Tarnished (16 page)

‘Does she? Oh, poor lady,’ the nurse said. ‘Did she lose a baby ever?’

‘Her youngest died in an accident.’

‘Oh, that’ll be it then. They never get over it.’ The nurse stroked Doll’s brow as she gave one last shudder of distress. ‘I’ve seen it loads of times. Of course, it was a lot more common back then to lose a child. But it still hurts, doesn’t it?’

‘What’s going to happen next?’ Peg said.

‘Doctor’s seen her and we’re just waiting for a bed for her upstairs,’ the nurse said, standing up and clicking cot rails into place at both sides of Doll’s bed. ‘He’d like to keep an eye on her for a couple of days, get that infection cracked, feed her up a bit. She hasn’t been eating properly and she was badly dehydrated when she came in.’

‘Poor Nan. I try to make sure she eats . . .’

‘It’s difficult to keep tabs when you don’t live with them, though, isn’t it?’

‘She won’t take any help,’ Peg said, gripping the bed rail. ‘I’ve tried so many times.’

‘I think the time might have come where she’s going to need a bit of support.’

‘She won’t like it.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll see if I can find the hospital social worker to come and have a chat with you, perhaps point you in the right direction.’

‘Thanks.’

A furious beeping set off from another part of the ward.

‘I’d best be off, then,’ the nurse said, smoothing down her skirt and tucking a stray hair behind her ear. ‘We’re a bit short-staffed at the moment. Everyone’s got that lurgy thing that’s going round.’

She scurried out, leaving Peg alone with the quieted Doll. Again she took her hand and stroked it, watching her wheezy sleep.

She searched the lines on the old lady’s face. Could she read loss there? To lose a baby. To have your other children watch helpless as he fell off a dock edge into the murky river, cracking his head, being swept away to his death. How terrible. And how awful that, again, no one had talked about it, not ever. She wondered if Raymond remembered it at all, and what witnessing something like that could do to a person as they grew up. Was that an allowance she had to make for him?

Poor Dolly. Both her sons, lost to her. Was it any wonder she made up stories to make it all sound better?

Was it any wonder she had never told Peg the truth?

Fifteen

‘Hello there!’

A youngish woman with two dangling plaits put her head through the cubicle curtain, reminding Peg of some comedian in a repeat Christmas special she had watched many years ago with Doll, Frank and Jean.

‘So, you must be Mrs Thwaites’s niece,’ the woman said, sliding into the cubicle clutching a bundle of folders to her chest. Her tone was elaborately solicitous, as if she had already decided that Peg was someone to feel sorry for.

‘I’m her granddaughter actually.’ Peg stood up and shook the woman’s hand.

‘Mandy Dawkins, duty social worker.’ The woman looked as exhausted as Peg felt. ‘Please, call me Mandy. You’ve just caught me. I’m due off in ten minutes.’ She pulled a chair from the other side of Doll’s bed. ‘I understand you wanted to have a little chat about Mrs Thwaites here.’ Her eyes drifted over to Doll, and she reached out and patted the waffle blanket somewhere near the old lady’s thigh.

‘The nurse said you might be able to help with some ideas for when she’s ready to come out.’

‘As I said, I’ve only got about ten minutes, but I’ll give you these.’ She pulled out a pile of leaflets from one of her folders and handed them to her. ‘If Mrs Thwaites is beginning to have difficulty managing by herself, I want you to know that council policy is to provide support so that people can remain in their own homes as long as is practicable. If that’s what they want.’

‘Oh, that’s definitely what she wants,’ Peg said. ‘She’d want to be back at home close to Aunty Jean.’

‘Aunty Jean?’ Mandy’s eyebrows shot up into her high, short fringe. ‘Would that be Jean Thwaites?’

‘Yes. Aunty Jean’s already got a care worker, Julie Maltby.’

‘Before I started here I was in the Domiciliary Care department. Miss Thwaites was very well known to us.’

‘She is pretty distinctive.’

‘So this is the mother. Well, I can see that Mrs Thwaites here would want to be close to her daughter after all those years caring for her single-handed.’

Peg bristled slightly. Was she in for another Mrs Cairns-type telling-off?

‘She’s quite a lady, your grandmother. How she managed to keep it all under the radar . . .’ Mandy said, looking at Doll with new respect.

