David was disappointed with his efforts to beguile the dogwalker, but he decided to have one last try, anticipating that Mrs Temple might have a variety of arrangements for a daily task that was expensive. He chose a fine Saturday morning, and made his way to Eccleston Street after breakfast. He waited, and watched on the other side of the street, in the shadow of the trees. At about ten am, a young girl in her teens pushed the buzzer on the door of number 73. In a few moments, the maid brought Poppy outside onto the porch, and handed over the leash.
David kept well away from the girl, as she was tugged down Eccleston Street by Poppy. He was optimistic at what he had seen. He thought he couldn’t get anyone easier to deal with than a young girl on her own, or anyone who was as likely to be sympathetic to his request. He had an idea that she would head for the public park and football fields which were, like Denby Hall, at the edge of the housing development. It was the only suitable place in the vicinity, and many people walked their dogs there. David followed discreetly as she took this direction.
The park and football fields were a vast space of neatly mown, blindingly green grass, which curved up a slope in the distance to a plantation of pine trees. Apart from the girl and Poppy, and one distant man and his dog, the area was deserted. The girl let Poppy off the leash. The dog dashed round in wide circles, jumping and stretching her muscles. The girl did her best to race alongside.
It was an ideal opportunity for David to speak to her. He began to limp across the field. Poppy saw him when he was fifty yards away. The dog stopped, took a second to make sure it was him, and ran towards him at full speed, yowling. When Poppy reached David, she sprang up, almost knocking him over.
The girl was alarmed by Poppy’s sudden reaction. She ran towards David, calling “Justina, Justina!”
David laughed when the girl came up, and said, “It’s OK… she’s just being friendly.”
He patted Poppy, and slapped her flanks, and she turned around him, bouncing with affection. The girl came closer, and when Poppy was near her she grasped Poppy’s collar and clipped on the leash.
“I’m terribly, terribly sorry!” she said.
“She knows me… It’s all right.”
“Really?” the girl said, looking relieved. “I thought for one horrible moment she was attacking you. I don’t know what I’d do if that happened!”
“She wouldn’t do that. She used to be owned by a friend of mine at Denby Hall.”
“Denby Hall?”
The girl looked serious. She knew about Denby Hall.
“Yes, Cathy Marsden. I’ve walked Poppy a lot. ‘Poppy’ is what Cathy calls her.”
“I see,” the girl said cautiously. “I’m glad you’re not hurt. I’ll have to go,” she added, pulling Poppy away.
“Look…can I talk to you a moment?”
The girl’s soft, pale face stiffened, and she drew back further, trying to still the restless Poppy.
“I think I saw you in Eccleston Street, earlier,” the girl said, with a hint of suspicion.
She was working out that this wasn’t a casual encounter.
“Could we take Poppy … Justina to Denby Hall?” David said, realising as he said it, how bald, and unpalatable it sounded.
The girl, testing her strength against Poppy as she tried to retreat, said, “No, why? Of course not!”
“I mean, only to see Cathy for maybe half an hour.”
“I don’t know you. It’s Mrs Temple’s dog,” she said, shrilly.
“Poppy used to be Cathy’s dog,” David replied, the words tripping over themselves weakly, as his confidence evaporated.
The girl shook her head in disagreement, backing away pulling Poppy with her, but Poppy easily pulled back to David, wrinkling her nose with pleasure. He bent over and wiggled Poppy’s soft ears. He was aware that he could take Poppy if he called her, but also aware that such a step would only create more problems.
“Please!” the girl cried out, “Please let Justina go!”
The girl’s fear was like a virus which drained his strength. He had an explanation, if only he could start over again, but it was beyond his ability, at that instant, to get the words, and the ideas, in the right order.
“Please let me take her back!” the girl said, her voice rising in alarm.
David became conscious that the man he had seen in the distance exercising his dog was bearing down upon them at a run. He was a heavy man, in a blue track-suit with bristly grey hair. His dog, an old Scots’ terrier, was trying to keep up.
The man, sweating and red, shouted to the girl from ten yards, “Is this guy bothering you?”
