The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home

by Joanna Nell

Genres: General Fiction; Humor & Satire; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

The joyous, charming and utterly irresistible new novel from the author of mega-bestseller The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village
At nearly ninety, retired nature writer Hattie Bloom prefers the company of birds to people, but when a fall lands her in a nursing home she struggles to cope with the loss of independence and privacy. From the confines of her 'room with a view' of the carpark, she dreams of escape.
Fellow 'inmate', the gregarious, would-be comedian Walter Clements also plans on returning home as soon as he is fit and able to take charge of his mobility scooter.
When Hattie and Walter officially meet at The Night Owls, a clandestine club run by Sister Bronwyn and her dog, Queenie, they seem at odds. But when Sister Bronwyn is dismissed over her unconventional approach to aged care, they must join forces -- and very slowly an unlikely, unexpected friendship begins to grow.
Full of wisdom and warmth, The Great Escape from Woodlands Nursing Home is a gorgeously poignant, hilarious story showing that it is never too late to laugh -- or to love.
Praise for Joanna Nell
'Whip-smart dialogue, humour and sarcasm. A heart-warming story, extremely well written and highly addictive' Sun Herald
'Lively and whimsical ... with some serious points to make about ageing, love, community and friendship' Sydney Morning Herald
'This heartwarming story about growing old gracefully - and disgracefully ... is a funny, witty and thoroughly enjoyable read for all ages' Daily Telegraph

Release date: October 27, 2020

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 384

Sample

NEVER ONE TO DWELL ON THE PAST, HATTIE BLOOM HURRIED from hers – the last few days of it, at least – and headed for the waiting taxi. She wouldn’t look back, determined to put the whole unfortunate episode behind her. There were only so many sing-alongs, only so many games of carpet bowls and bingo that a sane person could endure. Legs eleven? If only. She’d settle for two that actually worked.

The taxi driver held the small plastic bag of Hattie’s belongings and her walking stick while she wrestled her unyielding limbs onto the back seat. He was in his fifties, she guessed, or perhaps forties after a hard life, and smelled strongly of onions. With his sweat-stained shirt and open-mouthed breathing, he wouldn’t have been her first choice, but Hattie couldn’t afford to be picky when it came to getaway drivers. This was, after all, her one and only chance to escape from Woodlands Nursing Home.

Back in the driver’s seat he addressed her via the rear-view mirror. ‘Where to, love?’

She gave the address.

The driver started the meter. The little red numbers were already more than Hattie could afford, and they hadn’t gone anywhere yet. Unsure of the correct protocol for tipping at a nursing home, she’d left a pile of small change – all she had – on her bedside table before she left. With her wallet and pockets emptied she hoped the driver would accept a cheque at the other end.

When the driver asked Hattie if she would prefer the windows open or closed and her choice of radio station, she shrugged that she didn’t mind and pleaded silently for him to hurry. Her knotty fingers worried at the handle of the walking stick balanced across her lap. She risked a backwards glance as the taxi pulled out of the covered portico into the sun, past the ornamental fountain in the shape of a leaping fish and down the short driveway. So far, so good.

At the road, the taxi came to a halt waiting for a gap in the line of stationary traffic. From her bedroom window, Hattie had watched this daily procession of children to and from the nearby school. They walked scuffed-toed in ones and twos, or small untidy groups, staggering like turtles beneath their giant backpacks. A few rode bikes, but far too many were chauffeured to the drop-off point outside the main entrance. She had hoped to avoid the crush of traffic at this time of the morning, but an earlier sprinkling of rain had caused chaos and narrowed her window of opportunity. Dozens of parents fearing their delicate offspring might dissolve on the slightest contact with water now clogged Woodlands Road with their armour-plated people movers.

‘I’m in a terrible hurry,’ said Hattie, now gripping the seatbelt like a lifeline.

‘Don’t tell me you’re running away?’ The driver grinned into the mirror as if he had all the time in the world, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music that sounded to Hattie’s ear like the cries of a wounded animal.

