Paradise Lodge (23 page)

‘Our trip today,' shouted Lady Briggs, like a tour guide, ‘will include a close-up experience with a very famous ram—stud name ‘Gunner Graham'—the most prolific breeding ram in the county.'

Mike turned into a farmyard and after a few words with the farmer we bumped slowly across a field and stopped. A large flock of sheep started walking towards the minibus. I can't explain what happened next but it was something to do with Lady Briggs opening the window to take a photograph of Gunner Graham and dropping the camera out of the bus.

Lady Briggs shrieked and Matron swore at Lady Briggs, ‘You stupid old fucker,' and the patients gasped at the curses. Mr Simmons gallantly got out of the bus to retrieve the camera. Matron then got out, slid the side door shut, jumped back into the passenger seat and ordered Mike Yu to drive away.

‘But, Mr Simmons?' said Mike.

‘Drive on!' she shouted. ‘I said, drive on.'

So Mike started the engine and drove away—leaving Mr Simmons out in the field surrounded by Bluefaced Leicesters. Mike drove slowly and protested, trying to reason with Matron, but she yelled at Mike again, ‘I said, drive on.'

Mr Simmons was now sitting on the grass.

‘Hang on,' I said, ‘Mike, wait!'

But Matron shouted, ‘Drive on, I'm the superior here–'

And I butted in, ‘No, you're not.'

And Lady Briggs just stared out of the back window at a sheep removing Mr Simmons' Ascot cap with its mouth.

Sister Saleem was surprised to see us back so soon and questions were asked as the patients—most of whom were shaken and upset—filed back into the day room. Matron took herself off and sat in the owner's nook, like a dog waiting to be whipped.

Sister Saleem told Mike and me to go back and collect Mr Simmons. As we set off Sister asked, ‘Why did she do it?'

And I said, ‘I don't know.' But I did know. She was jealous and mad and I suddenly believed she
had
strangled that nun over the award-winning coffee cake.

Mike Yu was a bit freaked out by what had happened and he likened himself to a young German officer doing what he was told even though he was a decent person at heart etc.

There was no sign of Mr Simmons at the farm—not in the field and not in the farmyard. We'd been told not to ask the farmer but just to find him. He wasn't on the roads between Paradise Lodge and the farm—about three miles of country lanes.

We walked along the canal towpath.

It'll sound terrible now but no amount of worry for Mr Simmons could stop my romantic feelings for Mike. I was worried and acting worried at the same time, and trying to chat with Mike. Mike himself was very worried, and perfect. He kept thinking of sensible things, like, ‘Perhaps someone stopped and offered him a lift,' and I'd say, ‘He did talk about the canal, though, so I think we might find him along here.' Just to prolong our walk.

A thought occurred to me and I gasped. I'd realized that Mr Simmons' actual home, Plum Tree Cottage, was in the next village and that he would obviously have walked back there.

I didn't tell Mike my thought, though, because I wanted the joy of strolling with him and maybe seeing a kingfisher and remembering the last time we'd been on the towpath together and I'd brought peace to Grandpapa Yu. It was selfish and awful. I'm not going to try to justify it.

‘What?' Mike Yu asked.

‘What?' I said.

‘You gasped,' said Mike Yu.

‘I thought I saw a kingfisher,' I lied.

We ambled on. Mike Yu kept squinting into the distance, around the curves of the towpath, hoping to see the shuffling figure of an old man.

‘What do you make of Sally-Anne?' he asked.

‘Sally-Anne?'

‘Yes, what's she like, you know, as a person?' asked Mike.

‘She's dead inside,' I said, and then I pointed out our narrowboat,
Harmony
, which was either back for another visit or, less romantically, had been parked there all this time, meaning the inhabitants lived on that bit of canal, and never floated along forgetting their cares and spent all their time simply keeping the boat spick and span and admirable for passers-by.

‘
Harmony
!' I pointed.

Mike was preoccupied and seemed desperately worried about Mr Simmons. We walked for a while, but there was no sign of him so we turned round.

