The glutinous porridge arrived so cold that, overturned, the oats would have stuck to the bowl. Her appetite wasn’t improved by a stuporous lady opposite, who was smearing porridge into her mouth with three fingers as if plastering a crack in a wall. When Kay couldn’t stomach even sampling the muck, a staff member gave his tablet a disapproving poke as he removed her bowl.
During the morning’s desolate solitary, or “quiet time,” looking forward to lunch proved a mistake. The undercooked boiled potato and overcooked grey meat were physically inedible, given that the “self-harm” regime allowed her only a blunt plastic spoon. The lime jelly was made with too much gelatine and almost as hard. How many meals could you refuse here before they stuck a tube down your throat like gavage?
Slipping her an indelible Sharpie, a kindly staffer warned as she left the “restaurant” that she’d better clearly label all her clothing or it would be swallowed forever in the bowels of the Close of Day laundry. Thus during the “rest period” after lunch—though from what exertions the residents might need to recover was opaque—Kay wrote “KW 114” on the tags of her tops, trousers, and frocks, as well as on the waistband of her knickers and the rim of each sock. The exercise was tedious; the Sharpie was running dry.
Perhaps she’d soon be grateful for a task of any sort. For Kay had made inquiries: there was no library and no gym. Residents were not allowed outdoors. The sole entertainment was the television in the communal day room, open only afternoons—where she prayed she might at least spend time with Cyril.
The large, dishevelled day room put Kay in mind of the ad hoc shelters organized earlier that year for British flood victims. Its few books were all for children: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, The Smurf’s Apprentice, Mr. Grumpy. Broken-down sofas were lumpy with dog-smelling coverlets. As she scanned the room in vain for Cyril, the cacophony resembled the competing monologues of a modern-day train carriage, except that none of these people had mobile phones. “Her rose was a climber, right overgrown,” one biddy narrated to no one in particular, “and well over the fence. I’d every right to lop it off. But the daft woman rung the council! Took on airs, that Stacy did . . .” Another resident’s tuneless rendition of “Yellow Submarine” failed to overcome the TV’s blaring rerun of Come Dine with Me. Kay finally spotted a staff member whose pocket sagged with the remote.
“Sorry,” Kay said. “Might we watch something else? Say, BBC News 24?”
The gaunt young woman had the complexion of someone who actually ate this outfit’s food. “Then we’d not find out if the chicken and Parma ham beat the Nigerian pepper soup, now would we, poppet?”
“I don’t sense our friends here are terribly involved in the programme.”
“Weekdays it’s back-to-back Come Dine with Me,” the staffer declared flatly. “I’m more partial to Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares at the weekend, but that’s just me.”
“Those are the only two programmes ever allowed on this television?”
“You’re a quick study,” the woman said deadpan. “This way, there’s no fighting. Everybody love cooking shows.”
“I don’t,” Kay said, but abandoned her petition on spotting Cyril, who’d a contusion on his forehead and his wrists zip-tied in front. His large male minders pushed him to a sofa and menaced from a step back.
“What happened?” she asked, kneeling. “How did you hit your head?”
“I lost control.” His monotone implied less having regained control as having exhausted his lack of it. “I became violent. I had to be restrained.”
“That’s not like you.”
“It turns out to be very much like me. We’ve never before been thrown in the Black Hole of Calcutta by our own children. In novel circumstances we find out new things about ourselves. Apparently, in the likes of Close of Day Cottages, I become resplendently violent. Why not? What can they do to me that’s worse than this? Purgatory is liberating.”
“If we’ve learnt anything in our practice of medicine,” Kay whispered, “it’s that there may be a limit to how healthy and happy a person can get, but there’s no limit to suffering. So they can always make our lives worse. ECT?”
“I’ve already been threatened with solitary confinement.” Cyril nodded at the codger still looping repeatedly through “Yellow Submarine.” “Which might be a mercy.”
“What’d I tell you?” the Keeper of the Remote exclaimed. “Chicken and Parma ham. No way them twee wallies in Somerset was going for Nigerian pepper soup.”
“If you’re put in solitary, we won’t see each other at all, and I couldn’t bear that,” Kay said. “What are we going to do? It’s only been a day. I’d rather be dead.”
“You had your chance,” Cyril said.
One of the beefeaters who’d dragged Cyril to the day room had been idly reading an Evening Standard, which he put down to check his phone. Cyril’s bound hands snatched the newspaper to his lap, like a lizard eating a fly. As he struggled to conceal the paper under his gown, a hand clasped his shoulder from behind.
“How’s our newbie doing, treasure? A little bird told me my pal Cyrus is having a wee bit of trouble adjusting to his new home.” Dr Mimi grabbed the Evening Standard, which Cyril held onto until it tore. “Newspapers are contraband. All those terrifying stories about the coronavirus are just the sort of news our stakeholders find distressing.”
“I promise not to share what’s happening in Italy,” Cyril said.
“I’m afraid I came over to break up the party. According to our records, you two may be a bad influence on each other. Goodness gracious me, your AMHP describes you as having formed a ‘death cult.’ Let’s get up and circulate! It’s best for our mental health that we make new friends.”
Hence the spouses were kept apart again, and only filing out for dinner was Kay able to sidle beside her husband. “What sparkling fare might be on the menu tonight?” she muttered.
“Wild mushroom
