Arjy and Sean have arrived at The Incontinental for their lunch date. They are shown into the communal dining hall known as ‘Large Chamber’ and are shocked by a wall of sound so loud it is painful. The Incontinental board of directors has decided to base much of the aged care home’s life style system on that of the traditional English public school. Large Chamber particularly, is modelled on the type of dining hall to be found at most English public schools.
(For some reason the English consider conversation at table to be an inviolate rule of civilised behaviour even if conversation is all but impossible without braying and bellowing like a savage. Therefore it is in halls like Large Chamber that the embarrassing, peculiarly English ‘loud voice’ has developed; the sort of loud voice that cuts through foreigners like a scythe, never mind if the foreigners are in their own country at the time. It is also the place where the, again peculiarly English, statement ‘I say!’ began – to establish that the speaker was about to utter something significant rather than merely indicating ‘I belch’ or ‘I choke on this disgusting lump of gristle’.
The noise at Incontinental’s Large Chamber was a sustained roar of conversation and a harsh metallic clash of cutlery interspersed with the scraping of dishes and the frequent crash of breakage. Arjy sat on the chair held for her by an 80-year-old flunky and failed to hear what Gladys De Weekent said.)
Arjy: I’m sorry, I can’t hear a thing. WHAT DID YOU SAY?
Gladys De Weekent: I SAID, WELCOME TO LARGE CHAMBER – MORE COMMONLY KNOWN AS DIN DINS!
Arjy: I’m not surprised. I SAID, I’M NOT SURPRISED!
(The strain of bellowed conversation was too much for Arjy who sat back and watched the frenzy around her. Occasionally a dish of some pallid gloop was placed before her and she did her best to chew a little of it even though she wasn’t quite sure if it was food or something to smear on a gangrenous wound. Those bringing food to the tables appeared to be older than those they served, they were decidedly less healthy and staggering under the weight of the loaded trays they painstakingly carried. These were sort of ‘scholarship’ residents who were there as working boarders. In exchange for a bed and a couple of meals per day they worked out their final years struggling to maintain the illusion of privilege enjoyed by the more wealthy residents. This was aged care in all its fiscal efficiency.
In contemporary aged care, the art of gradually absorbing the last scrap of value from the human carcase has been brought to a level of competence not seen since the 1940’s. Community minded volunteers gladly give their time to help out in these facilities and they are informally trained to assist in more and more areas until they are firmly established as essential workers in the organization as well as being possible future scholarship candidates. At that point, paid staff levels are reduced, resident self-help is further encouraged and another degree of fiscal efficiency is gained. Arjy is gradually suspecting these things and wondering how she can get in on the killing to be made in the fast developing discipline of aged care mechanics.
Eventually the dining ordeal is over and the hall empties. When the last wheelchair squeaks from the room Arjy and Sean look about them at a battlefield of broken crockery, dismembered foodstuff and overturned chairs. Gladys De Weekend picks her teeth with a spare fork.)
Gladys De Weekent: Did you enjoy the meal?
Sean: Very nice meal.
Gladys De Weekent: Ms. Barjy?
Arjy: It was an amazing lunch.
Gladys De Weekent: Mr. Bean is a liar but you, Ms. Barjy, merely refuse to speak the truth. You should be a politician.
Arjy: I have many aspirations left.
Gladys De Weekent: Unfortunately many of those in this establishment do not. Mrs Pessary, however, is eager to meet you and to question you about your interest in local affairs.
Arjy: Well, I was rather hoping to question her.
Gladys De Weekent: One can but hope of course, but be under no misapprehension, Ms. Barjy, you are being granted an audience not an interview. You will find Mrs Pessary’s room at the end of Billion Row – suite one. Any of the staff will direct you.
(When they eventually arrive in the room it is a surprise, it is also a chaotic dump; it would be difficult to imagine a more complex muddle. Clothing, magazines and torn snack-food packages are strewn across the lowest level of the room (presumably the floor). Vague shapes of furniture support more cast off clothing and mixed items too strange to be identifiable. Photographs and cheap prints hang askew on the cream painted walls that are splashed with snack residue. A bowl of rotten fruit sits on top of a television set jutting like a gravestone from the congealing rubbish. There is movement beneath the jumble in a corner and Arjy hopes it is a cat turning in its sleep but suspects it may be the first stirring of some new life form evolving from a swamp of soiled underwear. It would be no great shock if a possum pursued by a wild dog suddenly burst from the clutter, certainly no more of a shock than the mountainous, heaving bulk of a fat old woman reclining in hideous splendour on what might be a bed, smack in the middle of this dreadful and odiferous shambles. The old woman is indescribably ugly and Arjy suspects the woman revels in the response she generates as though she and this room deliberately challenge perceptions of the socially acceptable. Her wicked little eyes miss nothing and seem to act independently of each other. The eyes are also completely different shapes and this may be the result of cheap plastic surgery or they may just be the disconcerting eyes of a seriously disturbed psychotic. This is one of the few occasions when Arjy feels she is in a situation that she may not be qualified to control. There is an overall cloying smell, a stink of old lady and her imminent death.
SPECIAL NOTE:
The conversation that follows could have been written in the bland style of much of the inane chatter between young and old. Inane, because often the old are too world-weary and jaded to say what they truly think and the young are handicapped by a tendency to patronise those they consider degeneratively stupid. Instead I have chosen to report the hidden sub-text of these conversations en clair (that’s your actual French) thereby dismissing the bullshit that divides generations so disastrously.)
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Iris Pessary: So you are the detectives.
Arjy: Yes, Mrs. Pessary, I’m told you have a great deal of local knowl………
Iris Pessary: Where do you come from, dear? You’re not Australian are you?
