“A few scoops too many last night?” She was quick to relate to what would have been her own reason for holding her head in her hands.
“No Ellie, this may come as a shock to you but I am not in the habit of getting drunk on duty.”
“Sorry, you look as if you’re feeling crook.”
“My mother’s had a stroke, I have to close Woodlands for Christmas, I have to relocate the Hard Core, wouldn’t that make anyone crook?”
Ellie’s face was full of concern and sympathy; she asked about Kate’s mother, how much speech and movement had been lost, what was the prognosis. Not for the first time, Kate wished that Ellie had studied, qualified as a nurse, gone into paramedical management. She had so many of the right qualities. She was wasted on the loser Dan, the man with the dark, empty eyes and the unconfirmed plans for Christmas.
“But anyway, Ellie, these are the burdens of being a tycoon and running a place like this, a goldmine.” Kate’s voice was bitter. Everyone knew that Woodlands only paid its way because she put in so many hours there.
“They’ll throw Donald out on the side of the road,” Ellie said.
“Maybe we should have a long time ago.” Kate was reaching for her telephone book.
“And Georgia, she’s actually barred from Rest Haven, you do know that?”
“I know, which is why I’m gritting my teeth and getting ready to face Santa Rosa.”
“Isn’t it a pity there’s nobody …” Ellie said.
“I know, but there is nobody … I just can’t ask any one person to cancel her Christmas and stay here for the Hard Core. No money would pay them.”
“I know,” Ellie said.
Kate looked at her sharply. Could Dan have been darker and more brooding than usual and have forgotten Christmas? Kate couldn’t ask. She reached for the telephone and dialed Santa Rosa.
“Stop for a minute,” Ellie said.
With great relief, Kate replaced the receiver.
“I’d need a lot of money,” Ellie said.
“It’s yours,” Kate said.
“And double-time off afterwards.”
“That too.”
“You see, I thought I’d go to a health spa and have a makeover or whatever they call them. He likes smaller, younger, thinner girls, it turns out.”
“They all do, that’s what it’s about,” Kate said grimly.
“So after New Year’s, I go for two weeks to one of these places and get a new me, and then I go off with Dan.”
“As you say,” Kate said, hardly daring to believe it.
“Well, pack your case and go see your mother,” Ellie said.
“You do remember how terrible the Hard Core is?”
“I do. Did we mention how much money?”
“We’re talking about a week. Five times your weekly salary.”
“Six.”
“Oh come on, Ellie …”
“Think of Georgia in Santa Rosa, think of Donald in Rest Haven.”
“Six, but you have to cook properly and you are not to shout at them.”
“It’s a deal.”
The hard core were not at all pleased when they were told that Ellie was in charge.
“A slattern, that’s what we would have called her in the old days,” said Donald.
“She’s not a nurse, she’s a carer, a servant class,” said Georgia.
“I suppose her boyfriend has left her,” Heather said to Hazel.
“At least she had a boyfriend, which is more than you ever had,” Hazel said to Heather.
Kate Harris telephoned from the airport. “I must have been mad,” she said to Ellie. “My mind is unhinged, otherwise I wouldn’t have left them to you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Ellie said.
“Nothing personal. Listen, we could still get them in. Rest Haven owes me a favor or two, they’ll take Donald and maybe the terrible twins.”
“Hazel is eleven months older, you know that,” Ellie said.
“Ellie, this is no time for inessentials.”
“If I am to look after the Hard Core until you get back, let me be the judge of what’s essential and what’s not. Kate, get on that plane, and be pleasant to your mother, for God’s sake.”
“Don’t alienate them, Ellie, please. Woodlands is all I’ve got; if they leave, we go under.”
“Safe journey, Kate,” said Ellie, and hung up.
She squared her shoulders and went in to face the grumblings of the Hard Core. It was going to be hard enough to tolerate them for a full week without the knowledge that the place was in worse financial condition than any of them had suspected.
“I suppose you’re going to skimp on the food and pocket the profit for yourself,” said Donald, his face purple already with anger at the thought of it.
“If she ate less herself, she wouldn’t have lost her boyfriend,” Heather said.
“Tell us how you would know what a boyfriend might or might not like,” Hazel countered.
“This is the last Christmas I spend here,” said Georgia. “It was bad enough when Miss Harris tried to cope with us on her own, having let the staff go to save money, but to leave a carer. That’s inexcusable.” Georgia sniffed so loudly, it was like a pistol shot.
“At least they have a cook in Santa Rosa,” said Hazel.
“And some company over what is meant to be the festive season,” said Heather.
“And people of one’s own kind to talk to in Rest Haven … they don’t let the dross in,” said Donald, glaring at Georgia. It was generally known that Georgia was not allowed to darken the door of Rest Haven again.
