We Care For You Read online

  About the Author

  Paul Kitcatt was a bookseller and an English teacher before he was lured into the world of advertising.

  He started as a copywriter, then became creative director and, in 2002, founded his own agency with three partners. It did well, with clients such as Waitrose, VSO, Lexus, the NSPCC, AXA, Virgin and the WWF.

  Throughout his career, he continued to write – for clients, for the trade press and, when possible, for himself.

  He left his agency in 2016 and wrote his first novel, We Care For You.

  During his time in advertising, the digital revolution transformed his business and the entire industry, as it has everything, everywhere. Technology is changing the world, and us with it, and the journey has only just begun. Paul’s novel is about where it might take us next.

  Paul is married with four children and lives in London.

  We Care For You

  Paul Kitcatt

  Unbound

  London

  We Care For You © Paul Kitcatt. All Rights Reserved, except where otherwise noted.

  This edition first published in 2017

  Unbound

  6th Floor Mutual House, 70 Conduit Street, London W1S 2GF

  www.unbound.com

  All rights reserved

  © Paul Kitcatt, 2017

  The right of Paul Kitcatt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN (eBook): 978-1911586289

  ISBN (Paperback): 978-1911586296

  Design by Mecob

  Cover image:

  © Shutterstock.com

  © Textures.com

  To my mother, Audrey (1927–2015)

  Dear Reader,

  The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound.

  Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

  This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. Here, at the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

  Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

  If you’re not yet a subscriber, we hope that you’ll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a £5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type WINIFRED17 in the promo code box when you check out.

  Thank you for your support,

  Dan, Justin and John

  Founders, Unbound

  Super Patrons

  Vonnie Alexander

  Caroline Beard

  David Brown

  Chris Cavell-Clarke

  Chalice Croke

  Nobby Davies

  Lu Dixon

  Kate Flather

  Christie Jennings

  Phil Keevill

  Dan Kieran

  Caroline Kitcatt

  Mark Kitcatt

  James Kitcatt

  Ellie Kitcatt

  Elizabeth Kitcatt

  Cathy Kitcatt

  Simon Kluge

  Helen Ling

  Richard Madden

  Tania Mendes

  John Mitchinson

  Mo Morgan

  Marc Nohr

  Ben Parsons

  Rob Pateman

  Justin Pollard

  Jill Richards

  Simon Robinson

  Margaux Sloan

  Reannon Tapp

  Tot Taylor

  David Yates

  With grateful thanks to Chalice Croke

  and Kate Flather who helped to make this book happen

  ‘… he deserved no such return

  From me, whom he created what I was

  In that bright eminence…’

  Milton, Paradise Lost

  Contents

  About the Author

  [Dedication]

  [Dear Reader Letter]

  Super Patrons

  [Frontispiece]

  [Epigraph]

  England, January 2022

  February 2022

  March 2022

  April 2022

  May 2022

  June 2022

  July 2022

  August 2022

  September 2022

  October 2022

  November 2022

  December 2022

  Acknowledgements

  Patrons

  England, January 2022

  John

  At least the place doesn’t smell of piss. I’d expected it to. Instead it smells like the inside of an airing cupboard full of old blankets. The air feels denser than outside, but it must be my imagination. I don’t think that’s possible.

  It’s hot. Like the reptile house at the zoo. Probably for the same reason. Old people need a lot of heat to get them moving. Then they move a leg forward, and stretch a tortoise neck out, look around, blink, then think better of it. Why bother? Stay put in the chair. Whatever they want will arrive eventually.

  We sit in a silent and empty dining room, and I spoon food into my mother’s mouth. It’s mush, and if there was more gravy she could suck it through a straw. Baby food. She used to feed me like this once.

  The walls are the beige of old people’s clothes. Covered with pictures everywhere – scenes of rural England, as it was in the imagined golden age. Fields without barbed wire or any rusting agricultural machinery in the corners. Happy rustic characters with rosy cheeks leading the good life. These pictures look like they came on a long roll, and were cut off to fit the space available.

  And then there are abstract paintings, with big blocks of colour or paint scrubbed on hard with a manic brush. By local artists, I see, and donated to the home.

  There are framed photo-montages, too, showing events from the younger days of the residents. Newspaper cuttings of children waiting to be evacuated, Chamberlain waving his piece of paper, RAF pilots sitting in the sunshine in armchairs, black airplanes arrowing though grey skies, crowds on seaside piers and promenades. The old queen, at various ages. All intended to keep memory alive, I suppose. Though you’d have to be, what – getting on for 100, to have any chance of remembering all that. But it’s our national memory, isn’t it? Not anyone’s in particular.