‘How do you mean?’

‘It was astounding how she managed to look after your aunt as long as she did without any help whatsoever. Quite a feat.’

‘I tried to get her to get some help. It took years before she admitted that she couldn’t do it any more.’

‘Quite a lady.’

They both sighed. It was heartbreaking to see Doll lying there, passive, while decisions were made on her behalf that she would never agree to had she known what they were.

‘But it’s time though,’ Peg said at last. ‘It’s her turn to be looked after.’

‘So.’ Mandy flicked through the leaflets. ‘These explain the services we offer, from domiciliary care, through meals delivery, and various aids and adaptations for the home. This is the Mrs Dorothy Thwaites who, in the past, refused a walking frame?’

Peg nodded.

‘The lack of which is probably why she’s ended up in here. And she’ll be a perfect candidate for our new TeleCare alarm system, so if she takes another tumble, she’ll be able to summon help. I expect you’re quite familiar with most of this because I believe it was you who instigated the system for your aunt?’

Peg nodded again. She felt weary just remembering the altercations she had had with Doll, who had railed that she didn’t want any ‘busybody social services do-gooders prying into my life’.

It would, Peg hoped, be easier this time. Doll wasn’t exactly in any position to argue.

‘What’s the next step?’

‘I’ll arrange for you to have a visit at Mrs Thwaites’s home. It needs to be done as soon as possible, before she leaves hospital.’

‘But they said she’d only be in here for a couple of days.’

‘To look at her, I’d be very surprised if that were the case.’ Mandy said. ‘In any case, it goes against the council’s duty of care to let a client go home before we’ve put the appropriate measures in place.’

‘What will the home visit be about?’

‘We’ll be assessing Mrs Thwaites’s house for any health and safety concerns, such as tripping hazards and fire risks.’

Peg sighed. The whole bungalow was a tripping-hazard fire risk.

‘It’s also council policy to conduct a deep clean of a client’s home at the beginning of a contract, so that an adequate state of hygiene can be maintained. It’s quite usual for clients, when they reach the point of needing help, to have slipped into a challenging state domestically.’

‘But she has everything just how she likes it,’ Peg said, spreading her hands out in front of her. ‘She hates people interfering with her stuff.’

‘We have to think of our employees as well as our clients, I’m afraid,’ Mandy said, looking at her watch, brisk now. She stood up and handed Peg a form. ‘Now, if you could just fill in your contact details here and here,’ she pointed to the form. ‘Then someone will be in touch in a day or two about arranging the home visit.’

Peg did as she was told and Mandy bustled out, leaving her to fret alone. So not only was Doll going to have her autonomy stripped from her, but all her belongings would be gone through by strangers in the name of hygiene and health and safety. Peg was contemptuously familiar with all this: the heavy hand of the council bureaucrat was never far away at her own work, telling her how many books she could lift, and where she was allowed to walk with a hot cup of tea in her hand.

It was as if, by collapsing on Jean’s steps, Doll had set a juggernaut in motion to cart her own identity and self-determination away. It made Peg think of Solzhenitsyn, or Kafka. It was the stuff of horror.

The only way Peg could see round it, the only way she could help Doll retain some dignity, would be to do the clearing and cleaning part herself. To set herself up in the bungalow for however long it took to sort the place out.

But what would Loz say?

Loz.

If only she could call her. But she’d still be in the middle of it all at the restaurant.

So she sat there, by her grandmother, waiting.

Doll looked so innocent, lying in that bed like a baby. It was impossible to think that she had anything but the best motives for not telling the truth about Raymond.

Peg knew her grandmother loved her fiercely. Because of that love, she could truthfully say to Loz that what she could so far recall of her childhood wasn’t so bad – even the death of her mother had been dealt to her in a careful and loving way. It was because of that love that Doll had shielded her from the truth. It had been a form of protection. But it had also been as if she had held a blanket over her, unwittingly smothering whoever she really was with white lies. Blurring her. Rendering her – how did Loz put it? – without edges.

And what else hadn’t she been told?

Doll sighed and quivered. She looked so desperately alone there, hemmed under the waffle blanket. Her decline had begun, and Peg wondered if she was now ever going to have a chance of a proper conversation with her. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind to allow a chink of light into the fog. It took a while, but slowly something began to dawn.

