The next day, while the guests, or the ‘clients’, as they were now called, at Diamond House were drinking their morning coffee in the lounge, Martha thought about what she should do. In her childhood home in Österlen, down in the south of Sweden, people didn’t just sit and wait for somebody else to take action. If the hay must be put in the barn, or a mare was going to foal, then you simply pitched in and did what was necessary. Martha looked at her hands. She was proud of them—they were reliable hands, and showed that she had done her fair share of hard work. The murmur of voices rose and fell all around her as she surveyed the rather shabby lounge. The smell was decidedly reminiscent of the Salvation Army and the furniture seemed to have come straight from the recycling depot. The old grey 1940s building, with its asbestos fibre cement cladding, was like a combination of an old school and a dentist’s waiting room. Surely this wasn’t where she was meant to end her days, with a mug of weak instant coffee to go with a plastic meal? No, damn it, it certainly was not! Martha breathed deeply, pushed her coffee mug aside and leaned forward to speak to her group of friends.
‘You lot. Come with me,’ she said and gave a sign to her friends to follow her into her room. ‘I have something to talk to you about.’
Everybody knew that Martha had a stash of cloudberry liqueur hidden away, so they all nodded and got up straight away. The stylish Rake went first, followed by Brains, the inventor, and Martha’s two lady friends—Christina, who loved Belgian chocolate, and Anna-Greta, the old lady who looked so old that all the other old ladies paled in comparison. They looked at each other. Martha usually had something special on the cards when she invited you in for a glass of liqueur. It hadn’t happened for quite a while, but now it was evidently time.
Once they were in her room, Martha retrieved the bottle, tidied away her half-finished knitting from the sofa and invited her friends to sit down. She threw a glance at the mahogany table with the freshly ironed floral-patterned cloth. She had wanted to replace the old table for a long while but it was big and solid and there was room for everybody around it so it would have to do for now. As she put the bottle on the table she caught sight of her old family photos on the chest of drawers. Framed behind glass, her parents and sister smiled out at her in front of her childhood home in Brantevik, a small fishing village in Österlen. If only they could see her now … they would not approve. They were teetotallers. Defiantly, she set out the liqueur glasses and filled them to the brim.
‘Cheers!’ she said and raised her glass.
‘Cheers!’ her friends responded joyfully.
‘And now for the drinking song,’ Martha insisted, after which they all mimed a silent version of ‘Helan går’. Here at the retirement home, it was necessary to keep your voice down during sessions like this, so as not to be discovered with hidden alcohol. Martha silently mouthed the refrain once more and they all laughed. So far nobody had ever discovered them, and this was all part of the fun. Martha put her glass down and looked at the others out of the corner of her eye. Should she tell them about her dream? No, first she must get them on the same wavelength as herself, then she might be able to persuade them all to go along with her plan. They were a close-knit group of friends and in their late fifties they had decided they would live together in their old age. So now, surely, they could make a new decision together. After all, they had so much in common. When they had become pensioners, the five of them had performed at hospitals and parish halls with their choir, The Vocal Chord, and they had all moved into the same retirement home. For a long time Martha had tried to get them to pool their funds and buy an old country mansion down in the south instead. She thought this option sounded much more exciting than a retirement home. She had read in the paper how old mansions were extremely cheap to buy and several of them even had moats.
‘If you get some unpleasant visitor from the authorities or your children want to get at their inheritance in advance, then all you have to do is raise the drawbridge,’ she had said in an attempt to convince the others. But when they realized that a mansion was expensive to maintain and required staff, they chose the Lily of the Valley Retirement Home. But their lovely retirement home had been renamed by the ghastly new owners and was now called Diamond House.
‘Did your evening snack taste good?’ Martha asked after Rake had drained the last drops of liqueur from his glass. He looked sleepy but had, of course, had time to put a rose in his lapel and tie a newly ironed cravat round his neck. He was somewhat grey by now but he still retained his charm and was so elegantly dressed that even younger women stopped to look at him twice.
