Chapter 8 Stephanie
Stephanie
Present day
I slid down off the wall and wiped the dust from my hands on my thighs.
‘She’s not Irish is she?’ Finn said.
‘Who?’
‘Your nan?’
‘Nope, Londoner through and through. Why?’
Finn began wheeling his bike towards the entrance of Tall Trees and I followed.
‘I met one of the residents the other day and you remind me a bit of her.’ He looked over his shoulder and grinned at me. ‘She wasn’t impressed by my job either.’
‘I wasn’t not impressed. I just questioned whether it was, in fact, a job.’ I frowned. ‘She was Irish, this resident?’
Finn nodded as we went through the entrance of the home and I shut the metal gate behind us.
‘There are no Irish residents,’ I said.
‘Well this lady was definitely Irish, definitely a resident, and definitely not happy to see me.’
‘Oh,’ I said, remembering my conversation with Cyril.
‘I think she’s new. Sometimes they’re a bit prickly when they first arrive.
It’s no wonder really, it’s scary for them.
Like your first day at school but a million times worse.
I usually try to find something they like, or something we have in common and use that to help them feel more at home.
One of my ladies likes Earl Grey tea so I always bring her some teabags. ’
Finn gave me a little sideways look that I couldn’t quite read.
‘That’s kind,’ he said. ‘You’re kind.’
I ducked my head, embarrassed by the praise. ‘I need to go to the dementia unit,’ I said. ‘That’s where my nan is.’
‘Come and see me before you leave, and I’ll show you those pictures.’
‘Okay,’ I said with a nod. ‘I will.’
I pushed my bike to the rack and locked it up.
‘Hey!’ The shout made me turn. Finn was standing a little way away, shielding his eyes from the sun.
‘You didn’t tell me your name,’ he called.
‘You didn’t ask.’
He laughed loudly again. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Stephanie,’ I said. ‘But my friends call me Stevie.’
‘See you later, Stevie.’
I waved to him and then I wandered up the path to the unit, to see my nan.
To my delight, today was one of my nan’s good days. She knew who I was straightaway.
‘Stephanie,’ she said. I went to where she was sitting in her usual chair by the window. ‘Hello, dear.’
I braced myself for the normal barrage of questions about Max, but it was my father who was on her mind today.
‘Where’s that useless dad of yours, eh?’
‘He’s in Portugal, Nan.’
‘Portugal?’ She looked pleased with herself and then she began singing about going to sunny Spain and clicking her fingers like castanets.
‘That’s right, Nan,’ I said, laughing. ‘Just about.’
She settled back in her chair. ‘Useless.’
‘Do you remember the Blitz, Nan?’
Nan turned her dark eyes to me and for a moment I thought she’d gone again. That happened sometimes – she’d have a period of being lucid and then it was like a cloud had descended and she was back to not remembering. And even when her mind was clear, her thoughts danced about. But then she nodded.
‘I was only a nipper.’
‘I know.’ Nan had been born in 1935, so she would barely have started school when the bombs began falling. ‘You stayed in London, though? You weren’t evacuated?’
Nan shook her head. ‘I stayed with my mum.’ She laughed. ‘She was a right piece of work. She went to prison.’
The word made me widen my eyes in alarm. Had she heard about Max and got confused?
‘What? Your mum didn’t go to prison.’
Nan folded her arms. ‘Me and Auntie Sandra went to visit her.’ She smiled fondly. ‘You can’t just take stuff that belongs to other people though. She needed to be punished.’
‘She went to prison? Really?’ I said. Perhaps Max’s recklessness didn’t come from our mother after all.
‘My old mum could sell sand to the Arabs. My Geoff’s the same.’
‘He is,’ I said. I had to be honest, she was right about my dad. He was a born salesman.
‘We’ll go to the bombsite and see what we can get,’ Nan said in a sort of sing-song way, like she was talking to a child. ‘See what we can sell.’
‘Did your mum steal from bombed-out houses?’ I asked. ‘That’s terrible.’
She gave me a sudden grin. ‘I had a hat with a bow on it. I loved that hat.’
She put her hands on her head like she was putting on a hat, and I watched, feeling strangely disappointed.
I liked the idea of the Blitz spirit and everyone being nice to everyone else.
I had thought the war was all singing songs and eating powdered egg and huddling together in the tube.
But times were tough back then. Perhaps people did what they had to do to get by.
Nan leaned forward and patted my hand. ‘The horses all died,’ she said.
I blinked at her, not knowing what she meant. ‘Which horses?’
‘In the dairy. The horses all died when the bomb fell. Lying there on the cobbles, they were.’ Her eyes glazed over. ‘I cried and cried.’
