Miranda’s Family

Chapter Six

When Jim Tucker’s wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, they were both in shock for the first few days. Then Gracie began the course of treatment recommended by her specialist and Jim arranged to take the few months’ unspent annual leave his employer had been nagging him about using up.

He had to be with his darling wife through it all. They’d fight this horrible affliction together and win, he was sure they would. They had to. He couldn’t even begin to imagine life without her.

Until this happened he’d never bothered much with taking leave formally from his job as head gardener, because he loved what he did. But now he used up every single day he was entitled to. And he and Gracie certainly fought hard. They tried anything and everything, which meant a couple of stays in hospital for her.

But in spite of their best efforts, joint efforts in every way possible, she began to lose the battle. He could tell, tried not to show it, but knew she too realised she was dying. Sadly, as her condition grew rapidly worse, they had to convert their dining room into a miniature hospital.

Just as things were getting really bad, her great-nephew from Australia turned up to see her. Jim and Gracie had visited Ellery’s parents in Australia once but the Deans hadn’t made old bones and were both dead now.

He hadn’t expected to see anyone from her side of the family, but Ellery turned out to be one of the nicest, kindest guys you could ever hope to meet and of course they invited him to stay with them, even in these circumstances. Well, apart from anything else, it distracted Gracie and she enjoyed her great-nephew’s company and tales of what his parents had done down under. In addition, he was able to help Jim with the house and garden in several practical ways.

Then things went rapidly downhill and Gracie became so ill her doctor tried to persuade Jim to put her in a hospice. But she begged him not to do that, wanted to be with him as much as he wanted to be with her for every second they had left together.

With the wonderful gift of her nephew’s full-time help, and some visiting palliative care nurses, Jim managed to look after her at home. He knew he’d always be glad he’d been with her till the end and she’d whispered her thanks for that many times.

Then they got to the final stage and Gracie accepted that more quickly than Jim did. It was she who tried to help him through it now. She had always been a brave lass, coping with life’s problems better than he did.

It took it out of you when you were seventy, working hard to look after someone who was so very ill but with Ellery’s help, and that of other kind friends, he’d managed to cope … somehow. 56

She’d whispered her thanks for that every single day and died with her hand in his and her face turned towards him with love shining out of it. He didn’t know how he’d managed to smile fondly back but somehow he had, and he knew he’d always be glad he’d been with her till the very end.

The arrangements for the funeral kept him busy for a while, then the fuss ended and the empty days began.

Losing her broke his heart. People used that phrase so carelessly but it was exactly how it felt, broken into tiny pieces. He’d been so determined to save her, would have given his own life in exchange for hers willingly. But he’d failed to prevent it all happening.

Ellery comforted Jim as much as anyone could and to his relief Gracie’s great-nephew stayed on a little longer.

Jim was so numb with the shock, he could hardly put two words together, so he knew he was poor company but Ellery seemed happy to sit quietly with him in the evenings without saying anything.

After a few days, however, Ellery apologised but said it was time he set off on his travels again because he didn’t want to miss a cruise round Norway’s coast that he was booked on.

‘I’d have stayed if Gracie had still been alive and you’d needed my help,’ he said apologetically.

‘I’m grateful for all you’ve done, Ellery lad. I hope you have a wonderful time. You’ve more than earned that cruise.’

When he began living totally alone, Jim tried to pull himself together, to cope with the empty house, the need to cook and wash his clothes and other daily tasks. As if he cared about details like that now. But he knew Gracie would be upset if he didn’t keep going to the best of his ability, so he sort of managed for a while.

He returned to his job as head gardener at Buswell House, but felt as though he was walking through mists most of the time and if it hadn’t been for his two assistants helping out and covering up his lacks, the gardens would have suffered and his employer would probably have had to sack him.

But just as he was starting to settle down and do his work properly, things once more went from bad to worse. Buswell House and its extensive grounds were sold to a building company. For a while, no one seemed to know what Pearmarsh Potter, the new owners, intended to do with it.

And it wasn’t only Jim who was worried now. Everyone he worked with was.

Several weeks after the funeral, when he’d been back working full-time for nearly a month, Jim was handed a letter by a uniformed courier who was waiting for him when he arrived at his office-cum-workshop in the morning. It was from the new owners, Pearmarsh Potter, and he had to sign for it.

