Have the Men Had Enough?

by Margaret Forster

  The rest I hear from Dad who doesn’t tell things like Mum. He goes to the hospital in the morning but won’t let me go. I have to go to school, he is adamant. All I do all morning is worry, I would be far better off at the wretched hospital. I race home at lunchtime. Dad says Mum is still with Grandma, but contrary to what she told me on the phone this morning, Grandma has not had a stroke. She has not had anything. Once more, she is a nuisance to the hospital, once more we have cried wolf and they want her out. Dad says he is off now to see a man at King’s Wood. King’s Wood, I echo. King’s Wood is a mental hospital, a loony bin, a nut house. Good God, King’s Wood? Dad is grim. He says he knows perfectly well what King’s Wood is, but there is no alternative. There is a ward there for the senile demented. Grandma will have to go there. Dad warns me – he says, ‘I warn you, Hannah’ – that he doesn’t want to hear any self-righteous speeches from me. He has had enough. Mum is making herself ill, we cannot cope. Even when the nurse arrives, we still cannot cope. He has reached the end of his tether (picture: Dad as a goat at the end of a long rope). He says that before the blessed Bridget gets back he wants the deed done. I say Bridget won’t let Grandma be in King’s Wood, she won’t tolerate it. She can bring her out, he says, but if she does, she looks after her herself. And, he says, it will be impossible to get her back in.

  King’s Wood. I’ve never been, but it’s famous in our neighbourhood, famous like Holloway Prison or Borstal, famous for being a kind of Bedlam. I’ve passed it often. It’s a huge building with enormous grounds. Going past on a bus I’ve looked down over the high wall round it and seen people wandering about. It has a security wing where they take violent cases. Everyone is frightened of King’s Wood; it’s no good saying it’s a psychiatric hospital. The stigma is awful even now. Bridget will go mad, she will be livid. She leaves her mother all jolly, if confused, leaves her laughing in her kitchen chewing biscuits and swigging tea and talking back to the radio, and she comes back after three weeks to find her a zombie in King’s Wood. Who is going to tell her? It will be like those Greek messengers who were killed if they brought bad news. Dad must do the telling, the explaining. But Bridget will want the truth from Mum, and even from me. She won’t trust Dad.

  King’s Wood will take her. The hospital is arranging a transfer tomorrow. When Mum comes home she is drawn and exhausted. She does not fight the King’s Wood news. She has never been there. She asks Dad what it is like. Dad pauses. Mum says there’s no point in his lying because she will be going to see for herself tomorrow. Dad says it’s awful to go into. The corridors are long, the paint peeling, the smell diabolical. The ward Grandma will go into is locked. Inside, there are three rooms. One is vast, the sitting room and dining room combined; one is medium sized, used as an extra sitting room; yet another is huge, the dormitory with twenty-four beds. The first sight, says Dad, struggling, is pretty bad. Old women sitting in chairs, the television blaring, half of them shouting out. But the staff seem kind and attentive. The inmates are all clean and their hair is brushed. There are plants and flowers everywhere and pictures on the wall. There is a garden outside with a door opening onto it. Once you’re in, Dad repeats, it’s not too bad. He seems a little distraught, for Dad, but ends by saying, firmly, that there is no choice. We have left it too late. It is King’s Wood or nothing. He says when Mum goes tomorrow she has to remember that: there is no choice.

  I bet there is. There must be. It’s just that Dad won’t devote himself to looking for it. He thinks he’s looked but he hasn’t looked far it seems to me. I know most private places don’t take the senile and incontinent but there must be some specially for them. Or, if not, we could employ full-time people, night and day. That’s what Bridget will say. But then Bridget hasn’t any money. Dad has. It would cost, he says, £500 a week to have nursing care all round the clock for Grandma and still we would have the responsibility. He insists it is this, the hell of being responsible, that he wants to be rid of. And he doesn’t want to pay £500 a week for maybe ten years or more. He says he isn’t that rich, not by any means. He says Bridget will have to realise it and being a McKay she will.

  Poor Bridget.

