Page 7 of Wish You Were Here
Saskia
‘I think I need to be single for a while,’ I say to Lou, while he moves half a slightly burnt sausage around his plate.
There’s a small dollop of mashed potato left and a puddle of tomato sauce.
‘Clearly, I have a problem with men. I keep making terrible choices, so maybe being celibate for a while and focusing on my singing is what I need to do. What do you reckon?’
‘Celibate?’ says Lou. ‘I’d give my right arm for a last crack at a good shag, love, and you’re choosing it? Sounds fucking barmy to me, but what do I know, eh?’
I started working at Marrickville Retirement Village five years ago to make some extra money, and hopefully make a difference.
The term ‘Retirement Village’ conjures up images of a lovely suburban, carefully planned out community of aesthetically pleasing homes where old people can spend their last years on earth, cohabiting with like-minded people in a relaxed, comforting environment playing board games and reminiscing about ‘the good old days’.
In reality, it’s a couple of ugly old buildings on the edge of Newtown and Marrickville, where old people go to die because no-one else wants to take care of them.
The home smells like an unpleasant combination of disinfectant layered with subtle notes of cheap air freshener and lingering bottom notes of over-cooked meat.
Luckily or not, depending on how you look at it, I’m sitting with Lou, who wears aggressively strong aftershave, and so that’s all I can smell.
Lou is seventy-eight, his wife died ten years earlier, and he has a son, who has never been to visit, has poor eyesight, a bad back, likes to complain about everything – mostly young people and the government – and for someone of his age and physical condition, is surprisingly horny.
He’s lost weight every year he’s been at the home because in his own words, ‘I’m just not fucking hungry anymore, eh.
’ So, despite his reasonably tall frame, he is thin, has a head of almost white hair, and like most men of his generation, he still wears a smart shirt and trousers every day.
In some ways, being with Lou reminds me of the last few months with Dad.
Towards the end, when I visited Dad in hospice, he had lost so much weight that his face seemed to have melted, with sallow skin and patches of hair missing from the chemotherapy that had never fully regrown.
But despite this heartbreaking transformation, I was moved by the incredible nurses who took care of him.
Even when Dad could barely string together a few sentences, they would sit with him, and they made the end of his life better.
Mum and I would sit with him for hours too, especially during those last awful few weeks, and the staff would offer us food, drinks and it was that experience that made me want to do the same.
I couldn’t work in the same sort of care home that Dad was in because the memories were too visceral, too closely linked to the greatest pain I had suffered, and so I chose a retirement home instead.
I could still make a difference and spend time with people who didn’t have much left.
‘I keep sleeping with absolute losers, idiots, and men who are only after one thing,’ I say and Lou laughs, before it collapses into a wheeze and then a cough.
‘Sounds like every bloke I’ve ever known, love,’ says Lou once he’s settled down again.
‘Let me guess, but not you?’ I say, and Lou jabs the burnt sausage with his fork.
‘No, love, not me, although my wife would probably have something to say about that, if she were still here,’ says Lou, before he adds as he always does whenever he mentions her. ‘God rest her bloody soul.’
Despite his constant sexual innuendo and suggestions that if I ever wanted to make an old man very happy, he’d be happy to let me give him a ‘special’ bed bath, I know he misses his wife.
They were the real deal he often tells me.
‘Talk about beautiful, she was the one all the blokes wanted, and guess who she picked?’ In moments when he isn’t being wildly inappropriate, I catch looks of sadness in his eyes.
The look of someone who is being forced to live out their days without the only person they wanted to spend time with.
I want a love like that. A mind-blowing, all-consuming, passionate love and not men like best man Brad.
‘I’m turning thirty soon, and I’m going to take a vow of celibacy until then. What do you reckon?’ I say to Lou, who picks up the sausage, and just before he puts it in his mouth, he says.
‘I reckon you’ve never been with someone who knows what they’re doing.’
‘And what, that someone is you?’