Running away? Hattie scoffed at the irony. Only yesterday had she been given official clearance to walk, let alone run.

‘I’ve been walking all my life without official clearance,’ she’d tried to protest in a three-way tussle with the nurse and the physiotherapist. What she lacked in physical strength, Hattie more than made up for in steely determination, and she’d managed to bargain her way out of a four-wheeled walking frame in favour of a single walking stick.

‘Can I have a wooden one?’

‘They don’t make wooden sticks anymore,’ the physio had replied wearily. So, Hattie settled for one made from stainless steel. Her fingers traced the cool lightweight metal and she had the sudden urge to twirl it like a drum major with a baton. It might come in handy as a weapon too, should the need arise. You could never be too careful in the suburbs.

The driver’s eyebrows twitched in the mirror waiting for an answer. Was he on to her?

‘I’ve been on a short convalescence.’ Shorter than planned. Plenty long enough.

‘So, you’re not escaping, then?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. This is a nursing home, not a prison.’

This was sufficient reassurance to turn the driver’s frown into a crinkled grin. For a moment, Hattie worried he’d spotted the pyjamas under her coat.

It was true. Woodlands Nursing Home was not a prison. Technically, she was free to walk out the front door at any time. If she hadn’t been doped up on morphine after the operation, she would have told the surgeon and the social worker where they could stick their ‘respite’ and discharged herself there and then. But things had snowballed.

The driver flicked idly between radio stations. Woodlands Road was in gridlock. A horn sounded, then another. Soon there was a cacophony of toots and beeps as somewhere out of sight, patience morphed into indignation. Hattie prayed the taxi driver was more restrained with his horn. The last thing she needed was to attract attention before they were even off the property. The meter ticked over, but by now Hattie was beyond worrying about the cost of her liberty.

‘What’s the hold-up?’ Her mouth was so dry she could barely speak.

‘Fender-bender in the kiss-and-drop zone,’ said the driver with the nonchalance that suggested this wasn’t an isolated incident.

Hattie’s palms grew sweaty on the plastic handle of her walking stick. Pulling the seatbelt loose, she turned and looked back at the concrete building behind her. She counted the windows to the right of the portico until she found her room. Old Kent Road on the whimsical Monopoly-themed layout had been advertised as having a ‘community view’ – in reality this meant her room looked out onto the car park and the main road. The tiny silver lining was that she could watch the comings and goings from her window, which at least helped to alleviate the daily boredom. Nights were another matter. In the darkness, her window became a mirror reflecting the walls of the room that felt like a cell, and her face, a nightly reminder that she was old and for the first time in her life totally dependent. Even with the curtains drawn, Hattie had lain awake staring at the textured ceiling tiles and the air-conditioning vents that kept the entire facility at a constant twenty-three degrees. There could be a second Ice Age outside and none of the residents of Woodlands Nursing Home would be any the wiser. Night after night she had wrestled with sleep; her body dodged it, sparred with it and punched it away whenever it came close. The harder she struggled towards unconsciousness, the harder it fought back. Sleep was as out of reach as the ocean bed, and like a diver without a weight belt, she simply couldn’t sink deep enough to touch it.

When she had finally managed to drop off, she’d been woken by the click of her bedroom door and a torch shined into her eyes. She’d cried out in fear.

‘Just checking to see if you’re asleep,’ the nurse had said. Long after the woman and her torch had retreated into the darkness, Hattie had remained wide awake, alert and vigilant to every sound and shadow. It was easy to see why authorities used sleep deprivation as a method of torture. The staff were only doing their jobs, naturally, but she’d had enough. If she ever wanted to sleep again, she needed to get home.

‘Isn’t there another route?’

Ominously, the taxi driver turned off the engine. ‘Sorry, love,’ he said. ‘No one’s going anywhere until this gets sorted out.’ He pointed towards the melee where two women in matching figure-hugging sports wear and tight ponytails spoke into their mobile phones, indifferent to the chaos they had caused.

