One Precious Thing

 

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Introduction

'For fuck's sake!' Casey pulled her coat tighter around herself in a vain attempt to wring some warmth out of the cheap polyester. Even without a watch she knew that she was running late. She did not want to be out on a night like this. The damp of the day was already freezing beneath her feet as she crossed the precinct and pushed open the swing doors that led into the high-rise. In her hurry to get out of the cold she pushed a little too enthusiastically and both doors slammed into the graffitied walls behind them. There, stark in black on white, she was confronted with the news that 'Deth is comin.'

  "Don't I bloody well know it?' she muttered through pinched lips 'and Muggins here is on her way to sort it.'

  She summoned the lift, hearing its creaking complaint as it descended, floor by floor. It moved towards her with all the bad grace of a pensioner on his last legs. Now, encased in the grey shell, she tried to avoid contact with the suspect smears on the walls. Catching sight of herself in the fogged mirror, she admonished her reflection.

  "God, what a pretty sight...not' she sneered. Her mouth curled tightly under her creased nose, trying not to breathe in the miasma.

  'Come on, girl. You should be used to the stink of humankind by now,' she rallied herself.

  In her hurry to escape the smells Casey stumbled out of the lift and into splashed silver light. It spilled through the broken window and puddled onto the patent of her DMs. The landing light must have been broken; there was silence when it should have clicked on and so moonlight had the upper hand. Glancing through the smashed  glass she could see the streetlamp below strung like amber beads, spreading their orange glow onto groups of youths who jostled around shared chip bags. Distant young giggles danced in the air behind her as she turned towards the door across the landing and rang the bell.

  The day carer opened the door to Marianne's flat. She was buttoning her coat and bending down to pick up her bag in one movement, holding the door ajar with her foot.

  'You're late ' she grumbled and before Casey had time to cross the threshold, she was squeezing her fleshy body past Casey's thin frame so close that the younger woman inhaled the damp odour of her armpits. The woman filled her in over her shoulder as she hurried away.

  'She's had a quiet day, the old girl. Though, that might mean that she won't settle easy for the night. Anyway, her notes are on the coffee table if you need them.' She shivered in the draft from the landing window. 'Is it cold out? Can never tell when you are in there. The forecast threatened snow again.' She huffed off into the lift as if the weather had been a personal slight, stomping  into Casey's splash of moonlight. Pressing the button more times than was necessary, she bullied the lift door into opening and then she was gone.

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T Van Santana

Hi Sue, great opening :) Please keep going. You may also want to look at the social media site, Ello.co. There's a lot of friendly writers on there.

Sue Baker

thanks for reading. I would appreciate your feedback if it is not too cruel. Thank you.

New places, new people

Casey stepped back as heat slammed into her from Marianne's room. The old lady had not been in the living room and so she had quickly scanned the notes on the coffee table before moving towards the closed door that she guessed must be the bedroom.

  'New places, new people,' she sighed and then laughed at her own turn of phrase. These weren't new places or people, they were anything but...old, old places with old, old people inhabiting them.  She could hear a soft chanting through the painted chipboard. The words were half spoken, half keening...indistinct. As she stood in the doorway she could make out a shadow in the dim light. It could only be Marianne and she was rocking, rocking, crooning; the sound was almost shamanic, hypnotising.

  'I weigh, weigh. I weigh, weigh." Casey remembered from her brief induction course at the Everlasting Care Agency that people with dementia cling to what they know best in order to make sense of their world., in order to feel safe. Marianne's notes informed all that cared to read them that the client was over zealous about watching her figure...even now.  The notes said that she had been refusing to eat meat lately, that she had 'vocalised a worry' about getting fatter and that she chattered incessantly about losing pounds whilst standing on the scales several times a day.

