Maeve's Times

by Binchy, Maeve

  Now what’s ‘often ill’, for God’s sake? Does it mean all the time, some of the time? When you take the other alternatives, I suppose it is often. All that business about the gall bladder, and the limp I had where they were going to have me shot in the office unless I went to a doctor and had it cleared up. I get a lot of headaches … stop whining and feeling sorry for yourself. Subtract two years you silly hypochondriac and shut up. 49.

  False teeth? Now this is embarrassing. I have one false tooth. Is it right to take the thing literally? They said teeth (plural), didn’t they? But the principle is that one fang is gone. It didn’t fall out by itself from age or being diseased, it was sort of assisted out in an incident. Still it’s gone. Subtract three years. 46.

  So, no plans for how I can spend the seventies, the sixties or even the fifties. It’ll all be over at 46. I read that line about it not being scientific again and again. The man opposite me was doubled with laughter. He’s going to live until he’s 73, why shouldn’t he laugh? He said I had been too harsh with myself about the false tooth as we did it again to check. I said he had been too indulgent with himself about his weight. He said that it was being dramatic to call myself ‘moderately tense’. I said he was being insanely optimistic calling himself ‘always calm’.

  We both agreed that it was a very foolish and frightening exercise, that it didn’t take anything into account like family history or ill health, like whether you had children or not, like whether your skilled job was steeplejack or draughtsman. It didn’t bother to investigate whether you had money worries, came from a family of long-livers, or had your home in a war zone. The man said that it was rather unfair that he got extra years for not smoking and drinking. I said that perhaps when he got to 73 he could take up both feverishly on borrowed time. He then worked out his boss’s life expectancy and was disappointed to find that was 85.

  Anyway, according to the actuaries, you may not have to read me for much longer.

  Two News Reports

  Though she may be best known and remembered for her features and regular weekly columns, Maeve Binchy was also a skilled news journalist. The following are excerpts from just two major stories she covered from the London office.

  Hope and Bitter Memories

  24 July 1974

  In the third week of July 1974 a Greek military junta backed a coup in Cyprus, prompting Turkey to retaliate with an invasion. Maeve Binchy had just returned from a holiday in Cyprus, and was asked to go back to report on the conflict. She has described this as the proudest moment of her career, because despite total isolation and terrible conditions, she got a story into The Irish Times every day.

  Don’t talk to any Cypriot about Geneva. Geneva is not on fire. What will Mr Callaghan and Dr Waldheim do about the sons and brothers who are dead? Will this high-power conference bring love and peace and co-existence with the men who are shooting at you to kill tonight, they ask. Are we all expected to live like dear friends after this week?

  And not every country has known a military coup and a foreign invasion in one week. Tonight I talked to the Turkish Cypriot refugees, who sat spooning meat from tins and crying in the dark field where they wait to hear more news of their fellow Turks.

  And the news they hear is not good. They know that whole villages have been wiped out. There are too few Turks here for comfort, they say. Where are the women, and the children from that little village and that little sector of the town?

  An old man whose wife had been killed in a mountainous Turkish village near Platea told me that he had been saved by God, not Allah.

  He was a Maronite. His poor wife was in heaven now. It was too terrible to tell, he said, but he told it with tears streaming down his old, brown face. They had a small shop, some Greeks in the next village, young and drunken, had come there late one night, ages ago, like three weeks previously, and demanded food. The old man said they were not open. The young thugs had put stones through the windows, and said they would be dead. Back they came on Saturday. Shouting and screaming that it was now war, they had worn uniforms; they came into his shop, to this one only, and shot his wife.

  Another Turkish man confirmed his story. He said that they had been able to get lorries and get to the base quickly. They buried the old man’s wife in the garden and said prayers and then drove past before any other villagers could be massacred.

  They know nothing, nothing about what is happening outside, only that Ankara Radio tells them first it has come to help the Turkish Cypriots establish their rights, and now that these rights have been established. It must be strange, harsh news to hear when you sit spooning out tinned meat, and thinking of your wife buried in the garden.

  But there is not general despondency among the Turks, not even those whose villages have been attacked. At last Turkey has really come, and the intense pride that this gives them will be some solace when it is all over and the problems of normal life begin again. Turkey promised to come before and didn’t. Now it actually arrived and it will show the Greek Cypriots that the island is not all theirs, that a decent democratic way of life for all Turkish people will be maintained henceforward.

  And in a strange way they have some reason for this wild belief, because their status, however personally disturbing, must be collectively improved when the bargains are being made, when the law-makers are yet again drawing up the rules.

  I asked them did they not regret that the Turks had only landed in two areas of the Island, thus exposing the scattered villagers to risk. ‘President Ecevit is sad tonight in Ankara,’ said one young woman, who was a teacher in her town. ‘He did not want so many Turkish Cypriots to be attacked but what could he do? He had to land somewhere. He could hardly drop a hundred men into each village. These are the sacrifices we must make.’

  She went on to describe the sacrifices they had made. They had been a minority with titular representation.

