A huge crowd had gathered outside the Council House to watch it collapse. Mayor Jackson MacDonald, Polly the secretary bird and Alice exited by the main doors with little ceremony. In fact, few noticed them and those that did only recognised Alice. The Mayor had been hidden away so long that the people had forgotten what he looked like. They had, however, listened to his story over the loudspeakers and there were cries of “Save the Mayor!” as stones fell around them. One pessimistic voice shouted, “Let’s build a statue to commemorate him!” while several of the more materialistic townsfolk were volunteering to help search for the hidden coins.
Some people came up to Alice to shake her hand and thank her. She had no idea what she had done to deserve their thanks. She began to re-introduce the Mayor to people but he quickly stopped her.
“I now know it’s not me that’s important, Alice. It’s what I’ve done. At least, what I’ve started and what the people now have to carry on doing. That’s what matters. I don’t want to be recognised. I never did.” Jackson MacDonald removed his chain of office and gave it to a bewildered bystander. “Here. I have a feeling I shan’t be needing this anymore. From this moment on, I renounce my Mayorship. Or is it Mayordom?”
“But you have so much to talk to them about,” said Alice. “They need to meet the real you.”
“No-one can ever know the real me. Just like no-one will ever completely understand you, Alice.”
“That’s quite a scary thing to say.”
“It is scary, isn’t it? Tell me, would you say your parents understand you?”
“Not at all.”
“Your sisters?”
“No.”
“No-one is closer than family and if they don’t know you, well, I rest my case. We are known and will be remembered purely by the things we do.”
“But I haven’t done anything.”
“Not yet, Alice. But you will.”
“What will I do?”
“Ah, no-one but you knows the answer to that question. You will decide how well we know you by what you do every day, all through your life. You need to seize life by the collar. Be brave and jump in with both feet. Be the best you can be.”
“That’s sounds like a lot of pressure. Speaking of which, don’t the people of Banbury still need you around to lead them out of this mess?”
“I’m not sure I’m up to it. Let’s see what the future brings. For now, I’m back to being simply Jackson MacDonald and I probably need to go and attend to my mother. Thanks to Polly, the townsfolk now know the truth. So it’s up to them to make my vision come true.”
Alice felt bad at having thought ill of Jackson MacDonald for so long.
“I have a confession, Mr McDonald.”
“Call me Jackson, please. I suppose you’re going to say you thought I was the Jabberwocky.”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Well, you’re very young and it’s just the kind of thing someone with a vivid imagination might think.”
“Just as I was beginning to like you!” joked Alice.
The crowds around Alice had become a little blurred and she rubbed her eyes to clear her vision. But it didn’t help.
“Come on, Alice,” said Jackson, “there’s someone I want you to meet.”
Polly left Jackson’s side, but not before she gave him a peck on his cheek and he ruffled her tail feathers. They would meet up again later.
Once Polly had been absorbed into the crowd, ex-Mayor Jackson MacDonald led Alice down one of the side streets leading off the square. He was so happy, he almost bounced along. Before long, everything around them was quiet and calm.
“You know, Alice, I do believe the people of Banbury will be fine without money, especially now they know why it was done.”
“I do hope you’re right,” said Alice.
She hadn’t been down this road before, not that it looked much different from the other streets. She had become quite attached to the house facades with everything painted on as opposed to being real.
“Will you repaint your house?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m so looking forward to leading a normal life with Polly.”
Alice thought that Jackson was stretching the meaning of the word “normal” but she was very happy for him.
“So who was it you wanted me to meet?”
“You’ll see. It’s a bit of a walk but there’s not much that a good stiff walk won’t cure.”
“That’s funny, that’s just what my father says.”
After some minutes, the rows of painted houses ended abruptly in fields. To the right, the countryside was a patchwork of various crops – rape seed, wheat, barley, potatoes, was that a rice field? Delicious squares of browns and yellows and greens mingled in steep contrast to the endless stretch of rich green grass and deciduous forest to the left. Above, white clouds billowed across a deep blue sky like sails on the ocean.
“This is my idea of heaven,” said Alice.