  Jenny

  CHARLIE WAS RIGHT, it is the going into King’s Wood which is the worst. Can’t something be done about those corridors? Other hospitals have no money either but the paint there is not chipped and dirty nor is it dark bottle-green. But then King’s Wood is to be closed, there is no point in painting it. And Grandma did not notice the paint on her way in, she did not notice anything. I wished so much that she would be asleep and that they would carry her in on a stretcher but she was, for her, quite wide awake and I pushed her in a wheelchair. My heart pounded with fear. I was so afraid of taking her in. When I stood outside the locked door and rang the bell I was trembling with nerves. A man opened it. Grandma said, ‘A man!’ He did not attempt to smile at her or reassure her that although a man he was a friend. He just stood aside, tall and gaunt, his keys hanging from a loop on his grey overall.

  No one came forward to greet us but then it was tea time, everyone was busy. All the old women were seated round a long table being fed. There were four staff for the twenty women. The noise was terrible – wild cawings as though a clutch of rooks had settled there. One woman banged all the time with a spoon on the table and another shouted, ‘About bloody time! About bloody time!’ over and over. I pushed Grandma to the table, glad that I was behind her and could not see her face. The four staff members, in yellow overalls, stared at us. I asked if the Matron was around. I said we were expected. One of them went off, grudgingly it seemed, and came back with a small, squat woman in a blue and white uniform who said she was Sister Grice, and she was in charge. (I only learned afterwards that her name was ‘Grice’ – she pronounced it ‘Grease’ and so did everyone else.) Sister was very heavily made up, with alarmingly marked black arcs for eyebrows and a red lipstick of such brilliance that it was right off any colour spectrum I had ever seen. She was loquacious but had an accent so thick – a Geordie accent – that it was almost impossible to make out what she was saying. While she addressed me, a white-haired, sweet-faced old woman got up from the end of the table and shuffled down to stand beside me. She put her hand on mine and made some sound I could not distinguish. ‘Go away, Leah,’ the Sister said. ‘Go on, off with you, don’t bother the lady.’ I said she wasn’t bothering me and asked Sister what she had been trying to say to me. ‘She’s deaf,’ Sister said. ‘Nothing she says makes sense, don’t let her bother you. It doesn’t bother us.’

  When tea was over, the women were moved to chairs placed roughly in a circle. Some of them had trays clipped in front. I soon saw this was to prevent them falling out. One waved to me and called, ‘Fiona! Fiona! I knew you would come, darling. I said Fiona would come, how are you, my darling, come here and let me look at you.’ My hands froze on the handle of Grandma’s wheelchair. Grandma asked querulously, as disturbed as I was, ‘Who the hell is that? What in the name of God does she want?’ Luckily, Sister summoned us to the next room. On the way we passed a row of six chairs. Upon each was what looked like a dead occupant. One was twisted into a grotesque attitude, head back at an unnatural angle, feet splayed out, arms flung wide. One was bowed over, head almost touching the toes. The others had their eyes open but did not blink or move. Grandma was muttering, ‘Poor souls, poor souls,’ over and over. Sister took us into a small room with two beds. She pointed to one bed and said it would be Grandma’s until she had settled in. There was a glass partition beside it and Sister explained that the room on the other side was her office and she could keep an eye on newcomers. She said I could undress Grandma and put on a King’s Wood dress. She held up a strange florid garment and showed me with pride the Velcro fastening down the back and demonstrated several times how easy it was to open and close this.

  Grandma was not actually dressed in any case. She had her coat on but underneath only her nightdress. Sister said she did not even need her own nightdress an
d I should take it home. As I changed Grandma I told myself over and over again that clothes do not matter and especially not to Grandma who had never given a damn about clothes. But I had. I had chosen that nightdress with such care. It was a soft Viyella material, soothing and warm to Grandma’s skin, and it was a pretty lavender colour with lace at the neck and cuffs and lots of little pin tucks around the cuffs and across the yoke. What I replaced it with was a pink nylon monstrosity too short and too wide, which when fastened by the magic Velcro of which Sister was so fond left a gaping hole exposing Grandma’s bottom. I pointed this out. Sister said cheerfully that no one would see it in bed and it made ‘things’ easier. It was five o’clock but Grandma was put into bed and was glad of it. She closed her eyes at once. I kissed her, said I would come tomorrow.

