A Room With No View

The view from his window was barren, cold, without life. What life? A life of quiescence; of expiring figures eddying around the tea trolley. That’s what sort of life. It was crummy here, and the view crummier still. Of a carpark, devoid of anything more beautiful than the odd Touring 3 series and a single hydrangea bush. “Beyond that empty lot,” said the grumpy old man, as much to himself as any other. “Beyond that lot, lies the beginning and the end of my ken.” His warder – perhaps an unfair designation – continued to plump up his pillows whilst raising a slender eyebrow.

“You, Mr. Holdstock, have all your marbles. You write yourself off too soon.” In her genial alacrity, Katerina had missed the point he was trying to make. Although it was likely done on purpose. Careful to push aside recalcitrance, lest it bubble up. Become unmanageable. Ken Holdstock was only too used to being misunderstood. More so in these latter days. He moaned because it provided relief; an empurpling unguent for latter-day tragedy.

Beyond my ken. A stock expression used by the old man, as an eponymous play on words, at least to start with:

Ken [kɛn] – NOUN 1. One’s range of knowledge or understanding.

It used to be funny, used in raillery. Now it was habit. And of course, delivered in bitter recognition of his, by this point, dwindling ken...

Katerina, a carer at Millview care home (ironically titled), was oblivious to the connection. Fain to overlook all negativity, she was otherwise unflappable, warmhearted, and always smiling. But then she was young, carefree. Not yet to experience loss; not yet to have experienced true love either – at least, not the long-lasting companionship crafted over a lifetime. And the kind one must say goodbye to when least ready. Sorrow perching at the brow of one’s élan vital. 

After Katerina was finished in his room, making the bed, ensuring everything was in order, Ken Holdstock got onto his yellow scooter, like a metallic steed, and made his way to the lounge for a cup of luke-warm tea.

*

It was two years ago Ken Holdstock became a permanent resident of Millview. It followed a loss so deep, later life could only grow around the throbbing channels of his pain. Like the trunk of a tree which grows around a network of deadened ivy. Married to Marie for sixty-eight years, when her Alzheimer’s worsened so bad she could scarcely recognize him, he knew his life was over. And when, finally, she was sadly taken from him, he knew he would not last for too much longer on his own.

Benign-to-insufferable in less than a year, Ken’s daughter reckoned him to be unfit to live alone. Not to mention too morose and immobile to live with her and her kids. For Ken had lost, by this point, all use of his legs. At first, he was offered respite care, and not long after, a permanent placement.

“I hate it here,” the grouchy octogenarian had complained bitterly for those first few weeks. “The food tastes of nothing. And is always served cold.”

“They probably do it on purpose; so, residents don’t burn their mouths,” his daughter tried to reason with him. “I’m sure it can’t be all that bad.”

But Ken’s once furbished outlook had been replaced with a negative overlay. Since Marie, nothing seemed worthwhile and likely never would again.

“It’s like a concentration camp here,” Ken announced down the phone at the end of his third month at the home and on one of his more disagreeable days. “They tell you where to go, who to sit next to; Jah-Vol Mein Commandant."

“Dad!” remarked his wearied daughter with her, by now, stock response. “It can’t possibly be that bad."

“It's all that bad at my age. You wait till you get old,” Ken chided; a meaningless threat.

“Dad, if it were truly like a concentration camp there, well… it’s the only one I know of with a tea trolley!”

That night, as Ken drove himself off to bed early, the radiators along the corridor he passed gave out a sympathetic groan. He hoisted himself with much discomfort onto his lumpy mattress, and, leaving pain abaft, dreamed only of Marie.

*

It happened that once every few weeks or so at Millview, there would be some sort of themed evening. Usually Ken gave it a swerve, the other inmates either already doolalley or smelling faintly of wee. Hardly conducive to having fun. Though on this occasion, he decided he would grace the home with his hangdog presence. The theme that week was ‘Dance Music of the Fifties’ and it was for this particular ‘theme’, Ken still had an iota of feeling.

Ken had been a baritone singer in his younger day. In a dance band, naturally. He performed in venues up and down the country. From the Eldorado Ballroom, Leith, to the Wimbledon Palais. But it was at a local gig, in Rochford, where Ken had met Marie. A petit beauty on the front row, barely seventeen and with her folks. Her enthusiasm for Ken was understated but steadfast. And after they had got speaking later that evening in the bar, it was a union set in the stars. Love at first sight was an intolerable cliché but not so then. And so, it would transpire; a love which would span the decades.