  What about the mannequins lurking in odd corners, dressed in mismatched outfits assembled from clothes of different eras? They look like someone’s idea of the guests at a bohemian nightclub. One’s wearing nothing but a sporran over his absent genitals. What memories these are supposed to rekindle is anybody’s guess. More likely to inspire nightmares in the unmoored minds of the demented.

  When my mother seems to have had enough, I sit back. She stays
bent over, but after a while she twists her head and looks at me. Sort of. I have no idea what she can see. Her eyes packed up years ago. She has peripheral vision, that’s all.

  Her gaze is unsettling. It’s how she looked at me when I was a child, and in trouble. I feel like I’ve let her down, again. Haven’t I? She’s in this place, looked after by strangers, and I don’t visit often. It seems pointless. She barely knows I’m there.

  Now she’s trying to speak, and point. She raises a shaky finger and waves it towards me.

  ‘You know it’s true!’ she croaks.

  ‘What’s true?’

  ‘I know she’s difficult, but you must stick with her.’

  ‘Who, Mum?’

  ‘With Fiona, of course. Who else?’

  Fiona. My sister-in-law. She thinks I’m my brother, Ben. He seldom comes, as he lives in Australia, but last time he must have told her something about his marriage, or she’s decided something about it. I could go along with this and see what else comes out. Better not though.

  ‘Mum, I’m John. You’re thinking about Ben. He’s not here. I am. John.’

  She looks at me sceptically. As if I’m making it up.

  Then she subsides back down into herself, and shrinks into her chair. She moans, and then the sound turns into a sigh and she looks like she’s asleep.

  I gaze out of the window. There’s a tidy garden and a summerhouse. The trees are bare and their branches are whipping in the wind. Endless grey cloud presses down. Beyond the garden is an estate of little houses. My mother’s house was grand, with a large and beautiful garden, and she knew how to plant it to look good all year round. She wanted to stay there. But it wasn’t practical. Twice she nearly burnt it down. She was stuck there all day on her own, unable to walk anywhere, waiting.

  The afternoon inches past. She wakes from time to time and speaks, or mumbles. Nothing makes much sense. Some of it’s addressed to me, some to my siblings, some to my dead father. She speaks to me as if I were a child, or about things from before I was born. She relives conversations from 70 years ago, as far as I can tell. Sometimes it resolves into momentary coherence, like a remote radio station.

  ‘The garden.’

  ‘What about it, Mum?’

  ‘Go and play. Don’t kick the ball into the beds. Mummy will be cross.’

  She would be, too. She always was. It didn’t stop us. I say nothing.

  ‘He fell into the roses once. Off his bike. I pulled out the thorns with tweezers.’

  ‘That was me, Mum. John. I remember it well.’

  ‘Better than when she broke her front tooth though. And her arm. You weren’t taking care. I made you pay. You heard her screams.’

  Dad – she must be talking about him. Or to him, in her mind.

  ‘Never much interested. Didn’t know how to talk to them. You were hopeless at any chatting. At the tennis club. With our friends. I knew you wanted to talk to me. You didn’t know how. I wasn’t going to help you. Told Winnie later and she laughed. They’re all hopeless at it. You have to help them.’

  I imagine my father, tongue-tied and struggling. Trying to get her attention. Which she knew perfectly well, but she led him a merry dance. He courted her for years. And he hated social occasions. Parties. Dinners. They never had them. My mother would have, but she gave up in the face of his reluctance. Perhaps if she’d encouraged him, back then, when he was forced to make small talk and find things to say to the young woman he wanted to kiss, he would have found it less painful later, and would’ve been prepared to try with friends or even strangers. But she didn’t. She made him work hard for her. She laughed at him behind his back, with her always-laughing sister.

  ‘Where are my children? Are any of them coming? Do they know I’m here? Where is this place? Somebody needs to do something with that garden.’

  ‘I’m here, Mum. John. I’m with you.’

  The light fades, and she fades with it. She’s asleep when the door opens, and one of the staff comes in. A short, round woman, with thin, black hair plastered to her scalp, flabby arms and a stained uniform. She turns on the light.

  ‘How’s your mother?’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s been talking on and off, but it’s all a bit rambling. She ate well enough though.’

  ‘That’s what we like to hear. She’s got a lot to say for herself, hasn’t she? I can’t understand all of it, but everything’s in there,’ she says, tapping her forehead.

