Chapter 1

He was looking out of the window at the small patch of green with the empty bird feeders. Someone had put them up to attract birds, when? Last year? Two years ago? Who knew? Care homes tend to have a fluctuating and fluid staff. Whoever put them up had probably moved on; the home had no SOP for refilling the garden bird feeders. He knew how these things worked. They were judged on the SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures, for everything: Evacuation, Checking on Guests (meaning patients, inmates), Checking in Visitors, Supplying Regular Prescriptions, Calling a GP, Calling an Ambulance. The list would be extensive; seemingly endless. A SOP for every occasion. But not one for ‘Refilling Bird Feeders’; so it didn’t get done. The feeders looked as sorry and unloved as he felt.

He tried to shake himself out of the lethargy and indolence that seemed to be a natural direction when everything was done for you. You were told when breakfast, lunch and dinner were; you were told when to get up and go to bed; you were told when to enjoy yourself and when to bathe (or be bathed; he’d nearly exploded when a young woman had asked if he wanted help in the bath, he wasn’t incapable. Still, she was quite pretty... ).

He’d slipped, that one time. Fallen awkwardly and cracked something. In hospital, the pressure began – not able to look after himself (he’d managed to call the ambulance himself, but that didn’t count), alone, in danger, at risk. Social worker assessment. Rehabilitation in the Bide a Wee Rest Home. It wasn’t called that of course, that was his nickname for it. Mountain View it was called. It had the same meaninglessly stupid name as his next door neighbours’ house. Ex-next door neighbour. James and Jukes had actually called their house ‘DunRoamin’. They thought that a jokey name. They had only ever roamed to Scarborough, Blackpool, and once to London! In the home, he’d asked which mountain they could see and been told it was just a name. He’d asked if it was a metaphor for people climbing the mountain of life and looking out from the top; they’d looked at him like he was crazy. Perhaps he was.

He’d slipped, that was all. He was entirely on the ball. He just needed a bit of time to recover and then he’d be cooking for himself again. Albeit that he’d probably need a stick – his hip seemed not to want to recover fully, it would just fail him every now and then. When he met the director of the home (and four others, two in this town and others within a radius of fifty miles), they both recognised that he was the more intelligent; but he was seventy four, so everybody talked to him like he was demented. He took longer to speak than he used to, a normal thing in older people; but that was taken to show he was slow. His children finished his sentences for him, now so did his carers. They would talk over him “Does he take sugar in his tea? We like to get these little things right.” “I can still use a spoon, it was my hip that broke.” “Oh, yes, I think he does. I’ll ask.” ‘I’m right here in the fucking room!’ was the response he wanted to make. It was infuriating, since he was not stupid, just slower speaking. But this was not the home’s fault, this was a fault of society. The society that says “Oh, he can still dress himself, isn’t that good.” in the most patronising way possible.

The time in the hospital had not been good. The food was awful; he ate it, but filled in the feedback form to say how awful, bland and tasteless it was. He was marked down as ‘trouble’ and didn’t get a feedback form anymore. His ward was in the geriatric section. An old woman walked in stark naked on the first day. A man shouted for half the night. The nurses had it tough. He got little sleep, pointed out that he wasn’t senile (“Mr Trouble complaining again”) but would be if he stayed there. His lack of sleep made him look haggard so the doctor prescribed a sleeping draught. Sleeping pills do not help you get REM sleep; they let the nursing staff have a better night. When his son visited in the morning (unemployed again! Nowhere to go so he was given the morning visit by his siblings) old man Smith looked awful and sounded groggy. Son John reported that dad was going down hill. Simon Smith got an infection in hospital and, being seventy four, took time to shake it off. Rehabilitation was going to take longer than planned; and the hospital needed the bed.

