Have the Men Had Enough?

by Margaret Forster

  That’s what it is, depressing, depressing. Nobody asks what I think. Adrian doesn’t say what he thinks. It’s all pointless anyway. We don’t have any Dutch system here, even if Grandma qualified. We just go on and on being proud that we let people stay alive to the bitter end. This is called the sanctity of human life, I think. Great. You lose your brain and the rest of you is somehow sacred. Dad is excelling himself. He’s making a speech. He’s telling Adrian that, so long as Grandma has any pleasure in life, he would not want to put her to sleep (note: he does not say ‘kill’). As long as the quality of Grandma’s life is reasonably good, then no one has the right to end it. And he would not want to. Those, says Dad, are the guidelines. Mum says there’s another. Dad looks surprised. He asks what it is. Mum says so long as the damage caused to other people’s lives does not get to be too high a price to pay, then Grandma’s own life should not be brought to a close. Adrian asks, quite intelligent for him I think, who decides that? Who judges what the damage is? Who sets the price? Exactly.

  We go to bed gloomy. I can’t sleep. In my mind I am drawing up lists:

  Quality of Grandma’s Life:

  She is secure (but does she know she is?)

  She is well fed

  warm

  clean

  comfortable

  She gets some fresh air

  exercise

  entertainment

  love

  affection

  But:

  She is often lonely

  frightened

  confused

  bewildered

  She can hardly do anything for herself

  She is in a way a prisoner

  She can’t really communicate with anyone

  She has no hope

  Pleasures in Grandma’s Day:

  She enjoys jokes

  Burns

  the sight of her family especially Bridget

  tea

  biscuits

  cigarettes

  hot water bottles

  electric blankets

  mint imperials

  chocolates, especially Duncan’s Walnut Whirls

  sun

  the garden

  children

  cats

  Pains in Grandma’s Day:

  She suffers from getting up

  her back

  her legs

  failing eyesight

  her bowels

  her gums

  her corns

  headaches

  heartburn

  Damage to other people’s lives:

  Mum’s: Grandma causes her worry

  costs her about 15 hours a week in time normally (but

  things are rarely normal)

  responsibility of shopping

  doing laundry

  occasional cookery

  transporting to Day Centre

  Dad’s: hardly any in time

  financial burden (about £250 ‘normally’ a week plus £20 for bills ‘normally’)

  boredom of Mum nagging

  Adrian’s: virtually nil – slight worry which is good for him

  Me: ditto

  Bridget’s: two nights a week

  three evenings a week

  Saturdays

  lack of any freedom to run own life

  aggro due to tension with rest of family

  enormous emotional burden

  I thought I’d finished the lists, but here is another:

  What does Grandma give in return for what she gets?

  Gives Dad: nothing (but has given a lot)

  Gives Mum: support in arguments

  some pleasure (because Mum likes looking after her)

  appreciation (sometimes)

  Gives Adrian: laughs

  Gives Me: laughs

  amusement

  affection

  memories I like

  Give Bridget: devotion

  admiration

  intimacy

  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE

  Who gives most to Grandma?

  Bridget

  Who gets most from Grandma?

  Bridget

  Who would never, ever, kill Grandma?

  Bridget

  Jenny

  AT LEAST I have managed to buy Grandma some new shoes. Bridget thinks it was a waste of effort but she cannot deny Grandma is thrilled even if she moans about the cost (and that is knowing only half of it). They are men’s shoes, not quite the trainers Adrian suggested, but very nearly. They have thick rubber soles with good heels to support her weak ankles and soft leather uppers with wide openings. Because the corn, or bunion, on her left foot is enormous she needed a bigger shoe for that foot so I bought two pairs. Yes, I did, I don’t care about the so-called waste. Bridget was scandalised, said I could easily have padded the other shoe but I did not agree. Grandma now has two well-fitting shoes and walks better for it.