Back in the Datsun, Mike asked if I knew what had caused Sally-Anne to be dead inside. I didn't mention the twins and her baggy downstairs and numb heels—due to a fast and multiple birth, and never being able to marry royalty. I suspected Miranda had already told him all that, plus I didn't want to spoil our walk with gossip of that kind. Instead, I said she suffered with a difficult past.

‘Oh, God!' I yelled. ‘I've just realized where Mr Simmons is.'

Mike looked at me. ‘Where?'

‘He'll be at his cottage, I'll show you.'

I directed Mike and soon we pulled up outside Plum Tree Cottage. Mr Simmons was shuffling up the path and, at that moment, the front door opened and there stood the Deputy Head.

I leapt out of the car. ‘Mr Simmons!' I called.

He didn't hear and, after ushering him inside, Miss Pitt looked at us and gave me that hand signal that means ‘
OK
' to an adult (but can also indicate ‘vagina' if used concurrently with a prodding index finger). Miss Pitt thought I'd delivered Mr Simmons home as per our tacit agreement in spite of our fight at the cemetery. It was unbelievable but that was teachers for you. No grudges.

Sister Saleem hadn't decided whether or not to sack Matron for leaving a patient in the sheep field—she suspended her from duty while she thought it through and spoke to her church minister.

Matron popped up when Sister Saleem wasn't around. Just to say what a know-it-all monster Lady Briggs had become and what a love-struck idiot Mr Simmons was and how she didn't care what happened and she was all packed and ready for St Mungo's in case Sister Saleem sacked her. And what was Mr Simmons saying about the incident?

‘Mr Simmons isn't here,' I told her.

‘Where is he?' asked Matron.

‘At home,' I said.

‘Home?'

‘Plum Tree Cottage,' I said.

I spoke to Lady Briggs. It wasn't as natural to chat now she didn't spend hours on the commode and was living in communal areas, but we did have a very meaningful talk about the sheep field incident.

‘Lizzie,' she said, ‘what made Matron behave in such a peculiar way?'

‘What?' I said.

‘Leaving Mr Simmons in that field of Bluefaced Leicesters.'

‘She's turning into a monster,' I said, ‘because she's facing a frightening and uncertain future.'

‘How so?' asked Lady Briggs.

‘Her mother smothered her father with a pillow and they had to run away and now she has no pension coming and believes she'll end up in a homeless shelter near the prison,' I said.

‘Good grief,' said Lady Briggs. ‘But why did that cause her to leave Mr Simmons in the sheep field?'

I told her about Matron's quest to find a live-in companion position and her fear of other women encroaching, like Nurse Hilary had done with Mr Greenberg.

‘But she could be my live-in companion,' said Lady Briggs, clapping her hands.

‘No,' I said wearily, ‘it has to be someone who can leave her a bungalow to live in—after they've died.'

‘I see,' she said, ‘how very quaint.'

I got to work a few days later and discovered a lot had happened. Serious things. Firstly, Mr Simmons was back. Matron had rescued him. Mr Simmons told me all about it. Matron had knocked at the door of Plum Tree Cottage and Miss Pitt, thinking she was there to return Mr Simmons' car, opened the door to thank her, but Matron pushed her aside, told Mr Simmons to get his stuff together, helped herself to the spare car key—which was helpfully hanging on a car-shaped hook—and brought him back to Paradise Lodge.

She told Mr Simmons it was the least she could do after leaving him in the field and him ending up back at home. Mr Simmons had said she shouldn't worry about the sheep field incident, he hadn't minded at all, plus he was getting used to being kidnapped and rescued and abandoned and had since then armed himself with an Acme Thunderer, which I thought might be a weapon but turned out to be a police whistle.

Secondly, Matron had been sacked and she was gone. Sister Saleem refused to discuss the ins and outs of this to begin with. All we knew was that Jeremy Hughes, the owner's solicitor, had come and spoken to him (presumably about the sheep field incident) and it was presumed that he and Sister Saleem had had no choice but to sack her for gross negligence etc.

