‘Bloody relatives!’ The manager banged the phone down. ‘That was Betty Turner’s son. He’s one of them. Doesn’t come near the place all year round but gets an attack of conscience at Christmas and decides to visit.’
‘Oh! What about–’ ‘
Exactly. What about her teeth!’
Charlie Chaplin, the care home cat, chose that moment to pad into the office. ‘Out, Charlie,’ the manager ordered, without malice. ‘Unless you can tell us where to find those teeth.’
Betty’s dentures had been missing for a week. She had developed the unfortunate habit of removing both the upper and lower plates and putting them on the table while she ate, although her table companion Cora complained loudly that this was unhygienic. Betty countered by pointing out that Cora cleaned her reading glasses with the same handkerchief she used to blow her nose. The two women had struck up a companionship of sorts in the care home, largely based on sniping at each other’s habits.
The overworked and underpaid staff took little notice. The ones who stayed in the job learned to accept the residents’ various versions of reality, and to work around their foibles. They also learned to let distress and grievances go in one ear and out the other. Too much compassion led to burnout. Mealtimes were a matter of routine, so long as each resident was seen to eat something, and so long as the awkward customers did not throw food on the floor or at each other.
What usually happened was that the carer who cleared away the dirty plates wrapped Betty’s teeth in a paper napkin and returned them to the wash glass in her bedroom. This time, no-one remembered having done so.
Cora kept quiet. She had taken the dentures to teach Betty a lesson, but had no real idea where to hide them until she spotted the Christmas tree. As always, it took pride of place in the residents’ lounge, a reminder to many of happier times. A carer hurried across the room when she saw Cora fiddling with the strands of tinsel wound in and out of its green branches. ‘Cora, love, let’s leave the pretty decorations for everyone to enjoy. What have you got there?’
Cora opened her hand to reveal a felt reindeer minus one antler. The carer dropped it into her pocket and settled Cora back in a chair. She failed to notice Betty’s upper plate, gleaming pink and cream among the profusion of fairy lights, tinsel and sparkly decorations.
Delighted with her own cunning, Cora forgot about the lower plate, which was still in her trouser pocket when the carers collected the week’s washing.
Charlie Chaplin got the blame, as he got the blame for many minor incidents. ‘What have you done with Betty’s teeth, you naughty cat?’ The question was rhetorical, a way for the carers to acknowledge his presence as they went about their work.
With his glossy black coat, white shirt front and white paws, Charlie Chaplin was a firm favourite with residents and staff. Oak Tree Lodge had once been a grand Victorian villa, but an extension built in the 1980s had doubled its size. Charlie patrolled both parts of his territory tail held high, slipping out at night to hunt mice in what was left of the garden.
During the day, he headbutted his favourite residents on their ankles and left black and white hairs over all the cushions. Both manager and staff felt that vacuuming up a few hairs was a small price to pay for putting a smile on the residents’ faces.
Many residents led confused, resentful lives, abandoned by relatives who could not cope with their decline. For some, Charlie was the only living being who showed them affection. Like Annie, who so wanted to keep busy ‘helping’ the care staff. Usually, they asked her to dust the windowsills of the entrance hall, which she did, back and forth, over and over again. Unless she encountered Charlie sunning himself on one of the window ledges. Then she tickled his ears and talked to him. Charlie flicked his tail in acknowledgement.
He found an enemy in Ms Miller, the new cook. Ms Miller had graduated from catering college with top marks; the manager lost no time in placing her photo and certificates in a prominent position on the home’s display board. Apart from a genuine love of food, Ms Miller had a passion for cleanliness, leading by example and scrubbing the kitchen equipment to within an inch of its life. ‘I want that floor clean enough to eat off before you go home,’ she barked at her team. They obeyed, grudgingly, but since no-one could accuse her of idleness, the grumbles were muted.
In theory, the manager and her staff agreed with the requirement for scrupulous hygiene, but life had taught them to turn a blind eye to some regulations if that kept the residents comfortable. Good cheer was too much to hope for, but a comfortable atmosphere eased the load on the staff. The manager knew certain residents enticed Charlie into their bedrooms, and even up onto their beds, although the rules forbade it. She made sure Ms Miller’s diktats stopped at the kitchen door.
Until the night Charlie Chaplin found the kitchen door open. Betty’s upper denture had fallen out of the Christmas tree in the lounge right under his nose. The smell was irresistible and Charlie worried at it like prey, rolling it over and batting it along the corridor.
Somewhere a door banged. Stopped in his tracks, Charlie’s ears swivelled. The wind rattled the windows, but the house remained sunk in slumber. Charlie followed a new, enticing smell to the door of forbidden territory. The scent was all the more enticing for that, and he squeezed his lithe body through the now open door.
With a leap onto the counter worktop, he discovered a chicken carcase that had been left to cool under a mesh dome. He knocked dome and plate onto the floor, on top of the teeth.
What were plastic teeth compared to succulent chicken bones? Charlie crunched, nibbled, slept, and nibbled again.
The first person to arrive in the kitchen the next morning was a trainee. By now Charlie was digesting his feast in the residents’ lounge, and all she saw in her panic was a broken plate and scattered bones. She scooped up the bones and set them on another plate. A quick mop of the floor and all appeared normal. No need to report the unfortunate accident to that pernickety Ms Miller. She would only make a tremendous fuss and want to fill in an incident form. Besides, didn’t she always boast you could eat off her floors?
Thus Betty’s upper plate, trapped under the chicken’s breastbone, found its way into nourishing, homemade soup. Despite her martinet tendencies, Ms Miller knew the art of using up leftovers, and conjured up tasty dishes on a limited budget. It was one of the reasons the manager put up with her.
Ladled out by a distracted member of the care staff, Betty’s denture plate plopped into Priscilla’s soup bowl. As ill luck would have it, Priscilla decided the teeth looked sparkly clean – as indeed they did after simmering for hours in chicken broth. When no-one was looking, Priscilla swapped the sparkly white teeth for her own yellowing ones. They did not quite fit, but that did not matter. She admired herself in the mirror every day and the carers were too busy to notice that her top and bottom teeth no longer matched.
On the other hand, they beamed with relief on reuniting Betty with both dentures. ‘Betty, love, we found them!’ True, Betty’s teeth were no longer the same colour but that was not surprising when the upper plate had been found in a soup bowl and the lower plate had been through a hot wash.
‘There’s a poltergeist at work,’ one carer declared. ‘Something has disturbed the spirits in the old house. There will be more trouble, you’ll see. ’ But she was known for the doom-laden interpretation of her own daily horoscope, which she downloaded in the tea break and read aloud, so the other carers took no notice. Some happenings were destined to remain a mystery.
Poor Betty could only mumble that her teeth did not fit properly, but the staff patted her hand and moved on. Betty’s family made little sense of her mumbling either, and their Christmas visit did not last long. Betty’s face crumpled with distress and her rheumy eyes filled with tears.
‘Bloody relatives,’ the care home manager huffed as she locked the security door behind them. ‘One visit a year, and he thinks that gives him the right to interrogate me like he’s the Spanish Inquisition. Try doing the job 365 days a year, sonny.’ She paused to compose her own ruffled feathers before scooping up Charlie Chaplin and placing him on Betty’s lap. ‘Look, here’s Charlie come to say hello. You know how much he likes you.’
Charlie Chaplin, his crime unpunished, purred a greeting. Betty, recalling the warm weight of long-deceased pets, stroked him in silence. If she did not attempt to talk, her teeth felt almost comfortable.
About the author
Madeleine McDonald's published work ranges from newspaper columns to Shakespearean sonnets and historical novels.
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