Rough Justice

We remember Mr Micawber "Income 20/-, expenditure 19/6d - result happiness. Income 20/-, expenditure 20/6d - result misery.

For Caroline Painter the latter certainly applied. Last year's accounts showed an income of 368,000 and an expenditure of 401,000. The salary she pays herself, or rather doesn't, barely covered the loss - and yet she had to live. The bank is unwilling to lend her any more. Mortgage and overdraft add up to more than Clovelly House is likely to be worth, and how could you sell a house that is home to eighteen elderly residents.

Maud was a hospital nurse all her working life. She is now 86 and very frail. Alice was a school teacher. Although her mind is as sharp as ever at 84 she is wheelchair bound and needs help with everything. Beryl has had an amazing life. Most of it spent on ocean liners and, later, cruise ships where she had worked her way up from stewardess to housekeeper. She was always full of stories but now at 79, her mind is not what it was. Alzheimer's is not a name one wants even to mention.

None of these ladies married and none have any family now as far as Caroline is aware.

Betty and Bill are unusual in being a married couple and sharing a couple of rooms. Bill had a hard war. He fought with the eighth army all through the North African campaigns and the long slog up Italy. He never talks about it. He hasn't even kept his medals. After that he was a bus driver until he retired, still carried on afterwards driving coaches until he failed his medical. He and Betty had a neat little house in the town and managed very well until her stroke. It was her incontinence and Bill's angina that had made a nursing home inevitable. Their only daughter has had two failed marriages and is now more or less an
alcoholic.

It all sounds more than a bit depressing doesn't it? In fact they, and the other residents, all get on very well together and there is a surprisingly cheerful and positive atmosphere in Clovelly House. That, without any doubt, is mainly due to Caroline herself. She works hard, very hard, at keeping this atmosphere going and she's very good at it. Her staff, responding to her lead, themselves reflect and engender this happy state of affairs.

Many of those who come to Clovelly house have small hard-earned pensions. Some have savings or a house of their own which is usually sold to help meet the monthly charges. Nearly all, however, have exhausted those reserves by now and topping up of their fees is at the level which the 'social services' are prepared to pay. Caroline cannot see how she could possibly increase the fees above this level. The income is not sufficient to meet the running expenses of Clovelly House. Caroline is less sanguine than Mr Micawber. He always assumed that something would turn up, she being more realistic, cannot see what is going to turn up and simply does not know how much longer she can keep Clovelly House as a going concern.

Something does turn up however - a letter from a company calling itself Quillan Care Homes. Mr Colin Smart would like to arrange an appointment to meet Miss Painter to discuss a proposition which may be of interest to her.
Yes indeed, she would be very interested. The appointment is made for three days later.

Although Caroline knows most of the people running care homes for miles around she has never heard of this company. Is it possible that they may be thinking of making an offer for Clovelly House - a takeover bid so to speak? She thinks that it could well be so. It seems the likeliest explanation. She makes guarded
enquiries among the other care home operators, she doesn't want to show her hand, but none of them seems to know anything about the company.

Her next concern is to visit her bank manager. Ah! Would that it were that simple. At one time her branch in Bideford had Charles Prentice as manager, a delightful man, always very courteous, who was totally au fait with her situation, could advise her and make decisions about loans and so forth. That changed abruptly about 10 years ago. Now she will have to try and get through to someone in the regional office in Bristol by running the gauntlet of an artificial voice
saying if you want this press one, if you want that press another. She always ended up talking to an inarticulate seventeen year- old who has started his or her banking career about a fortnight earlier.

She does eventually manage to talk to her 'personal account adviser' who doesn't sound much older nor much better able to express herself in clear English. Her mortgage on Clovelly House, together with her business loan and personal overdraft amounted to just over a million pounds and the bank is very much hoping that she will be able to reduce this figure significantly, otherwise further measures would have to be put in hand. This latter phrasing comes in a subsequent letter confirming the conversation. Word processors are much more literate than people these days.

