VILLAGE OF FADING DREAMS

                            

During the Black Death that swept through Europe in the fourteenth century, villages died by the thousand.  By the end of the eighteenth century the Industrial Revolution plagued or deserted a myriad others, as it clanged and smoked, stifled and stank, gobbled and swallowed.  Surviving hamlets, save those in retreat to shadier nooks, developed not only in acreage, housing and population but also in life-style and purpose. 

The original village conjures up a small rural community of houses, say the mid-eighteenth century with its watermill and windmill, flint stone farmhouses or honeyed sandstone Cotswold cottages, thatched roofs, a village green with a pond of bulrushes and sticklebacks, ducks and geese together with the odd grazing cow; a leather-aproned smithy hammering in the sparking forge and neat gardens riotous with climbers and roses and clumps of lavender.  The nostalgic tableau of Constable’s Flatford Mill and the picturesque covers of This England and Heritage still preserve the sentimental idyll.

But in recent years the term ‘village’ has also fancied a modernist application.  Take exclusive Toorak Village with its mock Tudor black-timbered and whitewashed façade sitting pertly on the doorstep of Melbourne’s CBD.  Or Hampstead Village, formerly a spa town in the eighteenth century and now boasting the wealthiest housing in London Town.  Or Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan, coolly referred to as The Village, renowned till the 1950s for its funky bohemian culture.  Don’t hold your breath for the latest trend, predicated on the vertical village of high-rise apartments and in-tower shopping for the upwardly mobile.

Maxwell’s chill reality is waking up to an ambulance and paramedic car parked across the front entrance of his own village, the retirement village on Chiltern Hill.

                   Rude Awakening

Adjacent to the Mainstay, the off-licence area in the lounge where the residents’ grog was stashed for happy hour, Maxwell was accosted at the tea bar by a slim, bespectacled man going on eighty with a narrow, jowly face and slivery lips, half-crouching like Groucho Marx.  ‘Who are you?’  The tone of his voice was insolent, the timbre thin and whiny with occasional whistles through his teeth.

‘My name is Maxwell.’ Affronted by the man’s stare of perplexity, he resolved not to disclose any more information.  And turned back to dunk his tea bag.

The peevish clinger closed on him.  ‘What’d yer say?  Axel?’

‘My name is Maxwell,’ he said more loudly, tempted to spell it out, his jawbone tensing up beneath a frown, before sloping away towards a purple-padded armchair over by the far wall, cup in trembling hand.

‘Well, don’t expect me to remember it.  We’re senior citizens, after all.  So what are you doing here, Mac?’ persisted the old codger, trailing him through the maze of chairs, settees and small black side tables that had already barked his shins.

‘I live here,’ said Maxwell, turning in a huff.

‘What was that?’

‘I’m a resident here,’ he said too loudly, tempted to spell it out slowly.  This guy needs an ear trumpet!

‘Since when?  You’re too young to be living here.  The average age of the residents is eighty-five.  Somewhere between death and seventy-five.  By the way, my name’s Cyril, in case you were wondering.’

Rooted to the spot like an out-of-place fixture, Maxwell sensed his heart cranking through the floor like the lift to basement two.  Hadn’t the Village promoted itself as best suited for over 55’s?  ‘Most people arrive too late to enjoy the facilities,’ the sales manager had breezily declared.  Truth to tell, he’d already fathomed serious doubts about the wisdom of moving home, churning them over in bed hour after hour.

                  Darby and Joan

Not exactly.  You’d hardly be impoverished if you were capable of scaling Chiltern Towers.  Nor dropsical, as the old verse has it.  But in Wilf’s nice ‘n’ easy swaying walk along the passageways holding on tight to his slow-staggered wife, Maxwell was reminded of ‘Old Darby, with Joan by his side . . . never happy asunder, like a simple child’, for his jovial face was always aglow, even when escorting Violet’s carer back to the lift, her gales of bubbly laughter ringing all the way back up the shaft from the first floor, as if she might be a little daffy too.  More affecting was their inseparability, Vi clinging onto her husband’s arm, always beaming dewy-eyed, mostly silent, unless repeating in a roundabout way a comment or question already asked by her attentive hubby, even on their seventieth wedding anniversary when the four and five year old great-grandsons with startled hazel eyes and bright bow-ties circulated with plates of nibbles amongst the frocked-up ladies and dressed-down gentlemen.  One morning Maxwell had the temerity to enquire after an absent Violet.

‘She’s losing it, the dear thing,’ replied Wilf, squeezing Maxwell’s arm and lowering his voice to a whisper.  ‘The dementia’s really getting to her now.’

Maxwell nodded resignation, acutely aware of fade-outs in his own short-term memory.

               Cyril puts the wind up

Cyril in his silk dressing-gown of autumnal colours and slippers shuffling to collect his newspaper from the vestibule and sign for it.  Blinking in disbelief and gaping with slack jaw, he clapped bleary eyes on Maxwell striding up the driveway.  The outside doors opened automatically.  ‘Don’t you ever go to bed?’

‘Just returned from my constitutional.  Only took an hour.’

‘Walked to where, for goodness sake?’

‘Illawarra.  You know, that stunning ornate National Trust building.  Queen Anne style, with that lovely tower reminiscent of Italian belvedere.  Grand survivor of the 1880s land boom.’

‘Blimey O’Reilly, you must be fit.  What do you drink?’

‘Water,’ he snapped, ‘and lots of it, soya milk, tea usually green.’

‘Ugh,’ Cyril groaned.  ‘It won’t do diddly-squat.  I have three glasses of wine.  I’d rather give up my golf club membership than my cellar.’

‘Well, you seem contented with your lot and I’m a fit melancholic.’   So there!

‘Not really.  I’ve got a bad back.  Plays up something dreadful,’ he said, wincing at the thought.  ‘How much do you weigh?  You’re as skinny as a rabbit.’

‘I don’t know.’  Those last two syllables clipped with impatience.  ‘Haven’t the foggiest.’

‘What do you mean, you don’t know?  We’re all at risk in the Village.  Take it easy, young man.  You should look to your health.’

Irked as he was, Maxwell conceded that Cyril was right.  Besides, more than once he’d heard the elders mutter, ‘We’ve all got some disability.  Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.’  He forced himself to bring out his weighing machine from the laundry cupboard and placed it on the wooden floor.

Ever since the appendectomy Maxwell knew by the ledge of fat above his abdomen he’d been stacking on weight.  Dismayed that the weighing machine at Dr Easdown’s surgery recorded him at 12 stone, albeit fully dressed, he had deliberately refrained from stepping on the scales for fear of blowing out further.  Now plucking up courage, he was surprised, delighted, relieved to register 10 stone 9 lbs, 67 kilos, more or less his weight at the time of hospitalization.

                  The Race is not yet Run

Maxwell had never seriously considered himself a competitive sort of chap, but was occasionally goaded to prove the opposite.  One early-morning walk he noticed a twelve year-old girl in school uniform switched on to her i-Pod, quickly approaching from a side road.  Suddenly, she popped up on his right about to overtake – he caught glimpses of her white sneakers out of the corner of his eye even as he accelerated.  Like a red rag to a revolutionary, Maxwell resented the younger generations for making assumptions about dawdling curlies.  So whenever this presumptuous miss threatened to overtake, he put on a spurt with a rolling gait that wobbled perilously close to wall or fence.  By the time he’d zoomed to the last block of traffic lights, he was breathless, heart thumping, forehead dripping beads of perspiration.  When the snoot turned round nonchalantly to measure the length of victory, the lass was nowhere in sight.  For the rest of the morning, he rebuked himself for his folly and wondered how close he’d come to a cardiac arrest.

                  Sharon

Hard of hearingness was a major irritant for Maxwell, his own as well as others’.  The first dinner he ordered in the dining room was a chunky slab of succulent Atlantic salmon and a petite mash of vegetables, thanks to the complimentary voucher for new residents.  It was left to the chef, Andre, to designate who sat with whom at table.  Maxwell found himself next to a lady, introduced as Sharon, who needed the assistance of her carer to bring her to table and transfer her from wheelchair to padded chair.  Unfortunately, she inadvertently gave shivery shakes of the head and was stone deaf into the bargain, so whenever Maxwell tried to engage her in conversation she took not a blind bit of notice but her head shook a little.  Then the tall, screechy crosspatch opposite nudged her wheelchair-bound husband, ‘What did he say?  I couldn’t understand him.  What d’e say?’  More aggressively across the table:  ‘Can you speak up?’

Maxwell turned mute, not disposed to shout, nor talk about his own pedigree or provenance.  Especially not to strangers.  But in the corridors, whenever Sharon was pushed by a carer to the lifts, she always confirmed recognition with a silent regal flourish of an arm and a twitch of the beautifully coiffed silver-sheened head, which he acknowledged with a deferential nod.

One morning he caught sight of this immaculate nona sitting on a chair in the front row opposite a floor space in the residents’ lounge.  Jurgen, the maintenance man, had re-arranged the furniture for the Tai Chi class.  A group of eight resis were already engaged in a series of warm-up exercises, shaking their bodies loose, balancing on each leg, twirling their ankles, when Maxwell noticed that Sharon too was moving her arms and more tentatively her legs whilst sitting down.  Although she couldn’t hear the instructor’s gentle voice, she was following as best she could his graceful movements as well as the motions of the moving statues before her.

                  Miriam’s Letter

Dear Nance,

How is it up there, amid the decadent splendour of Chiltern Hill?

I don’t keep in touch with anyone from work these days.  I tripped over Olga recently and she insisted I drop in to say hi cos ‘everyone would love to see me’.  I don’t think so.  Most of the people there only have history in common with me.  I would have kept in touch or they would have if we had wanted to.

 

I am horrendously chubby these days and totally grey (except for the brown dye - yes, I finally succumbed – for wedding of niece).  I have health issues which slow me down and make doing lots of things either extremely difficult or nigh on impossible.  It’s so frustrating; now I have the time I can’t physically do what I want.

Last year, in particular, was very irksome.  I fell in January and fractured a bone in my foot, which was painful and refused to heal.  That caused me to walk awkwardly, which resulted in cartilage damage in my right knee.  I had to have an op to fix that and another to fix my foot, so I ended up in a wheel chair from late May until September and crutches until October.  I had a moon boot for three months.  When that came off I went walking to try to get some fitness back.  Stupidly, I took my Staffie heeler called Zoe.  We were both walking nicely when a snippy German short-haired pointer came skidding up the street yapping and bouncing.  We crossed the road to avoid the beastie but Zoe unexpectedly shot across in front of me.  I went head over heels and watched my thumb grind into the bitumen an inch in front of my nose.  As the top of my thumb came off I instinctively knew it was broken.  It was in plaster for a month and I still couldn’t get back to golf.  At last, in January I played golf again.  The thumb still troubles me (arthritis in all the joints of my right thumb) and it makes the clubs hard to hold properly.

Oh well, I don’t worry about my scores any more, I just concentrate on having fun.  That isn’t too hard.  You have to make do with what you have, don’t you!  No use moaning about what you used to have because it aint there no more and it won’t be coming back either!!!

                  A Relationship Thaws

Towards lunch-time, making a cuppa of English Breakfast at the Mainstay, Maxwell heard Cyril pipe up.

‘Guess what, young man.’