“I thought it might be,” replied Jackson. “But of course, heaven is different for every person. For someone with hay fever this would be hell.”
“Don’t spoil it for me,” said Alice in mock anger, for she knew Jackson was just teasing her.
“Can we walk a bit more slowly?” asked Jackson. “I’m still wearing slippers.”
“Yes, I noticed.” That was another annoying thing her father did.
After a mile or so, they turned left into a sandy lane that led through the grassy fields towards the woods. Soon, great oaks and old elm trees provided a thick canopy overhead, yet enough sunlight filtered through to make the glade a glorious garden of gold. A short way in, the lane widened and then ended in a pair of rusty wrought iron gates that spanned a gap between red brick walls either side. A large sign above the door read: SWEATLANDS - MORE CARE FOR MORE PEOPLE.
“Is that pronounced ‘sweat’ as in ‘wet’?”
“It’s supposed be ‘sweet’ as in ‘cheat’. Sweetlands. What an unfortunate spelling error.”
“Someone lives way out here?” asked Alice.
“More than one person. You’ll see.”
Above a doorbell was a small plaque, which read: “ONLY FOR PRESSING MATTERS”
“Well that makes sense,” said Alice.
“Probably the only thing that does in this place,” quipped Jackson. He pressed the button and the gates swung open, creaking as if they had been deliberately left unoiled.
“It’s an old gate,” said Jackson.
“Then they should have called this place Aldgate.”
They walked along a driveway bordered by large yew and box bushes. The yellow gravel crunched underfoot. Around a corner, the gravel driveway culminated in a large red brick mansion with a white door and white window frames.
“I had this place built with some of the money that I didn’t burn. It was a venture to house those people of Banbury that were too old or fragile to look after themselves. I had seen how we were treating our old folk at the end of their road and it wasn’t nice.”
Alice wondered if Jackson included his own mother in this group of people. If Banbury treats its old folk anything like it treats its animals and children, then they must be in trouble, she thought.
“This rest home was intended as a kind of a stop gap, until Banbury was able to resurrect itself and the people look after one another properly. But that might take a little longer than I had hoped.”
“It’s a wonderful idea. Perhaps the town could copy it for other unfortunate groups, like old or sick animals. Or orphans.”
“Maybe. Your heart is in the right place, Alice.”
“I’m not so sure. Someone in Wonderland told me I wear it on my sleeve.”
“Maybe that’s the right place.”
“Possibly. But I tend to say things in the wrong way at the wrong time.”
“Well at least you say something. Many people go through life without saying anything.”
“Perhaps they’re just shy, like my sisters.”
“Perhaps. But in my experience, it’s very often because they are afraid what others may think of them. Never be afraid of saying what you really feel, Alice. And remember, the older one gets, the stronger the fear of looking stupid becomes.”
“Can older people start to look so silly they appear to be animals?” asked Alice.
“What an odd thing to say.”
“It’s much quieter than normal,” noted Jackson with a frown. “Last time I visited, a lot of the residents and staff were outside on the lawn. Now the doors and windows are all shut even though it’s a beautiful day. Let’s see if anyone’s in. They may have all gone to the seaside.”
Jackson pulled a large brass handle that dangled on the end of a rope. From inside the house, they heard a voice shout “Ow! There’s someone at the door. Hurry up, before they ring again!”
The door opened and a very tall, thin and rather ugly middle-aged nurse looked down her nose at them. “Mayor MacDonald. What are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you.”
“Evidently not. But, I would nevertheless like to come in and show Alice around, if that’s all right with you?”
“Sorry. Now is not a very good time. We are overseeing an extensive renovation to the building.”
“A renovation? As founder of this home, I should have been informed about any renovation. What are you doing?”
She hesitated. “Changing all the locks.”
A bad excuse is better than none, thought Alice, but decided to let Jackson handle the nurse.
“Well, that’s not a problem,” said Jackson. “I’m sure we can see the part of the facility that’s unlocked.”
“Changing all the locks as well as changing the beds,” added the nurse.
“Changing the beds is hardly a renovation. Most people do it at least once a week.”
“By changing, I mean we’re throwing all the old beds out and buying new ones.”