So Simon Smith got his elder son, Albert Simon, power of attorney, financial control; so he could pay the rates, the electricity, the gas etc. He was going to need a lengthy period in the home to recuperate. The physiotherapy was badly arranged, three weeks out of the seven that the local authority agreed to fund, it didn’t happen. Seemed that there was no come back on this – you can’t claim a refund for something you haven’t actually paid for, and the local authority may, or may not, have reclaimed the money. After seven weeks, Simon Smith was less mobile that he should have been and even he could see he needed help.

He didn’t blame the family for not wanting to take him in to help out. It might not be temporary; he could only get older, after all. In his lucid periods, in the afternoons after the sleeping pill had worn off, he knew that he had failed to take proper care of his wife’s mother. His parents had died early, so he hadn’t had the problem, his wife’s father – an army man like he was – had been shot in Korea. It hadn’t killed him, but it probably chopped ten years off his life. His mother-in-law was fit and well for a long time, and he (mostly) liked her, but he wasn’t keen for her to move in. He had been looking forward to a good retirement, not to looking after an old person. Mary hadn’t argued, but she had regretted it. Especially when her mother fell over in the street and was ignored by several people who assumed she had been drunk. She hit her head and never properly regained consciousness.

So he understood the hesitation of his four children to take him on. A four month stint might be a permanent arrangement; and he was only seventy four. He could live for another twenty years, easily. He understood it all, but in the evenings, when the visitors had all gone, and they were being shepherded to bed at nine o’clock, he resented it. Yes, he resented it bitterly then. He was stoic. There was a choice: complain about everything and be ignored or be stoical and try to work out how life can be made better. After all, he wasn’t in a Gulag, even if they joked about it being StalagLuft 13.

Still he accepted the arrangement of staying in the home, and set himself the task of getting better. He started his own fitness regime. The home weren’t keen, they liked people who were totally dependent. They made plenty of noise about encouraging independence, they arranged lots of activities. But that was the home staying in control. He started walking up and down the corridor, but he was in the way; he tried walking outside, but the pathways were too slippery he was told – slippery with lack of use he thought; he got a step from Ikea and started doing 50 step ups each day in his room. They weren’t keen, said he had to leave the door open in case he fell; but they let him do it. He was shattered at the end, but he kept at it. So that was pulling his body back from the brink. Now ... about his mind.

The majority of the inmates – the guests – were completely gaga. Or at least that’s what they seemed; perhaps behind their non-expressive faces there was a brain screaming. These were taken to the toilet at the same time each day (if they could still go to the toilet); they were put in front of the TV; some had colouring books that they scribbled on. This paints a poor picture of the home. They were a good home for people such as this. When they had a choir in to sing, the residents visibly perked up. Mountain View took a lot of care for the jettisoned old people.

As he discussed with an ex-teacher, someone else who was still sound in mind, it was a lot easier to put plenty of effort into bringing up the ‘slow ones’ at school than to provide a challenging environment for the gifted ones. It was the same at the home. It was easier to provide a sing-along for a load of old biddies who couldn’t escape the raucous noise even if they wanted to, than to provide a room for a discussion – possibly a heated discussion – on Brexit.

There were two sitting rooms, one was meant to be the quieter room, but since there was so much diverting day-time TV on, a choice of viewing was provided. It was all mind-dissolving pap. When the teacher had suggested that University Challenge was on and some might like to watch that of an evening, she was told that it wouldn’t be fair for the majority. So the majority got to watch Dancing on Ice, Murder She Wrote, even a shopping channel; the minority who still had brains got nothing. They tried meeting in the dining room but were shooed out so it could be got ready for breakfast the next day. They tried meeting in one of their rooms, but the carers weren’t keen. Especially when Simon Smith and Patrick Flynn got to arguing about Northern Ireland. It was a discussion that became a row, that became an argument. It never got violent, it never would have; but there were strong feelings on both sides and so it was an argument with spirit. Since Patrick Flynn’s brother had lost a leg, run over by an Army Landrover, and Simon had been at the clear up of Warrenpoint, it was understandable that they had ‘skin in the game’. But the argument was about what should happen, it was reasoned on both sides. The next day, the carers expected World War Three to break out, but Paddy and Simon respected each other, and both laughed that they were two old gits, two armchair generals. Still, that kind of intellectual discussion was not encouraged.

