St Anthony of Padua , livre ebook

Andrews UK - Lyn Funnell

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39 pages

English

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St Anthony of Padua is the Patron Saint of the Old. Unfortunately, he seems to be missing from the UK nowadays! I feel that if Charles Dickens was still alive, he would be just as upset and angry about the plight of our Senior Citizens as he was about Victorian children. The secret cruelty that they suffer in many Homes is horrendous. Drugs are often given out like sweets, to people who don't need them, just to keep them calm and docile. Unfortunately, some of them are so drugged that they can't control themselves and they're classed as senile and incontinent when they shouldn't be. This novelette contains secret information that I've been given. It's a work of fiction, written to make you think, as well as to entertain you. I hope that it makes you sit up and take notice! Our Old People should be given more dignity in their Twilight Years. After all, it will be our turn one day!

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Short story

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	18 février 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781849893237
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page

St Anthony Of Padua

By
Lyn Funnell

Publisher Information

St Anthony Of Padua published in 2010 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

Copyright © Lyn Funnell

The right of Lyn Funnell to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

St Anthony Of Padua

The bed was damp again. Forcing her body to sit up, Martha Greenham eased her arthritic legs on to the floor and placing a hand each side of her, she bounced herself upright. She just managed to make it to the toilet before her bladder completely lost control.
Luckily she’d woken up in time. Oh why was Mother Nature so cruel? Martha painfully stood up and flushed the toilet. Then she took one of the moisture wipes out of the pack on the shelf and wiped herself clean. She threw it down the toilet and washed her hands.
She hobbled back to the bedroom, hesitated and walked over to the window. Pulling aside one of the curtains she stared down at the garden.
A thin mist floated above the ground, making the lawn appear white and frosty. At the end of the garden a bramble poked out of the top of the greenhouse, clearly visible in the moonlight. It was certainly green now, Martha thought cynically. You could hardly see through the windows.
For nearly 40 years she and Elliott had lovingly laboured together, turning the rough area of land into a garden that was admired by everyone who saw it. It had even featured in a homes magazine once.
How they’d enjoyed the first new potatoes of the season, and Cos lettuces with sweet fruity tomatoes from the greenhouse.
Elliott had been proud of his fruit and veg. He’d carefully selected the gooseberries, blackcurrants and raspberries and Martha had made pies with them. He used to make home-made wine to use up any glut of produce and they’d sip it on the patio in the evenings, becoming quite giggly sometimes.
In the autumn they’d had to fight a constant battle against the falling leaves and when they’d finished they’d sit side by side cupping bowls of home-made vegetable soup in their mittened hands. But they’d never felt cold after all their exercise.
The garden was deteriorating fast. Martha paid someone to come along weekly to look after it. He worked at a fast pace, mowing the lawn, cutting the hedges and roughly tearing out a few weeds. He never neatened the edges of the lawn or dead-headed flowers. He wasn’t a gardener. He was a non-caring money-grabbing maintenance man. The garden meant nothing to him. After he’d finished he would collect his money – in cash, he insisted, load his noisy great mower and his electric hedge- clippers into his 4 x 4 and roar off to the next helpless, gullible customer who couldn’t manage without him.
Martha closed the curtain. Pulling back the duvet she lay on the edge of the dry side of the bed.
In the silvery light she could see her late husband’s photos on her dressing-table. If only he could see how his Little Queen had ended up! Little Queen, his pet name for her. Martha had called him her Sir Lancelot. And here she was now, an incontinent, arthritic, wrinkled old Little Queen.
Tears filled her eyes and trickled down her thin cheeks. It was no good, she had to face the fact that she couldn’t manage their 4-bedroom house or look after herself any more. She was deteriorating as fast as the garden. She was going to seed. Going to pot. These were her autumn years.
Martha quietly cried herself to sleep, dreading the future.

