Have the Men Had Enough?

by Margaret Forster

  The relief when Bridget has gone . . . But then the depression. Several times Mum asks, ‘What do you think, Hannah?’ As if I know what I think.

  I think it’s all a mess.

  I think old age is a mess.

  I think Bridget is right.

  I think Dad is right.

  I think it should be ended as soon as possible.

  I think there’s no need for all this.

  I think there are a lot of clever people around.

  I think they should apply themselves to this problem.

  I think if Bridget brings Grandma out and gives up her own job, goes onto Social Security to look after her, then she is mad.

  The question is: is it better to be mad or is it better to be sane and cruel?

  Jenny

  I RANG BRIDGET before I set off to visit Grandma but there was no reply so I was half expecting to find either that Grandma had already been removed from King’s Wood when I got there or that Bridget would be at her side. But Grandma was there and Bridget was not. Grandma was in her usual seat – so quickly, in such a short time, it has become ‘usual’ – surrounded by pillows. A pillow behind her head, one behind her right shoulder, a third under her right leg which was resting on a stool. I crept into the room, after the man on the door had let me through, worried that Bridget might have made trouble the day before and we would all be branded as a nuisance in consequence. But Sister Grice bounced out of her office, all smiles and welcomes.

  ‘There’s a little problem with the breathing,’ she said and gestured towards Grandma. ‘She’s got a touch of cold on her so we want her propped up, you see, don’t want her lolling all over, she’s a devil for the lolling.’ I made some kind of concerned sound. ‘Oh, you don’t want to be worrying, she’s a tough old bird, we take good care of her.’ I said I was sure they did. Sister Grice drew attention to Grandma’s hair. ‘There, you see, shampooed. We don’t run to a set, this isn’t Vidal Sassoon, eh, but we’ve shampooed it, lovely don’t you think?’ I said I did. Grandma’s hair was indeed very white and clean-looking. I ventured to wonder aloud how they’d managed the washing since I knew Grandma was not co-operative. Sister Grice said it was no problem. She explained to me they had a hoist. The old women got strapped safely into the hoist and lifted – ‘gently, mind’ – into a bath. ‘They love their bath,’ Sister boasted. ‘Oh, it’s a struggle getting them out once they’re in. Some of them haven’t had a bath in years when they come in, not in years.’ I said we had been unable to get Grandma into a bath ourselves and had had to be satisfied with all-over washes. ‘A bath’s best,’ Sister said. ‘It’s a luxury, they love it, you love it Mrs McKay, don’t you, eh, you love your bath?’

  Absolutely not a flicker of response. Sister marched off as the telephone rang in her office. I drew closer to Grandma. I could hear her laboured breathing above the noise of the television and the caw-cawing and sudden bursts of frenzied shouting which punctuated the background noises every few minutes. It was very hard to believe Grandma was aware of anything at all around her. But was she suffering? How was I to know? Then I took her hand, expecting it to be limp and was shocked at the strength of her grip. She clung to me, her nails digging into the palm of my own hand. It changed everything. Wherever Grandma was in her mind, she needed someone to hang onto. I bent my head, not attempting to speak, suddenly twice as confused as I already was. I dreaded Bridget arriving and finding me there but with my hand in such a trap I could not bring myself to move. I was still motionless half an hour later when tea was brought round.

  Grandma’s tea was in a feeding cup with a spout. Last week, I’d seen her drink from an ordinary cup, holding it herself once it was put in her hand. Now she had it in a feeding cup. The nurse gave it to me. I tried to insert the spout into Grandma’s mouth but she flinched. I tried again. She let her mouth hang open, slack, and the tea dribbled out. The nurse came back, seeing my inexperience. She put one hand under Grandma’s chin and tipped her head back very slightly and then controlled the flow of tea to a merest trickle. Grandma swallowed. It was all done, if not with the love and tenderness Bridget looked for, with patience and expertise. The nurse gave me a smile as she handed me the cup back. She was not young herself, older than I am, and her face had the same worn look Grandma’s had always had. I could read no expression in her eyes. I suppose I looked for contempt or even resentment but her look was quite bland. She was making no value judgements, or not letting me see that she was.

