Read Online Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe - Free Book Online Page B

straight away but Nurse Hilary came in behind me just as Matron was telling a tableful of staff about Northamptonshire’s gently undulating hills.
    Hearing this, and seeing Matron all smiles with a sample box of Weetabix and a tin of sucky sweets, Hilary put her hands on her hips.
    â€˜Sounds as though you’ve had a lovely day, Matron, I’m so glad.’
    â€˜Yes, we did, thank you–’ Matron began.
    â€˜Well, the news here is that Granger’s dead,’ she snarled. ‘Died with her fucking teeth in and no relative.’
    â€˜Another eighty quid a week gone,’ said Nurse Gwen. ‘I thought she had another year in her.’
    There was a general sadness but no one reacted philosophically. None of them imagined it being their granny, mother, sister or themselves. No one seemed to care that this woman—who’d once been someone’s baby girl, who’d seen Captain Scott leave for the Antarctic, whose favourite colour had been peacock blue and whose dressing gown had caught fire on a candle one winter’s night when they still had candles—was dead and gone. And the last image in her mind having been the waxwork model of Lester Piggott.
    Hilary and Sally-Anne left the kitchen to do whatever you have to do to a recently deceased person.
    â€˜By the way, Brixham’s shit the bed,’ barked Hilary from the door, ‘Lizzie had better come and sort her out.’
    I followed them to Ward 2. A screen had been put round Miss Granger’s bed and Hilary and Sally-Anne went behind and clanged around a bit.
    I laid an inco-pad across the seat of the communal wheelchair and helped Miss Brixham out of bed.
    â€˜Where are you taking me?’
    â€˜To the bathroom,’ I said. ‘You’ve had a little accident.’
    Matron appeared in the bathroom and said quietly to me, ‘It’s a bad omen. I bet Mr Greenberg’s going to go and die on me. I bet you he’s next, and I need to get out of here before this place closes down.’
    â€˜No, he won’t,’ I said, just meaning to shut her up.
    â€˜I’ll give you a pound note if he’s not the next to go,’ she said, looking gloomy and folding her headscarf again and again, into a tiny, tiny square.
    â€˜He won’t die,’ I whispered.
    â€˜Ah, something’ll go wrong,’ said Matron.
    â€˜What could go wrong?’ I asked.
    â€˜He’ll either die or, worse, get better and leave,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you a pound note if he doesn’t.’
    â€˜Right,’ I said.
    â€˜And you give me one if he does,’ she said.
    After cleaning and powdering and putting Miss Brixham in a clean nightie, I began wheeling her back to the ward. On the way, a traffic jam had developed in the corridor behind Hilary and Sally-Anne struggling to carry Miss Granger in what looked like a cricket bag. They’d not secured her properly and it looked as though she might tumble out. She didn’t, but an arm flopped out and the owner, who was drifting along with a large Campari and soda, looking for Lazarus, let out a high-pitched scream.

7. A Rival Concern
    Paradise Lodge, for all its faults, started to feel like home—the comings and goings, the bickering, smoking, eating, laughing—and with no one guarding the biscuits, and only Miranda telling me smoking would stunt my growth and poison the air. There was all the hair-curling, making-up and bathing, and I was being paid.
    I loved the feel of the place, the big sunny windows, and the height of the ceilings, the space, the smell of fruit pies baking and talcum powder in the air, the sound of the owner’s sandal buckles as he mooched drunkenly about, the endless perfect denture smiles and the dreamy niceness of the old ladies, their constant murmuring, their gladness to see me and their tales. And that the simple act of singing ‘Play That Funky Music’ while I dusted caused such