‘Someone’s nicked your paper.  No?  You haven’t paid your monthly service fee or the electricity has been cut off.’

Cyril fixed an owlish stare.  ‘No, no, our generation always pays its bills on time.  Now listen.  Me and Florence just got back from walking to Illiwhacker.’  He winked conspiratorially.

‘Well done, you two.’  Maxwell found himself warming to Cyril, who, he was beginning to discover, possessed four ounces of impish larrikin to one dram of comedian.  At least I’ve made a bit of difference in someone’s life.

‘It only took us forty minutes,’ Cyril said deadpan, a twinkle gleaming in his eye.  ‘It’s a breeze compared with hoofing round the outward half of Riversdale Golf Course.’

‘No, really?’  In spite of himself, Maxwell sounded crestfallen.  ‘It took me fifty-five and I was scorching up Chiltern Hill on the return leg.  That’s incredible.’

‘We thought so.  Mind you, we did cheat.’  The old codger paused. ‘We drove to Toorak Road and strolled down to Illywhatsits from there.’

That night Chiltern Towers was struck by an earthquake.  Not that Maxwell noticed in his lounge, but he heard an unusual amount of clucking and moaning along the passage and rapping on doors.  ‘Mia, are you all right in there?  There’s been a quake!  Mia?  Mia!’

                  The Great Leveller

Having got himself ready in time, bathers, robe, sandals, Maxwell was delayed by a phone call from the office requesting an operational check on his emergency pendant.  ‘Press your pendant down for three seconds, so we can make sure it’s working.’

‘All these alarms are bound to give me a coronary,’ he reflected.

So he arrived a few minutes late for the aquarobics class that commenced at ten o’clock.  Already self-conscious at the prospect of appearing in bathers without his sun-protecting polyester top that he wore to the beach and revealing his abdominal scars, he didn’t know where to look; even more nervy on discovering as many as fifteen foreign resident bodies in the pool already, all of whom were stealing an upward gawk as he ambled along the matting beside the pool, tummy tucked in - he only just remembered - deposited his beach towel on a lounger, unvelcroed his sandals and slipped out from his green cotton robe as discreetly as possible.  Then, heads turning to follow his approach to the steps, six half-moons with hand-rail broadening towards their base, he sensed thirty beads sizing him up, covertly.  

O the relief to sink one’s privates into warm water, gradually - be careful! - clasping the hand-rail, slotting into a space between slowmo moon-walkers that yawned before him.

‘You are most welcome,’ said a pear-shaped man in khaki shorts approaching from the middle of the pool with a genial smile and a quizzical tilt of the head.

‘Hello, my name’s Maxwell.  Sorry I didn’t get in touch.  I hope it’s all right to join in.’

‘Of course it is.  We’re very glad to have you.  Ben, apartment 371.’

A smidgeon of Maxwell’s awkwardness evaporated at once.

Each weekly session of water-based activities would begin with walking round the inside edge of the pool, now striding, now bunny-hopping, now sideways, leading with left leg then leading with right, usually to music on a portable CD player, Tchaikovsky being a great energizer.  To which Percy, three years shy of making a century, would beat out the rhythm with plosions of air from his mouth set in a wry grin with more gusto than his tottery feet allowed.

‘Long stride, knees loosely locked,’ called Ben.  ‘Backs straight, shoulders back, tummy in.’

Where Maxwell took a tall man’s gargantuan step, others barely minced but cautiously, so he felt impelled to cut corner jams and establish an inner circle round Ben.  It was during this exercise that he couldn’t help noticing the insidious effect of ageing on a person’s skin.  One lady, Olivia, another nona, a slow mover crippled with arthritis, was raddled with brown rashes and a scattering of black blobs down her back, as if cauterized by the sun in her youth before the jingle of slip ‘n’ slop made an impression.  Olga, a former state tennis champion, sporting a neck brace that restrained her head as well as a bewildered smile attached to her lips, with dabs on her legs where the cancerous cells had been burned off.  And there was Walter, with so much fine black hair running across the back of his shoulders.

‘Raise one arm above your head, straight if you can.’ 

No problem there for Maxwell who could shoot both arms in turn adjacent to his ears, whereas Beatrice, heftily built about bosom and thighs, was unbalanced, triceps drooping in flab, gave up the attempt and simply surged on, frowning, a determined downward curl to one side of her mouth.

‘Nice long strides but come up on your toes and down in the water to your shoulders.  Bend those knees.’

It was several weeks before Maxwell deduced that Beatrice’s ‘having the big needle in the shoulder’ meant regular cortisone injections for arthritis.

The newie also found himself marvelling at the late-arriving Albie, whose abdomen billowed out and down over the briefest of black bathers left in a barely discernible V-shape across his thighs.

‘Now walking sideways like Charlie Chaplin,’ Ben demonstrated, ‘big toes meeting    

together then heels.’

‘It’s too tricky,’ muttered Dieryk, reaching out for the rail. ‘Why are we doing this

nonsense?’

‘Remember, those of you with hip or knee replacements or lower-back issues . . .’

‘That’s all of us,’ some wag quipped to general merriment.

‘You know what you’re allowed to do and what you mustn’t do,’ preached Ben in earnest.  ‘Hold onto the rail or wall and lift your outside leg and place it on your calf.  Hold it steady.  If you can, let go of the rail or wall and balance on the outside leg.  Oh, excellent, Daphne!  Now if you’re really clever, close your eyes.  Oops!  Try again, but don’t close your eyes till you are stable on that outside leg.  Remember, at our age balance becomes increasingly important, so this is an exercise you can practise on the carpet in your lounge, holding onto the kitchen bench.

‘Grasping the rail, lift your outside leg ninety degrees and down again.  Up . . . and down.  A few more of those.  Now turn round and change to the other leg.  Bring that knee up to the horizontal.  Up . . . and down.  Now pawing the ground with your outside leg.  Bring it up full circle.  And paw a la Black Caviar.’

                    At the Heart of the Matter

One of the advantages of Chiltern Towers was that it lay at the epicentrum of medical centres, hospitals, hospital annexes, surgeries, neurotherapy centres and discount chemists.  One of the disadvantages was that most taxis refused to take you there from Chiltern Towers, the short distance being worthless.

Close by is the Arcade of Heavenly Bodies, a hypochondriac’s dream of purdah with its array of studios ranged over two levels renowned for pampering the body corporate:  Laser Therapy for Removal of Hair, Veins, Tattoos and Brown Spots; Facial Fillers and Muscle Relaxants; Dermatology and Cosmetic Surgery; Lips Sculpture; Mega Liposuction; Laser Wrinkle Removal; Eyelid Rejuvenation; Breast Reduction; Anti-Aging Injections; Vellashape Cellulite Removal; Colonic Irrigation . . .

Dr Easdown, silvery about the temples, with a murmurous, cushy manner, ‘What can I do for you?’

‘Good to see you, doctor.  It’s that time of year for a blood test and a flu injection.’

‘Let’s see,’ as he scrolled down his computer screen.  ‘Here we are.  Yes, I gave you the physical test for the prostate last June . . .’

Suddenly, Maxwell winced at the memory, inwardly groaned and visibly shuddered, all too aware of that probing exam.  ‘Now just lower your pants and hop up onto the table,’ Easdown had murmured.  ‘Just relax.’  The rubbery finger had pushed up, way up, into the floor of his lungs, expunging breath in gasps of desperation, so he couldn’t yell out.

‘Hold onto your insides like billyo, there’s a good chap.’

Easier said than done, Easdown.  Yikes!

‘There, all done.’

Phew!  He was left giggling in relief between snatching at breath.

‘About the same as last time,’ the doctor had deliberated, with quiet satisfaction.  ‘The prostate hasn’t grown any larger.’

Thank god, but your fist definitely has!

‘Yes, I’ll print off the referral’ fast-forwarded Maxwell to present time.  ‘When you go, remember not to eat in the morning or clean your teeth, but you are allowed three glasses of water.  That’ll be seventy-eight dollars.’

‘Thank you, doctor.  There’s just one other matter.’

‘What’s the issue?’

‘Last year I mentioned I was having trouble with my throat.  It was dry and scratchy and particularly husky in the evening.  I can’t project my voice very far.  Is it old age?  I’m not used to speaking to many people since my retirement and certainly not with the same frequency and intensity as when I was at work.  You said it was pollution, but I’ve changed my living arrangements since then.  What’s more, I’m not allowed any pets, so there’s no cat or dog hair tickling my nose, yet my condition remains the same.  It could be the oesophagus.’

‘Careful.  If you start reading up on health issues, you’ll convince yourself you’ve got one.  Do you cough up blood?’

‘No.’

‘Or catarrh?  Drink lots of milk?’

‘No, not since the regulation half-pint bottles of school milk we’d glug down at break after the war.  I just try to expectorate the irritation but can’t.’

‘I must confess I have the same problem.’

‘Yes, you told me last year.’

‘I could send you to the ear, nose and throat specialist and he’ll report back to me.’

‘I have a better idea.  What about if you go to the specialist and you report back to me?’

Dr Easdown leaned back in his revolving leather bucket chair.  ‘Touche!  I see you see my ulterior motive.’ And emitted a soft chuckle.  ‘Try gargling with a pinch of salt in hot water.  That’ll be seventy-eight dollars,’ he said, looking at his watch.  ‘Just.'

                  The Avenue Garden Reminisced

But the promise of November’s finely turned and combed soil, so earthy dark-chocolate, would have all but dried out in February.  Even the super-abundant silver beet would be flagging in the relentless heat and humidity, its white stalks now streaked with a seeping red line and its sheeny dark green leaves shot-holed by caterpillars, snails and slugs.  The broccoli plants would yield several tightly bunched florets even as their leaves were withered grey by clusters of white aphids.  Hardy lettuce varieties would still be edible for a few more weeks before turning rubbery and grotesquely tall and run to seed, if the new Chinese owners bothered to water them.  Talk was that the purchasers got the old place dirt cheap, would rent it out and rake in an easy fortune.  Maxwell was biting his lip at the memory of deserting his beloved trees – those sturdy old arbors out front and three modest camellias peeking from denser foliage with their spanking white and pink flowers, turning orangey when they mouldered on the damp ground.  No longer could he tame their inexorable growth with clippers extended or risk toppling off a ladder.  His strength and confidence and appetite for the task were shot.  Tree surgeons were necessary, but he couldn’t bear to witness the lopping of limbs and hacking of boles and buzzing whine of relentless teeth.  The upper branches had been tangling unchecked with power lines for years. 

Still he missed the garden, just walking out the back door onto the lawn and picking a fresh cos lettuce and Tom Thumb tommies for lunch, the scent of onion grass and lavender, so much so that he had to remind himself of why he’d moved from The Avenue.  One factor was Plumb’s ghastly discovery with stifled whistle through his teeth, the muttered exclamation, ‘O, Christ!’ and his growly response to Maxwell’s anxious ‘What’s up?’ from the lounge: ‘You don’t want to know.’ 

‘I’d rather you told me,’ Maxwell replied, his voice catching the suspicion in his throat.

‘See this,’ said Plumb, who’d punched a hole in the wall in the L-shaped passage to locate the pipe that fed water to the bathroom.  ‘Notice anything about the clagging?’

Maxwell stared at the tight-bound black casing.  With sinking sensation, ‘Don’t tell me it’s asbestos.’

