screamed her way through the blinding pain she was in to drag herself out of the bathroom, along the carpeted corridor to the bedroom to get to her phone. She couldn’t live on her own any more. We all knew and accepted that. Joel’s solution was to ask her to live with us.
‘Admit it, you don’t want me living with you, do you, Saff-aron?’ Aunty Betty was appealing to me because she knew I’d be able to convince Joel it was a bad idea.
‘Of course we want you to live with us,’ I replied, because we did. We loved her and wanted her to be safe. Joel and I had both been shaken and tearful at the thought of her being alone and in pain.
She laughed bitterly. Shook her head. ‘You two are out of your tiny minds, you know. I want to get into one of those nursing homes with my own flat, see if I can meet some nice widowers who’ll spend their weekly allowance showing me a good time.’
‘You really want to go to a nursing home?’ I asked.
She grinned and nodded mischievously. I wasn’t sure if Joel could see that despite the smile, despite her rejection of our offer, she was terrified. Of the encroaching years, of having to drag herself naked to get help because of the choices she’d made in her life. The flames of pride burned in her eyes, though. She made no apologies about the way she’d lived her life, you only had to spend a few minutes in her company to realise she’d enjoyed every single second of it, and she wanted that independence for as long as possible. Living with us would be a slow, lingering death by boredom. I could understand that. When you’ve travelled all over the world, when you’ve been one of the first black women to have a starring role in a West End play, when you remind anyone who’ll listen that you’re better-looking than Eartha Kitt ever was, when you’ve told the world every day for sixty-odd years that you’ll do things your way, thank you very much, the last thing you want to do is live in a four-bedroom house in Brighton with Mr and Mrs Boring and their two children. Independent living when there was someone around to help if she needed it let us all pretend that she could still be whoever she wanted to be no matter how old she was.
Over five weekends, Joel and I took it in turns to pack up her flat. We put most of it into storage, and she moved into Rose Bay Manor three months later.
*
‘As I said, Mrs Mackleroy, we’ve tried to be understanding, but we feel it’s time for your aunt to move on,’ Felicia Laureau says. Sandy Fields is the third home she’s been in. The others didn’t ‘work out’.
‘What did she do?’ I ask again as I wonder how much it would cost to make the ‘moving on’ go away. In the last home, she’d got into a fist-fight with another resident because she didn’t like the way the woman had looked at her. Aunty Betty neglected to mention that she’d flouted every single piece of dating etiquette when she moved in. The poor woman who’d punched Aunty Betty had been quietly and carefully working long-term on a widower with cups oftea, afternoon walks, listening to Radio 4 together. Within days of Aunty Betty moving in, she’d asked him whether he was going to buy her a drink, and had basically been dating him ever since. That had cost us quite a lot of money to make it go away and to suppress potential assault charges even though Aunty Betty was technically only defending herself.
‘Maybe it’d be easier to list what she didn’t do,’ Mrs Laureau says without a shred of humour.
‘I see.’
‘The incident that inspired this call, however, was her being caught having … intimate relations with another resident in one of the out-of-bounds areas of the main complex.’
‘Oh, God,’ I sigh.
‘The member of staff who caught them was most upset.’
‘Old people have sex you know,’ I said, channelling, it seems, my inner Aunty Betty, ignoring the fact it would permanently traumatise me if I walked into a room and found
‘Admit it, you don’t want me living with you, do you, Saff-aron?’ Aunty Betty was appealing to me because she knew I’d be able to convince Joel it was a bad idea.
‘Of course we want you to live with us,’ I replied, because we did. We loved her and wanted her to be safe. Joel and I had both been shaken and tearful at the thought of her being alone and in pain.
She laughed bitterly. Shook her head. ‘You two are out of your tiny minds, you know. I want to get into one of those nursing homes with my own flat, see if I can meet some nice widowers who’ll spend their weekly allowance showing me a good time.’
‘You really want to go to a nursing home?’ I asked.
She grinned and nodded mischievously. I wasn’t sure if Joel could see that despite the smile, despite her rejection of our offer, she was terrified. Of the encroaching years, of having to drag herself naked to get help because of the choices she’d made in her life. The flames of pride burned in her eyes, though. She made no apologies about the way she’d lived her life, you only had to spend a few minutes in her company to realise she’d enjoyed every single second of it, and she wanted that independence for as long as possible. Living with us would be a slow, lingering death by boredom. I could understand that. When you’ve travelled all over the world, when you’ve been one of the first black women to have a starring role in a West End play, when you remind anyone who’ll listen that you’re better-looking than Eartha Kitt ever was, when you’ve told the world every day for sixty-odd years that you’ll do things your way, thank you very much, the last thing you want to do is live in a four-bedroom house in Brighton with Mr and Mrs Boring and their two children. Independent living when there was someone around to help if she needed it let us all pretend that she could still be whoever she wanted to be no matter how old she was.
Over five weekends, Joel and I took it in turns to pack up her flat. We put most of it into storage, and she moved into Rose Bay Manor three months later.
*
‘As I said, Mrs Mackleroy, we’ve tried to be understanding, but we feel it’s time for your aunt to move on,’ Felicia Laureau says. Sandy Fields is the third home she’s been in. The others didn’t ‘work out’.
‘What did she do?’ I ask again as I wonder how much it would cost to make the ‘moving on’ go away. In the last home, she’d got into a fist-fight with another resident because she didn’t like the way the woman had looked at her. Aunty Betty neglected to mention that she’d flouted every single piece of dating etiquette when she moved in. The poor woman who’d punched Aunty Betty had been quietly and carefully working long-term on a widower with cups oftea, afternoon walks, listening to Radio 4 together. Within days of Aunty Betty moving in, she’d asked him whether he was going to buy her a drink, and had basically been dating him ever since. That had cost us quite a lot of money to make it go away and to suppress potential assault charges even though Aunty Betty was technically only defending herself.
‘Maybe it’d be easier to list what she didn’t do,’ Mrs Laureau says without a shred of humour.
‘I see.’
‘The incident that inspired this call, however, was her being caught having … intimate relations with another resident in one of the out-of-bounds areas of the main complex.’
‘Oh, God,’ I sigh.
‘The member of staff who caught them was most upset.’
‘Old people have sex you know,’ I said, channelling, it seems, my inner Aunty Betty, ignoring the fact it would permanently traumatise me if I walked into a room and found
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