Posted by No point being mad without showing it, Verona wrote in her diary, underlined. “That’s what mama always used to say,” she added out loud.
She was sitting alone in a hotel room on the south side of Chicago with several of her diaries laid out before her. Many people already thought that she was certifiable and for a time on medication in London, she had questioned whether she had in fact lost it. But now, arriving in America, though she still behaved oddly, she felt hopeful, confident, perceptive and strong.
She had fallen under a spell of writing about her life and everything she could remember. So stirred was she by these journal entries that she moved from place to place with a briefcase full of papers. She had carried this attaché from London to Florida, then back to London to nurse an ailing daughter. Now, exactly one year later, she flew to Chicago, and from Chicago took a taxi to the Chicago Grand Hotel at 7242 South Clyde Avenue where she was currently hold out.
She had found a job nursing an elderly Jewish woman, not too far away in Deerfield, Illinois. The plan, as she set it out from London, was to spend a few weeks getting to know the city, and then, move out to the suburbs of Deerfield to live with her elderly charge.
People on the plane must have wondered why the old fool was crying, but she just could not stop herself. So churned up with emotions was she that she had two Afro-combs in her handbag, yet could find neither one of them. The comb she borrowed from a stewardess was totally unsuitable. So normally particular about appearance, she arrived at O’Hare International Airport with her hair unkempt, and her face shiny because she had left her powder compact in another handbag. For someone who all though her life had been self-reliant and would never have forgotten those things, normally, she had suddenly become very helpless and feminine like some silly schoolgirl.
She had arrived at O’Hare on time, although the plane had left Heathrow over an hour late. She had no dollar cash on her, of course. Fortunately, the trolleys were free. Then she had to call Toby collect, because she had no change for the telephone, either. But it all went smoothly. Toby sent a Cabbie and Verona paid with an American Express Travellers Cheque. Toby, Harry and Sally were all waiting at the hotel to meet her, and as usual with Toby, Verona felt quite at home.
She had not felt tired at all throughout the day and couldn’t go to sleep that first night. In fact, she had hardly slept these past few days and was up bright and early again this morning. The only thing is that something was missing from her life. She woke in the middle of the night sobbing. Her soul ached. Her eyes looked like an old woman’s suddenly. She felt lost and terribly alone. All her confidence had miraculously deserted her. For once in her life, she felt at a loss, unsure of exactly what she ought to do next.
Bristol Drive, Deerfield, was to be a far cry from Catford, South East London. She would always be grateful to Toby for her kind invitation. It was also very nice to see Toby’s mother, Sally, again. If only briefly. Sally was a fine old lady. When she looked after her in Florida last year, they had a lot of laughs.
One day, when things were not going too well for Sally, Verona had tried to convince her that “none of us is perfect.” Sally gave her a big hug, “Thank you for being so kind, Rona,” she said. Verona was touched. It was not a lot that she did for the old woman. After all, she was being paid to do it. Treating Sally the way that she would want to be treated (should she ever lose her memory any more than she had lost it already, at her age) is the least that she could do.
I do hope that Sally will remember who I am, she wrote. I do hope that she will talk to me while I’m here. There is a lot I can learn from Sally. She’s quite a woman as I discovered in Florida, and not a lot of people know that!
Her good friend Ronda had been a real brick, too, on the journey to Heathrow. That Rupert can be such a “woman.” He’s her children’s first cousin, and he gets a bit carried away, quite flustered in fact. So they didn’t even stop off to pick up her son. Getting to Camberwell should have presented no problem for a “real” man, but Rupert couldn’t get there and get back on the South Circular. So, Raymond was left waiting like a lemon wondering if Rupert had crashed the car and managed to get them all in hospital. Raymond took it quite well when she phoned him from the airport, considering how disagreeable he can be sometimes. She underlined ‘sometimes’.
“Would you be an angel, sweetheart?” she had said to him. “And ask some of your social climbing contacts, preferably in the Charity sector, if they could find a job for a kind hardworking divorcee in her forties? She is fond of animals, but she could be persuaded to live and work with people, and like them too. Her only problem is her vast age but she needs the job because she has a mortgage. She has been unemployed since December 1990 – the same as me. Ronda has been such a dear friend to me, Raymond, I wish I could help her. Friends like her are hard to find. Now end of my begging. But you know you can do it, son. I hope you will. I’ll write.”
She had hung up the phone before he could respond. That was four days and three nights ago. She had hot flushes and night sweats again last night. When she woke up this morning with the pain in her back that made her feel as if one side of her neck had suddenly become shorter than the other, she had to turn a full two hundred and seventy degree angle to see behind her in the fell-length bathroom mirror.
The Jeffrey Express had the sort of heating on yesterday that she first experienced at Swimer House in 1986. She had experienced it several times since, too, including in this very hotel room. There was a sort of bluish ray that immobilised her whole body, her joints, and the place over the shoulders at the base of her neck. At Swimers, the pain in her joints and muscles had affected her neck and chest, seized up her body, and held her like a cripple in a vice.
Yesterday was a warm day in Chicago, but in London between November to April, it is not only cold, but it’s wet and it’s windy. In a ten by eight office the size of her double room at The Chicago Grand, her head and body would get so hot that straight out into the cold she would run. Her eyes and ears would itch, and when she looked at herself in the mirror this morning, she could see exactly why the receptionist at Brockley Road Surgery had taken one look at her in London back then, and sent her to see the nearest available doctor.
Dr Tan said she had an allergic reaction to something or other. He prescribed antihistamine tablets, but the joint and muscle pains persisted, alongside new levels of palpitations, mood swings, and panic attacks. The insomnia and disrupted sleep patterns made her feel ever more depressed and miserable. It got so excruciating at times that she thought of taking her life, but she continued to pretend that she was feeling no pain.
The headaches and flashing blue lights left her convinced that there was something very powerful in the air. A poisonous, colourless, odourless gas, she concluded. But whatever it was, it had to do with the heating system in her office. She was certain of that. But how to prove it?
The spells came in fits and starts at first but with a particular vengeance during one excruciatingly hot summer. They were literally coming about every five minutes in her office at work that year, coupled with the heat, nearly drove her insane.
She was then a 52-years old woman. Yet none of her doctors had considered treatment for the menopause. It certainly did not occur to her that her own body could be ‘naturally’ attacking her with such vengeance. She thought she could “ride it out” at first, but secretly, she feared that the pain would eventually kill her. That was when she decided to put her flat on the market, and to follow her dream of moving to America. Maybe that would stop this pain.
A chubby little English fellow named Terry came to see the property on the first day of showing. He made her an offer on the spot of fifty-two thousand pounds. It was a good price. She had paid £32,000 for it two years previously, and although she had spent about £8,000 doing it up, she was due to make over twenty thousand pounds on a two-bedroom maisonette in a quiet part of South East London. It was a good return on her investment for the times. With forty thousand from the sale of her flat, and a little she had set aside, she was ready to relocate to Queens in New York City.
Her friend Nettie was thinking of setting up her own shop in Harlem over there, selling best quality designer jumpers and cardigans, and even knitted dresses for the plus-size woman. They decided to go into business together. Nettie had a friend with a house locked up in Queens, who would rent it to her. Then, Terry got his mortgage from Leamington Spa Building Society, and it seemed as if she was all set.
© Photography by Newton U Brown.
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