Paradise News by David Lodge

Author:David Lodge
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781446496749
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2017-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Monday 14th

A meeting this morning with Ursula’s lawyer, a Mr Bellucci. His office is in what is called downtown Honolulu, the financial and business district. Like Waikiki, it has a slightly unreal quality, as if it was all built yesterday, and might be dismantled and cleared away overnight for something quite different to be erected tomorrow. You take a turnoff from a rather scruffy stretch of the Ala Moana Boulevard, a mile past the Shopping Center, park in a multi-storey, and walk out on the other side into a maze of pedestrianized streets and plazas linking sleek tower blocks that look confusingly alike, all built of the same stainless steel, smoked glass and glazed brick. The offices, or “suites”, are lavishly furnished with wood panelling and fitted carpets, chilled by relentless air-conditioning, and screened by venetian blinds lowered over tinted windows, so that minutes after you have stepped inside off the hot bright pavement it is hard to believe that you are still in Hawaii. Perhaps it is a deliberate effort to create an artificial microclimate conducive to work, and to overcome the lethargy of the tropics. Bellucci and his staff certainly seemed to be playing parts in a simulation of office life in some commercial capital of the northern hemisphere. He wore a three-piece suit and tie; his secretary a severe long-sleeved frock, stockings, and high-heeled shoes. I felt sloppy and unbusinesslike in my slacks and sports shirt.

Mr Bellucci greeted me gravely at the door of his room and gestured me to sit down in a green buttoned-leather armchair that, like the rest of the furnishings, looked brand-new and curiously inauthentic. “How you doing, Mr Walsh?’ he said. I told him briefly of my problems, Daddy’s accident, etc., and he clucked his tongue sympathetically. “Sticky wicket,” he said. “Isn’t that what you say in England? Sticky wicket?” I told him the meaning of the phrase in cricket. “No kidding?” he said with mild incredulity. “You gonna sue the driver?” He seemed disappointed when I said no.

He called his secretary to bring in the power-of-attorney document, and smoked a cigar while I read through its four pages. The text was written in typical legal jargon designed to cover every possible eventuality – “to purchase, sell, bargain, or contract for, encumber, hypothecate, or alienate any property, real, personal or mixed, tangible or intangible …” But the drift was clear enough. It had to be signed by Ursula in the presence of a notary public. I asked how that could be managed, since she was confined to bed, and Bellucci told me the notary would come to the hospital. “The hospital social worker will set it up for you.” Which indeed she did. To my astonishment the business was all completed by three o’clock this afternoon, after a brief little ceremony at Ursula’s bedside. I now have total power to manage her affairs. My first task was to pay Mr Bellucci’s not inconsiderable bill, $250.00.

Between my appointment with Bellucci and the signing of the document, I fitted in visits to two more nursing homes on the list Dr Gerson gave me.

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