Last Train from Liguria (2010) (10 page)

Behind me there’s the squeak of shoes and I turn to see Bunty. ‘You have an appointment to see the registrar, I believe?’ She looks amused. No, more than that, she looks as if she has to restrain herself from bursting out laughing in my face. The brazen cheek of me really, a mere mortal, to question the hospital authorities. Bunty obviously finds this a scream.

‘That’s right,’ I say.

‘It’ll be Mr Brook who’ll see you. Do you know Mr Brook?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, a lovely man! I can’t begin to tell you. Actually he used to treat your grandmother, when she came here first. You know where to go then?’

I stand up and nod and go. Thelma is waiting to let me out. ‘Here,’ she says, ‘you missed it! All the excitement your nanny caused. The police and all. You want have seen the state of her when they brung her back in. Ah you missed it, you did.’

I can never stand at the mouth of this corridor without remembering the first time I stood here. I can never look down the icy length of it without feeling that way again. There was a doctor with me - come to think of it, the last time I spoke to a doctor in here. He walked with me a little way, Doctor Ian Coyle, not an unusual name, but I had difficulty holding on to it just the same and had to keep glancing at his badge. He told me they had decided to keep her in.

‘You mean for more tests?’ I asked.

‘No. I mean, indefinitely.’

‘But I understood, I mean I was led to believe, anyway, you know, I thought - is she not going back to the nursing home?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘But I was told—’

‘They just wouldn’t be able to manage her.’

‘But I can’t leave her here. There has to be some place else. I mean not
here
, not this awful place…’ I was crying a little then, and he said that he was sorry. We came up beside two brown plastic chairs set by the wall and sat down. I remember noticing how young he was then and that he reminded me of one of my honours art students. Earnest and brave, a bit of a swot. He pulled his chair closer to mine; no aftershave but two kinds of soap. One wholesomely scented, probably from his mother’s bathroom. The other, that pink disinfectant stuff in the square bottle by the sink in the ward.

He allowed me to smoke, even went as far as to fashion a little ashtray for me out of a piece of card he had in his pocket. He was very kind. ‘Senile dementia,’ he said. ‘Your grandmother has senile dementia.’

I said nothing and after a moment he began to tell me a story. It was a third-hand story, told to him by the nursing home’s GP, who had been given it by the nursing home matron. A condensed version of which was now on file. He told it well, soft-spoken and slow, so that his words became pictures almost as soon as they left his mouth. And I felt I was there, watching my grandmother in the dining room of the nursing home - the ‘graciously appointed dining room overlooking the gardens’, as the prospectus would have it. I could see her, standing up suddenly and lifting her plate from the table. The plate still full of dinner and her bringing it across the room to the French doors. Passing through them, going down the few steps sideways. Pressing her hand into the food, digging her fingers in and shoving it off her plate. I can see it falling, heavy and dark, staining the velvety lawn with its bulk. And her coming back into the dining room, sleeves covered in gravy, spills all down the front of her dress, laying the gravy-streaked plate back on the table. Nobody paying all that much heed, until suddenly she starts making grabs at the plates of the other residents.
Pandemonium
. Old greedy eyes going into a panic, arthritic hands clutching their plate rims, shaky voices calling, ‘Help! Help!’ Staff from all corners swiftly arriving, my grandmother becoming violent, biting a nurse’s hand.

‘So you see…’ he concluded.

‘Yes, thank you, doctor, I see.’

We arrived back at the ward where I signed the committal papers for St Ita’s hospital, Portrane, and had one more look at a heavily sedated Nonna. Doctor Ian Coyle was still chatting gently, not that I was really listening. I couldn’t stop thinking of the episode in the nursing home, not least the idea of Nonna wasting food, wasting anything. Nonna, who would turn a jam jar inside out to get the last little smear out of it.

‘Are you sure, doctor? Are you certain there’s no other solution?’ I had finally asked.

