VILLAGE OF FADING DREAMS (4)

For Beatrice Stack life was shutting down now with the passing of husband Clem, a big noise in the City, just when she’d almost overcome the pain from the shoulder replacement and taken once again to slipping down to the pool for water aerobics, Wednesday mornings, which had done nothing for the lardy sagging of her upper arms, but she needed company, desperately.  Married for sixty years, she frequently muttered, shaking her weary head as if struggling to suss out where she had misplaced so many days, no, years!  Now, whenever she returned to their apartment up the stairs at the end of the turn-off to the pool on the second floor, she expected Clem to be there, lying in wait with his feet up, poring over his share portfolio to the end, someone to talk to, a familiar face who instinctively picked up the threads of their life and wove them into their very own patterns of narrative.  Naturally, she still insisted on her three offspring phoning every day to make sure she was bearing up, doing ok, pulling through, but these shudderingly cold days no way did they know her every thought like Clem seemed to, as if wired into the sockets of her tired old brain.

So that now the very apartment was shrinking, shutting down, threatening to smother with shadow.  With a start, she noticed the clanging slam of the heavy gym door nearby and faintly heard or imagined the ding of the bell as the lift arrived at her second floor.  Yet she could barely make the effort to leave the building, until the necessity of slowly plodding down to Coles to sniff around for some sustenance.  Why bother?  Nonetheless she kept her regular weekly appointment with Basil at the hair salon – just a small room with basic sink and shelving adjacent to the so-called business office with solitary computer – for a touching up of her thin grey curls with gingery streaks of dye.

Just quietly, the management office that faced the residents lounge noticed Mrs Stack was no longer filching sweet bikkies from the cake stand and squirreling them up to her own apartment.

‘Those biscuits are meant to be for all the residents, not just her,’ Irene would relay indignantly to Maxwell from behind her desk in the office.

‘Yes, she does seem impervious to guilt,’ he added, fearing that Irene, who liked to have a handle on practicalities, knew he too was culpable but too cagey to be spied upon.

By turns, raising one leg up, one down in the swimming pool, Maxwell almost choked at a sudden booming clang from the outer door.  Why are the ERAs so violent? he groused, his steamy reverie broken.  Craning round to glimpse the usual suspect, Emergency Relief Assistant Doreen, Maxwell’s jaw dropped.  Holy mo!  Shock waves!

For there instead was Beat Stack, staring straight ahead, swaying with grim determination and heavy plod, eyes glued straight ahead to the far wall, not even glancing across to where Maxwell was splashing around.  What was she doing here at this time of night?  Oblivious, evidently, her robe gaping open, so that flabby breasts stretched sideways rather than pointed forwards.  A repulsive sight, but he nevertheless felt some spurt of sympathy for her in spite of his own embarrassment. ‘Beatrice!’ he called out in a restrained voice that echoed above the bubbling spa. ‘Beatrice!’ more urgently, to stop her plod before she turned toward him, in full frontal exposure, at the far end of the pool.

As if lost in thought, she focused for the first time on the stick-like figure opposite, whose neck was sticking up out of the water like the stem of a sodden cabbage.

‘Where’s the toilet?’ she whimpered.

‘You’ve just passed it,’ he said, gently because he suspected something odd.  ‘In the women’s change room.  ‘Look, I’ll get out of the spa and go round this way,’ indicating his retreat on the nearside of the pool to avoid confrontation and further embarrassment for the two of them.

‘Where’s the way out?’

‘Just walk back the way you came.’  This is the weirdest.

Utterly bewildered, dejected even, she turned round, failing to readjust her robe, and scuffed back in her slippers to the exit, listing heavily, still billowing amidships.

What kept the bereaved Beat going was to hunker down in front of the tele to watch her beloved Kangaroos, the blue and whites, muttering through gritted teeth at the opposition that included umpires:  Car’n, ya Kangas, belt the living suitcase out of that arse’ole!  Butt ‘im in the breadbasket!  That ugly unit hasn’t got a scone, umpie!  ‘Yamaggott, that’s tiggy touchwood stuff!  E never laid ands on the piker!’  Then quietly sank into a reverie about her late Clem, who would often claim, ‘There are no accidents in Aussie Rules, Beat.’

‘Did you hear what happened to Viv and me?’ said Mervyn, sidling up with wincing smile, winding up for a long-winded story.

‘What was that, Merv?’ said Alexander Farthingale, a beanpole of a man who towered over all-comers in the residents lounge, his hardness of hearing turning him into a bewildered old sourpuss.  Besides, the impending procedure on his second hernia was hanging over him and causing niggling discomfort.

‘I said, “Did you hear what happened to Viv and me?”’

‘No.  What happened to Viv and you?’ Alexander chimed in like the fall guy in an old music hall routine, mechanically.

‘Last week, Monday morning, there was a sickening wake-up call for Viv and me, terribly sickening.  Persistent ring ring ring from the dread of night.  Police.  Your son-in-law’s been killed in a road accident.’  Mervyn’s face froze, mouth yawed in disbelief at his own words, eyes haunted wide-open.

‘Go on,’ murmured Alexander, just registering after some seconds, impatience now jostling with curiosity.

Mervyn cranked himself up with a hitch to his trousers.  ‘A woman driver had stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake, skidded across the pavement skittling my son-in-law.  Took out the fence and front gate.  Day after his forty-third birthday an’ all.  He was just taking his son to St Leonard’s.’