He took the letter out to the rose garden to open it, unable to face whatever news it was the fancy envelope brought inside the office, where he always spent as little time as possible. He was an outdoor man, whatever the weather, always had been. Gracie had understood that and arranged their life accordingly.

He’d lived and worked at Buswell House for almost fifty years and knew every tree and bush there, so went to sit on his own special bench near his favourite rose bush to do this. He stared down at the envelope with its fancy letterhead in one corner, but still couldn’t force himself to open it.

He knew somehow it’d be bad news – just knew it.

He hadn’t paid much attention to the takeover gossip when he’d been on leave and dealing day and night with Gracie’s problems. Even Mr Buswell’s illness had seemed unimportant after losing her. Now, a nephew had inherited the estate and Jim had supposed things would tick along as usual with small changes.

He couldn’t arouse much interest in anything except his plants as he tried to cope with life without Gracie. Were these people going to appoint one of their own gardeners to take charge now? Well, if they were, so be it. He’d done what he had to for his darling, that was what counted, not whether the gardens were thriving.

He stared across this part of the grounds. Surely these people would let him continue working here as an ordinary gardener? He was relying on his beloved plants to see him through the sadness of life without her. If anything could help him recover, it was this place. As much as you could recover from the death of your soulmate of half a century.

He frowned at the envelope again. ‘Just open it,’ he muttered to himself, but worries about what it contained twisted round inside his head and he didn’t dare do it. What would he find? Why were these people at head office writing to him so formally now? He’d made it clear that he’d be coming back to work again this week.

What he needed now was recovery time, needed to start doing that here, in his garden, because he was still so torn apart by his great loss.

He took a deep breath and tore open the envelope suddenly, pulling out a two-page letter on paper as fancy as its covering. ‘Here goes,’ he muttered.

After he’d read it, he had to read it again, and even so it took a few moments for the information it contained to sink in fully. He’d been made redundant – redundant! – and they hadn’t even told him that in person, just sent some bits of paper through the post.

Was he not a human being to them?

He stared down at the second part of the letter, because he didn’t want to believe this could be true on top of the other news. In three brief sentences it said he had to vacate the house as well because it was a tied dwelling, one that went with the job. That shocked him even more. Didn’t these new owners know this was his home?

In fact, he felt shocked rigid. He’d always thought that phrase was just a way of expressing in words your feelings at something unexpected and unpleasant but he now found it applied very accurately to how you were affected. He couldn’t move for a good few minutes, was quite literally rigid with the shock of it all.

How could he ever leave this house? It was not just a home but the place where he and Gracie had lived for decades, all he had left of her now.

He studied the second page of the letter again. He had to leave the gardens as well, his gardens, so that these new owners could destroy them. It seemed that they were going to sub-divide the land into building plots and therefore wouldn’t need any more work doing on the grounds as all the trees and plants needed to be removed and the area levelled before it was built on.

They were going to destroy his beautiful gardens as well as his home!

He moaned aloud and screwed the letter up, throwing it away from him onto the ground. After a few moments he picked it up and smoothed it out, starting to read it yet again. Repetition seemed the only way to make the details of how this was to happen sink in.

They thanked him for his years of service and in view of his recent personal problems, they would give him a few weeks before he would be required to move out of his house. He would be the last person to leave and they suggested he do that at the end of this quarter, in two months’ time. His redundancy money would be paid once he had cleared and vacated his cottage.

The big house and small workers’ cottages like his would all have to be demolished to make way for a new arrangement of dwellings and small gardens, so as a bonus for his years of sterling service, he could take anything he wanted at no cost, including the house fittings and any plants from his own or nearby gardens.

Even the beautiful big house was to be destroyed, he read, betrayed into a few sad sobs as this further horror sank in. Why had it not been heritage listed? Then he remembered the nephew who had now inherited persuading his uncle not to do that. The fellow must have been planning this destruction for years.

The news upset Jim so much, he wept himself to sleep that night, not as bitterly as when he’d lost Gracie but getting on that way. His wife had made their home so pleasant and comfortable that being here after her death had comforted him more than anything else ever could.

He still had her ornaments on the mantelpiece, dusted them every day. Indeed, the home felt as if it was keeping the two of them together still.

Now, the three main pillars of his life were all being taken away from him in what seemed like the blink of an eye and he wished fate had swept him away with them as well. Why had he been left behind like this? He was no use to anyone now.