  She also has a track suit. The more I thought about Hannah’s remark, the more sense it made. After the shoe buying, which was not the ordeal I had prepared myself for, I took Grandma next door into a sports shop and bought her a dark blue men’s track suit in that thick, fleece-lined cotton material. The jacket has a zip up the front, very easy to get on and off, and the cuffs are elasticated and fit snugly. The waist of the trousers is quite loose and goes over her bulging stomach nicely without cutting into it. Again, the ankles have elasticated bottoms so they don’t flap and get in her way. It is so sensible, so practical. With one of her own jumpers underneath she is warm and twice as comfortable as she ever was. It has been hell for months now getting her in and out of her old skirts.

  But I admit there is one disadvantage: the track suit is so easy to get on and off that Grandma can do it herself and that is bad news. Yesterday I went round at three o’clock and she was wandering around in her vest and knickers complaining about the terrible cold. It was indeed cold – this is the new thing. From barricading herself in occasionally Grandma has now moved to flinging open the back door in all weathers. I arrive every day to find the outer door wide open, even if it is raining, and Grandma shivering in a corner. Charlie is going to have to fix some kind of mechanism to the door to prevent this. When I try to be cunning and scold Grandma for letting the heat out, pointing out that heat is expensive, she says she wouldn’t dream of doing so and I must be thinking of someone else.

  She looks so awful. As I dress her on these days, pull on the jumper and track suit again I find myself wondering if she ever looked attractive in vest and knickers. She must have done. I think how sweet children look in their little white vests and brightly coloured pants, how pick-up-and-huggable. And young women, like Hannah, how fetching those running singlets, those vests, with tiny satin shorts. Probably the elusive Mr McKay just longed to get Grandma thus, in vest and knickers. But they were Scots Presbyterians, probably had the light out for all dressing and undressing, probably took knickers off under a nightdress and the vest never. I met Grandma too late to make these obvious sweeping generalisations, though – how can I guess at her sensual past? She was fifty-three when I first met her and looked seventy, and had already been widowed nearly twenty years. She is fond of telling us she had her chances of re-marrying but ‘couldn’t be bothered’. Bridget says she doubts if there were any chances. She has no memory of her mother having a single male friend, not one. No man, not even a relative by then, ever came to their home and Grandma seems never to have left it.

  It makes me despair, this sudden wilful making herself cold. Whatever her state of mind, is there no automatic animal response to cold? When she opens that door on those raw, wet autumn days we have had recently, does she not feel the blast of cold and want to close it instinctively? No – she opens the door wider, shivers and then takes her clothes off. Yet cold makes her miserable. She would never heat her home properly even when Charlie took over the bills, long before we brought her down here. That kind of obstinacy has just got worse, that’s all, but it was always there, always part of her, moaning
about the terrible cold yet too mean to have even one fire.

  Meanness is not exactly the word. It is more that Grandma disliked excess and her judgement of what was excessive was always faulty. I used to have some ugly arguments with her on that. I would point out that there was something wrong with her values, surely, if she thought lighting a fire in the mornings, in a room where there was ice on the inside of the window panes, extravagant and yet lighting twenty cigarettes a day not so. Grandma would sniff and become distant. She would say she could manage fine without a fire till the evening and I would cut in and say ‘but not without a ciggie’. She called cigarettes ‘ciggies’, being deliberately jocular or matey, but if I did, it was interpreted – correctly – as contempt. I did despise her smoking and I despised even more the absurdity of economising in ways that did not make sense – to me – and frittering money away in other ways. But Grandma would always win, absolutely always. Her house remained freezing until the magic hour of six o’clock. By eleven, when she went to bed, it would be warm enough to be tolerable.