‘Oh?  That snobby educational factory down Brighton way?’

‘Right.  Killed outright, instantly.  We can’t believe it.  How someone’s life can be snuffed out just like that.  Like a mozzie blitzed on a bug zapper.’  Quick as a flash, he slapped the back of his hand, jolting Alexander’s head back.  ‘A computer designer on the oil rigs on the top of his game.  We still can’t believe it, Viv and me.  But it was on the news, rubbing our faces in it.  It’s turned our lives upside down.  Left our daughter in a right mess.  No more thoughts about our holiday in New Zealand.  We’ll have to cancel now.’

‘Unbelievable,’ said Alexander, accentuating each syllable slowly, his jaw sagging with the weight of imagination kicking in.

‘Just goes to show, doesn’t it?’

‘Why, yes,’ pondered the gentle giant.  Eventually, ‘What does it show?’

‘You can’t be too careful these days, can you?’

If he trusted you, Lester would always engage close-up, toe-to-toe almost, but those clear blue eyes held a confidential twinkle that made you warm to him.  The octogenarian had been missing for some weeks, but Maxwell caught up with him in the gym.  Breathing hard but rhythmically on the pounding treadmill, he slowed to a halt with ‘Half an hour’s long enough, otherwise it gets boring,’ he gasped, stepping down.  ‘After eighty, you can quite suddenly experience a sharp drop in energy.  Take Shirl.  She likes her walker, something to hold on to, thank goodness, because she can’t see the cracks in the pavement.  When we walk around the oval, we cling on tight to each other.  But as soon as you stop exercising regularly, at our age, it’s impossible to start where you left off.  We’re both eighty-seven and various parts of our bodies are running down or dropping off.  I’ve got big problems with my big toe.  Too much treadmill.  Or tomatoes.  If it’s not one, the other will be the death of me.  After half an hour’s brisk walking, my big toe gets very sore.  There’s a lump underneath, which worries me.  I can’t seem to get rid of it.’

‘Have you tried walking on uneven ground?’ suggested Maxwell.  ‘Makes the muscles on your feet clench with every surface variation.’

‘Sounds bloody painful.  I prefer the straight and narrow.  Thirty minutes every evening before happy hour.’

‘The treadmill I can’t stand.  Too robotic, too mechanical.  You’ll get flat feet.’

‘Won’t matter at my age.  This lump under my big toe.  What d’yer reckon?’

‘Check it out with the podiatrist quick smart,’ said Maxwell, recently relieved himself by the very youthful, bespectacled lass who came on Friday mornings, who’d given him hope that his own fungus feet could be cured in six months with a dextrous flip of the clippers on cracking, crusted, white-streaked toenails daubed with Lamisil cream.  In fact, he felt proud of the fact that he knew all about problem feet.

Lester shifted nearer, limpid blue eyes fixed on Maxwell, searching.  ‘There’s no point,’ he shrugged.  Just a hint of a wry smile but a steady gaze.  ‘I’m ill.’   A couple of slight but knowing nods, a lower voice:  ‘Seriously ill.’

Andrew the chef, nicknamed Andre by the more frivolous resis, slipped out the automatic sliding door into the front garden to snip small bunches of flowers to  garnish the tables for that night’s meal.  Roses out the front weren’t much chop because of the very hot weather, the petals barely lasting.  Which was disappointing, since he liked to surprise the oldies with little personalised touches to the evening meal, such as writing out name tags in neat sloping hand for that night’s diners, eight to a table, and providing a small dish of chocolate creams for each table.  Ducking down by the flower beds out front, hoping that his distinctive white chef’s coat wouldn’t be seized on by manager Maeve Warren, who’d get snippety over his vandalism, especially since it was on her recommendation to give a facelift to the flowers bordering the fishpond, the central feature of the forecourt.  It was she, Maeve, who’d delivered a heavy hint to Jess, the florid-faced gardener beneath the bush hat, that the surrounding flowers should be varied in height, colour and foliage to create a more densely textured impression than each bloom leaning wanly towards a uniform height.  She didn’t want to be reminded of her own most senior human charges fading away.

Since her second marriage, well into her forties, Maeve Warren, the manager of Chiltern Towers Retirement Village, had seemed more rounded, physically speaking, than a posh Porsche.  Happier too, apparently, as she chucked fewer wobblies, abrasive Bernie excepting, though she wobbled rather than walked, her wobblers leading from the front and her too short, tight-hugging skirts retreating from behind.

       But the surprise installation of a shiny new coffee machine donated by the new owners, Twilight Living, was causing unseen problems.  For starters, the tab for the requisite sachets of coffee amounted to $100 a week.  Admittedly, when the containers were cleaned, several unpunctured sachets were found gumming up the free flow of liquid.  Almost as bad as the large brown wooden box of Twining Teas, whose distinctive flavours in their own brightly coloured but hardly exotic sachets lined up in sections, were nicked so quickly and smuggled to their apartments by certain recalcitrant residents that the entire selection on display disappeared within a week, to be replaced by mundane rows of tightly packed Lipton teabags in the same impressive Twining box.