Ellie’s heart felt heavy. She had in her hands the future of four people, one-eighth of Kate Harris’s clientele. They would all leave. Possibly during Christmas, with maximum publicity involving television coverage. Ellie could see Donald giving interviews and waving his stick as he crossed the road to Rest Haven. She could literally see the interview as if it had already happened, and could imagine Kate’s face at the other side of Australia as she saw it too. And the place would close. Kate would lose her investment. Ellie would lose her job. Twenty-eight people would come back from their Christmas holidays and find that their home was under sentence. And these four difficult old horrors would have to be resettled somewhere. Not an easy task.
All this would happen simply because of the Hard Core and their selfish refusal to believe that Christmas could be hell on earth for lots of people, and their refusal to admit that their destiny was in their own hands. What a tragedy that she had promised Kate not to alienate them. It would be so good to tell the Hard Core what they were putting at risk.
“This place will close,” Ellie heard herself say. “Between the four of you, you will manage to close it down. The rest of us will survive somehow. Kate will get something for the property if not the goodwill. The other guests are normal, they’ll find other places to take them. I’ll even get a job somewhere; as you’re all so keen to point out I am a lowly person, there are still lots of lowly jobs about. But you four are the ones to worry about. I wonder where you will all be next Christmas. Wherever I am then, I will think of you, all four of you, and wonder.”
There was a silence.
Ellie couldn’t believe that she had actually said it. Only five minutes after being pleaded with by Kate, who was on the way to her paralyzed mother’s bedside. How could she have been so selfish and thoughtless? But it had been said. And there were no words that could take back the insult and the hurt. She hardly dared to raise her head.
To her surprise, Donald wasn’t pounding his stick on the floor, Georgia wasn’t giving one of her unmerciful sniffs, neither Hazel nor Heather had said anything about Ellie’s unlikely prospects of keeping any man if this was an example of her social behavior.
The silence was more powerful than anything. It was not a feature of life with the Hard Core.
When she looked at them, she saw that their faces were stricken. They had all aged in front of her eye
s. They looked what they were: old, frail, and frightened. Ellie’s eyes filled with tears. Tears for their future, for her own future when she was their age, for what she had said and done to them. And childish tears of frustration because she had no idea what to do now.
After what seemed the longest silence that Woodlands had ever known, Donald spoke. He spoke without moving his stick, and there was no sign of the sneer that Ellie had thought was built into his face.
“What should we do?” he asked.
Georgia also looked like a frightened child. “I mean this is not the worst place in the world, and you, Ellie, even if you have no qualifications, you are … well, you are kind. They were not kind in Rest Haven. Even if they would have me again, which I gather they will not.”
Ellie looked at her openmouthed. This was such forbidden territory, and here was Georgia admitting it.
Heather had begun to whimper, but Hazel reached out her hand. “Now, now, none of that, Heather. I’m here, Hazel is here, didn’t I always know what was best for my little sister?” she said.
Ellie blew her nose loudly, but somehow it only made her cry more. Dan was on his way to some job up on the Gold Coast. At the last minute there had been a job as a driver, driving lots of leggy girls to and from a resort … Surely Ellie would understand. It wasn’t as if this Christmas was definite or anything. Was it? … Dan had looked at her with troubled eyes, and Ellie had been too hurt and tired and sad to tell him just how definite and important it had been. And Kate Harris, who had worked hard and been cheerful all her life, had been deserted by her rat of a husband, her business was about to collapse, her mother was going to be an invalid. But somehow saddest of all were these four self-destructive people who looked at her with frightened old eyes.
“I don’t know what we can do.” Ellie found herself speaking to Donald as an equal for once. “The place isn’t quite making ends meet as it is, and if Kate’s mother means she’s going to have to be away a bit she won’t have the money to pay a proper person to come in here.”
Georgia bit her lip. “We don’t need really proper people, we could sort of get by,” she said.
“But Kate’s a qualified nurse, she mightn’t be able to keep her license …”
“We don’t need nursing,” said Hazel. “We’re as strong as horses, aren’t we, Heather?”
“Horses,” Heather repeated dutifully.
“But there are no new people coming and it costs so much for Kate to advertise …”
“We could do word-of-mouth,” Donald said. “You know, we could write and tell people it’s a fine place.”
“But if they do come here, you’ll just tell them that everyone is being poisoned,” Ellie said, with spirit.
“No, no, it would all be different.” Donald sounded as if he meant it.
“I could go and try and get some of the people in Rest Haven and lure them here,” Georgia said.
“Kate wouldn’t allow that, no poaching on other people, that’s always been her rule.”
“We could write to our old school, Heather,” Hazel suggested. “Lots of past pupils of our age might like to know of a place to come.”
“Chaps who retired same time as I did,” Donald said. “There’s an office newsletter, I could write a first-person piece for it, I was always good with words, I could describe all the full days we have here …”
“But you hate it, Donald, you absolutely hate Woodlands, no point in luring them all here and then telling them the place is filled with dunderheads and lower-class people.” Ellie didn’t want to raise Kate’s hopes only to have them dashed again.
“I wouldn’t if …” Donald didn’t finish the sentence.