Hattie picked at her thumb. She pulled loose shard after loose shard until she had a little pile of skin in her lap. If everything had gone according to plan she would be home by now. Once she’d made sure the Angophora tree was safe she could relax completely. Only when she saw with her own eyes the owls in their hollow would the nightmare be over.

She had been away from home too long. She had missed the familiar screech of the boisterous cockatoos and the kookaburras’ cackle. She had missed the gentle pock-pocking of the frogs from their damp hollow at night and of course the oh-woop of her powerful owls. It was time to leave behind the plastic-wrapped mattress that puffed and sighed whenever she shifted position, surprisingly comfortable as it was. Beds, she was fairly sure, weren’t meant to come with sound effects. She wouldn’t miss the pillow; it made her feel as if she was being suffocated by a giant marshmallow.

Only a short taxi ride away, her own bed was waiting to welcome her home. She’d been conceived in that bed and then born in it. With Woodlands Nursing Home behind her, it was safe to assume she would one day die in it too. The idea of buying a new bed had never occurred to Hattie. Not that she could afford one. It wasn’t so bad. The springs and what remained of the stuffing had settled around the contours of her body over the years. The mattress had moulded to her, and vice versa, her ageing spine was now curved and bed-shaped.

It was her pillow she missed most. Hattie couldn’t wait to press her nose into the faded cotton pillowslip and inhale her own sleepy breath. Was there anything that smelled more of home than a pillow? If she listened too, ear against the feathers, she could still hear the echo of her mother’s distinctive heartbeat.

The taxi was hot and stuffy in spite of the cool air blowing through the vents. All too conscious of her recent breakfast pushing up against her diaphragm, she took big gulps of air and clawed at the collar of her blouse. At the point she thought the smell of onions would claim her, the traffic started to flow once more. The wheels had barely moved when a hand slammed down hard on the taxi’s roof, followed by shouting.

‘Stop!’

If she were a Hollywood fugitive, this would be the cue for screeching tyres and the big chase. She would clutch her improbably light suitcase – suitcases always appeared empty in the movies – and make her getaway, only for the authorities to capture her again later. But this wasn’t the big screen and Hattie didn’t have a suitcase, let alone anything to put inside one. She had a plastic bag containing a spare pair of donated pyjamas, slippers, dressing-gown, and the clothes she’d been wearing when the ambulance arrived to find her broken at the foot of the tree.

‘Mrs Bloom!’ A face appeared at the window, a hand now motioning for the driver to lower the window. ‘Where are you going?’

Hattie’s door opened. Two smiling, uniformed women gestured for her to step out of the taxi and into a waiting wheelchair.

‘Now come along, Mrs Bloom,’ said one of the women, leaning in to undo the seatbelt. ‘Why don’t you come back inside and have a nice cup of tea?’

‘But I need to get home.’ Hattie clung to the back of the driver’s seat with strong pale fingers but somehow, gently and skilfully, the two women managed to extricate her from the taxi into the wheelchair. The driver was appeased with a twenty but not before he’d mouthed a silent ‘sorry’ to Hattie. He was still standing, watching as the wheelchair headed back up the drive, past the ornamental fish. Hattie looked back and they exchanged a final wave as the morning sun bowed to the shade of the portico.

She hadn’t noticed the sign over the entrance when she’d arrived: Woodlands Nursing Home. Putting life in your years.

As she slumped mute and resigned in the wheelchair, a high tide of pain returned to Hattie’s hip. She’d run out of fight. For now. Her body might be a prisoner, but her mind and her spirit would remain free as long as she let them.

Instead of punishment or judgement, the women made breezy conversation as if nothing unusual had happened. ‘The good news is you’re still in plenty of time for carpet bowls, Mrs Bloom.’

‘It’s Miss Bloom,’ Hattie protested. At least that was one shackle she had managed to avoid.

