From her designated seat in the dining room, Linda could see past Tanya’s blue rinse on Table Chizzlewick, that the Bougainville was only a week away from exploding in purple near the Garden of Memory, where the Dementia patients sat. The tables were named after Charles Dickens’ characters. Linda had sat at Table Pip for five years. Her name, Linda McCafferty, was taped on the back of her chair. Sometimes she wandered as far as Table Gradgrind over by the piano, lost in a sea of strange faces, until a hand attached to an aged care worker, guided her firmly back to her place.

Linda used to sit next to Dorothy Penrose, who spent 22 years working as a weather girl on local TV, until she married an advertising man and chauvinist, became a feminist then won $3.2m in 1986 on a TV game show, ‘Do or Dare’. She told her husband to shove his outdoor billboards, radio promos and marriage up his arse. She wore her wedding ring as a reminder to never get married again. Dorothy had her meals in her room now. Bad hips. Linda would set sail after lunch and try to remember, much like the Maoris navigating far from land by reading the waves, how to get to Dorothy’s room, which was two corridors of dirty cream Axminster carpet, a water fountain and a reading room away.

Linda noticed during the third game of Euchre, Dorothy wasn’t wearing her rings.

“Where’s your rings, Dot?” Linda said, holding up her own ring finger, which held a simple gold band which lay outside a sapphire engagement ring, circled by tiny diamonds.

“What?”

“Your wedding and engagement rings”

Around her grey, gnarled finger lay a circle of white skin where they used to sit.

“Oh darling, you’ve got to help me find them,” as she threw off the bed clothes. “They must have slipped off in the night.”

They looked through the sheets and blankets and under the bed. They looked in the pockets of her clothes. Linda called the laundry but no rings were found.

“Maybe Gypsies took them in the night,” Dorothy said. “My Mother said Gypsies used to steal children, why not rings?”

“Don’t worry, love. They’ll turn up. Would you like me to Nivea your hands?”

xxxxxxx

Christine Punt, the Manager of Golden Slumbers Aged Care Centre, was up to pussy’s bow with audits, ever since the Department of Health investigated last year’s gastro outbreak and the death of Margo Pearce. Margo’s adult children held a news conference in the carpark. Their mother was a kind woman, they said, who raised three kids on her own. She deserved to spend her twilight years in peace rather than dying alone in a pool of shit and vomit. The Coroner noticed her wedding ring was missing. They’d like that back too, if it wasn’t too much to ask.

Linda couldn’t remember Margo. So many faces came and went. Her grandfather said that during the war, it was the empty bunks of the dead bomber crews that haunted him most. Golden Slumbers was like that. An Axminster interchange between life and death.

That night after the first 12 bars of The Beatles’ ‘Golden Slumbers’ played over and over the tinny PA, reminding the inmates it was shut-eye time, she dreamt of Jamie, her husband of 20 years. It wasn’t a passionate love affair. Rather an accommodation of interests such as the theatre and travel. She asked him to marry her in a Leap Year and wore her grandmother’s engagement ring to seal the deal.

Jamie was in one of his moods: silent and withdrawn only to erupt in to a Stephen Sondheim song and dance routine from ‘Company’. He taught organisational systems at university but retired early. Then a shadow fell over the dream as a faceless head wearing a nurse’s hat, floated over her. Then the dream changed again and she was throwing Jamie’s degrees and books out.

“You don’t need these anymore,” she said, “now you’re retired.”

Linda awoke at 3.17am and lay staring at the ceiling. At sunrise, the nice nurse Felicity or Francine or Francis, knocked on the door and in a sing-song voice said, ‘hullo Linda’ and showered her. She sat in the chair as the nurse hosed off the suds off.

“Where are your rings, petal?”

Linda looked down at her left hand. They were gone.

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“Look Linda, I’m very sorry if you and Dorothy lost your rings,” Christine said, who wore a gold name badge over her left breast and a lapel watch to suggest she had once been a nurse, rather than a low level HR functionary at a third rate university. She undid the top button of her pants and sat behind a large desk. She’d put on 10 kilos in the last 12 months, living the high life.

“When you say ‘lost’, I hear the word ‘misplaced’. Have you got pictures?” Christine asked with a frown. “Because if you haven’t, that’s going to make it hard, isn’t it? Look, I’ll put a notice up on the staff bulletin board, alright love?”

Linda hadn’t heard a word she said. She was staring at a print of a goat flying through the night sky, which hung below the certificate of business registration. She had seen the same painting in Paris with Jamie, many years before.