“You couldn’t change overnight … people don’t,” Ellie insisted. “There’s no one who wants this place to survive as much as I do, but come on … you’re all old enough to know that it might only be a dream.”
She saw that they were looking at her with hope. Suddenly Ellie realized that they never thought of her as someone with any real involvement in Woodlands. After all, she had only told them about her hangovers, the parties she went to, the fellows who came in and out of her life. Perhaps it was only now that they saw another side to her. The feeling that this place had been good to her and was in many ways her home.
“When I was in business,” Donald said, “at the first sign of trouble we always called a meeting around a table to have a conference.”
“When I was a hostess, with anyone who was anyone in the state wanting to come to my dinner parties, I always began with a list,” said Georgia.
“When we ran the house for Father,” Hazel said, “Heather and I would always work out with each other what was the very worst that could happen, and we sort of worked backwards from there.” Heather smiled proudly at her older sister.
“That’s a good idea,” said Donald. “Dealing with the negatives first.”
Ellie pulled up a table and they settled around it.
They would eat sparingly over the Christmas season, no need for festive banquets, they would save money for Kate there for a start.
“I’ll forgo my bonus for looking after you,” Ellie offered.
How much was it, they wanted to know, and were horrified when they heard it was six times the weekly rate.
“But you are pretty terrible,” Ellie said, and they nodded. Almost proudly.
They listed the people they could contact about how much they loved Woodlands. Donald said they might contact a local television station to do a heartwarming interview for Christmas, about how four elderly people had refused all the offers to go to members of their family because they liked being together in their normal surroundings.
“Won’t the members of our families who see it be surprised!” giggled Georgia.
“Wipe their bloody eyes for them,” said Donald.
Kate called when her plane got to the airport at her mother’s town.
“Tell me it’s all right, Ellie,” she said.
“Are you going to do this every day, are you going to waste the profits, meager as they are, on interstate phone calls?”
“What about you taking six times your salary for one way of wasting the profits?” said Kate crossly.
“Oh well, yes, I sort of rethought that.”
“What are you trying to do now, bleed me dry?”
“No, double time will do.”
“Speak to me, Ellie, are any of them alive?” Kate begged.
“Have one quick word, say Happy Christmas to each of them and then hang up, this place isn’t made of money,” Ellie ordered.
They all gave her a greeting.
“We decided not to be fulsome, in case she suspected something,” Donald said.
“Good senior management thinking,” Ellie said, and she got the first genuine smile Donald had managed since he arrived in Woodlands.
* * *
Late that night, they were still planning and structuring. They had cocoa and biscuits. A great car-hooting was heard outside.
“It’s your young man,” said Heather.
“Let him come on and knock at the door like a normal person then,” said Ellie.
Dan arrived. “Didn’t you hear me?” he said. “I called to say that I asked them could you come to help. Told them you’d worked at a place, you know, a place. I didn’t say it was like this.”
“No indeed,” said Ellie.
The Hard Core shook their old heads.
“So if you want to, you can come, company for the journey.”
“Happy Christmas, Dan,” Ellie said.
“Is that a yes or a no?” Dan asked.
“It’s geriatric speak for goodbye,” Ellie said.
They sat in silence while his car roared off.
There was still postal time before Christmas, they must get letters into the mail tomorrow. There were phone calls too. Messages of goodwill to people estranged, cut off, or neglected because of real or imagained slights. Invitations to come and visit before t
he New Year.
“The place looks shabby,” said Georgia, “they might not think it was smart enough. You know the way that some people judge by appearances.”
They agreed to ask local children to come in and whitewash the walls, help with the garden, build up the window boxes. Churches and community groups would cooperate.
On Christmas day they were having a barbecue when the phone rang. Georgia answered.
“No, Kate, better not talk to Ellie, she’s as drunk as a lord, Donald just insisted we get her some wine. She has been absolutely marvelous. How’s your mother, by the way?”
Kate lost her power of speech, and sat down on a chair in the hospital corridor. Ellie was drunk. Georgia was cheerful. Donald had insisted that Ellie have some wine. They had remembered her mother was in hospital. The world was ending.
“I think I’ll get back very soon,” Kate said in a strangled voice.
“Not until your mother is ready to travel,” Georgia said brightly.
“Travel?” Kate squeaked.
“Well, you will be bringing her home?” Georgia said. “That’s what the committee thought.”
“The committee?”
“Yes, we searched for a name but we decided to call ourselves the Hard Core,” Georgia said with the smile that had made her famous years ago, before she had fought with everybody and ended up with no friends.
Miles away, outside the ward where her mother was recovering but would always need permanent residential care, Kate held the phone and hardly dared to think about the spirit of Christmas.
“Kate, I think you should hang up now, Ellie said we must all be very careful of finances if Woodlands is to be the success we all want it to be.”
“Ellie said that?” Kate’s voice was a whisper.
“When she’s sober, which is most of the time, she is a fine person,” said Georgia in a tone that implied the only dissenting opinion had been Kate’s.
“Give my love and thanks to the Hard Core,” said Kate.