Page 81 of Meet me at the Seaside Cottages

‘There’s nothing wrong with your ears,’ she says, examining them at some length. Although his large old nose has white hairs bristling out of it, there aren’t any in his ears. He has obviously had them groomed specifically for this visit.

‘I can’t hear so well,’ says Mr Zandisky.

‘You’re eighty-six,’ she says, not without sympathy. ‘This is just what’s going to happen.’

‘I think I have some wax.’

She looks again, and sees a little stick of something white. Frowning, she fishes it out with her blue clinical gloves and rolls it between her fingers.

‘Ah, yes, you see,’ says Mr Zandisky.

‘It’s wax.’

‘Yes, is wax.’

‘Mr Zandisky . . . is thiscandle wax?’

He looks at her with a wide-eyed expression of innocence. ‘I do not think this can be.’

‘Have you been putting candles in your ears?’

There had been a fashion some time before for ‘ear candling’, a total load of hooey that involved people sticking candles in their ears to supposedly bring out wax and impurities from the brain, a physical impossibility, or so Janey most fervently hopes. This resulted in a rash of burnt ears, stuck candles and even, in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, someone who’d managed to puncture their own eardrum.

‘Well?’’

‘I just think it is nice,’ he says defiantly. ‘To have very clean lovely ears. I am sure you agree with me.’

‘I do,’ says Janey. ‘But not to the extent of you cluttering up my surgery.’

Mr Zandisky looks sad and Janey immediately feels bad. This trip to the hospital has probably been the highlight of his week. He lives alone, all his friends back in Poland long dead, his children hugely successful and living in Paris, London, Sydney. He worked incredibly hard all his life to raise a family and is now on his own, his smart suit and tie indicating a man who very much still has his pride. It makes Janey’s heart slightly ache to see him, when there are so many who expect everything to be given to them. Mr Zandisky expects so little.

‘Let me just double-check,’ she says, and takes a surgical wipe and wipes it around his ear, removes the ear candle detritus, and puts in a little ointment, for absolutely no reason.

‘You have,’ she says, ‘the best ears for a man your age that I’ve ever seen.’

Mr Zandisky beams.

‘But no more sticking candles in them. It’s dangerous and ridiculous.’

He nods seriously.

‘Well done.’

‘I make other appointment?’

‘In two years,’ says Janey. ‘You’ll get a free hearing test.’

‘That is long time,’ he says.

‘Because you’re doing so well,’ she says, smiling encouragingly and standing up. She has a long list to get through. ‘You should be very proud.’

He nods, then brings out – oh, no, she thinks. Please no. But yes. A Tupperware of Polish sugar cookies he has baked for her.

‘You don’t need to do this,’ she protests.

‘But I wish to,’ he says gravely.

She knows he does, but now she will have to decant the cookies, he’ll want the Tupperware back, and then show them to everyone and she shouldn’t be eating sugar cookies anyway, she just can’t get away from it, miserable as this may seem, and he’s so kind . . . maybe I should just date him, she thinks. Make my life a lot simpler. But instead she takes the better lesson. Don’t lose contact with people that you love. Don’t ever lose contact with the people that you love.

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