‘It is asbestos, right enough.’

‘O god, no.’ His eyes screwed tight with a fuffed-out grimace.  ‘That’s dreadful.  What the hell am I supposed to do now?’

‘For starters, not panic.  I’ve seen hundreds of old houses where indoor pipes are wrapped round with asbestos.  That’s as long as we don’t disturb it or cause it to flake, and we don’t need to.  Now I know where the bugger is, I can seal up this hole.  Sorry I’ve made a mess of your wall.’ 

                  Politicking

There was a message on Maxwell’s answering machine:  ‘This is your president speaking, . . . err Warwick Holman.  I wonder if you’d mind calling me back.’

Maxwell slumped down onto the settee in a tizz.  ‘Oh no.  He’s going to ping me for riding my bike round the underground car park at an ungodly hour in the morning.  Or putting some washing out to dry on the balcony.  Or not using the fan over the hotplate.’

They met in the lounge, Warwick ushering him to a three-seat settee before opening the conversation.  Somewhat corpulent but big-boned, dignified in his navy blue blazer and tie and sheeny silver hair, he held office with warm presence, confident behind a microphone, easy on the ear.  ‘Maxwell, your name keeps cropping up as someone who should bring fresh ideas to the table.  I suppose you’ve thought of nominating for the residents committee.’

‘Actually, I hadn’t, Warwick.  It’s a privilege to serve, I know, but I’ve only been in residence a couple of months.’

‘I appreciate that, but it’s felt, and not just by me, that you’re the sort of chap who could make a valuable contribution, who could make a difference.’

‘That’s very flattering, but I doubt it.  I’ve a poor track record on committees.  In designing a horse, we’d come up with a camel.’  He sniggered nervously.  ‘I always agreed with everyone just to keep the peace.’

‘I’ll be frank.  I envisage you in the role of editor of the newsletter.  You must admit it badly needs brightening up.’

‘To be honest, I’ve scarcely looked at it.  I glimpsed a list of forthcoming events and dates and reminders that residents shouldn’t bully staff into administering their drugs.’

‘Precisely.  And you’d be just the man to lift it out of its boring mediocrity.’

‘Heavens, Warwick, you’ve got more faith in me than I have myself.’

‘I know I’ve made the right choice.  I need someone reliable to be my right hand.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re the new editor of the newsletter.’

Maxwell swallowed hard.  ‘No, no, I couldn’t accept such an offer, Warwick.  With respect, I just haven’t settled and need more time to myself.  Thanks anyway.’

‘Now let’s not be too hasty.  Sleep on it.  Otherwise you’ll regret missing out.’

Whatever happened to Independent Living, Twilight Living’s slogan?  And what’s in it for him?

                  On the Fourth Floor 
                    

It took Maxwell two minutes nineteen seconds to stride from the last apartment at the dead-end corner of the east wing to the dead-end corner of the last apartment on the west wing.  On wet-weather days Duncan in his wheelchair might take three minutes twenty-nine seconds.

Charmian was explaining to Maxwell outside the west lift:  ‘We old girls have a lot of trouble with joints.  I’ve had my finger joints and shoulder joints and knee joints all replaced by metal plates.  So when the water is tepid in the pool, swimming becomes excruciating.  Like if you put a bone and a piece of metal in the fridge.  When you take them out, one is much cooler.  Lower the water temperature by one degree and I’ll notice it.  Lower it by two and it’s useless for my arthritis.  Sometimes I steal down to the pool at ten o’clock at night to immerse myself in the spa.  I’m in that much pain.  After you’ve been used to 36 to 38 degrees in the spa for nine years, it comes as a huge shock.  It’s infuriating what these cheapskates will do.  Bloody management!’      

Lena from Zurich always wore a cheery, dimpled smile and spouted bursts of warm feelings in her lubricious Germanic accent:  ‘Add life to years; not years to life’ was her mantra.  She walked arm in arm with a tall, almost silent, slow-moving figure of a husband, Gordon, who would prop every few metres.  His bowel condition cried out for a hospital bed.

She loved to paint whenever she could.  But having a large extended family didn’t make the pursuit of her goal easy.  Recently diagnosed for macula degeneration, she was still coming to terms with the fact that portrait painting was beyond her now.  Outside her apartment hung her painting of the Town Hall opposite Chiltern Towers.  Thin, straggly, bare-leaved branches spread like arthritic veins across the white-washed façade with its splendid arches and colonnades and French empire domes and hexagonal crowns with iron railings about the Australian flags atop.  The normally busy major intersection at Chiltern Hill transmogrified into a pale blue wash devoid of traffic; instead there were Lowry-sized people in active poses and bright-coloured clothes:  dog-walkers, girl sitting on a bench, man reading a newspaper; a group of pedestrians chatting.

A white ground in many of her works that climbed up the walls of her three-bedroom apartment often flashed her back to memories of skiing in the Jura Mountains after the war.  In her mind she was already composing twin mountain peaks of ghostly white, the higher peak emerging from the flank of the former, like the interlocking grey-slated eaves of many Chiltern mansions; with fir trees represented by dabs of chevrons pointing a meandering path to their summits.  From the floor of the steep valley soared a bush, burning incandescent gold flames from its stubby branches, reminiscent of a stylized menorah that one might find as decorative pattern impressed on ancient earthenware lamps.

                  Trivial Time

When Sandra pinned up in all three lifts an invitation for residents to enjoy a fun game of Trivial Pursuit, Maxwell was in two minds.  His self-confidence was so low that he needed something to hang his hat on.  He prided himself on his knowledge of History, Literature and Sport, but would be abysmal on Entertainment, especially soapies and pop music post-Elvis.  A long-skirted Veronica scurried in five minutes late with a breathless apology, white hair straggling beneath a black beret.  She had the nervous habit of whispering, ‘I’m not sure, but . . .’ and sliding her answers towards Maxwell, as if they were classified documents.  He scrupulously wished to dredge up his own answers which he shielded behind a palm and ignored the hint.  It wasn’t long before he realized that in spite of her self-doubt, she was rather a canny biddy.  Whereas Maxwell stumbled over the real name of Bob Dylan and the capital of Brazil, Veronica, sharp as a tack, whispered, ‘I don’t know, but is it Robert Zimmerman?  Is it?  Oh do tell! . . . Brasilia, but I could be wrong.’  Then when she declared that Elizabeth Taylor’s Oscar in 1966 was awarded for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,  ‘But I never saw the film’, Maxwell, who had attended both play and film countless times and, what’s more, relished their snidey baiting and game-playing, was striking his forehead with the heel of his hand.  What once was oh so familiar had simply vanished from his synapses.  Thanks to Veronica’s commendable recall, their team won a Mars bar each.

                  Noel

‘It was about fifteen years ago that I noticed these little lumps of dead skin, like warts.  Seemed unimportant at the time.  Turned out I needed a skin graft on my scalp - skin cancer!  After the operation I had to wear a turban for a couple of weeks.  I looked like the Elephant Man.  The skin was taken from my right thigh.  You’ve probably noticed the gentle rolls of implanted skin on my scalp.  At least, the redness on my leg is already fading.  When we go out my wife is always reminding me, ‘Have you got your hat?’  Nowadays even in winter I always wear a hat.  In our youth no one ever told us to beware the sun.  If you got burned or blistered, the discomfort would only last two or three days max.  You might put some calamine lotion on and laugh it off.  Now I regularly go and get these spots burnt off.’

Each resident of the Village has the right to be involved in the social, physical and sporting activities offered to residents.

                                                      A Charter of Residents’ Rights and Responsibilities

Never a morning person, Maxwell at Chiltern Towers would rise at 5.30 – so keen was he to sustain his exercise regimen – enjoy the sweet/bitter half-grapefruit and two slices of toast and honey and slurp through a double portion of seriously hot coffee.  Forty minutes later, all the lights having surged full on, he emerged from the lift into the underground car park and was cruising on his mountain bike, then three minutes later in half-lights and dark extremities.  This was an ideal venue in summer because the Independent Living extractor fans blasted refreshingly cold air, whereas he was compelled to muffle up in winter.  Fizzing over stains of dirty grey concrete offered stability and renewed confidence after the operation, compared to the jarring potholes that had befallen more than one resident in nearby streets.  In fact, he came to relish that matinal loop round the classy new cars, mostly grey, several white, some black, quite unlike his own small burnt orange Kia.  Soon he realized that the rare residents who chanced to discern the mad upstart in the gloom would not dob him in to management as long as he secreted himself with bike behind a pillar and listened out for the thud of the lift.  Then Ross would bang down his case of empty Cabinet Merlot bottles for recycling or Oliver would drive away for a round of golf or Sylvia in black leathers on her motorbike would rev up for work.  There still remained the possibility that he’d skittle some unfortunate oldie who’d suddenly ghost out from behind a pillar to unlock his vehicle.  One complaint to management would surely terminate his underground quest to regain fitness.

                   Hello, Possums

The monthly residents meeting for June held the inmates in a state of apprehension.  They would be asked to accept the annual budget with a show of hands.  Not a few would seek reassurance from Audie’s muscular arm before they committed themselves.  There were dark mutterings about duckshovers and finaglers.

Shuffling through the minutes, the president of the residents committee, Warwick Holman, was quite chipper:  ‘I’ve just come off the interchange bench after a short procedure, so just bear with me.’

‘Was it a colonoscopy?’ Maxwell wondered.  ‘I’d heard he’d got shingles.’

The manager, Maeve Warren, reminded everyone to consult the Advanced Care Plan pack on the notice board before proceeding with the main business on the agenda.  She had warned in May that the budget would be tough, very tough.  In front of her own top brass from the City, she was surprisingly frank and pitched her tone at a mix of self-pity and tough decision-making.  ‘I was cut down by the imminent rise in the cost of electricity.  I was cut down further by the introduction of the carbon tax.  We are also looking into savings in our own consumption; for example, replacing down lights with LED lights and converting the swimming pool to gas-generated heating.  Even so, we are striving to keep the annual CPI increase to four per cent.  We do appreciate that everyone’s doing it tough.’

The treasurer of the residents finance committee, Dick Bellchambers, declared that the king-hit would come from insurance, what with the natural disasters in Australia and overseas, such as the tsunami in Japan, floods in Queensland, bush fires in Victoria, all of which contributed to the hefty increase in premiums.  ‘Need I go on?  We have arranged for an energy audit.  We might turn the exhaust extractor fans off in both underground car parks, depending on the levels of carbon monoxide.  We are looking at buying electricity in bulk, then charging residents with a discount.  Another worry is the heated pool, which is expensive to maintain, more so since it is under-utilised.  However, it is a thumping good asset for marketing.’

‘I now call upon the various representatives to give their sectional reports,’ intoned the president.  ‘Firstly, our evergreen honorary garden supervisor.’

Kelvin:  ‘The garden is our frontispiece and a first impression to those buying leases here.  Our gardener, Amy, has been attacking the acapanthus with gusto but they are weeds, so take a dickens of a job to root out.  If we planted diosmas in their stead, small hedges with masses of pink flowers, that would cost five thousand dollars.  Currently, we are experiencing an invasion of possums, so I am appealing to residents for donations of stockings in which we would pack blood and bone to deter them.’

