by Diana Melly
I couldn’t go to the prison where I work in the visitors’ centre every Thursday. I couldn’t go to My Memories Café and this time it was something I minded missing very much. Raymond had sweetly offered to come along and dance with any ladies who wanted to. Gill was also coming. One of her six sisters is a beautician and Gill has picked up many of her skills: she was going to do manicures and hand massage. Kate, who organises these afternoon activities, had indicated to Raymond which ladies were likely to want to dance. And he went up to them, made a small bow and said, “Could I have this dance?”
Some people with dementia find that they can still remember and derive pleasure from poems learnt while at school, or from favourite music, whether Mozart or Bing Crosby, even though more recent memories have faded. Of course, the women loved Raymond asking them to dance so elegantly. It’s an activity that will be repeated and next time I’ll be there. Perhaps I’ll be able to get some of the men up on their feet. I might have more success than I did with George. He had so much rhythm, but it was all expended in his singing. At most he’d hop about on the stage to Dr Jazz but nothing would get him onto the dance floor.
It was because of George having dementia that I had become involved and interested in the subject. I had some understanding of how the person with dementia felt, and I knew from experience how isolated carers can be.
Dementia is notoriously difficult to diagnose in its early stages. And with someone like my husband, who had always been eccentric and absent-minded, it was even harder.
Three years before he died, I just thought his behaviour was becoming somewhat delinquent. He was losing credit cards – fourteen in one month – because he couldn’t remember his PIN, which should have been easy as it was related to his birthday. He would leave the front door open, lose his keys, and when travelling to London he would sometimes end up in Plymouth. I didn’t take these episodes seriously. Then something happened which should have alerted me but still didn’t. He was singing at Ronnie Scott’s, and when I called in the club, admittedly unexpectedly, he didn’t recognise me. A few weeks later – this was January 2005 – his lung cancer was confirmed and I think I was putting his increasing memory lapses – which weren’t just forgetting the names of his favourite film stars, Laurel and Hardy – down to his health, his whiskey and his medication. George had pills for his heart, high cholesterol, psoriasis, duodenal ulcers and a thyroid problem – also numerous inhalers for his lungs.
But in March that same year I stopped him in the street outside our house, and again he failed to recognise me. When I told him my name he asked if I was a cousin. We laughed it off, but when I told a friend, she said it wasn’t funny, and she thought he had dementia. I went to my GP, who gave me the number of admiral nurses; she said they helped anyone worried about any aspect of dementia.
I rang them and got through to Madeline; she listened carefully and said it sounded like vascular dementia with Lewy bodies.
The next few years were often sad and depressing but as it was George there was a lot of humour; also love and anger. Hate too, because sometimes when he was unfair, I hated him and then I hated myself as well.
When his diagnosis was confirmed I felt relief. Not knowing in any situation is hard, but knowledge is power. Madeline sent me information packs, advised which books to buy and told me which financial benefits we were entitled to. I now googled not only lung cancer but vascular dementia, Alzheimer’s and Lewy body too. A diagnosis also meant that I wasn’t imagining things; there was something wrong and now I could plan.
There were the two conditions to consider – the cancer and the dementia. I planned for stair rails, a wheelchair, a commode. I imagined moving him from his bedroom, which was on the second floor – too many stairs – down to his sittingroom. And eventually all these things came to pass. I hoped he would die of cancer before he reached the last stages of dementia when he might have to go into care. And there I think we were lucky, because he did die at home. At least I think we were. It’s probably selfish and sentimental, but because I miss him, I sometimes wish he was still in his sitting room, in his hospital bed or even in a home and I was on my way to visit. When you miss someone it’s not just the good bits and the happy times; you miss the whole person, the bad bits – and the sad bits too.
I knew that it was important to George to keep working. Singing wasn’t a problem; right up to about four weeks before he died he could remember all the words to his songs. Writing was different. When asked to write 1000 words on Salvador Dali he wrote 10,000. It was a frightful muddle, scrawled over endless sheets of paper without numbers, and three months late. Luckily he had a wonderful editor who sorted it out.
