Chapter 1: Leaves and Levy

When the wind blows in from the north-west and he tramps northwards to the paper shop, 74-year-old George Bryant’s left eye tends to water up and he has to stop and wipe the closed eyelid with a fresh handkerchief before the left lens of his spectacles steams up. That eye is his weaker eye and the tear ducts on that eye don’t seem to have a stop cock that he can access to switch off. On the way back to the care home he believes he’ll all right as far as the biting cold wind goes, as the cold breeze will only propel his spare skin and bones homeward that much faster.

However, if the sun is still out, heading back south-east, his left eye will still be leaking like some hammy actress clutching a golden Oscar to her silk-covered breast, while he’ll be holding onto, as today it’s Saturday morning, The Daily Mirror newspaper, the local rag The Songlebridge Herald, and the Racing Pigeon weekly to his chest, which is more than amply covered by his waterproof anorak, self-knitted cardie, buttoned-up cotton shirt and, bless’ ‘em, a trusty M&S thermal vest.

Now that George has reached the point where the railings, separating the junior school playing fields from the footpath, he notices that the raw freezing temperatures yesterday, followed by strong overnight winds, have brought down much of the autumn leaves off the trees.

It seems to George that the leaves appeared to have fallen somewhat early this year. He recalls when the railings were actually erected, around 20 years ago, shortly after he first moved into his lonely flat at the Songlebridge Lakeside Community Village & Care Home, not long after he lost his wife Molly.

‘You could never live without me, Georgie dear,’ Molly says softly inside his head.

“Oh, you can tell what I’m thinking now, even when I’m not talking directly to you, eh, Mole?” George replies out loud, trying to put an edge of fake exasperation into his voice.

He was, after all, out in the open, it was very early in the morning, as the paper shop was unofficially open as soon as the bundled newspapers and magazines were delivered from the tiny station in Holdover Halt, usually around 5.30 am; it was George’s habit to wake early, rouse himself out of his flat in the retirement village and go collect his newspaper before even the early dog walkers were persuaded by their frantic pooches to leave their warm beds, especially as this was Saturday, the first day of working people’s weekend, for doggies’ necessary walkies and poopies.

‘Of course I know what you’re thinking, George, I always have. You’re an open book, honey, besides, you’re far too old and set in your ways to try and keep any secrets from li’l ol’ me.’

George’s late and only wife Molly has always spoken to him in his head, ever since she unexpectedly left him behind almost as soon as they had decided to sell up their tiny cottage. They had lived immediately behind the large fuel station and truck and car maintenance workshop they owned. They had sold both their home and business at the same time, with the intention of moving into the two-bedroom flat they had purchased with the proceeds at the Lakeside Village retirement home.

Molly had been having some mobility issues for quite a while and the upstairs flats at the retirement home were designed for independent retirement living and were serviced by lifts. Also, the ground floor of the complex contained a full service care home for when they eventually needed such a facility. A fall which resulted in a painful broken hip, forced Molly to be collected by ambulance and she expected a long hospital stay, before the hospital discovered that Molly was riddled with previous unsuspected bone cancer. Before George had even grasped the severity of her illness, she gave up her mortal existence. It all happened in only a matter of days.

In a daze, George allowed the sale of the cottage and business and the subsequent move to the lonely flat to wash him along like the unstoppable tide of time. Even before the cremation, Molly continued to guide his life in death just as she had in life by talking to him in his head and George simply went along with events. He was still holding conversations with his for-ever-loving wife a dozen otherwise lonely years later.

Shaking his head, knowing the truth of their sixty-plus long years’ relationship, which was unblessed by Molly’s inability to conceive, the loving couple had only drawn closer to each other with the passage of time. When they set up the business on all the land in front and to the side of their original post-war prefab bungalow, George had managed the truck and car servicing business, while Molly ran the fuel pumps and small convenience store in the prefab’s front room initially. They built the two-bed cottage in the back garden as the store eventually took over the whole of the original bungalow.