Gerard:  ‘On the catering side, it’s important to regard dining here in Chiltern Towers not simply as a means to make a profit, but to see it more as a social occasion.  Now I’m something of a numbers man.  We shoot to get one hundred meals a week.  But we need twenty or more diners each evening to keep the restaurant viable and maintain a strong communal spirit.  That may be pie in the sky, but I know I speak for all that a strong sense of community and mutual support mitigates against loneliness and depression.’

Albie:  ‘There’s only been one item of correspondence this month, the Village Retirees Newsletter.  By the by, my computer has suffered a major heart attack and has to go into intensive care.’

Amid reluctant chuckles, ‘Thank you, gentlemen.  Are there any questions or comments from the floor?’ asked the president.  Half a dozen limp hands were raised. ‘Henry?’

‘The elephant in the room is the carpet.  The watermarks are getting worse.’

‘Can we get notification of the mail delivery to prevent residents going up and down in the lifts ad nauseam?  Not only does it waste precious time but also electricity.  Or should we all stay in our apartments till four o’clock in the arvo?’

‘There’s some anxiety about the placement of the lounge furniture.  It’s never put back in the right position and it’s far too symmetrical.  Couches, for a start, should be moved closer to the hearth.  Can we please set up a committee on furniture placement?’

‘Possums are a real problem, eating the magnolias and camellias.  Now I was a crack marksman with a Lee Enfield and I suggest . . .’

‘There’ll be no rifle shooting in the Towers while I’m the manager here,’ pronounced Maeve, in her most defiant stentorian tone, brought to her feet with a scraping of chair.

‘Poss Off is your answer,’ blurted Cyril.

‘Beg yours?’ someone queried.

One lady in the second row instantly bent over double, the only apparent threat to the decorum of the meeting, apart from the obvious gleam in the president’s eye, and the slightest of bemused smiles from the partially deaf.

                  First Floor

The apartments on the first floor afforded a balcony sufficient to place a couple of recliners and a few pots of flowers.  Those incoming residents with small dogs for pets usually preferred the first floor, although a furtive black cat was occasionally spotted on the second.  Furniture removalists, sick of watching their step on emerging from lifts at retirement villages and inadvertently squashing dog litter into the carpet, sang the praises of Chiltern Towers for the scarcity of doggy doo in its passageways. 

One morning at about eight-thirty Maxwell was skimming The Age in the lounge when his attention was diverted by bouts of heavy coughing that signalled a pulmonary problem.  He craned round at a gaffer he didn’t recognise, whose lop-sided gait passing the raised beds of lilies, a mosaic of white, yellow and mauvish pink, suggested he had ticked off at least eighty years, save that he was regaled in white from top to toe, sporting a cap, slicker, trousers and tennis shoes.  He was carrying a tennis racquet in its cover and a shortbread biscuit nicked from the tea bar.  Good on him!  Sometimes I wonder if I shall even make it to three score and ten.

Little did Maxwell realize that the foursome playing on court that day could only swing their racquet from a stationary position, relying partly on placement of shot but mainly on devilish cunning use of spincunning use of spin.

Every day Amrit would prepare macaroni with curried lentils or chickpeas with chapatti for lunch, then fish, Swede and parsnips for tea.  In memory of his late wife’s recipes, but the former delicacy never tasted anything like the spicy-hot offering of marriage.  Her much-lamented departure must have brought out his mongrel alter ego, for soon after he began lobbying all the ladies to reject Audie’s proposal before the residents committee to install a pool table in the recreation room.  Or switching on the plasma screen in the lounge to listen to jazz and refuse to switch it off when he shuffled off to the business centre or fell asleep, head back on the armchair, mouth yawing wide open at a twisted angle.  Sometimes you could hear the strains of Bollywood music emitting from one of the two computers housed in the business centre, drowning out the traditional classics relayed in the lounge, such as Romeo and Juliet, Pomp and Circumstance, O silver moon.  Or he’d shamble through the lounge, whistling a semblance of Beautiful Dreamer in utterly the wrong warbling key and ask you to complain to the office about stroppy resis turning off his soothing smoky jazz that made such a refreshing change from the predictable repetition of hoary classical chestnuts.  In a kind gesture, he recommended to Maxwell a visit to the podiatrist, as he was finding his own treatment for hardening toenails difficult to cut – rub olive oil over them to soften them – was no longer having any effect.  Thanks to Amrit’s constant griping to the office about ‘duty of care’, management had installed a sliding glass window in front of the office desk to keep persistent whingers at bay.

‘How are you, Amrit?’

‘O, muddling through,’ was his invariable reply.

‘There’s a locus of disease in the apartments around mine,’ Amrit was fond of saying, buttonholing some helpless resi ensconced in a wheelchair trying to read The Age in peace in the lounge.  ‘I’m a liver degenerate but my respiratory problems began with Marg’s cigarette smoke eating through our plasterboard walls.  You can smell it in your clothes.  And I’m not the only one to suffer.  Esme claims that Dieryk has been going downhill ever since they moved in the other side of Marg.  She’s toxic, I’m telling you.  I complained to the manager.  A retirement village shouldn’t tolerate smoking, I said.  Maeve bit my head off, no doubt anxious about the decline in sales of the apartments.  She corralled me up against the lifts and warned me not to alarm the other residents.  She would install a fan in Marg’s apartment.  But a fan’s no good.  It only compresses the fumes.  You need an outlet to allow the smoke to escape outside.’

                  At the West Lift

‘No, she’s adamant she’s not having any chemo.’

‘So how’s she going to manage the pain?  Has she got a strong threshold?’

‘That I don’t know.  Ah, here’s the lift.  Catch you later.’

‘Greetings, Victoria,’ chimed Maxwell, somewhat embarrassed.  ‘Please excuse the dressing gown.  Going up to the fourth floor?’ 

‘Yes. Thanks, darl.  My neighbour doesn’t like to be seen in her dressing gown.  I think she looks very nice in her dressing gown.’

‘I’ve just been swimming a few laps.’

‘I can never go swimming because of my hair.  You don’t have that problem,’ she said, pointedly looking up at the rapid recession of Maxwell’s hairline.  ‘I have to get my hair done every Saturday morning in Toorak Village.  I could just pop round the corner where I go to my chiropodist or the salon next to that lovely old button shop, but it’s hard to kick the habit when you’ve been doing it for as long as you can remember.’

‘Is it true that your toenails grow as tough as rhinoceros horn as you get older?’  Maxwell was still chivvying about Amrit’s advice.

‘I’m deaf as a post because I can’t wear my hearing aid to the hairdresser’s.  You’ll have to excuse me.’  Her beautifully kempt hair swept up into a big wave of silvery pearl that matched her pink cardy and that pale blue dress she wistfully but proudly remembered getting into twenty-five years ago.  ‘How are you settling in?’ she asked, as was her custom during his first six months.

‘I’m enjoying my constitutional every morning,’ replied Maxwell, who truth to tell was decidedly unsettled by his move to the Towers.  ‘Ah, here we are at the fourth.  After you.’

‘You’d be good at walking,’ casting a keen eye over his long, wiry body.  ‘I’m not much good at anything.  The only thing I’m good at is looking after my husband and he’s ninety-seven.’

Who was invariably sighted from mid-morning in the lounge, sitting myopically bent over at the end of the jigsaw table, Reg, poring over the share prices in a state of dystopian despair, the tip of his nose almost touching the page.  Other times, though, stuttering from the lift, recognizing Maxwell in green dressing gown, a beach towel draped over an arm, his mouth would break open into a huge gummy grin and without saying a word he’d simulate the butterfly stroke with a humping of the shoulders and double round-arm movement.  Or in the lounge, realizing that his wife had snaffled the business pages, grinned hugely and with a nod in her direction, would mutter, ‘She Who Must Be Obeyed.’  Tee-hee-hee.

‘I’m still having trouble,’ Maxwell was telling Victoria, ‘gauging the cooking time for dishes in the oven with those on the hot plates.  I burnt the fish last week and the smoke alarm went off.  I was growing ulcers just standing helpless in a right old tizz.’  Maxwell usually mocked himself when anyone praised him.

‘It takes time.  About five months.  You need to get out of your apartment at least once a day and enjoy a bit of company.  I can’t go anywhere without my earrings,’ she said.  ‘I always remember to put one in, though.’

‘Costs four hundred bloomin’ dollars to clean yer oven,’ said Reg.  Tee-hee-hee.

                  The Pool

Methodically, he’d been working his skinny body with a fair degree of rigour during his sixth decade, but was obliged to let lapse that drive before and after his two operations.  Now having been given the all-clear by his surgeon to recommence some ‘gentle exercise’, he was experiencing a change of attitude towards physical exertion.  No longer was it a matter of punishing himself or a crusade to gain optimal fitness, particularly when he couldn’t achieve the distance or time he’d set himself.  Cycling twenty laps round the underground car park in thirty minutes got the endorphins jumping.  Then hour-long walks at the crack of dawn in chilly conditions of four degrees instilled him with wild joy; not a defiance against the elements but an embrace of being touched by the rawness of nature.  As his stride quickened with a jaunty swagger, rendering him breathless on the relentless climb back up Chiltern Hill, it was a sensation more than the rush of endorphins which elevated his mood to a kind of meditative flying, or, dare he acknowledge it, a warm glow of contentment, a sense of satisfaction from the striving, even if he was lurching with sore fatigue or his torso bent into the wind.  For the first time in his life he felt an acceptance of his body, scarred, starred, bunch-backed and blotchy, that his mind and spirit inhabited without being critical of its shortcomings, blown away by the release of energy, that special lightness of being and euphoric mood that made him more open-hearted, forgiving and uninhibitedly smiling to all and sundry, without having to listen to the chattering mind.

As a single sexa, Maxwell would frequently take a plunge in the evening when the pool was deserted and couples tended to linger together after dinner.  The few singles, mostly widows, octos and nonas, would nod off in front of their digital teles till nine o’clock, a little electric heater warming the poor circulation in their snugly slippered feet.

Maxwell relished the pool best at night:  the quiet, the dark viscous green of the flat surface of water, stippled planes of shadow – he wouldn’t switch on the lights, but contented himself with the automatic lights dampened that lent a sylvan green enchantment.  And when he eased himself down into the water, the gentle surface ripple of his entry released a mirrored wave in shadow surging along the side of the pool like a cock’s comb and a constant shimmer of chemicals in the form of amoeba blobs jigging half a length before dissolving.

When the water was cold, increasingly these times with talk of cost-cutting measures hanging over the residents and evidently the manager too, Maxwell would fling himself with a deep gasp into an ungainly free-style to warm his body, rather than shudder as cold-seeming water permeated his eardrums with the metronomic double-arm backstroke that completed the return lap.

In the extra humidity of late evening, he liked to cast his eyes about its fifteen-metre length while taking slow, deep breaths:  aquatic dumbbells blue and white striped; noodles of red, blue, green, yellow and mauve; recliner chairs in diagonally opposite corners; two potted plants in vases of pebbles; two lifebuoys like giant Polo mints, a red band on each quadrant; a first aid box; two emergency pendants encased in small plastic boxes fastened inside the pool; five cards in a plastic case on the railed side of the pool, containing diagrams illustrating exercises for residents:  buttock stretch, groin stretch, hamstring stretch, straight leg to side, and squats; four reproductions in burnished red tones of sandy outback Australia in rectilinear frames on the windowless end wall. 

