Notes to my Mother-in-Law

by Phyllida Law

  Do you know, she used to turn the electricity off at the mains if she felt people had overstayed their welcome. And when we had a visitor I would be sent upstairs to light the gas fire in their bedroom (the house was always freezing). When I’d done it I’d slide under the bed until I saw Granny’s little black shoes tip-tapping to the fire to switch it off. Satisfied and breathing heavily, she would trot away to her room and I would emerge to relight the fire. She must have been ninety. My brother said she would live for ever because she ate all the mould off the top of the jam pots. My other job was to hide behind the curtains in the dining room to collect the dirty plates she carefully put away. She called it ‘clean dirt’ as she wiped them with a licked finger.

  She put great faith in spit. I was about six when I fell heavily on a cinder path and a little cinder embedded itself in my forehead. Granny cleaned it up and spat on the wound. ‘There now,’ she said. ‘That’ll heal over nicely.’ And it did. I had to go to the doctor’s to have the cinder dug out. You can see the dent in my forehead to this day.

  Around this time Gran had the first of her many falls. I found her on the loo floor with one little foot in its size-three shoe wedged around the lavatory pedestal. I couldn’t pick her up because she was laughing so much. Eventually I managed to pull her into a sitting position and give her a cup of sweet tea.

  ‘Oh, thank heaven I’ve been,’ she said, hiccuping.

  When I finally had her upright I walked her to her bedroom by placing her feet on my size fives, like you do with kids, and we swayed shrieking across the landing, counting loudly at each uncertain step.

  This was when I learnt that severe bruising is more painful than a break, or so the doctor said. Bed rest was prescribed. We rigged up a commode on a dining chair with a Wedgewood tureen shaped like a cabbage beneath it. It sold at auction for quite a lot some time later.

  Mother sends acres of healing love. She says she fell down the manse stairs with her portable wireless in one hand and her tea in the other so she knows how you feel.

  Uncle Arthur is pretty well, considering. Ma got up the other morning very early and feeling chilly, only to find him kneeling at his open window and just wearing his pyjama jacket. She thought he was dead or praying but he was taking aim at a rabbit. He keeps a shotgun under his wardrobe. Mill’s pet rabbit used to eat the sitting-room carpet. It had to have a hysterectomy and, appalled by its pain, she fed it port and Veganin. Killed it. She couldn’t understand it because her monkey was an alcoholic. They all are, I’m told. When she took him to the pub, folk would ask what her little friend fancied. Port-and-brandy was his favourite.

  The girls will serve tea in your boudoir at 4 p.m. or thereabouts. You are getting better, I can tell.

  Matron

  I got the Baby Bio. It’s underneath the sink. Treated myself to a can of Leaf Shine (very expensive). The flipping tobacco plant I got from Molly gets me down. Can I rip off that yellow leaf now?

  I’ve washed the fanlight at the front door and emptied the bluebottles out of the lampshade. What’s more, I’ve given the door itself a coat of linseed oil because I found half a bottle in the hall cupboard. Used the paintbrush Dad ruined creosoting the deckchairs. Very successful. The linseed oil has softened the bristles. Also, which is good news, the holes in the panelling are not woodworm but marks from the drawing pins we used to put up the wreath at Christmas. Ha!

  Mrs Wilson sends love. Her arthritis is being kept at bay with some injection or other. Do you fancy a go?

  Mr Wilson fell down the tube-station stairs at Trafalgar Square last week and ‘came to’ in the Middlesex. He has a lump on his head the size of a cricket ball and the bruise is slipping down his face. Mrs W says he may have to have it lanced.

  Dr P says you might think about getting up and sitting in your chair tomorrow afternoon.

  The girls will re-open lessons with ‘the Box’.

  Normal service should resume on Monday.

  Coming down the hill from the cleaners I saw Larry T on his front steps with a dustpan and brush, wearing yellow rubber Marigold gloves. He was about to clear up the corpse of a rat that had walked up the stairs, looked at him piteously and died on his doormat.

  I had a friend who was having a bath when a rat came out of the loo, collected a bar of soap and went back down. She keeps the complete works of Shakespeare and a huge family Bible on the loo lid in between times. The rat apparently lived in the flat below where it ate a cardboard carton full of tampons, and built a brilliantly comfortable nest with the contents. They are clever creatures. Mr Richardson used to keep pet rats. They used to sit on his chest and nibble sugar off his moustache.

