by Phyllida Law
Gran, it’s remarkable. I’ve never seen your skin so clear. You must be thrilled. D’you think it’s because of this enforced rest? Posh people with psoriasis spend pots of money and rush off to the Dead Sea, which sounds alarming, but I understand bathing in its salty water is very efficacious. I’d have thought it was agony getting salt into those raw patches, but it’s bordering on miraculous and apparently you can float on the surface reading a newspaper. Something to do with the salt. You simply can’t sink. The Adriatic is pretty salty. I couldn’t get my bottom under the water. Dad said it looked as if I was being followed by a baby elephant. Or a small island.
You are still taking the gloop, aren’t you? Or did we stop it? Whatever. I think it’s the total rest. But while you are sitting up for lunch or tea, please remember to waggle your ankles, toes pointing up!
Toes pointing down! And then round and round as demonstrated by Nursie. Life is not all beer and skittles.
Matron
Where’s your clean nightie, Gran? He’s coming to see you tomorrow after surgery. When I told him there was this blobby thing next to your sternum (posh name for your breastbone) he was thrilled and asked if I was a nurse. Maybe even a doctor? I said, no, but I was sure I could deal with the blob very neatly before tea. It’s just like an ounce of suet, I said, no bigger than a baby’s bootee and just under the skin. A quick snip and that’s that. He said
perhaps not. Ooh, I’d love to do it. It wouldn’t take a minute and, after all, I had my tonsils taken out on the dining-room table.
It’s not a generally known fact but I did intend to become a doctor. Don’t laugh. Do you remember during the war there were huge posters warning people about VD? In Glasgow they were everywhere. Aunt May said it meant Digging for Victory but I could read the small print. Besides, they were on the back of every public loo door so that you could read all the details from a perched position. I made undercover enquiries in a luridly illustrated medical dictionary I found in Granny’s bookshelves only to discover that I had all the symptoms listed and would surely die young and in disgrace. My best friend Isobel Hebblethwaite said you could catch it from loo seats so when I stayed with her I used to pee in the sink. Realising I was socially unacceptable, the obvious career move was to sacrifice myself for the human race and maybe work with lepers in the Gorbals.
Oops, there’s the phone.
That was Mother. Everything much as usual. Yesterday she found Uncle Arthur buttoned and belted into his raincoat. Lying on the sofa head back, mouth open, specs squint, teeth dangling. She thought he was dead and went to phone the surgery. Just as the doctor answered Uncle Arthur shouted, “He owes me £1.”
I think the doctor is the only well-dressed man ever to darken our door. He even wears a waistcoat. Thank God we tidied your bedroom. Of course, when he rang the doorbell I was creaming butter and sugar with that electric whizzer thing you gave me and the bell startled me so that I lifted it out of the bowl without turning it off and covered the walls with gobbets of cake mix. Typical. I thought he was coming after evening surgery.
Anyway, he seemed delighted to view the baby’s bootee and not unduly worried about anything except what he describes as your “pallor”. What does he expect? It’s not much fun baring your bosom to young men in mid-morning. However, he will be in touch shortly as he is going to send us to a friend of his in the ’orspital who, he says, is top man for bumps and awfully nice. He will make the appointment, he says, and hopes to let us know within the week. Huh, we’ll see.
I’m off to put the kettle on and clear the kitchen. Back with cuppa shortly. Well done, Gran. You were brilliant.
PS Can we watch the snooker up here with you tonight?
Just in case we get called to the hospital within a week or so, let’s get your hair done. Tracey can come on Thursday, and backwards over the sink is all right now, isn’t it? I’ll bring up that kitchen chair.
I think your best blouse is in the laundry bag still. I’ll wash it today. Don’t laugh. I will, and I’ll hang out the tweed pinny with the zip. You don’t want to have to pull anything over your head. Actually, your stays will be difficult for a doctor to negotiate. Can you use garters for your stockings? We’ll take a wheelie for the endless corridors and you’ll be sitting down for the viewing. Maybe your bloomers will keep your stockings up, if you are sitting down. That’s if the elastic is tight enough.
