by Anne Bennett
‘Go ahead,’ Eileen told him. ‘You’ll find it is as I said.’
And so it was. As far as Peter could ascertain, a large tumour was lodged in Eileen Gillespie’s stomach. He pulled the covers back over her shrunken body, sat on the chair beside the bed and said, ‘I can certainly prescribe morphine for the pain. As for how advanced it is, a surgeon could tell you better than I could. I could arrange for you to visit hospital …’
‘No doctor, no hospital.’ Eileen said firmly. ‘I want to die in my own bed.’
‘You will require nursing,’ Peter said.
‘I know that, but Geraldine can do that in the day. She has little to do now her children are both at school and Jenny can take over in the evening. It might even do my daughter good to have to put someone else’s needs before her own. She’s never had to do that, you know, and I suppose I’ve encouraged her, but I shall not be here much longer. She’ll have to learn to stand on her own two feet before very long.’
‘Mrs Gillespie, without a thorough examination by a qualified surgeon, I have no idea how long you’ve got,’ Peter said, and added, ‘it could be months.’
‘It won’t be, Doctor. I know it and you know it,’ Eileen said. She spoke matter-of-factly, without a trace of self-pity. ‘I doubt I’ll be here by Christmas.’
Peter doubted it too, but he didn’t say so. Instead he said, ‘Do you want me to tell the family?’
‘You can do,’ Eileen said. ‘But explain I want no wailing and weeping around me. I have no time for it, and before you go – can you give me something for the pain?’
Peter thanked his lucky stars he’d thought to pack phials of morphine. He administered an injection to give the old lady some relief and went downstairs to break the news to the family and write out a prescription.
Norah refused to believe it at first. Her mother had never had a day’s illness in her life. Surely, she asked, there was something the doctor could do, some treatment he could try? Peter explained patiently that even if the old lady had agreed to go to hospital, there was little that could be done for her. ‘She’s known about it for some time apparently,’ he said. ‘But she chose not to call me in earlier because she didn’t want treatment. She doesn’t now. She just wants relief from the pain.’
‘She’s monstrously selfish,’ Norah burst out. ‘She owes it to me to try everything!’
Jenny was the least shocked by the doctor’s diagnosis. She’d seen how her grandmother’s body had seemed to waste away over the last weeks; her face had pouches of skin beneath her eyes, and her chin, and her proud neck had sunk into folds of sagging flesh. She didn’t doubt anything Peter said and she asked the question both her mother and sister wanted to ask, but lacked the courage to do so. ‘How long has she got?’
‘It’s impossible to be accurate.’
‘Weeks, months, a year?’ Norah snapped out. ‘You must have some idea.’
‘Weeks,’ the doctor said.
‘Weeks?’ Norah repeated, and faced the fact that her mother, who’d shared her home and her bedroom for the last four years and who’d been her confidante and friend for as far back as she cared to remember, would soon be there no more. An immeasurable sadness took hold of her, for she knew none of her children would make up for the loss of her mother.
‘I’m sorry,’ Peter said. ‘It’s the worst news a doctor can give.’
‘Thank you, Doctor, at least for your honesty,’ Jenny said, when it was obvious neither her mother nor sister seemed able to say anything.
‘I’ll call tomorrow,’ Peter said and Jenny saw him to the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.
Jenny shrugged. She couldn’t feel too sorry for the old lady, but she’d seen her mother’s stricken face and said, ‘Is she in any pain?’
‘No, not now. We’ll be able to keep her virtually pain-free with morphine,’ Peter promised. ‘I’ll be along tomorrow and I’ll try and arrange a nurse to call daily. She seems to think you and your sister will cope with the rest.’
‘We will,’ Jenny said. ‘We’ll have to.’
‘Now, don’t you go running yourself ragged,’ the doctor warned.
‘I won’t,’ Jenny promised. ‘I’ll have to give the warden’s post up, but we’re not so necessary now and everything’s winding down anyway. It’s all right, I’ll go down tomorrow and explain.’
However, the doctor was still worried for Jenny. She had her work cut out with a full-time job and the house to run, besides nursing one terminally ill person and another who’d willed herself into disability.