Now George was walking on the crunchy fallen leaves that were strewn across the footpath. When the junior school put up the stout metal fence, was it designed to keep the kids in or keep the ‘pedos’ out?, George idly wonders.

Anyway, to erect the fence, the contractors had to cut down and take away the old beech hedge that once upon a time used to catch and retain most of the deciduous leaves from the thickly-wooded surrounds of the school field, which was made up, he noted, of sycamore, field maple, hornbeam, oak, horse chestnuts and a few ornamental Japanese maples. Nowadays there was nothing to hold the leaves back from the prevailing wind and the leaves were strewn all over the downhill footpath, trapped between grassy bank and uncut long grass strip beside the roadway, and looked dangerously slippery from the morning mist of early Autumn.

George could’t cross the road at this point because there’s only the single pavement on this side of the road and he knows that the mad buggers’ll still dash down the hill in the cars and vans doing 50 instead of 30 because there’s nowhere for the police to set up their radar thingymajig to catch them on this stretch. So he threads his way very gingerly through the thick carpet of crunchy golden autumn leaves.

‘You should’ve brought your stick, Hon, you’re nowhere near as spry as you once were,’ Molly gently admonishes.

George didn’t feel in a position to disagree. “Yes, I’ve forgotten my stick, you know, the old one I inherited from my old man who, like me, was usually too damn stubborn to use it.”

‘I know dear, that stick may be an antique it’s as good as new. You know you should have kept up the football playing, you were so supple and agile once, as well as tall and commanding as centre-half in the school football team, I remember. Watching you leap and head the ball was like watching a salmon climb a dam going upstream.’ Molly recalls, ‘We were a sweetheart couple even at school, when you were 15 and I was 14. Happy days, honey, every single one of them back then and every single day ever since.’

“Well, my National Service at 18 put an end to my football days,” George remembers. “Actually, we were actively encouraged to play sport in the Army and I did play constantly throughout my time in the REME, both during my two years’ National Service and the four years I signed on for afterwards. And then when we set up the garage together that the car and truck servicing was its most busy time at the weekends and I had to give up sport altogether.”

‘Yes, signing up for another four years in the military, certainly meant a delay in us getting married until I was 23, by which time I almost considered myself an old maid,’ Molly sniffs. ‘It showed me that you clearly couldn’t be trusted to make decisions on your own, George, in fact making any decision as important at that without me whispering in your ear.’

“You’ve certainly been making up for all that lost time, Mole,” George chuckles, ‘You’ve been metaphorically sitting on my shoulder almost all the time since.”

‘Having regrets about us, this late in life, huh, George?’

“No regrets, Hun,” George answers with warmth in his voice, then put on an edge, “though even in death you seem to hang around me like a witch’s curse!”

‘Huh! I must be a good witch, it’s been a twelve-year curse until now and we’re still counting!’

“Oh, I’ve stopped counting, Mole, I just wish you had your witch’s broom with you right now to sweep these leaves out of my way before I fall and join you in wherever half-life you are.”

‘I’m always here, George, next to you and within and above you, there’s simply nowhere else I wanna be that has any appeal for me. When you go, eventually, I’m sure we’ll still be together. But don’t rush, I’m still enjoying every moment we’ve been able to share right here.’

“Me too. Actually, I really don’t mind the leaves. When it’s dry, I like to kick my way through the fallen leaves, just like a big kid. It takes me back 70 years to when I was still a little kid in short trousers and a pile of leaves was like a huge magnet to me. Huh! Imagine me if you will in short trousers and a pair of equally scabbed knees!”

‘Oh I do, Hon, all the time. I thought you were simply adorable back then.’

“Yes, well, that was back then. Even now I like to see the autumn leaves thick on the ground. Those big maple leaves and chestnuts are easy to kick up when they are dry and sometimes a sycamore seed’ll launch into the sky and spiral down looking for just the right spot to sprout and put down roots. Even us old’uns can still enjoy the autumn leaves in the autumn of our lives.”