Above the spa resided the Emergency glass box with red button.

Best place for it, thought Maxwell, after Audie had warned about the danger of staying immersed for longer than ten minutes in the spa, allowing your blood to heat up.  After which you were a sure-fire candidate for heart attack.  Fortunately, the four-sided tub automatically stopped jetting after this time, but Maxwell took no chances for the next fortnight, lying on one of the four ledges for barely two minutes, putting the frighteners on himself by imagining his blood bubbling up to the boil and feeling slightly faint, as if about to pass out; even imagining himself flat out on the decking, stone dead, one bold dead eye staring up like a fish on a monger’s grey-marbled slab, before scurrying to haul himself out just in time.

                  Audie

One of the original foundation residents eleven years ago, Audie Backus wistfully recalls those early years when dinners were characterized with lively discussion, when a whole new cluster of strangers were flung together and fed off one another’s company.  One of the office staff used to bake fresh scones or pikelets for afternoon tea, which became something of an institution at Chiltern.  Over the years the numbers for the restaurant steadily declined, partly due to the expense but mainly because the conversation no longer buzzed.  Ever a keen listener to sound out new residents, Audie usually advised them how he would have tackled their situations differently.  ‘But I don’t want to tell you how to run your life,’ he would add.  As someone who described himself as ‘a glass half-full’, Audie had become increasingly resentful of his wife who saw the glass half-empty.  ‘My wife exasperates me.  I’m always telling Joy to get out of our apartment more and do her own thing.  It’s driving me nuts.’

A native of Arizona, Audie, was amongst the first of the old guard to broach the hesitant new chums:  ‘I always like to keep busy.  Otherwise time hangs heavy.’  In the gym the American would start on his weight-lifting routine at the 5 kg dumb-bells.  Solemnly lifting and raising them above his head for eight seconds, holding for four, and elbows locked bringing them up to his chest for eight seconds, holding, then stretching them behind for eight seconds, kneeling on a bench.  He relished telling the story of how after one exercise session he was feeling strangely light-headed.  His GP rushed him to hospital for some checks, where he was found to be suffering from cardiovascular heart disease.  As a result, he was instructed to stay in hospital for a week for tests, exercises, medications.  His reward was an insurance policy-paid defibrillator implanted in his upper chest.

‘Here, you feel this.’  He’d snapped up Maxwell’s hand and placed it firmly on the upper right side of his chest.  Maxwell could feel a hard, lumpy object.  ‘Have you heard of a defibrillator before?’

‘No, never.’

‘At week’s end I was still at risk, so they installed one of these little gizmos,’ he said, hand on heart.  ‘Have you any idea how much defibrillators cost?  No?  Really?  Over one hundred thousand bucks!  Boy, am I glad I’ve got insurance cover.’

And here he was, in his mid-seventies, leading a bike group of seniors some twenty-five strong, the octogenarians preferring a motorised bike for hills and weather.  He liked nothing better than tooting a salutary blast on his alpenhorn if the handlebar bell proved ineffective when a parking motorist might suddenly door him.  The next ride required setting off from Chiltern to Elwood bayside via the back streets, catching a train to the City and enjoying lunch in the chow hall on Pier 45.

Audie was a systematics can-do man and indulged in tirelessly explaining his own take on various systems:  ‘See, what you do is, with your dishwasher, you turn on the rinse cycle for two minutes to remove only the gunge, then stop.  After six days or four, depending on whether you’ve got a batch of half a dozen cups or plates, you can put every dirty item through the full rinse cycle.  So yer see, you won’t have to wash up every six days.  It’s really quite simple.’

The gym had the feel of a murky underground dungeon, though situated on the first floor, with half a dozen exercise machines, a plasma screen and an armoury of many different-sized pairs of weights in neat rows on racks.  Audie had designed and pinned up posters of exercises for the different machines, but management had ordered him to take them down.

‘Doesn’t insurance just blow you away?  Twilight Living don’t want to be held accountable if you’re dope enough to drop a fifteen-pounder on your noggin.’

Audie was the only resident who possessed the tact to tell Amrit, just quietly, that he should change and wash his clothes more often.  Admittedly, the Indian was a familiar sight shuffling about in the same loose garb of brown robe, baggy wide pants and sandals. 

‘Are you telling all these good people I smell?’ suddenly burst out in the lounge behind a flailing of arms.  Dougal jolted awake, but the four ladies at the jigsaw table and three playing mahjong kept their heads bowed as if they’d heard nothing.

‘Sackcloth and ashes,’ mumbled Dieryk.

‘Do us all a favour, Amrit.  Just change your clothes just once in a while, huh?’

‘Are you sure it’s not the colour of my skin, you want to change?’

‘I haven’t got a problem with the colour of your skin.’  Then suddenly snappy:  ‘And don’t you play the racist card with me.’

‘Then stop all your baiting and bullying, man!’

Bunching the reins in tightening grip, Audie replied calmly, ‘Man, you’re on the nose,’

whilst the warmth of his pale blue Viking eyes glinted over and would remain icy for weeks whenever the ponderous scrape and shuffle of Amrit’s feet alerted him. 

                  In the Twinkling

‘I was doing what you’re doing,’ Lester was relaying to Maxwell, ‘jogging, cycling, swimming, but one night about four years ago I fell asleep while watching TV. When I woke up I couldn’t for the life of me see out of my right eye.  I hit the panic button, rang my GP.  He took one squiz at me and declared my eye had haemorrhaged.  But because of the delay in double-checking, much worse was to follow.  He started messing about with the eye, so by the time he realized it was no ordinary haemorrhage I’d got a distorted macula.  To top that misfortune, my wife broke her ankle in China.  No sooner had she got over the operation than her GP found a lump.  Breast cancer.  We were gutted.  Our whole way of life changed drastically in the twinkling of an eye.’

                  Mug at the Window 

The security factor became crucial in Maxwell’s decision to leave The Avenue, just as it was for most of the widows in Chiltern Towers, who shuddered at the notion of being left alone in a double-storey three bedroom house.  One night, lying in bed soon after the appendectomy, he happened to be facing the window.  He’d never realized how transparent the threadbare canvas blind was until that night when the neighbours’ kitchen light shone its pool of amber onto the roof of his car parked in the driveway adjacent to his bedroom window.

All of a sudden the fuzzy details of a face materialized on the canvas and loomed closer before turning past his line of vision and on up the driveway.  Maxwell was baffled.  Must be one of the new mature-age student neighbours I haven’t chanced to meet, but what’s he . . . What the . . .?  A dark burly shape passed back again, right up against the window, no full-frontal face this time, turning away by the back of the car.

The penny dropped with the force of hammering at his heart.  Struggling with covers to get out of bed, so trembly was he, he threw on his dressing gown.  Should he turn on the bedside light or the porch light to scare the blighter?  In the dark, still shaking, he couldn’t rattle open the deadlock on the front door, then frantic couldn’t find the key.  Finally, he’d wrenched the door open and in bare feet skipped down the steps and rushed to the foot of the driveway.  About to put his head round the hedge to detect anyone scooting up or down the pavement, he baulked.  Behind him, both front and security doors were yawning wide open and lit up.  Some bod or two bogans could at this very moment be sneaking round the back of the house and grab him before he could regain the front door.  Suppose the scum was lurking the other side of the hedge?  And what weapon was he, were they, holding aloft?  A wrench?  A hammer?  Metal twine for a necklace job?

Striving to fix the image on his retina . . . the blurred face belonged to a man in his mid-thirties, broad-shouldered and stockily built.  Maxwell had rung triple O.  Which direction had the guy taken?  Maxwell didn’t know.  Perhaps he should’ve tailed him. ‘Just stay indoors, sir, and don’t try to be a hero.’

The intruder returned at least half a dozen times between ten and eleven o’clock at night.  Maybe there were other times too, when Maxwell wasn’t in bed or not staring at the window.  Consequently, he would lie in bed hour after hour when the neighbours’ kitchen light lit up half his bedroom, partly in dread and partly in the hope of venting his anger somehow, getting a crick in his neck for his pains, fearing to miss the dark presence loom closer as the man stole round the near side of his car, thereby facing him for a brief moment.

Restless over many nights, Maxwell heard outside or inside his own head faint rustling in the long grass and leaves.  In anger he couldn’t leave well alone.  An idea sprang to mind, but if his ruse failed, he might get his windows smashed and the front door staved in.  But he’d show these hoods that he knew what they were up to, that he’d spied them wrenching the door handle of his car to break in.

He rigged up a trip wire with an old jumper lead tied six inches above the driveway.  It ran a metre behind the boot of his car from a metal picket used to hold back the orchid stems from tumbling over the driveway to the bole of a thorny-branched tree hard by the fence.  The trip wire was scarcely visible in the patch of black shadow just beyond the arc of amber outside his bedroom window.

And waited, staring at the window’s threadbare canvas.  One night his ears pricked up at a scuffling sound beneath his window, a dark horizontal shadow jerking as if stumbling forward.  With adrenalin surging, he sprang out of bed with the deepest darkest snarlingest growl, the blood-curlingest howl, the loudest, longest growl cum howl he could muster.  Till even the male student neighbour in pyjamas pulled aside the curtain in the kitchen opposite.

The wolfman slumped back on his bed, chest thumping.  The recidivist never returned.

A gang of four had broken into several homes along two blocks in The Avenue those past three months, sometimes twice at the same house, carrying off TV sets, computers, even one five year old’s money box.  ‘The ratsos must be in league with the suppliers,’ one distraught neighbour surmised, whose back door was hacked open with his own axe left out in the yard.  ‘Don’t leave any garden tools lying around in the garden,’ the police had warned.

                  Albie

Albie had an appointment to see the knife man to remove some crud blocking a heart valve.  He was reaching up to a shelf with his left arm when all of a sudden he experienced a wobbling sensation and felt faint. 

‘Will you have a scar?’ asked Beatrice.

‘The zipper,’ explained Albie, almost slurping.  ‘From here to here,’ carving a vertical line from the upper chest to the belly button.  ‘I’m more worried that I can’t fly to London for the Olympics now.  I’ve got two tickets for men’s hockey, but I shan’t be able to use them.’

‘Let’s do some cycling.  Sing out if you want two noodles.’

Bulky Albie was physically incapable of putting two noodles behind his back and beneath his arms.  The red and yellow sausages kept jumping up behind his groping right hand and he couldn’t stretch back to grab them.  It was only when the instruction came to sit on the noodles that Albie regained his composure, briefly, before splashing backwards, spitting out a false tooth and swamping the frail and spluttering Percy.

‘We’ll have to give you a breathalyser, Albie.  Remember that you master the noodle.  Don’t let the noodle master you.’

But a couple of older or scrawnier resis struggled to put one noodle under the foot, for it would squirm and jump, making it impossible to pump that leg down and clamp it without Ben’s help.  ‘Yes, kill it if you have to,’ he beamed.

Which is where Maxwell met the struggling Daphne, embarrassed at the shallower end in front of an outlet surging hot water.  She could neither bend down nor put her foot down on the noodle.  ‘Allow me,’ he said, lowering his face to the water’s surface and forcing the noodle downward.  ‘How’s that?’

