The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

IN SEPTEMBER LAST year, the hospital hired a temp.

The Patient Experience and Wellbeing department had taken a knock from two resignations and a pregnancy. The Temp, overqualified as most temps are, had just graduated from a Good University with a Good Degree in a Good Subject. The trouble was that the market was saturated with other Good Graduates from equally reputable establishments, so she jumped at the offer of the position of Temporary Administrative Assistant at Glasgow Princess Royal. It didn’t matter that the work was in no way related to her art degree or career goals; she was happy to no longer be out in the cold with the other shivering graduates of the class of 2013.

The Temp was put to work immediately and spent several months toiling away at data entry and photocopying, while staring out of windows into the hospital car park yearning to be an undergraduate again. One day, when speaking to her boss, a wide man who wore faux designer perfume that he bought in the market, she mentioned an article she had recently read – and this was the part that piqued The Boss’s interest enough for him to look up from his smartphone – about a charitable art foundation that was offering a considerably large donation to hospitals and care homes wishing to install art therapy programmes for their patients.

The Boss told The Temp that he would photocopy his own paperwork that afternoon, and within a few weeks the General Office Crap on The Temp’s desk was virtually non-existent. She wrote the financial bid, organized quotes from contractors, spoke to art supplies companies, and filled out the endless health and safety documents needed to navigate the maze of putting seriously ill people in a room with craft scissors and pencils, upon which they might accidentally impale themselves.

The funding presentation to the art charity was at their head office in London. The Temp’s palms were sweating so much as she waited to be shown into the board room that she left wet stains on the bottom of her document, and had to beg the charity temp to make her another copy.

The news came on a Thursday morning, just after eleven. She didn’t read the first paragraph of waffle thanking her for applying but skipped to the second, which began: Your grant will consist of … She’d done it. There was going to be an art room in the Glasgow Princess Royal Hospital.

The Temp worked harder on the art room than she had on anything before. She bored her friends on pub quiz night with the latest news in medical arts and crafts. She spent her weekends painting plant pots for the flowers that the patients would draw. She designed three different posters promoting the new art room, and secured media coverage from two local papers and a regional news programme to get the word out.

The day before the grand opening, The Temp went into the art room to make sure everything was ready. The merging of two old IT store rooms meant that the classroom was a decent size, and it had the added benefit of natural light through big windows on two sides. There were cupboards with art supplies, books on art, a whiteboard for the teacher, tables and chairs of varying heights and comforts for the patients’ needs, a sink to wash brushes, and a wall covered in display boards where string and fabric pegs hung at different heights so that patients could hang their work up to dry.

She circled the space. The art room was ready, it was waiting. The pencils were unbroken, the tables unmarked, the sink still bright white and the floor not covered in paint drips. One day soon, she thought to herself, this room would be alive with colour and buzzing with expression. It would give the patients somewhere to soothe their souls. Somewhere to be heard. A place they could stop being ‘ill’ people and just be people for a while. Before she locked the door, she breathed in the fresh paint smell of the walls and reminded herself that just a few months ago, this had been a badly managed stock room for IT equipment.

The morning of the grand opening, The Temp drove to work feeling as though she might be sick. She couldn’t wait to tell people about the art room, but more importantly, she couldn’t wait for the patients to see it. The one thing she hadn’t been able to imagine was what it would be like when they got in and started to use it. What stories would those first paintings tell?

When she arrived at the office in her specially bought outfit, she couldn’t understand why The Boss was so reserved, why he wasn’t meeting her eye and why the atmosphere felt so … low. She showed him the Twitter coverage on her phone and ran through the itinerary for the grand opening.

‘Look, I hate to put you on the spot, especially today,’ he said, running his fingers through what was left of his hair, ‘but we’re going to need an art teacher, and with the budget cuts, and temps needing holiday pay …’

The Temp’s heart was racing; she would be lying if she said that she hadn’t hoped he would ask. After all, it was obvious the art room would need a teacher and he had dragged his feet about hiring one. He knew she had a degree in art – who could be better? She squeezed her own hand tightly.

‘Anyway, the woman I’ve hired is going to cost more than I thought, so we don’t have the budget to renew your contract at the end of the month. But please do stay for the opening. And you’ll have three weeks before your contract officially ends.’

The Temp smiled for about three or four seconds while her stunned brain tried to communicate with her mouth that this was not a time to smile.

Then came the time for