  Shall I leave Boot in your room tonight?

  Darling, do try not to worry about it. I’m sure that’s part of the problem. Any sort of tension or trauma seems to seize one up. I can never go when I’m visiting. Think of Dad. He comes home from New Zealand to go to the loo. Release of tension, you see. Some people don’t go for days together and it’s quite normal. Queen Victoria was always writing to her children about constipation and fresh air. Then Albert died from bad drains. Ironic.

  They did a lot of research on it during the war because of lifeboats. I mean people didn’t go for three weeks or more. When you come to think of it, just a bucket on a boat. Maybe not even a bucket.

  I think the Navy is an authority on constipation. It was a naval doctor who wrote that book on bran. Let’s have another try. If I put it in soup it wouldn’t make you cough. Or if I squidged it up with All-Bran, cream and sugar?

  I don’t want you to get like Uncle Arthur wandering about in his pyjama jacket eating Ex-Lax.

  An Indian with a strong Welsh accent has just come to read the gas meter.

  I put the bed mat on the lawn because I felt it couldn’t stand being on the line while still wet. Some of the stitching is very rotten. It’ll be an enormous task mending it, darling, but I’ll bring the bag of bits and it’ll be something to do while you are sitting.

  Boot was sick again, but very neatly, and there was a little patch of fur in the middle so maybe the vet was right after all.

  Sorry I didn’t tell you about the dentist. I thought you looked a bit bleak when I got home. Forgot. Sorry. Of course, I was late leaving and I couldn’t find my keys. (They were on top of the fridge.) Then I lost my handbag. (I’d put it down by the front door.) I didn’t have time to come up.

  I was running down Fawley Road when I noticed something odd about my left leg. A certain stiffness about the knee. I slowed down a bit and walked briskly on, thinking bleakly about old age. It wasn’t till I was sitting on the tube that I noticed a dingy clump of cotton sticking out of my left trouser leg. I tried to pretend it was perfectly normal to pull a pair of knickers out of my trouser leg and push them into my handbag.

  I once dropped my handbag on the tube whereupon it burst open and scattered a packet of Tampax all over the floor in front of a large class of small boys from that posh prep school in Hampstead.

  Do you think we should manufacture a pocket on your pinny a little higher up? For the aid, I mean. When you sat down at lunch it was under the table. You’ll have to bring it out and lay it down, trying always to have the little round speaker bit facing upwards—or outwards if it is clipped on to your pinny, and I think above waist level. (‘Where is that?’ you cry.) Up the ’orspital they said you might hear swishing noises from some materials you wear, and some fabrics crackle.

  It worked best at tea, didn’t it? I didn’t raise my voice one little bit. If you sit there holding it towards me it works a treat. A carpeted room and no extraneous noise or fidgeting members of the public.

  I don’t think Sanatogen can make you dizzy. Were you bending down a lot? Looking at Boot? I know. I agree. There is a decided swelling.

  Hurrah for Pooh.

  For who? For Pooh!

  Tremendous celebrations downstairs. Dad did a rather undignified dance from study to wine rack and will propose your health at sup
per tonight.

  Sausages and mash.

  I was so thrilled to see you beaming away all pink and pretty that I will not even impose sanctions on whoever smuggled in the Ex-Lax.

  PS If I stew a large bowl of Bramleys to serve with the All-Bran, will you promise me not to take Ex-Lax every night?

  Matron

  He says it’s cancer, darling, and he can’t operate. I shall tell the girls at teatime. We’ll probably come up to your room. Dad has gone to golf to stride about.

  I went up to Flax’s and bought a packet of smoked-salmon bits. He can’t say how long she has left, but he gave her an injection of steroids and vitamins, which will give her a terrific boost and we should see a difference in her within twenty-four hours. She may even meet you tomorrow morning as of old, so take care on the landing.

  She liked the smoked salmon.

  See you at tea.

  Well, onwards and upwards, darling. I may try and clean shed out tomorrow if weather continues fine. If not, I may do out china cupboard. I did floors very thoroughly last week, so if you do waist-level dusting, I’ll just come behind you with the polisher.