“Whatever for? They can’t be old yet.”
The nurse looked back and forth between the Mayor and Alice, clearly considering how much to tell them.
“According to our research, old people…”
“The elderly,” said Jackson, correcting her.
“Quite. The elderly are shrinking. On average, each old … aged person is using only eighty per cent of the length of his or her bed. And sixty-eight per cent of the width. By giving them smaller beds, we can fit … we can care for more people.”
“You mean to say you are squeezing more people into one room?” asked Jackson.
“Of course not,” said the nurse. “That would be barbaric. We have a policy of one person per cell … I mean room.”
“But surely,” said Alice. “If you have the same number of rooms, then you don’t save any space at all.”
“Did I forget to say we are lowering the ceilings and moving the walls in too?”
“I want to see what’s happening,” said Jackson, pushing past the nurse and looking angrier than Alice had seen him all day. Once they were inside, Alice took stock of her surroundings. It reminded her of the entrance hall to her old school. There was a lot of dark wood panelling and corridors leading off to the right and to the left. Like the branches of an old tree, the corridors sprouted rooms and smaller corridors on both sides along their length. Directly in front of them was an old wooden staircase leading to the next floor, where Alice knew there would be a similar labyrinth of corridors and rooms.
It was then that Alice noticed an old man in a dressing gown standing behind the open front door. A long and taut piece of string tied to the big toe on his right foot led to a hole in the wall and presumably was connected to the outside doorbell handle. He gave Alice a please-don’t-ring-the-bell-again look.
“I don’t see any sign of the renovation,” said Jackson.
“We haven’t started yet. The builders are coming in an hour’s time. Or it’s their day off, I’m not sure which. But it’s a highly inconvenient time.”
“Inconvenient for whom?” asked Jackson, suspecting that the nurse had her own agenda for preventing them from seeing more. “I’m sorry but I insist that I see some of the residents. As Chairman of the Board of this elderly people’s home I believe I am within my rights to demand this.”
“Very well. On your head be it. Follow me.” She stopped and smiled sarcastically. “Welcome to Sweatlands.”
“Sweetlands,” corrected Jackson.
The nurse gave Jackson a tired look and set off at such a pace that it was hard for Alice to keep up. They passed half a dozen doors on either side before the nurse stopped abruptly and produced a key.
“This is Mr Percy.”
Alice thought it was a strange name for a key until she realised the nurse was talking about the man inside the locked room.
“We have to keep him behind lock and key for his own safety and the safety of others,” she added, in response to the look on Jackson MacDonald’s face.
The door opened inwards to reveal a small room with a simple bed, writing desk and chair. In one corner was a rusty enamel chamber pot and in the other a dirty mop. Sitting on the bed was a thin, haggard man of least eighty, holding is head in his hands. He had no legs and in their place, someone had tied two table legs to his stumps. Alice couldn’t help wondering if they were Chippendale. On his head was a small red hat that resembled a cockerel’s comb.
“Mr Percy, you have visitors. Now sit up and behave.”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo!” crowed Mr Percy, raising his face to the ceiling. Mr Percy was smiling. “My cock’s crowing this morning, all right.”
“We don’t want to know about that, thank you very much!” chided the nurse.
“Hello, My Percy,” said Alice.
Mr Percy leered at Alice and made an eerie cooing noise.
“Would you care for a dance, Alice?” he cooed.
“No she wouldn’t!” shouted the nurse, stepping between them.
“I used to dance you know,” continued the old man with a wink. “I used to dance with my wife. A right old time of it we had. Until she lost her favourite dancing shoes,” he said sadly. “She got so depressed she wouldn’t dance with me anymore. Had to dance on my own. Then just when she got interested again, I lost my fiddling sticks. Not much use to her without those, am I? By the time I’d found them again, she’d done a runner. So now I dance with others, don’t I? So how about it, Alice?”
He grinned a toothless grin and jumped up on his table legs. He was surprisingly fleet of foot for an old man on table legs. Before Alice had time to react, the nurse had pushed Mr Percy back on to the bed with the dirty mop and was ushering the rest of them out of the room. She locked the door behind them and glared at the visitors.