Reminds me of old Mrs Hatrick up the glen who had a thing about spiders. She says she saw their teethmarks in the butter and used elastic bands to tighten the legs of her bloomers because she thought spiders would invade.
Remember Boot eating spiders and throwing up over your bedcover? We will discuss and unravel the garter problem tonight.
My drawing board is under your mattress, so can we bring the old card table into your room? The aim is to finish the jigsaw before you go in for the boob job. It might be quite fun and any visitor can wander in and add a piece here and there. Dad says if we rearrange the furniture a bit we can get it all set up under the window and you can have your chair beside it. Hurrah.
Gran’s room had always been a storeroom with a bed in it. She welcomed this sort of interference and she loved it when we watched the snooker lying on her bed, the only available space in the room other than her big armchair. In its heyday Gran’s cottage must have had elastic sides. It was home for one husband for a bit, three sons, one daughter, an elderly mother, an elderly dog and, during the war, a floating population of evacuees. Anything that interfered with the general flow was thrown higgledy-piggledy into Gran’s little bedroom at the top of the narrow stairs. Problem solved.
After the war, things thinned out. One by one the boys left home and eventually she shared the cottage with her daughter, her daughter’s husband and their small son, who was the apple of Gran’s eye. We used to take our girls to stay or just visit for treat weekends. I remember with awe the massive teas served on a spotless lace-edged tablecloth. The children, their noses level with the table top and eyes on the cake, equally awed, behaved like angels. No, not the jam tarts quite yet. Bread and butter first. There was always a bag of Mixed Assortment to be handed round when we watched Gran’s favourite Dixon of Dock Green in the front room.
Then one summer Gran was due into London from a visit to her eldest son who lived abroad, and I was to put her on the train home to Horsham. I think I was washing up when the phone went. It was her son-in-law ringing from the cottage. ‘Is she there?’ he asked.
‘No! She isn’t expected till three fifteen,’ I said.
‘My wife,’ he said. ‘The drawers are empty and the wardrobe is full of hangers.’
Gran’s daughter had run away to Cornwall with a beautiful young man, taking her little son with her.
I made up a bed and a thermos of hot, sweet tea. I told Gran in the car that I was going to take her home to our place at least for a night and I told her why. She took the news, mug in hand, with surprising equanimity. I drank most of the tea.
Years later, I learnt that Gran had helped pack up her daughter’s clothes for her flight. Not many moons later she packed up her own and came to us.
It occurs to me that we ought to cut your nails before D-Day. I don’t think they do that sort of thing in ’orspital. You can soak your feet while jigging and sawing and we’ll use Dad’s clippers.
Let’s watch Delia Smith tonight?
We’ve lost the lid of the jigsaw, so we will have to struggle without looking at the picture. It’s not so much the ship, it’s all that blue of sky and sea.
I’ve checked the elastic in your bloomers and I think they’ll be fine. It was Granny who used to wear wee garters of black elastic on her enormous knee-length bloomers. They were an unfortunate green, which seemed to glow in the dark. When she went walkabout guests were horrified to be confronted by a small bald ghost wearing plus-fours. She left her bunch of false curls on the dressing-table after nine at night when she was on patrol before bed and on
her way to tur
n the electricity off at the mains. She said she had a degree in electricity. Her gnashers were kept in a bedside jug, tho’ quite often they rattled about in her bed-jacket pockets among ‘sneesh paper’ and charcoal biscuits. She left a trail everywhere she went like Hansel and Gretel and me with hairpins.
Yes, I know, I’m frightful about Granny but she was such a thundering old bigot. If nuns called collecting, we all rushed to the door before Granny, as she was a miniature version of Ian Paisley and quite as loud. Once she had shouted about the Pope being an instrument of the devil, she would play wobbly hymns on the piano and sing off-key in an uncertain soprano.
I did enjoy sitting with her in ‘the morning room’ when she read the paper breathing heavily and peering thru a large magnifying glass. With any luck you might get a bit of chocolate from her bureau drawer. She would prise out the soft centre with one of her hairpins, eat it, return the hairpin to her bun, and hand me the chocolate shell. Sometimes she gave me the Russian Toffee because that stuck to her dentures, but I found her careful concentration and her clicking teeth rather soothing.