  Fish and chips takeaway? Haddock? Or, I know, what about skate if they have it? I’ll just get one portion of chips and two of whatever we decide on because that will give us spare for Boot and batter for the birds.

  I was sitting at the kitchen door in the last of the sun this evening doing the crossword when Boot came out and walked up to the end of the garden. The melancholy slowness of her walk struck me to the heart. She sat down, curled her tail round her body as neatly as ever she did and stared into the shadows. I put down my paper and called to her gently, and she turned and stared at me in an abstracted sort of way, and then when I held out my hand she moved towards me with the shadow of an old hope in her eyes, touched my hand with her dry hot nose and sat down on the crossword. That cheered me up.

  Do you remember how we lost her not five minutes after we brought her to the house, and how wild with grief the children were and how even you wept till we found her in the cutlery drawer?

  Do you remember how she used to live under our bed in order to occupy it when we left? Em used to call to her severely, ‘Come out of there, Boot. I see your boiling eyes.’

  Nor will I ever forget when she had her kittens in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe and I lay on the floor and held her hand. And Dad woke the RSPCA at two in the morning to tell them his cat was having a breech birth as all we could see were three tiny paws sticking out of her hindquarters.

  And do you remember when we moved house I slept on a mattress in the sitting room to try and prevent her escaping up the chimney? Of course, that’s when we discovered she could get out through the letter-box. So she was lost for two days and nights and we fed her poor children every two hours—or was it four?—with an eye-dropper. On the third night we heard her call in the garden and Dad fed the kittens outside so she slowly came nearer, tortured by their squeaks. After that she was fine.

  I always wish I’d never had her ‘doctored’. When she came home with that bandage round her middle, looking humiliated and aggrieved, I was stricken with guilt. She wouldn’t look at me. There ought to be a pill they could take. Animals, I mean. Mother had a medical acquaintance who fed birth-control pills to pigeons to keep the numbers down.

  Oh, Boot. We’ve never seen eye to eye, have we, till just these last weeks. What a successful, controversial cat you’ve been. I’m glad you were wicked and nicked Gran’s fresh crab.

  So there we sat in the sun and communed one with another and sighed over lost summer times.

  I don’t think we’ll have her with us till Christmas, will we?

  You are sound asleep, thank heaven, but I have put your drink on the table in case you wake. The yellow pill in the spoon beside it should be taken if you are in any pain at all. I’ll leave the landing light on, just in case, and our door is open. Have put bell by wireless. Don’t hesitate to use it.

  We are all so relieved that you are home. How you did it without breaking something I will never know. The noise was tremendous. Like three loads of laundry with boots on. And it was followed by this eerie silence when Virginia and I sat open-mouthed with eyebrows in our hair.

  The ambulance men (one was a girl, did you notice?) told me you shouldn’t have been wrapped up so warmly. I always thought you had to keep the patient warm. I forget what they said now, of course, but it’s something to do with bringing the blood too near the surface of the skin, which would be foolish if you needed an operation or anything, which, of course, was why I didn’t give you any tea, darling. I felt such a cow. And you were just coming downstairs for a cup too. Bet you were parched. Also, I didn’t come with you in the ambulance because I couldn’t have got home again in time for the girls. So there you were with a cushion under your head and your feet in the air saying you were sorry. I found your other shoe under the hallstand, but I can’t find your deaf-aid anywhere.

  Not surprisingly, I forgot the gingerbread so the edges are all black but the middle is surprisingly edible, if a bit chewy, so we just sat and ate it out of the tin. I’ll have to soak the edges off.

  Your specs flew off and you landed on them so one of the legs is a bit bent. Dad has been trying to straighten them over the gas, but he’s a bit tentative so I’ll take them round to the oculist tomorrow.

  But I’m amazed you didn’t smash something. There’s only a little chip on the hallstand and at least this time you weren’t wearing two pairs of bloomers. Remember when you broke your leg in Scotland and you had put on two of absolutely everything for fireworks? That little Indian doctor had rather a testing time cutting you out of your drawers. He probably thought it was an ancient Scottish custom.

  There is a bit of a bump on the side of your forehead, which will probably show up more tomorrow. You must have biffed your head on the banisters. Nurse thought you may get a black eye. Ooh. Gorgeous.

