Chapter 4: Stops and Starts

The Moto Rugby comfort break station on the M45 just south of Rugby was better serviced than George and Molly had expected but was far from what they would call comfortable. The place was filled with hard plastic chairs and tables and, being a Saturday at mid- to late morning, it seemed it was a convenient stopping point for two full coaches of football supporters heading for two different games that coming afternoon.

George was no longer particularly interested in football and didn’t follow the professional game. Once he had stopped playing the game himself, not long after his Army service, when he found that Saturday afternoons were busy working times as many companies had their trucks, vans and cars serviced at the weekend, he lost any interest in participating in the sport or watching it.

George noted with more than a little amusement that, although each set of supporters tried to out-sing each other in support of their own teams, there was no real animosity between the two sets of fans, just a cheerful acknowledgement that one day their paths might cross again should they ever play in the same division. In fact George found himself even more cheerfully amused when the the two sides discovered that today’s opponents for one of the teams turned out to be the historical rivals of theIr own team and they were soon harmonising through the same derogatory songs about a common foe and learning fresh insults that were assured would be used to unsettle the opposition during the upcoming game.

The shopping and dining area was right next to a rather basic fuel station, which the bus didn’t need as the tank had been filled with diesel the day prior to the trip and they only used a fraction in the short distances between the two stops so far.

The dining area did have a busy Burger King and an even busier Greggs, as well as a Marks & Spencer shop, so there was a wide choice of snacks and hot drinks available. George only wanted a simple cup of coffee, but Sally persuaded him to indulge in a bacon sandwich from Greggs in lieu of breakfast, which he told her he never normally ate, so they queued up at Greggs together for their refreshments.

Rosemary, leaning on her four-wheeled Walker, queued up just behind them. George knew her slightly, having exchanged the odd greeting before, but Sally didn’t know her at all, although after her usual hour of physiotherapy every other morning she had seen her act as an independent, bright, independent and acerbic individual as Sally had recovered in the care home lounge and dining room. George introduced them and, before leaving with their purchases, George’s treat he told Sally, he offered to help carry Rosemary’s hot drink to her table for her, but the independent old lady declined, insisting that she could manage that herself.

George and Sally left Greggs and they sat companionably at one of the sets of hard chairs and tables as far away from the chanting football fans as they could manage in such a small place.

The half hour refreshment stop went by quite quickly as Sally told George about her little house and her particular worries about the present state of her garden without being home to tend it.

“Although I grow my veggies in the back garden, I mostly grow flowers in the front garden, particularly dahlias and they should still be flowering well. It is quite a small front garden in an old pre-open plan estate, with a low wall and double wrought iron gates separating the garden from the pavement and a short drive long enough to park one car in front of the garage and still have room to open the garage door in order to get to the chest freezer that I keep there. Dan had filled the garage up with all sorts of junk, intending to buy and sell antiques and bric a brac that he planned to sell for a profit one day. He used to go off to auctions and bring back all sorts of rubbish that he would try to repair and sell on in local free ads. So much junk was kept in that garage that he had to park the car outside in all weathers. He didn’t need our car for work, so I used it for shopping and ferrying the girls to school and their evening and weekend clubs. It used to annoy me that I had to get the girls ready for school on winter mornings and then have to scrape the frost and snow off the car as well as everything else. When he died I had the whole lot of junk cleared out and now I can get my little Ford Corsa safely inside the garage.”

“So, who’s looking after the garden while you are here?” George asks, being urged on by Molly whispering in his inner ear.

“No-one,’ Sally replies. “It is an old estate, built on the east side of Songlebridge Green, just after the First World War; ‘Homes for Heroes’, they were supposed to be. They are quite small three-bed semi-detached houses with short front gardens and large back gardens with room between each pair of houses for bicycle sheds and garages. Our house had a garage with wooden double doors when we bought it and Dan had the doors replaced with an aluminium up-and-over door once we moved in. Because they are older old-fashioned houses, the people in the area are older people, many of them widows and there aren’t many people that keep up their own gardens let alone look after anyone else’s. My neighbour Gina, breeds dogs, has her back garden laid to lawns with shrubs and small trees; she has a contract gardener come in to mow the lawn once a week and trim up the shrubs during the winter. I hadn’t planned on being away, just an accident falling off that stupid ladder meant I went into hospital as an emergency and haven’t been able to sort out anything with Gina. I will probably be here at the Care Home for another three weeks or even a month, my GP told me, so I may have to write a letter to Gina and see what she can arrange for me with her garden service.”