‘Just saying, love. When it’s done right, you aren’t taking a break from it, are you? It’s like the perfect meat pie. No-one in their right mind is abstaining from the best meat pie,’ he says, and then he finally puts the sausage in his mouth and starts chewing.
‘What about vegetarians?’ I say adroitly.
‘Fuck the veggos!’ says Lou, offering up another of his ‘takes on the world,’ before he adds, ‘although they’re better than the fucking vegans, eh.’
We’re sitting in the dining room, which hasn’t been decorated since the 1980s and perhaps even before that.
Every piece of furniture and decor is older than me, so it’s like I’m working in a museum.
Even the menu has a distinctly old person feel to it with lots of mashed potato, meatloaf, over-cooked vegetables, and very sweet, cooked fruit for dessert with custard.
After dinner, they have the weekly quiz in the lounge, and then it’s sixties music night, which is always a blast. Nothing quite says ‘Swinging Sixties’ like Cathy putting her hip out again, and Alan trying to get everyone to do the limbo, which means at least one person overdoing it and having to have a bit of a lie down.
Life at Marrickville Retirement Village is full-on, and you have to have your wits about you at all times – especially around Lou Sanders.
We’re about to leave the dining room and head to the quiz when Lou stops me.
‘Can I give you one piece of advice, love?’
‘Depends on what it is, Lou.’
‘Don’t close yourself off to love because you never know what’s around the corner,’ Lou says with a smile, before he walks off towards the lounge.
Is Lou right? Is shutting myself off from falling in love even possible?
I don’t know, but I do know that after Jess’s wedding and waking up with best man Brad, I have never felt lower, and surely that means I have to change.
What’s the definition of madness? Oh yeah, fucking the same men over and over again and expecting a proper relationship.
I am on the bus heading back to Glebe when my phone rumbles, and when I look down, it says I have a new email.
I wonder if it’s from Ben. The strangest thing has happened.
The other day, I got a rando email from some bloke called Ben in London.
He works for an asset management company, and he was talking about a buy to let opportunity in Wapping, and clearly he had sent the email to the wrong person.
Perhaps there is another Saskia Conway in Sydney, who is leading the successful version of my life, and can afford to invest in property in London.
I could have deleted the email, gone about my day, but I decided to have a bit of a joke and reply.
But then something weird happened. Ben replied.
I replied to his reply, and now we’re sort of whatever the modern version of a pen pal is.
Email mates? I look down at my phone to see another email from Ben. This is number eight.
Dearest Saskia,
You are right about the weather in London, and I am, of course, very jealous of the weather and the beaches in Sydney.
Although I can take the train and be sitting on a pebbly beach in Brighton, eating fish and chips, while being attacked by vicious seagulls in just over an hour!
Do you know what an asset management company is?
What is it that you do in Sydney? My ex-girlfriend – completely bonkers and attacked me with a ball of burrata cheese in a restaurant, but that’s another story – had a gap year and lived in Australia.
She said she loved it and would happily live in Sydney, except for the spiders!
Have you ever seen a giant spider? Not that I’m terrified of spiders, but the ones in England are normal size and can’t kill you while you sleep!
I think this is a perfectly rational fear. Is there anything you’re afraid of?
All the best,
Ben, Asset Manager, Clapham, London, England x
I read the email with a smile on my face before the bus pulls up at my stop.
I get off and walk towards home. Our house is a Victorian terrace just off Glebe Point Road, minutes from the buzz of all the shops, bars and restaurants, and within twenty minutes of Sydney CBD.
It’s the house I grew up in and one I could never afford myself.
It’s only a two-bed, so Mum has the front bedroom, which has the gorgeous balcony overlooking the street, while I get the bedroom with a view of the backyard.
To be fair to Mum, she’s done a good job of making the house look immaculate, and even now, despite some of Brian’s things infiltrating the house – Peruvian fertility penis statue, no thanks, Brian!
– it still looks fantastic. Dad used to do all the house stuff, but since he passed, Mum has taken that job on herself.