The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules (3 page)

A car alarm was going off down the street, and somewhere far away a fan was whirring. Martha blinked and then opened her eyes properly. A ray of sunshine seeped in through the window and her eyes slowly grew accustomed to the faint light. The windows were dirty and needed to be cleaned, and the same could be said about the floral-patterned curtains that she had hung up herself to brighten up the room. Evidently, nobody cared about keeping things clean nowadays, and she certainly couldn’t manage such chores herself anymore. Martha yawned widely, but her thoughts were all confused and she couldn’t really think straight. Oh dear, oh dear, how slow and tired she was feeling. Ever since the party it had felt as if she had small clouds of chewing gum clogging up the inside of her head. Of course, the wine and all the pills she took every day didn’t mix very well. But what fun they had had! If only they had had time to tidy up and return to their rooms … Yes, if only they hadn’t fallen asleep …

Martha sat on the edge of her bed and manoeuvred her feet into her slippers. Oh, it had been so embarrassing, and Director Mattson had shouted at them in such an irascible manner. She glanced at the bedside table. There lay the corkscrew that Brains had given her ‘for future parties’, as he had put it. But, sadly, there’d be no more. After the party, Nurse Barbara had locked them all in their rooms and now they could only leave the residents’ floor if a member of staff accompanied them. And on top of that, they had been given small red pills ‘to calm them down’. How boring life had become!

And talking of pills—why did old people always have
to have so many pills? They almost seemed to receive more pills than food. Perhaps that’s what had made them so dull? They always used to play cards and had gone into each other’s rooms after 8 p.m. But since Diamond House had taken over, things like that didn’t happen any more. Nowadays they hardly did anything at all, and if they got the chance to play a hand of cards, they either fell asleep or forgot what they were doing. Christina, who loved her literary classics, didn’t even have the energy to thumb through magazines, and Anna-Greta, who had liked to listen to horn concertos and some of the Swedish popular folk singers, now just stared at her record player and couldn’t muster the energy to get any of her records down from the shelf. Brains hadn’t made any inventions for ages, and Rake didn’t look after his plants properly. Most of the time they just watched TV and nobody did anything special. Something was wrong, really horribly wrong.

Martha got up, supported herself on her walker and went into the bathroom. While she washed her face, brushed her teeth and went about her morning routine, she mulled everything over. Hadn’t she been the one who had intended to protest and make a revolution? But now here she was, doing nothing again. She stared into the mirror and noticed how worn out she looked. Her face was pale and her white hair stood on end. Sighing loudly, she stretched out, reaching for her hairbrush, but in so doing happened to knock the bottle of red pills onto the floor. They scattered across the bathroom floor and lay there like angry red dots by her feet. She didn’t feel like picking them up. Martha snorted and just swept them all down the floor drain with her foot.

She got rid of some of the other pills too, and after a few days, already felt much chirpier. She started knitting again and, having always loved crime thrillers, went back to working her way through the stack of ghastly murders on her bedside table. And her revolutionary zeal had returned.

When Brains heard the knocks, he knew it must be Martha. Three distinct knocks on the door right next to the handle and then silence. That was definitely her. He dragged himself up from the sofa and pulled his sweater down over his round belly. He hadn’t had a visit from Martha for quite some time, and he had wondered if she was OK. Every day he had intended to go and see her in the evening, but instead he always fell asleep in front of the TV. He looked around for an empty cardboard box and quickly tidied away the pile of drawings, chisels and screws from the coffee table into the box before hastily pushing it under his bed. Two blue shirts and some socks with holes in them he hid behind the sofa cushions, and he brushed the breadcrumbs scattered across his side table onto the floor. Having done that, he turned off the TV and went to open the door.

‘Ah, it is you, come in!’

‘Brains, we must have a talk,’ Martha said, striding into his room purposefully.

He nodded and put the kettle on. In the cupboard he found two printed circuit cards, a hammer and some cables before he reached the instant coffee. There were two coffee cups behind the coffee jar. When the water had boiled, he filled the cups and added some coffee granules.

‘I haven’t got any biscuits, I’m afraid, but—’

‘That will do just fine,’ said Martha, accepting the cup of coffee and sitting down on the sofa. ‘You know something, this might sound crazy, but I think they are drugging us. We get too many pills. That is why we have been so lethargic.’

‘Really? Do you mean—’ He discreetly pushed a gutted Grundig radio under the armchair and hoped she hadn’t noticed it.

‘Well, we can’t allow it to go on!’ he said.

‘Exactly! We should have acted when we said we were going to protest.’

He took her hand and patted it lightly.

‘But, my dear, it still isn’t too late.’