‘Hey, George, it hasn’t rained for a few days, those leaves only have a little hint of dew on the top. Go on, kick up a few for old time’s sake. Remember, the bus trip is due to leave at nine o’clock on the dot, so you can then rest up for half the morning sitting in the bus on your bony butt. You can afford to swing those pins a little like the old days. Go on, I double dare you, live a little!’

“If I pull a bloody muscle, Molly, you know you’ll get an earful from me for a few days!”

‘Don’t worry none, Georgie, your ear hole is all mine and, remember, I can give you just as good as I get!’

“OK, let’s kick some crinkly leaf butt, sweetheart. Watch this!”

At seven-thirty this morning, Claire Jessop, the 50-year-old manageress of the Songlebridge Lakeside Community Village & Care Home, is in the midst of discussing today’s unusual community bus outing with her six years younger assistant Connie Collins.

“The poster was put on the Notice Board two weeks ago and at first it only attracted a couple of residents who expressed a willingness to go. Then, when they heard that the local Member of Parliament was driving the old bus, we filled the bus to capacity almost immediately,” Claire chuckles, “the tenth name was Gladys and her electric scooter but we lost her yesterday ago to respiratory problems due to flu and old age, the doctor tells me, and for half a day there was no-one else interested at such short notice to fill the last place.”

“That was until Boris declared that he was dead keen to go, and looks like he can use Gladys’ freed-up scooter because of his own mobility issues. That has helped to make the trip more viable,” Connie points out. “Do you think Sofija will be able cope on her own with all those people, even with the help of Mrs Jones?”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with Boris,” Claire asserts, “I mean, we never normally get a peep out of him from one month to the next, do we?”

“True,” Connie retorts, “he always keeps to himself, never takes part in any of the activities but when he heard that the MP was also the Speaker of the House of Commons and that the destination the MP was driving the bus to was Weston, his ears really pricked up. I didn’t realise that our local MP was all that popular as a celebrity among the Belgians, or that Weston-super-mare was even all that famous a resort in England for that matter. As for our honourable member, it’s only because this constituency is a rock solid Tory seat and that Monty has been the incumbent for god-knows how long that the other parties never risk putting any half-decent candidate up against him.”

“Monty Smythe isn’t all that famous, Connie, even in Westminster,” Clair points out, “and he is only the Deputy Speaker not the main Speaker, and that’s just because the government in power couldn’t find him a junior ministerial job in government that he wouldn’t bugger up as soon as he opened his bloody big mouth.”

“So what is the story behind Monty being our volunteer driver this week anyway? I mean it’s difficult to get Monty to do anything voluntarily around here and it can’t be for publicity because we’ve been told by Mabel Smythe to be quiet about it to prevent his being forced into volunteering becoming newsworthy.”

“Ah, that’s where one of our Care Home Charity governors came into the picture, you know the magistrate Evelyn Mason?

“Yeah, I’ve met Evie, for a Governor she’s quite a good laugh.”

“Well, Evie was the chair of the magistrates on duty at the Michaelmas assizes when Monty came up before them on the charge of exceeding the speed limit yet again,” she rolls her eyeballs skyward to show that this is apparently a common occurrence, “and getting to hear his appeal to the mandatory ban after that last speeding ticket. Apparently, that ticket took him over the 12 points in the last three years, which adds up to a year-long driving ban. He claimed that he was entitled to have his special circumstances taken into account, representing a rural constituency far away from any railway stations, no local bus service, and including his additional responsibilities as Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. So, it turns out that Evie has done a deal with him. She let him get away without losing his licence by him doing 200 hours of community service with us instead of the usual twelve months’ driving ban. Then, she subtly suggested that if he could do this particular weekend trip, the court would allow him to use up 33 or 34 of those community hours all in one go.”

“And he actually agreed to the deal?” Connie asks, with more than a hint of incredulity in her voice.