‘Thank you so much,’ she said, her youthful face a spontaneous wreath of smiles.  ‘I daren’t bend down for fear of popping one of my hips.  I’m a double hip, you see.  The ligaments are very weak, but I can put them back myself, though I have to wiggle my bottom.’

Ben was already pushing out across the water the blue and white-striped dumb-bells, Maxwell and Albie distributing them further along the chain of resis.  ‘Let’s do some stirring,’ he said, with that signature cocking of his head.  ‘Albie, you’d be good at that . . . Nice big orbit through the water with your hands, crouching down . . . Now a figure of eight . . . Now try taking one dumb-bell under one leg and over the other . . . Yes, it’s not so easy to balance.  All right, standing upright, turn your arms uppermost and bring them down into the water at 45 degrees, so you’re exercising the ulna muscle.’

‘I haven’t got one of those,’ squeaked painfully thin Elsie, pouting, utterly miffed.

                  Not quite managing Chiltern Towers 

It was a filthy morning at home in Maconochie Mansions, Kew.  ’Maeve had grounded her teenage daughter for wearing her skimpiest gear for a night on the town with her besties in the class and coming home paralytic, given a lift by some bearded weirdo in a hoodie who expected to doss down for the night.  What’s more, she’d received a snotty email from her ex who would be attending some actuarial course and couldn’t possibly take their daughter at the weekend.  At rushed breakfast, Maeve suddenly came over queasy.  It wasn’t the mug of Mocca or the toast with vegemite, but the headlines in the business section of The Age:  Developer sinks further into the mire!

Oh, shit!  I don’t believe this!  Twilight Living is struggling to refinance one loan from Mooncore and faces a write-down of thirty million dollars on its retirement village assets.  Control of the company could change hands within days.

At 8.05 Irene, one of the ERAs, an Emergency Response Assistant, had already rung her mobile from Chiltern Towers:  ‘Some of the residents are complaining that they’ve got no heating.  I’ve been up to the cooling tower.  The second boiler is not functioning.  There’s no green light.’  ‘Where’s Jurgen?’  ‘He rang in sick.’  ‘Bloody hell!  Okay, I’m on my way.  Be there in thirty-five.’

Then this:

Maeve:  Sorry I’m late.  Got held up at the level crossing at Burke.

Irene:  More bad news.  Nance was stuck in the lift last night and no one heard her screams and hammering for fifteen minutes.

Maeve:  My god!  Didn’t she press the gold emergency button?

Irene:  She claims she did.  She was terrified by all that eerie, shrill whooping.

Maeve:  But you were on duty.  You should have heard the alert in the office.

Irene:  I was doing the safety check around the pool and gym, then re-arranging the lounge furniture after dinner.

Maeve:  Holy shit!  Let’s hope she doesn’t lodge a complaint for your sake.

Irene:  (stung but cool) By the way, Maeve, you’d better take down that copy of the results of the resident survey.

Maeve:  Oh?

Irene:  States the manager has a dissatisfaction rate of fifty per cent.

Maeve:  Shit!  See to it, Irene, will you?  I’m flat out.  Change it to eighty per cent satisfaction . . . no, make that eighty-five and pin it back up.  Twilight Living should have alerted me.

Ben:  Excuse me, Maeve, could I have a word with you about the temperature of the water in the pool?

Maeve slams the door in his face.  I get really pissed off with the whingers, usually the old widows living alone, the churchy types who complain that the lift is dirty.  Of course, it’s dirty!  The removalists have been grunting in and out for the past two hours!  So two ducks have been raiding the pond for goldfish food.  What do they want me to do?  Lay on more security?  Lord love-a-duck!  O you shouldn’t put sweet biscuits out because some of us have got diabetes 2.  I sweetly remind them that we don’t force-feed anybody in any establishment I care to run.  And those bloody contractors still defying the No Smoking signs opposite the lifts in basements one and two.  O and the staff toilet’s blocked again.  ‘Jurgen!’

‘Now come on, girl, get a hold of yourself!

                  Railing at Management

Ben, the mild-mannered and quietly spoken diplomat, decides not to stir the waters till The Lady Maeve’s storm has abated, then wisely makes an appointment.  At which she apologises.  Once again he gently but firmly puts the case that even in times of economic downturn, the pool needed to be at least 26 degrees for his aquarobics class.  Besides, the temperature stated on the sign poolside guarantees 26 to 28 degrees.

Maeve:  But I did warn that stringent methods would have to be used to hold the budget to no more than the CPI increase and that pool is expensive to heat.

Ben:  I’ve had two residents, one in her eighties with a double hip operation, the other in her mid-seventies, who complained about the cold temperature in the pool and left the session ten minutes early.  As you know, several of our most senior elders are very frail and seldom get any exercise.

Maeve:  (giving a hard stare over the top of her glasses) I’m very uneasy about having fifteen residents in the pool at any one time.  That becomes a safety issue.  You shouldn’t allow more than ten.

Ben:  We really do need a second rail because fifteen is twice as many as the number we can squeeze in on the solitary rail.

Dick Bellchambers:  What made me decide to move into this village ten years ago was the swimming pool.  And now you aquarobics people want to install a second rail on the inside edge to facilitate your exercises and I say to them that the swimming pool is meant for swimming, not for therapeutic exercises.

Secondly, you’re complaining that the temperature of the water is too cold.  Frankly, I don’t like swimming in hot water.  What’s more, inserting a rail on the other side of the pool would interfere with the swimmer’s strokes, given that we can only have one person swimming at a time owing to the narrowness of the pool at the entry end with the steps.

We, the undersigned residents of Chiltern Towers who participate in the regular water aerobics exercise classes, request that our management committee fund and provide a rail on the west side of the pool similar to that already on the east side.  The reason for the request is that the number of attendees is too many for one rail.

Ben:  Maxwell, you’ll sign our request, won’t you?  It’s quite obvious we need another rail to accommodate everyone.

It wasn’t obvious to Maxwell.  Rarely did the class number fifteen in the pool.  In any case, hardly any came down to exercise out of class, so the rail might be used for a mere ten minutes per week.  Maxwell couldn’t justify a second rail.  In any case, it would interfere with his backstroke.  Then again, it was crucial for these well-intentioned elders to hold onto a rail, not struggle to keep the flat of the hand on the top of the side wall. 

The rail issue had become a political hot potato.  The treasurer of the residents finance committee chose to ignore the residents’ safety concerns in favour of his own piscine pleasure, goggled up and rolling his heavy body through the choppy water like a blubbery walrus.

One week their instructor, looking strangely grim, his breath raspy, conceded that he wasn’t well enough to conduct the class from the middle of the pool, but would stand on the decking.

‘How are you, Ben?’

‘Not too flash,’ he murmured in a subdued, croaky voice.  Reluctantly, he added, ‘I’m having a pacemaker inserted next month.’

Maxwell raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

‘Signs of the ageing process, alas,’ sighed the eighty-one year old.  Perhaps he was dwelling on the funeral of a dear friend that afternoon, who had gone downhill with frightening rapidity with motor neurone disease. ‘I’m afraid we’re all getting to the stage when . . .’ 

                  Tete a Tete in the Spa

Beatrice:  I often sleep till twelve o’clock.  I’m afraid.  What’s going to happen to us when we die?

Beryl:  I was a believer for sixty years.  Now I‘m an atheist.

Beatrice:  But aren’t you afraid?

Beryl:  No, Beat, I just live for each day.  What’s there to be afraid of?

Beatrice:  Surely there has to be something out there to believe.  I’ve grown too dependent on my family (wistfully said, as if owning up to a big mistake).  I speak to each one of my three children every day.  Living by yourself makes you selfish.  Don’t you think so?

Beryl:  All I know is, as you get older, the sense of your own mortality grows stronger.  More of your contemporaries pass away.  Yes, it can be very sad.  And scary.  But you know this is the fate shared by everyone on the planet.  Death is an integral part of life’s holy mystery.  Otherwise you’d see it as mockery, a pathetic waste, ugly stuff.  So we should honour it like the Ancients did.  Look at their sarcophagi decorated with images of creation and the life-force.  Your health, something you’ve probably taken for granted for much of your life, becomes a gift to be constantly appreciated and nurtured.  And you still enjoy aquarobics and sitting in the spa to ease your pain, don’t you?

Beatrice:  My Clem’s been going downhill ever since we came here.

                  His Former Domain on The Avenue

He tried not to remember the stolid 1940s orange-brick house he’d left behind.  But it was impossible to shut out the garden, now that he could no longer walk down the front step to twist off a mandarin or snip a ripe fejoia.  The photographer from Tallis & Haigh Real Estate had airbrushed the peeling paint from his garage in the side driveway.  Even the tangle of branches reaching into the gutters stacked tight with wadding of bird nests and leaves was made to look old-worldly charming.  Fortunately, the rectangular inset of the photo giving measurements of the property distracted, it was hoped, from the unruly sprawl of taproots and mongrel bush behind it.  Lest it be forgotten, such massing arboreal cover had kept cool the ageing prisoner within on 35 degree days until late afternoon, before the relentless sun crept round to the front verandah.

Out back, hardly a yard it was so green and hedged, the garden had always relieved the the isolation that he mostly enjoyed and the opportunity to do odd jobs:  weeding the vegie patch; tending the self-seeding silver beets upon which he dined almost every evening for the iron; removing the diseased black leaves and dead twigs from the rose bushes that straggled way above his head, white, pink and yellow petals; the purplish spears of asparagus, scarcely visible against the shadow-line of the back fence, pushing up shyly; raspberries coming with a sudden profusion of leaves that bowed their canes over wired-up pickets, hiding much of the harvest from the birds; the sclerotic plum tree, still bearing its juicy wares and sharp mauve skin on its frail fractious sticks mottled with verdigris and targeted by red-throated honey-eaters and cheeky myna scavengers.

Remember the excitement of spring two decades before the tipping point of irreversible climate change when with regular and abundant rainfall, he’d cradle bulwarks of zucchini for hollowing out and stuffing with peppers. 

This won’t do, all this going back.

                  Audie’s Daydream

Heck, how I remember that wild-eyed mustang!  Name of  Maddy.  What a jittery critter!  I saddled her up and hey there what is this?  She’s lighting out one hellaballoo.  I never did kick-start her and she’s tossing her head and frisky, sparring and a-spurring leaps and bounds.  In those days I was just a knock-down kid, a cocky cowpoke, a stetson son of a gun but sudden death on horses.  See, I could ride a bit.  Reckoned I could tell tack from taco.  Didn’t need no geeing up.  Gee whizzerkins!

We was approaching a fork in the trail, but Maddy at breakneck speed takes this bend of Bolt Street at sheer right angles, see, while I went a-sailing north through the air.  Throws me in the scrub and dust she does and makes a home run, so I was obliged to ride back by the marrowbone stage.  Yes sirree!

 

An’ I was sure damn lucky wearing a goddam helmet, for I was real mussed up, straight from the shoulder, bruised black and blue.  I thought I had the cinch on her.  Jayzus Christ!  I was crackwise, almost crackskull!  Who said I was a control freak?  Huh, Maddy.  Que bronco loco!