Together Ken and Marie had had a modest but full life. On their honeymoon, they’d stayed at the most beautiful hotel in Aghios Georgios where the view from the windows were full of blue sea and sky; and hydrangeas of all colours, flat and lacey, as well as large and rounded, in fulsome clusters. When they were much older, following their retirement, they had gone back to that place. To rekindle their love and consolidate the riches of their past.

Now, in the middle of the lounge room, the music had started. One swinging dance number after another. All the while, Ken swayed on his scooter like a dogwood shrub in the zephyr breeze; to Unforgettable, Memories are Made of This, and the truly unforgettable, That’s Amore. While in the background, by the staff exit, Katerina beamed and sang along.

When the evening was over, the residents going off one by one to their bedrooms, Katerina sauntered over to where Ken was still sat, staring blankly into space. “A good evening Ken, weren’t it?” Ken twisted round in his seat to view the figure with lustrous, long red hair behind him. “Yes,” he said, agreeable for a change. “Yes, it was.”

*

A few days later, Ken was drinking tea in the lounge when Katerina passed him by, and he stopped her. “My dear,” he said. “Far be it for me to interrogate you, but you seemed actually to enjoy the other night? I find it quite perplexing. My daughter always positively loathed my old ballads and the Honky Tonk. But you, you seemed to get into it, no worries.”

“If you must know, Mr. Holdstock,” Katerina responded, “My boyfriend is a musician.”

Ken scoffed. Musician. What did the youngsters of today know of true music? What did they really know about anything? Little Hitlers and Jumped Up Nobodies were how he described the slight of girls that manned the desks, administered medication and checked on residents as they slept.

“What sort of musician?” Ken asked.

“Well,” she said with an inward smile. “He plays both violin and piano. He works in an orchestra.”

Ken’s face upturned like a canoe. “Oh really,” he said. He wasn’t expecting the young reprobate under discussion to be anything more advanced than a measly punk rocker. Katerina pulled out her phone from her uniform pocket which she proceeded to hover shily under Ken’s now villous hooter. And there, pressed against the plastic phone screen, was a picture of her boyfriend at the piano, in white tie and tails. A reedy sort of fellow, with buckteeth and blinkers. Beside him, Katerina, in an elegant black Kathleen dress made of a fluid silky fabric. With her red hair flowing, she resembled molten lava spilling down an Albuquerque volcano. She looked, Ken concluded, like a million dollars.

The esthetic disparity between Ken and Marie had been similarly striking. Ken, only 5’6 and with wonky nose, had landed on his feet. So said the family, when first he took this coy young beauty back to his parents’ place in Bow. Her acceptance, her warmth, her lack of shallow differentiation, was what had been so brilliant about her. In the modern world of ‘online dating’ and much in the way of minor – and not-so-minor – cosmetic surgery, Ken had seen these qualities fast vanish amongst the young, like sand through the lithesome fingers of a child. It made him want to only think of her. And anchor his heart into the rocks of time.

*

Unable to visit much these days – arising from some virus or other, keeping everyone locked in their homes – Ken’s daughter had noticed his mood improving. For while Ken opined Marie daily, he spoke more positively about her. About the things she used to do, as if she were still doing them. Still making her famous lamb stew. Still dancing wherever she went.

Marie loved the violin. She loved classical music. Tchaikovsky, her favourite. Ken couldn’t remember what made him think of that one, but it made him smile nonetheless.

*

While motoring down the corridor towards the tearoom a few weeks later, Ken noted that the radiators seemed no longer to make that terrible groaning noise. Perhaps they had been fixed at last, he thought to himself. The place was also looking a little less shabby, he couldn’t help noticing. Someone had obviously come along to give it all a lick of paint. Not, he concluded, before time.

“How are you doing today?” asked Katerina as he entered inside. She fluttered her lashes and Ken felt, for the first time in so long, his heart making tiny pirouettes inside its cavernous chamber.

“Oh, you know,” said Ken, “Mustn’t grumble.” This time, the irony had been lost not on Katerina but on Ken. Katerina not fain to acknowledge even her own acknowledgement, smiled feverishly as she made space for the old man at the big table, next to Fanny.

“We have a bit of a treat for the residents today,” Katerina whispered to him. “It’s Maureen’s birthday…” She suddenly raised her voice, turning to face this wrinkly old package, a tenantless vessel, in the chair at the far end; all the while, the latter grinned mindlessly and, as she had been doing for the past few hours, continued blowing random kisses to all with whom she locked eyes. “So, we have delicious birthday cake. Victorian sponge. I know it’s your favourite.”

"I see," said Ken, also peering over to Maureen who blew him a wet one which made him grimace and blush.