To make matters worse, he had completely run out of energy and was feeling his age fully for the first time ever. It hurt him to the depths of his soul that he couldn’t even stay in his home and he lay in bed for the whole of one morning, just lay there, couldn’t find the strength to get up.

The original owner had once promised that Jim would be allowed to stay on there even after he retired, but Mr Buswell clearly hadn’t put that in writing as Jim had assumed he would do after their chat.

Once Mr Buswell’s money-hungry nephew had come to live with him and help, everything had begun to change for the worse. He’d nibbled off a bit of land here and sold it to a stranger to build a big ugly house on. Nibbled off another bit there and then sold that as well, all with council agreement to the changes.

And once Mr Buswell died, they’d started to plan total destruction of what was left. Previously the council had refused to approve such changes to land use. What had made them change their minds? Who knew?

Two days later, Jim pulled himself together and went to the nearest job exchange. This was not because he wanted or even needed to go on ‘the dole’ as he still thought of it, because he had enough money to ‘see him out’ as people often put it. Well, he’d hardly ever spent much, only when Gracie decided she wanted something, and his work had provided plenty of home-grown fruit and vegetables so living had been relatively cheap.

What he intended to do now was ask for these people’s help in finding a similar job. It was his only hope.

He needed another garden to care for if he was going to lose this one, needed it quite desperately. The only place he felt he could manage to go on living without his lass or their long-time home was in another garden. He’d care for the plants skilfully because he knew his job. And he’d find a way to put in the sort of flowers she’d loved most and let them comfort him as much as anything could.

Gardens did that. He simply couldn’t live without one. Just – could – not. Surely that wasn’t too selfish, too much to ask? Surely the modern world still needed gardeners?

The woman at the job exchange sat him in front of a computer and asked him to answer some questions showing on the screen. He stared at them in bewilderment. Not only did the questions it was asking have no connection with what he needed from these people, but he didn’t know how to use a computer. Gracie had always seen to that sort of thing and he’d given hers away to one of his friends after she died.

When he confessed to that lack of knowledge, the woman sighed loudly and an uppity young chap was called out of the back part of the building to help. This fellow took him into a cubicle to ask him questions, fiddling with the computer after each of the first two, then stopping to stare at Jim, looking surprised.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Tucker, but you’ve turned seventy. That’s too old to be found work by us, especially the hard physical work you’re asking for. You’re far too old to cope with that anyway.’

‘I’m not! I’ve not been coping with it, I’ve been enjoying it all my life! I still am! I was working in a garden digging out a new flower bed only yesterday.’ He’d sneaked one in at the side, near the hedge, hoping they’d keep it after he’d gone.

‘Good for you. But why do you want another job when you can retire, collect the state pension, or your private superannuation if you’ve got some, and take things more easily from now on?’

‘I need another job, need it very much. I don’t like sitting around doing nothing.’ Jim explained about losing his wife and home.

‘Ah. I see. Well, we’ll find a place for you in an old folks’ home since your house is going to be demolished. You’ll be able to make new friends there and the management will put on entertainments and little hobby classes for you to attend. They may even allow you to potter about in their garden if you can show them you know what you’re doing.’

He glared at the arrogant young sod, speaking more sharply than usual. ‘I’ve earned my living gardening for more than fifty years and ended up as head gardener on a large estate, Buswell House in fact. Do you think they would have employed me for over fifty years, or I’d have ended up managing the grounds and two workers for them if I hadn’t known what I was doing?’

The man blinked, didn’t even try to answer that, then shrugged and ignored what he’d said. ‘Please calm down, sir, and listen carefully. You’re coming into a new phase of life now where you won’t have to work so hard. And anyway, work is changing for us all these days, isn’t it?’

He didn’t say it but he couldn’t help thinking that plants didn’t know that, not unless humans fiddled around with them anyway. He tried to concentrate on what this chap was rabbiting on about, as Gracie would have said, but had difficulty concentrating.

‘We’ll give you priority for a place to live and in the meantime we’ll put you in some emergency accommodation until somewhere suitable becomes vacant.’

‘What do you mean by emergency accommodation?’