         Secondly, unbeknown to Maeve, the Emergency Relief Assistants took a while to master the system, forgetting that the spout had to be washed and replaced at the beginning of every morning and then rinsed.  Often Maxwell, the earliest resident down in the lounge before eight o’clock, was the first to collect the spluttering squirt of rinsing mix, which Andre, alias Andre, would reassure was not harmful but meant a substantial reduction in the strength of the coffee as well as less liquid in the final cup.

  o.    ‘Not harmful?’ pondered Clay, the junior maintenance bod in navy blue dungarees and size 14 boots, wound up in vacuum hose and wires lassoed over his shoulder. ‘Mm, what about that message Descale now!  What allergies might milk crust give youse seniors?  Best leave it to Andy.’

       ‘Probably right,’ decided Maxwell, after rolling his tongue round his palate and detecting a slightly bitter taste.  ‘Handy Andy.’

          But Andrew was secretly riding a thumping dumping wave on the bet he’d placed at the beginning of the English soccer season.  If only he had wagered on rank outsider Leicester City when the Foxes were 5,000-1 against, having only just escaped relegation the previous season.  Would have made a mint.  Even now, he was still ahead; three thousand pounds ahead.  With nine games to go in the English Premier League, these unlikely lads were still an incredible five points ahead of second place Tottenham Hotspur and twelve ahead of Manchester United.  Again and again, he’d prevaricated: Should I cash in now?  They must crack soon, surely.

         Instead, Andrew cracked.  His wife suspected apnoia, as her normally placid  husband began kicking out and muttering a long-drawn-out South American howl of g-o-a-l! in the middle of the night.  With nerves stretched unbearably, evidence of fresh vegetables overcooked and drops of a good red spilt on white tablecloths, he offloaded twenty-five pounds on these minnows winning the premiership.  ‘I stand to win a cool one hundred thousand pounds,’ he’d frequently murmured, lips barely moving, eyes darting around.  Premature retirement beckoned from Byron Bay.

       But the tea leaves were ominous.  On Sunday he’d lost a small fortune playing foursomes golf at Chiltern’s Menzies golf course.  Betting forty cents on each hole, he’d tossed away $3.60 on losing nine straight, the winner scooping the pool after every round.  So pissed off was he, he’d advised his golfing mates that he wouldn’t be a gamester guru any more.  He cashed in the chips while still ahead on the Foxes, but narrowly.  That secret of those upstart Foxes he kept to himself.  Not even his wife would know of his penchant for piddling gambling.

       After two years of living on the second floor of Twilight Living, Nicholas Ferry was growing increasingly frustrated.  Although a member of the five-persons residents committee, he was very much out on a limb, a stiff one at that.  Like a handful of upright inmates, he wished to be of service, to be useful and busy, but had lost faith in the management.  The first job that he undertook on his own unpaid initiative was to provide felt covers for the castors of new armchairs, so they didn’t scratch the floor or depress the carpet.   He could manage three a day before boredom set in.  His next fad was to drive  about the city seeking long, rubber-webbed mats to cover the deck area of the swimming pool, whereas Maeve Warren had bought cheap matting bone-hard for puckered soles and bunions.  All this done for residents, but he still found the manager a tight-wad with money.  After waiting eight months for a new stovetop, he and Hazel got tired of Maeve’s delaying tactics for the expected upgrade.  He dashed out to buy a brand new stovetop at an unexpected cost to their own budget.  Maeve Warren’s niggardliness had again won the day.

         On the main noticeboard outside the business centre, Nicholas read that Maeve, a ‘mistress of spin’ in his eyes, had declared that the recent feedback sheets to Twilight Living revealed that over fifty per cent of residents had affirmed Twilight Living’s take-over, whereas he reminded everyone that forty-nine residents did not vote at all, which had skewed the percentage positively upwards.

         ‘You’d better watch out,’ Nicholas said to Maxwell by the Mainstay bar.

         ‘Why’s that?  Maeve on the prowl?’

         ‘Unfortunately, she had another hissy fit.  So desperate that she even asked me to stand again for the committee.’

         ‘Well, you are very practical and generous with your time.  So you offered?’

       ‘Naaah!’ replied Nicholas with a vigorous shake of the head.  ‘But I did warn her there’s no one coming up through the ranks to run the committee.  The demographic is jumping up.  The first intake have pretty well moved on to pastures greener, but the new recruits are already in their eighties and most unlikely to want to be lumbered with any responsibility.  In fact, we should re-examine what this place represents.  Originally, it was designated a retirement village for the over-fifty-fives, then Twilight Living renamed it a resort, but it’s rapidly taking on the appearance of an Old Fogies alms house.  There’s a new bloke on the block, has a very distinguished English accent and old-fashioned manners.  Asked me the other day, ‘And who might you be?’  Forgotten his name, but he’s eighty-six, doddery on his pins and very hard-of-hearing.  Then there‘s that squinty-eyed woman with deep male voice recently installed on the fifth floor, rarely comes out of her room, but when she does she avoids eye-contact. That blonde ERA says she’s got encephalitis, therefore mentally deficient in some way.  These sorts of people should not be put in here because they can’t cope and we don’t have the resources.’

‘So why are they then?’

       

‘Twilight Living needs to maintain a high turnover, with the demand for retirement apartments in Melbourne rising rapidly.  Michaela’s not going to concern herself about an applicant’s health, so long as she scores a signature on the contract.  She’d receive a  pretty tidy commission, as sure as London to a brick.’

‘Is that London, Ontario?’  Maxwell’s smirk lingered too long.

