Paradise Lodge Read Online Free Page A

tiny brother, Danny, who’d just gone into pants, but that was obviously a very wrong thing to say and the Owner’s Wife told me never, ever to say it again.
    We were silent for a moment and I was about to apologize and explain when a car clanked over the cattle grid and sounded its horn. The Owner’s Wife rushed away to investigate and reappeared a moment later in a controlled fluster.
    â€˜A convalescent patient has arrived, we weren’t expecting him until tomorrow, we’re not quite ready,’ she said, ‘you’ll have to do the comfort round.’
    So, I was thrown in at the deep end—as it were—and though I hadn’t had the proper training (only the theory), when it came to it, the comfort round was only a matter of escorting or wheeling the patients to the sluice across the hall, waiting outside and helping with corset hooks and stockings and trying to avoid saying the word ‘toilet’ or ‘wee’. I noticed the shy nurse plucking her eyebrows in the mirror above the vast butler’s sink while she waited for her gentleman and even when he called out, she carried on.
    It was nice to get to know the ladies without the Owner’s Wife watching my every move and word, especially since running into her husband in the hall had put her in a ‘blue funk’ (her words). And though it was a simple endeavour, it still took me over an hour to get the thirty-five-odd patients all to the conveniences and back into their chairs. Some of them said they didn’t want to go and had to be forced, literally, to get up and walk across the hall. Sometimes my euphemisms must have been too vague so I was resorting to nods, hand gestures (raindrops) and pointing. Some walked incredibly slowly and others had walking frames which, in my opinion, slowed them down. Some took ages in the cubicles (one fell asleep) and others insisted on washing their hands afterwards. Some had to go twice, one did it on the way and I had to drag a cloth round with my foot and hope to God the Owner’s Wife didn’t appear and notice the area of brightened tiles.
    After I’d finished the comfort round I joined the Owner’s Wife and the patient who’d arrived unexpectedly. He was called Mr Simmons and lived locally. He had reddish, greyish hair and not a single eyelash. The Owner’s Wife was asking him very specific questions about his health and his breakfast preferences but kept interrupting herself to say how delightful it was that he’d been discharged early from hospital, and she wasn’t being sarcastic—even though anyone could see the chaos it had caused. Mr Simmons was in good health except for a gammy foot and whatever operation he’d just had, which wasn’t discussed—presumably it was made clear on his medical notes or was too personal for an auxiliary to know about.
    He had been scheduled to have something done to his gammy foot but the surgeons had found this other more pressing (undisclosed) thing and had switched to that instead. The Owner’s Wife said that was a common occurrence and probably quite right under the circumstances. But it was obvious Mr Simmons was fed up—so fed up he made a little fist of crossness. That was the thing with private hospitals, I supposed (privately), it being in their interests to find extra things to do. Ditto vets, hairdressers and car mechanics.
    Apart from guessing what his breakfast preference was going to be—porridge with cream (I’d guessed Grape-Nuts)—I could hardly stop myself from groaning out loud with boredom.
    Mr Simmons waited in the Owner’s Wife’s office while she and I prepared his room. Room 8 was a bright, sunny room with its own little bathroom and, instead of parquet and rugs, had a bristly carpet on the floor. The fireplace with overmantel gave it a comfy, sitting-room feel and from the leatherette Morris recliner you could see the reservoir and, in