“He sure did go for it,” Clair chuckles, “and he doesn’t even realise the irony that he has been done for speeding and yet he’ll be driving a clapped out old bus that is limited to just 56mph on a good day and the bus is so cheap and underpowered, that its last good day was about a dozen years ago! You and I have both driven that blasted bus and know that it’ll struggle to get to 50 going downhill with a following wind!”

They both laugh at the image of Monty trying to stamp down hard on the accelerator and finding nothing happening for twenty long agonising seconds until the old clapped out engine considered responding.

“So, you’re telling me that the local magistrates’ court allowed him to keep his licence,” Connie says, still giggling, “because this is a rural constituency and he was the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons, but he has to offset that privilege by a little further service to the community by driving a bus full of vulnerable old dears?”

“I sure did,” Claire laughs, “I know it does sound crazy but it’s true.”

“I’ve got to see his face when he sees that bus,” Connie giggles.

“Me too, and,” looking at her watch, “if he doesn’t oversleep, and I’m betting Mabel Smythe won’t allow him to do that, so he’ll be here in about twenty minutes!”

George returns from the newspaper and tobacconists shop in the West Green Parade with his papers and wears a huge smile on his face at his enjoyable exertions. As he enters the main entrance of the care home he literally bumps into a younger woman who he could not recall ever seeing before.

Sally feels sure that she is the one at fault, and that she must’ve bumped into George by accident. She was highly embarrassed, red-faced and stuttering, and she apologises profusely even though it could’ve easily been George’s distraction which caused the accident.

Sally admits to herself that she had admired the tall and distinguished figure of George at least a couple of times before, shortly after she was sent to the retirement village and care home for convalescence after a brief hospital stay, but had not dared to approach him. And now she is extremely embarrassed about this accident and horrified that he would forever consider her such a clumsy oaf.

“Sorry,” George says immediately in his usual smoothing tones, “my fault entirely, madam. I couldn’t have been looking where I was going. I was distracted because I was in the process of donning my mask.”

“No, no, it was completely my fault,” Sally claims even more apologetically, “it was all me, really, I was probably looking at my phone to check for messages, I do it without thinking most of the time. So embarrassing.”

“Did you find any messages?” George enquires with a smile. Although Sally couldn’t see his lips because of the face mask, she notices that the smile reaches his intelligent eyes that had clearly been brightened by time spent outdoors this early in the morning.

“No, I never get any messages, ever,” she smiles back, having gotten over her embarrassment due to George’s relaxed natural charm. “I don’t even know why I was looking. I’m Sally, by the way, er, Sally Benstead, I’m er, from Number 23 ... upstairs?”

Sally Benstead is 67, a lonely widow, who hasn’t been at the care home for very long. She is quite a fit and self-reliant person normally but, after a fall at home and with no nearby family at hand to assist her at home, her GP recommended to the care services that she needed at least temporary assistance and was therefore moved into the residential floor of the care home, for at least a period of convalescence.

Sally has two adult daughters but one lives the other side of the world in Australia, the other based with a husband in Berlin. So Sally simply doesn’t get any visitors and was becoming quite lonely after spending a couple of weeks in the care home. She is quite a shy person normally and generally keeps to herself. She has actually seen George before but not been formally or even casually introduced to him. He is tall, distinguished looking and stands out from the rest of the crowd at the care home, but Sally had never even spoken to him before and wouldn’t have gone out of her way to speak to him, but this accident has put a different aspect on their immediate relationship.

“Oh, well hello, Sally,” George stutters in reply to Sally’s apology, “I’m George, George Bryant. I’m also domiciled on the second floor, but on the opposite side of the complex, at er number 27. Still, it is a pleasure to meet, er, bump into you.”

“Oh the pleasure was all mine, George. Anyway, I must dash ... I want to get a newspaper, oh looks like you got yours already, but I need to get mine in before this dreaded weekend trip gets underway.”

“Ah, I am on this damned weekend trip, too ... so I collected my papers early,” George admitts, holding up his acquisitions like they were hunting trophies.