  Sister took me into her office. She was sucking a large boiled sweet and offered me one. I declined. She asked me a few particulars about Grandma which I supplied, speaking like an automaton. Sister said it was upsetting for relatives bringing people in but that I should remember my mother-in-law was not seeing things as I saw them. She would not have a clue where she was and she would be well looked after. I said I wished I could believe that but that it seemed to me Grandma had already picked up several clues that told her she was somewhere strange and hostile. Sister jumped on that, she said, ‘Oh, not hostile, we’re very friendly here, more like a family than a hospital.’ I stared at her, fascinated by the extent of the delusion, as she extolled the virtues of her ward where everyone loved the ‘old dears’ and treated them ‘like their own mother’. Already, I was afraid I had offended Sister and that by offending her I would make things more difficult for Grandma. So I half apologised before I left and was craven and hated myself.

  Charlie came with me the next day. He took the afternoon off work and we both went. Again, the ordeal of the corridor, of the awful smells which neither of us liked to analyse too closely in case we decided it was something a little worse than urine. Again, the ringing of the fiercely harsh bell and the wait behind the locked door and the jangling of the keys by the silent man who opened it. I saw Grandma immediately. She was sitting in a chair at the far side of the room with a tray clipped on in front of her. The television was not on as it had been the day before but the room was just as noisy. A woman was standing in the middle of the circle made by the chairs. She had a soft football and was throwing it to each old lady in turn and urging them to throw it back. Some did, with astonishing vigour. They became wildly excited at the success of their aim and at the accuracy of their catching. But some held onto the ball and tried to hide it under their dress and then those on either side berated them and pointed and screamed. Charlie said, ‘You can’t say they’re just sitting like vegetables, anyway.’ No, I could not. As we watched, the ball was thrown towards Grandma. We both tensed. Charlie even said under his breath, ‘Come on, Mum.’ Grandma didn’t seem to see the ball. It sat on her tray and she didn’t even knock it off. Again and again the woman in charge took and threw it and again and again Grandma ignored it. I could not stand it a minute longer. Charlie was annoyed with me for interrupting but I marched forward and said I didn’t think my mother-in-law was up to this and I unclipped the wretched tray and beckoned to Charlie to help me get Grandma up and we walked her out of the circle.

  I had no idea where to go except away from the noise. We passed the six chairs with the comatose patients in them. Grandma was groaning and wishing she had a cup of tea and saying her legs hurt. Charlie asked me where I thought I was going. I said I was just looking for a little privacy. I found it in Grandma’s bedroom. There was no one else there. I put Grandma in the only chair and Charlie and I perched on the bed. ‘Look at that dress, look at her hair!’ I raged. Charlie said nothing. Grandma squinted at him and said, ‘Got a light, mister, got a fag?’ Charlie said smoking wasn’t allowed in hospital. Grandma laughed and said, ‘Suit yourself, you always have.’ Charlie said it wasn’t his fault. Grandma sighed and said, ‘They all say that, all the men!’ I’d dug out the walnut whirls from my bag. Grandma bit into the first and the cream inside exploded up her nose. She pulled what was left out of her mouth and with the other hand took another and did the same again. The lower part of her face looked as though it was covered with shaving cream. Charlie leaned forward to clean her up but she thought she was trying to steal the chocolate whirls and biffed him with both hands. I laughed. He said he hoped that meant I was enjoying myself. Grandma said, ‘And what’s wrong with her enjoying herself? You men are all the same.’

