Read Online Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe - Free Book Online

she could find a companion position and have a bungalow bequeathed to her.
    It was a major rant and all the time she held me under the chin, like a school bully. She said that the departure of the Owner’s Wife would result in Paradise Lodge going to ruin and if she ever got an interview for a new job—which was unlikely, due to her age—she’d be tainted by its failure under her command. ‘I thought I’d explained all this,’ she said.
    I knew Matron had had a tough life. She often talked about the bad old days wherever it was she’d grown up—when you weren’t allowed to eat a bag of crisps in the street and they probably didn’t even have crisps anyway, but even if they did, she couldn’t afford them and people’s parents were always drowning themselves or drowning kittens or leaving in the night or whipping the children.
    I agreed to work her shift. ‘Not because you deserve it,’ I said, sullenly, ‘but because I want to buy a floppy mackintosh.’
    â€˜Good gel,’ she said, ‘a floppy mac covers a multitude of sins.’
    â€˜But you’ll have to drive me to school first, so I can register.’
    We got into the Austin, I sat in the back and Mr Greenberg drove. It was the oddest thing I’d ever done. Matron kept laughing and eating sweets out of a tin and pointing at cows and horses. ‘You’re like our very own little gel,’ she said.
    They waited outside in the street while I ran to the school office to register as a late arrival and then snuck back out of the gates. It was all ridiculous and I felt really annoyed.
    Back at Paradise Lodge Matron thanked me and said she was much obliged and then, as they were driving away, she shouted through the window, ‘Keep an eye on Granger.’
    In the kitchen, I read the Day Book to see what Matron had meant about Miss Granger.
    O/B+++ black stool. Agit’d, ref. Food. NOK informed by tel.
    I asked Nurse Hilary what it all stood for.
    â€˜She’s coming to the end,’ said Hilary with a sniff.
    It seems so obvious now, but at the time I wasn’t entirely sure what Hilary meant. And daren’t ask. I spent the day obsessively creeping in and out of the ladies’ ward looking at Miss Granger.
    Between chores, I offered her sips of water, dabbed her forehead with a flannel and talked to her about any nice thing I could think of. I’d been told by my mother that old people liked being read to, or spoken to, especially when they were dying or close to dying—that it was soothing and the next best thing to having a lullaby.
    So I talked to Miss Granger just in case. I talked about Jackie Collins, ex-pupil of Miss Tyler’s, who’d written a bestselling book that some of the staff had read and loved. I fetched the book and read her an excerpt:
    â€˜All right, I’m sorry I spoke. I just don’t know why you want this stupid career of yours. Why don’t you–’
    â€˜Why don’t I what?’ she interrupted coldly. ‘Give it all up and marry you? And what do you suggest we do with your wife and kids, and all your other various family entanglements?’
    He was silent.
    â€˜Look, baby.’ Her voice softened. ‘I don’t bug you about things, so why don’t we just forget it? You don’t own me, I don’t own you, and that’s the way it should be.’ She applied lipgloss with a flourish. ‘I’m starving. How about lunch?’
    After that it got a bit saucy, so I switched to chit-chat. I told her that Matron had gone out for a tour of the Weetabix factory and that I actually disliked Weetabix since having it one time with slightly sour milk. And for some reason I told her my favourite word was London.
    â€˜London,’ I said, ‘London.’
    And that was the only time she opened her eyes, and it occurred to me that maybe London was the only word she’d understood all day.