Two Visits for Cynthia
SOME LIKE IT HOT IN MUCH BICKERING
JELLY BABIES AND A RABBIT
Nanny’s niece phoned. She told me they have moved her into residential care near Newton Abbot. She’s been getting increasingly confused and has had a several falls, and the family can’t cope any more. I’m sure it’s for the best and about time she was looked after properly. I hope she got the Easter card I sent.She hasn’t replied to my last few letters.
Anyway, I thought I would pop down to on the train and drop in some Christmas cheer in the shape of a lace hankie and bottle of 4711 and have a chin wag. Nanny is always pleased to see me and knows the right thing to say when I’m feeling low, and let’s face it, who isn’t after the election? I’m terribly worried that Alyona will have to go back to Estonia after we leave the EU and we’ll never find someone to replace her…not at minimum wage anyway. Maybe Nanny would know somebody suitable.
The ‘home’ is quite near the station, so if Stubbins dropped me off at Cheltenham, I could call in on Kitty and Biff too. I decided to take them both some jelly babies. You can’t go wrong with those.
When I rang Kitty in Bovey Tracey, Biff answered the phone in yet another foreign language. It sounded like Serbo-Croat today, but I was not to be put off.
Kitty said she would pick me up from The Grange and I must stay the night, as Biff would be away again, and she could do with the company.
Oh dear, when we’re on our own, we can get very naughty. I could feel the hang over kicking before I’d even packed my case.
The train was heaving, but on time and I’d booked a seat in the quiet carriage. I really can’t justify first class these days but at least I was spared grizzling babies and young men with head phones, and I was able to settle down for a nice read. I so rarely get the chance. Some old nonsense about falling in love on a cruise but I adore a romance and this one was funny too.
A cab dropped me off outside the gates at ten past three where a board announced
THE GRANGE - A member of the First For Seniors Residential Care Group
We Put People First, FFS
or so it said. I should jolly well think so too.
It’s an old Georgian House, rather like Bickering Manor so Nanny probably feels quite at home. Just like the old days. Of course, there aren’t the views, but a nicely kept lawn with a fountain in the front garden… that’s always a good sign…and a bench under a cherry tree. Life is always a compromise. I hoped she wouldn’t be on the third floor now…not with her knees. She always found the narrow stairs a trial, even in her younger days .
The first thing to hit me when I opened the front door, was the silence. A haven of peace and quiet one might say, but there was no ticking long clock in the hall.
No rush of spaniels.
No laughter.
Just the hush of thick piled carpet and closed fire doors. I stood for a while wondering if there was bell to ring or something, when a girl with untidy hair and a broad smile came around the corner carrying a yellow bin liner.
‘I’m looking for Nanny…um Miss Frobisher.’
‘Oh Mabel? She’ll be in the conservatory with Matron having fun with the others.’ She waved a latex gloved hand. ‘It’s enrichment hour. Just go in.’
Through a glass door a I could see plump woman in a navy spotted dress, which marked her out as a cut above the plain pale blue or stripes of the other carers. She was bouncing a balloon back and forth to the residents who sat in rows of identical armchairs, all holding foam tennis rackets. Awake or asleep, they each had their turn. Only one attempted a return shot but that seemed to be more out of surprise than anything else. The others seemed not to notice that their hour was being enriched.
Every nodding grey head, every pastel leisure suit, every pair of Velcro slippers, looked much like the next, and I was beginning to wonder if I’d come to the right place.
But then I spotted her in the corner. For all her frailty, Nanny hasn't lost her fierce stare and air of knowing best. Her hands, that once brushed my hair, dabbed TCP on my grazed knees, and latterly cradled my own babies, are now arthritic and clawed, but she had a remarkable grip on the handle of her bat and she wasn’t about to let it go to shake mine.
‘Have you come to do my feet dear?’ she enquired rather loudly.
‘No Nanny. It’s me. Mrs Trehorlocks...Cynthia.’
‘Are you sure? I’ve some nasty hard skin on my toes. I can show you if you like.’
She bent down, to reach for her slippers, and released an almighty fart of which Crichton would have been justifiably proud, almost tumbling from her chair.
‘We’re not meant to take our shoes off,’ snapped the woman in the next seat.
‘I’m sure you’re not,’ I said, and helped Nanny to right herself. ‘Look I’ve brought some photos of the twins.’
Was there a flicker of interest? I held out one of the snaps.
‘Look, here’s Arraminta with Jerome and that’s Zim-Zam the pony…you remember Zim-Zam don’t you?’
Nanny held the print tightly, stroking the edges tenderly with her thumbs, tracing the children’s faces with one gnarled finger, her eyes focused in the distance.
‘They sent their love.’
The photo slipped to the floor.
‘Have you come to do my feet dear?’
Poor Nanny. She had as much idea of who I am, as the man in the moon. No wonder she hasn’t been answering our letters. I felt suddenly ashamed that I was still relying on her for advice and support.
When it was her turn with the balloon, she took a wild swipe and gained a round of applause from the woman in the spotted dress.
‘Well done Mabel,’ she crooned and turned to me. ‘Your mum’s a real little Billy Jean King isn’t she?’
I was about to put her right when Nanny called out.
‘She’s not my daughter, you know. She’s just the chiropodist.’