  Bridget still had not come by the time I left. I didn’t ask anyone if she had already been, because I did not want them to think our family was not in perfect harmony, but I felt Sister Grice would have been sure to tell me Grandma had already had a visitor that day. When I got home, I rang Bridget again, though the last thing I wanted to do was speak to her after the scene the day before. Charlie had said I should leave her to stew in her own juice, as he so inelegantly put it, but I had no intention of obeying his callous instruction. Bridget was suffering, something Charlie did not take into account. I could not desert her even if she did not want me. So when she still did not answer the phone I went round. Karl was there. He opened Bridget’s door but made no move to step aside or to ask me in. I felt embarrassed. I hardly know Karl, I was not even sure how to address him. I asked him if he had enjoyed his holiday and he said yes, he had thank you. He was quite amiable but still blocking the door. I was obliged to ask if Bridget was in. Karl said no, she was just next door in her mother’s flat and I felt immediately and foolishly relieved that he had not after all been told by Bridget to keep me out.

  Bridget was packing. Grandma’s flat was in chaos, with every drawer and cupboard tipped out. ‘Don’t worry,’ Bridget shouted, ‘I’ll clear it all up. It will be left spick and span.’ She looked immensely cheerful. ‘I’m getting everything organised,’ she said, ‘all the rubbish can go to a jumble. I’m being ruthless, I have to be or there won’t be room for the two of us in my flat.’ I followed her through into Grandma’s bedroom. The bed had gone. Bridget said Karl had already moved it. It hit me for the first time that Bridget was serious. My face must have been a study. Bridget said, a little grimly, ‘You didn’t think I meant it, did you? Well, I did. I do. I feel better already. I’m not going back to King’s Wood till I’m ready to bring Mum out. I can’t bear it. I can’t bear going. Just give me a few more days and I’ll be ready.’ I said nothing. Absurdly, my heart was thudding and I felt shaky. Meekly, I helped Bridget carry Grandma’s awful blankets through to her flat. Karl had set the double bed up in Bridget’s sitting room. We put the blankets on it. I sat down, weak at the knees. Bridget was singing, she was happy. I wondered why Karl let her carry out this plan, why he wasn’t objecting. I had never done more than exchange pleasantries with him – he had been entirely peripheral to Bridget’s life. The holiday seemed to me to have made no difference: he still was. It was Grandma who was central to Bridget’s life and Karl was either so stupid he could not see it or so in love with her that it made no difference.

  I stared at the two of them, not knowing what to say, observing them minutely. Bridget bossed Karl but at the same time was lavish with the kind of endearments I had never heard her use. It was ‘honey’ and ‘sweetheart’ and ‘angel’. And she had such an odd expression on her face as she bustled about, issuing directions. A sickly kind of expression, unctuous and unnatural as though she were trying to make up to him at the same time as dominate. It made me uneasy. I felt suddenly that physical attraction was all that kept Bridget with Karl. But did he know? He seemed so intent on pleasing her. Nothing was too much trouble, he hurried to carry out every task, his face serious. He struggled to hold her eyes occasionally but never managed to do so – she was off and away. All the time Bridget kept up an inane prattle, at her most infuriatingly repetitious, but Karl hardly spoke.

  He was making a cupboard to put Grandma’s things in. Planks of wood and a sheet of hardboard lay on the floor. Bridget praised him, told me how wonderful Karl
was at carpentry. She laughed and teased him and told him to get on with it, all hands to the deck and a string of Grandma’s other clichés. I said I’d been to King’s Wood but Bridget stopped me, she said she did not want to hear the wretched name, she begged me to tell her nothing because she was pretending King’s Wood did not exist and her mother was not there. I sat on the bed, bewildered. ‘She’s going to be so happy here,’ Bridget enthused. ‘It will be lovely, I’ll make her so comfortable, I know all the things she likes, all the little treats.’ An inexplicable anger towards Bridget caught me by surprise and I said, ‘All on your own?’ Bridget was not a bit put out. She said I was right. ‘And if you’re ill?’ I asked. ‘You’ve been ill twice recently –’ ‘Thanks, Jenny,’ Bridget said, ‘I had noticed. If I’m ill then the Social Services will have to take over.’ ‘They’ll put her in King’s Wood,’ I said. ‘Well,’ Bridget replied, quite composed, ‘so they will. But at least she will have been out of King’s Wood longer.’