‘You know, sometimes, Anna, quite simply, there isn’t.’

That first day. Two and a half years ago - maybe more. After finally finding my way back to reception, I had stood outside the main door trying to pull myself together with a cigarette, before attempting the long drive home. Two young men stood a few yards away from me. The tall one wore a suit that was too small, the short one wore a suit that was too big. It had crossed my mind that maybe they should swap. After a bit of shuffling and huffing the tall one approached. ‘Herehaveyegotasmokehaveya?’ came rattling out of his mouth. I noticed he had beautiful teeth.

I gave him a smoke and he skulked away. The short one then decided to chance it. Picking his way over to me, he held his hand open and flat, as if I were a horse in a field he was trying to corner, and against his better judgement at that, I placed a cigarette on his palm and he went back to his mate.

I had heard the lunatic cries from the sectioned wards off the corridors while I’d searched for my grandmother’s ward. And I couldn’t say the ward, when I did find it, was the prettiest. Yet I was more affected by this pair than anything else that day. It wasn’t really any one thing about them, apart from the stupid suits, nor the fact that they were so young. It was their near normality that had got to me. Everything about them, from their eyebrows down to their feet, seemed to be only slightly askew, yet it was enough to make everything wrong. Like a room where the pictures hang crooked. Maybe it brought it home to me what sort of a place this really was. This place where any one of us could end up. This place where my grandmother would have to die.

*

And now, two and a half years later, on the way to see the registrar, I stand here again for the umpteenth time and still have to think about which direction to take. As I look down the first long corridor running away from me like a dim country lane in the middle of nowhere, I try to understand how she managed it. At a stretch, I might be able to accept that she got herself out the door of the ward - if the keys were left lying around or someone had carelessly left it unlocked. But I just can’t begin to imagine how, in the dead of night, she found her way not only out of the building but also off the hospital grounds.

I am baffled and appalled. I am angry. I am nothing short of impressed.

Moving towards the registrar’s office. A silence you could swim through. I also notice, not for the first time, that unlike other hospitals, no smells linger in these corridors, and it occurs to me now that the numerous draughts have probably sucked them all out. So bloody cold. A bolt of ivy that has slithered through a hole in the glass of a window has now curled down to the floor. I can’t remember this from six weeks ago. The chocolate-box pictures on the wall are buckled from damp and there’s a bucket with rainwater still in it, set under a leak in the ceiling. Patches of pointless heat hit out from the occasional radiator along the way. And my footsteps, which started off self-consciously slow and restrain ed, have, in my hurry to get this over with, increased their speed and impact until they’re banging out a Gestapo-like rhythm, and I am almost running.

The minute I set eyes on Mr Brook, I start whingeing. I can see the spread of my letter on his desk, my points and questions numerically arranged. The hand is heavier than usual, the lines waver, despite the several attempts to get it just right, and I can’t even remember what those questions were now. It was supposed to have been a controlled sort of a letter. Designed to let these people know they weren’t dealing with some fool to be fobbed off with a few watery excuses. Nor was it written by an indifferent relative who couldn’t really give a shit when it came to it. I had flattered myself that this was the letter of an intelligent woman, a woman with no reason to feel guilt or remorse. A secondary school teacher in her thirties, for God’s sake, well used to dealing with tricky customers.

And here I am blubbing like a baby and saying how sorry I am before Mr Brook even has time to open his mouth.

He brings me to a chair and I sit down, then he perches himself on the corner of the desk right in front of me. He passes me a pluck of tissues from a box and I notice his hand shows a slight tremor. He waits for me to compose myself. An elderly man, handsome and small, he takes his hand away from me then and folds his arms over a hand-knitted jumper. His trousers, although clean and pressed, bear the shadows of old stains that haven’t quite shifted. His shoes are canvas, and he looks as if he’s forgotten to shave. When he speaks his voice is frayed, his manner a little uncertain. He holds my hand and speaks to me as if I were a child. I duly oblige by behaving like one, sniffling and politely nodding so that in the end I’m only short of holding my arms up to him and calling him Dada.