‘I’m not surprised, Nan.’ I wished I hadn’t asked. ‘That’s awful.’
‘I had a hat with a bow,’ she said again.
‘Sounds lovely.’
‘Where’s Max?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Is he coming to see me today?’
I shook my head, feeling sad. ‘He’s busy, Nan,’ I said.
*
I stayed with Nan for a while, and I chatted about the flowers in the garden and the rain and everything that wasn’t Max’s whereabouts, and then I went to find Finn.
He hadn’t been exaggerating when he said that he had a cupboard to work in.
His cubicle, which was off the reception area of Tall Trees, fitted a tiny desk and that was it.
He was surrounded by boxes, because clearly he was sharing his space with Cyril who was using it to stash supplies of loo roll and cleaning products and a broom.
I tapped on the door lightly and Finn, who was bent over a book with his back to me, turned round and smiled.
‘Stevie,’ he said, closing the book. ‘Perfect timing.’
‘Are you sure I’m not disturbing you?’
‘Not in the slightest.’ He gathered together some papers and a thick folder. ‘Shall we go into the lounge? I can spread everything out on the table in there and the residents quite like seeing the pictures. It gets them talking and I love to hear their stories.’
I nodded, thinking how nice his enthusiasm was.
It seemed a long time since I’d been so enthusiastic about anything.
‘I was asking Nan about the Blitz earlier. She told me some things she remembered. She could tell me more about the bombs than she could about yesterday. But she was so young – she wasn’t even at school when the war began. ’
‘There aren’t many people left who were there,’ Finn said, handing me a bundle of papers. ‘Can you take those? That’s why I love hearing these stories now because in a few years there will be no one left alive who can remember.’
‘It’s important,’ I said, meaning it. ‘We need to write this stuff down.’
We walked along the corridor to the lounge. Inside a few of the residents were watching Cash in the Attic, and a couple more were reading, or chatting quietly.
‘Hello, Finn,’ a resident called Kenny bellowed as we walked in. He was deaf as a post but he hated his hearing aids. ‘How’s that book on Millwall coming along?’
‘Slowly,’ said Finn. ‘Very, very slowly.’
‘Too busy writing about Charlton’s glory days are you? Mind you, that won’t take you long.’
‘Rude,’ Finn said mildly. Kenny chuckled in delight and I looked at Finn questioningly.
‘Kenny’s a Millwall fan,’ he explained. ‘And I’m Charlton.’
I grinned. ‘You’ve found something in common,’ I said. ‘Like me and the teabags.’
‘You’re right.’
Finn put his papers down on the table and I did the same, then we both sat down and I looked at him expectantly.
He didn’t disappoint me.
‘Like I said, Tall Trees was originally the South London District Hospital,’ he said. He opened one of the folders and took out a photograph. ‘Here.’
I looked. There was the main building, looking very similar to how it did now, except the far side of the building looked different. And at the end, where the dementia unit now stood, was a row of very large poplar trees.
‘Tall trees,’ I said triumphantly. ‘They must have cut them down to make space for the dementia unit.’
‘I guess so.’ Finn pointed to the part of the building that was different now. ‘And this bit of the hospital fell down after a bomb.’
‘Tall Trees was bombed?’
‘Sort of.’ He sat back in his chair and grinned at me. ‘And that’s why I’m here.’
‘Spill.’
‘A bomb fell on the road outside, in early 1941. The hospital’s foundations became unstable.
Word is that they’d dug out the basement to fit more beds down there or an operating theatre – I can’t remember the details – and hadn’t supported some of it properly.
Anyway, that part of the building collapsed in on itself. ’
‘Oh gosh,’ I said. ‘Were the patients killed?’
Finn shook his head. ‘By some miracle, not one patient was hurt. There was one chap who was injured and he did die later on but he was a member of staff, I think. And he was the only casualty.’
‘That’s amazing,’ I said. ‘It must have been very frightening.’
‘Must have been.’
‘So what’s all this got to do with you?’
‘When they rebuilt the damaged part after the war, they shored up the basement obviously, but they left the rubble as it was because it was too costly to dig it out again. A couple of years ago, they were renovating the home, and they considered expanding into the basement.’
I shuddered. ‘Who’d want their room down there?’ I said. ‘I can’t see that being popular with the residents. They all love looking out into the garden.’
Finn shrugged. ‘That’s probably why they decided against it. But as part of the plans, they had some of the rubble left over from the bomb cleared. And they found this.’
He opened the biggest folder and from inside he produced a large, A4-size book. It was bound with a stiff spine and thick covers – it looked like the old family Bible I remembered Nan having, or an old-fashioned photo album.
‘What’s that?’