Martha’s eyes sparkled and her face lit up.

‘You know what, I’ve been thinking of something. In prison you are allowed out in the fresh air at least once a day, but here we are hardly ever let out at all.’

‘I wonder how fresh the air is around a prison, but yes, I get your point.’

‘Prisoners get out for at least an hour every day, and they are given nourishing food and can take classes in a workshop. In fact, they have it better than we do.’

‘A workshop?’ That got Brains’s attention.

‘You see? I want to live for as long as possible—but I want to live an exciting life for as long as I can too.’ She leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Brains raised his eyebrows and shook his head. But Martha didn’t give up.

‘Brains, I have thought this over very carefully …’

‘OK, why not, why not …’ he said. He leaned back in his armchair and burst out laughing.

The sound of her heels echoed harshly in the corridor as Nurse Barbara hurried along. She opened the storeroom door, wheeled out her trolley and put the medicines on the tray. Each and every one of the twenty-two clients had an assortment of pills that it was her job to keep track of. Director Mattson was fussy about medication, and each of the elderly clients had their personal prescriptions. But some of the pills, like the red ones, were given to all the residents. As were the light blue pills that he had recently introduced. They made the old folks lose their appetite.

‘They will eat less and then we won’t have to buy so much food,’ he had said.

Nurse Barbara wondered if this was ethical, but she hadn’t dared make an issue of it with the director since she wanted to stay in his good books. She wanted to make something of her life. Her mother had been a single mum and had worked as a maid in the posh district of Djursholm. She had never earned very much and they had been quite poor. When Barbara had accompanied her mother to work one day, she had seen fancy paintings, shining silver and patterned parquet floors. She had seen the ‘fancy folk’ her mother worked for dressed in furs and beautiful clothes. That glimpse of a different sort of life was something she had never forgotten. Director Mattson was one of those successful people too. He was twenty years older than her, energetic, quick-witted, and had many years’ experience doing business. Above all, he had a lot of influence and power, and she realized he could help her along in life. She hung on to his every word and she admired him. He might be
carrying a few extra pounds, and perhaps he worked too much as well, but he was rich, and with his brown eyes, dark hair and charming manner he reminded her of an Italian. It wasn’t long before she fell in love with him. He was married, but she hoped for more and they soon embarked upon a relationship. And they were going to go on holiday together.

She hurried down the corridor and distributed the pills to the old people. Then she parked the trolley in the storeroom again and returned to her office. Now all she had to do was tidy up the paperwork on her desk, so that Katia, her replacement while she was on holiday, had a clean desk when she arrived. Nurse Barbara sat in front of her computer with a dreamy look in her eyes. Tomorrow, she thought, tomorrow. At last, she and Ingmar would be able to get away from it all and just be together.

The next day, Martha observed that Director Mattson picked up Nurse Barbara in his car. Aha! She had suspected that there was something going on between them. The director was going to a conference and was taking her with him. Good. That suited her perfectly. The car was barely out of sight before Martha was gathering all her friends to tell them about the pills, which were promptly discarded.

A few days later, laughter was heard in the lounge again. Brains and Rake played backgammon, Christina painted her watercolours and Anna-Greta listened to music or played patience.

‘Patience is good for keeping your brain in good shape,’ Anna-Greta chirped as she placed the cards out on the table. She was careful not to cheat, and never forgot to tell everyone whenever she solved her card solitaire. Her long, thin face and the bun on her neck made her look like an old school mistress rather than an ex-bank clerk. Some smart investments had made her rich, and she was proud of her ability to do sums in her head so quickly. Once, when the staff at the retirement home had offered to help her with her bank accounts, she had looked daggers at them and nobody had dared ask a second time. She had grown up in Djursholm and had learned the value of money. At school she had always been top of the class in mathematics. Martha looked at her out of the corner of her eye and wondered if it would be possible to get such a correct and proper person to join her on an adventure. She and Brains had concocted a plan and were just waiting for the right opportunity to put it into action.

The days without Nurse Barbara were the calm before the storm. On the surface, everything seemed normal, but inside each of them, something had changed. The five friends sang ‘Happy as a bird’ and the first movement from Lars-Erik Larsson’s
God in Disguise
, just as they had done before Diamond House took over, and the staff applauded and smiled for the first time in ages. Nineteen-year-old Katia Erikson from Farsta, Nurse Barbara’s temporary replacement, baked some cakes for afternoon coffee, found some tools for Brains and let everyone get on with their own thing. The guests at Diamond
House became all the more self-confident and when the day came for Katia to cycle home for good and Nurse Barbara returned, a defiant rebellious seed had started to sprout.

