CHAPTER 4
Jess finished the last 200 yards of her journey on foot, turning into a busy car park, the entrance to which bore a large white sign: “St James Nursing Home – Compassionate Caring For All.” Tuesday. Her least favourite day of the week. But she had promised, and that was that.
She trudged up to the front door and rang the bell. St James had a primitive but robust attitude to security. No one could get in through the front door without a key, and keys were only available to staff. After a moment, the door opened and an Asian woman in a nurse’s uniform greeted her fondly with a big smile.
“Oh hello, Jess! How are you today?” said Nisha, beaming from ear to ear as she held the door to let Jess enter the vestibule.
“Fine thanks, Nisha. Are you well?” replied Jess with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. She liked Nisha a great deal. She was always smiling and happy and courteous, and she seemed to enjoy her work, however traumatic that must be. Jess always wondered how anyone could be so unremittingly cheerful when confronted day in, day out by death and dying and hopelessness. It should put her own position into some sort of perspective, she told herself. But it didn’t. Anyway, seeing Nisha again would no doubt be the highlight of her day and she should savour it while she could.
“I’m very well, thank you,” replied Nisha, seeming genuinely grateful for the enquiry into her health and with that little side-to-side shake of the head that for Hindus signalled the affirmative rather than the contrary.
“How is he?” asked Jess automatically as she leant over the visitors’ book to sign herself in. The same conversation each week. The same answer.
“Oh, he’s okay,” the word “considering” left unsaid, as always. But unusually, Nisha did have something to add. “But he has a mild chest infection, so the doctor has given him antibiotics.”
Jess put down the pen and considered this new information for a moment. A mild chest infection in someone confined to a nursing home had a somewhat greater significance than it did for most people. Still, action was being taken, and that was no more and no less than she expected at St James.
“Okay, thanks,” said Jess, then she exited through the internal glass doors.
Nisha dutifully maintained her smile as Jess left, but it quickly evaporated as she watched her walk down the corridor and turn left up the stairs to the first floor.
Nisha thought Jess a troubled girl, but she was very fond of her and was concerned. So sad. She was less enamoured with her father but then she had experienced abuse in one form or another all her life, from back home in Rajasthan to the moment she had set foot in Britain, and ever since. It was just something you got used to and had to deal with. So sad to think Jess may not be visiting again. The sound of the doorbell ringing startled her out of her thoughts, and the beaming smile returned.
***
Joe Butler was up and dressed but asleep in his chair. It was a fitful sleep punctuated by coughing and snorting and wheezing, interspersed by a vague and incoherent mumbling; confirmation, as if Jess needed it, that Joe was indeed a bit under the weather.
The room was warm and the spring sunshine streamed in through the side window, but despite this, Joe wore a string vest under his cotton checked shirt and his favourite red cardigan, a tartan rug covering his legs and lower body.
At six foot five, Joe had been a big man. But now, slumped in his chair, he looked sunken and shrivelled, vaguely cadaverous, his thinning grey hair unkempt, two days’ stubble randomly speckling drawn cheeks and greying skin. Blue veins drew an incoherent map down the side of his nose and spread across his cheekbones under deep-set and dark eye sockets. His lips had a tinge of blue about them, too, with traces of mucus forming at the corner of his mouth.
The room itself was tidy and utilitarian and a not unpleasant place to be, but then Joe hardly ever left his room, which to him made it feel like a prison cell on death row. Nevertheless, Jess thought, it was better appointed than her own house, and that was ironic.
The room was dominated by a medium-sized, iron-framed bed and featured a small pine-effect wardrobe, bedside table and table lamp, two upright armchairs upholstered in faded green velour, and a chest of drawers on which sat two photograph frames. One held a picture of a schoolgirl of about eleven: Jess, looking smiley and self-conscious on her first day at high school. The other was an old wedding photograph: Joe and Madge on their wedding day back in 1975, Joe sporting a mullet and outrageously flared brown suit with a frilly shirt and red velvet bow tie, his bride similarly flamboyant in a white lace gown, her hair backcombed with ringlets down the sides, huge circular earrings dangling from petite ears and hands clutching a posy. Both smiling. Both happy. Together and in love on the best day of their lives. On the window ledge sat another, larger framed picture. Madge, alone, elderly, frail, but smiling stoically.