The priest came in, and Patrick Flynn was grateful. Simon wanted to ask how he could be a devout Catholic but espouse murder as a political doctrine; but he didn’t. The local vicar came in and a couple of people took communion. The vicar talked to him when he first arrived but not after; this was not about converting people, it was about making people content with the advancing, approaching, death. Dr Jones asked if he believed he would see his wife Mary again; no, he explained, he didn’t believe in some perfect afterlife. When the machine that was his body stopped, that would be it. His consciousness was a product of a complex brain. It might be nice to believe in something more, but he would not delude himself to make himself happier. Dr Jones, vicar of St Barnabus, with a congregation of twenty, founds she was too busy to engage in more debate – perhaps she didn’t want her faith challenged too much.

Mary had not had a good death. That would be a hard issue to get over if you wanted believe in a loving God. Simon never told anyone that he had helped her take the overdose of painkillers. He had held her hand as she died, calmly and quietly after three weeks of increasing pain. His children probably blamed him for not realising how much she had taken, they hadn’t been able to say goodbye. He maintained that stoical silence, and only felt a slight guilt when he lied to the doctor. Accidental death. He hoped someone would love him enough to do the same for him; and he hoped that someone would be strong enough not to share the guilt around by confessing.

It was arguable that he hadn’t been quite himself when he signed the forms. It was in the morning, he was groggy from the pills. But it was done now. He’d signed the form to stay at the home long term; and to pay for that, he’d agreed to sell the house. It made sense, no-one wanted to mow the lawns, keep the heating on. If he got fit enough, he could find a retirement home. One last trip home then, to pick up his treasured possessions; then there would be no home to go home to. He kept up the fitness regime though, after a day or two of depression.

His room only had space for one book case. Over their lives, Mary and Simon had amassed books on so many things. A thousand, maybe. He wouldn’t miss her Patricia Cornwells (or was it Cornwall?), he wouldn’t miss the Anthony Trollopes, but he wouldn’t give up his Henry Williamson collection, his Gavin Maxwells – nothing valuable, but such interesting books, such a complex character; he had their novels and the biographies. He would keep his first edition of Lord of The Rings too. He had a paperback copy to read, the first edition was worth a lot of money and he knew the children would just sell it. They could sell it to a book dealer when he’d gone, sell it and be cheated out of half of its value, no doubt. But none of them were as voracious readers like he and Mary had been. They had guide books of all the places they had been – The Rough Guide to Mozambique, Delhi in a Day, Gibson’s Guide to Iceland, there were so many; but then they’d been to so many places. If their fiction interests diverged, their love of travel did not. That was the thing that bound them together; to go somewhere and walk and see the real country, not just the tourist bits. That, and their love of books. They had been to places that tour guides warned against. He had lost his fear after becoming lost in Derry and finding people helped him find his way out of Bogside (he was torn off a massive strip for that); Mary had never had that fear. She would talk to beggars in Russia, to scary black men in Harlem. She did it with confidence and calmness so they felt comfortable with her. He learned to do the same. Still; no point in reading about places you’ll never see again. He let them go to the charity shop. One bookcase to store a lifetime of reading. He kept Mary’s poetry books – they took up a lot of space and he didn’t ‘get’ poetry. But her notes were all over the pages. It was like she was there “Listen Simon ‘Do not go gentle into that goodnight. Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ Isn’t that magnificent?” “Why rage? If you are dying, why get angry? It won’t change anything.” “Simon, my love, you are a Philistine” she had laughed. She had underlined those words by Dylan Thomas; yet she hadn’t raged; or was her overdose her way of raging against the loss of control?

