Catherine O'Flynn - News Where You Are

Frank was eleven when his father died, but in truth Douglas had been absent throughout much of his life, his passion for his work taking up most of his time and energy. Frank and his mother stayed on in the house that Douglas had built for them, a modern two-storey flat-roofed home set on a gentle slope in Edgbaston.

Even before his father’s death, Frank had noticed the way Maureen often seemed elsewhere in her thoughts. He had become aware as a young boy of days when his mother would watch the television without seeing anything, would ask him where he was going without listening to the answer or open cupboards and stare into them for minutes at a time. Some days she would be fine, but on others he would return from school to see her at her bedroom window, looking out at the sky, an expression of terrible loss on her face. As he grew older, he began to suspect that his mother was doing all this for his benefit — that he alone was her intended audience. Sometimes friends or work colleagues would visit and she seemed a different person with them, laughing and chatting. Whilst he believed she often was unhappy, and could even see that she perhaps had grounds to be so, he also felt that she wanted him to see her that way. It was a feeling he could never quite shake.

Walter was winning as always. Frank wasn’t sure what Walter got from playing against someone so weak at the game, maybe just the novelty at his age of anything being effortless.

‘I saw your mother in here the other day.’

‘Oh, good. She does leave her room occasionally, then?’

‘Oh yes. She’s not in here all the time, but she comes down every now and again, and it’s always a pleasure when she does. She has such a sense of humour.’

Frank had heard this many times. ‘Apparently yes.’

‘Yes, oh, she makes me smile. Very quick witted. Very dry.’ Walter laughed to himself. ‘You should hear what she says about the management here. “The Cabal” she calls them. I know she has her blue days. We all do. But on her good days she’s like a crisp, clean gin and tonic.’

Blue days. Frank had always thought of them as purple. He smiled at the thought of the gin and tonic; it was a good description — sparkling and fresh. He saw that side of her very rarely now, but he knew what Walter meant.

After Douglas’s death Maureen continued to work parttime at the local doctor’s surgery and had many friends and colleagues around her, but despite this she often spoke as if her life was almost over — referring to herself as old as far back as Frank could remember. At times her melancholy bordered on self-parody, descending into Eeyore-like gloom. Andrea asked Frank not long after they married if he thought his mother was depressed and Frank had said: ‘She’s not depressed; she’s just miserable.’

But after retirement, whatever constituted Maureen’s condition — grief, depression, loneliness or just a predisposition to melancholy — was exacerbated by an increase in her alcohol consumption. Late in the evening, after she’d had a bottle of wine, Frank would receive phone calls from Maureen telling him that she didn’t think she’d live much longer, or that she wanted to be cremated not buried, and he would find himself ensnared in her circular monologues.

Gradually the house became too much for her. She no longer had the energy or the will to keep the large windows and the parquet floors clean. More of Frank and Andrea’s visits were taken up with cleaning and shopping for food. Maureen started to lose weight and never seemed to know when or what she’d last eaten. One day Frank received a call from the newsagent near his mother’s house, telling him that Maureen had tried to pay for her paper with a bus ticket.

The doctor didn’t rule out Alzheimer’s but diagnosed Maureen primarily as depressed. Frank asked her to come and live with his family, but Maureen refused point blank. She said she would rather he smothered her with a pillow than become a burden on him. And so after much investigation and thought, aged just sixty-seven, Maureen moved into Evergreen Senior Living.

Evergreen had started off in the States before importing their variety of deluxe privately run care homes into the UK. Maureen’s home, by virtue of being in the Midlands, had been branded Evergreen Forest of Arden. It was a vast purpose-built facility, with over one hundred permanent residents and more making brief stays for respite care. The home was divided into two zones. Maureen, Walter and Henry were in ‘Helping Hands’, whilst those with more advanced dementia or greater dependency were housed in a separate, secure area called ‘Golden Days’, inevitably referred to by residents as ‘Gaga Days’.

For some historical reason never explained to Frank the home had always attracted a significant proportion of residents retired from the entertainment business. Frank had first heard of Evergreen through Phil Smethway, who had himself heard of it through someone else, word of mouth being the way that most people came across the home. Retired magicians, dancing girls, musicians and technicians now found themselves all at the same endless after-show party, drinking tea and trying to identify the latest presenter of Countdown .

Once a month a cabaret night was staged by the residents. Maureen had attended one once and told Frank it had all the charm and entertainment value of being buried alive. Frank noticed the poster for the next one on the wall:

The Great Misterioso

(aka Ernie Webster)

will be presenting a dazzling array of his greatest tricks in

THE MAGIC NEVER DIES

Saturday 24 th4 p.m., Shakespeare Lounge

‘ “The magic never dies”. Are you going to that, Walter?’

‘No, it’s been cancelled.’

‘Why?’

‘He died.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Frank.

Walter broke into a wide grin. ‘So that proved that bugger wrong, didn’t it?’

It was almost midnight. Frank undid his bow tie, took off his dinner jacket and flopped onto the sofa. His head was filled with the static of the evening’s exchanges — scraps of banal conversation, half-hearted banter, empty words that continued to jangle. His face ached from smiling for the camera. G. E. Jones Industrial Solutions had got their money’s worth. The drinks reception was interminable, followed by a dinner of overcooked beef, and he’d thought he’d be able to escape after his speech, but then came the photos. He had posed for at least forty, and at least half of those, it seemed, with men called Derek.

Frank was always amazed by the non sequiturs and bizarre remarks that tipsy managers and board members blurted out whilst posing next to him and waiting for the flash. The close physical presence of someone hitherto seen only through a television screen seemed to have a strange impact on conversational skills. One insisted on saying ‘Penis’ rather than the more traditional ‘Cheese’ as the photo was taken; another asked Frank: ‘Do you piss in a bottle under the desk?’ whilst another muttered inexplicably: ‘The wife won’t like this.’ Frank knew he wouldn’t sleep until the buzzing in his head subsided. He didn’t want to wake Andrea with his tossing and turning and so sat in the cool, dark living room waiting for a calm to descend.

He looked at his cufflinks and cursed Phil Smethway whose gift they were. He felt bad for cursing the dead, but couldn’t help blaming Phil for every PA he did. It was easier to blame Phil than himself. He knew that he could say no, as Julia did. But Phil had said yes to everything and Frank had simply carried on unthinkingly. Phil always said it was part of their job; he emphasized the many charities he supported through appearances. But most of the charity dinners were naked exercises in corporate PR and Phil’s true motive, Frank suspected, was that he simply enjoyed the glitz and glamour even as low level as it often was. It was after all at a launch for a new car showroom where Phil had met his last wife, Michelle, almost forty years his junior.