Lundy View Nursing Home closed last year. It was roughly comparable with Clovelly House and the property, after failing to sell privately, had been knocked down for 630,000 at auction just a few weeks ago. Caroline couldn't see how her business itself, as a going concern, could be worth very much since it had been operating at a monthly loss for the past three years. It was rich, very rich indeed in goodwill - but not the sort that has any commercial value.

Apart from the gardens, too large and too expensive to maintain alas there were two paddocks amounting to a further 6.5 acres. The next-door farmer, old Sam Treswick is virtually retired now and he rents the two paddocks as grazing for his shire horses, also retired, who are so much loved by the residents of Clovelly
House. He pays her 600 a year as rent. No, he says sadly, he couldn't see his way to buying them. In fact he is going to have to make some very hard decisions about keeping the horses at all.

As we can imagine, Caroline is hoping against hope that Mr Smart will be coming with an offer in mind but could it possibly be high enough to clear this awful debt.
More terrible questions oppressed her. What about her 'residents', her family as it were?

"Economies of Scale", explained Mr Smart, when he arrived the follow day.

"Call me Colin, please. We are a division of Ethica U.K. and we have care homes here, in the States and in Europe. We'll be able to cut most of your costs in half, some of them even more."

"Now I've been making a few enquiries as we have to, and I know more or less how you are placed. I'm speaking in strict confidence here, just between the two of us. I know that you are so placed that you would have to accept just about any offer we care to make. But I haven't told the board too much about this, no tales out of school! I've persuaded them to put a top price on the value of the property and a generous figure on the business itself, based on how we aim to turn it around, rather than on your track record - no offence. Now I have persuaded them to agree to an offer of one million, one hundred thousand pounds but I would have to get a more or less immediate decision on that. If it is left to drag on, the board will get wind of how much you are up against it and quite frankly, it would be out of my hands."

He can see that Caroline is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the decision she has to make. "I've arranged to stay at the Devonshire Arms tonight. I know you'll want time to think about this offer and then sleep on it.
I'll see you tomorrow morning before I take your decision back with me. This offer is only open until then. After that, as I say, it's out of my hands."
Caroline has every kind of doubt, worry and misgiving. Far from sleeping on her decision it keeps her awake for most of the night. Yet, in spite of all her doubts and worry, she has consulted no-one. She just cannot see that she has any choice in the matter so who could give her any help or guidance. Though she is
fretting herself to death with anxiety and nameless fears about she knows not what, she can see no possible alternative. The last message from the bank has made it clear that time is up. What would have happened if this offer from Smart had not turned up she simply cannot imagine.

As promised, Colin Smart arrives on time at ten thirty the next morning and he has brought a solicitor with him. A document is all prepared and ready for signing.

The solicitor, a man from Exeter whom she knows slightly, says that of course if she wants to take independent advice he would recommend that she spoke to Mr. Wellings, he believes that she normally deals with Mr. Wellings. She does but she can't see how he, more than anyone else, can advise her as to any other course of action. Colin Smart drops a hint about "now or never at this figure."

Later on she sits down to lunch but she can eat nothing. She has signed the document. It's not really a contract as such, a "heads of agreement" which would keep the solicitors busy for a while yet, preparing the full contract, the completion of the sale, the clearing of the mortgage and the secured loans. In the meantime Colin Smart has given her a cheque for 10,000 as a kind of deposit or down payment. She sees herself being solvent, just, at the end of it all. The first time she will have been solvent and debt free for years.

A week passes and the contracts have been signed. Another two weeks and the completion of the sale of Clovelly House will take place. Caroline has been running it for nearly twenty years. For all this time it has been her whole way of life. What on earth is she going to do afterwards?

First of all she promises herself, take a holiday! Colin Smart had suggested that. "I bet you haven't had a proper holiday for years. Why don't you take a complete break - take your mind off the changeover, give yourself a long rest. You've earned it." In fact that was the only exchange they had other than about
the business strictly in hand.

