Have the Men Had Enough?

by Margaret Forster

  We moved on to the bedrooms. No dormitories but three to a room. Each bed was so arranged that there was, as Matron pointed out, some slight feeling of privacy. Certainly, the furnishings were attractive. Matron said each lady had at least one of her own pieces of furniture in her bedroom – usually some small antique she particularly valued. I raised my eyebrows at Charlie behind her back: which ‘antique’ from her Glasgow Buildings would Grandma take with her? We inspected the bathrooms, all very clinical, and Matron showed us with pride, the sit-in showers and all manner of latest equipment designed to help the old and disabled bathe in comfort. It struck me how very confident Matron was, how much she enjoyed showing people around, and how, by contrast, we were nervous and ingratiating. We criticised nothing, only praised. In the garden, Charlie went into positive raptures, even though, since it was nearly November, there was very little to see. Matron described how nice it was for ‘the old dears’ to potter about the garden if there was any decent weather. She said the roses were beautiful.

  We ended the tour back in the office. Matron asked if we would like coffee or tea but, as we had agreed beforehand, we declined. We said we had to get back, life was difficult at the moment. Matron nodded understandingly. Then we got down to the negotiations. Charlie said he had no doubts at all, he would like his mother put on the waiting list. Matron said it was not quite so simple. Mrs McKay would have to be assessed, as she had explained on the telephone. She could arrange for someone to come and make the assessment at Mrs McKay’s home or we could bring her here. Charlie hesitated. I could see him wondering which gave us a better chance of getting his mother accepted. I used his pause to ask Matron what kind of things were assessed, what St Alma’s was looking for. She described the problem: St Alma’s wanted pleasant personalities, people who would get along with other people. It was no good admitting anyone so deeply rooted in their family that they would never accept a substitute. And, although most of the old people they had were a little confused, they did not accept the severely demented since it put too much of a strain on the other occupants. Of course, if while at St Alma’s they degenerated into severe dementia, then they would not be turned out; other arrangements would be made.

  I really felt we might just as well forget it. It did seem a pleasant enough place but Grandma had about as much chance of getting in as she had of getting into a Cambridge college. But Charlie was most persistent. He made an appointment for his mother to be assessed in her own home, and cross-examined Matron yet again on how long she would be on the much desired waiting list. Matron took a sheet of paper out of the drawer. We held our breath. She said St Alma’s had only fifteen residents and at the moment there were fourteen on the waiting list. Charlie’s face! He managed to pull himself together sufficiently to ask, with no false delicacy, what the ‘turn over’ was like. Matron flinched and became a little stiff in tone. She said that if Mr McKay wanted her to be brutally frank – and even a fool could see that Mr McKay did – then she could tell him that this year they had admitted six new residents ‘as vacancies occurred’. Charlie brightened slightly. She made him even happier by adding that the waiting list did not stay the same as, often, when the time came, ladies whose names had been put on the list did not need the place any more. Charlie asked if he would be right in thinking the average lady waited a year? Matron nodded and said, roughly speaking, roughly speaking. Charlie’s last request was for the price. Matron pushed a brochure towards him. St Alma’s was, she said, reasonable at £300 a week.

  All the way home, Charlie did mental arithmetic out loud. £2.50 an hour for Susan during the day equals £37.50 a week plus £3 extra for her evenings equals £12 so that equals £49.50 for Susan in an ordinary week; but, then, there was £2 an hour for Lola who normally did ten hours so that was £20 a week which made it approximately £70 a week but of course the real expense was the nights and five nights a week at what we’d paid Mrs O’Malley meant £200 a week added to the £70 equalled very approximately £270 a week and he hadn’t even begun on light, heat, rent, bloody hell, St Alma’s was a snip. I just let him ramble on, only half listening to this run-down of expenses which was followed by a calculation of how much Bridget and I saved by also helping. It was all a pipe dream. Grandma would never hoodwink an assessor, she would never make St Alma’s prestigious waiting list. It was too late, we had waited too long. A year ago, yes, but not now. There must be places for the severely demented but we had not found them and if we did I felt instinctively that they would not be like St Alma’s. After all, when I asked Dr Carruthers if he could recommend anywhere he said, ‘Recommend? No, there’s none I’d actually recommend. A few I could suggest as tolerable, perhaps, but none I’d recommend, not for your mother-in-law, not at this stage. A psycho-geriatric ward in a mental hospital is really the only option apart from the individual private care you’re giving her now – that’s the best thing, really, if you can manage it, keep her in her own home.’ Oh, he was so very pleased with us for doing that, the right thing, keeping her in what passes as her own home though she doesn’t have a clue where she is.

