Life was a gamble. A spin of the wheel here, a throw of the dice there, and who knew where you might land? And today had been one of those throws of the dice. The plan was to meet an old friend, but when Callum had arrived at Liverpool Street Station, Mike had texted to say something had come up at work and he was sorry but he couldn’t get away. That was when Callum had decided he’d take his chances and surprise Jenna. The sensible thing would have been to ring her to check she was free, but sometimes a surprise was so much better.
And Jenna had certainly surprised him!
Chapter Fifteen
Danny had a reputation for being extremely easy-going; never one to let things get on top of him, but that no longer seemed to be the case.
Everything bothered him now. The poor standard of English on the radio and television; the dumbing down of language and etiquette; the lack of manners; the ruthless hacking of hedgerows and needless destruction of wildlife; the appalling standard of driving; the abundance of technology designed to outwit anyone over the age of twelve; the endless Brexit wrangling; the paucity of soft cod roes in tins which he used to love as a child – coated in a dusting of flour, gently fried in butter before placed on toast with a squeeze of lemon juice. Delicious! Now those little tins were as rare as hens’ teeth. Why had supermarkets decided they were no longer worthy of shelf space? And why did people talk in terms of drilling down, unpacking, or rolling out? Why couldn’t they speak plain English?
That was all for starters when it came to his long list of grumbles and gripes. He tried to make himself think positively to counteract the negative forces that were so bad for his wellbeing, but that only turned into yet another grumble – since when had he caught this disease for such psychobabble-mumbo-jumbo; when had that sneaked up on him?
Mindfulness, that was the latest buzzword to come onto his radar. Calm yourself down with a packet of felt-tips and a colouring book. Forget that the world was going to hell in a handcart, propelled with all the force of a nuclear missile strapped to it!
Back in the day everyone had been terrified by the thought of a nuclear bomb; you were the odd one out if you didn’t wear a Ban the Bomb badge. Frankie had an aunt who had actually camped at Greenham Common with all the other women protestors. What would she think of the world now, the world she had protested so vehemently to save from coming to an end.
Maybe it would all be a blessed relief not to wake up one morning, for the world to be nothing but a flattened wasteland like Hiroshima after the US had razed it to the ground with an atomic bomb. But then he’d think of Frankie and Jenna and be appalled at his cowardice, and his selfishness, that he could sink so low as to wish for the world to end just so all the gripes and grumbles he felt overwhelmed by could be gone, lifted from his shoulders. Better to fight and be alive than to be six feet under, had been Frankie’s aunt’s opinion.
Frankie said he cared too much. As ever, she was probably right. Just as her aunt had not been able to save the world singlehandedly, or cure it of all its ills, nor could he. But he could come and see Mrs Maudsley and keep her company for an hour or so; that much he could do.
He drove through the gates of Woodside Care Home, signed in, and was told that if he wanted to wait in the garden, Mrs Maudsley would be brought out to him shortly. Apparently she was lucid enough, and more importantly, well enough, to insist that she wanted to be taken outside.
On the terrace he passed a group of residents playing cards at a table in the shade of a large parasol. He had been sitting comfortably on a bench for some minutes when across the lawn he spotted the newest member of Woodside staff pushing a wheelchair along the brick path. It wasn’t often that Danny took a dislike to someone, but this particular care assistant – her name was Suzie – did not pass muster with him. In his opinion, she didn’t fit in with the general ethos of the care home, although with the recent change of ownership and cutbacks made, maybe the ethos was not what it used to be.
From what Danny had observed of her, Suzie Wu was too offhand and not as patient as she ought to be. If he wanted to be kind, he would say that it was because she was Chinese and English wasn’t her first language, so its subtle nuances got lost in translation. But if he were being honest, he would describe the way she spoke as surly and dismissive.
He had wanted to say something to Matron, but hadn’t dared for fear of being accused of being a racist. He could hear the screams of protest before he’d even opened his mouth.Aha, so the man is a racist! How typical that the only member of staff with whom he should find fault is ethnically different.Had she been British, Danny would not have hesitated to air his concerns.
It wasn’t just the lawyer in him that made him so fearful of the minefield of consequences, should he dare to complain. No, it was the mob of haters out there who would be only too quick to condemn the likes of him. He was white, he was middle-class, he was therefore guilty of prejudice.
All his life he had considered himself to be liberal in his outlook and in his political views, whereas Simon and Alastair were more of a Conservative persuasion, though they had briefly flirted with New Labour and Tony Blair’s fresh way of doing things. But somewhere along the line, the liberal elite had hijacked what it meant to be liberal and promoted themselves to policing anyone’s views that didn’t exactly align with theirs. Their growing toxic intolerance made Stalin look like a pussycat and Danny didn’t doubt that having claimed to be the guardians of moral decency, they would be only too keen to string him up for his intolerance towards Suzie Wu.
God help him, but he found everything about her intolerable. Even her appearance. In her late forties, it could not be said that she took a pride in her appearance. With her unkempt hair, bitten nails and shabby worn-down shoes, slovenly was nearer the mark. But who was he to judge? Perhaps she couldn’t afford trips to the hairdresser or new shoes, and had a ton of worries that made her bite her nails. So long as she did her job well, that was all that mattered.
But Danny didn’t think that she did, that was the trouble. Her brusqueness and lack of patience didn’t sit well with him; surely patience was one of the key requisites for the job here?
Still staring across the lawn at her, anger flared within him as he watched her not paying any attention to the old lady in the wheelchair, who he now realised was Mrs Maudsley. The poor woman’s head was lolling to one side and visibly bumpty-bump-bumping against the metal side of the chair as she was pushed haphazardly along the path by Suzie, who, with her mobile phone in her left hand, was too busy looking into it to give a damn about her charge.
This was the second time Danny had seen her doing a similar thing, and incensed, he was across the lawn in a flash, his legs moving before he’d even processed what he was doing, and not a thought for his straining heart.
‘Why can’t you take more care with Mrs Maudsley?’ he demanded, the words coming out in a breathless angry rasp.
Taken by surprise, Suzie dropped the mobile phone, which hit the ground with a clatter.
‘Look what you did!’ she threw back at him, bending to pick up the device, its screen now cracked. ‘You buy me new mobile!’ She gave him a look that suggested she’d happily wring his neck if he refused.
‘Rubbish!’ he said. ‘You should be paying more attention to what you’re paid to do, not reading messages on your mobile.’ He bent down in front of Mrs Maudsley and very gently moved her head to a more upright position. ‘Are you all right, Mrs Maudsley?’ he asked, conscious of a tightening in his chest, a deep skittering sensation that sent a tremble running through him.
The old lady’s eyes flickered into focus, and as if tuning in to the correct radio station, her lips parted into a rare smile of recognition. ‘Danny,’ she murmured, ‘how nice to see you.’
‘It’s nice to see you too,’ he said. ‘Would you like me to take you for a walk?’
‘Yes please,’ she said. ‘But nowhere that’s too bumpy, I have a terrible headache.’
He straightened up and stared grimly at Suzie. ‘I’ll be speaking to Matron about this.’
‘So will I!’
It was inevitable. Suzie Wu got to Matron before he did and claimed she was being picked on, singled out by a racist bigot. She claimed she had been shouted at unfairly. She hadn’t been using her mobile, merely putting it in her pocket. Mr Fielding had made everything up to get her into trouble. She wanted an apology. If not, she would find a solicitor and demand compensation for stress in the workplace. For bullying and racism too. She knew her rights. What was more, she would go to the newspapers and say what a bad man Mr Fielding was to attack her.