“How does that sound, Linda?”

“It’s a Chagall”

“Who? Now toddle off dearie as I’ve got a lot of paperwork to do”

Linda set sail for the cafeteria but ended up in the TV room which was over-heated and smelt of farts. Old Arthur was asleep in his chair with his dressing gown open and shrivelled penis exposed. His left arm in plaster. A fall in the shower. The hosts of the morning TV show were smiling so broadly, she wondered if they had a mental illness. Their inane banter and the butter scotch sunlight pouring on to the Axminster carpet, created the perfect ambience for life at Golden Slumbers.

xxxxxxx

Nancy picked up the mobile and was shocked to hear her mother’s voice.

“Mum, I was just thinking of you”

“That’s nice dear,” Linda said.

Nancy hadn’t visited Linda in seven months. The aged care home was depressing: the reverse cycles pumping hot, humid air, the smell of boiled cabbage and old Arthur wandering around with his dick hanging out, made her heave.

“I was thinking of coming to see you next Sunday. How does that sound?”

“That’s nice dear but could I have Tom’s number. There might be a little earner for him here”

Tom was Nancy’s son. A security system technician who also ran a successful SP bookie business from his car. Three years ago he did three months in a low security prison for nicking women’s underwear while installing security cameras in their homes. He was genial, inoffensive and looked like John Christie, the Rillington Place murderer. He liked Linda and bought her flowers.

Linda wrote down Tom’s number and checked she had it right.

“That’s right Mum and how are they treating you at Golden Slumbers?”

“That’s nice dear, speak to you soon. Ta ta”

There was a new face for lunch at Table Pip. Dina asked to be moved from Table Heathcliff because of the ribald language. She was 87 but looked in her late 60s, with a passing resemblance to an Italian film star. She and her husband had owned a chain of grocery stores. A thin gold crucifix hung around her neck. Her husband died three years ago and her son put her in Golden Slumbers but not before making her sign the business over to him.

“This is a much nicer table,” Dina said. “The women at Heathcliff were awful. All they talked about was sex. I’m trying to eat my boiled meat and cabbage and it’s cock this and cunt that”

“How did you get the black eye?” Linda asked.

Dina fiddled with the salt shaker and looked away.

“I fell on a door knob”

The members of Table Pip ate in silence.

“You are very welcome here, Dina,” Linda said and patted her hand. “Do you know you look like Gina Lollabrigida”

“Everyone says that”

xxxxxxx

Every Monday morning the tradesmen walked through the sliding glass front doors of Golden Slumbers – their entrance passes unchecked – and amongst the sea of blue overalls, high viz jackets and industrial work boots, walked Tom, carrying a ladder, coaxial cable and connectors. Tanya on Table Chizzlewick, claimed last year she was raped by a tradesman but because she was so heavily medicated, all she could remember was he wore a yellow high viz jacket, blue overalls and industrial work boots.

By mid-afternoon, Tom had finished. He knocked on Linda’s door. She was propped up in bed reading Under the Volcano. She secretly wished she could get as hammered as Geoffrey Firmin in the book. It would pass the time.

“Well, if it isn’t my favourite grandson,” Linda said and handed him $300.00 in cash. “Job all done?”

“All done Grannie-Bear. Had to wear a mask and gloves as there’s shitload of asbestos in the roof. I checked the signal and it’s good. Is there anything I can get you? Some chocolate or Nembutal?”

“You’re a good boy, Tom, always remember that. Now mooch off and we’ll chat soon”

The days merged in to the nights as breakfast became lunch and lunch became dinner. Arthur and his penis died and another old man filled his bed. The sun rose over the roses and set over the geraniums. The ants marched in single file across the Garden of Memory and marched back again. At night Linda lay in her bed long after lights out as the small, kindly Filipino nurse’s aide, Jasmine, herded old Boris, a nocturnal wanderer, back to his bed. She could hear the Latvian woman crying in the room next to hers. They were all passengers waiting their turn at the Axminster Interchange.

Two weeks passed and revolution brewed over breakfast at Tables Pip, Chizzlewick, Gradgrind, Heathcliff, Estella and Carton. Five wedding rings, three engagement rings and the gold crucifix belonging to Dina, had gone missing. The sizeable form of Miss Punt made its way through the tables as the dining room fell in silence. She tucked her thumbs under her ample bosoms and stared long and hard at the insurrectionists.