  Oh yes, it looked good at the beginning, they had been given Vice-Presidentship and positions for a small Turkish National Guard. They were second citizens in every way, except one, she said proudly. ‘We are half of Cyprus. Even though our population is not half nor even a quarter, they must consider us one half of the population, and the Greeks the other when any decisions are made. That is what they never understood, but now that Turkey has shown real support and not forgotten us, things will be different.’

  It all seemed so clear and so right that the Turks should be the victims in this mad war that I found myself agreeing with her from the heart. And the heart can change in a short walk through the section where the Greek Cypriot refugees are spooning meat out of tins.

  There was an old Greek woman who thinks that her three sons are dead. Someone explained to me that she had not stopped wailing since Saturday morning when she was taken by friends to Dhekelia. They were in Kyrenia. They must be dead. Everyone is dead in Kyrenia. She was being looked after by a woman of about 40, her daughter-in-law, who refused to believe anyone was dead. The Turks had been pushed back into the sea. She had heard it all day on the radio.

  An old Greek man thought that Cyprus would have to be partitioned sooner or later. Why not give the Turks Kyrenia since they had captured it anyway? Move the rest of the Turks in there, and let them feel happy with their harbour looking over at Turkey if that was what they wanted.

  And what will happen to them all? The mixed villages will have to go, for a start. When the whole truth of this week’s fighting comes out it will be shown that many of the killings were to settle old scores, feuds and hatreds growing and festering in tight communities where the fear of fear grew and grew. Partition has never worked well anywhere else, as we all know, but it might be the only solution.

  Numbed Dover Waits for Lists of the Dead

  9 March 1987

  On 6 March 1987, the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry on the Dover to Calais route capsized near the Belgian port of Zeebrugge in a disaster which killed 253 crew and passengers. When reporters were cordoned off from the site, Maev
e quietly bought a ferry ticket so she could access the passenger terminal to talk to passengers and relatives. This is her report from Dover.

  There was a fine coat of snow over the Cliffs of Dover making them whiter than ever at the weekend. The flag was at half-mast on Dover Castle … the town, which has always claimed to be the largest passenger port in the world, had a heavy feel about it as the reality seemed to sink in.

  One of the FEs was not coming home. There are eight of the Townsend Thoresen ships called Free Enterprise, and, just as Sealink vessels are known by affectionate nicknames or initials, the Free Enterprises were always the FEs, and they were always considered unsinkable. All day long the local radio station broadcast the telephone numbers for enquiries, but stressed that there really wasn’t very much more information.

  From Friday to Sunday, distraught relatives moved in a maddened circle from Dover to Maidstone where the police headquarters had been set up, on to Gatwick where some survivors had been flown in, then back to Dover where 30 surviving crew members had returned unexpectedly on another ferry.

  The horror of the first published lists was that nobody was utterly certain whether this was a list of known dead or known living. So to hear a name read from a list could have meant the best or the worst.

  In Enterprise House, the company’s Dover headquarters, the staff were red-eyed with lack of sleep and tears shed for friends and for the very fact of the catastrophes … families sat in little clusters on the benches of the big departure hall, they followed the staff with their eyes and whenever a telephone rang on a desk, a small crowd would gather immediately, just in case.

  Wearily, the ferry staff faced television teams and made statements. ‘I have been asked to say that the Kent Police will answer any questions from now on.’

  ‘Well what have we all been doing here for God’s sake?’ asked a man, distraught for news of his son.

  ‘I don’t know, I’m terribly sorry, but we realise that the lists are incomplete …’

  The man, whose face was so drawn it looked like a skull, clutched at her hand. ‘If you do know, I’d prefer to hear it now. I don’t want his mother to go on hoping.’

  The tired girl from the ferries swore that she did not know. She pressed several ten-pence pieces into his hand so that he could ring the police in Maidstone. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘I know you’re sorry. He was only 19,’ the man said ….

  A woman, who was waiting for her sister-in-law to come back from this Continental shopping trip, said that they might all be better off at home, looking at their televisions. A Salvation Army woman gave her more tea and sat down beside her on the bench.

  ‘Tell me about your sister-in-law. What did she go to buy?’ she asked.

  ‘She might be drowned,’ the woman was frightened to talk about her in case it might bring bad luck.

  ‘But we don’t know that. Tell me what did she go to buy?’

  ‘Well she said there wasn’t all that much in Zeebrugge and she would go on to this place called Knokke-Heist that was nearby. What will happen to her children if she’s gone?’

  ‘Don’t think about that yet. The Lord will help, tell me about this place where she went shopping …’

  Around the terminal building the crowds came and went as if by looking at that cold, grey sea they could somehow make it more likely that people had been taken from it the previous Friday night. And all around the Eastern Dock there were the distressingly inappropriate advertisements saying that the Continent is nearer than you think and perhaps the saddest of all, the big signs: ‘They’re here, the new big value luxury ferries.’

  It was the endless waiting that was so hard to watch, even as an outsider. People passive in the never-never land of not being sure a full day and a half after the tragedy.