“I’d offer to help, Sally, only Molly was the one with green fingers in our household, if left to me everything would turn into brown sticks.”

“That’s all right, George,” Sally smiled, “I’ve got some potatoes, onions and carrots to lift and store, but so long as I do them before the first frosts, they should be all right. My GP said I should be able to go home in a matter of weeks.”

‘So why is she convalescing in one of the flats and not the Care Home itself, George?’ Molly wondered in his ear. ‘Go on, ask her, George.’

‘You know that it’s none of my business, Mole,’ George quietly thought back at her, knowing that she seemed to pick up his thoughts without any additional effort on his part, ‘but this sounds like I’m grilling her here. Why do you want to know anyway?”

‘Because I want to know why she is staying in one of the flats and not the Care Home,’ Molly stated clearly in his inner ear. ‘and I can hardly ask her myself, George, can I?’

‘That would freak her out for sure,’ George smiled to himself, ‘oh well, anything for peace of mind, or in this instance: peace inside my mind.’

“I was just wondering, Sally, if you don’t mind me asking,” George asks with a nervous smile on his face, knowing he’d never get any peace from Molly until he asked.

“I don’t mind,” Sally replies with an even warmer smile, “ask away. What were you wondering?”

“I was wondering why you are staying in one of the flats at the care village and not in the Care Home rooms itself?”

“Ah, well,” Sally replies, “as I was recovering from my fall in Songlebridge General Hospital, I got to a point where I was fit enough to leave the hospital and thereby free up my bed for someone more deserving and less well than I, but I was not considered safe to be allowed to go home by myself and be left alone. Then, they couldn’t find a space in any of the care homes nearby, so I was stuck. But the manager here, Claire, rang the services nurse at the hospital to say that the executors of one of the Songlebridge Retirement Village residences had just called Claire to say that the sale of their mother’s flat had fallen through because of a mortgage problem on the buyer’s behalf, that this was a bad time of the year to find a new buyer and that they would probably leave it empty until next spring. Claire had only recently been called by the hospital on my behalf, so she asked the executors if they’d mind renting it out furnished by the month and they agreed. The rent is really cheap, because the owners had no idea what to charge, and I am still treated as a care patient by the Care Home, I just need to go downstairs for my meals and laundry, etc, paid for by the NHS, and I only have to make my bed and keep the flat tidy. A week ago, they thought I should be able to go home soon, but I won’t know for sure until next week, so I had to commit for another month’s rent.”

‘Well, George, Hon,’ Molly whispers in George’s ear, ‘if she’s leaving Songlebridge Care Village soon, you better get a shift on and make sure she doesn’t get away!’

‘Get away? Why?’ George asks.

‘Because, you bozo, Sally is clearly perfect for you, Hon, absolutely perfect. But you’ve gotta her her while you can.’

‘But you’re ... you’re... ‘

‘Dead? Yeah I am and I’m deadly serious with it. I’ve had you to myself long enough, George. You need someone who’s still alive.’

Boris felt that he had sat in the back of the bus long enough but was still concerned about the safety of his bag, which he’d securely taped up using the elasticated ties with hooks, that were already supplied on the scooter, and he had also used plastic adhesive tape that one of the nurses bought for him yesterday from the hardware store to ensure the contents of the bag were secure and any tampering to reach the contents would be immediately obvious.

He had stayed in the bus, with only the ancient Elsie for company, at the first stop in the Country Park. Strapped into her chair and sitting silently with a permanent smile on her stupid face, she wasn’t much in the way of company but, as he grimaced to himself, he’d also never been much company for anyone in the care home even though he was one of the longest residing members of the little community, with over a decade of life and experience at the care home under his belt.