  There was no arguing with her but why should I wish to argue? My need to do so puzzled and distressed me. I felt locked in a contest with Bridget and I was envious that she was wiping the floor with me. I was the one who went to King’s Wood and held Grandma’s hand and condoned her situation, while Bridget moved beds and prepared a nest for her. I ought to be admiring Bridget. I ought to be clapping my hands and marvelling and praising but I do not. Instead, I am appalled at what Bridget is doing, it seems not magnificent but almost obscene. But why? Because it feels so. The facts of Bridget’s action are admirable but the feel of it repulsive. She will give up her job, a job which is no ordinary job, one to which she has given her life and from which she derives great satisfaction, and she will wait on her mother who cannot walk or talk and may take years to die. Bridget cannot know these are Grandma’s ‘last days’: look at the Death Chairs in King’s Wood. With the kind of care Bridget plans to give her, Grandma could last another decade. And of course, while she does, so does my shame and guilt and confusion. Bridget knows we will never be ‘out of it’, as she says. Never. With Grandma in our street, in Bridget’s flat, we will be sucked in once more, not having hearts of stone. How long will it take before we are back to rotas (to give Bridget a break), back to the supporting we have done so long, but supporting Bridget now, in this folly.

  As I left, Bridget said, ‘Don’t worry, Jenny, I’m not going to be a burden, this is going to be my affair, I promise. I know what I’m doing and I can cope, I’ve got it all thought out, honestly. There’s no need for you to fret. And thanks for visiting Mum till I can get her out, thanks Jenny, it makes a difference, don’t think it isn’t appreciated, you’re very kind.’ I suppose I made some expression of derision. ‘No, really Jenny, you are, very kind, you always have been, Mum always said how kind you were and still are. You shouldn’t upset yourself. It’s Charlie’s concern if anyone’s, not yours.’ That focused the anger I was already feeling. I told Bridget, coldly, that she couldn’t separate Charlie and me like that, she was always trying to do it and it didn’t work. Charlie’s mother was like my own mother, we took each other’s family as our own. Bridget shrugged. She really did not care, I could see, what I thought nor did she believe my high-sounding sentiments on marital accord. How could she? Suddenly, I despised Bridget and her Karl. She used him, tolerated him, enjoyed him but when it came to love, there was only her mother.

  *

  Today when I went to see Grandma she was not in her chair, nor was Sister Grice in her office. Another Sister was there, far preferable in demeanour, gentler and quieter. She said Grandma was in bed, that the doctor had been round and thought it advisable because the breathing was worse, there was some sign of infection. We went together to see Grandma who was in the small side ward where she had started off. She was propped up on huge pillows and turned onto her left side. The new Sister left. I sat beside Grandma’s bed, so relieved not to be sitting in the main room, so pleased to have Grandma actually lying down and tucked up. It was quiet, peaceful. Grandma slept and wheezed. Her colour was dreadful, a dirty grey lying under her usual yellow pallor. Then, to my surprise, she opened her eyes and stared at me. I bent forward and said, loudly, who I was. A faint flicker of a smile came and went and an attempt at speech. I took her hand – again, the strong grip, fiercely strong – and another mumble. My ear almost against her lips I distinctly heard ‘thank you’. Thank you – for what? For putting her in here? For discouraging Bridget from taking her out? For putting myself first? I wanted anything but thanks from her, thanks were unbearable.