That night he remembered Doctor McKenzie’s theory about hypochondria. By morning he thought he had a solution of sorts. Norah O’Leary trusted him as she trusted no one else in the medical profession and she’d seen no doctor for years. If he were to introduce some pills to her now, just standard painkillers, and tell her about the new breakthrough in pain relief for arthritis sufferers she might believe him, if she wanted to. It was worth a try. If she only agreed to do a few things for herself and relieve the load from Jenny’s shoulders, that would be a help. He did wonder if it was a truly ethical thing to do, but he pushed such concerns aside.
Geraldine was upstairs when he knocked the next morning and she came down looking flustered. ‘I didn’t think you’d be so early,’ she said. ‘Grandmother hasn’t long finished her breakfast and I haven’t washed her or anything. She won’t want to see you just yet.’
‘It’s all right,’ Peter said. ‘I’m in no hurry.’ He was in fact rushed off his feet, but he kept that to himself and went on, ‘I’ll sit with your mother for a minute.’
Geraldine gratefully bustled back upstairs and Peter Sanders let himself into the living room.
Norah was bored enough to welcome the doctor. She missed her mother’s company and Geraldine’s too, for her daughter spent most of her time in the bedroom. So she smiled at Peter and said, ‘Hello, Doctor. Isn’t my mother ready for you?’
‘Not yet,’ Peter said. ‘But that’s all to the good, because really I wanted a word with you anyway.’
Norah was skeptical about the tablets as he explained, but he fully expected her to be. She stared at the young man with the beard and moustache looking at her with concerned eyes. She could have told him she could get up and walk if she wanted to, almost as well as anyone else, but she didn’t. What she said was, ‘I’ve had painkillers for years, Doctor. They don’t work.’
‘These are specially formulated for arthritis,’ Peter said. ‘They’re still in the experimental stages, but the results of the trials have been excellent.’
‘I don’t want to be a guinea pig for some drug company.’
‘Oh, you won’t be that,’ Peter assured her. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just that they’re not yet available over the chemist’s counter. I’ve been sent a small supply to try on selected patients, and I thought of you immediately.’
Norah liked the sound of that – as if she was a special customer. Peter pressed home this advantage. ‘Would you try them and tell me what you think? You’d be doing me an enormous favour.’
‘You’re sure they’re safe?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And how much will this wonder drug cost? You know with Mother’s medication there isn’t a lot to spare to spend on anyone else.’
‘As I said, it’s experimental,’ Peter said. ‘So at the moment it’s absolutely free.’
‘Oh well, in that case.’ Norah weighed the small glass bottle in her hand and then opened it and spilled the white tablets into the palm of her hand. ‘They don’t look very miraculous, do they?’ she said. ‘Just like aspirins really.’
‘Ah, but what matters is the ingredients,’ Peter said, and wondered if he’d always been so good at lying. He was mightily glad when Geraldine opened the hall door at that minute, a bowl of water in her hand and a towel draped over her arm. ‘Grandmother’s ready for you now,’ she said.
‘Ah Geraldine,’ Norah cried out. ‘Fetch me a glass of water, th
ere’s a good girl. I’ve some tablets here the doctor wants me to try and I must have a drink to help them down,’ and Peter escaped upstairs as Norah was explaining the tablets to her daughter.
Jenny wasn’t aware what Peter had done for her mother and he didn’t confide in her. Geraldine only told her that he’d given their mother some new pills to try. She therefore didn’t expect a miracle cure and wasn’t disappointed when there wasn’t one.
Anyway, all her energy and that of her sister went on their grandmother. Eileen had never been easy and now pain and frustration made her querulous and quarrelsome. She was quite capable of administering a ringing slap if you did something wrong and inadvertently hurt her; occasionally she even threw things. Jenny tried to be patient, knowing that she hated having to stay in bed and have someone help her with most things, even the most personal ones. Also, time hung heavy on her hands and she missed the chats she enjoyed with her daughter. Geraldine was all right, but not much of a talker. Besides, she was always in a hurry taking the children to school or fetching them and making meals as well as helping both her mother and grandmother. And Eileen had never had much to say to Jenny.