  'Come on Marianne,' she said without bothering with the niceties of introducing herself, 'time to pop you into bed. Let's get you comfortable.' She tried to push the fragile frame backwards onto the bed and under the rich red covers. Wispy as cobweb but as strong as spider silk thought Casey as the old lady pushed back against her, resisting her efforts. Thin, veined hands were cupping something small. She couldn't make out what it was in the cave of blue tipped fingers. Finally Marianne ceased struggling and allowed herself to be tucked up. Her hands were clasped together, now on the top of the sheets and she was still softly reciting her mantra,

  'I weigh, weigh. I weigh, weigh,' as Casey stepped away from the bed.

  'You should eat more, Marianne,' she scolded, irritated into cruelty by the repetition. 'You weigh no more than a speck of dust. Soon they won't be able to tell the difference between you and a stain on the mattress.'

  The frail body sat itself up in one decisive movement. It was so sudden that Casey, startled, was put in mind of a corpse rising from its coffin. Marianne began to speak. Her voice, now, was clear, even confident and the clouds shifted from her tarnished eyes.

  'There were thousands, all over the floor, thousands, all the same and yet each one...' she reached into the abyss to find the word, 'not the same. He took me there, to see them...thousands, all over the floor, each one no bigger than a fingernail.' She held up her hands to look at her own little nails. 'I can't remember his name but he told me what they were. China, painted by hand, painted to look the same and yet they never could be, could they?' she was thinking hard, wrinkles on her forehead deepened into troughs as she drew memories from the well of her consciousness, working it all out. 'They had been painted by lots of people, at different times, all in different moods. I wanted to touch them but we weren't allowed. We were too late. Others had crushed them underfoot you see and now they were dangerous to breathe over. We could only look but I needed to touch.'
 

  "Well now Marianne,' Casey patronised 'this is all very interesting but you need to sleep.' Her voice high pitched cut the air crisply like a teacher's cajoling a young child into focussing on their work; she frowned, at a loss as to what to reply to this elderly lady's ramblings. Casey did not understand what Marianne was talking about and yet she could almost picture something flitting from the recesses of her mind, something that she tried to catch as it flashed past; a large room, a monochrome floor and then it was gone escaping as sliver and fleet as a fish from a fishing line. Anyway there was something starting on TV that she wanted to watch and she needed Marianne out of the way, tucked up asleep within the next fifteen minutes. The old lady wouldn't stop talking and Casey cocked her head, only listening with half an ear, wondering if her life was to be doomed to hearing the prattles of demented oldies, 'God help me, where are the normal people?' she muttered.

  "Afterwards we walked across the road from the gallery to the river,' Marianne smiled triumphantly at finding the word 'gallery' as Casey deftly pulled the covers back over her tiny bones and right up to her neck. 'It was hard for me to leave though. I tried to see if I could touch when they weren't looking,' her mischievous expression became rueful as she sighed 'but they were always watching. The tide was out as we walked down onto the mud. He stared across the water to...far away.' Casey stopped moving around the bed giving Marianne's story her full attention at last. Marianne was alone in this world she knew that much, so who was this 'he?' Marianne prattled on '...but I saw it, shiny, nestled against the toe of my shoe. When I picked it up I saw;m I saw that it really was what I had hoped it would be. It had been there waiting for me to find it.' Her voice became querulous then, like a child asking why the sky was blue. "However did it get there?" Casey could almost hear the rusted cogs as they rolled laboriously over in Marrianne's mind. 'Ai Wei Wei, he was the artist, he had them made." She laughed aloud and as she laughed, she opened her hand to show Casey a tiny porcelain sunflower seed. Casey took the seed into her own hand, feeling the cool of the clay, examining the straight grey stripes on white.

  'It reflect ts us all, don't you see?' Marianne smiled into her eyes 'We are all alike and yet we are all...not.' She lay down again, folding her hands over the covers and closing her eyes. As she melted into sleep Casey heard her whisper her mantra for the day 'Ai Wei WEi' and this time she thought that she understood what her charge was trying to explain.

  With Marianne asleep Casey busied herself about the room picking up and folding Marianne's things; she took all the care that she did with her son Jack's clothes on the nights when he was allowed to sleep over. Jack, her vibrant little boy, seven years old and growing up too fast. He was beginning to resist the cuddles that she loved to share with him.