“He’s trying to take my dog,” the girl cried, turning to the man thankfully.
“I thought something was up. From way over there. Body language!”
“He’s from Denby Hall,” she said.
“The nut-house?”
The man looked closely at David, and saw a plump, soft looking, uncertain sort of person. His aggression lessened slightly.
“I’d beat it, son. Back to where you come from. And don’t get any ideas about girls walkin’ round here. You oughta be locked up. Go on, scram!”
David wanted to tell the girl that he didn’t mean to frighten her, but the man was standing in front of her, blocking her out, and the words wouldn’t come. Poppy was whimpering.
David turned his back on them, and made a slow path across the empty green.
David was sitting in his room, watching television one afternoon, when he heard Cathy start up like a siren. Loud, deep cries of frustration were coming down the corridor. He knew that Cathy had been visited that day, by an official from one of the health authorities, or social security departments. There were so many of these departments with a finger in the pudding that David was at a loss to know who was responsible for what, even in his own case. He supposed that Cathy’s case was no different. He had heard from Rose that an official wanted to come and see Cathy. David had learned that officials never came to ask; they came to tell, if they said anything at all. Cathy’s fear was that ‘they’ wanted to move her to another home.
David went down the corridor to Cathy’s room. It was a bright place, with wide windows, looking out over the row of apartments across the road. Beyond, were rolling hills, studded thickly with houses. The dresser and bedtable were cluttered with greetings cards, and postcards, mostly old, and curling in the sun. There were family photographs, some in blackened silver frames, photographs of healthy children, nephews and nieces who had never appeared at Denby Hall. On the bed was a cluster of teddy bears, including a very old one that Cathy had had as a child, and another, with patches all over it, called Lucan.
Cathy was in her wheelchair, raging. Keith was bending down to her level, trying to soothe her, and joking as he dodged her swinging arms.
“Don’t knock me about, love.”
David put his head in the door with an uneasy look.
“The nurse from the local authority upset her,” Keith said.
Cathy seemed determined to communicate something to them. She looked furiously from one to the other, waving her fists, choking, as mangled words came out. They couldn’t understand what she was saying.
“What’s she unhappy about?” David asked.
“I dunno. Not knowing what’s going to happen to her? Could be.”
“Is she going to leave Denby Hall?”
“I dunno. Depends on the Funders. She’s got to have an assessment first, haven’t you love?”
David knew about assessments from his own experience, and from his talks with Mark and John. The Funders were a mysterious, amorphous presence, who could materialise in the form of two or three uncommunicative people, with clipboards and notebooks.
David had been visited recently by a pair who arrived at the Hall carrying thick brief-cases. A woman in shapeless dark clothes, with tousled hair, and a man in an anorak, with a long, grey pony tail. They had coffee offered by the staff, and talked with Dr Floor. They were joined by Keith, Maggie, as David’s key worker, and Helmut. Helmut, who did not intend to be present at the meeting himself, had insisted to them, in David’s presence, that David should sit in at the meeting.
“His father can’t get along today,” Helmut said, “but the boy can understand, and he ought to hear this.”
Muted murmurs of disapproval came from the Funders. “Medical detail could be upsetting … not the usual practice…”
“Nothing will come up that David hasn’t heard already in his many visits to the doctors,” Helmut insisted.
Helmut’s ingenuous proposal in David’s presence defied outright opposition, but the Funders were uncomfortable. Nobody addressed David during the entire meeting, except to show how impressed they were by the talented person he had been.
The officials hunched over their pads and papers, asking each other questions. The drift of talk, as far as David could interpret it, was that in a period of months he would move out of Denby Hall. Arrangements would be made for his further education and training.
David wanted to say, ‘Excuse me, but I’m not very interested in learning to work a computer… I don’t think I could remember the key sequences. And I don’t particularly want to go back to Somerset…’ but he couldn’t find a place to fit the words, which bubbled in his mind, into the discussion.