Caroline's mind immediately goes to her sister Kate who lives in Australia. Kate has only been back once in the last fifteen years and, she herself has never been to Australia. Janice in the travel agency, whose gran had been resident in Clovelly House for several years is able to fix it up for her almost immediately. Flights are arranged, stopover in Singapore, Kate will meet her when she arrives in Perth - how could it all be so easy?
One thing still troubles Caroline. She knows that the staff and residents at Clovelly House are not happy about the forthcoming changes. She supposes they will miss her, of course they will. They'd been one big happy family for years and it isn't really surprising that they will be worried and uncertain about their
future. Old people do get upset about changes and the staff seem to feel that they haven't been fully consulted in the matter.

Now Caroline had never shared her financial worries with either the residents or the staff. She thinks it would have been quite wrong to unsettle them with these worries which were hers to deal with. It would have seemed to her that to do so would be showing weakness, moaning and complaining to people about her troubles which they could do nothing to help her with.

In any case Mr Smart has assured her that Clovelly House is being taken over as a going concern and that everything will continue as before.

"I suppose there will have to be some changes in the long term - that's inevitable isn't it? But before that we'll have to get our new manageress established. She'll have the back-up of our very professional team and she's had experience of doing this sort of thing before."

Caroline's departure for Australia is scheduled for the very day after the formal handover of Clovelly House. She will go up to Heathrow immediately and catch
her flight the next day.

On top of all her other concerns, Caroline has had to cope with the complete disruption of her own life. Clovelly House has been her home for many years. She's never been a great one for collecting personal possessions and the little she has has been put into store for her. She really is planning a complete break. She will stay in Australia for at least three months. Then she will make a radically fresh start - doing she knows not what. She hasn't even given any thought
to where this fresh start is going to be made - perhaps even in Australia.

Three months pass by amazingly quickly. Caroline fits into Kate's home like an old glove. Kate's husband Trevor, she is even getting used to calling him Trev, is a native of Perth, they married a couple of years after Kate had arrived there to take up a pre-arranged nursing job.

Trev is a doctor specialising in sports medicine and Kate works as his nurse and secretary. Trev's mother had a bad fall not long after Caroline's arrival and
is still quite disabled as a result of it. Caroline has been taking turns with Kate in the care of Trev's mother and in the nurse/secretary role. There has been no mention made of Caroline's return to England and the novelty of her new surroundings have driven all thoughts of Clovelly House out of her mind for the past few weeks.
Before that she had told Trev about how worried she'd been beforehand. Trev considered privately, he said nothing to the sisters, that the seemingly impossible financial situation she had been in, the radical solution that had appeared out of the blue and above all her inability to share these worries with anyone, seek advice or consult anyone had preyed on her mind so much that she'd had a mental breakdown of sorts. Not Trev's field, of course, and anyhow she seems to have stumbled, almost by accident, on the solution which solved her problems and helped her regain her mental equilibrium.

Caroline has had just one communication from the Exeter solicitor informing her of the final accounts of the sale of the sale of Clovelly House. It appears that after the mortgage was repaid, the bank loans settled and other small debts dealt with, there are always more of these than one would think, there was a net sum owing to her of 23,684, of which she had received 10,000 by way of advance. It doesn't seem much after twenty years of hard work and of course she has no pension to look forward to. And think of the capital she had put it at the beginning when she was buying Clovelly House. It was her inheritance from her parents and had seemed a huge sum at the time.

A few weeks later another letter, well a bulky packet really, arrives with an Exeter postmark. A covering letter is from a lady called Beryl Davies who is employed as a secretary in the solicitor's office and who happened to obtain Caroline's address in Australia when she mailed the previous letter, It seems that Beryl had an aunt, Mrs Greenslade, who had been resident in Clovelly House for several years and had been very happy there. Oh yes, Caroline remembers her well, a lovely old lady. Well Beryl thought that Caroline might not have heard of what had happened at Clovelly House after she had left. (Indeed she has heard nothing of it at all.) Because of her aunt's stay there, Beryl had kept the press cuttings and was now sending them to Caroline to bring her up to date with things.