  'Muuuum, nooo! he would chuckle and gasp as he twisted out of her grasp. 'Yuck, you're a girrrl!' Then he would run just slowly enough for her to catch him and allow her to steal a kiss before he pulled away and was off again.

  She liked Marianne's room, she thought as she stacked away all the paraphernalia of the day. It was a room of mellowed pine, golden and warm with the sunlight that had caught and changed it over the years. There was a day quilt draped over a small nursing chair in the corner, a striped indian cloth  of sunset reds and blush pinks. The voile curtains were purple, sequinned, arcing rainbows across the rooms she switched on theTiffany lamps. A dresser beside the bed had been embellished with china knobs, each one different. She spied a jewellery box on the velvet runner of the dresser, in its cushions lid stood Marianne's collection of antique hatpins, here topped with a star, here a sapphire globe and here one that caught Casey's eye so that she wanted to touch...a grooved grey bead that held blue and green streaks in its translucent depths. She knew from her last job in the New Age crystal shop that this was Labradorite, the stone of transformation. "And that was a load of old bollocks,' she thought 'cos I never saw anyone transformed by a lump of stone.' At the foot of the bed, on a sandalwood chest, small teddy bears were tumbled together, just a few. Casey stroked the one on top wondering why a childless old lady would have them. According to her notes there were no children in Marianne's life and there never had been. 

  'I wanted to touch,' Marianne stirred and spoke through slumbered lips.

  'I know love, I know.' Casey surprised herself with the gentle tone in her own voice; it was the tone that she only used for Jack. She stroked the yellowed hair from Marianne's face and as she gazed down at her, she realised that the old lady still held a prettiness about her but with all her vibrant colours faded and squeezed out of her like a pressed flower.

  She picked up the jewellery box and carried it with two hands into the living room. She did not really know what prompted her to do such a thing, to pry into something that was not her business but Marianne was beginning to intrigue her.  She wanted to know more about her than the story that was set down in her notes. She felt the urge to look at the things that Marianne owned, to see what she treasured. The theme music from her favourite TV programme played as she lifted the lid of the box, careful not to dislodge the hatpins. She turned the sound of the TV down; on the screen a key character was shouting at his weeping wife. Casey began to examine the contents jumbled before her. There did not seem to be much of great value as she rooted though the tangles of silver and gold...a sparkly diamond ring, an unusual little brooch shaped like a workkman's boot. The latter had a hole in it and a plump silver towelled out when she picked it up kicking the crease of a smile into her tired eyes. "This would make good money at the pawn shop'... her bad self tossed the idle thought out into the forefront of her mind as she held up an engraved bangle to read the words 'Don't let the shadows of yesterday spoil the sunshine of tomorrow.' Her reverie was broken by a blast of freezing rain as it splintered against the window pane. The TV screen flickered, catching her eye as the shouty husband now seemed to be kissing someone who was not his wife. Casey shook herself,

  'God, your mouth is like the Sahara Desert girl. What you need is coffee.' It was comforting to hear her voice in the silence of the stranger's flat. She lifted herself out of the easy chair and she noticed a faint whiff of stale cabbage about it as she raised her warm thighs off the velvet brocade.

  Neon spotlighted the scene in the kitchen. There were unwashed dishes spread out on every surface.

  'Oh for God's sake,' Casey whistled through the gap in her front teeth, 'who's been feeding the five thousand? That lazy mare from the day shift could have cleared up.' Hadn't the woman told her that she had had a quiet day? What the hell had she been doing then? She had bloody well given herself a quiet day too by the looks of it. She held her breath trying not to retch. The place smelt of rotting fish. As she moved towards the sink she could see why. There under the dripping tap were the remains of a fish and chip super lying soggy on their wrapping. 'I bet this wasn't Marianne's. The woman didn't even use a plate,' she was close to throwing up as she lifted the whole mess out of its watery grave and searched for a bin.