Jess laid her carrier bag quietly on the bed and took off her coat. She was reluctant to disturb him, especially if he was not feeling well, and the sleep might do him good. But she knew that was disingenuous and had to admit to herself that it was not the reason. She would rather he stayed asleep so she could fulfil her duty, carry out her promise, without any further effort or interaction. She had nothing to say to him of any importance, nothing she wanted to ask, no advice she needed. Nothing but idle conversation, and neither of them was any good at that. Not now.
She gazed out of the window onto a garden carefully tended with rose-filled flower beds, small patches of lawn and a bench for residents and visitors to use and take in the air; although few actually did. She leant against the wall, arms folded, eyes half closed in the glare of the sunlight, with her back to Joe, who continued to snuffle and snort restlessly behind her.
She wondered how much longer it would be before her duty was finally done. How many more times she had to come to this place to fulfil a promise, a promise she was forced to give but did so willingly out of love. Another complication she could well do without; as if that would make a difference. Maybe this would be her last visit. Maybe Joe would simply not wake up. Maybe.
As if he had read her thoughts, Joe spluttered and coughed and broke her train of thought. She watched him open his eyes wearily and try to focus on her. He adjusted his position in the chair and tried to sit up, a grimace of pain at the effort creasing his forehead. He took as deep a breath as his damaged lungs could manage.
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said with a rasp and another wheezy intake of breath. “How long you been here?” A moment’s hesitation.
“Just got here, Dad,” replied Jess stiffly. She felt awkward and guilty but couldn’t think of anything else to say, and she was in no hurry to make eye contact, so she decided to stay where she was. Despite his physical discomfort, Joe tried again with the pleasantries.
“Hmm. What you been up to, then?” Joe was originally from East London and still had the cockney twang and an economy of language which meant that participles, past, present or future, were usually foregone in the interests of brevity.
Jess sucked in her breath and exhaled slowly. She didn’t want to have a conversation about herself, or anything else for that matter. She just wanted to go. Go back to her miserable world and leave her dying father alone in his.
“Oh, you know. Work and stuff,” she said, just for something to say so as not to completely ignore him. Whatever she felt, she was not a rude girl. But then, chiding herself that she ought to try harder, half turned her head to catch Joe in her peripheral vision. “How you feeling?” she asked without conviction, stripping back the phrase to its bare essentials in a way Joe would understand.
“Shit,” Joe declared, grimacing and then throwing his head back before launching into another painful coughing episode. Jess breathed in again.
“Oh,” was all she could think to say in response. She didn’t know what she had expected him to say in his current condition. Hoped vainly that perhaps he might simply join her in this forced and inane banter, with a “Fine, thanks.” No chance. She turned her head back to the window. “Have you taken the pills?” Despite her best efforts, and to her continued discomfort, she could not conceal the lack of interest in her voice.
“Yeah, well, they ain’t going to do nothing, are they?” Jess sensed the resignation and bitterness in Joe’s voice. As always, he would find something to be angry about. Angry at his condition, angry at the unfairness of it all, angry at the missed opportunities, angry at her apparent lack of sympathy, and angry that, unlike him, she was blessed with youth, her future stretching out before her. If only he knew. But maybe he was just afraid? She could empathise with that.
The coughing abated for a moment and he decided to get more than phlegm off his chest.
“You found that Paki waster yet?” he sneered, the mocking tone neatly conflating his racial prejudices and his disappointment in her dismissive attitude towards him.
Jess pursed her lips and closed her eyes. Here we go again, she thought. He can’t resist bringing it up, finding a way to get it into the conversation every time. Doesn’t he realise the pain? Of course he does. She was tempted for a moment to scream at him, throw something at him, walk out and leave him to his fate, the miserable old bastard. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She just didn’t have it in her.
“No, Dad,” she said curtly, hoping that would be the end of it. It wasn’t. Joe was onto his favourite subject and he wasn’t about to let it go just yet.
“Nah. Told you he was no good. Told you not to get involved with them sort. That weren’t never going to work.” He shook his head. “I said to your mother, that’ll end in tears, that will.” Her dad had been right for once in his life, Jess thought, but she was not about to discuss it with him or admit it. It just wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it.
“Play another record, Dad.” She didn’t much know what a record was – something music was played on in the old days – but she remembered her mother often saying the same thing to him and it had stuck in her mind. So she deployed the phrase when Joe was, as now, being boringly repetitive, and it was also language he would at least understand.