‘Evening snack? Just something to keep hunger at bay. Not that it worked. The food here is worse than on a ship,’ he said and put down his glass. In his youth he had been at sea, but after going ashore for good he had trained as a gardener. Now he made do with a few flowers and herbs on the balcony. His greatest annoyance in life was that everyone called him Rake. True, he loved gardening and had once tripped over a rake and done himself an injury, but in his opinion that wasn’t a reason for the nickname to stick for the rest of his life. He had tried suggesting other nicknames but nobody had listened.
‘Why don’t you make yourself a cheese sandwich instead? Quiet food that doesn’t go “ping”?’ came a muttering from Anna-Greta, who had also been woken by the microwave and had found it hard to get back to sleep. She was an assertive woman who knew her own mind, and she was so tall and slim that Rake used to say that she must have been born in a drainpipe.
‘Yes, but you can always smell the delicious food and spices that the staff are cooking from up on the first floor. So that makes me hungry for more than just a sandwich,’ was Rake’s excuse.
‘You’re right; the staff should cook similar meals for us to eat. The food that we have delivered and served under cellophane wrapping isn’t very filling,’ said Christina Åkerblom as she discreetly filed her nails. The former milliner, who in her youth had dreamed of becoming a librarian, was the youngest of them all—only seventy-seven. She wanted to live a calm and pleasant life, eating good food and doing her watercolour painting. She did not want to be served junk food. After a long life in Stockholm’s poshest district, Östermalm, she was used to a certain standard.
‘The staff don’t get the same food as us,’ Martha agreed. ‘The food that we can smell is just for the new owners of Diamond House, who have their office and kitchen on the upper floor.’
‘Then we ought to install an elevator which can transport their food down to us,’ remarked Oscar ‘Brains’ Krupp, who was the solution-finder of the group and was one year older than Christina. Brains was an inventor and used to have his own workshop in Sundbyberg. He also loved good food, which was apparent in his plump and cuddly figure. He considered exercise to be a recreation for people with nothing better to do.
‘Do you remember the brochure we got when we first came here?’ asked Martha. ‘Good food from the restaurant, it said. And they also boasted of daily walks, visits from artistes, chiropody and somebody to do our hair. With the new owners, nothing works any more. It is about time we made a stand.’
‘Rebellion at the retirement home!’ said Christina in her most melodramatic voice, waving her hand vigorously so that the nail file ended up on the floor.
‘Yes, that’s right, a little mutiny,’ Martha agreed.
‘A mutiny? We’d have to be at sea first,’ snorted Rake in a disbelieving manner.
‘But perhaps the new owners have some financial difficulties? It’ll get better eventually, wait and see,’ said Anna-Greta, straightening her glasses, which dated from the early fifties. She had worked in a bank all her life and understood that entrepreneurs must make a profit.
‘Get better? Like hell it will,’ muttered Rake. ‘Those bastards have already raised the charges several times and we haven’t seen any improvements.’
‘Don’t be so negative,’ said Anna-Greta, straightening her glasses again. They were old and worn out and were always slipping down her nose. She never changed spectacles and instead just updated her lenses because she thought her frames were timeless.
‘What do you mean, negative? We must demand improvements. Across the board, but starting with the food!’ Martha said. ‘Now listen, the owners must have something nice to eat in the kitchen upstairs. So when the rest of the staff have gone home, I thought we could …’
Enthusiasm spread round the table as Martha talked on. Before long, five pairs of eyes were glowing just as brightly as the water on a lake shore on a sunny summer’s day. They all glanced up, looked at each other and made a thumbs-up sign.
When her friends had left her room, Martha put the cloudberry liqueur back into the depths of her wardrobe and hummed happily to herself. Her dream about the bank robbery seemed to have given her new energy. Nothing is impossible, she thought. But in order to succeed with a change, you must put forward alternatives. And that was what she was going to do now. Then her friends would think that they had made their decisions all by themselves.