 No, London, South Africa, smart arse!

In spite of his popularity, both as a warm, amiable person and as an obliging, capable chef de maison, Andrew, fondly dubbed Andre for his yearning for the Paris of his student days, in particular   those sentimental memories of Les Halles gutted long ago, whose snobbish garcons had despised and mocked his French accent, had his down days.  Having surrendered an easy $75,000 dollars win thanks to those stubborn Foxes and therefore sacrificed instant retirement, the tipster was now facing a glum future. Arriving just before twelve o’clock Monday to Friday, he’d feel dejected if the advanced weekly order showed a mere two tables to set up for dinner.  Mondays were fairly popular, as the three main dishes were roast and the aroma wafted up by lift to the third floor.  But as the dining numbers were declining, the new owners, Twilight Living, had brought in a consultant to look over the standard weekly menu and suggest changes.

Usually most accommodating, Andrew began snipping at the principle of holding a ‘special night’ in the restaurant on the first Wednesday of each month.  But when the residents committee in their anxiety about the restaurant’s profitability - and therefore long-term viability - sought to have extra specials, such as a Bush Night with poetry readings; Mid-Summer Merry Madness with celebrity dress-ups; Valentine’s Night for fuzzy sentimentalists; the Grand Final Dinner, where residents with dodgy knees could dress up in their team’s colours and blow whistles with fruity farts; and Christmas in July for the Anglophiles and war-time refugees from Germany and Austria.  Those ‘fun’ nights with entertainment suggested by the social committee were well supported by sixty or seventy diners, one bottle of wine per table paid for by the social committee.  On the following nights, though, custom dwindled markedly, stragglers at two or three tables sitting under a cloud of gloom.  ‘It’s too much for many of them,’ muttered Andrew, ‘especially if they’ve been down for happy hour too.  They just want to be tucked up in bed by eight-thirty.’  Looking busy was impossible for the white-coated chef on long afternoons with nowhere to hide but the confinement of the galley.  He’d much prefer to watch old black and white highlights of English soccer matches from the seventies and eighties or The Two Ronnies on You Tube. Besides, the recommendations for the revised menu went down like a stodgily fluffed-out lemon bomb dashed with cinnamon, too daring by half.  Those who had groaned at another roast pork or roast beef and potatoes on Mondays now lamented the loss of their regular Monday dish at Chiltern that had formerly been their traditional Sunday lunch at their last family residence, their real home.

Throwing his hands in the air despairingly as if about to tender his resignation, Andrew could not help but groan inwardly:  What more can one do for flippin’ fuddy-duddy millionaires?

Excuse me, Maxwell,’ said Irene with an awkward half-smile, her too slender black jacket appearing round a pillar in the lounge, behind which the retiring septuagenarian retreated most dawnings to a doubly cushioned purple armchair.  ‘We’ve err been given a new rule,’ her eyelids fluttering up to the ceiling in embarrassment or disbelief or the discomfort of scratchy contact lenses.

‘Oh,’ replied Maxwell, with a wry knowing chuckle.  ‘What now?’

‘We’re not supposed to put out the biscuits till 10.30, but I’ll give you something, a  piece of fruitcake or a plain biscuit, because you’re always here at eight o’clock and disappear by nine.  It seems unfair that you’re being penalised.’

‘That’s awfully kind of you, Irene, but don’t worry, really.’  Though touched that office staff demonstrated genuine concern for his welfare, he was hesitant about accepting special favours, for Mia had slunk in at the rear of the lounge and was staring at the two of them, evidently straining to hear.  ‘Why the change in policy?’ he said in lowered voice.

‘There’s at least one resident who comes down every morning with a plate, helps themselves to a few biscuits and scurries back upstairs.  That’s just not on.  These biscuits are meant for all residents.  Encouraging them to have a chat.  I think I know who it is.  Rather, who they are.’

While she was talking with animated shakes of her head, eyes skittering, Maxwell was casually exploring the ceiling for any surveillance cameras he had failed to notice.  Never would he have been so careless as to bring down a plate, but he had been inclined occasionally to snatch a chocolate finger while depositing his empty cup on the side trolley, always watchful, of course, lest anyone was trundling along the corridor from the west wing or round the corner of the bar.

On the following Sunday morning, one of the ghostlier mornings at the village, half a dozen perhaps going to the ten o’clock service at St Michael’s, most others invited to the family lunch, when the door to the main lift slid open to a yelp of pain, as Ross Welk, the secretary of the residents committee, whose copies of the monthly minutes pertained to the minimalist school, lurched out.  With each painful shuffle he gave an edgy howl of pain.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Irene, who desperately broke stride from the staffroom on her flat black shoes.

‘I had a fall last night,’ he gasped in pained frustration.  ‘I can’t walk.  I think I’ve broken my hip.’

‘I doubt you’d be able to walk if you had.  Did you use your pendant to contact the ERA on duty?’

‘I didn’t,’ he whined vehemently, ‘because when I got back into bed, I didn’t feel that much pain.  I rang my daughter.  She’d take care of it.  But this morning when I tried to get out of bed . . .’

‘He couldn’t manage it,’ added the no-nonsense, middle-aged woman, a spitting image of her black-eyed, heavy-jowled mother in bulk and domineering nature.  Maxwell was put in mind of a dour-faced prison warden.