  I found myself wondering what happened to Grandma’s own mother. I remembered asking Grandma herself, when she was compos mentis. She was always telling me that she was not like her mother – it seemed very important to her that I should understand this. She emphasised that her mother was small and quick and sharp, whereas of course she herself was tall and slow and sleepy. She told me she was like her father and was proud of it. Her mother told her she should have been a lad and people in the street said to her father that he couldn’t say she wasn’t his. It took some probing to discover, even then, the fate of her mother. If I remember correctly, Grandma’s mother died in a Home of the same senile dementia from which she is now suffering. Grandma did not tell me this – she told me her mother was ‘well looked after till the end’ without specifying this end but Bridget suspects differently. Grandma’s past is full of contradictions but Bridget was once told by some relative that Grandma’s mother was found wandering in her nightdress in the snow and was ‘put away’. Bridget thinks this must have been during the time when Grandma was in Newcastle, widowed, with three children and no money. She can hardly be accused of neglect. If her mother did die in a Home, I don’t think it would have been like St Alma’s.

  I think Grandma was afraid of her mother rather in the way she used to be afraid of me. I, too, am small, quick and sharp. Grandma used to watch me helplessly while I made a cake or did the ironing – any simple job – and groan at what easy work I made of it. She would say it took her all day. I would point out the advantages I had – the Kenwood mixer, the lightweight steam iron – but she knew, and I knew she knew, that these had little to do with what she was admiring and envying. Admiring, envying, even praising but, and this was the point, also disliking and being repelled by. Grandma slightly resented super-efficiency and it also made her laugh, she mocked it. She liked most of all to identify with people, to be able to say, ‘You’re just like me, what a mess,’ and she could not say that to me. I made her despair. ‘Is there anything I can do to lend a hand?’ she would ask, then add, gloomy and aggrieved, ‘I suppose you’ve got everything done as usual.’ I always had. Later, when I learned wisdom, I would deliberately leave jobs for her to do, jobs I would never even have thought of doing but knew she liked. Drains, she was an expert at cleaning drains. She believed a gallon of boiling soda should be put down the drains every week and would happily slosh about outside sluicing the drain covers and poking about with a stick to free any fragments of dirt. Wherever she worked she collected clutter, surrounded herself with implements, fell over them, lost them, but in the end did whatever she had to do perfectly, leaving the site of her labours immaculate.

  I was glad, as we drove home, to think of St Alma’s having a garden. Grandma, who had grown up in the Buildings, loved gardens. One of her many quotations was ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot’ (and always she would ponder on the meaning of ‘wot’, howev
er many times it was explained). She liked to put a man’s shoes on, any man’s, and tie a scarf round her head and get out into the garden where she had not the least idea what she was doing. She would trudge up and down in her Old Mother Hubbard shoes poking at the ground with a hoe and then bending in her agonisingly slow way to pick up stones. She was happy in the garden but also worried. She knew she did not have it under control and could become frantic at evidence of any plant beating her – that’s how she would put it, ‘This damned thing is beating me.’ It was really better for her if someone else gardened and she acted labourer, or better still if she could be persuaded to sit and watch and supervise. She was willing to go into the garden at the first hint of warm weather. It was, still is (except she can’t stay anywhere for long now and feels cold when it is blazing hot), one of our few points of contact. I, too, like to be in the garden whenever possible.