‘A temporary lodging house for people to stay in till we can find them somewhere suitable to live. There’s a bit of a shortage of permanent accommodation round here for people your age at the moment, I’m afraid, but we do make sure these temporary places are clean and you’ll have people your own age to chat to there, at least. You’ll only be sharing a bedroom with one other person at most and there will be a common room to sit in during the daytime, if you’re not out for walks or off to visit the library. Most people get bedrooms of their own later on in their stay, even before they move on to a permanent placing.’

It was hard not to show his indignation. He would never willingly share a bedroom with a stranger and after only a few seconds of reflection, he immediately vowed mentally to refuse point blank to do that. ‘I’d rather get a job and support myself, thank you. I enjoy my work and I’ve always been an active sort of chap, so I’m very fit for my age.’

‘I can’t help you to find the sort of work you’re used to, I’m afraid. It’s dealt with by another section of the department, one which finds jobs for the younger folk with families to support. They take priority. Oldies like you usually want to retire.’ He stared at Jim indignantly.

‘I’m perfectly capable of working and supporting myself, and I’d much prefer to go on doing that, thank you very much. Surely the government will want to save the money it’d have to spend paying me a pension for doing nothing?’

But the young fellow didn’t seem to be listening and began fiddling with the keyboard again.

What were these officials intending to do with the information they’d taken down about him? Jim wondered. Where did that computer send it to? He had no idea what those damned machines did with what you told them, only that they could apparently communicate with one another across long distances. All he knew was that they absolutely baffled him and he had better things to do than spend his days fiddling around on those tiny keys and ruining his eyesight by squinting at a screen only a few inches from his nose.

The young man pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Thank you, sir. That’ll do for a start. This way, please.’

He showed Jim into another stuffy little room where there was some food sitting on a shelf at the back and two small plastic tables, each with garish matching green plastic chairs to sit on while you ate the anonymous sandwiches and the tiny greyish-beige cakes with their uneven dabs of bright pink icing sugar on top. Ugh! The sight of them took away his appetite. Gracie would never have made him something as nasty in appearance as that. The cakes looked as if they were made of plastic as well as the chairs and table.

‘It’ll be an hour or two at least before I can find you somewhere to stay tonight, so just help yourself to food if you’re hungry,’ the young fellow said with another of those glassy-eyed smiles that meant nothing. ‘The toilets are next door and you can switch on that TV and watch it if you like while you’re waiting.’

As if he ever sat and watched TV when the sun was shining outside, Jim thought scornfully. He tried to tell the young chap that he didn’t have to leave his home for a week or two but the idiot hurried out without listening. A lot of youngsters were like that when dealing with older folk. It felt sometimes as if they spoke a different language or had lost their hearing when you did manage to get a word in edgeways about what they’d asked you without them repeating it wrongly.

A minute later, the young chap popped through the doorway again and tossed an envelope on the small table. It landed next to Jim’s hand. Couldn’t he even be bothered to pass it, or was he afraid of touching a client?

‘I nearly forgot to give you this emergency pension book, Mr Tucker. You can take it to any post office once a week on a Thursday and they’ll pay you that week’s pension. Once you’re living somewhere permanent again we can get you a bank account proper payment system sorted out for paying your old age pension. But you might have to move lodgings once or twice before you’re settled so we’ll leave that till later.’

Once again, he spoke to Jim as if he was a half-witted child, not a mature adult, adding slowly in words of one syllable, ‘You paid in for this. You should have been claiming it for years.’

Jim breathed deeply but didn’t let his temper loose, or waste his breath telling this young idiot again that he’d much rather work for a living, thank you very much. What was the point? There were none so deaf as those who closed their eyes and ears to other folk, as his dear Gracie used to say.

He blinked, determined not to let these strangers see how upset the thought of her always made him feel.

The man mistook why he was upset, of course he did, not bothering to ask what was wrong. ‘No hurry for you to do anything from now on, Mr Tucker. I’ll sort everything out for you.’

‘But I don’t need to—’

The youngster didn’t even try to listen, had already turned his back and was walking out.

Jim tossed the worst curses he could think of after him, speaking them aloud, something he normally only did out in the garden when pests got at his seedlings. Or he might whisper them soundlessly inside his mind when someone particularly annoyed him as this chappie had.

After that he got himself organised to escape as quickly as he could.

He was not, repeat not, moving into an old folks’ home and ending his life shut away indoors. Never, ever. He’d feel as if he were suffocating.