When the meeting closed, it was evident that it had been satisfactory. The Funders smiled, stood up, yawned, stretched and accepted another cup of coffee. They turned their backs on David, and talked agreeably with the Denby Hall staff, while they put their papers away. David reflected that it didn’t matter that his father wasn’t there, because the assessors were, like his father, entirely preoccupied with a tomorrow, which they had constructed in their own minds for him.
David expected that Cathy’s assessment, when it came, would follow the same inexorable drift as his own. You couldn’t protest; there was nobody to protest to. Everybody agreed with what was happening, except you.
“She doesn’t want to leave Denby Hall,” David said to Keith.
“Yes, I know, but that doesn’t count, David.”
“Why?”
“Cathy’s too ill to say what she wants, or know what’s good for her.”
“But she is saying.”
Keith stopped brushing Cathy’s hair for a moment. “You’re right, David, yes, in a way. But it still doesn’t count. It’s a case of what’s in her best interests.”
“Who knows what they are?”
“The Funders.”
“I thought the Funders were trying to save money. That’s what Mark, John, and everybody says.”
Keith smoothed Cathy’s brow, drawing her hair back with a comb, and catching it in a flowery band. “Make you look nice, dear.”
He looked sharply at David. “I kid you not, David. They are looking for a cheap way out. It’s public money after all.”
“But you said the Funders were deciding what was in Cathy’s best interests.”
David wanted to try to follow this elusive fairy of ‘best interests.’
“Well, it’s in Cathy’s interests, if it’s not too expensive.”
“What’s too expensive?”
Keith threw up his arms. “Search me! Too expensive is what the Funders say it is.”
“I thought it was free, if you’re very sick.”
“David, nothing is free. Not a goddam thing on the planet, let alone health care.”
“Mark says the politicians are always talking about a free service.”
“If you’re very ill, but not actually dying, like say, Cathy, it costs. Depends how much dosh you’ve got. They milk you.”
“But Cathy is very ill …”
“David, what is very ill? Say you’re dying. OK, dying’s free, provided they think you’re not going to take too long. Anybody else is out of luck. But it’s a nice thought, free care.”
“Isn’t there a way of telling who is very ill?”
“Certainly there is! That’s the beauty of the system. Every authority has their own guidelines, measuring instruments and scoring tables. They have ombudsman’s rulings, court decisions and directions from the secretary of state. Reams of paper. It’s a real bugger’s muddle. Nobody can understand it!”
“B-because it’s too expensive?”
“Too expensive. And it really is bloody expensive!”
“But if people can’t understand …”
“Look, here’s the neat way it works. The ordinary punters outside can’t understand the test, and everybody inside pretends they can! So it’s unchallengeable, you see? You look at the rules, score this, estimate that, throw in a specialist opinion, and a medical report, and you think you’ve made a case for your granny. But you’ll be told there are fifty eight reasons why you’re wrong, if you’re so lucky as to get an explanation!”
“If what Cathy wants is disregarded … what about her husband?” David asked, trying a different tack.
Keith was anxious to go, and he handed the wheelchair to David, now that Cathy had calmed down, and said, “Take her downstairs. Naah. What Desmond wants doesn’t figure.”
“Surely…”
“Well, they’ll probably listen to Desmond Marsden, if he digs his oar in deep enough, because he’s an educated bloke, but that’s all. Smartest to listen to an educated bloke first, because he might catch you out.”
“So he could stop Cathy going?”
“Doubt it. They listen to the Desmond Marsdens first, then do what they want. Next of kin, David, are viewed like a piece of dog turd in the road.”
“Desmond’s quite …forceful.”
“He only gets to speak if he insists. And all that comes back is the echo.”
Keith was only rehearsing what David had already heard from Mark and John, and partly experienced himself. Both Cathy and David were in ‘their’ hands. David’s expectations for Cathy’s assessment were low. He feared it would lead to disappointment and departure for her, and the loss of a friend for him. But when Keith had gone, he made a lot of cheery remarks to her and, instead of taking her to the sitting room, they stayed in her room and played the DVD she loved for the umpteenth time; Queen’s Rare Live.