  The whole household smoked, even if Charlie were sitting among them wheezing with bronchitis. Grandma on her minimum twenty, Bridget on forty, Stuart on forty – all of them puffing away and saying poor Charlie, what an awful chest he has. My indignation only amused them, still does. Nobody smokes like that in my house, in Charlie’s own home. I have every right to forbid it and I do. But Grandma and Bridget make me feel like a spoilsport, a prig, a fusspot, a silly, self-righteous do-gooder. They ostentatiously blow their smoke away from Charlie as though that made any difference. They smirk when they see me open a window – little Jenny being virtuous. And Grandma always did go into a huff if she asked to smoke and I pointed out that Charlie was chesty. I was implying that she, his mother, did not know what was good for him and I was wrong. Charlie himself did not help. His mother’s refusal to accept that smoke caused him discomfort, made him so embarrassed that he encouraged her to go ahead, it didn’t matter, he didn’t mind. Then she would light up, smiling triumphantly at me.

  Now, when I control Grandma’s smoking to a large extent, I no longer care. I give her cigarettes when she wants them and derive a certain amount of shameful satisfaction from watching her ruin them. Because she is convinced people steal her cigarettes she hides them and, in hiding them, destroys them. She breaks them in half in her cardigan pockets, crumbles them to bits. It drives Bridget mad. She roars at her to stop ruining the bloody cigarettes and Grandma is outraged. Even when she does smoke them, she ruins them. One puff and she forgets she’s smoking and the cigarette burns out. Dangerous. Of course – there are holes in her skirts, in the carpet, in the table-cloths. She can’t be left with cigarettes on her own, ever. We keep them in a dish high up on top of the bathroom cabinet and dole them out when we are there. She gets through hundreds. We only have to put a packet of twenty on the table for one minute while we make tea and it will have disappeared. The only way is to take one cigarette, as required, from the bathroom dish and never let a packet near her. I am the most generous with them. Once, for sheer devilment, when she complained she hadn’t had a ciggie for weeks, as she was actually smoking one, I gave her another just to watch what she would do. Could she smoke two at once? No. She let both go out and complained bitterly again.

  These days I wonder where my compassion has gone. Hannah looks at me accusingly sometimes and I know she thinks I am being less than kind to Grandma. My irritation threshold gets lower and lower in proportion to Grandma’s inability to control what irritates me – it is all wrong, I ought to feel more tenderness for her, not less. At least when I am with her on my own I do still find it easy to be gentle and I don’t think I betray my irritation. It is when I am not with her that this unworthy feeling gets the upper hand. When Susan rings and says the cigarettes have gone and I know I put a new packet there the day before and I know they will turn up crushed and useless, then I am profoundly irritated. When I arrive to take Grandma out and I know I will find her with no clothes on, then I could scream – but I don’t, not when I am with her. I can even pass the biggest test, changing her when she is wet, and remain soothing and calm. Oh, let me praise myself for something.

  I think that when Grandma was small she must have been smacked or scolded severely for wetting herself because she is so alarmed now. She offers every sort of explanation for her state – buckets of water thrown at her, wet towels put on her seat, a leaking tap mysteriously attached to her chair – and, until I have accepted the excuse and agreed with it and said how careless other people are, she is terrified. She will even ask me not to mention it to her mother and I have to promise. I find reserves of patience I never knew I had when I actually have to deal with this kind of problem. But for the situation in general I have none. I want an end to it as much as Charlie does. Bridget, who never thinks more than a week ahead, does not know what it is like to be farsighted and fatalistic as a consequence.

  Bridget is going on holiday tomorrow with Karl, for three weeks. First, to catch what is left of the late autumn sunshine (though she is mad to imagine it will be hot). They are going to the Black Forest and on a boat up the Rhine. Then they will spend the last week at Karl’s home in Berlin. Bridget is excited and nervous and most of all amazed at her own daring. She has wasted every holiday she has ever taken. Mostly, she spends them at home, sleeping, but, when occasionally she has stirred herself and gone away, she has gone on dreadful package holidays to Benidorm – literally – it is not a joke – or else coach tours of Belgium. She has had awful holidays, truly. When I offer to organise a good holiday for her, she is quick to say she cannot afford it. Where does Bridget’s money go? A Sister’s pay is not high but Bridget is single and her standard of living very far from extravagant. She has a car, she smokes and drinks, but otherwise what on earth does she spend her salary on? She has no idea, resists all Charlie’s attempts to sort out her finances and make some wise investments. He tries to get her to buy rather than rent a flat but she will have none of it.