If Raymond’s imprisonment – and specifically the reason for it – was the lock he had put on the past, then, if she told him she had found out, wouldn’t they be in a better position to move forward? Then perhaps Loz’s plan to take his money for Doll
would
work. It would even give her a subversive thrill of satisfaction. And anyway, didn’t she owe it to her grandmother – because of the love she had shown her all her life – to at least try?

She pulled her red notebook and pen from her rucksack and wrote:

1: Tell Raymond that I know about Mum’s death.

Sixteen

By the time a bed had been found for Doll, it was gone three in the morning.

Loz had called when she got out of work and Peg told her she planned to go to the bungalow after the hospital. Thankfully, Loz had been nothing but understanding.

Peg took the first morning train. When she arrived at Whitstable, it was still dark. A brisk, icy wind whistled the reek of low-tide mud all the way inland to the station, the cold air whipping at her eyes, making them water so that the station lights appeared at once blurry and sharp. She had plenty of time before Jean woke up, so she pulled her rucksack on and set off straight down the hill on her favourite, seafront route to the bungalow, taking care not to slip on the patches of black ice on the pavement.

Unlike Loz, who always seemed a little jumpy at night, Peg completely lacked any street smarts. It never occurred to her to look around her or worry about walking anywhere alone in the dark. If anything, lack of light made her feel safer. Even from close up, and especially in her parka, her height and build was such that she could easily be mistaken for a sizeable man. Sizeable scary man, even.

However, when she passed a white van on the hill down towards the sea, her antennae prickled. And when it pulled out after she had walked twenty or so metres beyond it, she stopped, turned angrily and stared at where she imagined the driver must be.

‘Piss off, Raymond,’ she yelled.

As the van passed her, the skinny white driver was caught in the glow of a street light. He looked alarmed.

Then Peg saw the ladder on top of the van and the sign-writing on the side. He was only a builder going to some early-morning job.

Chiding herself for being so jumpy, she pulled her parka hood close to protect her frozen cheeks and slipped down between the shadowy tennis courts and over the concrete steps of the sea wall. The tide was far out, nearly on the turn, and the moon hovered in the clear, cold sky, spilling silver light on the distant, shifting water.

She loved this walk; it was a perfect antidote to the sleepless hospital night she had just endured. She followed the concrete path along the edge of the beach, past the wooden cottages that opened right onto the shingle. Some were still as dilapidated as they were in her childhood, but many of them had been fixed up and painted Farrow and Ball colours, with Derek Jarman-esque stone and driftwood gardens.

She remembered now the Whitstable of her childhood, when it had still been a slightly down-at-heel Kentish seaside town of dingy B&Bs and day-tripping Londoners.

It was on this very path that Jean had told Peg of her mother’s illness. The realisation brought the taste of the ice cream and chocolate to her mouth as vividly as if she were holding the triple Ninety-Nine in her hand.

She stopped for a minute and squeezed her eyes tight shut, pinching at her frown with her mittened fingers. Had she ever been here with her father? Could she see Raymond on this beach? Or Suzanne, her mother?

She had no recollection whatsoever about either of them being there. But even so, she could feel her mother very close by. Perhaps it was finally seeing her face in the newspaper photograph that did it, but Suzanne’s presence right then was strong enough to send a shiver down Peg’s back.

She skirted the harbour, where she stopped and, half hidden behind a closed oyster stall, watched fishermen, long returned from the night’s work, cleaning their mud-stranded boats and loading their catch onto lorries. She would have liked that straightforward sort of life: go out there, catch your fish, come back and clean up. Even the dangerous bits – the possibility of being swamped by a colossal wave, or of having your ankle lassoed by an anchor chain and being dragged beneath the keel – seemed to be real, tangible problems, compared to the ever-increasing mess that her own life seemed to be churning out for her.

Too cold to stand still any longer, she moved on down the road to rejoin the coastal path. She passed the Continental Hotel which stood silently, held by the first fingers of dawn, the only inside light coming from somewhere behind the dining room where, she imagined, some lonely chef would be setting up for the breakfast rush hour. This brought Loz to her mind, and she sent her love to where she imagined her to be – warm, tucked up and fast asleep on her own side of the bed at home.