* * *
All too predictably, after breakfast the next day they were both handed paper cups of a dozen anonymous tablets. When Kay tried to slide the medication into a lower cheek, the nurse shouted, “Pocketing!” Another staffer held her mouth open as the nurse fished out the tablets and forced her to swallow the lot. The pills made her groggy and vague. It would be easy to fall into the habit of most residents: sleeping fifteen hours a day.
Despite the arduous Sharpie exercise, the first time Kay got her laundry back not a single item was recognizable. In trade for her becoming peach blouse with a cowl neck, the neat cream knit top trimmed with tiny black buttons, and form-fitting emerald trousers from Selfridges, she was bequeathed: a vast floral house dress, black polyester sweatpants with an exhausted waistband, and a loud men’s shirt covered in golf clubs. Thereafter, she spotted a squat gentleman in his nineties wearing her cream knit top all twisted out of shape, with three of the tiny black buttons missing. Mindful of her appearance but no fashionista, Kay was surprised how personally obliterating it was to be deprived of your own clothes.
As Cyril had no better luck, before long they were both slobbing about in other people’s clashing plaids and stained hoodies. Allowed to see the barber only once a fortnight, her husband could often have fit right in with the Romanian beggars sleeping rough around Marble Arch.
After that first load, Kay knew better than to abdicate to the voracious commercial laundry her birds of paradise kimono from Kyoto or the beloved dressing gown in black and crimson satin that Cyril had found on eBay—in which she would often swaddle herself luxuriously during long lonely evenings as a reminder of her husband. Well, so much for that. Both garments disappeared. She didn’t have a key to her room, but plenty of the staff did. Any complaint about having spotted a certain portly nurse flouncing campily down the corridor in her satin dressing gown was bound to be unavailing.
Their first big group activity was an egg hunt on Easter Sunday. As still more Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares yammered overhead, residents were corralled in the day room for a stimulating exercise of intuition, problem solving, and spatial awareness. The objects of their “hunt,” solidly coloured Styrofoam ovoids big as rugby balls, were hidden in plain view. They littered the carpet. They sat on the sofas. Curious, Kay lifted a cushion or two, but even concealing the odd giant egg under a pillow was considered too challenging. Nevertheless, the group was divided into teams, and their fellow inmates scurried round piling bright elliptical desiderata into plastic baskets with an impressive simulacrum of excitement.
“Now, princess,” Dr Mimi chided, pointing to Kay’s empty basket. “Let’s see some team spirit!”
“Blimey,” Kay said, staring at the red oval at her feet. “I’m stumped.”
At last displaying a trace of subversive gumption, the residents started throwing the footballs at one another and bouncing them off the walls, until Dr Mimi exiled the delinquents to their quarters in disgust.
Weekly “exercise” sessions were equally demanding. Residents gathered in a semi-circle as a visiting gym instructor led them through a series of seated calisthenics: waving your hands urgently in the air, as if your car had broken down on one of those lethal new “smart motorways” with no hard shoulder. Stamping the floor, with its apt suggestion of a tantrum. Circling hands above the lap to execute what the instructor called “the muff.” Jutting a leg out and rotating the foot, although this one was only for the “advanced.” As a climax, the slow-mo Mr Motivator led them in a virtually stationary hokey cokey, though the turning-yourself-about bit for the wheelchair-bound tended to be fraught.
Cyril participated to the barest degree that would spare him punitive measures (cold showers, wheelchair confinement, sleep in restraints . . . ). In the fitness sessions, he’d flap a hand two or three times like the final throes of a dying partridge. During group sing-alongs, he opened and closed his mouth in silence, with no one the wiser that he had once been the lead tenor in his men’s choir. When in Arts and Crafts they fashioned landscapes out of corn kernels, kidney beans, red lentils, and mustard seeds, Cyril piled up a succotash that was mostly paste.
For her sanity, Kay took a different route. On May Day, she helped the more impaired to weave a May pole that was competent and attractive. On Father’s Day, she assisted several residents with Alzheimer’s in constructing cards with heartfelt messages, whilst keeping it to herself that the dads whom the tributes addressed were long dead. If Cyril opted for minimal compliance, Kay’s strategy was overkill compliance. Her calisthenics were so wild and pacey that she got winded. She found she enjoyed singing—she’d always been self-conscious about the reediness of her voice in comparison to her husband’s—and belted out “Baa-Baa Black Sheep,” “If You’re Happy and You Know it, Clap Your Hands,” and “The Alphabet Song” with gusto. Kay’s bean-and-seed landscape was meticulous, with more than a suggestion of Monet.
Socially, Cyril remained aloof, but Kay latched gratefully onto one inmate, Marcus Dimbleby, who was only seventy-seven and had his wits about him. The childless former estate agent had sold his home after being T-boned on the pavement by a mobility scooter, and his injuries made independent living difficult. But the posh care home called Journey’s End he’d found outside of Aldeburgh was so expensive that it soon consumed his equity. Thrown on the mercy of the council, he’d been demoted here. She could listen for hours as Marcus detailed the fare at his Aldeburgh Club Med: freshly fried chips, steak and ale pie with button mushrooms, and proper green vegetables.
Kay took a still savvier approach to the underpaid staff, who hated their jobs. True, the worst of the carers took out