WALTER WAS RUNNING OUT OF HIDING PLACES. THE VOID between the back of his pressure-relieving cushion and the vinyl of his electric recliner had served him well but had reached capacity. Three empty Scotch bottles and a month’s worth of medication now sat uncomfortably behind his buttocks, barely concealed by one of Sylvia’s crocheted cushions. So far he had stayed one step ahead of the revolving door of care staff, but he would be found out eventually. Damn pills. He’d take the puffy ankles any day over the endless trips to the bathroom, each one a mini-marathon of effort followed by the disappointing dot–dot–dash sprinkled against the bowl. At least he was getting his money’s worth – every trip made the expense of the en-suite more affordable.

He had a visitor. There was barely time to sit back down as a boy appeared in the doorway. Walter hastily disguised the clinking and crunching sounds with a cough.

‘James! What a lovely surprise.’

It was difficult to see his grandson’s face beneath that foppish fringe. Perhaps that was the idea. Walter felt a tug of sympathy for the lanky kid. He wanted to tell him to stand up straighter. There was plenty of time later on for that slouch. Walter pinned back his own shoulders, silently urging James to do the same.

‘Hey, Grandpa,’ said the boy.

‘Where’s your mum?’

James flicked his fringe towards the door. Walter saw his daughter standing outside in the corridor talking to the tea lady. Her passive-aggressive head tilt and thin-lipped smile suggested more than chit-chat. Walter could only make out snippets of the conversation. Something about biscuits.

Naturally he looked forward to visits from his family. More precisely, twice-weekly visits from Marie, who dragged James along at respectable intervals. When he wasn’t busy with Taekwondo or Jiu Jitsu or whatever his latest thing was.

‘How’s school?’

‘Good,’ replied the boy, collapsing rubber-limbed into a chair near the window. The chubby toddler who’d always laughed at his grandfather’s face-pulling was now an etiolated kid, growing as quickly as Walter was shrinking, all but oblivious to the world beyond his miniature screen. His eyes slid back to the mobile phone in his hand as it chirped a tinny tune that reminded Walter of a barrel organ at a fair.

Sylvia was the one who had insisted Walter write the cheque two Christmases ago for the latest piece of technology that the boy protested he was the very last of his friends to own, dismissing Walter’s suggestion of a train set or Scalextric. ‘I don’t think they play with that sort of thing anymore,’ she’d said. Sylvia had always made such a fuss of James, the late-arriving grandchild who’d been as much a surprise to the bewildered doctors as to career-minded Marie and her childless-by-choice husband. But Marie had risen to the challenge of parenthood, like every other task she’d set herself. The impatient little girl who’d cast aside the baby doll that wet itself had grown into a doting mother.

In turn, Walter had always wanted to be a good grandfather to his precious only grandchild. He’d planned to take the lad to the science museum, and teach him how to fish and whittle wood. Somehow the plans had stayed as just that. Once upon a time there had been all the time in the world. Somehow, he’d blinked and missed it, the days so slow, the years so fast.

‘Am I going to have to confiscate that?’

Walter stiffened, trying not to move. Had she spotted his last bottle, containing only dregs, poking from beneath the skirt of his reclining chair? Marie stood with her hands on her hips. Glowering at her son. James’s smile disappeared, as did the mobile phone into his pocket. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘Kids, honestly.’ Marie leaned down to kiss the top of her father’s head. ‘I’ve lost count of the times I’ve told him to put that thing away.’

‘What thing?’ asked Walter. He tried to pull Marie into a hug. She pulled away.

‘New mobile, Grandpa,’ said James. ‘Want to see?’

‘No!’ Marie interjected. ‘He’s obsessed with it,’ she added. ‘Can’t help himself. It’s like a compulsion for him.’

With that, she began her usual routine: tidying and straightening the newspapers, squaring up the tissue box and glasses case on the bedside table, then heading to Walter’s wardrobe to repeatedly ball and un-ball pairs of identical black socks in the drawer. He’d noticed the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and white corkscrew hairs sprouting from her temples. His little girl was an ageing woman.

‘Did they find your missing cardigan?’ With a frown, Marie moved a single empty coat hanger to the exact centre of the hanging rail.

