Stevie Turner

Chapter One

TOM

I can’t look at the poor bastard as a Lucentis injection goes right into his eye. The bloke’s terrified, but then so would I be if it were me lying on the slab. I can see his breathing increase as he clenches his fists. This is where I step in…I’m a bit wary of men’s reactions though, but hey, his adrenaline’s flowing and he’ll probably think it’s a nurse. I make a tentative reach for his fingers, and he grabs my hand and hangs on as though his life depends on it.

“You’re doing fine.” I try to make my voice as reassuring as possible. “Soon be over.”

I don’t stroke the fingers, mind you, not even with the ladies. There’s nothing sexual in my intentions at all. I’m just doing a bit of voluntary work on Mondays and Thursdays now that I’m too ancient to be of use to anybody else. I’m fit and healthy, but I’ll be eighty seven next muck spreading. The patients who are more ‘with it’ sometimes give me a second look as if they’re wondering why on earth such an old codger as I obviously am is still working in a medical treatment room, but then they have to lie down under the spotlight for a needle full of Lucentis and their minds go to mush. If somebody like me holds their hand, then I’ve found majority of them seem very grateful for it.

The chap whose hand I’m holding looks as though he might pass out with fright. My fingers feel numb under his grip until the injection is over. Then he relaxes, catches sight of me, and wrenches his hand away as though I’ve just escaped from a leper colony. I don’t mind; many of them do the same. I’m just a temporary oasis in a desert of meddling medics. Once their injection is over, patients can’t get away fast enough, especially from me. I suppose I remind them of their moment of weakness.

After ten or so injections it’s time for a break. I’ve lived on my own since Jean died, and it’s somewhat daunting to walk into a tea room full of doctors, nurses and secretaries all at least thirty years younger than I am and all talking nineteen to the dozen. Sometimes there isn’t even a seat, and so I have to stand. Today the urn of hot water bubbles away; I take a tea bag and somebody’s cup who is off sick today, and hope I don’t fall arse over tit over a pair of outstretched legs as I make my way towards the fridge for a drop of milk.

“Okay, Tom?”

The only person who occasionally speaks to me is Rachel, one of the secretaries. I stir my tea and head towards the only seat that’s left.

“So far, so good.” I sit down and try not to make the ‘old man’ noise. “It’s the weekend tomorrow anyway.”

“Those cakes on the table are for my birthday.” Rachel points towards a box of chocolate eclairs. “Help yourself. They won’t last long.”

“Thanks.” I feel guilty as I reach over and grab one. “Happy birthday.”

Rachel is nice. The others are too high up the food chain to bother with a volunteer worker, especially one who is pushing ninety. I chomp away at an éclair and hope my dentures aren’t moving too much. To be honest, it’s easier to eat without them, and when I’m at home I often do.

I endure feeling like a fish out of water for a further ten minutes whilst everyone either stares at their mobile phones or chats to each other. I decide I don’t want to interrupt their conversations with pointless small talk they probably won’t be interested in. Rachel goes back to work, and so that puts the kybosh on any possible human interaction. I get up and head for the lavatory, relieved to stand at the urinal in perfect peace.

I decide to wait in the treatment room for Doctor, no Mister, Joseph, one of the ophthalmic surgeons, to return after his break. On the way I pass a sea of expectant faces, each one as miserable as patients in a pox doctor’s waiting room. Some of them I recognise due to the amount of injections they’ve had before, but others are terrified newbies. I feel for them all.

As usual Mister Joe is late, simply because he can be. I know the patients will be shifting about and clucking in frustration, but there’s no point in trying to hurry him up. He’ll amble along in his own sweet time, a tinpot king of the clinic. A full thirty minutes after he should have started, Mister Joe rolls up, gives me a condescending glance, scrolls through the first set of notes on the computer, and throws a few curt words in the direction of the treatment room nurse.

“Send Ellen Wilkinson in.”

A ‘please’ would have gone down better. From the way the nurse shoots him an evil eye, I can tell she doesn’t care for him either. I much prefer working with Miss Rose, who has more than her fair share of empathy. Perhaps she needs to give this arsehole of a surgeon some of it.