  I sent Charlie off to take a walk round the grounds, told him to come back in half an hour. What was the point in making him stay? I was better on my own with Grandma, though God knows there was little enough I could do for her. After the walnut whirls she had some tea which I’d brought with me and then I cleaned her up. I’d just finished when the woman who had been in charge of the ball game poked her head round the door and smiled brightly. She said her name was Jane and she was the physiotherapist. She said she quite understood that as I’d come to visit I would want a little privacy and so she didn’t mind a bit that I’d taken Mrs McKay away in the middle of a session, not a bit, but that she did think she ought to explain, in case I hadn’t realised, that the object of what she’d been doing was to keep muscles in trim. Arms had to be exercised as well as legs and what might have looked silly and pointless, wasn’t. I was quick to slobber. I said I was sorry if I had seemed rude and of course I appreciated the work she was doing, that I was thrilled to think anything at all was being done. All this time Grandma was saying, ‘Is she going?’ alternated with, ‘Ask her if she has a fag.’ Jane left, after a little more boasting on her part and a little more soft-soaping on mine.

  I took Grandma back to her original chair, once more running the ordeal of what I was already thinking of as the Six Death Chairs and settled her down. I knew I must try to make friends for her – it was foolish to isolate her and make others jealous. I sat at her feet, holding her hand, and tried to talk to the women either side. One seemed remarkably sensible. She said her name was Ellen and that she had been in King’s Wood a year and liked it very much thank you but missed her children. I asked how many she had and she said six. I asked whether they were boys or girls and she said that had never been made clear, the doctors were unable to decide. That stopped me. But Ellen was gracious, almost queenly and now that I’d got her going was not going to miss the opportunity to tell me the story of her life. I was quite happy to listen but Grandma was not. She tugged at my hand impatiently and asked when we were going home. She stared at Ellen, in full flow and interrupted her to ask who invited her here. The woman on the other side, to whom I turned for some relief, had very clear, alert eyes but could not talk. She tried to but all that came out was a mm-mm-mm sound, her lips working away desperately. Grandma said she wished this woman, on her left, would shut up and give her some peace. I realised I was surreptitiously looking at my watch, praying for the time to pass a little quicker. No one else was visiting. All the other women sat there staring at me hungrily. When Charlie rang the door bell I leapt up and had kissed Grandma and gone all in a flash.

  We did not speak on the way home. There was no need to. Depression filled our car like a fog. I found myself thinking of that inane question which turns up in women’s magazine quizzes or on radio shows: how would you define happiness? I had just defined it and wished to be asked: happiness is coming out of King’s Wood. It was sickening, the feeling of liberation, of relief. Not to be in King’s Wood was bliss. To breathe fresh air, see the trees, hear ordinary conversation. Not to be confronted by hopeless, despairing people waiting to die. Not to have to tussle with the hideous moral dilemma: why is this allowed? Why don’t I do something? Oh, happiness was leaving King’s Wood behind all right.

  *

  Misery is thinking of Bridget coming back tomorrow. Misery of every sort. Misery for Bridget and-misery because of her. Pity and guilt, sympathy and fear, compassion and dread. S
he arrives at Gatwick at ten in the evening. It was agreed, before she left, that she would come for lunch the next day and ‘hear all the chat’. She will not disturb Grandma at that time of night but she is bound to look in on her in the morning before she comes here. Bound to. So what shall we do? Leave a note? What kind of note would that be? I think I should go to Gatwick. Charlie is against this. He says Bridget will be so alarmed at the sight of us, she will think Grandma is dead. One of us will have to stay the night at Grandma’s to avoid Bridget perhaps popping in and finding Grandma gone before we see her. So I will stay and when Bridget comes I will either ring Charlie or bring Bridget straight along. We have gone over what we will say. I have warned Charlie to stick to the bare facts, no justification at this stage for Bridget to fasten on and rage about and tear to pieces. We are lost if we get into an argument before Bridget has heard a word. Charlie says he has a warning for me too: I am not to be so bloody apologetic and nervous. I am to be calm and matter-of-fact, I am to act as though the idea of King’s Wood is satisfactory. And above all I am to remember that there is no going back. Should Bridget fire up at once and turn on her heel and say she’s going to fetch Grandma home this minute, then I am to stand firm. Charlie will say on behalf of us both that Bridget can do that of course but that she must understand we are withdrawing our support. No more money, no more help. She, Bridget, will be on her own from now on if she chooses to bring Grandma home.

  He must be mad. How could Bridget be left, on her own? The idea is monstrous. I will have to desert Charlie and stand with Bridget if she goes ahead with this. If?