‘At least, you’ll be in the same hospital as Cynthie,’ Irene tried to console.

‘No, I won’t!’ blurted Ross, with a tantrum of childish peevishness.  ‘And Cynth knows nothing of this cock-up.’

‘Mum’s been transferred to Cowfold,’ explained the daughter with blunt matter-of-factness.  ‘Cellulitis is a real bitch.’

‘What a pity!’  Irene, straining to stay even-keeled.  ‘Why don’t you sit here till the ambulance arrives?’

‘Another thing:  I’ve got a bloomin’ committee meeting on Monday morning,’ Ross groaned, as if struck by a blow to the paunch.  ‘Irene, can you ring two people?’

‘Yes, of course.  Who are they?’

‘Warwick Holman, president of the committee, for the residents.  And Brenda, for the gossip.’

Who should plod slowly up to the coffee bar but Beat Stack, Apt 111, who was recovering from shoulder surgery and scarcely sighted these days in the lounge.

‘Good-o!  I do like Andre’s dark fruitcake,’ she muttered, wielding a patterned plate, her doughy, lipsticky face leavening. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes, but any chance of leaving me a piece?’  Maxwell found himself saying, irritation tripping over sarcasm, as he stared at the drooping flab of her freckled right arm extending, while she loaded up the plate with half a dozen slices of the chef’s studded fruitcake, then overlading it with Scotch fingers.

‘Wow, that’s some helluva sugar fix!’

But the stout woman with thinly frizzed, gingery blonde hair possessed a tin ear.  ‘I’ve left you some,’ she offered, beneath a frown of indignation.

‘No, it’s ok,’ he shrugged, exuding a woebegone sigh. ‘Don’t mind me.  I can go without.’

Ignoring him:  ‘I don’t think I can drive any longer, Maxwell.’

‘Your shoulder still keeping you up at night?’

‘Yeah, but it’s not that.  I’ve just received notice from the RACV.  I’ve just been slugged over two thousand, three hundred dollars for car insurance.  That can’t be right, surely.’

‘But it’s a Mercedes you drive, isn’t it?  That would explain it.  You can always trade it in for  something more modest.’

‘I couldn’t do that,’ she protested, amazement giving way to disgust across her forehead and pinching lips.  ‘Clem would never forgive me.  Gee, I do miss him.  Immediately I get home, I start a conversation with the old bugger as if he was still alive.  Just can’t kick the habit.  Funny, ain’t it?’

So accustomed to being the solitary swimmer in the pool in the evenings, Maxwell was irritated to hear from the gym below a deep rumbling and bubbling of water above.  Someone using the spa!  He briskly walked up the six flights of steps and discreetly pushed the door open to pry.  To his surprise, perched over in the tiled-up far corner of the square-shaped spa, was an unfamiliar figure, a youngish face - perhaps helped by the long, honey-blonde hair and subdued lighting - looking directly at him with a clenched expression.  Quivery with nerves at this intrusion, he quickly changed into bathers and showered in a cursory manner, pulled in his stomach muscles and boldly walked to the steps down into the pool.  Suddenly she burst up from the water in front of him.

‘Oh!  Scuse me,’ he said, taken aback.  ‘I’m terribly sorry to disturb you.  I thought you were in the spa.’

‘I was.  Now I’m in the pool.  And you don’t disturb me.’  But there was something in the hollow-eyed stare that discomfited him.’

‘May I join you?’ he asked in an unconvincing voice, confronted by that imperious air.

‘Of course, I don’t!’ she snapped.

Tentatively, because awkward and self-conscious while fiddling with his goggles, he negotiated the steps.  ‘I usually come down for a swim in the evening.  It’s very peaceful after dinner.  Usually.’

‘I know,’ she replied, in a tone of hapless resignation.  ‘I was deep in meditation.’

‘I’m so sorry.’  And painfully cautious in his descent, just like the older seniors.

‘Don’t keep saying sorry,’ she gurgled with exasperation.

‘I’m sorry.  Oops, there I go again.’  She was not amused.  ‘You must be a new resi.’  He was wearing his sweetest smile.

‘God, no!  My mother’s just come out of hospital.  My older sister and I are caring for her.’

‘Oh, my name’s Maxwell, by the way.’

‘Sue Ellen, Hettie’s daughter.  You’re obviously not Australian.’

 ‘I hope it’s not my stiff upper lip showing.’  No, but his teeth uncharacteristically were.

She snorted a laugh in spite of herself.  ‘My husband’s English,’ as if to explain.  ‘My ex-, I mean.  He lectured at Cambridge.’

                       

‘And what’s your line?’‘I was an English teacher too.  Another Aussie in Kangaroo Valley.  Cambridge, to be exact.’

‘Did you sit at the feet of Dr. Leavis on the banks of the Cam?’

Again she snorted.  ‘Good god, no!  I’m no Leavisite.’

Maxwell relaxed a little, knowing that she knew he knew of the literary critic.  ‘Anyway, how is your mum?’

Immediately, her face tensed, eyes watering over.  ‘It’s very sad,’ she murmured.

Maxwell bit his tongue.  In a twinkling, she sounded so different, shrunken to a woeful little girl.

Abruptly, she snapped.  ‘Can we stop talking?’  She was pleading now, close to tears.  ‘I’ve only been given half an hour’s respite.  Let’s swim!  Race to the other end under water!’  And already she was arching into free-style.