“I told you! Mad as a hatter,” she exclaimed. “If I hadn’t intervened, who knows what mischief he would have wrought.”
“I felt a bit sorry for him,” said Alice.
Jackson was visibly shaken. “I can’t see how we’re helping a lonely old man by locking him up in solitary confinement. If anything, it could make him worse.”
“Are you a doctor?” asked the nurse and without waiting added. “I thought not.”
They stopped a few rooms farther down.
“Meet Jonathan Thomas,” said the nurse, flinging the door open. “He’s in perfectly good shape, if you ignore the fact that he’s as bonkers as Mr Percy.”
The room was smaller and newer. The ceiling was so low that Alice couldn’t have entered without stooping. Even the walls seemed closer together.
“You call this renovating?” said Jackson. “Even the bed’s smaller. And where did the window go?
“More care for more people. That was the motto you came up with yourself, Mayor. I don’t know who could argue with that.”
“Well, certainly not the bank, if you are charging money from more and more people,” said Jackson, a little too sarcastically for Alice’s taste. “Come to think of it, are the people of Banbury still using money to pay for their board here?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that.”
“They don’t have money any more, so we’ve had to take on people from other towns, who do have money.”
“What have you done to those poor people that can no longer afford to stay here?” asked Alice.
“Nothing.”
“So you’re looking after them free of charge?”
“No. I mean we’re doing nothing for them. Their relatives came to collect them. In the case of Mr Thomas, who doesn’t have anyone, I’m sure he’ll find his own way out sooner or later, when he gets hungry enough.”
Jackson slumped against the wall. He was clearly shouldering some of the blame. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“It’s so wrong,” said Alice bluntly to the nurse. “You’re turning your back on poor people. And it’s them who need help the most.”
“Rubbish!” said the nurse. “The wealthy have more problems than the poor. They need to be cared for plus they have the added burden of finding ways to spend their money, which their relatives are invariably trying to get at. Sweatlands is ideally suited to help them with their troubles. People with few possessions only have to worry about themselves. It’s so much easier for them. It’s the rich who need our care.”
Alice couldn’t believe her ears. Perhaps that’s why her tongue seemed unable to respond.
Until this moment, Jonathan Thomas had lain prostate on his under-sized bed. But now he sat up and let the light from the corridor illuminate his features. He was, like all the other residents, very old. He had a distant look in his eye, as though he was not aware of what was happening around him and couldn’t make the effort to find out. He wore a white nightgown, which had begun to fray and turn grey through constant use. From under the nightgown protruded one human leg and one chair leg. Alice thought this one could be Rococo.
“Hello, Mr Thomas,” said Alice.
“It was the goose, you know,” said Jonathan Thomas, his pale blue eyes momentarily lucid. “He visited us during the night. Not me, my wife. He tricked her, cajoled her, brought all kinds of gifts and promised her more. How could I compete with that?”
The nurse made large circles with her forefinger against her temple.
“And he was young too. Much younger than me. And stronger. He asked me if I prayed to God every night and when I said most nights but not every night, he dragged me down the stairs by my left leg. I lost it.”
Jonathan Thomas tapped his table leg.
“That’s when I bumped my head and started to lose other things.”
“Marbles?” suggested the nurse.
“Yes, I lost my marbles, my train set, my toy soldiers. I haven’t seen them in years. And my wife, Lydia. Lost her too. Goodness knows…”
“As you see,” said the nurse, shutting the door on a bewildered Jonathan Thomas mid-sentence, “we do what we can for them. But it’s mostly making them comfortable during their final months. Or in some cases, years,” she added and rolled her eyes. “You need a lot of patience in this job.”
“I’d say you already have too many,” said Alice, barking up the wrong end of the stick.
“It’s quite preposterous how you treat them,” said Jackson. “Last time I visited, everyone was happy. People were reading, talking, going for walks in the grounds.”
“And when did you visit last? Five years ago? Times have changed since then, Mayor.”
“And not for the better. By the way, what is your name?”
The nurse stopped in her tracks and looked Jackson in the eyes. She waited before answering. “Foster. Nurse Fiona Foster.”
