Chapter seven
Lewis started the morning with his bike ride into work, skimming along the quiet roads and narrow lanes that circled Rosemount Court.
He filled his lungs with the fresh dawn air, sharp with the scent of green leaves, and breathed out the stale thoughts inside his head, letting them go.
You had to let things go. Cycling flushed away negativity better than anything else; it was the physical exertion combined with forward motion.
He freewheeled past an orchard that stretched up and over the hillside, endless lines of short trees in rows, each branch tipped with the tiny jade buds of the new crop.
Every corner of the landscape was bursting with energy, changing, growing and dying, then growing again.
There was something about that turning wheel of life that Lewis found comforting.
Lewis’s grandparents, with whom he’d spent most of his childhood, had been farmers and their matter-of-fact attitude to life and death had taught him not to be scared of death.
It was not growing that you should be worried about.
Stagnation, rot, that was worse. Dying before the wheel had turned properly, that was the worst of all.
His strong legs pumped hard as he headed up the drive to Rosemount, pushing himself to set the time he’d aim to beat over the coming weeks, and he crested the brow with a gasp of triumph.
Lewis wheeled the bike round to the back of the main house, where he dug out the bunch of keys from the pouch at the back of his shorts and unlocked the dilapidated sheds that had once, when Earls of Longhampton had lavishly overstaffed the house, been manned by a squadron of gardeners, under-gardeners, lawnsmen and nurserymen.
The previous evening Lewis had conducted an examination of the maintenance files; David Rigg had been paying four professional landscapers to work three afternoons a week, a cost that seemed somewhat sus, given the lawn was full of dandelions and in dire need of a mow.
The accounts could wait, but in Lewis’s opinion the lawn could not. Eventually he found the ride-on mower under a pile of empty wineboxes, which bore out his theory of where the money had been going.
Fortunately, there was still petrol in the tank.
Lewis had a knack with machinery and after a few attempts, he got it started and chugged out to the front lawn.
It pained him that the first thing the residents saw when they got up, and the first thing their families saw when they arrived to visit, was a neglected lawn.
Especially one like this, that should be magnificent, mown into stripes and edged with beds full of bright flowers.
Lewis would normally have waited until after breakfast to make so much noise, but he had a full day of meetings ahead and it would annoy him, he knew, until it was done; fidgeting away in the back of his brain when he needed to concentrate on the many tasks in hand.
Lewis mowed the first straight stripe across the lawn, then turned, left space for the return journey and set off again.
There was a technique to mowing stripes, a pattern you had to follow that didn’t make sense until the final pass; it was satisfying.
Deep down he felt a connection to the distant agricultural relation who’d spent his summers patiently guiding a heavy-footed Clydesdale up and down a field, carving thick corrugations in the soil.
Lewis sometimes felt a sort of guilt that the closest he got to that sort of skilled, productive work was keeping grass short, but he reminded himself that what mattered was the act of improvement, that pride in his surroundings that made life better for everyone.
He was concentrating so hard that he wasn’t aware of anything for the first ten minutes or so; the morning’s cycling had thrown up plenty of ideas and focusing on the straightness of the lines allowed his brain to shuffle them into order.
But when he looked up, rounding the fifth bend, he realised he was being watched from the upstairs windows: an elderly man in pale-blue pyjamas with a bald head.
Lewis raised a hand in apology for the noise, but the elderly man nodded in acknowledgement and gave him a thumbs-up.
Another face appeared at the window beneath: a white-haired lady in a green jumper. She seemed curious rather than annoyed, and when Lewis gave her a friendly wave, she waved back, then tapped her watch at him crossly.
By the time he was coming into the final straight, the line that would reveal the perfect back-and-forth stripes, six spectators were observing his lawn-mowing, including Pam Woodward, who had arrived in her red Beetle and parked in the space marked Housekeeper.
She was standing there, arms crossed, watching him with a frown, as if trying to work out what he was up to.
He waved at her with a smile, and she waved back uncertainly.
It would do no harm, Lewis knew, for her to return to the staff kitchen and tell them she’d seen the manager mowing the lawn.
He noted that she had abandoned her pink suit and returned to a more comfortable uniform of black trousers and a short-sleeved lilac jumper, with a gold cat pendant over the top.