  She has been round to borrow things for her holidays. A case, for a start. She thinks she ought to have a decent case and of course would not dream of buying one – Bridget prefers borrowing. She would like to borrow my clothes but so few fit her since we are completely different shapes. She has taken a beach wrap which would fit anyone (though heaven knows what use she will find for that on this holiday) and a light dressing gown. I urged her to go out and buy some new clothes and she said she might if Hannah would go with her. I should think Hannah might – she likes to choose clothes and has a good eye for colour and style. But any outing of that kind will inevitably end in disaster. Bridget will ask Hannah’s advice and then not take it and Hannah will get cross. To be as indecisive as Bridget is a state of mind beyond Hannah’s comprehension.

  I wish we were allowed to meet Karl properly. Now that his existence is acknowledged and we all know about the coming holiday, why not? I have formally invited Bridget to bring him for supper or Sunday lunch but she shuddered at the thought and made enigmatic remarks about this being ‘too much’. Pressed to explain for whom – for her, for Karl, for us – she shook her head. She does not want to discuss it. Karl is hers and she is wary of showing him to us. She did once say he was ‘too young for all this’ – more mystery. I tried to reassure her, to say that Karl’s youth would hardly be a handicap in our family or be held against him but, though she agreed, this did not alter her mind. I asked her if Karl himself did not think it odd that she kept him apart from a family he must know she was very involved with – she said yes, he was curious. Watching her carefully, I suggested that perhaps Karl might think she was ashamed of him or embarrassed to be seen with him because of what silly people might say about an older woman and a young man. Bridget coloured and said, ‘Not at all,’ sharply. But that can be the only explanation for declining an invitation to Sunday lunch, unless it is because Bridget does not want Grandma even to see him.

  Bridget hates me to try and analyse her relati
onship with her mother, especially if I imply that there is anything abnormal about it. Then, Bridget jeers and accuses me of having read too many ridiculous pseudo-psychology books. Once, I went so far as to suggest Bridget had been more of a father and husband to Grandma than a daughter and that made her angry. She claimed her desire to protect her mother and look after her was every daughter’s desire (is it?). She said I did not seem to understand how much she liked her mother for her own sake, quite apart from their relationship. And I suppose I do not. It is hard for me to believe Bridget chooses to be with Grandma not because she is dutiful but because she is amused and entertained and in tune with her. As Bridget points out, her life is full, she is no desperate spinster who has to cling on to her mother because she has nothing and no one else. It is very tempting to say that if things were so idyllic between Bridget and Grandma, why did she ever leave her? Why did not Bridget stay in Glasgow? Was lack of promotion the real reason? I doubt it. And why not, if it was, if Bridget had to move to London, why not bring Grandma who was well at the time?

  Grandma does not know Bridget is going on holiday though she has been told often enough. It offends her. She is against holidays – ‘Holidays, holidays, what does she want to be having holidays for?’ When we say Bridget is going to Germany she is appalled and asks what is wrong with her own country, what is wrong with the Highlands? Adrian unwisely suggested the weather was wrong which brought forth a tirade against people who told lies about Scottish weather and how they used to bake in the sun on their holidays there. Hannah pointed out that Bridget might be going to Germany because she had never been whereas she was fed up with Scotland since she grew up there. Grandma was outraged – ‘fed-up, fed-up’ she screeched – and demanded to know how anyone could be fed-up with the most beautiful country in the world. She said that she wanted to hear no more about it anyway – ‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know the half of it.’ It was no use trying to get her used to the idea of Bridget’s German trip. Constant repetition of the facts only produced constant fury. When Bridget has gone we will need to go through the whys and wherefores every hour in any case, I should imagine.