Dougal

Maxwell had bearded Dougal in Glenmackie Road.  This gentle old man was walking his pusher slowly, hugging the inside of the pavement, his reflection stalking the window displays.  About lunch-time at Chiltern Towers he would come down to the lounge and nurse a newspaper in his lap, reading with undivided concentration, scarcely looking up, least of all on Monday afternoons, Ladies Catch-up, when he strategically moved to the back wall, well away from the gals’ encampment of armchairs and settees and tray of cream biscuits.

‘How are you faring, Dougal?’

Long pause:  ‘Oh, the bits and pieces are still hanging together.’

‘What are you reading these days?’

‘I’m researching Ossian.’

‘Who?  Ossian?  Good grief!  The eighteenth century Scottish poet?’

‘I might as well waste my time on him as anybody else.’

‘Just a minute:  wasn’t he the philological hoaxer?

A long pause before an uncertain, ‘I can’t remember . . . The one who was buried in Westminster Abbey.’

The old feller seldom answered any question immediately and one wondered if he’d heard or even understood, yet when he replied, always with slow deliberation, his diction was invariably refined, sometimes witty with a lacing of charm.  In fact, his cherubic face and sheeny bald scalp and staring eyes of a frightened hare put one in mind of Friar Tuck. ‘I’ll have to give it some thought,’ he said, and continued plodding down the street.

Days later Maxwell caught sight of the gentleman in his pale blue cardigan in the armchair by the glowing flicker of the electric fire, immersed in his newspaper.  ‘Hey, Dougal, how’s it going?’

Much to his surprise, the comfy nona replied, ‘I have given your homework task much thought (pause prolonged).  I tried to break up my reading into categories, such as history and . . .’

‘Good idea.’  And waited.

‘History of Language.’

‘Oh?’

‘Especially . . . especially medieval English.’

‘Oh?’  Maxwell was more astounded.  ‘The original Middle English?’

‘Oh no, I wasn’t much of a reader.  At boarding school, the head, an ex-military survivor from World War I, entrusted me at weekends with keys to the library.  That gesture was a major turning-point in my life.  I was never a scholar but one weekend I discovered the joys of Chaucer.’  He paused longer than usual, a broad grin spreading over his round face.

Maxwell pitched in with a hunch:  ‘The Miller’s Tale?’

Dougal broke into a slight but high-pitched chuckle and snort.  ‘You’ve got it.  The Miller’s Tale and The Nun’s Tale or whatever the title was . . . Every weekend I burrowed into the library and found myself a quiet corner and steadily worked through some of the ancient texts:  Dunbar . . . err . . .’

‘Robbie Burns?’

‘ . . . No, I couldn’t understand him.’

‘Have you burnt your hands, Dougal?’

‘No, it’s old age.  When you knock into something, your skin bruises very easily.’  He tugged back his sleeves to the elbow.  His puny arms were blue and black sticks discoloured a muddy yellow in patches.

‘Does it hurt?  Can you put something on it?’

‘Oh yes . . . but I’ve lost the tube.  Anyhow I gradually became interested in the evolution of the beautiful English language.’

‘Terrific.  And who’s your favourite author?’

Dougal sat mute as if he hadn’t understood the question.  Eventually:  ‘I’ve brought one of his books along.’  He looked into the basket at the front of his pusher.  ‘O dear, I’ve forgotten it.   He’s very prolific.  The presenter on . . . The Story of English.’

‘Oh, you mean Robert McCrumb?’

‘Not McCoomb . . . Good-looking bloke . . . Often on the box.’

‘Malcolm Bradbury?’

‘Yes, Bradman, that’s the fellow, Malcolm Bradman,’ he enunciated very slowly, relishing each syllable, his bold eyes glazing over, either in admiration of his media idol or pleasure that a fellow-traveller in Chiltern Towers had heard of him.

                  Chill at the Barn for Coffee and Books

The atmosphere seemed decidedly unpromising at the Barn, the regional drop-in centre for seniors.  Literary fare comprised two copies of the Herald Sun and its supplements splayed on the long table.  Maxwell introduced himself to the likely co-ordinator, Mario, who warmly invited him with a wand of his hand to tea or coffee and biscuits over by the kitchen’s serving hatch, and read the paper if he liked.  ‘We allow a few minutes leeway.’  Two women were chatting across the table in between flicking over the pages and didn’t acknowledge him, so he retreated to another table to absorb the leader headlines.

Ten minutes after the prescribed time of commencement, Maxwell ambled back to Mario’s table by the window.

‘What we do with the seniors,’ said Mario, ‘is talk about the books each of us has borrowed from Chiltern’s library.  This month’s theme is romance, but it’s very laid-back.  In next to no time we find ourselves chatting over nothing in particular.’

One of the women, the very plump one, huddled up in a thick, charcoal grey sweater, snorted indignantly.  ‘Romance for me means fantasy.’

Saskia, a tall, slim lady with unusually wide-open round eyes and thick lips that sometimes slackened into a pout, blonde tresses trailing over her shoulders, lamented,  ‘You’ve always got your nose stuck in fantasy.  I don’t like fantasy.  Why don’t you change habits?’

‘I hate prejudice of any description,’ declared Doreen, bristling and looking sternly at Maxwell.  ‘You know, I go into a store and ask for a pair o’ pants.  Some smart arse says dismissively, “Oh, we don’t have your size,” she mimicked.

‘Pants is easy,’ says Saskia, as the two ladies cut across each other, all the while vying for Maxwell’s attention.  ‘You can take them up or down.’  Then closed her eyes as soon as she braced herself for Doreen’s punch-line, as if feigning sleep.

‘Yeah, but that’s not the point.  It’s a bloody nuisance and I don’t know if the spare turn-up is the right length or what I’ll look like.’

‘I’m skinny,’ shrugged Maxwell in consolation.  Saskia gave a laugh and opened her bulging eyes.  ‘And self-conscious too, so I know what you mean.’

‘But you’re tall.  What’s more, you’ve got no gut on you,’ said Doreen.

‘All right, ladies,’ said Mario.  ‘Let’s report back on our reading.  Who’d like to start?’

‘I couldn’t read this one,’ said Saskia.  She opened the hardback at random, flicked over some pages and held up a double-page.  ‘The print is too small and it’s not black print on white background.’

‘Saskia has impaired vision . . .’ Mario explained to Maxwell.

‘I have perfect vision, 20-20, but it’s the glare, you see.  Look, it’s cream background, not white.  It’s impossible.’

‘We do have a few large books . . .’ commented Mario, ‘but not in this title.’

‘Usually I can’t read until two o’clock in the afternoon because of the light.’  Those big hyacinth eyes skewered Maxwell, as if she were appealing to him to understand, not necessarily offer sympathy.

Maxwell didn’t know what to say.  He reached across to pick up her chosen novel.  ‘Oh, Emma,’ he feigned delight and surprise.  ‘ Lovely!  I haven’t read it for half a century, but I wouldn’t like to pass over Jane Austen without a comment.’

‘Don’t you find her irritating?’ said a short, stout lady with grumpy oval face accentuated by too much red lipstick and close-cropped hair dyed a startling ash blonde.  Yet buttered up nicely with a tam o’ shanter hugging her ears, taking considerable time to shrug off her coat and plump herself down.

Ms Austen no way, old grumps yes!

‘Not at all,’ said Maxwell, slightly rattled.  ‘The way Jane Austen illustrates the importance of understanding your own feelings before you can empathise with others a century ahead of Jung . . .’ Suddenly he trailed off, aware that he was growing tetchy, schoolish and downright ostentatious.

‘This is Barbara, by the way,’ said Mario.

‘Off again, on again.  Why can’t they just get on with it!’

Oh shut up, Babs!  It was a different age, for god’s sake!

‘But it’s better than tons of stuff written today,’ whined Doreen.  ‘They’re always getting their gear off, hopping into bed whether they’re in love or not and everything’s described in graphic detail.  And I mean everything.’

‘No, we don’t need all that, what you say, panky-hanky,’ agreed Saskia, gulping out a smile across at Maxwell.

‘Hanky-panky, love,’ corrected Doreen.  ‘Anyway, I’ve read it and as for that gorgeous Colin Firth, wor!’

‘Doreen’s a late reader,’ muttered Mario.

And still horny by the sound of it.

‘Yeah, couldn’t stand reading no book till I turned forty.’

‘She’s making up for lost time,’ chuckled Mario, with a nudge.

                   The Brain is Man’s Second Favourite Organ

At the beginning of the aquarobics session Maxwell found himself exchanging awkward glances with a lady who was only just head and shoulders above the level of the water.  Though petite, her large teeth dominated a quick winning smile and nervous wink.

‘Hallo.  My name’s Maxwell.  I’ve seen you around, but I don’t think we’ve met.’

‘And I’m Tanya.  We’ve been away for a month, cruising down the Rhine.  You look as if you’ve led an interesting kind of life.’

Taken aback, Maxwell stumbled.  ‘Not especially, I . . .’

‘I only ever see you swimming.  You’re a veritable water baby.’

‘I’m not much of a swimmer,’ he said, casting his head down, ‘but I really need to start exercising again, especially after my operation.’

‘Why do you put yourself down?  I see you lunging for the wall at every turn, gasping for breath, thrashing at the water.  You’ll do yourself a mischief.’

He slapped both hands against his abdomen.  ‘I’m growing a paunch,’ he confessed through pursed lips.

‘All of us are.  You can’t help it at our age.’  Yet she still retained a very svelte figure.  The fact that she lurched badly, stomped down hard on her left leg, and that up close her cheeks were very grey-lined, she must have been all of seventy-five.  In fact, in her striped costume of magenta, sky blue and marine blue he was suddenly made aware of how alluring the sassy creature must have been in yesteryear, with those still shapely legs mottled grey and pink rendered longer by the shortness of her body.

‘Now make two circles,’ Ben was saying, casting around.  ‘The height-advantaged people down the deep end and the not-so-height-advantaged down the shallow end.’

‘You have a beautiful body,’ she whispered in her forthright manner, words he’d never heard said to him before.  Flustered, Maxwell did not hear the instruction.

And although she was not much over five feet, Tanya found herself in the ring of the height-advantaged at the deep end.  Wondering if there wasn’t just the slightest squeeze on his left hand as she gathered him in, Maxwell scarcely looked up at the other four members of their group, in case they noticed anything.

‘Now right leg up to the horizontal and revolve from the knee,’ said Ben.  ‘Twirl your ankle at the same time.  Revolve your leg the other way and stretch your toes . . . ooh . . . unless like me you’ve cramped up.’   He was wincing at the irony.  ‘And a big stretch, leaning back only slightly.  And watch out for any slippery patches.’

                  Ring of Fire

Tanya was annoyed that Byron would go off to the golf course once a week for three or four hours, even when it was raining, longer if he chose to have a beer and sandwich in the clubhouse.  And what did he do when he condescended to return home?  Resting mainly or watching the cricket on Foxtel.

‘You need to do something about those spots on your back,’ she confided to Maxwell in her forthright manner.  ‘Your body’s either too steeped in chlorine or it’s perspiration drying on your skin after your strenuous walks.  I’ll ask Jurgen if he’s checked the ph levels in the water to kill off the fungus.’

‘I think it must be the pool,’ Maxwell said.  ‘I do rub moisturizer on my chest, but it’s difficult to apply on my back.  What’s more, they’re beginning to itch, especially in the spa.’