A lady obviously in her early eighties hobbles into the treatment room with the aid of a walking frame. I give her my widest smile and place my old carcass on a seat parallel to the middle of the operating table opposite to where Mister Joe and the nurse will do their thing. I can see he’s already impatient at the elderly woman’s lack of speed, and I want to shout out to him that one day he’ll be old too, but hey, he’s God, and gods live forever on an elixir of eternal youth and their own self-importance. The patient takes a consent form from the nurse with shaky fingers, signs it, and then listens to a list of side effects and what not to do afterwards. She nods, lies down on the operating table, and I grasp her hand, which feels cold.

“Won’t take long. It’ll be over in a jiffy.”

“I hope so.”

Mrs Wilkinson is quite well spoken, stoic, and with her ongoing mobility difficulties has obviously learned to endure. I don’t squeeze her fingers, as that smacks of familiarity. The nurse faffs around the bed and decides to be the first to break the silence.

“Mister Joseph will numb your eye first, and then inject it with Lucentis.”

So far the surgeon hasn’t said a word. He must be having a bad day. Mrs Wilkinson’s hand warms up under my grasp. It feels soft, as though she hasn’t had a lifetime of hard work, but some of the fingers are knobbly with arthritis. I can recall hands more than faces now; fat ones, thin ones, long fingers, stubby fingers, some with wedding rings and some without.

“Yes, that’s what he said at my first clinic appointment, plus the fact it will keep new blood vessels from forming under the retina.”

I can’t look at her face, because that means I’d see the needle going in. I don’t care too much for needles. I concentrate on the blue patterned blanket and hope my presence is bringing some kind of comfort, albeit small. The faces may change, but it’s the hands I remember.

Chapter Two

I still haven’t got used to going home to an empty flat, and I guess I never will. Jean died more than a year ago now. Sometimes when loneliness gets too much for me I open her wardrobe, as I’m going to do now. Her clothes have gone of course, but her perfume seems to have sunk into the wood and it lingers on inside. Often, like today, I’ll step inside the wardrobe, pull the door to, and stand there in the darkness with my memories. We never had any children, but just being together for 65 years was enough for us. The trouble with getting to such an advanced age is that all our relatives have died, apart from a niece of Jean’s who lives on the mainland and whom I never see. I’m an only child, and so that makes things worse.

It’s comforting inside Jean’s wardrobe; I don’t want to come out. We did not have a cross word in all our married life, and even when Jean failed to conceive month after month, we agreed never to take any tests in order to discover whose fault it was, just in case each blamed the other. Jean pursued her career as a nurse, eventually moving up the scale to Matron, which did much to satisfy her need to look after people. Me, I worked as a roofer, and it kept me fit going up and down those ladders for years on end. The knees couldn’t do it anymore now, but I’ve still got all my original joints even if they don’t work as well as they once did. Plus the fact that Jean was an excellent cook, and she never served up what they call ‘junk’ food nowadays; plenty of vegetables and fruit was her motto. She always thought that if we ate well then she might fall pregnant.

We were a team; Jean cooked and I washed the dishes afterwards. She still insisted on cooking even when riddled with cancer and half doped up with pain medication, but the doctor told me to let her do whatever she was able to. I had to hover close by just in case she let the saucepans boil over or switched on one of the hobs over the steamer, and in this way I finally learned how to cook. Trouble is, most days I can’t be bothered to cook just for one, and stick a ready meal in the microwave instead.

It’s Tuesday today. I’m not needed at the hospital as there’s no injection clinics until Thursday. So far I’ve avoided Bingo in the community hall, but today is a bad day and I think I’ll have to toddle along and give it a go. You’d think that living in a sheltered housing complex as I do there would be lots of people to talk to, but they’re either asleep all the afternoon, at the hospital or the doctors’ surgery, or they’ve dropped dead and their flat is empty. Did you know there’s a dedicated ambulance space out by our main entrance? What could have been a covered parking space for motorbikes around the back is now more often than not full of mobility scooters.