But she had already decided she would not be drawn into an argument and she hoped that, having said his piece, he would relent. Contrition didn’t come easily to her father, but he sighed and softened his tone. Conciliatory and sympathetic. Well, almost.
“Ah, well. You don’t learn nothing without making mistakes.” He paused in contemplation for a second. “God knows I made a few.” For a moment, Jess thought he might be about to launch into some sort of confessional, here and now, while he still had time, seeking absolution, but then realised there could not possibly be enough time for that. He coughed again. Jess turned and looked at him.
“Do you want a cup of tea?” she asked, hoping he would refuse.
“Yeah, go on then,” he grunted without any enthusiasm.
“Digestive?” she said, reaching over and peering inside a tin which sat on a tray next to two mugs.
“Yeah, go on then.”
Jess noticed someone had been at the biscuits since last week. One of the young girls who came in to clean his room perhaps, helping herself to one when he was asleep in the chair. Well, they were welcome to them, Jess thought. There had to be some compensations in the job, especially if every day you had to deal with a filthy, bigoted old sod like him.
“They’re almost gone,” she sighed. “I’ll get you some more when I’m out.”
“Yeah – you do that. Use me card. You still got it, ain’t yer?” Joe had entrusted his debit card to his daughter for making incidental purchases on his behalf, like tea and biscuits. He had said he had no use for it, nor the meagre contents of his bank account. They were not going to make a difference. Not now.
“Yes, Dad,” Jess said, irritated by the implication that looking after his debit card was not treated with utmost care and attention.
“You’re a good girl,” said Joe. It could have been a show of affection, or even contrition. But the words made her bristle and she felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She suddenly had to get out of there, even if it was only to go and boil the kettle. She had to be alone for a moment. She did her level best not to react. She just stared at him for a second. He actually looked like he meant it. And that was what hurt her the most.
“Back in a minute,” she said, turning away as Joe’s head lolled forward and his eyes closed.
***
Joe Butler married his childhood sweetheart, Margaret Jamieson, in April 1975, when he was twenty-one and she had just turned twenty. They were a handsome young couple. They rented a council house in Lewisham, South East London, and after taking a succession of labouring jobs, Joe trained as a bus driver and got a steady job driving for London Transport. Madge had a part-time job in a newsagent which provided a bit of extra cash; that was all she needed because she and her new husband had planned to start a family, and soon there would be babies.
To their misfortune, Madge suffered two miscarriages over the next five years, and they began to fear they might never have children. Her GP counselled her to prepare for the fact that she might never conceive and suggested that they consider adoption or seek professional help with an emerging new technology he called IVF.
They were simple people, disinclined to seek professional help – that was only for rich folk – and felt that the adoption process was not for them. But in all other respects they were happy, and so their lives trundled on relentlessly with only the anniversary of each miscarriage to remind them of what might have been.
It was on their twentieth wedding anniversary that Madge visited the doctor, who informed her that against all odds she was three months pregnant. Six months later, Madge presented Joe with a beautiful baby girl who they christened Jessica Anne.
It seemed that their lives together had started all over again. Madge gave up work to care for Jess while Joe worked overtime to make up for the loss of Madge’s income and the increased costs of family life.
Over the next ten years they were happy and contented, with Jess developing an easy-going and joyful disposition and Madge returning to work part-time so they could afford family holidays and other luxuries, such as a small family car. Joe and Madge doted on their only child and spoiled their daughter with presents on her birthday and at Christmas, and to their neighbours, they appeared to be the model family.
But the Butlers would soon face their biggest challenge. By 2004, London Transport had moved most of their fleet to larger buses, and this, together with the relentless growth of car ownership, resulted in fewer passengers, which in turn meant they needed fewer drivers. Despite long and loyal service, Joe was made redundant just before his fifty-second birthday, his bitterness exacerbated by the knowledge that other younger, mainly Asian drivers with fewer years’ service had not been chosen instead.
Joe spent a difficult six months trying to get another bus driving job – it was all he knew – and while there appeared to be vacancies elsewhere in the country, the Butlers were Londoners born and bred, and to them it was inconceivable that they should move away.
But their savings were running out and they had to do something, so with much trepidation, Joe applied for, and got, a job in the Midlands working for a private bus operator in the market town of Wellingford. With heavy hearts they packed their belongings and left Lewisham for a new life in the country.
