Jane Gilley - The Woman Who Kept Everything

Tilsbury was hopping around in mild terror.

‘Ooo, my love! You gotta get the electricity people out now. Could be a fire! You insured?’

‘Wouldn’t know, Tils. Never really pay for anything any more, do I, ducks. S’all set up out of me bank account or summat. Cleggy sorted it all out for me after Arthur went, as you know. But I can smell summat singeing! Get hold of me son for me, will ya, ducks? Cleggy’ll sort it all out. Bit worried about being burned alive in my bed. You hear of it happening.’

A few days after the people from the electricity board came to check on the situation, three people from social services turned up; one with a clipboard. They looked official, to Gloria, with their curt smiles and long dark coats. She would’ve said they were calm and sympathetic, if someone’d asked. But they didn’t look that way after their first encounter with 75 Briar Way.

They came into her house, sniffing the air and gagging for some reason. One of them, a man, ran out muttering something. Gloria found it amusing. Tilsbury went round shrugging.

‘Must’ve eaten summat off before they came here.’

The plump, friendlier woman who finally arrived later that first day, Diane, was the most understanding, but even she had a strongly scented handkerchief she kept wafting across her face. Gloria screwed her nose up at the smell and stood a little distance away from her. She wasn’t keen on heavy perfumes.

Oh, but there was nowhere to sit per se. That was the tricky thing about having more than one person over at any one time. And in order to be courteous, Tilsbury had to clamber over a lot of stuff, upstairs, to get the stool off the top of Gloria’s bedside dressing table, so Diane could sit down in the tiny bit of space between the hall and kitchen door. Gloria leant against the architrave and rested her burnt hand on a stack of crumpled magazines.

Now that Diane had finished looking around – her mouth gaping in awe, her handkerchief not far from her nose – she said that her mother had been just like Gloria when Diane’s grandparents died. Couldn’t quite accept it; still didn’t; in a nursing home now.

‘Much better for her. All her woes dealt with and she’s properly cared for.’

Gloria didn’t really know what the woman was talking about. She wasn’t interested to know something about someone she didn’t know and would never know and, anyway, her hand ached. She grimaced as she tried to reposition it.

‘Oh my, that hand looks sore, love. Should’ve wrapped it in cling film or something clean if you had it. But, anyway, don’t you worry about all that, now. We’ve got to get you away from here and do some sorting out,’ Diane informed her, with a bright smile.

Gloria shook her head solemnly. ‘Don’t want to go anywhere else. Been here so many years, ducks, and I certainly don’t want to go anywhere now.’

‘I know that, Gloria! But we’ve, um, we’ve got to sift through all this – er – this stuff to try and find where the electrics blew. Your house’s become a bit of a fire hazard now, so we’re taking you somewhere safe while we sort things out. And that hand of yours needs looking at.’

Clegg appeared at that precise moment, his large frame filling the already clogged front doorway. He was sweating and also trying not to gag. He squeezed past them to try and look at the kitchen, pushing boxes and piles of magazines aside in his attempt to get through, but then he stopped, deciding against it.

‘Oh stuff this! Right, Mum. Bleeerr. God! What a stench! And what on earth is all that crap and rubbish doing over there by the kitchen sink? Wasn’t there last time I came. Good grief, there’s bits of food in it as well, Mother! What on earth’ve you been doing?’

‘I think some hooligans nicked me wheelie-bin, Cleggy. So I leave me household rubbish near the back door. Can’t put it outside. Foxes might get it!’

Clegg gagged and put his hand over his mouth, shaking his head.

‘Un-fucking-believable! Right, well, I got rid of that bloody scoundrel, Tilsbury. Seems to me he’s using your ruddy good nature to wheedle his way into favour, rent-free, and how’s that helpin’ matters? It ain’t, Mother. So you’re coming with me. And I don’t want any more ruddy arguments. Plus it’s not safe for you in here with all this crap everywhere and dodgy electrics.’

He turned his back on his mother and nodded to Diane.

‘Just get rid of the bloody LOT! Don’t care how you do it but just DO it. Give me any paperwork you find in drawers and the like but otherwise there’s nowt of any value. I’ll pay for what needs payin’ for but just get rid of it. And, er, thanks for getting her a place at Green’s Nursin’ Home for a couple of weeks. They’ll clean her up and sort her out a treat, I’m told,’ he said through clenched teeth.

‘They certainly will, Mr Frensham. They’re one of the best homes in the district. And you say you’re happy to take her afterwards? Is that for full-time care or will you need some additional help?’ mumbled Diane, behind her handkerchief.

Clegg shook his head vehemently. ‘No. We’ll be okay with that, thanks. My Val’s sorting all that side out. She’s a nurse as you know. We’ve got a small en suite extension for my mother. So we’ll all be fine at home together. God! That smell is unbearable! Dunno how she’s put up with it all these years. Nowt so queer as folk, as they say.’

From the moment Gloria stepped foot inside Green’s Nursing Home she decided she didn’t like it.

Well, it wasn’t 75 Briar Way, for one thing! And where were her belongings? Where was her winceyette nightie? Where was her splayed blue toothbrush for cleaning her dentures with? And where was her little alarm clock with no battery that Arthur bought her, back in the day, which she kept under her pillow when she slept? She liked those things around her. They brought her comfort.

Clegg had driven her to the nursing home. His wife Val was not with him and nor were the children. Gloria felt as though she was being shuttled away somewhere, out of everyone’s hair.

‘Right, Mother. I’ve got to go. Already had more time off work than is good for me. You go in through those doors, there, to reception and ask for Mrs Lal. She’ll be looking after you,’ he’d said, revving his engine. Once Gloria had clambered out, he’d driven off without so much as a wave. Gloria shook her head. Clegg’s behaviour was not what it used to be.

The lady who’d met Gloria in reception, Mrs Lal, was the chief carer. She’d asked if Gloria would like a brief tour first but all Gloria wanted to do was squirrel herself away and have a jolly good think about things. Plus she wasn’t good at speaking to new people because she hadn’t had to do that for a long time.

So Mrs Lal had taken Gloria upstairs via a lift and showed her into a very small room with a single bed, one chair and a wardrobe and nothing else at all. No ‘things’ or ‘stuff’. The décor was insipid. Pale peach walls, pale peach bedspread. Pale this, pale that. Not the mish-mash of colours, textures and chaos she was used to. Gloria felt downhearted. Clegg had told her she’d be here for two weeks while he sorted things out with the house. So she knew she had no choice but to stay and accept this place and the people she found within its walls.

Clothes, not new ones, had been left on the bed for her to change into. They weren’t her own. Mrs Lal had shown her where the shower and toilet were and asked her to have a good shower and hair wash with the gels provided.

‘You okay with that, Mrs Frensham, or do you need someone to help you get cleaned up?’ Mrs Lal had said with a kindly smile.