‘That’s where the worst are, where you’ve been scratching yourself, especially at the base of your spine.  I’d better bring along some of my famous magical elixir and rub some on.  Vitamin E will do you the power of good.’

‘Well, I . . .’

‘It’s no trouble.  I’ve got my old portable massage table rusting away in storage.  I was an occupational therapist, but don’t tell anyone.’

But Maxwell already knew.  Cyril, on his circuit working the lounge with his mischievous patter, had already pointed her out as one of his girlfriends, apartment 159, occupational therapist.’  Was this joker serious?

Maxwell was both apprehensive and strangely excited.  This was an obvious come-on; even blind Freddy would’ve picked it.  So how could he refuse?  Easily.  Tanya was at least five, if not ten years older.  And she had a no-nonsense firmness about her; that could be over-whelming.  Yet he was flattered, bolshie even.  Obviously she wouldn’t make overtures to the old boys, most of whom were married, rarely seemed to exercise and undoubtedly suffered difficulties over erections, even if still interested.  It was difficult to imagine any of the staid gents here popping Viagra.  Hold on, you goof, you’re being ridiculous!  Was it flattery or lechery that made him uncharacteristically frisky?  Was it loneliness or sexual starvation?  Vanity or desperation for a last-chance grab at the mystery of romance?  A clandestine affair with a cougar?  On the cusp of seventy!

Wait a mo!  What did Sara-Jane say, the ERA on duty at nights and weekends, usually gadding about in a spin, grey flashes in her swinging bunches of golden hair:  ‘I can’t live without my mobile phone!’ as she sought high and low.  ‘This isn’t a dating agency,’ she’d confided.

He’d never imagined that it was, but he was taken aback at the residents meeting when one of the ladies referred to an article she’d recently read about seniors taking up dancing as a counter-measure to the onset of Alzheimer’s.

‘Can we touch each other?’ chirped a female voice that brought some stifled chuckles and one outrageous guffaw.

‘I’m talking about line dancing,’ protested Val with a grim frozen smile.  ‘And maybe Aqua Zumba for a modest cardio, toning and getting that wiggle back in our hips.  Yes, I’m serious!’

                  Pina’s Dilemma

As a carer, Pina coped comfortably with her work, though the job could be boring, even stultifying.  Sometimes Sharon showed a vile temper if she burnt the toast or dared turn up a few minutes late to push her wheelchair into the lift or round the garden avenues even at short notice or Amrit fussed over his shopping list and got sidetracked explaining the subtleties of Indian spices in Kerala or Dougal again forgot how to log off the computer.

Youthful in bubbly manner, Pina suffered from strabismus, whereby both eyes could not focus together at the same point, so she looked at you with the one eye only, the other wandering off, a condition that intrigued some men.

Emerging from lift 3 at the fourth floor one balmy afternoon, she was confronted by the high-pitched suction of Jurgen’s vacuum cleaner and stepped clear of the trailing extension cord and yellow warning sign:  Tripping Hazard.  No one answered her tap on the door, so she tentatively opened it and trilled a softly, softly hello.  Anxious that Maxwell might have suffered one of his dizzy spells or panic attacks or, worse still, fallen over one of his dumb-bells and lay unable to move with a dislocated hip, she hastened toward the master bedroom.

There, gently tracing teasingly slow whorls on Maxwell’s bare back, was a wizened grey-haired woman sitting on the side of what appeared to be a broad ironing-board whose hard face and immaculately groomed silver hair cut short but inwardly combed above the collar she recognized.  The woman seemed lost in her dreams with a vacuous smile.

‘Oh, excuse me.  I’m so sorry,’ said Pina, her fingers dancing about her lips, her heart beating too loudly.  In that short, narrow passage, she didn’t know where else to look.

Maxwell was almost asleep under the soft tissue massage, swimming in a cerulean lagoon surrounded by coconut palms in the Tuamotu Islands.  ‘Mm?  Wozzat?’  From the candy-striped sheet on the massage table came a voice annoyed but muffled.  ‘Bloody hell, it’s you, Pina.’  Maxwell scrambled up onto an elbow as Tanya snapped out of her reverie.  ‘You might’ve knocked.’

Turning to face away, a confused Pina squeaked, ’If you still need me, I can wait in the lounge downstairs.’

‘Can you come back in fifteen?’ said Maxwell.  ‘We’re nearly done.  Sorry, by the way.’

Pina sank herself deep into an armchair in the residents lounge with a stiff cup of instant coffee, staring out to the main road but saw nothing.  I wonder what the old boy’s up to.  Or her, for that matter.  Looks sus.  Mutton dressed as lamb.  And she must be seventy-five if she’s a day.  I hope to goodness that he knows what he’s a-doing, at his age too, and with an impaired memory.  I wouldn’t like to see him taken for a ride.  Huh, an unfortunate choice of word.  Taken advantage of.  Perhaps I should have a chin-wag with the manager.

                  Now and Then there’s a Fool such as I

It was one Sunday afternoon, usually the quietest time of the week in the residents lounge, when Maxwell came down for a break and a glance at the Sunday Age.  Hearing some lively patter and excitable squeals from a huddle of strangers standing in a semi-circle, he looked over and suddenly laid eyes on a seated lady with a greyish-tinged face of laughter lines and brimful of strong molars.  Against her breast, she was hugging a child.

Maxwell’s face fell with a pang of disappointment.  She didn’t even look across, dammit!  So any sign of Tanya he avoided for several days, but when he did bump into her scurrying along the first floor corridor he instinctively called after her.  ‘Hi, Tanya, was that your grand-daughter I saw you cradling on Sunday?’

She laughed her throaty laugh, a spackle of gold amid incisors tinged a faint grey.  ‘I’m no spring chicken, dear.  That was my great-grandson.  My second, in fact.  My grandson is in his thirties, bless you!  He was the guy with the premature bald patch.’

                  Esme and Dieryk.

‘Sometimes I just have to get away for respite,’ she said, looking at the spread of jigsaw pieces, then up at the illustration of the completed puzzle on the box cover.  ‘He’s so slow these days.  Specially since this new batch of medication.  Would you believe he insisted on driving the car, up until last year that is, even when I had to tell him which lane to get into, when to turn right, what speed we were travelling at.  I became a nervous wreck navigating.  How often was I tempted to grab the wheel out of fear or frustration!  Last year his GP gave it to him straight.  “Stop driving!  You’re a menace on the road.  If you don’t care about yourself, think of Esme.  You owe it to her to stop driving.”’

Dieryk would stand close to the side of the pool, staring at Ben or slowly looking round to check what movements he should be doing.  Everything was very laboured now, including walking in the pool.  He needed assistance to get down the steps, clinging to the hand-rail, then stand there bereft, with wide-staring eyes.  Esme would be over-seeing from the decking, smiling anxiously and looking at the resis to check what their reaction was to his ponderous movement in the water, notably when they were marching or bunny-hopping round the inside edge of the pool, anxious not to give him a nudge.

When Maxwell approached him, ’You going all right, Dieryk?’ the latter muttered, ’Do we have to have this music?’

That was Puccini for god sake!

‘Mermaids and mermen,’ David was saying, ‘I thank you for your attendance.  And don’t forget to come down to the pool whenever you can to make full use of our excellent but under-used facility.

‘We’ll conclude as usual with some digital exercises, fingers and thumbs.’  He extended his arms, elbows up, fingers tight, palms facing out and inwards by turns.  ‘Now bring your elbows together, something the gentlemen should be able to achieve more easily than the ladies.’  Then dropped into silence, slowly revolving in their midst, watching each resi imitating his actions.  ‘Nice right angles with those palms . . . church and steeple . . . Get a good grip on yourself,’ he said, gritting his teeth, locking two sets of fingers in behind each other.  ‘Stretch finger and thumb in turn with forefinger and thumb of the opposite hand.  Tweak the arthritis out of those joints.  Finally, shake your body . . . just relax and breathe in deeply for three seconds . . . and let go for five . . .breathe in . . . and let go.’

Getting changed from his bathers, Dieryk was the epitome of dumb show in slow motion, utterly wound down.

‘How are you going, old feller?’

‘Weak and wobbly,’ he mumbled.  ‘And it’s getting worse.’

‘That’s no good.  Did you enjoy the aquarobics?’

‘I’ve brought the wrong trousers.’  Then several minutes later, ‘I’ve brought the wrong shoes.’  After a minute of sitting on the bench, ‘I wish I was twenty years younger.  Is this Twilight Living?’

‘It’s the Towers, yes.  Now can I help?’

‘No, I’ve got to fight through this myself.’

‘Good on you, Dieryk, but try not to get too angry.’

‘But I am angry,’ suddenly burst out in hoarse rasp.  ‘And I blame my surgeon.  I should never have listened to his advice.  More fool me.  He insisted on operating for prostate cancer.  The timing was all wrong.  This was just before reservations about this operation appeared in the papers.  It’s no longer regarded as absolutely necessary to cut out the cancer.  Did you know that?  The treatment can be worse than the disease itself.  Far worse.  My plumbing was shot to buggery.  I was never the same after that.’

Maxwell thought Dieryk was going to shed a tear and didn’t know how to console.

Fortunately, the long-suffering Esme was waiting outside the door, straining to hear the conversation.

                  Do not go Gentle into that Good Night

Early on the morning of his seventieth birthday, some six months since his initiation into Chiltern Towers, Maxwell was in a jolly mood:  Made it at last to the golden age.  Three score and ten.  Lucky old bastard!   Not only had he lost one hundred calories in eight minutes pumping the piston pedals of the elliptical walker in the gym, but the ear, nose and throat specialist had eased his fears about cancer of the throat, just some mild reflux, but he should practise a repetition of short vowel sounds in a high-to-low squeaky voice, perhaps singing the Queen of the Night’s celebrated aria from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, as his rarely used vocal chords were very dry.  What’s more, he’d confronted at last the puffing Giorgio, a tradie in blue dungarees working from his parked truck dead opposite the No Smoking sign in basement one, a perpetual chimney frequently warned by management. ‘Would you mind butting out, please?’

Giorgio shrugged his innocence.  ‘Why?  I not working in the living area.’

‘Your toxic fumes get into the lifts.  Some of our old residents have respiratory problems.’

‘Excuse me, I not know.’  Giorgio snatched one last drag, before dropping the butt onto the concrete floor and grinding it with a boot.  ‘And who are you?’

‘One of the owners.  So now you know.’

Having doffed his warm wintry gear for the spring sunshine and an imbibing of Vitamin D, Maxwell double-checked to make sure he had pocketed his identity tag and phone number as well as his swipe card, as Sara-Jane occasionally reminded him - he was still capable of becoming disoriented among the local streets and attracting a vicious German Shepherd off its leash in that narrow park by the railway line.  He walked briskly out from the vestibule for his morning constitutional into a sharp chill that sliced at his face.  An ambulance was parked across the entrance.  That was nothing unusual, nor the lively joshing of the paramedics.  Perhaps levity was the only attitude you could take in such a calling.  He inhaled a deep lungful of breath, braced his shoulders and opened himself up to the freshly minted dawn.  Lengthening his stride, he found himself in a flamingo-pink sunrise spreading with spears of crimson and smouldering purple plumes unfurling beyond the valley and over the horizon.

                                                                                                                        Michael Small

May 30, 2012-November 19, 2012