One advantage to living in the Midlands was that rents were much cheaper and so they were able to get a semi-detached council house with a small garden for the same price as their terraced house in London. Jess had just finished primary school in Lewisham so the timing was right for her, and she settled quickly into Wellingford High and made new friends, although to her they all seemed to have strange accents.
Joe had always liked a beer or two and he also liked his football. He never regarded himself as a heavy drinker, but back in Lewisham each Saturday afternoon, when his beloved West Ham were playing at home, he and his mates would go to the pub after the match and sink five or six pints while watching the highlights of the day’s matches on the pub’s massive new 36″ plasma TV.
As he didn’t work on a Sunday, Joe had no qualms about enjoying a Saturday night out with the lads, sobering up the next day in plenty of time for his next shift on Monday morning. He took his job very seriously and never drank the night before a working day, which in any event was strictly against company rules.
He never managed to replicate this activity in sleepy Wellingford, but when England were playing a World Cup qualifier in Germany one Sunday afternoon, he told Madge that he would go to the pub with some of his colleagues from the bus company and have a couple of shandies.
England lost the match, and to drown their sorrows, he and the lads had a couple of pints before he made his way home at around 8 p.m. to find Madge and Jess slumped in front of the TV watching a costume drama.
The next day he started his shift at 6.30 a.m. as usual. At 8.45 a.m., on the High Street, a small car unexpectedly pulled out of its parking spot and the front of Joe’s bus clipped the offside front wing. It was a minor accident in which no one was hurt and blame fell on the driver of the car, a woman in her sixties, who was mortified and profoundly apologetic.
However, procedures had to be followed and the police called. Both drivers were routinely breathalysed, and although falling far short of the legal limit, Joe was found to have traces of alcohol in his system, a legacy from the previous day’s session in the pub. When his employers received the report of the accident, Joe was summoned to his manager’s office and instantly dismissed without appeal.
This was not like redundancy. This was different, and there was no rehabilitation for a bus driver who had been caught with the barest amount of alcohol in his blood. At fifty-five he was unemployable on the buses and, in his mind, anywhere else. He made a concerted effort to find work but to no avail. Increasingly he found himself in the pub drinking ever-increasing quantities of beer and squandering his unemployment benefit.
At fifteen, Jess had grown into a beautiful and intelligent young woman and watched with increasing horror and dismay as her father descended into alcoholism and indolence; and as the money ran out, her mother fell into a desperate malaise, withdrawing into her shell, unable to cope with the transformation of her beloved Joe into a wretched old man.
***
Jess sat in the chair opposite her father, who had fallen asleep again. She had made him take some of the antibiotics with his tea and although his breathing remained raspy, the coughing had stopped and he was able to rest for a while.
She glanced at the clock on the bedside table: 11 a.m. She had been there an hour and she had time to spare before getting back on the bus to her next destination, but she needed to get out before he woke up. She didn’t want to go through the motions of saying goodbye, and she would be back next week to do the same. Back to do her duty.
She turned her head to look at the framed photo of her mother on the window ledge. She leant forward and picked it up, bringing her mother’s haggard face into sharp focus. Madge was clearly forcing a smile for the camera and the lines on her face belied her years. She had only been sixty when the picture was taken, but she looked ten years older and her face bore the stoicism with which she had tolerated her last few years. Jess could still hear her mother’s voice, trembling, echoing in the dark recesses of her mind. Jess, my darling, promise me you’ll look after him. Look after him for me, Jess. Promise?
She could still hear the pleading in the voice, the desperation in her last breaths, that she might yet elicit some semblance of reconciliation, something she couldn’t do when she had been alive, and finally rest in peace. Jess was overtaken by a profound sadness. She had done her duty, but the reconciliation her mother wished for had never happened, would never happen. Madge may have been deluded, in denial of the terrible years in the run-up to her death, but remembering how it had once been was the only way she could face dying.
Jess was disturbed that she herself felt so dispassionate and unsentimental. She too wanted to remember her mother the way she had been when she was growing up. She had loved her mother, but in the end Madge had let her down, and she had had to put distance between them in order to save herself. Who had been more selfish? The separation had been forced on them, but in the end it had been the final straw and her mother had simply given up.
Jess replaced the picture and looked up once more at her father, who was breathing deeply and erratically. Without making a sound, she got up, collected her things and slipped out of the room.