I’ve been caring now for a month, very much the new girl at 57. I’m part of the growing zero hours contracts, paid 8-12 quid an hour, no petrol money. It’s been a long time since I conventionally earned money – not since ICRF 25 years ago, and I’m enjoying the reward professionally. It is very intimate work, body orientated. I wash and bath bodies old or young, change nappies. Every Thursday I’m on a Paliative case 7 hours with Mavis, dieing of stomach cancer. Her husband has 5 complex things breaking down in his body. He’s had a bag since he was 30. But my work and and concentration is with Mavis, now only in her bed. She’s a fanatical cleaner. I must clean, dust the mantle piece, each object must be wiped down. I must disinfect the bathroom all surfaces thoroughly. Polish the 3 piece suit. Standards must be maitained. Her love – their love – is for their Alsation dogs. They have 5 portraits – the only photographs in Mavis room. She came to trust me enough to ask me to tidy her warderobe, fold her caridgans, her yoga trousers, hand her flowery nylon shirts, all of which she knew she would never wear again. Like a ritual last look at the vestments of her life, that wrapped around a different form. As I folded, she gave me their histories provenance and moments of pleasure. Their obituaries.
They came to love Kali, who I tried to hide at first – Kali is not overly friendly. But he managed to get the run of the house and their easy maintenance garden. I asked if I could take the lupin seed heads, and they said, yes, but the colour will not come true, he warned.
She died while I was in London. A relief I felt. Today I dug the seeds into the open woodland area, I think she would smile to know.
East Lodge, the place I’d tried to convince Barry to buy, is unexpectedly to become my home. I almost lost it. When I came to consider it, it had sold within days of coming on the open market to a developer. But a week later Aiden called me and said the sale had fallen through as the developer could not get planning to put on another floor. There were other builders/develioers interested but he offered it to me first due to my good connections with the Park.
So not a Georgian house, not a house in Tunstall Wood, nor the Water House near Reedham, nor any of the others I’d looked at and imagined myself in, then rejected for one reason or another, these past 5 years. But an ugly bungalow on my doorstep. It is however, a stones throw from the wood, albeit on the other side of the road. It was that – and the skin cancer dress rehearsal – which decided.
Kaliwood 