PS My specs were found under the washing line when I stepped on them. They must have fallen off when I pinned up your blouse.
Mother sends much love. She is fed up. Uncle Arthur has been very mumpish. Mrs Mac sent round some lovely home-baked ham studded with cloves and he complained bitterly that ‘Mrs Mac might be all very well, but her ham was full of nails.’
He won’t eat Ma’s mashed potato either and asked for the stuff in a packet called Smash. ‘No lumps,’ he said.
Talking of which, there is movement on the lump front. We are to go on Friday next at 11.15 a.m., which is wonderfully much sooner than expected tho’ I don’t like the look of that ‘15’ detail. Can he be seeing people every 15 minutes? We’ll take the Daily Mail, a pen and some wine gums. Thank Heaven we got your hair done.
It’ll be nice to get it over before next weekend when we are all at home and a roast is planned. You may be allowed to recline with Room Service on Saturday and then you will be escorted downstairs to oversee the Yorkshire pudding department. What do I do wrong? Dad stuck my last efforts to the fridge door and is demanding ‘the nun’s farts’ his mother makes.
Ooh, what about that surgeon? Wasn’t he gorgeous? Long time since I’ve seen a bow tie. When he bent to pat you on your shoulder I thought he was going to kiss you.
‘Half man, half woman,’ he murmured admiringly.
I told him you had that boob off forty years ago and he was THRILLED. He said you were ‘a miracle’.
Did you mind all those students having a feel? I was a bit worried and the surgeon said rather firmly they weren’t to squeeze it. In medical terms it’s known as a Mouse apparently.
Do you mind nurses calling you Annie? I felt you might.
Anyway, Mouse is to be removed and Mr McClure, the surgeon, is looking forward to it. All very well for him, I say, but he makes it sound easy and comfortably imminent.
I know tea was a bit peculiar, Gran, but Sophie was determined to impress. It’s called Lamb Moroccaine or something. I can’t explain why it was grey but the fingernails were actually flaked almonds. I shall waltz in later with your Sanatogen and the last of the cake.
Don’t worry, Gran, we’ve got time, but let’s make a list tomorrow. Where’s your wee case? It used to be on top of the wardrobe. Lost? Talking of which—Mother couldn’t find Uncle Arthur this morning when she took him his tea. He’d got into bed upside down. His head was where his feet should be if you follow me.
We’ll use some of this baby talc to stop your legs sticking together.
I’ll turn your radiator off in your room. It’s horrid getting hot and sweaty because it makes you cold. Aunt Ella sweated so much at night she took a hair dryer to bed with her. She said it had nothing to do with the weather.
Right. Paper and pen at the ready. Let’s make a list of requirements.
talcum powder
paper hankies
2 good hankies for handbag and pocket
2 nighties? One on and I bring a clean when needed?
dressing-gown
your sponge bag with—soap, facecloth, hairbrush and comb
Steradent
big tub psoriasis cream
bottle of arthritis gloop
those yellow pills
handbag with purse with coins in for buying newspaper etc.
Daily Mail
pen and pencils
book—I got you a Reginald Arkell at the library
two pairs of specs and, last but not least, your hearing-aid. We might get help with that while you are in.
Please tick list and add any other requirements.
Quite agree—I think Maynards wine gums essential. Well done.
Mother says she has discovered why the prize fuchsia overwinters so well. You will recall I know that Uncle Arthur won a prize for it at last year’s flower show having bought it the day before at Marks & Spencer or was it Woolworths? Anyway, he has it in its pot just below the bedroom window and she caught him peeing on it.
Shades of the aunts, three of whom sat backwards out of an upstairs window and peed on a parishioner’s flowery hat while she sat talking to their papa. I loved that story when I was little and even now I wish I’d known my grandpapa. He died rather young, and not surprising after Granny and eight children. Mother’s memories of him are rare, but he used always to wear a velvet smoking jacket when he was at home, and if she cried in the night and he came to sit on her bed, she knew she would find a stick of nougat in his breast pocket.