  She put the kettle on, rifling through Marianne's cupboards until she found a premium brand coffee from some german based discount supermarket and a hard lump of malt loaf past its sell by date. She hadn't eaten for hours, her stomach rumbled as if to tell her that it didn't care about any sell by date. There was barely any food in the cupboard at home. It wasn't payday yet and so she had to save it all for Jack's next visit; thank God he liked pasta and ketchup.

  Half an hour of washing up and two coffees later she flopped back into Marianne's chair. She sighed as she sank into its squashy cushions allowing the soft leather arms to engulf her in a cuddle. She sniggered at the sight of her legs stuck out in front of her and the chair like a toddler's; she wiggled her toes in a mini mexican wave, trying to stretch them to the floor. Her TV programme had just finished and she tutted as she flicked through the channels, stabbing at the buttons of the dying remote control. There was nothing much to interest her on the first four channels and she couldn't be bothered to investigate the rest, there was far too much choice.

  A sharp sound behind her made her jump out of the chair, turning in mid air to face the bedroom door. Marianne was standing in the doorway, her victorian nightie askew on her shoulders. She seemed so vulnerable as she pulled at the buttons down the front...one of them popped off and spiralled down to the floor, rolling towards Casey's stockinged feet.

 'I have to go now,' she said sweetly 'I have enjoyed my stay but I have to get to the airport.' Her eyes were blinking rapidly in her peaky face, open and shut, open and shut...now I see her, now I don't thought Casey...like a flickering lightbulb about to blow.

  'This is your home Marianne.' Casey moved towards her as she spoke.

 'Have I been here before then?' The old woman looked at the young one disbelievingly, suspiciously, as if she were on the lookout for trickery. She began to back away never taking her eyes off Casey.

  'Marianne, it's the middle of the night. The planes aren't flying out until morning. You need to sleep so that you can get up early for the first flight outstomorrow.' Inwardly Casey congratulated herself for reading the new book on dementia which advocated agreeing with the patient so as not to frighten her. Marianne stared agitatedly down at her gaping nightwear,

  'but I haven't brought any clothes. I've only got this to wear.' She began to make small mewing noises of distress as she tried to hold the front of her nightie together where the button had been pulled off.

  'It's ok Marianne,' Casey took ker hand 'your clothes are being washed and ironed ready for the journey.' She led the unresisting figure back to bed and tucked her in again.

  'I'll wake you in good time tomorrow,' she promised 'now sleep tight Marianne.'

  Casey yawned as she felt the weight of the day, the weight of her life, press as heavily upon her as chainmail. She picked up the jewellery box and crept, stealthily as a thief, back into Marianne's bedroom to place it carefully, quietly, back into its oblong shaped patch amidst the dust on the chest's surface. Marianne seemed to be fast asleep now and Casey closed the door gently on the small snuffles and snorts that accompanied the old lady on her journey into oblivion. She crossed the living room to the door opposite Marianne's guessing that this must be the spare room. Her exhausted features registered disappointment as she felt the clammy cold of the unused space, saw that this room was as utterly bereft of personality and warmth's Marianne's was alive with it. A bed, a bedside table and a chair that weren't much different to the flat pack ones that she was forced to have in her own flat.

  'Home from home,' Casey's lips mouthed the words as she spoke under her breath. She flopped gracelessly onto the single bed, sinking her head into the overly soft pillows. Out of the corner of her eye, over the edge of a pillow, she glimpsed something leaning against the curtains window frame, a grey shadow against the black night now that the streetlamp had been put out...even the Council was saving on its electricity bill. She raised her head reluctantly to see across the room that it was photograph of two figures. Groaning she pulled herself up and moved over to the window, dragging her weary feet over the icy linoleum. Holding the photograph close to her nose, she screwed up her eyes to make out a younger, more radiant Marianne smiling beside a tall, middle aged man. He wasn't especially handsome she noted. He had his arms around Marianne's shoulders  as he gazed down at her, his face wearing the expression of someone who was completely enamoured. Marianne was transformed, she was holding something up towards the camera, something between her forefinger and thumb; it was the sunflower seed. Casey turned the photograph over in order to read the neat black script that stretched across the back. She spoke the words aloud

  'At last, my own James, at the Ai Wei Wei installation, Tate Gallery, 2010.' Wrinkling her forehead she fished her memory again for something that she couldn't quite catch. 'I weigh, weigh, Ai Wei Wei.' She clutched the photograph still as she nodded off shortly after; dozing and deciding that she would visit the library on the way home in the morning to look up this Ai Wei Wei on the internet.