He really didn’t want to speak to Monty, either. He had taken an instant dislike to Monty’s arrogant attitude and even the sound of his voice grated. Monty was clearly one of the hated upper class, so Boris called out to the Nurse Sofija instead. He trusted that she wouldn’t betray him for who he really was. After all, he told himself, she had worked here for at least the last five years, all the while him knowing that she wasn’t really Latvian and that she had equally recognised that he wasn’t really Belgian.

“Comrade Sofija, may I haff a vord?” He had earlier decided only to speak English to the nurse just in case they were overheard by anyvun.

“Of course, vot can I help you viv, er Boris?” Sofija responds, trying hard to remember not to call him TN19 to his face.

“I vont to take a valk und gat a sandvich for mine luncheon,’ Boris whispers, “but I need my cane vich is strapped to ze scooter, und ... I vant to make sure zat my bag vill be safe in zee bus, is it securely locked und alarmed?”

“Da,” whispered Sofija conspiratorially, “ze bus is not only alarmed but if anyvun tries to break in, zee bus sends an alarm to my mobile phone. Your bag vill be perfectly safe in zis bus. I vill get your cane for you now, Boris.”

“Zank you, Comrade Nurse Sofija, you are too kind.”

‘Here’s your cane, Boris, let me help you off ze bus.”

Monty was already halfway down the bus and stepped down to the pavement and helped Boris down the three steps and saw him on his way, as Monty stood by the nurse.

“Is it all right to leave Elsie alone on the bus?” Monty asked.

“Elsie CB56’ll be fine, Mr Monty. Most trips are short and ve may haff only vun stop und she vould rather stay put and just get off at ze destination und vill happily trundle round taking in ze sights. If Vestonsupermere is all on ze same level, CB56 vill be in her element.”

“And what was all that tosh about the bus alarm?”

“You heard?”

“No, but I can lip read.” Monty said, adding by explanation, “a product of years of serving in committee rooms with speakers being shouted down by oppositions, or vice versa; anyway, so the bus alarm goes through to your phone?”

“No, of course it doesn’t Mr Monty, it is as you sometimes say, utter ‘tosh’, but Boris doesn’t need to know zat,” Sofija replied, “if fact I don’t sink zee alarm even vorks at all. But vot is zere to steal from an old age pensioner on an outing, huh? Zey haff no electronic devices, ozzer zan zheir hearin’ aids, so who’s goin’ to break into zis old bus viz ‘Care Home’ painted in great big letters on ze sides for ze vun or two spare hearing aid batteries, huh?”

“You’re right, although a dyslexic tea leaf might read those letter as ‘Cash Here’ but what are the chances? Okay, a cuppa tea and a sticky bun is next on my agenda, old girl, will you come join me?”

“Yah, vy not?”

They lock up the bus with Elsie happily waiting inside and watching them walk together towards the main refreshment hall.

Boris laboriously makes his way down through the food hall of the service station, checking out the refreshments available, talking very softly to himself. “Marks und Spencer, no, zat is much too bourgeois for me; Costa Coffee, no, too rich; & Play slot machine arcade, definitively no, zey are preying on ze proletariat; KFC Kentucky Fried Chicken, no, too American; Burger King, no, too royalist; Greggs ... vell, ze food zat is down to earth, tasteless but honest food for zee vorking class.” Then louder he calls out, “Hey, Comrade, yes, you, serving girl, I’ll haff vun black coffee und a hot sausage sandvich, please.”

Balancing his cup of drink and bagged snack with one hand and the walking stick in the other makes it hard work for Boris, but he manages to get himself over to one of the hard plastic chairs to sit down. He sits and watches the people moving about what he considers were their completely purposeless lives, grateful, he thought to himself, that his own life had always had a singular vital purpose. He hadn’t quite known what that purpose, his mission, would be exactly, but he had left that decision to those in charge, confident that they would know the what, the where and the when, concerning himself not for the why.