“I knew it. You’re Doctor Foster’s sister. My sister Gillian was engaged to your brother.”
“And he’s now dead as a doornail thanks to your sister.”
“How come?”
“My brother was so besotted with her that he travelled all the way to Gloucester to buy her a ring. If he hadn’t gone there, he would never have fallen into that puddle.”
“That was hardly her fault.”
“Nevertheless.”
“So is that why you are running my home like a prison camp? Avenging your brother’s death by sabotaging the lives of our elderly people? I demand to see Mr Shafto and get to the bottom of this.”
Nurse Foster flashed Jackson a cruel smile. “Mr Shafto? Mr Robert Shafto? Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Take me to him.”
“Very well.”
As the nurse led them farther down the never-ending corridor, Jackson MacDonald talked quietly to Alice.
“Robert Shafto is the Chief Executive Officer here. You’ll like him. He used to run Halfway House many years ago. Grew this amazing garden of fruits and flowers and other plants made of gold, silver and jewels.”
“Yes, I visited Halfway House,” whispered Alice. “I heard he fell in love with a Spanish princess and sailed overseas to find her.”
“He did. Tragic it was. He went dressed in his finest clothes and laden with gifts for his princess. But by the time he found her she was already married to her Spanish gardener. Ironic tragedy. Or is it tragic irony? When Robert returned, he couldn’t face Halfway House, so I asked him to run Sweetlands.”
Alice was beginning to think that “Sweatlands” might be a more appropriate name.
“E voila! The big man himself!” said Nurse Foster. She opened the door of another tiny new room. An elderly bearded man was hunched at a writing desk, the ceiling barely an inch above his head. He hummed a melody Alice knew but couldn’t place.
“When should I harvest the nuts?” said the old man, without taking his gaze from the ledger he was writing in.
“Bobby?” said Jackson. “Bobby Shafto? It’s me Jackson. Bobby? What’s happened to you?”
“It’s all wrong!” continued the old man. “Nobody gathers nuts in May, it’s totally the wrong time of year. It doesn’t make sense! There must be a deeper meaning to it all.”
“Bobby, it’s me, Jackson.”
Robert Shafto looked up but saw no-one, just a world of blank pages in his ledger waiting to be filled.
“It’s too cold for nuts in May. In fact, England is always too cold for nuts. Unless…unless…they are mistakenly referring to the underground tuber of the pignut - Conopodium majus. You know of it perhaps?”
Robert Shafto was not directing his question at anyone in particular but Alice felt obliged to answer. Especially as she was sure she heard the words “Underground” and “Tube”.
“I know all the names of the London Underground stations, but I haven’t heard of anything like ‘Connor Podium’. Could it be that they haven’t built it yet?”
“My dear girl, I speak of a small perennial herb,” Robert explained further. “Some people call it a groundnut as you can eat it as a root vegetable, even cultivate it as it grows quite sparsely in the wild. Its tubers naturally grow underground and it’s just possible they mistook them for chestnuts. Though only an expert gardener could tell the difference.”
Alice was disappointed that she wouldn’t get to discuss the London Underground with someone but she was fascinated at how dedicated the man seemed to be to solving the problem of a simple nursery rhyme.
“Perhaps,” said Alice, trying to be helpful, “the real message is about mulberries.” She knew the words to the tune he was humming to be not about nuts in May but about dancing round a mulberry bush. Perhaps he was barking up the wrong tree. She recited the “Here we go round the mulberry bush” poem for him.
“…on a cold and frosty morning.”
Robert Shafto had clearly heard Alice’s voice because he looked around the room trying to locate the source. He answered without looking at her.
“Interesting. You’re a clever little thing. But not as clever as you think because this creates a whole new mystery. You see, mulberries don’t grow on bushes. They grow on trees. And they certainly don’t grow in freezing weather. It’s another riddle. But I’m getting closer. And you’ve been of great help. Thank you,” he added, looking up at the ceiling and then scribbling furiously to document this new piece of the puzzle.
Nurse Foster sighed and rolled her eyes again. “Mr Shafto hears voices.”
