On these makeover programmes, they always go back a year later. Lawrence sometimes wonders if they wish they just hadn’t looked, if they wish they had just done the job — laid the pebbles and the decking, cleaned the limescale off the sink and cleared out the fridge, thrown away the middle-aged lady’s sequined tops and replaced them with the trouser suits that flatter her figure and her autumnal colouring — and then walked away, knowing that their work was done, that they had done some good. But they go back. They wait a year and then return, with the camera already filming as they stand on the front doorstep and knock. They can’t help it, they have to look. They have to see the state of the garden now, the state of the kitchen; they have to see what the lady is wearing. They will find that the weeds are growing through despite the polythene. They will see the cat excrement in amongst the pebbles, the sticks of bamboo that have split and snapped, the half-dead plants flattened by footballs, the decking turning green. They will see the limescale on the sink, the double cream in the fridge. They will discover that the lady has been into the bin bags, digging out a sequined top and wearing it to the karaoke on Thursday nights; they will find the autumnal trouser suits still hanging in the wardrobe, barely worn. They will be disappointed.
The house on Small Street had a back garden. No wider than the narrow house and only ten feet deep, it backed up against a field whose edges you could not even see and you could almost think of that as an extension of the garden, except that there was a wall between the two, and the field was private with no public right of way. Signs on the gate said, ‘KEEP OUT’ and, ‘DOGS WILL BE SHOT’. You could see the field though, from the upstairs windows. A sizeable tree grew in the nearest corner. Its branches hung over the wall, dappling the bed in which Lewis planted apple pips that never grew into trees, and in which he tried to grow sunflowers faster than the slugs could eat them. The garden did not get much sunshine, but they put the stripy deckchairs out there anyway, next to the sunflower stumps.
There are other residents in the living room too, but Lawrence is speaking to no one in particular when he begins to talk about when he was a boy, about Small Street and his cousin Bertie and when everything around here was just fields. While Doris keeps her gaze on her television programme, Lawrence talks about the birds you saw then and the hedgerows that have gone. ‘The sky-lark and thrush,’ he says, ‘the birds of the bush.’
Two of the other residents across the room have begun a conversation between themselves. Another one has closed his eyes. ‘We were only children,’ says Lawrence. ‘Breathing English air, washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.’ Doris watches the rolling credits, while Lawrence quotes next from DH Lawrence, after whom he was named and whole passages of whose texts he knows by heart: ‘It was a spring day, chill, with snatches of sunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from the hedge-bottoms…’
Someone is standing in the doorway — a young lady who is saying to him, ‘What do you want?’ She reminds him of the salesgirl in the department store who showed him the tray of engagement rings. ‘Can I get you something?’ she asks. And then he realises that it is the girl who comes down the corridor with a vacuum cleaner in the afternoon. The vacuum cleaner is the sort that has a happy face on the front; it wears a bowler hat. Smiling, it follows her around like a dog.
When they first told him about pat-a-dog day, Lawrence anticipated a golden retriever, like the puppy they had when Lewis was younger. It is a small dog though, not a puppy but a full-grown dog that will always be small. Lawrence has to reach almost to the floor to touch its coarse hair.
He knows that this is not craft day. Monday is craft day. The craft lady, who smells of vanilla and has a son in Afghanistan, has only recently been and will not come again until next week.
‘We like to keep them busy,’ said the manager, when Lewis first brought Lawrence here and asked about the programme of activities. There is a lot of singing. They have a microphone in the cupboard. Or they bring the kiddies from the infant school, line them up along the wall and get them to sing. Some of them sing their hearts out and some of them cry. There is a man who comes with a keyboard once a month and does all the old tunes. He takes requests but he does not know Handel’s Messiah, although he has said that he will have a go.
The girl has turned around and walked away.
Opening the cleaning cupboard, she wheels out the vacuum cleaner. Putting her head around the staff room door, she says to the nurse who is in there, ‘One of the men in the lounge is crying.’
‘That will be Lawrence,’ says the nurse, who is due a break and has just sat down.
‘I think he wants something,’ says the girl.
‘He always wants something,’ says the nurse. ‘He spends half the night calling for a glass of water when he’s already got one.’
The girl walks away again, pulling the vacuum cleaner down the corridor towards the lounge.
Lawrence sniffs at the air, detecting soup like an old sailor sensing a storm. Is he waiting, he wonders, for someone to come and take him to the dining room?
The girl comes back in and Lawrence half expects to see in her hands a velvet-covered tray, a selection of rings, gold studded with precious stones, so that he can choose which one he wants, take it home in a little satin-lined box, a little bit of treasure in his pocket. She walks right up to him and says, ‘What is it, Lawrence? Do you want a cup of tea?’ She is holding the plug of the vacuum cleaner. She stoops to push it into a nearby socket, but she is waiting — her young face turned to him — for an answer.
‘Yes, please,’ says Lawrence.
‘He wants a cup of tea,’ says the girl, standing in the staff room doorway with the happy Hoover at her heels.
‘He always does,’ says the nurse. ‘He’ll say yes to whatever you offer him.’ Checking the time, putting aside the unfinished crossword, the nurse sighs and then stands up and goes to the kitchen to switch on the urn.
It is not his bath day. Someone else is in the bath. He can hear a thin voice calling down the corridor, ‘Are you coming to get me?’
He is not expecting the hairdresser, who comes every Friday to snip at the wispy white hairs around his ears.
‘Is there anybody there?’ calls that thin, high voice. ‘Are you coming to get me?’
One of the nurses is approaching. It is the man nurse. He has long, curly hair and a man’s voice. He wears shiny earrings and has a man’s hands.
The man nurse, putting down the cup of tea he’s brought, says, ‘Do you want a blanket, Lawrence, over your legs?’ When Lawrence says yes, please, the man nurse says, ‘Do you want a coconut macaroon?’ When Lawrence says yes, please, the man nurse says, ‘Do you want a dancing girl?’ Lawrence, looking up into the man nurse’s eyes, opens his mouth. The man nurse laughs and pats Lawrence’s knee. ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ he says. ‘Maybe tomorrow. Today, my friend, is pat-a-dog day.’
8. He wants the family silver
WHEN HE OPENS his front door, Lewis, who has only had half a shandy, and not even that, is surprised to see his dog standing in the hallway. Then he realises that this cannot be his dog because his dog was lost half a lifetime ago, fifty-odd years ago. He wonders how long golden retrievers live for — not beyond their teens at least.
‘Well,’ says Lewis to this dog which is standing by the coat pegs smiling at him. ‘Where have you come from?’ He reaches into his pocket, looking for a treat, but the dog has turned around and is trotting down the hallway, heading into the living room. ‘Are you hungry?’ says Lewis to the dog’s retreating backside. He follows, without stopping to take off his coat or his shoes. ‘You’d have had the vegetarian sausages,’ he says. ‘You’d have wolfed down whatever came your way, whatever fell on the floor.’ He admires a good appetite, even if he himself does not eat much.