with the bench, the table with the green umbrella, thinking the place was really something quite, quite special. The grounds were grand and made her feel she was definitely in England. They were a people that knew how to make a garden, the English! And during the first few weeks Vadnie would eat her Coronation chicken sandwich in the palatial garden with the blossom on the trees and the green grass under her feet and feel almost content; at least, the worry about money and the future would lift and she would be in the unusual position of just being able to sit and eat her sandwich and watch the birds flit about in the trees. She always kept her eye out for a barbudawarbler even though she didn’t think they ever came to this country. But if birds of paradise could be in the florist then barbudawarblers could be in the garden. It would have lifted her heart to see a bird from back home in the garden of Sunnyside Home for the Elderly. She didn’t much like the two women who ran Sunnyside, and they didn’t get any better over time. For a start they had no sense of humour which was quite a problem. Vadnie had never realised how big a problem this could be until she first ran into the two sad Sunnyside women. All the good conversation has to have a little light-ness! Well, the first thing Vadnie said to the Matron was, ‘The garden is quite something. What lovely borders! You do all the weeding yourself?’ (Of course she was joking, and was going to go on to mention the beautiful garden design, but the Matron - she didn’t get it.) She replied seriously, snooty-like, ‘No, no. We have a gardener.’ Just like that. And Vadnie nodded, undaunted, and said, ‘Handsome man is he, this gardener? About my age do you think?’ Matron stared and said, ‘He’s Irish,’ as if that might be something that would put Vadnie off. ‘And he’s in his seventies.’ That would be the clincher then. So after that Vadnie never joked with Matron which meant there was no basis for conversation; there was only a way of receiving instructions. And the head Nurse was even worse. She had something nasty about her, that woman, and no mistake. She was always picking fault. She’d say to Vadnie, ‘Did you say you had washed the kitchen floor?’ when the floor was gleaming, gleaming, so shiny Vadnie could see her face in it, which was the test her mother had given her when she was a little girl. She would say have you polished so bright you can see your reflection? Whenever Vadnie did see her reflection in some domestic surface, it never looked like her, and she’d have to pause for a minute and say is that me, is that really me? Sometimes she loomed in things. She appeared all out of proportion. Still it is not an absolute necessity to get on with the people you work for, especially not when they are your boss. When you do get on with them, they can let you down even more. Vadnie remembered the woman she cleaned for in St Elizabeth in Jamaica saying, ‘Very sorry Vads but you’re no longer needed. You did such an excellent job and have been like family to us, but...’ And what was the real reason? The details of the thing had gone, but

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