He tells me about Nonna and how she’d been found. It was in the train station in the neighbouring village of Donabate, in the early hours of the morning. Wandering up and down the platform clutching an old wet cardboard box she’d found somewhere, probably in a bin. By the time the police were called she was already injured, covered in blood, although not as bad as it looked in the end. Arm broken of course, hip more or less banjaxed, blood all over her legs. Even so, she wouldn’t let go of the box.

He releases my hand and, leaving his perch, goes to the other side of the desk. ‘Anna,’ he says, ‘you express certain concerns in your letter - isn’t that so?’ He leans down to the letter rather than picking it up and I can see him reread, as if to remind himself.

‘Oh please,’ I begin, ‘it doesn’t matter now. Really it doesn’t. I’m sorry I sent it at all.’

‘My dear girl, you were quite entitled. And I’d just like you to know before we go any further that this sort of thing will never happen again. Never.’

He begins to tell me about a new electronic security system, soon to be installed, involving secret codes and a button panel. As he speaks his fingers move as if already on the panel, his expression slightly bewildered as if he’s trying to understand how such a thing could be possible.

‘Yes. If you forget your number then it seems - hard cheese. You have to go home.’ Anyway, it means at least only a staff member can open the door. He tuts, then half laughs, closing that particular subject. Then, folding the letter, he slips it back into my grandmother’s file.

I glance at the file. Not all that thick, considering. A whole life boiled down to a few flimsy pages; a few shameful incidents recorded. I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on it, but haven’t the nerve to ask.

‘Anna?’

‘Yes, Mr Brook?’

‘We should probably talk about the tests now, and yes, my dear, you are quite right, it was without your consent. Now let me just explain why. The nature of her injuries being, well… You see we were concerned that a sexual assault may have taken place. Awful to think that such a thing could happen, but in fact not long ago, and not too far from here either, an elderly lady was sexually assaulted. Perhaps even by a patient in this hospital. The perpetrator was never found, I’m afraid. Anyway I’m glad to tell you no sexual assault took place. But, quite simply, we couldn’t locate you, and therefore I made her my ward - this is the usual practice when no relative is available to a patient. Because you see it’s imperative to act quickly in cases of sexual—’

‘Please, Mr Brook,’ I say. ‘Please, could you not keep saying that, I mean - even if it didn’t actually happen could you not keep saying it?’

‘Which dear? Oh yes, of course, Anna. I am sorry. Look, why don’t I get us some tea?’

I wait for him to ring a bell, or go to the door in the wall and call out to a secretary, but instead he moves to a corner of the room and lifts a small electric kettle from a tray. He removes a dead plant from the sink before filling the kettle.

‘You were brought up by your grandmother, I believe?’

‘Since I was eight anyhow. After my mother died in a car accident.’

‘Ah, wasn’t that unfortunate for you,’ he tuts, as if it were down to some sort of carelessness. ‘Was your mother an only child?’

‘Yes.’

He goes to the wall and plugs in the kettle. Then turns around, smiles and nods as if he’s only just seen me. ‘And your father?’

‘He worked away from home most of the time so Nonna, my grandmother, took care of me. He died last year - cancer.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it. And what do you do yourself, Anna? Are you working?’

‘I’m an art teacher in a secondary school.’

‘Ah, that’s very good. Tell me, do you have anybody else in your life at the moment, a husband? A boyfriend?’

‘My partner and I just split up, that’s why I was in London.’

‘He works in London?’

‘He’s an artist. He can work wherever he likes but yes, now he likes London. I was over there because I was trying to… Well, I don’t know really what I was trying to do.’ And I begin to sniffle again.

‘These artistic types, eh?’ he says and rolls his eyes wearily before turning back to the tray. ‘Still, a lovely girl like you won’t be long about getting a replacement.’

I listen to the rattle of cups.