“Of course, he does,” answered Alice, angrily. “He heard mine. We all hear voices when someone speaks to us!” She was getting quite cross with the nurse, who seemed set on ridiculing the residents.
“I can’t help thinking it has something to do with Japan,” interrupted Robert Shafto. “Because in Japan people wear kimonos. And kimonos are made of silk. And silk is made by silk worms, which live on mulberry leaves. So if we don’t have mulberry trees, the people of Japan might be furious with us.”
There was an odd logic to Robert Shafto’s train of thought. But it was a kind too strange for Alice to think that he would ever do little more than write nonsense in his ledger. It was a shame because Alice was beginning to like Mr Shafto.
“Or had they simply begun to use the word nuts after corrupting the original phrase about ‘gathering knots in May’ - the tradition of gathering bunches of flowers to celebrate the end of winter?”
They left Mr Shafto to his life’s work. Once they were back out in the corridor, Jackson was clearly in a state of shock.
“How did Mr Shafto get like that? What did you do to him? What happened to make him lose his mind?”
“I’ve no idea,” said the nurse. “But if you ask me, anyone that sails overseas in search of love is already doolally.”
They went farther down the corridor, deeper into the warren of rooms. Room after room. There was something about the sheer number of rooms that unsettled Alice; a distant memory that she needed to remember, but which was just out of reach, hiding behind the corners of her brain just as she caught sight of it.
She was shaken out of her own thoughts by the sight of a large man carrying a bed from one room to another. He was dressed in a grey uniform, making him look more like a warden than an orderly. What made Alice’s blood curdle was the fact that she recognised him as one of the Gang Green. If their members worked at Sweatlands too, there was a good chance that they were behind the corruption here. Alice was about to ask Jackson if he had seen what she had, when he spoke up.
“I can’t just stand by and watch this. You are keeping these poor people prisoners.”
“Rich people,” corrected the nurse.
“Whatever. Elderly people need social contact just like the rest of us.”
“And they have it. You haven’t seen the kitchen and canteen area yet. That’s where they interact with each other.”
“And then you send them back to their rooms?”
“If there’s one free, yes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, we’ve taken in so many paying inmates … residents sorry, that there aren’t quite enough rooms for everyone. So at any one point in time we round up and herd a number of them into the canteen. It costs something to feed them of course but that’s covered ten times over by the additional fees we secure.”
Jackson held his head in his hands and moaned. “Show me.”
A few turns left and right led them to a large white room, bare but for metal tables and chairs. Most of them were occupied by elderly men and women in their pyjamas and dressing gowns. Amidst the din of chairs being scraped noisily across floor, the residents were playing cards, talking or eating. Nurse Foster took Jackson and Alice to a long serving counter at the far end of the room and introduced them to an old lady, who was dishing out ladles of weak soup onto flat plates. Half of it seemed to end up on the trays or on the counter.
“Nell is one of the few residents we still have from Banbury,” said the nurse. “We let her stay here because she works for free. Tell them, Nell.”
Nell was dressed in a large white apron and tall white hat. She gave a toothless smile and spoke in a crackly voice as she continued to slop the soup out.
“I’m a Banbury baker by trade. That’s how I got the job of cook here at Sweat House.”
“Sweatlands,” corrected Nurse Foster.
“Sweetlands,” said Jackson, half-heartedly.
Alice could well imagine Nell hawking her wares on Baker Street.
“I left the bakery to work at the Unfair as the original Baker girl. I was dressed up as the Baker, I was. Mandy was the Butcher and Sally the Candlestick-maker. Together we was the Splash Girls. I earned the same in one evening as what I earned in a whole month in the bakery. Then I got old and the owners said the men didn’t want to pay to see me, let alone … well, you know. Now I’m cooped up in this madhouse, but at least I got a roof over my head and three square meals a day, don’t I?”
“The meal looks round to me,” said the nurse, fed up with Nell’s whining.
“And that’s just one reason why I wouldn’t touch the stuff,” replied Nell. “They call it pease pudding. Lumps of fat and hard peas in water, if you ask me. Disgusting! I make sure I eats my fair share back there in the kitchen. The only reason they lets me stay here is that I’m the only one who would agree to make such cheap muck.”