***

There was a parade of shops round the corner where Martha could buy her daily needs, like newspapers and milk. But once a week her daughter Alex took her into town. Martha enjoyed browsing in shop windows. She and Alex always stopped for a coffee and a wickedly delicious cake in an Italian cafe, and sometimes they’d go somewhere for lunch. Then they’d end up in the supermarket to do their main shopping. Alex unloaded her mother’s bags from the car and Martha put everything away. Then they’d have a cup of tea and a chat.
Lately Martha had found it a great effort to keep up with Alex, but she hadn’t said anything as she looked forward to their mother/daughter outings. Alex knew though, and she’d slowed down her pace. She’d always been close to her mother. But she was waiting for Martha to call it a day when she’d had enough. And Martha wanted to keep going.
Alex turned up early and let herself in the front door. ‘Hello Mum!’ she called, then she ran up the stairs. And she caught Martha struggling to change her dirty sheets.
Martha paused, looking and feeling guilty and embarrassed. ‘Um, I had a slight accident in the night’, she explained. She dropped the sheet and shielded her eyes with her hand, feeling hot tears ready to fall.
‘Oh Mum’. Alex walked up and placed her arm round her mother’s neck. ‘It’s no big deal. It happens to loads of women who’ve had children. I was reading about it the other day. Even I have some near misses sometimes’.
‘It’s a bit more than a near miss. More like a direct hit!’ Martha flopped onto the bed. ‘Oh Alex, it’s no good. I just can’t cope on my own any more. I can’t keep up with everything. It’s all getting on top of me!’ The tears came then. Martha couldn’t stop them any more.
Alex gently patted her on the back. ‘Don’t worry Mum, we’ll sort something out. I promise’.
‘No, Alex’.
‘Oh come on Tommy, she just can’t manage on her own any more’.
‘We’ve only got a 3-bedroom house. There’s no room’.
‘We could convert the garage into a granny flat. It would add to the value of the house too’.
Tommy winced at the sound of raised voices and thuds upstairs. ‘I’m sorry Alex. I already have to come home from a hard day’s work to the sound of two teenage monsters who we’re very fond of for some strange primeval reason, either playing their terrible music at full volume or trying to kill each other, and I don’t want to have to smile and talk politely to your mother as well!’ He placed a hand over Alex’s. ‘You know I’ve always been very fond of Martha, but I can’t face having her living under the same roof as us. It’s an infringement on our privacy. I don’t want old lady’s stuff all over the place’. He rushed to the door and shouted up the stairs, ‘WILL you two stop fighting! And turn that row down. I can’t hear myself speaking!’
‘Please, Tommy. What’s she going to do?’
Tommy sat down again. ‘Look, we’ll find her somewhere really nice-’
‘I’m not putting my mother in a home!’
‘Listen Alex. There’s a great choice of homes now. She’ll be with like-minded people of her own generation. These places are carefully monitored nowadays. They have a great choice of activities, and their own rooms with their own possessions’. He winced again as the volume upstairs increased. ‘In fact, I quite fancy going in to one myself for SOME PEACE! And the sooner we send those two away to Uni, or whatever they call it, then marry them off, the easier our life will be! Just think, we’ll be able to have sex in the afternoon again’. He nuzzled Alex’s neck but she pulled away, biting her lip.
‘I’m not happy about it, Tommy. Not my mum. She’s always been so independent’.
Her husband sat up with a sigh. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll take our time looking, and find the right place. And she can still come here for holidays. She won’t have any housework to do, and there’ll be constant medical help available. And you know I’ll help out financially and with running everyone to and fro. It’s the best thing for her, Alex. In fact it’s the best thing for us all’.
Alex nodded her head reluctantly. ‘I suppose so. But I’m not convinced’.

***

Martha dusted around her bedroom. She used to get up early and dust every day. She waited until the dust mounted up now. She used to enjoy it and sing while she did it. She rarely sang any more. Her legs ached and she kept having to stop because she felt weak and tired.
On the landing, to the right of the top of the stairs was a stained-glass window with silver-framed photos of the family on the window-sill. Martha had neglected it for ages and the dust was too thick to ignore now. The sun glistening through the glass showed how bad it was. She reached out to grasp a photo and everything spun round. Her legs gave way under her and she knew that she was falling and helpless to do anything about it. She tried to grab the banisters but she missed.
She must have blacked out with the shock. The next thing she knew, she was lying at the bottom of the stairs. Her arm, head and the bottom of her spine were hurting and there was blood on the back of her hand.
Moving slowly backwards, Martha hoisted herself onto one of the stairs and checked herself over. She was still clutching the duster. The blood was from a graze on her right knee-cap, and she’d bitten her bottom lip. Her tights were torn and laddered in several places. She had a small bump on her forehead and her arm was going to have a very dark bruise on it tomorrow.
‘Oh you stupid, stupid woman!’ she muttered. She’d always been so steady on her feet.
There was nobody to call for help. Elliott would have been there at once and swept her up into his arms. He’d have been so concerned about her, and she’