Fay Weldon - Novel 23 by Rhode Island Blues (v1.1) Read Free Book Online Page A

wore
bright polo shirts, the women shell suits. They made Felicity feel frail. By
mistake we saw an assisted living home where the old sat together with their
zimmer frames, backs to the wall, glaring at anyone who dared to come into
their space. The sense of quiet depression was such I could have been back in
my own country. The smell of cheap air freshener got into my lungs. Felicity
looked shocked. Joy wouldn’t step inside the room they showed us, so proudly.
     
                 * * *
     
     
             ‘I’d
rather die,’ she shrieked. ‘Why don’t they just polish themselves off?’ If the
inhabitants heard they did not stir. Management did, and showed us hastily out,
but not before giving us their list of charges.
                 I
relented. Nothing we saw looked at all suitable for my grandmother’s dash into
the future. I told Felicity if she wanted to come back to London I’d do what I could for her: find her
somewhere near me, even with me. I declared myself prepared to move house to
live somewhere without stairs, into the one-floor living that seemed to be a
requisite for anyone over sixty. I spoke coolly and my reluctance by-passed my
brain and settled itself in my stomach in the form of a bad pain: appendix,
maybe.
                 ‘She’ll
drive you crazy,’ shouted Joy. ‘You’ll regret it.’
                 Felicity
persisted that she did not want to return to London , even to be near me. (The pain at once
subsided.) I was too busy, too taken up with my own life. She would just feel
the lonelier because she’d never get to see me, and I would just feel the
guiltier for the same reason. Besides, she was used to the US .
                 Life
in England was too cramped, too divorced from its own history, the young had no
interest in the old, the IRA left bombs around, the plumbing was dreadful and
she was too old to make new friends. And we certainly could not live together.
Joy was right, I would kill her, or she me. I did not argue. We went home in
depressed silence.
                 ‘You
just have to be patient,’ said Joy, softer again. ‘Don’t sell to this stupid
client of Vanessa’s. Anyone who wants to move in within the month is bound to
be a bad neighbour. You do owe a little consideration to the rest of us.’
                 She
took the wheel of the car and bumped off in a way that never happened when I
drove. It was scarcely more than a year old, and fitted with every possible
kind of gadget to ensure a smooth ride. I don’t know how she managed it.
                 When
we got back to the serenity of Passmore we found that a brochure had been
pushed through the letterbox. It was from an establishment called The Golden
Bowl Complex for Creative Retirement. Felicity examined it over toasted
cinnamon bagels spread with Cream Cheese Favorite Lite. This Golden Bowl
place,’ said Felicity, ‘doesn’t sound too bad at all.
They have a Nobel Prize winner in residence, and a Doctor of Philosophy. Fancy being able to have a conversation with someone other than
Joy. And what synchronicity that it should arrive
today!’
                 It
would have been even more synchronicitous if it had arrived in the morning
rather than the afternoon, so we could have visited it when in the area, but I
held my tongue. The Golden Bowl charged at least double the fees of any other
institution we’d seen, and they went up ten per cent each year. Which when you
worked it out meant that in ten years’ time you would be paying double. But by
then Miss Felicity would be well into her nineties. It might not be so bad a
deal. It was a gamble who would end up making money out of whom.
                 I
hoped her liking for the place wasn’t because it was the most expensive on
offer. Reared in penury as she had been, Felicity now had an almost innocent faith
in the power of money: she believed that the