Arjy: Well, I believe my roots are Middle Eastern but……
Iris Pessary: A fuzzy wuzzy then, a little Arab. Do you wear traditional costume at home, dear? Robes? Fez and so forth, or is that just the men? Perhaps you are from one of those tribes that go about naked? How are you finding civilisation?
Arjy: I’m still looking for it, Mrs Pissary.
Iris Pessary: Oh, my dear, do you not think my name is embarrassing enough or perhaps you think I am too old and ignorant to know what a pessary is? Or perhaps you don’t know what a pessary is? Does your tribe use some kind of camel dung plug to prevent more little Arab bastards? Is that what you have been cramming into yourself since puberty when you were no doubt deflowered by some disgusting witch doctor during your primitive initiation ceremony? Do tell me, dear.
Arjy: Mrs. Pussary. I was hoping you might be able to give me valuable information but I think, perhaps, you know very little of any value.
Iris Pessary: What I do know is – you have the face of an angel, the body of a monster and the soul of a nasty, vindictive, mean-spirited shit. You are intelligent and quick witted but you will never be as successful as you desperately long to be because, without others to trample on, you have no idea how to climb. You will always be a parasite, my dear, greedily and jealously feeding on the next one up the hill until you meet one who really doesn’t give a damn about anything except the truth. Then you will be lost and as far as you will ever get. You see? I do my homework, Ms. Barjy, and I know all about you and your pathetically disguised inclinations.
Arjy: And what about you? Have you dug into your own foul tripes and come to a conclusion about yourself, Mrs Pastit?
Iris Pessary: Long ago. I have the body of an ape, the heart of a lion and the wiles of a fox but I also have the soul of an angel.
Arjy: Quite the celestial zoo. Talking of zoos, what is that dreadful smell?
Iris Pessary: I also recognise evil when I see it and I can weigh people up very quickly and very accurately.
Arjy: Oh, that’s it! That’s bloody it! Why is it that you smug, drug-ridden sacs of mouldering bones have the bloody gall to assume the mantle of the wise when most of you can’t even wipe your own arses without help? What makes feeble bastards like you imagine you can sit in judgement on the very people who bust their guts keeping your pointless lives glimmering? We feed you, house you, wash the stink off you and dress your suppurating sores. We treat you with a deference most of you don’t deserve and with a respect few of you have earned. The only claim you have to justify special treatment is age - as if that were some kind of sodding achievement. Christ, every pebble on the ground is older than any of you buggers. Perhaps we should establish nursing homes for tired boulders and use you lot for road-base; that would make a lot more sense.
Iris Pessary: If only I could last to see you in a wheelchair and suffering the way we have to suffer! But my time is now short and …….
Arjy: Oh, please. Spare me the violin recital! Most of your kind are perfectly capable of moving around and doing a bit of productive work even if it’s only knitting willy-warmers for refrigeration engineers, but you prefer to slump on your wrinkled backsides and do fuck-all while young battlers are throttled by a politically correct concern they are forced to espouse. And every time your feather bed lives are challenged you counteract with the worn-out sympathy card and weep tears generated by an inexhaustible supply of self-pity. Don’t you know how false and bloody embarrassing you look when you pull that kind of shit?
Iris Pessary: My God but you’re a nasty swine! Have you no regard for those that wiped the snot out of your nose and did all the things for you that you now object to doing for them? Everything you are, you owe to us and don’t you forget it. As for young battlers, what a joke, you think it’s battling when you lose the signal on your mobile phone. Do you believe that welfare for the aged is too much of a drain on you? Just remember this: every time you go out in your tinny new car you drive on roads built by the old, each time you switch on your big screen TV you are connecting to a grid conceived and constructed by the old. Your laptops are connected by a web spun by the old and every damned thing you consider to be your birthright was fought for, built and maintained by the old. Just what the hell do you think you have achieved apart from unprecedented levels of debt that are threatening to destroy it all? You miserable, puny, greedy little bastards should be on your knees to us in thanks for the glide through life that you enjoy. It’s a bit tough at times? Hard bloody luck! Welcome to the land of grown-ups, kid!
Arjy: You just can’t stand that you’re no longer necessary, can you?
Iris Pessary: That is such a stupid thing to say, it’s not worth answering.
Arjy: Because it’s true!
Iris Pessary: Of course it’s bloody true, you brainless, moronic tart!
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Arjy: Well, it’s been nice talking to you, Mrs. Pessary, but I have to go now.
Iris Pessary: Of course, dear, I have enjoyed our little chat and I do hope you will drop in to see me again soon.
Arjy: I certainly will. Bye bye for now.
Iris Pessary: Oh, Ms. Barjy! Did you know that the managers of Cols and Woodies are refusing to make the payments on their police protection policies? They stopped paying about six weeks ago, just before the killings started. Ahh, you didn’t know. I thought not. Goodbye dear.
(When Arjy and Sean leave the room, Iris Pessary lies back on her grubby mound of pillows and shakes with delighted mirth. In the corridor Arjy is silent as she walks towards the exit. Her eyebrows are raised and there is the ghost of a smile on her lips.)
Sean: What was that all about?
Arjy: Mmmm?
Sean: Well, you seemed pleasant enough with each other. Having a nice little chat and that - but there was something else. You both seemed tense as though something was going on between you. I just wondered.
Arjy: Have you ever had a bar room brawl in a pitch-black room while you were blindfolded?
Sean: Shit no.
Arjy: I think I have. I might go back to visit the old bag again some time…..it was….interesting.
Sean: Where do we go now?
Arjy: We follow the old bag’s lead. We go to Cols.
TO BE CONTINUED.
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