of her there was. Her little legs eventually appeared with perfect miniature feet and minute nails on the toes. No one had warned me that the birth was not the end and I watched in horror as the afterbirth came out – I thought Kirsty’s entire insides were turning inside out.

I had just decided that this had to be an only child when someone handed me a white bundle: “Would you like to hold your daughter, Mr Winterton?”

That was the first time I realised that we had a baby girl. From the moment her head appeared I had noticed nothing but her length until her feet came free. Now I sat rigid, hardly daring to breath with my child, my daughter – our daughter – weighing me down with thoughts of my responsibility to this scrap of humanity.

“Perhaps Mrs Winterton should have a hold of her now.”

I looked up to see the midwife reaching for the baby. She and Kirsty were both smiling at me with justified superiority. Whatever I accomplish in my life I will do nothing so wonderful as to give birth and the two women shared sympathy for my lack.

While I had been holding the baby, Kirsty had been cleaned up. When I finally managed to take my eyes from my little girl and look at my wonderful wife, I had never seen her look so radiant. She wore no make-up and there were dark circles under her eyes but there was a new maturity in her – two hours ago she had been a grown-up girl but now she was a woman. She had performed an everyday miracle by giving birth.

It was one in the morning before I got home from the gala dinner, and I had gone past tiredness. Kirsty was quietly sleeping so I tiptoed about taking off my dinner suit and putting on pyjamas. Then I stood beside Cate’s cot and watched her sleep. I know it was just wind, but her mouth twisted into a welcoming smile when I looked down at her. I pulled up the nursing chair and sat watching her until she became restless and woke nearly an hour later for her two o’clock feed.

I sat on the bed and watched Cate gorge at her mum’s breast; then I changed her nappy and settled her in her cot before I got into bed at last. Kirsty had barely wakened during the feed, but she gave me a warm and welcoming smile. The next morning, I slept through the six o’clock feed waking up in time to see Kirsty settling Cate in her cot.

Kirsty makes it all look so effortless. I’m still a bit traumatised from simply witnessing the birth but she assures me that it was a simple, straightforward delivery. When I tried to remind her of the sweating, swearing maenad I had stood beside she told me it’s all in my mind. The bruise has faded that she inflicted when she kicked me in the chest during a particularly fierce contraction so that’s where the memories will stay from now on – all the love, gratitude and admiration I feel for my wife will remain in my mind. I got out of bed and stood behind her looking down at our daughter.

I put my arms around Kirsty in an affectionate squeeze. Before Cate arrived that would have been a signal that I wanted to take my wife back to bed but now I meant the hug simply as a sign of my esteem. Fortunately, Kirsty misinterpreted my motives, so we finished up having great sex, trying to keep it quiet so we didn’t disturb the baby!

We had a shower together, but it was a bit draughty since we left the bathroom door open in case Cate stirred. After breakfast I went to my study to pick up the reins of the company. Everyone had checked in, so I read the morning reports. There were no problems, Cate was happy and healthy, and I had just got laid so I began to worry that it was all too good to last.

Fortunately, there was a long email from Jenny in the Cayman’s to bring my spirits down to a sustainable level. She went on at some length about how hard it was for her to reorganise the company when I was constantly changing it, but I had learned to live with that censorious characteristic of hers. Tucked in on the last page was approval for my proposal to develop a site near Perth.

“I think she’s mellowing,” was Kirsty’s comment when I showed her the email.

I took two cups of coffee out to the wilderness area in a corner of our garden where the best tree house in human history is under construction. Dick McTurk’s grandsons Jack and Jim are overseeing the project on behalf of Cate who isn’t yet showing the slightest interest. Dick is master-of-works on the project ably assisted by his daughter Faith’s new boyfriend, Billy. They met when she sold us a statue for our garden landscaped by Billy. Babs was a bit unhappy at the romance until she discovered that Billy is an honourable who will succeed to a title in due course.

I told Dick that Jenny had approved my proposal and that he should get going with the work on the Perth project.

“When did you start giving Jenny the right to approve projects,” he asked.

“It’s my new policy to get all the battles over before we start rather than when we’re half finished!” The Glasgow job had been delayed for a week when Jenny and I issued contradictory orders to Dick.

When he’s not building tree houses, Dick prepares properties in which we can look after the health – and much of the wealth – of discerning pensioners. He handed me his empty cup and dialled a number on his mobile. I could only hear one side of the conversation, of course.

“Councillor Forbes, please. It’s Dick McTurk.”

Several seconds of unintelligible chatter.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Neil, but not to worry. I’ve got my team on stand-by, but we’ll just go on with the Inverness job. They’re really keen up there.”

Several more seconds of chatter.

“Are you sure, Neil? I mean, I know it’s a Grade Two Listed building, but I can’t stop it falling down.”

Brief response.

“Well, I’d need all the permissions by the end of the week.”

After he rang off, he turned and grinned at me.

“He’s the new chairman of the Planning Committee and he feels the need to make his mark. You know, it’s easier to deal with corrupt officials overseas when the only question is ‘how much?’ Here councillors and officials are honest, but they need to show you how powerful they are.”

At that point Faith arrived having dropped the boys off at school. She kissed her dad and me and waved to Billy who was sitting astride a branch about ten feet above our heads. I went back into the house with Faith and left a few minutes later to drive to Glasgow. She spent a lot of time with Kirsty when the muse wasn’t driving her to fire up her welding gun and turn out another sculpture from rusty iron.