His two sons had transported a small bookcase, tutted at the lack of space in his room that resulted, and arranged the books. When they had gone, he had re-arranged them: subject groups and alphabetical by author surname. His sons had no idea, perhaps they had no interest. Then he sat on the bed and cried. This was his life now. He and the teacher formed the ‘Entertainments Committee’. Only one carer picked up on the reference, Stefan from Rumania said “That’s like the escape committees in your World War Two stories, always the Entertainments Committee is a front for the tunnel.”

“We’re planning to use taxis.” Simon had smiled back. Stefan was okay; he had his own concerns; would he be able to stay in the UK after Brexit? Care homes were incredibly short staffed, he liked working with old people (“Why?” asked Hilda, the ex-teacher “We’re all a load of wrinkly, grumpy, gits.”), but there were people in power who would prefer unemployed Brits to take no interest in their patients than caring foreigners. “Wait until they get some slag giving them a bed bath when they’re old” said Hilda, once. “Too late, too late by then.” Stefan wouldn’t say a word, and the others were not subtle enough to understand the allusion.

They did plan, and execute, escapes. Five old people; three men and two women. One was wheelchair bound, but all were sure that the diet of pap TV and enforced group activities was going to send them to an earlier grave no matter how good the care. Christmas was the first escape. Small groups were being taken by minibus to the mall to see the lights. Those that were already partially in their dotage came back delighted with the pretty lights. The five wanted to do a little more than wander round as a group and admire the commercial trappings of Xmas. Two wanted to visit the parish church; they were told it was probably too difficult to arrange something for just the two of them – but when the others said they’d go too, there was another excuse to be found. It wasn’t something the home wanted to organise. After all, the minister came in every week. That missed the point. Three wanted to do some real shopping. Simon was one, he wanted to spend an afternoon in Waterstones. They all just wanted time out. True to what they’d said to Stefan they ordered a large taxi on the day that many of the staff were heading in to town already with guests. That was deliberate, the staff were busier than usual. The taxi was told to park in a particular part of the car park not visible from the front desk.

They dressed, got Lottie into her going out wheelchair, and stayed in their rooms until the last minute. Then they marched as a group to the desk, each signed out (no way they were going to be accused of breaking rules) and headed for the door. They were seen, of course, but two staff members assumed they were being taken in the minibus, and another staff member smiled (Stefan was cool). In town, they all went to the church. Even an inveterate atheist like Simon admitted that the dim lighting, the piped carols and the holly and ivy with the crib made the church rather special. Dr Jones saw them, smiled and waved. She didn’t disturb them, and Simon thought better of her after that.

Then it was down the old streets, not the glitzy mall. Hilda and Simon went into Waterstones, the other three into “Maynards clothing emporium since 1874”. Lottie giggled at the bras and pants that wouldn’t keep a hamster warm, let alone her “big bum”, as she put it. Her male escorts looked the other way and pretended they weren’t wishing they knew women who wore such skimpy clothes. The jumpers and anoraks were a draw for them. They each laughed as they bought ridiculous Christmas jumpers (cardigan for Lottie so she could put it on easier). They spent two hours in the shop, and Simon and Hilda spent two hours in Waterstones. It wasn’t enough, but it was a wonderful two hours. They came out loaded with books.

“Aye – pile it on, I’m fine.” Lottie said as she disappeared under more and more bags and packages. She was having the time of her life. She had been an only child and her parents had not been ones to push the boat out at Christmas. Unfortunately she had not found a lover in time and her parents had grown old and sapped the life out of her for two decades before releasing her to enjoy one year of freedom before a debilitating disease put her in a wheelchair. Her house was not suitable for a wheelchair, so she had been one of the few inmates who had booked themselves in to incarceration. Theoretically she could leave when she wanted, and it was that knowledge that made it bearable, she said. “I can leave any time; I just choose not to.”