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| pic by Jenny Eatwell |
‘You look like you need a good stiff gin,’ said Kitty, when we were in the car.
She always knows how to make a girl feel loved. I said I thought it might be a bit early but Kitty declared that the yard arm had definitely been cleared in Rangoon and we followed up the G and T with a Singapore sling, before moving on to Prosecco, pizza and a box set of The Onedin Line… ogling Michael Billington as Daniel Fogarty. Happy days.
It was almost like being back at school, except then we drank cider or cheap vermouth if we could get it. We sat up past midnight, talking about the children. Kitty’s two boys have been a nightmare since kindergarten and make Arraminta and Jerome look like saints. Paul’s a civil servant now but he and his brother, Gordon got into terrible trouble selling car shampoo over the internet one year. The house was piled up with the stuff and we all got given a bottle of it for Christmas. It took the paint off along with the mud and there was a very nasty/expensive court case. Gordon now lives in The Virgin Islands much to everyone’s relief.
I returned with an almighty headache to find that, Crichton had invited Alex and Jojo to stay. We did owe them a return match and I couldn’t think of a reason to say no, but I must say my heart didn’t exactly leap at the prospect. I told him that I refused to inflict them on our friends, so just the four of us for a curry supper with supermarket wine… Alex and Jojo are always so tired they are glad of anything… and if beastly child Harold should upset Brexit I would not be responsible for my actions.
On Friday morning, Cook lost her glasses. Not such a momentous thing in itself…she does it at least twice a week, but this time they could not be found, and she spent the day channeling her inner Mrs Patmoor from Downton Abbey, squinting at her recipe book and muttering to herself. ‘It was my new pair madam,’ she whined, ‘They were bisexuals.’
This does not bode well for the weekend.
The Wafflers arrived without the children. They phoned at the last minute to say they were leaving them at home with his mother and not to worry about cots and nursery teas, so that was something. A little more notice might have been polite, but it was such a relief that I could be bothered to feel offended, and I had promised myself that I would be hospitable no matter what. I think Alex and Jojo may have had a bit of a ‘domestic’ en route. She glowered at him through her lashes, over her plate of coq au vin, while he made pointed remarks about people with credit card debt and split a glass of red on my favourite table cloth.
If only I’d told them to keep their bedroom door closed at all times.
Our house guests didn’t get up until after ten. There was a lot of banging about which quite unsettled The Sausage who had taken post outside their door. I could only assume they were ‘making up’, but they still seemed to be barely speaking when they came downstairs. Cook’s Eggs Benedict were ruined… mind you, they were pretty tough at eight thirty. I think the lack of spectacles might have been to blame.
Jojo and I took a stroll around the gardens while the boys talked business. She’s very hard to have a conversation with. Her life revolves around jogging, and taking the children to various improving classes such as Monkey Mozart, and PoppetsPortuguese. She has no interest in dogs whatsoever and if I never saw her again it would be too soon.
After lunch, during which she refused everything but lettuce, Jojo declared that she needed some ‘me time’, whatever that is, and took herself back upstairs reappearing dressed in a low cut top and skin tight trousers leaving nothing to the imagination, just as I was pouring the drinks and passing the Bombay mix round. Crichton’s eyes were on stalks. By the time we’d moved to the dining room for an onion bhaji/chicken samosa starter (Cook makes everything from scratch) things seemed to have thawed between Alex and Jojo. At least, he was squeezing her thigh under the table and she was calling him ‘Babe’ again, if that is any indicator of affection.
It wasn’t until she dished up the chicken jalfrezi (one on Crichton’s favourites) that we realized how short-sighted Cook really is. There’s quite a difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon when measuring spices.
Wowzers!
Jojo’s usual pallid complexion turned very pink for a few seconds before she put down her fork and declared herself a vegetarian. I did my best…one doesn’t want to offend the staff, and Crichton took at least four mouthfuls, but Alex battled on regardless, declaring it a culinary masterpiece.
‘I haven’t had a proper curry like this since I lived in Cardiff 30 years ago,’ he declared, ‘but in those days the meat was usually fox or rabbit.’
And talking of rabbits…
It was at this moment that Brexit appeared with something in his mouth. Something pink and plastic and pulsating. Let’s face it girls, we all have one, don’t we? For dull days when there’s nothing much on the TV… (mine is under the mattress and well hidden from prying canine snouts) …but I don’t take it away for a weekend with friends!
Well! You could have heard a pin drop…
Then Jojo squealed, Crichton said something about Viagra and Alex choked on his poppadum, while I tried to grab the sausage and his prize. He has a strong grip and wasn’t going to give it up easily, but I finally wrested it from his jaws and returned it to its owner. It was now a bit rough in places and one of the ears had come off the G-spot stimulator but with a good wash it should be perfectly serviceable. To give her credit, Jojo didn’t say a word. She just slid the offending item into her enormous handbag and took another piece of Naan. I hate to think what else she keeps in there.
Crichton coughed and asked if anyone would like a top up and the conversation was off again, skirting around the elephant/rabbit in the room, as if nothing had happened.
The evening took an upward turn when Cook served the dessert. Glistening under a pineapple ring were her glasses baked into the upside-down-pudding.
Crichton Comments
Well that went off rather well. Good to see Cynthia and Jojo seem to be hitting it off at last. Lovely girl.
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