And thirdly, You Jolly Fucker, Mr Simmons' car, had gone—presumed stolen by Matron. No one else had the ignition keys and no one even tried to defend her.

No one knew for sure where she'd gone but everyone doubted it would have been St Mungo's.

‘Where did she say she was going?' I asked.

‘St Mungo's,' said Eileen.

I telephoned St Mungo's on the phone, in the hall, without batting an eyelid. It answered after about fifty rings. I told a nice man I was trying to track down a relative (I knew to say relative since the Emma Mills at the Royal incident) and described Matron in great detail. The man at St Mungo's had no knowledge of a Maria Moran (which was apparently her name, according to the paperwork Sister Saleem had found) and advised me to call the police. They'd had only one new resident in a month and she was from outside the county and definitely not called Moran and not in a nurse's dress. I took this to be good news but the others reminded me that the Midlands had many such shelters and Matron might have gone to any of them. She had a car, after all.

It should have been a relief to be rid of Matron really—especially as we were trying to make improvements, and her always being so awful—but everyone was terribly upset about it. Paradise Lodge was poorer without her. The patients, who we'd kept in the dark regarding the Owner's Wife's departure, knew straight away she was gone. We couldn't possibly have kept it from them because they missed her being there and felt the loss of her too keenly.

Mr Simmons worried that his chivalrous act over the camera had sparked everything and Lady Briggs felt it was her fault—for dropping the camera and not being sensitive to Matron's state of mind. Sister Saleem wrung her hands over not making it clear that sacking her didn't mean she was throwing her out with immediate effect. We all blamed ourselves but no one more than me. I counted a hundred things I could have done—people I could have spoken to about Matron—to get her some help and understanding, instead of colluding with her and half protecting her when I should have turned her in to get the help she needed.

Lady Briggs kept asking where Matron might be living. I told her it seemed she
hadn't
gone to St Mungo's, even though she'd repeatedly said that that was where she was going. Lady Briggs understood that Matron's unreliability and vulnerability were one and the same thing and asked if I couldn't help her find more reliable details about Matron. For instance, was her name really Moran? Lady Briggs thought not. She remembered her from years before, and didn't recall that name. She had a book, somewhere, that Matron had lent her years ago with her name written on the flyleaf. Could I help her find it perhaps, when I had time?

Eileen and I searched Matron's old room for clues. There was nothing there, not even the Goblin Teasmade.

‘Would you take a Goblin Teasmade to a homeless shelter?' I asked.

‘Matron would,' said Eileen.

We got used to Matron not being around but no one liked it. It was like when the Owner's Wife was suddenly not there—but a hundred times worse. The patients didn't stop asking about her.

It wasn't Mike's fault but I started to hate him. I was fed up with being in love and feeling so on edge all the time. I tried to tell myself I was kicking out at him because I was feeling low about various things. But it wasn't that—that only happened in an actual relationship.

It was that he started to seem
too
good-looking. I felt shallow for loving his beauty and felt inferior and not worthy. It was like the time my mother had driven us to Dorset to join a family holiday and it had been an embarrassing misunderstanding and we'd sat in the beach car park having a cheese cob while our mother summoned the strength to drive all the way home again. Even from the car, the beach had seemed too beautiful for us and we hadn't been welcome and I just longed for the muddy ruts of a Leicestershire field or the messy verges of the motorway. It was all we deserved.

Plus I'd begun to feel furtive and sleazy at my deviousness. My manipulating Miranda into divulging personal things about him, running into the drive just to say hello and look as if I were on the brink of weeping. And my betrayal of Mr Simmons in return for getting back into the ‘O' Level group—which had been very much under Mike's influence.

I imagined married life and having to see his face all the time and how its niceness would soon become sickly, like winning by cheating or eating too much pudding. Like when I'd begged for another slice of strudel and cream and Granny Benson had finally agreed and made me eat every last flake until I was sick.