I was about 9 when I got caught short in the ladies’ compartment of the little local train to Wemyss Bay and boarding school. The train was
corridor-less and loo-less, so I ate all the choco-lates from a Christmas gift box, peed into it and threw the box out of the window just past Fort Matilda.
Your case was under the bed.
Dad has ascertained that wheelchairs are always available and he polished your shoes before he left.
No, darling. Manchester.
We’ll cab it to the hospital as Dad has got the car.
In Manchester.
He has added a packet of Rich Tea biscuits to your luggage.
Your carriage is ordered for 10 a.m.
No, darling, he’s in Manchester.
We will be very leisurely, and you won’t be harassed by anyone. Mr McClure will visit you perhaps, but he’s nice. Your case is packed and ready, outdoor clothing hanging up neatly by the airing cupboard.
You’ve got your nightie on back to front. That’s tremendously good luck. Did you know?
The tall one in dark blue with the wee hat is a big sister. I think there aren’t any Matrons any more. (She’s very young, isn’t she?) The pretty wee blonde in the pink stripes with the frilly hat is from Great Ormond Street and visiting or something. I miss all those daft wee organdie hats nurses used to wear. The staff nurses here look like hairdressers or checkout girls from Sainsburys.
The dark girl with bottle-top specs wearing a white coat is American or Canadian, I think, and very keen to interview you when you are available. She’s doing a ‘paper’ or a dissertation or some such and she is fascinated by your interesting condition. One boob and a bump.
Don’t know who is behind the curtains next door. No, it’s not a man.
The young women opposite are a bit yellow, which is jaundice, I think. We both look very large and pink.
Am just disappearing to the loo for a minute. I can’t go into the ward one. It’s over there.
It wasn’t far. Just outside the ward doors. Sister says you’ll be done first in the morning. Expect to be wheeled off around 8 a.m. I forgot it’s nil by mouth. There’s a large notice behind your head.
I’m glad you get done first. You’ll be back up by lunchtime and I’ll be here about 3 p.m. to eat your grapes. You are a pretty sight sitting there. The nurses are mad about you already.
OK, sweetheart, I’m off. We sha
ll take tea tomorrow together. I’ve just seen a trolley waltzing about.
Got everything?
Nurse has your medicaments.
Wine gums on your locker. Better ask if they’re allowed.
They’ll probably give you a pill to sleep. I hope so. It’s a bit noisy behind the curtain.
No, it’s a woman. The man is just visiting. Ta-ta.
Gran! I’ve left a wee notebook and a pen on your locker for nurses to write things in case you don’t hear them.
3.05 p.m. You are asleep, Gran! I’ll be back later.
I’ve brought your post, Gran. It’s like Christmas. Can’t read this one. Who is Piggy? Your specs are in your handbag. Shall we do this later? I’ll put them out on your locker. Don’t think about it now.
I’ve started on your room. Found a desiccated sock behind the radiator.
I took your clothes home yesterday and I’ll bring you a clean nightie when needed. You are wearing a hospital gownie. The yellow ladies are looking better. How is the curtained lady?
Oh.
Isn’t it quiet at the weekend? There will be no action till Monday. Is it painful just now, Gran? I’ll tell Nursie. She’ll want to know.
Will you eat any of this?
Let’s ask for a cuppa and you can dunk a Rich Tea. I’ll ask too if you can have a hot milk drink tonight. Horlicks or Ovaltine. Not chocolate. OK
I’ll just give your specs a clean. Where’s your hearing-aid? The family are coming up from Sussex to see you tomorrow so you will need it.
Gran, look. See this? It’s your Visitor’s Book. Get them to write in it.
It’s absolutely pelting out there. I think I’ll just get in beside you.
No, I came by cab. Dad has the car in Manchester.
You are tired. I’m going to go! I won’t come tomorrow as everyone else is calling in. See you Monday. Not Dad. He’s in Manchester. I’ll see Sister before I go.
TTFN.
Ooh, get you, Annie Amelia. Tuppence to talk to you.