Downstairs Norah was just as miserable. One day, just over a week after her mother had taken to her bed, she felt particularly lonely and neglected and sorry for herself. Geraldine had left the house just after dinner as she said she wanted to do a bit of shopping in Erdington village before collecting the children from school. She suddenly realized with a slight shock that she’d not spoken a word to her mother for three days, though she slept in the divan bed just three feet from her own, for Eileen was usually asleep when Norah was helped to bed at night and down again in the morning. In fact, if she didn’t make the effort to see her, she might never speak to her again, for no one knew how long she had.
She pushed the rug off her knees and, grasping the chair arms, she pulled herself to her feet and stood for a moment. Her head swam a little so she stayed still until the dizziness passed off. There was also a little pain in her knees and she was stiff, but nothing like the other few times when she’d walked around the room. The tablets of Dr Sanders were very good, she decided.
She walked slowly across the room holding on to the back of the armchair and the sideboard, and out to the small hall where she looked at the stairs with some trepidation. Walking around a room was one thing, tackling the stairs alone was quite another. But if you don’t, said a little voice inside her, you haven’t a hope of spending any time with your mother, for she knew Eileen would never leave her bed again. Using the banister as leverage, she pulled herself up one step at a time, until slowly but surely she stood at the top, out of breath at the unaccustomed exercise.
Eileen was waiting for her, as she’d heard her laboured approach, but her smile of welcome turned into a grimace of pain, ‘Oh Mother,’ Norah cried.
‘Don’t fuss,’ Eileen said sharply, ‘I can’t bear it and never could.’ She gazed at her daughter and said, ‘So you made it up at last, on your own.’
‘It’s the new tablets that doctor gave me – they’re marvellous, Mother.’
Eileen gazed at her daughter. She knew there was little wrong with her, but she also knew why she’d pretended all this time and it centred on Dermot and what he’d put her through. If only Eileen hadn’t become ill after her own husband died, she would have prevented her daughter marrying that common oaf Dermot O’Leary. Despite the lack of money, they could have made something of life, either through an advantageous marriage for Norah, or perhaps running a small business somewhere together. They’d had friends who would have helped them, but when she married out of her class, they’d been ostracised.
It had nearly sent her to the asylum when her darling sent for her and she found her beautiful daughter reduced to a drudge. In no time, she had three children and was pregnant with another while her husband was preparing for war, and all he’d provided her with was some hovel that for some reason he’d seemed ridiculously proud of.
Then there was the dreadful business of the riots and uprisings in 1916 and he wasn’t even there to protect Norah and his family from the mob that threatened to burn them in their beds. They were forced to take refuge with Maureen O’Leary. That had been a terrible time. Eileen, Norah and the children lay night after night on hard pallets, pressed in among other bodies, and never had quite enough to eat and their clothes were in rags. Eileen Gillespie knew she would hate Dermot O’Leary till the end of her days, and daily she expected him to arrive back in Ireland and take them out of the nightmare.
But when he did come, she found he had his family hanging to his coat-tails and he had to see to them too and not just his own wife and children. When they eventually sailed to England, they went together and lived together too while Dermot got work with his uncle. He worked all the hours God sent, but not to lift just his wife from the mire, but in order to care for his mother, sisters and young brother. Oh God, how she’d hated him at times and begrudged every penny he gave to his mother, but she could do nothing.
Nor could she do anything about the other two children Norah had after Dermot had forced himself upon her daughter. The first of those children, Jenny, was the spit of the O’Learys – and from day one, she’d belonged to her father. The moment she could toddle she was after him everywhere, and her first word was ‘Dada’. He even took her down to Maureen O’Leary’s, where Norah had forbidden the others to go. Dermot at least didn’t go against her wishes there, but then he hardly knew the older ones. Jenny had been his one consolation; he hadn’t bargained on another child, but two years later Anthony was born. Eileen told her daughter to put her foot down then and she had. Anthony was to be the last and she’d made it plain.
Eileen knew Norah had been hard on Jenny, but she couldn’t blame her for her resentment. When Norah shouted at Jenny, or slapped or shook her, Eileen knew she was getting back at all the O’Learys, but in particular Dermot, who’d trapped her into marriage with him.
