PART NINE:
When Quentin arrived home at The Firs, Hector was there with six friends.
They didn’t, of course, hear him arrive or move their entangled limbs from around the TV when he opened the living room door. He found them, thumbs and fingers in a blurred frenzy of activity, engaged in a digital battle between a gang of metal clad giants and an army of prehistoric beasts with machine guns that belched green smoke and orange fire. The noise was deafening.
“Good Evening,” he shouted at the row of humped backs.
“Aw. Ah. Yeh. Get that you slime ball. His head’s gone. See that Heck?”
Quentin tried again, louder. “Good Evening.”
“Gotcha. Three in one. Use the flame thrower, Matt. Fuck! Where the hell did that weird Ork come from?
“I’ve just arrived from the real world,” Quentin tried.
“Wahay! Gotcha. Ahhhh. Doh! Roasted, man. Right where it hurts.”
Quentin gave up, retreated, went to the Wi-Fi router in the hallway, switched it off and listened with some quiet satisfaction from behind the door.
“Fuck! What the….? Just as I was ready to……”
He then heard Hector’s voice. “Christ! The old man’s home.”
Then the others: “That mean old geezer? My old man says he’s a loser.”
Quentin snarled, pulled the entire ethernet cable out, stuffed it in his pocket and went upstairs to his office. Perhaps, he thought, it was just as well they’d not seen him standing there in his grey wig.
From his office, he called Sinnick. “Red Lion? Twenty minutes?”
“Ready when you are, Quent. Swelling gone down?”
“Still hobbling but intact.”
He rang Paddy.
“Did you finish the book, Quent?”
“Not another word written for three days, Paddy.”
He rang Charlie.
“How’s Ada Marples?”
“An emotional wreck, Charlie. See you later.”
Their meeting lasted until closing time.
“It was the underlying, unspoken loneliness that got to me,” Quentin said sadly as, yet again, he related his experiences. “Thirty old people slowly retreating into their own irrelevance. Thirty old ladies and Cyril who, apart from Cyril, have found themselves living together because they were fortunate in having a few assets they could convert into half decent care where someone else hands out three meals a day, as many cups of tea as you can drink, but no true love or companionship.
“Wherever they’d gone for that care I suspect their lives would be much the same. A room with boxes of memories, a TV, monotonous menus and a patch of lawn and each other to look at for however much time they’ve got left. But amongst them……...oh dear.”
Quentin’s rare, emotional outpourings threatened to spill over once again.
“It’s not just your Edna, Sinnick. Oh no. It’s ladies like Beaty the astronomer, Emmie the teacher who’d taught in Africa and Asia, Shirley who ran a shelter for the homeless in New Zealand and Brenda, who once flew helicopters. All lost husbands, have children who they rarely or never see and now struggle with health issues – eyesight, deafness, arthritis. Their lives have stopped and yet…...”
He sniffed again as Sinnick, Charlie and Paddy watched hm. It was as if the last few days since his book idea, his ankle injury and his short time living as Ada Marples had changed him for good.
“Only Cyril is carrying on as if nothing has changed,” Quentin went on. “Except, of course, his shaking hands, his eyesight and his hip replacements. The only thing that worries Cyril is falling down and losing his glasses. Cyril, the only male inmate, is the only one beating the system. Should I point this out in the book if I ever complete it? He seems to think that living there is no different than living over his old fishing tackle shop in east London. “It’s just another stage, Quent,” he told me. “Another step towards the big hole in the ground that’ll open up in front of me sooner or later.”
“He says he runs the business to boost his pension but I reckon he’s making more than he can spend. He’s got a safe in his room that he says contains a few old antiques but I reckon it’s full of cash. He’s still a bachelor who claims his libido is as strong as ever and going on his attempted seduction when he arrived outside my door on my first night, I suspect he’s not unsuccessful. He would sometimes disappear upstairs for an hour or so and I’d notice one of the ladies was missing. “Sometimes fading eyesight is a bonus,” he told me. “And shaking hands are perfect for some jobs.”
“Cyril’s not changed since the day he came to see me saying he had a great business idea and would only vote for me if I helped him move to Grey Gables amongst thirty women. “I see some potential,” he’d told me with a wink, but he described his venture much more clearly the night we spent drinking vodka and Red Bull. ‘It’s loneliness,’ he said. ‘It’s a growing market. Someone’s got to satisfy it. If I spend the night telling them jokes you should see the change next morning. If they only look at me, they laugh. And then they ask me if I’ve got any more of that nice skin cream that smells of frangipani or could I get them a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream.’
“He then told me one of his best jokes. ‘It never fails to get a laugh, Quent,” he said. ‘I tell them I know I'm getting old because the other day when I walked past Krupton cemetery two guys with shovels picked me up and carried me inside.’ And the best thing of all is that they’ve forgotten it the next time I tell it.’”
“Edna,” Sinnick then said. “She was writing a novel when her eyesight became too poor. I asked her if she wanted to finish it. Her voice is so quiet now it’s difficult to hear her but it was clear she wanted to. I found it for her – three note books in a box she hadn’t had the strength to sort. It’s there now.”
“So why didn’t you help her?” Charlie asked.
“Why?” Sinnick sighed. “You want me to go through my list?”
“But Beaty or Emmie could help,” Paddy said. “Do you think they’d like me to read some Samuel Beckett, James Joyce or Roddy Doyle?”
“No doubt about it, Paddy,” said Quentin. “Audio books are one thing but there’s nothing like a real Irishman sat beside you to read to you and perhaps chat about other things. It’s company. It’s basic human friendship.”
“And it’s not just those living in Grey Gables is it?” Charlie said. “There are hundreds of old people around here sitting on their own with nothing to do and no-one to talk to. Couldn’t we involve them? Visit them? Invite them in? Turn Grey Gables into some sort of community where some live and others join in?”
“Exactly,” Quentin said. “Cyril calls it added features. I think we should make him our marketing consultant.”
“Charlie, Paddy and I met the bank manager,” Sinnick then said. “We bought Charlie a nice suit from Help the Aged so he didn’t get arrested. Paddy took a hot midday shower to dissolve the grease and I wore my trousers with the working zip.” He paused. “Afterwards, I asked Freud what he thought about us buying Grey Gables.”
Sinnick then stopped, embarrassed, aware he’d never before mentioned Freud. He looked at Quentin, Paddy and Charlie but they were smiling at him.
“What did he say?” Quentin asked.
“He thinks it’s a good idea. He says it’s the right thing to do and that it would be good for all of us. He also says we should change the name from Grey Gables to Silver Arches.”