Full Of Years

Full Of Years

By Murray

I had expected, when I agreed to meet Detective Brautigan that evening,
that he would make a final attempt to entice me into marriage and I was
quietly angry when I found that his intention was instead to issue me
with a warning. He had taken an interest in me, both personally and
professionally, over many years but I had never particularly liked him.
Because I had an income and a genteel demeanour, several careful men
had, over the years, sought to add me to their portfolios, but I had
always clung to my independence. And there was only one love in my
life, though an unworthy one.
"Everyone thinks you're so sweet," Brautigan said with genuine
bitterness. He exhaled an unpleasant waft of stale nicotine from his
throat and raised his cup shakily to his lips. (I wondered if he knew
he was in the first stages of Altzheimer's? ) "Such a nice little
person, looking after all those old ladies."
The caf? was noisy - mostly women. Some very nice hats! I would have
been flattered to have been one of the few with a man, if only
Brautigan had been more presentable.
"I have my successors well tipped off," he said. "If there is even one
suspicious case where there's so much as a whiff of your presence
&;#8230;"

"You're talking nonsense as usual," I said tartly.

"Oh, am I?" he jeered, raising an admonitory finger, "You'd be
surprised at what just a word from me could do."

I knew enough about the way things were run in this country to suspect
that the Attorney General would not swing into immediate action on the
ravings of a retired Detective Sergeant..

"I'm surprised you didn't know I'm retiring myself," I said.

"Eh?" he gaped.

"Yes, it's true," I said. "I've bought a nice little place in the
country,"

"I see."

"Yes an old railway cottage"

"It's well for some," he said. "I'm still stuck in the same cowboys and
Indians estate in Dublin."

I had, in fact, realised that retirement was out of the question for
the moment. Apart from my own requirements, there was Cian's old age to
be provided for. Women, unless ill, could look after themselves, but
men? Hopeless! And the women Cian was attracted to were not the sort to
provide much comfort in one's twilight years. Yet I was no longer
content to scrimp along on a salary and small legacies. I felt that
something better was within my grasp and that fresh fields were not
only more promising, but safer, given Brautigan's continued
interest.

"My most recent patient is still struggling along at ninety-two - I can
give you her name and address if you like." I said.

Brautigan looked discomfited and his cup rattled pathetically on his
saucer. His hair was much thinner than when I had first met him and his
moustache had gone completely grey. He didn't have his pipe with him. I
certainly wouldn't have permitted it at the table, but he brazenly took
out a tin of tobacco and a small machine in which he began rolling a
cigarette.

"There was some funny business about your earlier life," he said
finally, licking the strip of paper along the edge and giving me a very
policemannish look "That quare fellow Coyle, not to mention his
wife.."

"I'm not sure what you mean," I said.
"They died, didn't they?"

"Everybody dies some time," I said.

"Especially when you're around," he said.

"For God's sake," I said, by now thoroughly irritated, "My job was
private nursing - mainly terminal care. It's hardly surprising that
they die, is it?"

When I was fostered out more than forty years ago, the Coyles lived in
a semi-detached house on the North side, with a tiled front path, and a
motor-cycle and side-car leaking oil under a tarpaulin beneath the
front window. She was a domineering flabby woman in poor health, with
bloated ankles and moderate to severe angina. A red velvet turban
always covered most of her dull blonde curls, even in the house, and
she lived more or less independently in the large front bedroom, with
her jars of cream and boxes of face powder. The yard and outhouses at
the back of the house were infested with rats and Mr Coyle, who
suffered from gout and an enlarged prostate gland, used to boil up rat
poison on the gas-cooker in the back kitchen and traipse in and out in
his dressing-gown with saucepans of the stuff slopping on his slippers.
He had never worked, but lived on a legacy from an uncle who had
invented a patent stove-polish and I think Mr Coyle was trying to
perfect some concoction of his own as well, but he never said what it
was. Mrs Coyle was terrified of him and told me there had been a gas
explosion and two poisoned cats in the past three years. She did not
confide in me much, however, and ruled me with considerable severity,
saying she had been well warned about my propensity for evil by the
sisters at the orphanage.

One day, soon after I started my nursing training, Mrs Coyle was taken
away in an ambulance and that evening, before I could even visit her,
her husband was arrested and brought to the police station for
questioning about her death. The snotty-nosed boy from next door, whose
mother had reported her suspicions, said the police believed he had
"done her in." Mr Coyle was released without charge, however, and
although he was severely criticised at the inquest, a verdict of "
misadventure" was eventually arrived at. Mr Coyle changed after that. A
small black moustache was soon pasted in the middle of his flabby face
and he sold the motor-cycle and sidecar which he had used to trundle
Mrs Coyle occasionally to the shops. He bought a small saloon car and
joined the boy scouts. I think he was some sort of trainee scoutmaster.
I had just finished my nursing training when he was ejected from the
scouting organisation - I never knew exactly why but, as my
snotty-nosed informant from next door told me darkly, whatever it was
"had been going on for some time." Mr Coyle continued to go on camping
trips, using the equipment from his scouting days and I frequently had
to accompany him. Although he always treated me with respect, he seemed
to forget I was a girl. I hated the half-cooked meals, the khaki shorts
that left my thighs purple from the cold, the damp blankets and the
efforts to scour greasy plates and dixie-cans with cold river water and
sand.