‘I’m glad you came,’ she said to Norah and her wizened hand clasped her daughter’s.
‘Oh Mother,’ Norah said, and tears squeezed from her eyes as she laid her head on her mother’s breast.
‘Geraldine said she came round and found her in the bedroom with no sticks or anything,’ Jenny told her Gran O’Leary. ‘And she’s been up since and more than once. I mean, I’m not saying she leaps up and down like a spring chicken, but she does go up. They eat their breakfast together and then Mother often helps Grandmother wash and they spend much of the day together. She also takes herself to the bathroom for a wash unaided and to the toilet outside.’
‘And how did she explain this miracle?’ Maureen said. ‘Or didn’t she even bother?’
‘Oh yes, she bothered. She put it down to the latest pills Peter Sanders gave her,’ Jenny said. ‘He certainly gave her pills, but I would say they had little to do with anything.’
‘Who cares what the story of it is? Lord, child, it’ll lift the load off your back.’
Jenny knew that. She hoped the improvement might continue and possibly she wouldn’t then feel so tied to Norah. Perhaps she and Bob could have a future of sorts.
‘Of course, she might go downhill when Eileen Gillespie dies,’ Maureen said.
‘I know. I worry about that,’ Jenny admitted. ‘I’ve talked it over with Geraldine. She says we must make sure she doesn’t, but it isn’t that easy.’
‘No indeed it isn’t, for Norah has depended and leant on her mother for years,’ Maureen said and Jenny went home with a heavy heart.
Eileen Gillespie died on 3 November and Norah was by her bedside, holding her hand, when she breathed her last. The priest had administered the last rites and then she’d asked the assembled family to leave so that she should be alone with her mother. Geraldine popped in later and saw her mother sprawled over the still figure of her grandmother.
Norah was inconsolable and even Geraldine and Jenny seemed steeped in gloom. Linda was glad it was over well before Chr
istmas and tried not to show how pleased she was. They had shows booked for Christmas and New Year and she really hoped Jenny was not going to be hypocritical and stuffy and insist on a mourning period of a year, but it was hardly something she could ask before her grandmother was even buried, so she bided her time.
‘We’ll have to let the boys know,’ Geraldine said one night as they sat before the fire. Geraldine had moved in for a few days and between them they’d encouraged Norah to go up to bed, using one of the boys’ beds, while Geraldine said she would sleep in the other with the children.
‘Not, of course,’ Geraldine went on, ‘that they can do anything.’
‘No,’ Jenny agreed. ‘They probably don’t even know she’s ill, though I wrote and told them.’
She wondered if they’d got the letters, especially when none had mentioned it in the sparse missives they’d last sent. She imagined delivering the post was not considered as important as liberating towns and cities and fighting Germans. And anyway, how would they find them, spread across the face of Europe as they were?
‘It might help Mother if they wrote to her,’ Geraldine said.
Jenny knew it would, but none of the men had written by the time the funeral was arranged, though all the rest of the family and many neighbours were there.
Linda was surprised, but supposed they’d come to support Jenny. Maureen had, she knew, and so had Peggy. Norah, supported by her daughters, was also surprised at the turnout. Neighbours she hardly knew and had never spoken to thronged the church and some stood with their heads bowed. But Norah kept her head lowered and refused to acknowledge any of them.
When Norah saw her mother-in-law standing with a woman she didn’t know, she supposed it was the girl Peggy that Jenny had spoken of and she stopped dead still while her daughters stood each side of her. From her pew, Linda watched. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Norah,’ Maureen said, stepping into the aisle as she spoke.
Norah looked at the woman she’d always considered a thorn in her flesh, the link with the husband who had let her down and exposed her to tyranny and hardship, and she turned from her without a word. Embarrassed by her mother’s behaviour, Geraldine led her away, but Jenny turned to her gran and saw her face was flushed. She felt a flash of anger at her mother, who despite her grief, could have at least had the good manners to reply to her gran’s words. She gave Maureen a hug. ‘Oh Gran, I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, and Maureen patted her granddaughter, and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, cutie. It’s like water off a duck’s back.’