‘I’m not a natural swimmer!’ he called after her, sounding pathetic.

‘Well, I am!’ she gurgled.  In a flash, she was several metres ahead, a metre beneath a white ruffle. When she looked round at his floundering, she cried, ‘That’s not under water.  You’re cheating!’

‘My head’s under water!’ he protested.

For the first time, her open laughter tempered any scoffing.  She dived down again and shot past him.  When he finger-tipped the wall, turned cumbersomely and dared to look, she had already hastened up the steps and slammed the change-room door.

The following evening Maxwell, in dressing-gown and slip-ons, dawdled down to the pool at the western end of the second floor.  Breathing shallow, so anxious about laying furtive eyes on this girlish, grown-up woman.  Her mother, Hettie, he would regularly bump into before her recent hospitalisation, since her apartment was opposite the lift and the rubbish chute.  A gracious lady always well groomed with a string of pearls about her neck and a beaming smile of perfect porcelain teeth, invariably curious about this skinny man some nicknamed Perpetual Motion.  ‘Have you been for a swim?’ she’d ask.  Or ‘Have you been out for a walk so early?  I really don’t know how you manage it.’  Yes, he did miss her spontaneous warm smile and the way those large, round grey orbs would light up with a gentle inquiry.  Now as he passed her door under which the morning sunshine would bestow an orange glow, he strained to hear voices of the two sisters, particularly the hauntingly sad face of the younger.

At first, the streamlined younger daughter with long, loping gait bore no resemblance to her stout mother clasping a walking stick with white knuckles.  Maxwell was struck by her greyish-blue owlish eyes, both startled and startling; her dangerously slender figure in a one-piece cossie – none of the resi women wore bikinis; at least, not at Chiltern Towers.

No longer was Maxwell thinking blissful solitude in the pool.  Next evening, pushing the door open, he met with disappointment then relief that Sue Ellen was neither in the enclave of the spa nor the sloshing wavelets of the pool.  With sinking heart, he shuddered at the coldness of the water.  He couldn’t refrain from sneaking a glance towards the door for a shadow of hesitant feet in the gap beneath it.  Instead he froze at the clang of the outer door to the passage, but it was merely Doreen, the busily efficient ERA lady on duty, checking that no one was lying face down in the water.

Then two nights later, after he had swum forty laps more listlessly than usual, Sue Ellen ghosted in, wearily.  Wearing goggles steamed up, he couldn’t at first identify the intruder, then felt confused:  should he surrender the pool to this guest of the Towers and retreat to the spa?  Or should he carry on regardless, a leaseholder, therefore notionally a part-owner of the establishment?

‘Bugger, I’ve forgotten my goggles!’ as she shyly descended the steps before suddenly diving across him with a spray.

That’s against the rules!  STRICTLY NO DIVING!  The board clearly states!  His first reaction, but he was relieved not to have offered his plastic two-dollar pair, whose dearth of elastic was knotted in several places to fasten cheap goggles to one’s scone.

Maxwell flung himself across the water, intent on hugging the shorter side of the pool because of the entry steps, so as not to impede this spiky lass’s lane, but was churned up in her wake with a sore arm that kept bumping the exercise rail and nearside tiles.  All of a sudden, she was gone, vanished.  Then he espied her heels first as she’d dived down and was now touching the far end of the pool and turning.  Maxwell felt ungainly, hampered, sloshed and swamped.  Partially blinded, his eyes stung by the leaky, misted-up goggles lost sight of her, but sensed that somehow she was watching from below the rolled-up overhang of the pool cover.

‘Hello, how’s your mum?’ he asked with an edge of desperation when she bobbed up behind him.  He felt a hypocrite venturing this question, a wet cliché frequently aired at Chiltern Towers, but this time he really wanted to know.  The dark blue rings about her lacklustre eyes betrayed the reality.

‘Very grim,’ she practically whispered, staring down at the widening eddies.

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear it.’  What else could one say?

‘It’s very sad,’ she added.  ‘Mum won’t listen to either of us.  She’s so stubborn in her old age.  Rules with a rod of iron.  Even though I’m fifty-seven, I still have to fight her for half an hour’s R & R.  Would you believe, she spent two thousand dollars on a hearing aid that she can’t bear to use for more than fifteen minutes a day.  How’s that for stupidity?  No wonder I can’t get through to her.  All Meriel and I do is attend her bedside like dutiful daughters must, just waiting, waiting.’  She brushed away a tear, then stiffened up.  ‘Anyway I can’t stand here wasting time.  Please look the other way.’

‘What?’

‘Turn round, for god sake!’

Standing in the heart of the pool, staring out at the steamed-up night sky, he felt ludicrous.  And dreadful that he’d offended her.  The slam of the change room door behind him gave his nerves such a jolt.  It was the last time he laid eyes on her, save as a pre-Raphaelite figment of his imagination.

There was an electric charge in the atmosphere.  Maxwell was apprehensive:  twitching over the prospect of a surcharge being imposed on every apartment to cover the regular losses chalked up by the restaurant.  Just by chance, it seemed, chef Andrew had chosen to take his annual leave back in his home town of Portsea, on the south coast of Hampshire in England, to stay with his ageing mother and re-unite with his three brothers for a touring holiday to the gastronomy of Lyons.  In spite of that, he was looking glum, lacking energy, not even fussing around the spluttering coffee machine that yet again was spitting steam, water and stale milk from the rinsing process.