  Casey was on a boat. The water slapped on the sides and she lay listening to its slap, slap, unable to move, not wanting to move from the warm wooden cocoon. She woke spluttering from her dream, gasping for air, eyes wide. There was no boat; she was in bed...someone else's bed. As she sat up, her head still woozy with sleep, her limbs heavy, her eyes moved rapidly from side to side taking in her surroundings.  She could still hear a splash of water and looked around her to see if she could discern where it was coming from. She eased herself out of bed careful not to make a sound as she crept out of the bathroom and into the living room.There was a halo of light seeping out from around the bathroom door; it stood slightly ajar and from inside the room she could hear the slopping of water in the porcelain sink.She stretched out her hand to push the door open and as she did so, she was aware that she was standing on the sodden carpet edge. She jumped back as a silverfish darted across the top of her foot, shaking it off in disgust.

  'Jeez, Marianne. What do you think you are doing?' The words were out of her mouth before she had remembered to use her professional manner. She could have kicked herself; she had had it drummed into her by Stella at the Agency that asking questions confused the confused. Marianne was bent over the bath, pink and naked and small, putting Casey in mind of a baby bird that had not yet got its feathers. Casey pressed her lips together, surprising  the giggles that fought their way from her stomach up to her throat; she crossed her legs, squeezing her thighs tight as she watched Marianne's elbows moving rapidly up and down like pointy little bird wings trying to fly.

  "Marianne,' she spoke softly now, how could she word this without asking a question? She started several times, squeaking the beginnings of inadequate words, until all that she could think of to say as she wrapped a bath towel around the bird woman was 'tell me.'

'My nightie is wet,' Marianne whimpered. 'Mother will be cross with me,' she agitated the white sheet in the bath, taps on full blast, spraying the tiles, the floor, the toilet.

'It's five o' clock in the morning.' Casey fought to keep the exasperation out of her voice, her body tense beside Marianne's. She steered her gently back into the bedroom and changed the sheets while Marianne cried silently now, rocking herself in the nursing chair. She had grabbed one of the teddy bears and was stroking,  stroking, rocking, rocking. Casey made her comfortable at last and put her to bed once more.

     The morning sun was pushing through the clear morning air and past the living room curtains when she eventually carried her coffee from the kitchen, sat down yawning and picked up a pen. She had barely finished writing up her notes when the doorbell rang and she heard a key scratching in the lock.

'Oh, I thought you would be asleep.' The woman who did the morning shift stood arms folded, surveying her from the doorway, letting in a rush of cold air. "how's she been then? Have you had a quiet night?' She took off her coat and Casey watched her as she hung it carefully on the back of the door and bustled over to the armchair with all the purpose of a cuckoo ready to oust her from her nest. Casey raised herself in a leisurely manner; she was not about to let herself be bullied and busied about. She walked slowly over to retrieve her own coat from the bookcase that she had carelessly draped it over the night before and moved towards the door. As she opened it, she looked over her shoulder at her colleague,

'It's all in the notes.' She gestured airily towards the coffee table and wafted out.

     Once on the landing she yawned, her mouth forming a capital O on the blank of her face. Her whole body ached right down to the depths of her bones but she took the stairs down from the flat two at a time. 'Early morning exercise is as good as prayer,' she convinced herself as she exited the building, exploding out of the swing doors into the sharp newness of the day, heading off...running towards the library and the internet.

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

  

 

 

 

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