At some time in the last decade, as his mobility weakened, his hearing worsened, he was still buoyed up in his conviction that he would one day do his duty both for Mother Russia and his true comrades, to free the working class of this world from capitalist oppression and servitude.

He had until recently thought that his chance to make a difference, to strike a blow for the shackled oppressed had passed, especially as he got too old and his minor stroke meant he was considered unable to care for himself on his own, with no family or close friends to help, and he had been forced to move into the Care Home a decade or so ago.

But, only in the last week, completely out of the blue, or ‘should zat be “out of ze red”,’ he chuckles to himself, he received the call, not just from the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russian Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, but from the Very Important Leader of the Free World himself, the very same former KGB commander who originally recruited him in Dresden in 1989 and personally posted him to England in 1990 to await his designated mission that would change the world forever.

He had been one of Putin’s special sleeper agents for 32 years, keeping well under the radar, waiting and waiting, waiting even longer for simply a sign, waiting for Mother Russia to call him to duty ... and now, at long last and long overdue, he was a sleeper no longer. He was awake, alert and ready for action and soon he will be a Hero of his beloved Mother Russia. He put his hand on his heart for a moment before he remembered in time, he was undercover and must never reveal himself to the enemy until his duty was done.

Rosemary Long, Dot Woods and Ada Arbuthnot gathered together at one of the tables in the Moto Rugby Food Hall. They didn’t all arrive at the same time though.

Ada, being the youngest and most mobile, decided on the Marks & Sparks store for her refreshments and picked up a pack of four fresh cream chocolate eclairs, a banana smoothie and negotiated the self service till like a pro. She picked the seat where she thought she could best keep an eye on the main topic of gossip, the handsome George and that damned too-pretty-to-be-real new arrival and upstart. Sally Somebody-or-other. The supposed blossoming couple were quick off the blessed mark, she had noticed, after leaving the confines of the community minibus. Ada knew from her constant observations that George was fit as a fiddle and walked to the shops for his paper, for his groceries and simply took long walks for pleasure. With his long legs Ada imagined he could eat up the miles in half the strides that she could manage in order to keep up with him but then she knew she never could. Of all the girls who had deigned to tip their hats at “Gorgeous George” as he was universally known within the female contingent in the care home, Ada was generally accepted by them all as the leading runner in the care home fillies chase for the gold cup prize, that was George Bryant.

But George barely acknowledges that anyone existed outside his sheltered sphere of total independence from female partnership. No one even suspected that he was still in a committed and loving internal partnership with a lifelong-and-beyond soulmate.

Even after Sally made her appearance in the care home three weeks ago, her unwillingness to join in and make acquaintances, which seemed totally unaffected by gender issues, meant that the newcomer was considered by the general and highly prominent female contingent to be a rank outsider in the “handicap George Bryant sweepstake”.

Ada now realised that that simple interpretation on the newcomer Sally had clearly been a serious mistake on the ladies’ part. Ada felt that although she started from the traps as a clear favourite she was presently trapped on the rails while Sally appeared to be galloping to victory from the open flanks onto the finishing straight. However, Ada thought grimly, there were still some hurdles to jump and the main one being the rest of this weekend and Ada was not giving up the chase at this late stage of the race.

Rosemary joined her next, having queued up behind George and Sally at the cash desk of Greggs, where she had got a BLT and asked for a lapsang souchong tea in a paper cup and a plastic lid with spout hole in it and now she wondered how on Earth she was going to get both items to where she could see that Ada was hovering mid-gangway, waiting for George and Sally to sit down, before actually setting up a table for the girls to sit and observe their main obsessive focus of the weekend.

Rosemary paid for her purchases and it was George that turned to her and said, “Hey there, can I help carry your hot drink to where you’re sitting? Er, Rose isn’t it?”

“Rosemary actually, but I can quite happily manage to do that by myself,” Rosemary had asserted, thinking to herself that sometimes, no, most of the time if she was honest, she was far too independent than was good for her, but she was still quick-witted enough to realise that although she knew that she was going to sit with Ada and Dot but fully aware that there could be no determination of where to sit anywhere at all until they could see exactly where George and Sally were sitting, so the girls could observe them and talk about them.

