him, but I can’t be coping with his moods, the vicious old bugger. You’ll have to watch him, he likes to scratch.’ She rolled up the sleeve of her cardigan to show Maura the evidence of her claim. It looked as though she’d been savaged by a large and angry cat.
Maura assumed that Cheryl meant Gordon Henderson, the man she had been employed to look after. ‘I expect that Miss Hall falling and needing her own care has disrupted him.’
Cheryl rolled her eyes and flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘That’s an understatement! Mind you, he’s an ornery old sod at the best of times, doesn’t like change. He’s been like a cat on a hot tin roof ever since the building work started. Can’t get his head around it and it upsets him no end. Mind you, I’d feel the same if I was him – seeing your land sold off like that must be hard. Still, it’s her what has the purse strings, not him. You’ll have your work cut out, mark my words – he don’t take to strangers. None of us do.’ She said it as if it was a matter of intractable fact.
Maura gave her a wry smile in appreciation of her message of doom. In her ten years as a psychiatric nurse she had been spat on, sworn at, hit and generally abused on a daily basis. She felt confident that a stroppy old man wouldn’t prove difficult. ‘I’m sure I’ll manage.’ It was what she did and why she’d chosen to work in mental health: she had the ability to tame people and absorb their distress. It was what she was good at, even if she struggled to tame her own. When it came to other people, she cared, even when nobody else did. Sometimes even when she shouldn’t.
Cheryl heaved a large teapot onto the table. ‘Going to have to, aren’t you? Don’t suppose any of us has any choice but to make the best of a bad do. As long as you don’t interfere with me we won’t fall out. I have my jobs, you stick to yours. Just do as you’re told and we’ll all be fine.’ As she spoke, her eyes flickered towards the ceiling and a slight frown settled on her forehead.
Maura followed her gaze and saw nothing but cracked and flaking plaster. She had no intention of poking around where she wasn’t wanted – the woman could clean the depressing house to her heart’s content for all Maura cared. The way she was feeling, she wouldn’t be staying long anyway. The prospect of her own, lonely, memory-filled house was becoming more appealing by the second. But she’d been paid in advance – it made it awkward. And there was the old man with no one to care for him other than Cheryl, a woman who made Maura look positively cheerful in comparison.
As Cheryl poured the tea in weak, steaming streams, Maura said, ‘You do know I won’t be here on Mondays and Tuesdays? Well, during the day anyway. I’ll also be out on Thursday afternoons.’
Cheryl slopped milk into the cups ‘They said, but it’s mainly nights you’re needed anyway. I’m here every day so I can see to him then as long as you get him up. I’ve been coming in more since she had the fall, someone had to, but I’ve got me own mother to see to so I can’t be here all the time. Just stick to your duties. We’ve managed fine without till now, so I’m sure we’ll manage when you’re not here.’
Maura took her tea and didn’t wonder at why the woman seemed so frazzled. It must have been hard work dividing her loyalties. ‘Is your mother ill?’ she asked, imagining what it must be like to be in this house day after day, having its atmosphere soak into your skin and mess with your temperament. No wonder Cheryl was so gritty.
‘Nope, just old and lonely. Mind you, aren’t we all?’
Maura wasn’t sure how to take that. She knew that what she saw in the mirror, when she deigned to look, wasn’t what she wanted to see – a face made gaunt by loss and shame. She hadn’t thought she wore her unhappiness so blatantly so she chose to take Cheryl’s words as a general observation on life rather than a direct assessment of her personally, and any similarities to the harried housekeeper and her burdened state. ‘I was told you’d run me through his routines and show me where everything is.’
Cheryl laughed and pulled a sheaf of papers towards her. ‘Her ladyship made me write it all down ages ago, as if I don’t know all their foibles already. He’s a very particular man, likes things just so – as does she, so you’d be wise to remember it. No one in this house likes change.’ She said it with a hard stare, which did nothing to reassure Maura. ‘They are people who demand perfection, so make sure you get things right first time.’
The list went on and on: how he liked his bread cut (in quarters with the crusts cut off, butter – not margarine – thinly spread right to the edges), the precise consistency of his hot drinks (tea, weak, a splash of ice-cold milk and a quarter of a level teaspoon of sugar. At night, cocoa, not drinking chocolate, made in a pan with full-cream milk, to be served at precisely 9.30 p.m.), his medication (pills to be given in precise colour order beginning with the small blues ones and ending with the white). By the end of it, Maura was heartily relieved that Cheryl had written it down; the whole thing might have been a disaster if she hadn’t. ‘I think I’d better make a copy of that and carry it around with me!’ she quipped as Cheryl explained exactly how many loops Gordon preferred in the Windsor knot of his tie, before adding that he rarely got dressed at all these days so not to worry too much about that.
Cheryl didn’t catch the joke and frowned. ‘Might not be a bad idea. Anyway, I’ll show you around and then take you to meet him.’
Maura drained the last of her piss-weak tea and followed Cheryl out into the chill grasp of the house. She was about to ask where Dr Moss had gone, but realised this would reveal she’d been listening outside doors. Cheryl was abrasive enough, without Maura rubbing her any further up the wrong way. The woman’s hostility already came off her in sharp spikes, like static electricity that snapped and bit whenever anyone got too close. Cheryl’s welcome had been as bitter and cold as the house itself. For Maura, it didn’t bode well, but she had to admit she felt sorry for the woman.
‘Got to watch yourself. It’s not such a big place, but there’s nooks and crannies and it’s not hard to lose your bearings. Sometimes I think they just tacked this place together without rhyme or reason. Just stick to where I show you, and don’t wander off. There’s nothing to see anywhere else anyway and some bits are dangerous so you’d be wise to not stray,’ Cheryl said as she led the way past an array of rooms, few of which seemed to be in regular use. They were too tidy, too quiet and seemed to be holding their breath as if waiting for someone else to breathe first. The creeping sensation of waiting for that breath to linger on the back of your neck was a haunting thought, forcing Maura to view the rest of the building with a fair degree of caution. She wasn’t easily spooked, but the atmosphere was solemn, giving the place a sepulchral feel that settled into her bones like a deep-seated and ice-cold itch that had burrowed into the marrow and would not be shifted. She was being dramatic and she knew it, but Cheryl had an air about her that was echoed in the feel of the house, as if they shared a twin, hollow soul.
Maura’s bedroom was a pink-chintz nightmare that looked as if it had last been decorated somewhere circa 1935. Faded, overblown roses scrambled across the wallpaper in a busy tangle, while the ditsy curtains looked as if they were succumbing to a slow death from the constant onslaught of sunlight and moth. She couldn’t anticipate trying to close them without the thought that they would disintegrate at her touch. The room might have been quaint and charming in any other house but here it made Maura long for her ten-tog duvet and central heating. As she looked around she felt a pang of homesickness and a hunger for the comfort of familiar things.
It seemed that Cheryl had read her thoughts. ‘Don’t mess with the curtains, will you? They’re a bit delicate, ever so old they are, but her ladyship calls them vintage. You can use the bed curtains if you want to shut out the light.’
Maura