Needs must, and I cannot stay in this flat a moment longer. I lock my front door and venture out into the corridor, which is as quiet as the grave. No… I mustn’t mention graves… I’ve already got one foot in that. Hey ho… will there be anybody alive in the community hall? Jean felt safe and secure in this complex and made quite a few friends, but her friends were all women. I’ve nothing against the female sex, but being a roofer for all those years I became used to the type of banter you can only find in male company. All the husbands are dead here, killed off by too many fried breakfasts or cheesy chips, and I’m the only fella. Jean fed me well, which has kept me alive, but hey, what’s the point of living when the love of your life has gone?

***

Five women sit nattering at a table, Bingo dabbers in their hands. The prizes are lined up in their entirety; two tins of soup of indeterminate age, a six-pack bag of cheesy Doritos, a Toblerone, and a hideous turtle thing with a nodding head. I don’t fancy winning any of those. Too late, I realise I should have brought a prize. Warden Penny smiles and looks me up and down from her desk, as do the ladies.

“Nice to see you here, Tom. We haven’t seen you around much.”

“I’ve been volunteering at the hospital.” I stand awkwardly in the doorway. “It keeps me out of mischief.”

“Well, come and sit down. I’ve got a spare dabber.”

“You can get some ointment for that.”

Nobody titters. I take a seat at an empty table away from the women in case they think I fancy any of them (I’d rather have a hot dinner). Bingo turns out to be excruciatingly boring, as I knew it would be. I win the last game and end up with a prize that nobody else wanted… the nodding turtle.

By four o’clock I’m back in the flat and heat up a ready meal for something to do. I know I’ll be hungry again before I go to bed and will need to grab a sandwich, but hey… who cares if I put on a few pounds? Jean would have told me to miss out on a few lunches, but I don’t need to look good for anyone now and so I can please myself.

The nodding turtle stares at me from Jean’s side of the table. The shepherd’s pie tastes good and I don’t need to use my teeth. I balance my top row on the turtle’s head and its eyes sink down wards, unable now to reproach me after I accompany my meal with a couple of cans of lager rather than Jean’s usual glass of water. A big lump of supermarket cherry pie finishes me off, and I’m ready for a snooze. The washing up can wait.

It’s not until eight o’clock that I get around to washing the dishes. I could kick myself for sleeping for so long, because now I know I’ll be tossing and turning all night. I tend to take naps whenever I can, and really it’s just to escape the sad reality of my situation. I used to play Chess, Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit with Jean; I would win more Chess games, and she would more often than not beat me soundly at Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. We’d enjoy competing, but with Jean’s superior vocabulary and general knowledge it was a no-brainer who would usually be the victor. The old girls living here at the complex seem brain-addled. All I have left to keep Alzheimer’s disease from knocking on my door are my books of Sudoku puzzles and the Daily Mail crossword.

It’s quarter to nine and I’m wide awake after my nap. I switch on the TV and flick through a few channels, settling on a Western starring John Wayne as an elderly rancher having to herd cattle 400 miles to Belle Fourche with only the help of a team of young boys. What the hell… he’s pushing 60 in this film… I’m 27 years older than he is! If he’s elderly, then what am I?

The film takes me out of myself for a while, and stops me staring at the empty armchair where Jean would sit and knit or crochet. I fall into bed at midnight and stare at the ceiling for an hour before slipping into dreamland.

Chapter Three

Wednesday mornings, and it’s line dancing for beginners in the village hall. Yes, even I, dancing like Douglas Bader after a night out on the piss, can join in, as you don’t need a partner. I pay my three pounds and look around the hall. Once again it’s all the same middle aged or elderly women, and the only man is Donald, tall, willowy and slightly stooped, who takes the class and teaches us the steps. His wife Mary is maybe in her late seventies and dances with us. I think Donald is either the same age as me, or even older (if that’s possible). He wears a cowboy shirt with fringes, drainpipe jeans, and the same natty pair of grey Cuban heeled boots every week. He’s as bald as a coot. I think they live about twenty miles away in Newport. That’s Newport on the Isle of Wight by the way, not the one in Welsh Wales.