  Gently, the police, the ferry officials and clergymen explained that there had been such a panic; nobody was too sure of what names were given and what names were taken. These English-sounding names would be unfamiliar to Flemish and French speakers ….

  And in the town which has so strenuously opposed the building of a Channel tunnel, people said that it would be a crime if this disaster were to lead to the public believing that a tunnel was the only way to cross the sea.

  Quietly, and without the usual excitement and fuss of people going on their holidays, the passengers filed on and off the rows of ferryboats in the harbour. And in a wet, cold, sad Dover, the ships sailed in and out under the white cliffs. The seagulls called as they always did but through the sleet and in the silence they seemed as sad as funeral bells.

  EIGHTIES

  The Right to Die in Your Own Home

  17 February 1980

  My neighbour in London has lived for 81 years in her house. She came there when she was five. Before that she lived in a cobbled mews where her father was a coachman but he lost his position because the family he worked for decided to go over to the horseless carriage. The mews where she once lived changed hands for three quarters of a million pounds not long ago.

  They liked the new house when they came there in 1909 and had five nice peaceful years before the First World War. She remembers when that war ended in 1918 and all the excitement and the men coming back. And she worked in a big firm which gave a celebration party where George Robey sang. Every lady who worked in the firm was allowed to invite a gentleman and every gentleman a lady – the night is as clear to her as if it had been last week.

  Much clearer, actually. Last week wasn’t all clear.

  Her sight is so bad these days that she dare not even boil a kettle in case she burns herself, so another neighbour, a woman from further up the road, comes in and makes her breakfast, her lunch and her tea. The State, through the welfare services, gives an allowance for this, called an Attendance Allowance, of £27 a week.

  This is a fairly regular procedure now in London, where there is a real need for it. A lot of elderly people have no relations nearby, the very nature of big city living means they have few close friends.

  Britain is a very ageing society, the contrast between there and here is extraordinary. Here the parks are filled with children, in London they are filled with the old. In Dublin you hold a supermarket door open for a mother with a pram, in London for an elderly couple with a basket on wheels.

  The health cuts have meant that a serious attempt is being made to keep old people out of residential care. On a purely factual and financial level it has been worked out that it is much dearer to put a person in a home permanently than it is to provide what are called back-up services. Attendance allowances are a part of the back-up. The State also provides a Home Help twice a week for two hours on each occasion, and a bath attendant once a week to assist in washing. The Home Helps often say that they are more needed to assist as company than as cleaners, and that sometimes they are followed around by the people whose houses they are trying to clean. The need for conversation is greater than for vacuuming.

  The bath attendants say that very often they are told that the old person ‘doesn’t feel like a bath today’. It’s too cold or they’re too tired or whatever. It’s not a police state, they say, they can’t drag the person upstairs and insist on cleaning them.

  So back-up services and a fair amount of people calling in and taking an interest have meant that this neighbour has been able to live in her home reasonably well for the past few years, since her sight and hearing and mobility have all so disimproved. She has resisted sheltered accommodation, rightly saying that where could be more sheltered than where she is? A house whose every floorboard and stair step has been familiar for eight decades. And people will find her, she says, if she has a fall. She has given the keys to people who will come and look for her if she doesn’t answer the phone.

  She didn’t answer the phone last week. Her bed was empty when I went in. She was lying underneath it, unable to get up. There were no bones broken, so she couldn’t be taken to hospital. The police, who now work the ambulances beca
use of the strike, helped to carry her downstairs and settle her in a chair.

  Snow white and shocked from who knows how many hours like that, she was determined to be cheerful. Part of the generation that doesn’t like to worry the doctor, she agreed under duress to let him call. He is a determined man, he said she must go into hospital to be looked at, and because casualty departments will admit an ambulance with an old person if it comes with a doctor’s referral, she was taken to Charing Cross Hospital in Fulham.

  And that’s where she is today, while they try to decide whether she will be able to manage at home any more. The last time she had a fall they built an extra rail on the stairs; the time before that they arranged a commode.

  People have shaken their heads darkly and said, ‘Thatcher’s Britain!’ They say the old lady is not able to look after herself and there shouldn’t be all this cheeseparing and pussyfooting about, people like that should be given good residential care in their last years, they worked hard enough for it during their time.

  But I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I can see that, alarming as it might be to neighbours who are at the moment relatively mobile, an old woman might like to live and die in a house where she has been since the year Lloyd George tried and failed to bring in the People’s Budget and Bleriot tried and achieved the first flight from Calais to Dover.

  Yet, when I see her all clean and pink in a hospital bed with nurses around and company and no fear of falling and lying through the long hours of the night alone on a floor, then I think she must stay in care. She doesn’t get frightened of burglars when she’s in hospital.

  She doesn’t find her heart thumping in fright when someone knocks on a door after seven in the evening, thinking that it’s muggers like she reads about in the local papers. And there is an argument that says since she can’t really enjoy her own home maybe she should go into something more organised.