  I’ll just prop this up against the clock in case you wake. Take the yellow pill, darling.

  Didn’t they use to put a raw steak on a black eye? Why?

  Well done, Gran. You will find the yellow pill on spoon beside glass of soda water. Here are a few wine gums beside them. Hand bell by wireless. I’ve moved the flowers in case they get knocked over.

  I’ll ask Nursie about Benecol tomorrow. I know you have great faith in it but I think we’d better not take it till we know if it mixes with everything else.

  I do wonder what it’s made of. I simply cannot get it out of the carpet whatever I do, and I was scrubbing away the other day when I suddenly saw that the pattern on the edge has a line of helmeted warriors doing unmentionable things to each other. I had no idea it was so bellicose. Anyway, I’ve rubbed a couple of warriors threadbare and the Benecol is still clinging to the warp or the woof or the weft or whatever you call it—it’s like paint.

  Dad wants to know who is going to wash his knickers while his mum is confined to barracks. He chipped most of the gingerbread out of the tin and ate it. The mangled tin is soaking in the wash-house sink.

  I enjoyed cleaning the stained-glass window. It’s come up lovely so it has. I think the landing might seem brighter now, and the stair-rods are all fixed and firm. You know the rose you gave me from the Harrods flower show? The ‘Pink Grootendorst’ it’s called, poor thing. Well, it’s flourishing over on the other side of our fence, but it looks half dead this side. Rather hurtful. I saw this while hanging out of the window, so I sloshed all my soapy water over the bad bits and missed. Half the bucketful hit the deck and half went down that shiny new pipe sticking out of next door’s side wall. I think I’ve flooded their central-heating system. When the doorbell went a while later I assumed it was next door come to complain. And there they were. I took a deep breath and started to apologize, but they’d only called to show us their new baby. Brought it up to see you but you’d dropped off. Nice little person no bigger than a thermos and very comfy in a carry-bag. I shut up about the central-h
eating. If I’ve wrecked it they’ll only find out in September.

  Mrs Wilson says she was nearly cremated this week. Mr Wilson filled her cigarette lighter too full, she says, and the flames shot up so high it set her spectacles on fire. She managed to throw them off but they were burning the carpet so she had to pick them up with fire tongs and put them in the sink. She says the smell was frightful.

  I can’t understand how her hair didn’t catch fire. She uses masses of hair lacquer and it’s very combustible.

  ‘It’s the absolute bitter end in whiskers,’ she said.

  Boot actually had a boxing match with Dad tonight.

  He has put a cardboard box lined with a cushion and his copy of the Times by the kitchen heater.

  Guess what? You will squeal. I got up this morning to investigate an odd sound. A cross between castanets and a kettle coming to the boil. I thought it was the central heating, so I felt the radiators in our room and thought, That’s it. They’re tepid at the top so they probably need milking or bleeding or whatever it’s called. Wandered to the bathroom and the noise followed me onto the landing. Went to the loo and it stopped. It got very loud suddenly when I went near the laundry basket so I emptied it out in case there was something lurking in a pocket. Nothing. (Well, one 1/2d bit.) Opened my drawer to get some clean knickers and while I was struggling them on the noise got rather aggressive. Sat on the bed nonplussed and scratched my head. There it was. There it was. The noise, I mean, the rattling about. I’d run out of curlers last night and I’d used a tube of Anadin with six pills in it on my fringe and jammed it into place with two bent hairpins. It’s done the trick with the curl, I think you’ll find.

  PS Do you remember the night I swallowed my moustache bleach?

  Went to get our Friday fish this afternoon and told our bespectacled friend about Boot. He had wondered about all that smoked salmon. Goodness, he is nice. I think you might have to be nice to be a fishmonger. Carpenters are nice. Do they start nice or is it the job? Anyway, Spectacles was the one who said to drown your crab. I thought this sounded idiotic but he said, ‘No. Drop it upside down into warm water and wait till it stops bubbling.’ Help. It’s time you were up. If the water is too hot he says the crab will ‘shoot its claws’ (as in gents shooting their shirt cuffs). He and his wife are very keen on amateur theatricals and he was a virgin when he married. I didn’t enquire about his wife.