‘Damn,’ Rosemary thought to herself, ‘this is one of those chicken-and-egg situations, George cannot help me to my seat because where my seat was going to be would not be decided until George and Sally had selected their own seats.’

That meant Rosemary had to decline the help that she so clearly needed. A fine quandary with no ready solution other than to decline assistance and bare the circumstances.

So, although desperate for that help, she put all thoughts of that to one side. She told George that she didn’t need help, and then, once George and Sally had settled at a table close to Greggs but as far away from Burger King where the noisy and boisterous football fans were congregating, Rosemary was able to see that Ada had just chosen a table that offered a fine view of their quarry.

Using her Walker, clutching a full cup of boiling hot black tea in one hand, trying to also manhandle the Walker using her two smallest and weakest fingers of that hand, and gripping the quickly-crushed package of BLT in the other, Rosemary laboriously made her way over to Ada’s table.

Rosemary was completely unaware that she was leaving a steaming black trail of Lapsang Souchong drips clearly showing her tortuous and stuttering passage across the polished parquet flooring, although she was acutely aware that the splashes were scalding her hand quite painfully in the process. Rosemary noticed that her friend Ada didn’t offer a flying effing finger in coming to her aid, but then Rosemary had always insisted on her own independence at the care home where, as a general rule, the care home assistants and nurses safely carried all the refreshments to where the patients were sitting in the lounge or diner, thus preventing any risk of spillage. Ada’s attention was solely focused on the couple, George and Sally, so she didn’t even notice that Rosemary was struggling in her halting progress across the food hall.

At least three ladened diners lost their footing in the near vicinity of Greggs, spilling their lunches in the process, and complained to the management and one of the staff had to clean up the slippery trail of black tea with a mop, finishing up vigorously mopping around Rosemary’s Walker as it was clear she was the culprit, but without actually saying anything to the daft old girl.

Meanwhile, Rosemary had sat herself down on the flip down padded seat on her Walker, basically because however uncomfortable that seat was, my comparison it looked infinitely more comfortable than the hard plastic chairs that Moto Rugby had thoughtfully made available, although not one percent of that thought was for customer comfort.

The Moto company had clearly designed and provided seating that would actively discourage diners from lingering any longer than it took for their bums to go totally numb. About the same time it took to ingest the fast food that in its content and preparation was not intended to linger longingly upon the palate of anyone who had any appreciation of cuisine based on either balanced sustenance, continued wellbeing or simply good taste.

The third in the trio of old ladies, Dot, had queued up behind the long line of football fans who, while wanting to leave room for the miscellaneous meat pies that the stadia they were heading for prided themselves on, they opted for barbecued beef in a bap which differed from McDonalds in colour only; the King being greasy red meat in various stages of crispy singeing while McDonalds’ offering was soft, greasy and universally grey across, under and throughout the product that hilariously imitated foodstuff.

After a moment or two of the queue not moving as the football fans’ colloquial English completely bamboozled the BK staff who originated, probably only very recently, from the Far East of Asia, the Far East of Europe or the Faraway East coast of Brazil and the queue had barely moved since she joined it, so Dot switched to KFC and soon carried in triumph a bumper bucket of steaming chicken to where Ada and Rosemary sat quietly observing George and Sally.

“Hey Rosemarie, Aiddie, what the fuck’s going on with George and Sally, have their lips met yet at the end of the same long line of al dente pasta smothered in spicy sauce?” as she slammed her bucket of fried chicken on the slightly wobbly table and threw herself into the nearest plastic chair which fortunately retained sufficient resilience from the impact not to crumble from her bulky presence.

“Nothing at all, Dotty,” snapped back Rosemary, “I was standing behind the pair of them in Greggs and they barely spoke to each other and didn’t even touch each other either. Ada has watched them from afar, too, did you see anything interesting that I didn’t?”