Peahen's Flutter

George John

Description

What will you do if your wife, mother or father doesn't recognise you anymore?Christopher Hall is devastated when his beloved wife of over forty years loses her memory of him and their children, Adam and Meryl. Adding insult to injury, she develops a romantic relationship with Joseph Connolly, a resident in the Good Hope Nursing home where she is being looked after. Do the tail feathers of the peahen flutter even in dementia?Adam swears that he will put a stop to his mother's unholy affair and his father's humiliation. Jack Connolly, on the other hand, demands that his father, a widower, and Susan, his newly found partner in love,should be left alone to continue their affair. He asks, 'When do the rights of those who lose their faculties end and wilful gratification of the relatives take over?'This tale of tragic romance is set in Eastbourne, the seaside town that adorns the Sussex coastline of southern England. George John, in his first novel, tells a captivating story in a simple and endearing narrative style. The incident at the traffic lights, the goings on in the mysterious 'green room', the plot of a conniving, greedy ex-girlfriend, the opportunism of a scheming 'home help' and the woeful consequences of Ketamine abuse set the stage for a climax that is as dramatic as it is unexpected.

Sujets

• Conservation

Informations

• Publié par: eBook Versions
• Date de parution: 11 novembre 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781843963776
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published 2015 by
Sussex Doves Publishers

George John has asserted his right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 be identified as the author
of this work

ISBN 978-1-84396-377-6

Also available in paperback
ISBN 978-1-51734-875-5

This ebook is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be copied, lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise
circulated without the author s
prior consent in any form without
similar conditions being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.

Ebook production
eBook Versions
27 Old Gloucester Street
London WC1N 3AX
www.ebookversions.com
This book is dedicated to the hundreds
of thousands of relatives, nurses and other health
care workers who look after patients with
Alzheimer s disease, day and night, under
challenging circumstances.
THE
PEAHEN S
FLUTTER

A Tale of Tragic Romance



George John



SUSSEX DOVES PUBLISHERS
Contents


Cover
Title Page
Copyright Credits
Dedication

Chapter One
The R.E. Teacher
Chapter Two
At the Traffic Lights
Chapter Three
The Green Room
Chapter Four
From Crystal to Molly to Special K
Chapter Five
The Ketamine Bladder
Chapter Six
The Plot
Chapter Seven
Good Hope
Chapter Eight
The Peahen s Flutter
Chapter Nine
Down Memory Lane
Chapter Ten
The Female Cricketer
Chapter Eleven
The Opportunist
Chapter Twelve
A Visitor from Abroad
Chapter Thirteen
Adam Visits Good Hope