Marie, a great cook, had made the very best cakes. Always light, fluffy and above all, moist. All who visited the couple over the years relished the opportunity to arrive early enough for dinner to enjoy a delicious afternoon tea. Victoria sponge, reserved for special occasions, had been the very best of it; the gin in the Campari.

On his way back to his room that evening, after the party, Ken found himself in a strangely buoyant mood.

“How have you been Dad?” his daughter asked him down the phone.

“Oh yes,” Ken said. “Wonderful. And I have to say, the food lately has been simply divine. Just had the most wonderful Victoria sponge.”

“That’s great Dad. It’s good to hear.”

“And the other night…” Ken could scarcely contain his enthusiasm. “Well, the other night, we had my absolute favourite; the most beautiful and succulent lamb pie.”

*

Christmas soon came around, and Ken, who might have been jocosely nicknamed Scrooge, was in surprisingly high spirits. All around Millview, fairy lights. Hanging, like the trinkets and gemstones of some primeval goddess; the tragic heroine of a brutal love story.

“The most delicious turkey dinner,” said Ken over the phone to his daughter that evening. “A right old knees up it was. An audience full of women, squealing and hollering with joy. I even did a few numbers. They all wanted my autograph by the end.”

“That’s wonderful, Dad,” his daughter said. “I really am glad. And I’m just so sorry I couldn’t be there with you.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Ken. “The company was terrific; we had a whale of a time. Heaven knows where all the husbands were, mind; I honestly had my pick. It’s just a shame you were working today. You would have loved it.”

There was a pause.

“And the carers? Was Katerina there, Dad?”

Another pause. Ken scrunched up his face. And, for a few moments, he did not know how to answer. What he should say, without causing his daughter too much alarm or hurt. “Yes,” he said. “I think she might have been, yes.”

*

For a full hour, Ken had somehow managed to lock himself outside. He didn’t seem to mind. “Just getting a breath of fresh air,” he told the carers who escorted him inside. Less easy to write off, was the trouble he made with the other residents. His incessant playing the galleries. Encouraging Gladys, who had stroke-related imbalance, to neck a glass of red with him. Or announcing one evening that Carol, 89 and immobile, should get off her fat arse occasionally if she wanted to get herself a fella. 

“You know,” he declared to his audience. “You’re all lovely women. And I’m flattered by all the attention, I really am. But my heart belongs to another. I am so sorry to disappoint. But please, please, have another drink on me.” Riding off on his invalid scooter, his entourage gurned and grimaced. Maureen continued blowing kisses to an empty space.

  *

“’Love's not’, I’m reading from Shakespeare now... Are you listening Marie? It’s sonnet 116, apparently. Come on, you always loved his stuff. Here, let’s try it again: ‘Love’s not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come...’”

*

Another venture outside. This time, three hours. In the rain. He wasn't even wearing a coat.

*

That winter was cold and brutal; long shadows scattered over frosty white surfaces. The carpark, still largely empty, had become an increasing point of Ken’s fixation. He stared out his window almost on the hour, every hour. For ten, fifteen minutes at a time. It was a habit that saw him slowly withdraw from the social life he had, only a few months prior, begun to build. It had, in particular, caught the attention of Katerina.

Sorrow sits above love on the brow of one’s life. It looks down; its tears turning life’s mountain ranges into none but a solitary, fast-vanishing peninsula.  

“Isn’t it beautiful,” Ken softly proclaimed one afternoon, as Katerina came into his room, only to find his head nestled behind the nettings.

“What is?” asked Katerina. She had been in his room every day, plumping his pillows while he gazed outside, at seemingly nothing at all.

“The hydrangea bush.”

Katerina stepped over to where Ken’s inanimate bulk sat rested, his head as still as a stalagmite. She hitched up the white and lacey nettings above him, as though it were a bridal dress. “Yes,” she said, with a sort of indifference. “I suppose it is?”

“It reminds me of our trip to Greece. Such a wonderful honeymoon. Unrivalled by any holiday since. But then, it was a tall order, wouldn’t you say? Everywhere one looked, hydrangeas. I think that’s what made it so… so special. You know,” Ken continued. “Hydrangea is actually a Greek word. It means water vessel. Haɪˈdreɪndʒiə. But then you knew that already. We looked it up together only the other day, didn’t we?” A tear formed in the old man’s eye.

Katerina placed her hand on the old man’s shoulder. And he looked up at her through watery veil. 

“My love,” Ken took her hand in his. “I can’t imagine my life without you. Promise me, you won’t leave me. Promise me you will never go away.”

Awkward at first, the young woman knelt gently by the old man’s side. “I promise,” she said, squeezing his hand. “I promise I am not going anywhere.” And kissing him on the head, she sashayed over to his window and drew his heavy, dark blue curtains to a close.