She had always been a tidy child, lining up her teddies and dolls, something Walter assumed she got from her mother. She’d become worse after Sylvia died. That was over twelve months ago now.

‘It’s only temporary,’ Marie had assured him when she’d handed him the brochure for Woodlands Nursing Home.

He’d handed it straight back. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he’d scoffed. ‘I don’t need a nursing home.’

It was true the past few months had been tough. He and Sylvia had been married six decades; he was simply going through a period of adjustment. That’s what the counsellor had said. The truth was he didn’t want to adjust. If he couldn’t hold on to his wife, he could at least hold on to the pain and the nagging guilt that he could have been a better husband. Anything was better than the numb empty nothingness of loss.

‘You’re coping so well,’ everyone had said at first. Like riding a bicycle with a slow puncture, Walter had battled on for as long as he could before he finally wobbled and fell off.

After several minutes of holding a conversation with his daughter’s back, Walter said, ‘Don’t worry about the cardigan now, love.’ No doubt she would order an immediate search party for the missing garment. Things had a habit of disappearing at Woodlands. Cardigans, socks, dentures and hearing aids alike, all vanishing into thin air. People too. Walter would get to know someone then they would disappear, never to be seen again. A laminated butterfly sign Blu-Tacked to their door at the point of no return and then a few hours – or days – later, poof. Gone. Sometimes Walter found himself staring round the communal dining table wondering who would be next to cark it.

‘I’ll buy you another,’ said Marie. ‘The one you’re wearing is pretty tatty, Dad.’

Walter smoothed down the pilled wool on the front of his cardigan and tried to hide the hole in the pocket. It was his favourite, although it would never do to say so. Sylvia had had a habit of donating his favourite items of clothing in the name of charity. No sooner had a garment become comfortably worn in, than a stiff replacement would appear in his wardrobe. Marie became more like her mother with every visit, fussing and filling his living space with superfluous objects. What had begun with framed photographs, knick-knacks and ornaments soon progressed to small items of furniture. An entire carload of useless items that would only need to be lugged home again at the end of his stay. Fortunately this time she’d only brought in the carriage clock, the one he’d given Sylvia for their golden wedding anniversary. It was a lovely piece he’d found in a local antique shop. Remembering her wistful look he wondered now whether it simply represented all the journeys they hadn’t taken together.

He gave up on Marie and turned his attention to the wall-mounted television. The sports channel had been extra, a concession he had insisted on when signing the agreement. His golf clubs might be gathering dust in the garage but he still had his imagination.

‘Have you been watching the news, Dad?’ Marie had shifted her scrutiny from the wardrobe to the television. ‘It’s important to keep up with what’s going on in the outside world.’ With that, she aimed the remote at the par three, seventeenth hole. When nothing happened, she shook the remote control, banging it against her palm before tutting and announcing she was off to find new batteries.

‘Do you like golf, James?’ Walter asked as Marie swept from the room.

James yawned. ‘I guess.’

Golf, Walter supposed, like broccoli and whisky, was an acquired taste. But the boy was still young. His hand slid to his pocket and retrieved the phone. The music resumed, James soon a mesmerised cobra to a charmer’s flute, his thumbs a blur over the controls.

‘That’s a pretty fancy piece of equipment you have there,’ said Walter.

Without looking up, James listed the specifications, none of which meant anything to Walter.

‘Mum only agreed to me having the phone for safety,’ said James, now biting his lower lip in concentration as his thumbs twitched across the screen. ‘So she can track me if I get abducted.’

Walter was dubious. At the same age, he and his mates would be untraceable for hours, off on some big adventure like explorers. Neither kids nor parents had been bothered by these wanderings. The world was smaller than ever for these youngsters, more connected, and yet most of them never ventured further than their bedroom.

Marie returned with AA batteries and immediately turned the green, the flag and the spectators into a blank screen on the wall. ‘That’s better,’ she announced. ‘Now we can chat properly.’