Why did I love him anyway? Probably just because Miranda had paraded him and his love for her. She'd worn his love like a new mohair jumper and we'd all wanted its softness. It was probably nothing to do with his being so good-looking, so good and philosophical.

The planning of the wedding was well under way. We'd booked the registry office and would be having the wedding party at the Paradise Lodge open day. But we still couldn't decide who to invite.

I never really understood my mother's friendlessness. She was funny and nice to be around. Still is. She was unshockable—pretty much (not counting overpriced lunch buffets and cruelty)—and very jolly and not too serious and didn't mind when awful things happened.

But because of a faraway boarding school, an early marriage and move to London and then back and then a long bout of druggy drunkenness and a slide into poverty, she'd ended up quite alone, friend-wise.

After she started cohabiting with Mr Holt and began her rehabilitation, she met Mrs Goodchild across the road. Though Mrs Goodchild was friendly and supportive, I wouldn't have called her a friend exactly—my mother didn't like her very much and I don't suppose Mrs Goodchild liked my mother. But they were thrown together due to virtually being able to see each other from their kitchen windows and having babies around the same time. But then my mother started weeing in the sink and Mrs Goodchild ruined everything by mentioning it.

My mother's only other friends were Carrie Frost and a woman called Celia whose husband my mother had had sex with in 1972 but Celia hadn't minded until 1975 when the menopause sent her round the twist due to sleeplessness and hormone headaches and her husband had come clean about some affairs on his deathbed.

My mother had been at the husband's funeral and had spoken to Celia and had said how selfish of him, coming clean like that just to get into Heaven, but Celia wanted the drama and told her to fuck off.

My mother's lack of good friends reminded me that I'd let my best friend Melody slip away. Not because she'd seen me weeing in the kitchen sink or anything serious, but because I'd pretty much stopped going to school. Melody Longlady, Miranda's sister, had been the prettier twin all through childhood but things had switched for the twins during puberty (as previously mentioned) plus Melody hadn't taken care of her skin and drank insufficiently diluted cordials. Melody had had a miserable year coming to terms with being judged for not being pretty after a lifetime of being admired. Going punk hadn't occurred to Melody until one day she went babysitting with another friend and the friend suggested it (punk) and gave her a glass of orange liqueur and by the time the people came home (for whom they were babysitting) Melody had pierced her own ear and had literally become a punk.

All of a sudden she looked fabulous and exciting, like something in a magazine. And Miranda, her non-punk twin, in gipsy skirt and fluffy bolero, looked nothing next to Melody in a plastic mini-dress.

During Silver Jubilee week, everyone got cross with Melody about her punk attitude but Melody stuck up for herself.

‘I'm not really saying I hate the Queen. I'm glad she's made it to twenty-five years. I just don't suit any other fashion and it's who I am for the time being,' she said, cleverly keeping her options open.

Melody's punkishness really brought out the best in her—for instance, in the inevitable arguments with her parents, she called her mother a ‘waste of space'. A phrase I'd never heard before, but was so accurate.

In the run-up to the open day wedding day I'd felt slightly nervous about meeting Melody now she was a full punk and so comfortable with it. I had the same ridiculous preconceptions as other people and thought it conceivable she might beat me up for not being a punk. That was because the press always tried to show punks in a bad light doing awful stuff and saying upsetting things. But the truth was they were just people, like Melody, who happened to like wearing a bin liner and hanging around in a group with others who hated the mainstream.

I missed Melody and our friendship but wondered if I could be fully friends with her now she'd committed so strongly to punkhood. I worried that she might dredge up something from our past and want to get even with me—I'd heard punks bore grudges. Like the time I wouldn't help her with her European studies project even though I knew a hell of a lot about Denmark and Holland and the Low Countries. And in the end she wrote a load of nonsense about Belgium and Belgian artists being only interested in patterns and not realism. But she got a B for it because of her good vocabulary and knowledge of chocolate.