Before she undoes the packet Caroline hesitated. She's happy, she's busy, she is fairly sure that her future lies here in Perth. She does not need to go back into her recent past which she now realises, was traumatic. She is not privy to Trev's musings about this but she has been tending towards a similar conclusion herself. In any case, she can do absolutely nothing about it now, whatever she finds.

She has strong feelings, no, she knows, that the story that will be told in the press cuttings will be deeply distressing for her. She realises now, looking
back, that she had been deliberately closing her mind to what was going to happen to Clovelly House once she had handed it over. Terrible things were likely
to have happened to both, the residents and her staff, her family. She tries to ease her conscience by telling herself that there was nothing else she could
have done then. That had she known about everything that was to happen afterwards she could have done nothing about that either. And now, now if she opens this packet, this Pandora 's Box, what will she be able to do about what she might learn there - except to make herself thoroughly miserable? It won't make her feel guilty because she feels that already. Guilty of just what exactly? That's the point, she doesn't know. Isn't it better to leave it like that? Perhaps the less she knows about it the better. The easier it will be to live with.

It is her conscience rather than her curiosity which makes her undo the packet and start reading.
The cuttings are neatly collected in date order. The first is dated just a few days after she left England. Like most of the rest it is from the South West
Evening News. This first report records the fact that Caroline Pointer (39), proprietor of the old folks' home (ugh!) Clovelly House for the past ten years
has sold out to Quillan Care Homes. They had her name wrong and ten years had disappeared from her life but, on the plus side, they had sent along o photographer who had taken a very skilful shot of the staff and some of the residents gathered in the garden. Memories come flooding back for Caroline but there is one little disquieting note. The reporter says that she had difficulty in contacting the new owners and they refused to answer any questions about the future
of Clovelly House.

That, however, was made brutally clear in the next cutting from the same reporter, which appeared just four days later. It was the front page lead in the South West Evening News under the headline. "Old Folks' Home Shock" notice had been given to the staff and residents of Clovelly House that, it would close in one month's time. The formal notice to both residents and staff was accompanied by an explanation that it complied fully with the legal requirements imposed by their contract. There was a further paragraph stating that Quillan Care Homes would offer the residents alternative accommodation in one of the Group's other establishments. Nothing further was said about any offer of alternative employment of the staff. The photograph which had accompanied the earlier article
was reproduced again. It had a touch of poignancy about it now.

Caroline put down the file of cuttings. She was thunderstruck. Sharp (Don't call him Colin please) had told her specifically that Clovelly House was being taken over as a going concern, that nothing would change, except possibly in the long term of course. He had said that but, she recalls, there was nothing at
all about it in her contract, nothing was said there about the future of Clovelly House, its residents or staff.

A few days later there was a piece by the same reporter, now with her by-line,Janet Porter, relating a meeting she had had with local councillors and the area's M.P. Janet Porter seemed to be setting herself up as a champion of the residents and staff of Clovelly House. She had little to report however, which would bring little comfort to either. The councillors stressed the great shortage of places in such homes in the area. This is the second private home to close within the last 12 months and those provided by the local authority have long waiting lists. The budget for such residential care is under tremendous pressure and there is no hope of it being increased. You must remember that this is just one 'priority' out of many. Cuts rather than increases in budgets seemto be inevitable in the foreseeable future. Such is the baleful message which Janet Porter gets from the meeting. She also observes that the local elections are due next year. The last thing that any hopeful candidates will wish to be associated with is any increase in Council Taxes.

The next cutting is once again front page lead. The paper reproduces again the earlier photograph, under the headline. Clovelly House, Mystery. The indefatigable Miss Porter has discovered that the house and grounds have been sold to a national house-building company for an undisclosed sum. Apparently this deal was struck immediately after Caroline's sale of the property, almost before the ink on her contract was dry. The 'mystery' arises from the fact that Quillan Care Homes was not acting as principal in the original purchase of Clovelly House but only as an agent for the shadowy group who bought it and sold it in a matter of days.
Clovelly House Latest - Worse than a Workhouse! This headline makes Caroline freeze with horror. Though it's not quite what she first thought, she gets no comfort from reading further. It appears that her residents had received from Quillan Care Homes an offer of a transfer to Belton House one of their establishments in Plymouth, 70 miles away. Janet Porter had been able to pick up immediately an earlier story about this place, alleging neglect and abuse of its unhappy inmates. The families of the involved had used such phrases as 'worse than a work house' and 'more like Belsen'. To add insult to injury the offer to the Clovelly House residents informed them that the fees would be increased by
50 - 100 per week.