On one of these expeditions, Mr Coyle fell down a ravine and broke his
hip . He was in severe pain and I went for help on foot, as I didn't
know how to drive and Mr Coyle was in no position to teach me. The
coroner commended me most warmly at the inquest, although he found it
hard to understand how, remote though our campsite was, it had taken me
almost two days to raise the alarm. He was an impressionable old cod,
however and he took a shine to me, kept beaming at me and said that the
delay in raising the alarm, although puzzling, paled into
insignificance when viewed against the courage and initiative shown by
" this brave girl."

"I see that son of yours is in trouble again," Brautigan said with a
knowing leer.

"What son?" I said. "I have never been married."

"Oh, I know that," he guffawed. "Himself and that woman he's living
with were arrested at three o'clock on Sunday morning, fighting outside
their flat. What age is he now - forty-five? He's lost most of his hair
and of course she's a sight, after what he did to her face in that car
crash."

"Cian has always been unfortunate," I said icily. "That woman has shown
herself in her true colours."

"Yeah," Brautigan agreed, "particularly after he tried to trade her in
for a new model while she was still in hospital with her face in a
sling."

Though Cian was, in many ways a disappointment to me he was the only
person I loved. I had been almost torn apart when he was taken from me,
yet what could I do? I had to make my way in the world.. Although I
have supported him most of his life, ever since I traced him in his
twenties, he has never once called or visited me voluntarily but has
been under the thumbs of a succession of wholly unsuitable women. He
believes his father was a doctor, although he was, in fact, an inmate
of the institution where I spent the first sixteen years of my life.
Yet he is my son, the child of my heart. What more can I say?

Private nursing attracted me and soon after Mr Coyle's death I left my
hospital job. There was a surprising number of rich old widows in the
city, mostly moved into apartments overcrowded with furniture,
paintings and expensive junk from their former homes. There were a few
good souls among those I tended, but they were mostly difficult women,
their faults accentuated by age, and they were often guilty of
selfishness not to mention romantic fantasies and desires women a third
their ages should have been ashamed of. Yet they were often grateful
and very dependent on me and many of them left me little tokens or
remembered me in their wills. Most of them passed away full of years
(and frequently full of drugs) and often begged for early release. I
never used anything other than their medically prescribed drugs and I
do not believe I would have acted much differently, even if I had been
totally without self-interest.

Brautigan drained the remainder of his tea and satisfied himself that
there was none left in the pot, before standing up and reaching for his
scarf. There was a blob of cream cake on his moustache. He looked
neglected and unwell and I was momentarily sorry for him, in spite of
his insinuating manner.

"Retiring, eh," he leered. "I'll pass on that good news to my
successors."

As he went I realised that Brautigan was still trying to impress me,
calling up a vision of himself visiting various "nicks", smoking his
pipe and passing on information from his vast fund of knowledge and
experience, with many a nudge and knowing leer. I, for my part, felt a
thrill of pleasure to be deceiving him once again.

I had seen it first a fortnight ago, from my railway carriage, as the
train slowed to a walking pace due to works on the line. How had I
missed it before? It was easy later to ascertain its name and within a
few days I had been accepted on to the staff, without even the
formality of an interview. With my experience and qualifications it
came to really little more than an exchange of pleasantries and
compliments between myself and the matron as we recounted, with, I
confess, a little bragging on both sides, the edited highlights of our
respective careers.

That first day, though, as the train jerked forward, stopped and then
began to move slowly forward again, I got a full view of it through a
gap in the shelter-belt of trees. Wonderful! The building was of stone,
honey coloured in the evening sunlight, roofed in fish-scale slates and
had a widows' walk, wrought-iron balconies on the upper floors and
delicate filigree iron scrollwork on the ridges of the roof. It was
almost as though the place had been sketched by one of those artists
with a rather dashing style in pen and ink or could have been crocheted
by some of the delightful old ladies who were being supervised by
nurses in the grounds. The few cars in the visitors' car park were
reassuringly expensive. Paths, bordered with box and lavender, ran
across the lawns and continued along the cliffs. Long shadows were cast
at tasteful intervals by well- managed trees and shrubs. There were a
few late-flowering camellias in a neatly tended bed and the faint blue
and cream of a wisteria was just fading against the honey-coloured
stone. Wonderful!

I could see two old ladies being pushed in their wheelchairs along the
clifftop path - one of them, bent with osteoporosis, gesticulating out
to sea with her stick, the breeze coming over the cliff-edge and
whipping her dress against her frail legs. The other had her arms
folded and her head pushed into her bosom in a childish tantrum,
refusing to speak to the young nurse who pushed her. I could just
imagine the mulish pout on her face.

How well I knew my old ladies!

How my eyes were drawn to the path on the cliff edge with its
background of empty sky and the turbulent air beyond. And the rocks
where the waves crashed almost a hundred feet below!

Wonderful!

The End.