A window opened, and a bald man leaned out to applaud. ‘Good job!’
‘Thank you!’ Lewis raised an acknowledging hand.
‘Good job? Have you seen the time? I’m phoning the manager!’ shouted the lady in the window below. ‘You’re meant to start after nine!’
‘I’ll let him know!’ replied Lewis, and chugged back to the sheds.
After a quick shower and breakfast, Lewis spoke to three more carers (Shefali, Becky O and Becky Mac), Marek the chef, and Karen, the specialist matron in charge of the Memory Wing for residents with dementia.
In between noting their feedback and observations about the current state of Rosemount – most of which inevitably concerned David Rigg – he added to his expanding action plan, divided into three different timescales, and jotted down twice as many things in his personal notebook.
At eleven thirty, Lewis headed to the kitchen ostensibly to locate some fresh milk but really to familiarise himself with Rosemount’s complex layout. It was a big house, full of corners and corridors, and Lewis wanted to be able to stride around it as if he always knew where he was going.
As he strode, he made notes of windows that needed repairing or carpets that were worn, and was scribbling down ‘replace houseplants’ when someone barrelled round the corner at some speed, and crashed into him.
‘Careful!’ he said automatically, and the lady spun back, staggering as if she might fall. Lewis steadied her but when she flinched, he took a polite step backwards to give her space.
He didn’t recognise her from his breakfast in the dining hall, but as Pam had explained, not everyone ate in there.
The woman was tall, thin and seemed extremely agitated.
Panicked, almost. That panic in itself, thought Lewis, seemed to be panicking her.
Everything about her appearance – her smart clothes, her silk scarf and her amber brooch, her hair set into smooth waves – was gracious and composed, but she was glancing around her in confusion, if she’d unexpectedly found herself in a strange place.
Which, of course, wasn’t an unusual experience in a place like Rosemount.
‘Hello there! I don’t believe we’ve met,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘My name’s Lewis, Lewis Levison. I’m the new manager.’
‘I don’t live here!’ The woman looked outraged, and glanced over his shoulder, then down the corridor opposite, as if half-expecting someone to catch her up.
Lewis didn’t contradict her. Many residents had moments when they genuinely believed they were still in the houses they’d first moved to after their marriage.
A nurse – Shefali, from earlier – turned the corner with a tray of medication, and the woman visibly jumped.
‘Hello again, Shefali!’ said Lewis.
‘Hello, Mr Levison.’ She corrected herself, ‘Lewis.’
‘Everything OK?’
‘Everything’s fine, thank you!’
They both smiled, relieved to have got each other’s names right, and Shefali headed up the stairs to the Memory Wing.
Lewis turned back to the trembling woman in front of him; had she wandered down from there? ‘I’m so sorry, I should know exactly who you are but . . .’ He held out his hand again.
This time, an automatic response seemed to take over, and she shook his hand. ‘Martine Henderson.’
Her handshake was firm, but he could feel a fluttery agitation vibrating from her. The scarf rose and fell rapidly on her chest, her nostrils flaring as if she’d just run a race. Martine Henderson. The name wasn’t familiar from the residents’ list, but again, that didn’t mean she didn’t live here.
‘I was about to have some morning coffee in my office,’ he said. ‘Would you care to join me?’
‘I told you, Mr Levison, I’m not . . .’ She hesitated and then said, with a quick glance down the hall, as if she was afraid someone might turn the corridor and find her, ‘Oh, why not?’
Lewis led Mrs Henderson back to the manager’s office, offered her the deep leather armchair opposite his desk, then buzzed Pam Woodward on the internal phone to request some fresh coffee.
He wouldn’t normally have disturbed Pam but it was a good reason to invite her to his office to put Mrs Henderson at ease, and also find out – discreetly – if there was anything he should know.
Her composure had returned almost as soon as she’d sat down in the armchair, and now she was assessing the artwork hanging on the red walls with a curious eye.
Her knees were pressed together, slanted elegantly to the left, and her back was straight, shoulders down, neck long. Like a dancer. Or the Queen.
‘Won’t be a moment,’ he said, replacing the phone. ‘Not too soon after breakfast to tempt you with a pastry, I hope? They’re very good.’
‘Not for me, no. I don’t eat pastry.’
‘A cup of coffee then?’