‘Oh well, I suppose we must prepare ourselves for the worst,’ Brains sighed when he saw Nurse Barbara on her way in through the glass doors.

‘She’s probably all set to make even more cuts for Director Mattson,’ said Martha. ‘On the other hand, it might help our cause,’ she added with a barely discernible wink.

‘Yes, you can say that again,’ said Brains and he winked back.

Nurse Barbara had barely been back at the retirement home for a few hours before doors could be heard slamming and her high heels echoed down the corridor. In the afternoon, she asked everybody to come to the lounge. Once she had them there, she cleared her throat and placed a pile of papers on the table.

‘Regrettably, we must make some cuts,’ she started off. Her hair was nicely done up and there was a new gold bracelet visible on her wrist. ‘In bad times we must all do our bit. Unfortunately, we must cut down on staff costs, so starting next week there will be only two members of staff. Besides me, that is. This will mean that you can only go out once a week for a walk.’

‘Prison inmates can get exercise every day, you know. You can’t do that,’ Martha protested loudly. Barbara pretended not to hear.

‘And we must cut costs for food, too,’ she went on. ‘From now on, there will only be one main meal a day. At other times you will be served sandwiches.’

‘Over my dead body! We must have proper food and you should buy more fruits and vegetables too,’ Rake roared.

‘I wonder if the upstairs kitchen is locked,’ whispered Martha.

‘Not that kitchen again,’ said Christina, dropping her nail file.

Later that evening, when the staff had gone home for the day, Martha went up to the kitchen anyway. Rake would be so pleased if she could get him a salad. He was rather downhearted because his son hadn’t been in touch, and he needed cheering up. Martha often wished that she had a family too, but the great love of her life had left her when her son was two years old. Her little boy had had dimples and curly blond hair, and for five years he was the joy of her life. The last summer in the countryside they had visited the horses in the stable, picked blueberries in the woods and gone fishing down at the lake. But one Sunday morning, while she was still asleep, he had taken the fishing rod and disappeared off to the jetty. And it was there, next to one of the jetty posts, that she had found him. Her life had come to a tragic halt and if it hadn’t been for her parents she probably wouldn’t have found the strength to carry on. She had relationships with several men after the death of her beloved son, but when she had tried to get pregnant again she had miscarried. In the end she grew too old, and gave up on the idea of having a family. Childlessness was her great sorrow, even though she didn’t show it. Instead, she hid her pain, and a laugh can disguise so much. She found people were easy to fool.

Martha shook off her thoughts, tip-toed into Nurse Barbara’s office and opened the key cabinet. She remembered the smell of food and expectantly pulled out the master key. But when she got to the first floor her plans came to an abrupt halt. Instead of the keyhole, there was one of those strange protuberances for plastic cards. Diamond House had transformed the kitchen into an impregnable fortress! Disappointment washed over her and it was a good few minutes before she was able to gather her wits together and leave. But she didn’t give up; instead, she pressed the elevator button to go down. Perhaps there was a larder or storage area in the cellar.

When the doors of the elevator opened downstairs, she hesitated for a moment, not sure where she was. At the far end of the corridor she could make out a weak light from an old-fashioned door with a pane of glass at the top. This door was also locked, but the master key worked. Cautiously, she pushed open the door and a cold, invigorating winter air blew in. Lovely, here was a way out! The chill helped to clear her mind, and all of a sudden she remembered she had the old key from her parents’ home. It was very similar to the master key with a triangular bow. If she switched keys, she was sure nobody would notice the difference. Martha closed the door to the outside, turned on the light and entered another corridor. On one of the doors was a sign which read: GYM—FOR STAFF ONLY. Martha unlocked the door and looked inside.

There were no windows and it took a while before she could find the light switch. The fluorescent lights blinked to life and she could see skipping ropes, small weights and exercise bicycles. There were benches beside the walls, a treadmill and weird contraptions she didn’t know the names of. So Diamond
House had cut back on prophylactic exercise for the residents, but at the same time had a gym just for the staff! The old people had repeatedly asked to get back their own exercise room, but the new owners had said no. Martha felt like kicking in the door, which would be rather difficult at her age, but instead blurted out all the swear words she could think of, arched her back like a cat and made a threatening gesture with her fist.

‘You’ll pay for this, just wait!’

Back upstairs she put the old family key under her door and pulled it as hard as she could to bend it out of shape. Then she hung the crooked key in the key cabinet, so that nobody would be suspicious if it didn’t fit. She hid the master key in her bra, went to bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. The first step in a revolution was to be able to move about freely. And now they could do just that. Shutting her eyes, and with a smile on her lips, she fell asleep and dreamed of a gang of oldies who robbed a bank and were hailed as heroes when they got to prison.