This article, front page again, had had the now emblematic photograph as before but also others, which Caroline recognised, which showed the happy smiling faces of residents and staff in scenes of care and comfort.

Clearly the story had gained a much wider coverage after this and there were cuttings from other regional and even national papers. Apparently there had also been quite a splash made of the story on the regional television news.

All carried the same horror stories and the shocked reaction of the Clovelly House residents. Janet Porter's next 'scoop' revealed that the price paid for the Clovelly House property by the building company was over 3 million pounds. They are proposing to build about 90 houses and apartments on it.

The following day she reported the sad news of the death of two of the residents. The cause of Maud's death was not specified, Betty, Bill's wife, died of a heart attack. The final closure of Clovelly House is to take place two days later. Four of the original group have had other places found for them by their families and two are going to be cared for by their families at least for the time being. The remaining ten will be transferred to Plymouth by ambulance and
minibus.

The next cutting is the last and longest. There is a montage of photographs - before and after, as it were, and an interview with Colin Smart. It's not a real interview because he refused to speak to Janet at all. Nor has she been able to find out anything more about him. He is neither a director nor an employee of Quillan Care Homes. Ethica U.K., the supposed parent company, has only an accommodation address with an office letting agency. Janet has therefore set up the 'interview' by listing the questions she would have asked Colin Sharp and then suggesting the answers that he might have given. If any of these answers are wrong she says, Mr Sharp is more than welcome to correct them.

Q. Have you broken any laws in this business Mr Smart?

A. No. Certainly not. Everything that I have done has been perfectly legal.

Q. Do you think that anything which you have done has been unethical or immoral?

A. No.

Q. Not towards either the residents or the staff of Clovelly House?

A. All these people were given the due notice of the closing of Clovelly House which their contracts required. I had no responsibility towards them beyond that.

Q. Let's take the residents first Mr. Smart. Do you think that your treatment of these elderly vulnerable people was generous?

A. They were all offered alternative accommodation. Strictly speaking I was not bound to do that so yes it was generous.

Q. This case has had a lot of publicity and most people think that your treatment of these elderly people was harsh and uncaring. Do you deny this?

A. Yes. The only people who would have the right to criticise me would be those who come forward and offered to look after these old people better and more
cheaply than us. No one did.

Q. What about the two families who took their relatives in?

A. I am not family.

Q. You may not be a Christian Mr Sharp but do you think that you have treated everyone charitably?

A. Whether I am Christian or not is none of your business. I am not running a charity. I am a business man and it is the right and duty of everyone to run
his business as profitably as possible. That's what the capitalist system is all about.

That's the end of the cuttings. Caroline puts down the file. She's had a tumult of emotions while reading them. Now she feels drained. The worst feeling is that of impotence. There's nothing she can do now. It's all in the past. The folder had not had enough stamps on to come airmail. It had happened weeks ago.

On the one hand she cannot help blaming herself. Yet at the same time she doesn't know what she could have done either to save the situation or to change it.Colin Sharp, however much she detests him, is right. She too had set herself up to run a business not a charity. She failed to make a profit, failed even to cover her costs and, at the end, her only choice was between bankruptcy or Colin Sharp. Either option would have been equally bad for both her residents and her staff.

If only she had known that she could have got such a huge price for the property. Such 'ifs' get us nowhere. It only went to show that Colin Smart was just
that - a lot sharper in business than she was.
Is there any alternative to this dog eats dog version of business, what Colin Smart had called the Capitalist System? Yes the words were actually Janet Porter's but Caroline had no doubt whatever that he would endorse them.