The meeting was travelling smoothly, with Maeve Warren smiling through proceedings with searching eye contact over the top of her glasses at the sixty-eight residents present, whose names she was ticking off.

Then the barrel-chested octogenarian president bedecked in navy blue blazer and open-neck white shirt tottered to his feet.  ‘The next item on the agenda has been proposed by the resident body, a response to Twilight Living’s memorandum that Emergency Response Assistants should not carry out private work for residents.’

Spontaneous and unheralded, Dr Jiri reared up from the second row facing Maeve on the rostrum, a tall, lumbering, big-boned man, with a distinctive marbly accent.  In a shake, the semblance of bonhomie splintered.

‘A few months ago, I spoke at this forum to the effect that I was very contented in the friendly atmosphere at Chiltern Towers.  I have always been able to do what I need to do, to come and go as I please, no questions asked.  I have never regretted coming to spend my last years here among all these new friends and very warm-hearted staff.  In particular, I am referring to the ERA ladies.’

Suddenly his voice rose to a boom of blatant anger:  ‘The price of independence is vigilance!  We are being treated as prisoners in our own home.  When Twilight Living took over, their management team declared, when asked, what changes would be made, replied, “You probably won’t notice anything.  Just a bit of tweaking here and there.”

‘This is our home,’ he spelt out with bawling emphasis.  ‘We should have a say in how our money is spent, not be instructed by some remote pen-pushers in head office, Sydney, who know next to nothing about our needs.  How dare they!’

‘Jiri, please . . .’ said Maeve in a calm voice, over-ridden.  ‘I do understand, but . . . all the ERAs have signed the agreement to the effect:  We abide by our code of conduct.’

‘Of course, they’ve signed it!’ the doctor thundered.  ‘They had no choice if they wanted to keep their job.‘

Somebody in that awkward low-crouching walk of Groucho Marx was slowly zig-zagging toward Jiri, unwilling to distract the audience behind him but succeeding in doing just that by resembling the humps of the Loch Ness Monster riding the waves between the shoulders of bemused residents.  None other than Dick Bellchambers, treasurer of the residents committee.

The doctor’s eyes remained fixed straight ahead at Maeve, whose deliberately modulated voice could barely be heard in the sudden hush.  She had obviously taken those anger management hints to heart:  ‘You must understand, Jiri, there is a conflict of interest between the safety and health of the residents on the one hand and a possible perceived exploitation of elderly people deemed vulnerable.’

Reaching Jiri’s side, the stooping figure tapped him on the shoulder while levering himself a tad more upright.  ‘Can I just say . . .’

Oblivious of the splutters of the paunchy peace-broker hovering, Jiri ranted on:  ‘If the ERAs had belonged to a strong union, this disgraceful treatment would not have happened!’

Before Jiri could grab another breath, a crackly-voiced Dick Bellchambers mumbled:  ‘I move a motion that we allow these part-time workers to accept work requested by residents.  Some ERAs are happy to work as carers for us.  In fact, this practice has gone on for several years.’  Breathing hard into the hand-mike belatedly proffered by Dr Hugh, who was still fussing over whether the temperamental gadget was actually switched on, Bellchambers said:  ‘Twilight Living’s decision may well constitute a restriction of trade, since now these ladies are only permitted to work two shifts a week.  What’s more, award rates are disgracefully low.’

Still sounding remarkably calm and quiet but physically diminished on her chair, manager Maeve retorted:  ‘Twilight Living will say their ruling is to protect residents.’

Having remained a standing hulk in row 3, Jiri was raring to ride shotgun:  ‘But we want to seek out ERAs we know.  We trust them.  We don’t want carers we don’t know wandering through the corridors of our prison.  We don’t want autocratic decisions handed down from some remote eyrie in Sydney, without any explanation, without any attempt at consultation.’

‘Twilight Living are trying to protect you . . .’

‘We don’t want their protection, we want their assistance.  We are a fiercely independent mob!’

Cheers suddenly erupted amid the warm round of frail hands clapping.  Maxwell was taken aback by the revolutionary fervour and sensed he’d better take sides with the vocal majority.

‘I move,’ stammered Bellchambers, holding onto Jiri’s chair, unable to straighten up further, groping for succinctness through a staccato of gasps caught on mike, ‘that part-timers can do work for residents privately, if requested.’

‘I’ll second that motion and put it in writing straight away,’ jumped up president Holman, who must have felt it was time to butt in and take hold of the reins in spite of the manager’s attempts at appeasement, now that he had gauged a sense of the public will.

When Maxwell realised through absent-mindedly scratching that what appeared as pink scars on his lower right leg or mere grazes like insect bites developed into a glaze of pink, then red, he suspected the symptoms were further evidence of skin rash inflicted by excessive amounts of chlorine in the pool.

‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Jurgen, the maintenance man, waylaid one morning by the central lift.  ‘Every day the water left in the pool and spa, its quality is checked.  The reading is within the parameters.’

‘I’m not doubting you, Jurgen, but I’m jiggered if I know the cause of my skin becoming raddled with red marks.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s not the water in the pool.  I feed the test results in the computer.  Perhaps it’s the hot water in the spa.’  Was there a mischievous twinkle in his eye?  Could the maintenance jefe be taking the piss?