  Then she seemed to sleep again and looked, for her, at rest. There was little point in my sitting there – her hand no longer gripped – but I had only just arrived. I got up. There was nothing to do in that room. In my bag I had brought a packet of those soft jellies I had seen Sister Grice dole out. I took them out and decided to be bold, to try to use my time usefully, to remember there were other old women there who had no visitors. And it was a matter of being bold and even brave when it came to the Death Chairs. I was so afraid – afraid to look properly, afraid to talk in case it released a flood of gibberish I could not understand, afraid to touch. It was no good offering the packet for the Death Chair occupants to help themselves. They could not. Sister Grice’s method was the only way: ramming the jelly in, hooking my finger briefly over the flap of skin that was a lip and into the sickly-soft hole that was a mouth. I rammed, I hooked. The jellies went in and down. The big sitting room seemed by contrast suddenly full of splendid specimens of womanhood. There, several women could and did select their own jelly and several more were able to exclaim with delight. All except two said thank you, over and over again, thank you, so polite in the midst of senility. One said she was very hungry and took two in each hand.

  And then there were the nurses. Two were sitting at a very long trestle table sorting stockings out, heaps and heaps of lisle stockings. They were both black, both tired and drained looking. I hated my Lady Bountiful role with my wretched little sweets. They had watched me doing the rounds but I could not tell whether I had been watched cynically. I sat down and asked if I could help. They shook their heads, said there was no need. I ask how long they had been there, where they lived, what kind of shifts they did. I said it must be very hard working in this kind of ward. They nodded, warily. They didn’t ask me a thing but then why should they. To make conversation, I asked questions about the various patients and heard such a catalogue of woe, all delivered in a dead pan monotone, that I wished I had not enquired. One nurse looked me straight in the eye as she finished, ‘but the poor souls wouldn’t be here if there was anyone to look after them, would they?’

  No, they would not. I went back to Grandma who still slept. As I left, I stopped at the door of the Sister’s office, feeling I should make some enquiries about Grandma’s condition. The relief Sister was there, busy with paperwork, but she invited me in, indicated a chair. She said she had wanted to catch me anyway, just ‘to make things clear’. Grandma was not eating, and more important, hardly drinking. The infection of her lungs was worse. The Sister was watching me closely as she said, ‘The doctor isn’t sure if it would respond to antibiotics.’ Messages seemed to flash from every movement she made – the lowered head, the careful outspread hand, the gesture she made with her pen. Nothing explicit was said at all. I said I thought it might be better to wait, to see if nature would clear the infection on its own and what about something for the pain. Sister raised her eyebrows. She said that perhaps that might be a good idea but she didn’t think Grandma was in any pain at the moment. Then she asked if all the family were in agreement. I struggled. I almost assured her they were but of course it could not be done. I confessed. I said my sister-in-law was coming to take her mother home, probably in a few days. Sister was of course taken aback. She asked if my sister-in-law had visited today. I said no, she was busy preparing her flat to take in her mother and that she did not intend to come until she was coming to remove her. Sister said that in that case
my sister-in-law should be told her mother was very ill. Moving her might kill her. ‘So might leaving her,’ I said. The Sister nodded agreement but had the last word. ‘So might neither,’ she said. ‘You never can tell.’

  *

  Charlie was adamant: there was no need to tell Bridget about Grandma’s condition. She had said she did not want to know, did not want to hear King’s Wood mentioned, and that would have been sufficient justification in itself for me to keep quiet. But Charlie was even clearer. He went himself to King’s Wood that evening as soon as he got home and saw the Sister – by this time, Sister Grice again. She said Grandma was very ill but still very strong. Her heartbeat was amazing for a woman of her age and her pulse steady. Sister Grice was of the opinion that Grandma would rally, that she had a long way to go yet. So, Charlie argued, why bring Bridget into it? It would only complicate matters. Bridget would have her pumped full of antibiotics at once. Nature should be allowed to take its own course, said Charlie. I put this into different words and presented them to him. ‘You mean,’ I said, ‘nature might kill her, whereas science might save her, so let’s give nature a chance.’ Charlie was not ashamed to say, ‘Exactly.’ And he pointed out that once Grandma was under Bridget’s care, nature would be fought tooth and claw.