Why I Wrote This Book
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1

The R.E Teacher


Eastbourne! The Barcelona of England? Is that a joke? You may ask.
The answer will be, You haven t been to Eastbourne recently. Have you? C mon, pay a visit to Eastbourne .
The picturesque seaside town, adorning the Sussex coast line of the United Kingdom, is a well-known tourist destination. The spiteful, jealous, Northerners used to call it God s waiting room . It was in reference to the numerous pensioners who, on retirement, would leave the North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and move down south to Eastbourne, to live and yes, eventually die there. Older people, in general, are attracted to the warmth offered by the sunniest town in the UK . Gradually the profile of Eastbourne has been changing and now the younger population is rapidly increasing. Young parents are finding it more and more difficult to get their children admitted to good comprehensive schools of their choice. Ambitious Councillors and Mayors, in recent years, have been working hard to bring more and more improvements and developments to the town and the harbour, trying hard to make Eastbourne the Barcelona of England .
On a fine morning in February 2012, Susan Hall was sitting in the Staff Room as if she were in deep thought, her eyes fixed on something at a long distance. Ian Selby, the Deputy Head Teacher, was surprised to see her sitting there because he knew she was supposed to be teaching the final year G.C.S.E students for 45 minutes starting at 11 am. It was already 15 minutes past 11. Mr Selby was in charge of arranging the teaching rota for staff and he was sure that Susan was supposed to be teaching at that time. He approached her and asked,
Sue, why are you sitting here? I thought you were scheduled to be teaching the year elevens in 10B .
She was startled, as though woken up from a trance. Sue looked at her colleague, trying to take in what he was saying. For a few seconds she looked puzzled. She looked at her wrist watch. Then suddenly it dawned on her that she should have been in the class room almost 20 minutes ago.
She mumbled, I am sorry Ian. I completely forgot.
And she made her way to class room 10B.
Susan Mary Hall was a 60-year-old teacher in St. Augustine s Secondary School, a popular school on Willingdon Road about a mile west of Eastbourne town centre. She was an attractive, tall woman of 5ft 9in. Her husband Christopher Hall was two inches shorter than her but the difference in height was not conspicuous when they were seen together because, whenever possible, she would wear skirts and low heeled shoes. Those who saw her for the first time must have thought that she was twelve years younger. Her blonde hair was cut short to the level of her shoulders. She was not one to wear a lot of facial make up. Her blue eyes and her not so prominent chin gave her a pleasing countenance. Whenever she met someone, she had a characteristic smile on her which heralded her friendly nature. When she turned 59 in January 2011, she decided that she would retire only in 2017 when she would be 65. That would give her a reasonable retirement pension, making up for some of the time she had lost when she worked part time to bring up their two children Adam and Meryl.
Christopher owned a very successful bakery business in the town centre. His father, grandfather and great grandfather were bakers and he had inherited the business from his father. He was a very hard working man and not surprisingly, he ran a very popular establishment. The loyalty of his customers was one of the main reasons why his business was thriving. He was also a visionary who adapted the business to the vicissitudes of the market place to survive in the High Street. He made deals with the local supermarkets to supply them with fresh bakery items every day. He was a little overweight for a man of his height, mainly because of the lack of sufficient exercise. He would spend six days of the week in his bakery shop where there was little in the way of physical activity for him to undertake. In spite of that, he was a relatively healthy man. He had been free of any significant ailments all his life. It was ironic that his lean and tall wife was taking tablets for maturity onset (Type 2) diabetes and high blood pressure.
Nineteen-year-old Adam lived with his parents. The family lived in 12 Queen s Avenue in a comfortable four bed- roomed, two bath roomed detached house in an elevated position, with commanding views to the English Channel. Chris inherited the property when his parents passed away. He had maintained it well and made some significant changes, installing gas fired central heating and fitting double glazed replacement windows in all the rooms. The bath rooms and the cloak room were also refurbished and modernised. There was a built in double garage beneath the fourth bedroom, which made that bedroom slightly colder than the other rooms, even in spite of the central heating. The garage was a blessing because in winter Chris didn t have to scrape the ice and frost off his Volkswagen Passat early in the morning before he went to work. Sue had to park her Ford Focus outside the garage because one half of the space inside was taken up by the big fridge-freezer and various utility items. Meryl, who was 12 years older than Adam, got married in 2002 and she moved in with her husband, a trainee General Practitioner (G.P) at the time, to his flat in the town.
In St. Augustine s Secondary School, Susan Hall taught Religious Education (R.E). To her mild annoyance, many of her students considered their R.E lessons to be periods of relaxation – a welcome relief from the more onerous subjects like Maths and Science. Nevertheless, Mrs Hall s R.E. lessons were genuinely popular. Her students liked her and respected her. She conducted herself with dignity and decorum and always taught religious education with dedication and zeal. She was an active member of the local Church of England congregation at St Mathew s Church. Together with her husband Christopher she attended the church services regularly and both of them participated in church activities as much as they could. Susan taught her students about different faiths and religions but when she was teaching about Christianity she was all the more eloquent.
Her colleagues knew that she had faced considerable disappointments and challenges in her personal life as a result of the quandaries her son Adam had put her through. One day, Joanne, the English teacher and a close friend, told her
Sue, you are a strong woman, you know! If I were you I would have buckled under the pressure and strain you had to put up with. Your ability to take everything in your stride and carry on regardless is unbelievable.
Chris was a very busy man. Every day he used to get up early in the morning and after the morning chores, be in the kitchen to have his breakfast before he would start his journey to his bakery shop. (The staff would have already arrived, waiting for him to open up the premises for them and give them instructions for the day). Some days, Sue would be there in the kitchen before him and he would have the pleasure of a cooked breakfast. She was the one who could do an authentic cooked English breakfast. (If he tried to emulate her she would complain that he made the kitchen a mess early in the morning!). On other days he would simply have some cereal, a banana, and a black coffee. Of late, he had noticed that Susan was never to be seen in the kitchen in the mornings. Chris was not a fussy man. He had simply ignored this change in the normal routine and carried on as usual. After a few weeks he asked her,
Sue, shall we have a cooked breakfast tomorrow?
Of course she said, agreeing readily, without a second thought. It was not often that he asked for a favour like that and, after her answer, he considered it a done deal.
The next day morning, again Sue was not in the kitchen when Chris arrived and he thought that it was most odd. Normally, she would have been there before him especially because he had mentioned it to her that he fancied a cooked breakfast. As usual, he simply had his cereal, banana and black coffee and left for the shop, to be there on time. When he came home that day in the evening, Sue was sitting in the living room on the sofa, deep in thought and staring ahead. He asked her,
Sue, what s for dinner tonight? I am starving
Oh! Dinn