“Yes, me too, only I’m running a bit later than you, though, so I must dash. See you later, in the bus, perhaps?”

“Yes, indeed, I will see you later,” says George with a smile that seemed devastatingly handsome to Sally, even if she could only see his eyes.

“Er, yes, er, bye, er, George.”

With that Sally hurries through the door and rushed down the hill towards the paper shop. George watched her go for a few moments until she disappeared from view at the end of the car park.

‘You’ve not met Sally before?’ Molly asks, innocently, though knowing the answer full well.

‘No, but then you must meet everyone I meet,’ George replies to his late wife in his thoughts, assuming that she would listen and somehow hear them. He was pleased he was right, in his flat, where he had most of his ‘conversations’ with Molly, he had always spoken out loud.

‘I do, but wasn’t sure that you were actually aware of that.’

‘I am now,’ George silently replies.

‘Good, then I think ... yes, I definitely think she seems quite ... nice, don’t you?’

‘Mmm,’ George thought, ‘how do I answer that diplomatically?’

‘You already have, Georgie dear,’ Molly laughs in his head.

Doreen Jones is the youngest daughter of widower Oscar Peterson, one of Lakeside Community Care Home’s many less-abled community. He has advanced dementia, is a rather frail 88 year of age, and was once a highly skilled jeweller with his own business in the High Street of the small market town of Songlebridge. Now, he is almost blind after working so closely cutting and assembling such precious metals, gems and jewels into things of beauty giving untold joy to thousands of customers over the years.

His daughter Doreen is 57, the youngest of his four children, who is the only child of his that regularly visits him. Doreen is increasingly becoming depressed as, over the past year or so, Oscar no longer automatically recognises her at all, let alone realise she is his daughter. He was supposed to be trialling some wonder dementia drug but Doreen suspected he was one of the cohort that was on a placebo rather than the actual drug, as he was clearly getting worse with every successive visit.

Doreen thought that the advertised weekend outing, which has been heavily subsidised by a local church charity, was a really good idea and decided that this would be a useful exercise to help Oscar out of his dementia-influenced isolation and do him some longer term good. Always a quiet person, recently he had become increasingly insular and become completely isolated in his own little world.

The poster had asked for one or two volunteer carers, who could travel free as an incentive, due to the staff being short handed. So, she volunteered to help, to accompany her father on the trip as a non-medical assistant and the social care home management were keen to accept her to join the group as a helper.

“Daddy,” Doreen declared, “this weekend away at Weston-super-mare will be great fun for both of us and maybe give you a chance to socialise more with the others in the group that live here.”

Doreen thought that this trip would take him out of his isolation and get him more involved in the now and with other residents. Although Doreen doesn’t have much spare money, and it was costing her a fortune to keep her father in the care home, she believes it would do him good and she is therefore happy to help in any way that she could.

It was only a couple of days before the weekend when Doreen was excited to hear that the local MP was going to be the volunteer driver of the bus.

Montague “Monty” St John Smythe, is 63 and a Kings Counsel, even though he was still a Queens Counsel the last time that he actually plied his professional trade in a court room. For over twenty five years he has served as the Member of Parliament for the Songlebridge South constituency, situated in a deeply rural part of Northamptonshire, since he first won his seat in 1997. He had married into money by courting Mabel “Mabe” Smythe nee Robertson, of the Northamptonshire Robertsons, who initially made their fortune manufacturing under license a particularly popular sports shoe in the 1950s, sold the factory and the licensed rights to the sports shoe for undisclosed millions and sunk most of their money into property development and were doing even better for themselves as a result.

Mrs Mabel Smythe is locally active in various local charities and promoting her husband as the local representative in Parliament. As for Monty, he is an ex-Chief Whip and once served as a minor minister in the Justice Department under Prime Minister Theresa May. Since then his political career has been dogged by picking the wrong candidate for leadership of the party every single time and building animosity towards himself at every turn. When he was offered the Deputy Speaker role by the last Prime Minister but one, he snatched it gratefully with both hands and was still in post.