“Don’t they get any other food?” asked Alice. “Fruit, cakes, biscuits?” Alice couldn’t imagine life without any one of those.
“Oh yes. If you count the rotten apples they picks off the ground. And the cakes and biscuits that I make out of flour and water.”
“Stop exaggerating, Nell!” shouted the nurse. “She’s exaggerating. We send a man to Drury Lane every week to buy fresh bakery goods.”
“You mean that simple Simon? Most of the time, all he comes back with is a black eye for trying to pinch something off the muffin man. Anyway, any pie or biscuit that does find its way back here gets gobbled up by the staff. They even mark their initials on them because they’re afraid someone will steal their food.”
“Nonsense! Look around you. Everyone has food. Most of the plates are already empty.”
“Because most of it runs off the plates to begin with,” snarled Nell. “Look at Mr Spratt over there. The skinny man. Not allowed to eat fat on account of his heart problem, so he only has the liquid and hard peas. Which means his wife, the gigantic lady opposite him, has to eat the fat and gristle if she’s to survive. And woe betide anyone who leaves some food on their plate. They gets it served back to them the next day.”
“Some like it hot, some like it cold,” said the nurse.
“But not many still likes it nine days’ old, do they?” said Nell. “No wonder so many of them are having ‘accidents’ in here.”
“People are getting hurt?” asked Jackson.
“She’s exaggerating again,” butted in the nurse.
“Take old Mr Rogers, over there. They forced him to walk around the garden even though it was pouring with rain. Got such a cold that his nose got blocked up, didn’t it. Snored so loudly it woke him up and he banged his head so hard it knocked him out. Couldn’t even get up the following morning. Locked up, blocked up, knocked out. Never been the same since.”
“Hardly our fault if he forgot to put his coat on!” said the nurse.
“And how about old Mr John over there? They forced him to eat the same dumpling for a fortnight. So mouldy it was he got food poisoning. Didn’t know what time of day it was. Went to bed with half his clothes on then got up and came down to breakfast stark naked. And they never recovers after that, you know.”
“Nor did the people that saw it!” snorted the nurse.
“I’ve seen enough!” shouted Jackson.
“That’s exactly what I said,” commented Nell.
“I’m going to stay here to set things right. I’m taking over this place and I’m not leaving until everything is right again.”
“Well, you should fit in well here. I see you already have your slippers on and your pipe handy,” she scoffed, and rolled her eyes yet again.
Alice was lamenting Jackson’s decision to stay behind at Sweatlands. She knew it was the right thing to do but this meant that he would no longer be around to support her. She had got used to his company and had been hoping he would help her return home.
“I’m sorry, Alice. I can’t leave these people to face Nurse Foster and whoever else is in on this. I’ll send for help from town. I’m sure people will come to help me repair all the damage that’s been done here and deal with the Gang Green. I’ll send some of the people on after you to help you too.”
Jackson looked around for the nurse but she had managed to slide away unnoticed. She had left a bunch of keys behind on the counter and Jackson seized them just before Nell slapped a large dollop of soup on top of them.
“I understand,” said Alice. “It’s time I was going anyway. I miss home and I need to get back. I don’t see what I can do here and I feel I’ve outstayed my welcome.”
“You’ve saved Banbury,” said Jackson and kissed the top of Alice’s head, “and rescued Polly and I. I don’t know how to repay you.”
Alice looked at the tips of her dirty shoes. She felt humbled by Jackson’s gratitude yet frustrated and helpless about what to do next.
“Actually, I do,” added Jackson. “I almost forgot the reason I brought you here. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Without further explanation, Jackson took Alice’s hand and led her away from the canteen, down one of the corridors. More rooms. More doors. Why did Alice think that they would be better painted white? They turned left, descended two flights of stairs and continued along a long dimly lit passage with no doors either side. At the end was one solitary door.
“This used to be the largest, most exclusive room in the building,” said Jackson.
“But why is it so far away from everything else?”
“It’s what he wanted.”
Jackson wiped pease pudding off one of the keys and unlocked the door.
“Cheshire?” he whispered into the dark.