She thinks long and hard about this as time goes by. Colin Smart had not committed himself as to whether or not he is a Christian but she is, she always has
been. She has always tried to act out the Christian doctrine of charity and loving one's neighbours - enemies even. And of course she'd always been a Conservative and, by extension, a firm supporter of the capitalist system.

She spends a lot of time now asking herself whether, in the light of all that she's seen (and read), the two things, Christianity and capitalism are really compatible with one another - at least without making some adjustments. In that case which should give ground - Christianity or capitalism?

While these thoughts were occupying her mind an amazing scene was unfolding on the other side of the world.
Bill had been devastated by Betty's death. He had settled it in his mind that all the trouble about the closing of Clovelly House had been the direct cause of her heart attack. He is the one with the bad heart but she was the one who had done the fretting. The move to Belsen (the name Bill gives to Belton Manor, the Quillan Care Home in Plymouth, fulfilled all his worst fears. For both of these disasters he blamed Colin Smart.

The one advantage of being in Plymouth is that Bill now has the opportunity of meeting old mates. He can now get to the club where some of them still met. Like Bill they are, of course, all in their eighties but the publicity surrounding the closing of Clovelly House and Bill's involvement in it roused their indignation. More to the point they also meet with many of the young men who were now carrying on the old traditions of their regiment. "That Smart's a right bastard Bill" they said. "We should get hold of him and teach him a bit of a lesson." That is the germ of Bill's idea.

He hasn't told them everything he has in mind, indeed he's not sure that he knows himself exactly what he has in mind. They are ready to help out with the essentials of his plan, the final bit will be up to Bill. The key to putting the plan into action, however, depends on being able to get hold of Colin Smart.

Bill thinks of Janet Porter and contacts her. He's very cagey about what is afoot but she catches on to idea quickly enough. Yes, she thinks she will be able to pinpoint his movements sufficiently to set the thing in motion.

A few days later everything is unfolding according to plan. Colin Smart has gone to his car, his big Audi 4x4 estate, in the underground car park after a council planning meeting. He's met there by three burly young fellows who usher him into the back of his own car, one of them each side of him and the third driving. The car is driven out of the city, onto the moor, past a sign saying "MOD property, no entry," to what appears to be, in fact is, a disused firing range.

Smart is taken into what looks like a long, wide, shallow trench. He is tied to an old metal chair which is itself secured to a sturdy barrier. The three burly young lads disappear and the Audi is heard driving away.
Bill appears from a derelict hut, only yards from where Smart is tied, wrists and ankles, to the old chair and sits in a similar chair outside the hut. He has a hunting rifle with him. Where did he get it? He never says.

"You know," opens Bill, "a lot of old soldiers say that they don't know whether they killed anyone in the war - they hope not. Well I do know. I was a sniper. A good one. I killed lots of men. I had nothing against them personally. The war had to be won. This was my job in it and I did it."

So far Colin Smart had said almost nothing. He probably realised that no one was going to take any notice of anything he might say. What is he going to say
to Bill now?

Bill goes on "You're a different case altogether. I've got plenty against you alright. You killed my wife. You killed my wife. You ruined the lives of everybody at Clovelly House. You swindled Miss Painter. That place of yours - Belsen I call it, well it's the right name for it. You say you haven't broken the law and maybe you haven't. But you've broken my law - my law says everyone should be decent, fair, honest. You ain't. You're not fit to live. You're too much of a menace to helpless folk to be left alive."

"You haven't said much yet and you're right because nothing you say will make a difference to what I am going to do. After all, I've got nothing to lose, thanks to you. And not long to live either.

Bill lifts up the rifle. Colin Smart is now reduced to moaning incoherence. He knows that Bill means what he says. As Bill loads two rounds into the Chamber Colin Smart loses bladder control.

Then there is the sound of vehicles approaching. A police Land Rover, white with gaudy orange stripes and blue lights flashing, is bouncing along the track towards them. They are coming by appointment, at Bill's invitation. Following it at a distance is a little Renault. That's Janet Porter, also invited by Bill to get the scoop of a lifetime.

Just as the police vehicle come to a halt, two shots ring out.