Now Donald might have been an ace line dancer in his prime, but his old brain isn’t as quick as it used to be and he keeps forgetting where he is in the dance. He gets mixed up with his jazz boxes, grapevines, turns and shuffles, and then we all end up facing different directions. Mary soon puts him right though, but then he’ll have a sulk because she’s had to tell him what to do. In my opinion he’s a complete arsehole, and I don’t know how she’s lived with him all these years. But hey, it’s somewhere to go and something to do.

Donald doesn’t like me. Perhaps being the only other male in the room he sees me as some kind of threat. Well… yeah, I can be threatening if he starts shouting at me because I do a kickball change by mistake instead of a jazz box, but sometimes Mary yells at him that it should be a kickball change, so then I gloat and stand victorious. Silly old bugger. He takes it all far too seriously. If I want to do a kickball change, then I will.

I stand and watch when it comes to the faster ones, as the legs refuse to do them anymore. Donald has trouble as well, but he likes being in charge and unfortunately won’t give up. Mary can do the steps much better than he can, and to be honest it’s easier to follow her lead instead of his. Donald wears a headset with a microphone attached, just like one of those boy bands you see on TV. His booming bass voice belts out which steps to do, but after a few weeks I’ve learned to shut him off and copy Mary. I think the other women do too, but I don’t dare speak to them too much in case they think I’m a pervert.

After half an hour of dancing it’s time for a cup of tea. I always offer to help, but the women take over and usher me out of the kitchen. I sit on my own, as far away from Donald as I can manage. The tea is weak, like cats’ piss. I get one biscuit as well for my three pounds.

The last few dances after the break are slower, as we’re all old and knackered. Too late … I coaster when I should have done a mambo.

“Keep up, Tom.” Donald and his headset whip around to stare at me. “I’m sure I said mambo.”

I want to tell him to shove his mambo up his arse, but then Mary clucks around me like an old mother hen.

“You’re doing fine. We all make mistakes sometimes.”

Trying to remember which step comes next is good for me though, as it keeps my brain from going to mush. When I’m dancing I forget Jean is no longer with me, as I’m too busy to think about her. As soon as the class ends there she is again, in the back of my mind.

I enjoy a slow walk back along Steyne Road. A couple of the other women from the class live in my complex, and they chat away together as they walk a few yards in front of me. My legs ache after all that dancing, and I can’t keep up. I pass the supermarket, and then take a detour into Bembridge’s small cemetery for a while, where my wife is buried.

“Hello old girl. It’s me.” I take a seat right by Jean’s grave. “You’ll laugh, but I’ve been line dancing again.”

Birds trill their songs in the midday sun, and a heat haze shimmers over Jean’s headstone. I look at an empty space underneath the bit where it says Jean Hopkins fell asleep on 5th March 2023, and feel sorry that Jean’s niece will have the job of getting my own name added underneath. Still, at least she won’t have to pay for anything…I’ve made sure of that.

I talk about everything and nothing to Jean, and feel better after a rest and a chat, even though the conversation is rather one-sided. I get to my feet and carry on along Steyne Road, and then turn right along Egerton Road towards the retirement complex and Wednesday’s community lunch of the usual toad-in-the-hole with veggies and then sponge pudding and custard for afters. I can cope with that. Okay, so I have to sit with the other residents as they dribble and drool all over their food, but it’s better than cooking it myself even though they do charge me for it at the end of the month. Any company is better than none, and hey, sometimes one can become rather tired of all those ready meals.

Line dancing makes you hungry… well, it does me anyway. Warden Penny and a couple of helpers serve up the food and pots of tea as we sit at tables of four. I’m stuck with Cissie, Ethel and Edie, none of whom can hear as well as they used to.

“I didn’t see you ladies at line dancing today.”

“What?” Ethel’s blank stare is a vision to behold.

“He said this tea tastes like urine.” Edie takes a gulp of tea and frowns.

I shake my head at Edie, who tends to make it all up as she goes along. Sometimes it’s funny, and sometimes it isn’t. I wolf down my lunch, eager to get away from them all.