‘I admit that my lower legs sting with the heat.  In fact, around lap thirty, I do get that itchy sensation along the tibia bone.  Then it stings like billyo in the heat of the spa.’

‘Remember, if it’s catching, you’re not supposed to swim in the pool.  The oldies might get whatever lurgy you’ve got.’

What the hell have I got?  Skin sores?  Eczema?  Psoriasis?

‘What do you reckon, Clay?  I have to wash my hands after a work-out in the gym because my palms are filthy black.’

‘Best not pick your nose then,’ advised Clay.  ‘Gyms are notorious for bacteria.  There’s one million of the little nasties on each square inch of gym equipment.’

‘Jeez, that’s one hell of a blitzkrieg.  I dislike having my personal space invaded.  So what are you doing about it?’

‘Nowadays I can actually feel something whenever I walk into the gym,’ replied the gangling young maintenance bod, wafting his hand up near cheek and shoulder.  ‘I do wipe clean each piece of equipment, but by the end of this job I feel . . .’ he shrugged his shoulders . . .  ‘yucky’.’

At the commencement of General Business at the July residents meeting, the president warmly welcomed back half a dozen residents who were not travelling too well.  Following the acceptance of the June minutes, it was an ominous sign when Dick Bellchambers moved ponderously with small, shuffling steps to a chair brought forward by the genial Clay to the front row.  Dick’s bald cranium with grey tufts at the side obscured the view of the quiet, passive, seriously deaf elders in rows two and three, but they could smell a showdown.  The president must have wished for a dormant mouse of a past treasurer instead of this prowler with jutting jaw.

‘But we residents at Chiltern were deprived of the services of a most companionable and cheerful member of staff, who loved to mix in, always willing to strike up conversation with those most reluctant to say anything.  Indeed, she possessed the patience of Job.’

‘Dick, you’re still not listening.  I spelt out our position to Twilight Living and asked them for a reply.  They in turn wrote back to say they were still considering our request.  The situation hasn’t changed.’

‘Yes, it most certainly has.  Kylie’s been sacked!  This would not have happened if the ERAs had a union.’

‘Kylie was sacked for not signing the Code of Conduct.  Now, Dick, I say Let’s do it in a nice procedural way, not like a unionist thug.  Don’t you all agree with me?’  The hint of pleading in the president’s tone brought forth a mere modicum of support from an audience unused to displays of defiance.

Shelley with a large glass of red, glassy-eyed and rubbery red-faced, gabbling away in a slur.  Hurries away from the dining area, bored out of her brain.  No one needs me, she thinks.  I need someone to need me.

Which wasn’t Maxwell, when she turns the corner to enter the lift, just as he issues from the inside fire escape opposite, hoping to avoid other residents.

But not necessarily Shelley, who is eager to buttonhole someone with a bit of pizzaz.  ‘I did my usual round at Sabrini,’ she said, huddling up in a confiding tone.  ‘Made a point of visiting Esme.  Oh, didn’t you know she had a stroke?  Yeah, ten days ago.  Her face hasn’t dropped lop-sided, but she’s lost the use of her right arm.  But with her left hand she was doing fingers and thumbs, like the exercise for arthritis we do at the end of water aerobics.’

‘So what’s the prognosis for stroke?’  After four years at Chiltern Towers, Maxwell was becoming more adept at speaking in medical terms, but usually felt some physical sensation in his own body at the mention of someone else’s near-fatality.

Shelley took another gulp of the good stuff.  ‘Too early to say, but she still had her marbles.  Told me how worried she was she’d miss out on the residents annual raffle and you couldn’t claim a prize if you weren’t present, and would I look for her tickets in her bag of personals under the bed.  Well, they weren’t there, were they, and she started to fret.  It’s mean, isn’t it, if they won’t give her a prize if she wins.’  Head tilted, Shelley swigged, tasted the residue on her tongue and smacked her lips with relish.

‘It’s the only thing I can taste, wine, so I love a good drop of red, ‘cause I can’t taste any food.’  She was holding the glass up to the light and gently swilling its ruby contents in fascination.  ‘It’s three years to the month since my brother-in-law passed away.  He was fit, super fit he was, but one evening he had a nasty fall.  Fell backwards and struck his back on a solid corner of furniture.  Same evening, when he was urinating, he saw he was pissing blood.  My sister called the hospital.  Ambulance came and took him there.  Doctors sent him back home later that night.  He died a couple of hours later.  Punctured lung.  See, doctors don’t care these days.  First thing is, they look at your date of birth, see if you’re worth saving.  It’s all wrong.’

She nudged him in the side, lowered her voice.  ‘I’ve got a letter in my handbag telling them, Don’t revive me if I lose consciousness.  Three times they thought I was about to cark it on account of my aneurism.’  She pulled back her hair from the right side of the forehead.  ‘Have I shown you my shunt before?’

‘Yes,’ he said without enthusiasm, noticing the obvious corrugation at both sides of her forehead, making that ridge of bone stand out.

‘I refuse to go through all those family goodbyes again, only to come back to life soon after.  Just let me go, for god sake.’

It was all too much for Maxwell, whose faint heart prodded him back into the fire escape and slowly up the concrete steps to his apartment, where he took more care than usual not to bark his shin on the coffee table, trip over the ruffed-up carpet or absent-mindedly press his pendant.

 Michael Small

February 28-Ocober 18, 2016