  Charlie should be our biggest point of contact but he is not. Grandma always wished I had not married Charlie. She did not like my effect on him. She thought, although never said so, that I was much too dominant. She saw me as bullying Charlie as she believed her mother had bullied her father. I only had to say briskly, ‘For heaven’s sake, Charlie, stop daydreaming and get that letter off – go on, now,’ for her face to assume an expression of horror. She believed Charlie to be delicate – there was a long tale, frequently told, of his almost dying of malnutrition at six months – and she thought he should be encouraged to take things easy. I appeared to want him to jump all the time. And if he and I had rows when she was with us, she would hide in a corner, be almost offended when half an hour later we were amicably chatting to each other.

  Once, twenty years ago, perhaps even longer, we had a scene in the street. Grandma, who was not even a Grandma then, had taken ages and ages as usual trailing round Woolworth’s looking for a left-handed potato peeler. Charlie and I got impatient. He made the mistake of saying this was ridiculous, and urged his mother to hurry up. She walked out of the shop and into the street saying she was going back to Glasgow, that she knew when she was not wanted. It was very embarrassing. We hurried along on either side of her, begging her forgiveness, begging her to stay, offering our apologies. We were so alarmed and frightened by her sudden, totally unexpected fierceness. Of course, she stayed, it blew over, was never referred to again. It struck me only recently how extraordinary it was that a mature woman could behave like that. I would never, in such circumstances, be so childish. And Charlie was ashamed of her as he was on so many occasions. Just as Stuart was indifferent, Bridget proud, Charlie was often ashamed and she sensed it and in some way blamed me, not Charlie. Everyone will. The organising, organised daughter-in-law who brought it all to pass. There will be nothing I can do about it.

  *

  I hardly slept the first night Cynthia spent with Grandma. I lay and worried and the more I thought about it the more outrageous it was to leave Grandma with Cynthia. And I had lied – not directly, but by implication. When I went in to see Bridget and she asked who was looking after her mother at night I told her not to worry and said we were, we were taking it in turn, all of us. Bridget was mollified. She said she would soon be better and would make it up to us. And then I took Cynthia in to Grandma. It slightly alarmed me that she had no kind of overnight bag, nothing. She had a book in her hand, and a Walkman and that was all. Where was her nightdress, her toothbrush, a hairbrush, a towel? It seemed so odd, to me, but when I got home and mentioned it to Hannah she laughed at me – so old-fashioned to imagine staying the night meant paraphernalia. And it is true, Hannah’s friends come and stay the night and have nothing.

  I went through all the routines with Cynthia, showed her where everything was. Unfortunately, Grandma was in a bad mood. She glared at us, said, ‘Not more of them,’ and did a lot of in-the-name-of-God-ing. Cynthia did at least make an effort. She asked Grandma how she was and when Grandma grumbled that her bloomin’ back was sore but nobody cared and she’d told that doctor and he just said there was nothing he could do for her, bloomin’ cheek, Cynthia was very good. She had the cunning to request a full report on Grandma’s ailments and offered to fill Grandma a hot water bottle to put at her back. But, as I left them together, I felt nervous. Cynthia is only a girl, self-confessedly in this for the money. Bridget would kill me. I made absolutely sure that the door into the hall of the house was locked. As it turned out, everything was fine in the morning. Cynthia was up, dressed and Grandma quite happy eating her porridge when I went round. I was so relieved that when Charlie said we should accept her offer to do it for a month after the trial weekend was over I agreed. It was very fortunate indeed that we did not quite get to the point of asking her.