“Let me assure you,” she said firmly, “that all measures are being undertaken by management to form a committee to investigate these serious allegations. I’m personally writing the terms of reference and as soon as the quarterly audits are complete, I will ensure that the committee is transparent, inclusive, accountable and reflects the diversity of ethnicities we so richly enjoy here. I have therefore decided to include Jasmine Del Rosario, our smiling nurse on the committee. I will in turn, also ask a resident to attend as long as they can pass the medical.”

“Jesus on a stick, Christine, that’s just bullshit,” old Boris said.

“I don’t need to remind you Boris that myself, Dina and Jasmine, are practicing Catholics. The Crucifixion was no laughing matter. But we do have some early leads. It has been suggested that the jewellery may have been stolen by relatives, who – how shall I say this? – had trouble paying their accounts. I will keep you posted”

Christine unhooked her thumbs from under her bosoms and strode through the tables and out to the carpark, where she had a ciggie.

xxxxxxxx

Tom plumped Linda’s pillows, took a quick swig from a hip flask and pulled up a chair. He gently rested the PowerBook on her chest.

“Here’s the video I captured from the last two weeks,” he said. “Some interesting stuff here Grannie-Bear and the definition is pretty good, even with an infrared camera. My favourite’s at the end.”

The video started in old Boris’s room. It was early evening. Two male orderlies striped him, pushed him in to the bathroom and poured talcum powder over his head. The shorter orderly with a comb-over, punched him in the stomach and Boris fell in to the chair. They turned the cold water hose on full bore as he tried to cover his genitals.

The next scene showed Nurse Jasmine entering a resident’s room at 2.03am. The woman was asleep. Jasmine took a small bottle of oil from her pocket and put it on the woman’s ring finger. She gently massaged the wedding ring off, wiped the oil away and left the room. Two nights later, a young male nurse stood over Dina and masturbated in her face. Tom had recorded 27 scenes of assault including one rape.

“This is my favourite scene, Grannie-Bear”

A young nurse was undressing in the staff locker room. She wore a white sports bra and undies, which she peeled off and headed to the showers.

“You’d have to admit, the definition and contrast is exceptional,” he said.

“It’s certainly a contrast, young Tom,” Linda said. “Do me a favour? Delete all of the naked nurse scenes and leave the rest. Can you leave that computer thing with me for a couple of days and charge my mobile phone for me as well? You’re such a good boy”

“Sure thing Grannie-Bear”

Linda made her way slowly to the Garden of Memory. There was a mosaic of tiny white tiles of an open book on the ground, with the words, ‘A peace that surpasses all understanding.’ The nursing staff were busy handing out the afternoon medications as she punched a number in to the mobile phone.

“Hullo? Hullo? Is this the police? My name is Linda McCartney. No, hold on. It’s Linda McCafferty. I’d like to be put through to the Criminal Investigation Branch or the people who deal with nasty pasties. No, I’ll wait.”

She made her way unsteadily to Dorothy’s room but a nurse said she’d died of a heart attack in the night.

xxxxxxxx

At 3.00pm three detectives armed with the PowerBook interviewed Christine Punt. Another two detectives interviewed nurse Jasmine Del Rosario, who said that she was on a temporary work visa and Christine threatened to send her back to the Philippines unless she took the jewellery, sold them on eBay and gave her 75 per cent of the takings. Three TV news crews set up in the reception area.

Dina walked past immaculately dressed, with pearls and bright red nail polish.

“Excuse me mam, excuse me,” a reporter yelled and stuck a microphone under her nose. ”Can you tell us how you feel living at Golden Slumbers?”

“I can tell you this. I’ve also never seen a man take so long to masturbate to orgasm”

Because Dina looked like a once famous Italian movie star, her comments were broadcast on the nightly news on three stations. The Federal Minister for Ageing didn’t front Question Time the following day.

As many of the cooking staff had been sacked, Linda dialled in a pizza who for $30.00 more, bought her a bottle of Spanish red wine. She sat in her room, washed the pizza down with Tempranillo while listening to old disco songs on the radio. She made a small blessing to her parents and Jamie, tucked herself in to bed and woke up on the Greek island of Syro.

She could smell Jamie’s suntan oil as they lay on lie-lows 40 years ago. They’d been snorkelling. Jamie laughs as he makes his way to the water to cool off.

“What’s so funny?” Linda asks.

“The hidden camera idea, darling. That was genius. I’m proud of you”

A hearse idled in the drive as nurses put new sheets on Boris’s bed, ready for the next passenger at the Axminster Interchange.