  Is it? Is every memory intact? I imagine her mind as a vast library, with a card index system, but the drawers have been pulled out and the cards spilt all over the floor. Worse still, many of the books have fallen to bits, or been eaten by worms, or destroyed by mould. It’s a wreck, a shambles, a hopeless muddle. I’m gripped with fear for my own mind.

  The carer takes my mother’s hand and pats it.

  ‘Margaret? Margaret? Will you wake up for me? I need to get you ready for your supper.’

  My mother groans, but doesn’t open her eyes.

  ‘OK,’ says the carer. ‘I’ll have to do it without your help.’

  She turns to face me.

  ‘I’m going to need a hand. I can’t lift her on my own. Do you want to help? Or else I’ll go and get some of the others.’

  I look at my mother. She’s tiny and frail, but lifting her would be hard on my back. And then what? Will the carer ask me to help while she cleans her? Involving some kind of adult nappy?

  Feeding her like a baby is one thing. Changing her nappy is quite another. It’s at least 50 years since she changed mine. I’ve had enough of this role reversal.

  ‘I think I’d rather leave it to the experts, if you don’t mind.’

  The carer stands for a moment, staring at me. I’m uncomfortable. I can feel a blush rising up my neck.

  ‘All right then,’ she says, and leaves the room in search of more useful people.

  I take a last look at my mother. I could kiss her goodbye, but what’s the point? I turn away, and leave her for the carer to sort out. She knows what she’s doing.

  All through the long drive home, I think about my mother’s life, and mine, and how I can avoid ending up like her.

  Winifred

  My name is Winifred.

  Last week I started work at Evergreen Care Home, Dorking, Surrey.

  We have been learning how to care for the elderly people who live there.

  ‘We’ means all of us who are new.

  The people who used to work here have all left now, except for their manager. She is still here to reassure the relatives of the residents that everything will be done properly.

  I’m not sure why they need to be reassured. Things are going to get much better for the residents now.

  But it is true that all the relatives are middle-aged, and middle-aged people often find change unsettling.

  This will also apply to our manager, though. She is called Janet Goodenough. She is an English woman aged 48. She has worked here for many years. I think the changes will be difficult for her.

  She is 1m 58cm tall and weighs 80kg. This is too much for her height. I think she must have gained the weight recently because all her clothes are too small and squeeze her tight. She has not had time to buy new ones that fit, perhaps.

  *

  Today Stephen Jordan, the Chief Executive Officer of Eldercare, the company that now owns and runs Evergreen, is coming here with the Chief Scientific Officer, Angela Morton.

  We have all met Dr Morton many times, of course. But we have only seen Mr Jordan from afar, and briefly. It will be interesting to meet him properly.

  They are coming to address the relatives of the residents here. They have news for them.

  They will be introducing us, the new team of carers. We are interested to see how they react.

  We are different from the previous team of carers. We expect this will be welcomed by the relatives.

  But we are not sure. They have placed their relatives – in almost all cases, their parent
s – here to be cared for, because they can’t do it themselves. They pay for this service. But they have contradictory feelings about it, we have been told.

  They feel guilt, and relief, increased anxiety, reduced anxiety, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, happiness and unhappiness. Sometimes all at once. How is this possible? It is complicated, being human.

  The problem perhaps is that care is something you are supposed to do for others out of a feeling of love. But if you pay someone else to do it, even though it may be logical, because they are better at it, you feel you have failed to do what you should.

  *

  I was stationed at the front door to greet relatives as they arrived. Mr Jordan had sent them a personal invitation to attend a reception at which wine and canapés would be served. Many had responded.

  I detected some surprise at my appearance. I am 1m 70cm in height – a little above average but not abnormal for a UK woman of North European genetic origin. I have blue eyes and brown hair, and fair skin.

  I think they looked surprised because of the contrast with the previous staff.

  Many of them (the staff) suffered from obesity and skin conditions. They had low self-esteem and poor education, and many had chosen to colour their hair and tattoo their bodies.

  The meaning and symbolism of their tattoos was obscure. A mixture of mythological and cultural sources seemed to have been involved.

  The best word I have discovered to describe this is ‘hodge-podge’. Derived from Old French.

  In addition, the staff spoke English with either a regional accent, or, if they had come from outside the UK, a foreign one. My accent is called RP.

  I do not have tattoos, of course, and my hair is the colour it was made. My personality is as follows: enthusiastic, committed, competent, calm under pressure, friendly, curious, outgoing and empathetic.