  Cynthia cannot after all have been so clever. A clever person in that situation, knowing that her charge was surrounded by an obviously concerned and involved family, would never have taken the risk which Cynthia did. It was surely on the cards that one of us might pop in unexpectedly, especially during the trial period. How could she be so silly? I left Cynthia with Grandma the second evening at six o’clock, saying Susan would be doing the next morning. I told Cynthia that if Susan did not arrive by nine, she was to ring me at once. Cynthia smiled and nodded. I advised her to put Grandma to bed about nine thirty and not to give her tea after seven (Grandma, hearing this, said she would make herself as much tea as she wanted, the very idea). When I left, Grandma got up and said she would come with me, but there was nothing unusual in that. I sat her down again and left. But half an hour later I remembered I had forgotten to tell Cynthia about the arthritis pills Grandma needed to take every other night. I rang and got no reply. I thought maybe Cynthia was busy doing something with Grandma. I waited and rang again – still no reply. So I went round, round to the back because I knew I had locked the hall door. The curtains were not drawn and through the window I saw Grandma standing in the middle of the room, a finger to her lips, looking petrified. No Cynthia. I let myself in, thinking Cynthia would be in the bathroom or Grandma’s bedroom, perhaps putting the electric blanket on already. But she was not. I came into the kitchen calling Grandma’s name and she stumbled over and clutched me and thanked God I’d come. Her heart was thudding as she stood against me and there was a thin film of sweat over her brow. I took a deep breath, calmed Grandma and made her tea and lit a cigarette for her. In a minute her panic had subsided. Then I tried the door into the sitting room which also served as a second bedroom. It was locked. I hammered on the door, though not too violently because I did not want to frighten Grandma again. High up on the lintel we kept a spare key (because at one stage Grandma was forever hiding keys). I thought perhaps the key might be in the lock on the other side but, no, I was able to fit and turn the spare one. Inside the room Cynthia was sitting with Walkman headphones on. On the bed lay a young man, also wearing headphones. The room was full of smoke, sickly sweet smoke. Both had their eyes closed.

  I stood there dumbfounded, just staring, for a full couple of minutes. I waited to be heard and seen but neither Cynthia nor friend moved. The room was in darkness except for one small lamp. I snapped on the overhead light. The man blinked, opened his eyes. He didn’t move or look alarmed. Slowly, Cynthia turned and what I could not forgive was that she did no double-take, gave no sign of consternation. What she did was smile and remove her headphones and stand up. ‘We were just listening to a tape Greg’s made,’ she said, ‘just for five minutes. He dropped in to let me hear it – quite exciting, making it himself. He hired a studio.’ And then she said – the effrontery of it – she said, ‘Everything all right? Did you want something?’ I asked her to go, at once. She was indignant, wanted to know why. I said the fact that she didn’t appear to know why was an indication of her unsuitability. I said I had found my mother-in-law very frightened and the door between them locked and a strange man here. I said she had been engaged to look after my mother-in-law, not lock her out. She then said it was truly only for a few minutes and she had locked the door because Mrs McKay ke
pt interrupting; it was just to hear the tape quickly, there was no harm in it. I told her to go, at once. She said it was ridiculous; she had done nothing wrong. I said I was not prepared to discuss it. Luckily, I had my purse on me. I took out £30 and gave it to her. She said that actually it was supposed to be £40 a night and if she left now she would lose a night’s pay and she thought she was entitled to it because she was not leaving of her own accord. I said she could go and discuss that with my husband but please would she just get out.

  I was trembling with fury and guilt. If I had not come along . . . But, as Charlie said later, that was an unlikely train of thought. Maybe Cynthia was telling the truth, maybe her friend had only come to play a tape and would have left soon and she would have come out and put Grandma to bed perfectly well and kindly. It would not have excused her behaviour but there was no need, as Charlie argued, to read dreadful intentions into it. Clearly, Charlie thought I had been melodramatic, even that I had acted hastily, and this angered and upset me even more. He did not seem able to empathise with poor Grandma at all, could not grasp the nature of her distress. The most important thing to her is security – she must be made to feel protected – and nothing would threaten her sense of security more than strangers locking doors behind them. Charlie said I couldn’t possibly know what she felt and that is true, nobody can, but I know terror when I see it. Charlie pointed out that Grandma has been in a similar state with no cause, which again is true, but we cannot help that, whereas we can help leaving her with untrustworthy people. Charlie said the sooner we got her into St Alma’s the better: he had had enough.