Marie’s chats usually flowed in a single direction. About how Walter should eat less, move more, try to do things for himself. This was usually when they discussed biscuits.

‘I saw you talking to Margery,’ said Walter by way of a pre-emptive strike.

‘Who’s Margery?’

‘The tea lady. Margery-with-a-g.’ Like the spread. Parts of Margery’s ample anatomy had certainly spread more than others. But since she controlled the rations of the sugar and caffeine, it paid not to draw attention to her unusual centre of gravity.

‘Is she new?’ Marie asked.

How little he and his only daughter knew about each other’s day-to-day lives. When Marie left home, their weekly phone calls had invariably consisted of a brief exchange of pleasantries before Walter handed the phone to Sylvia.

‘Here’s your mother,’ he’d say.

‘Bye Dad, nice to talk to you.’

Mother and daughter could talk for hours. Now, the muted TV only amplified the awkwardness of the silence. Without Sylvia, it was as though the glue had dissolved from their relationship.

‘How’s Andrew?’

‘He’s having some “me time” this week.’ Marie made quote marks in the air with her fingers. ‘He’s gone surfing with the boys.’

The conversation stalled. Walter knew nothing about surfing. How much better the two of them might have got on if his son-in-law had shown a penchant for spiked shoes rather than Lycra shorts, a wetsuit, or whatever unflattering wardrobe his latest midlife crisis had entailed.

‘I read in the paper that we might have a storm later.’

‘Yes, so I heard.’ Marie’s fingers fidgeted in her lap. Her eyes kept returning to the sock drawer.

Walter played his conversational trump card. ‘How’s work?’ Strictly speaking, Marie had been to university and therefore had a career rather than a job, albeit one that left her stressed and tired and resentful. When Walter had pointed out that with Andrew’s exorbitant salary she didn’t really need to work she’d called him old-fashioned and sexist. Even after the lecture about gender equality, he still didn’t really understand what she did. Another modern job that had been invented since his day. One that naturally came with its own indecipherable jargon.

‘Busy,’ she smiled, obviously happy that he had remembered to enquire. She wore her busy-ness like a badge of honour, like everybody nowadays. For all the time-saving technology society had invented, people were more time-poor than ever.

More silence. Walter sensed Marie scrolling her mental to-do list. As if reading his mind, she said, ‘Sorry, Dad, we can’t stay long. I promised James a poke bowl.’

‘Sounds painful, mate,’ Walter winked at his blank-faced grandson.

‘Oh, before I forget, where’s your calendar?’ Marie flitted about, opening drawers and lifting old newspapers. She mumbled something about an appointment with an occupational therapist.

James leaned towards his grandfather and whispered, ‘Mum says you have to pass a test before you’re allowed to drive the Tesla.’ He was looking in the direction of the shiny red mobility scooter charging in the corner.

‘Piece of cake.’ Walter puffed out his chest. ‘I was a professional driving instructor for forty years. I reckon I can handle a motorised shopping trolley.’ He was pleased to see the outline of a smile emerging between James’s dot-to-dot pimples.

‘Nevertheless,’ Marie interrupted, ‘the DON made it perfectly clear that Woodlands would only allow you to keep the scooter if you pass the proficiency test. Otherwise it has to go back to the showroom.’ Then she added her favourite sign-off. ‘We’ve already talked about this.’

How could he forget the frosty conversation with the Director of Nursing? In hindsight he should have thought to forewarn her about the delivery of the Tesla, but honestly – he and his brothers had made go-karts that went ten times the speed of the Tesla. In the end, the discussion involving Walter, the DON and the salesman had resulted in a compromise: a practical assessment by the occupational therapist.

‘It’s nothing personal, Mr Clements,’ the DON had said. ‘It’s simply a matter of health and safety.’

Walter bristled at the questioning of his driving skills. For crying out loud, he’d made a living teaching others to drive. He barely recognised the world he was now living in. Everything had to be either healthy or safe. Things that human beings had been doing for millions of years now needed a risk assessment. You needed a certificate to take a piss in this place. No w. . .