After that I tried to answer his phone so that I could turn down any commission that I thought would be too difficult – but of course that had to be balanced with not assuming too much control.
I was always nervous when George was away singing. I was told that once or twice he’d wandered off to the pub and been unable to find his way back to the concert hall. But some of the battles we had when George’s dementia was in the early stage were because I tried to control him and he resisted. My faults and virtues are inextricably linked; I’m a good manager and organiser and therefore I’m bossy and some would say domineering.
But in the end I did learn. It’s probably wrong to make comparisons between dementia sufferers and teenagers, but a useful strategy when in conflict with either is to walk away. I did it with my own teenagers and then I did it with George. And I learnt to be kinder sometimes when he knew that something couldn’t possibly be as he imagined it. His eyes would look sad and scared, and then I could put my arms around him.
Later on, in his last few weeks, we could even make jokes. He would ask, “Is such and such true or is that my dementia?” He got to be rather proud of having it, and it was almost the first thing he told people. “What’s that thing I’ve got that starts with D?” he would say. And then he would laugh because he could never remember what it was called. His way of describing his condition was “I have no sense of time, date or place”. And one aspect that he enjoyed was possibly caused by Lewy bodies. Three lovely pre-Raphaelite women used to wander through his room and into his bathroom.
It was in March a year before he died that his condition began to deteriorate, although some things remained quite intact – like his refusal to have any treatment for his lung cancer, and his determination to get through three packets of cigarettes a day.
He also began to lose weight; his famous suits hung off him and he lived in his kaftan. I could chart his decline by the contents of our fridge and freezer and the food he liked: fish fingers replaced fish cakes, shepherd’s pie was replaced by one lightly scrambled egg. He could only manage three sips of his daily glass of lager and eventually he didn’t even want any whiskey.
In June, four weeks before he died, he was carried downstairs for a family lunch in the garden. He sat there with Tom reading King Lear, and choosing the bit he wanted read at his funeral. We couldn’t carry him back up so he slept in our granddaughter’s room next to his sitting room, where the next day the hospital bed was installed. The commode, a box of controlled drugs and a syringe driver arrived, along with the district nurse, the palliative care nurse and a carer called Mary who was going to relieve me for two hours a day.
I found the task of caring for George that last month very satisfying and comforting. I like taking care of people, and because our marriage had often been difficult, I felt I could make up for some of the bad times. I was lucky; I had wonderful support from the nurses, our GP, my friends and children and of course from Madeline.
George’s dietary needs went from a spoonful of rice pudding to sucking water from a sponge. I think it was the absence of whiskey that made him less angry and confrontational. The main thing he insisted on was that people should not ask him how he was. I put a note on the door; “Don’t ask him,” it said, “he will reply ‘I’m fucking dying’”. And he wanted to. The last t
en days when the Marie Curie nurse arrived at night and I went to bed he said goodbye rather than good-night. And then, four weeks after he had managed to sing three songs at a benefit for admiral nurses, he died. At home, not in pain and ready to go.
Working at the prison visitors’ centre and helping at My Memories Café were not the only thingproduced pastas I missed while I was ill: there was also the monthly dances at Shoreditch Town Hall, the Porchester Hall, often on a Friday and just up the road, and Watford, a bit of a trek but worth it. Dino and Dora went to Shoreditch and afterwards came to see me. They sat in front of the fire and told me that Mr Wonderful had sent his love. Seeing that I wasn’t well enough to go out for supper, Dino went to my kitchen and produced pasta carbonara without asking me where anything was. Having washed up – he doesn’t like dishwashers any more than computers – he inspected my medicines. He told me to take the stronger of the two antibiotics I had been given. No alcohol, he said, lots of yoghurt, Greek honey and keep well lubricated. Dora made my bed look more inviting and when they left I couldn’t decide whether I felt three years old or a hundred.
The next day I booked a holiday in Tenerife. As I was sitting in Gatwick Airport, Dino sent me a text: “Turn off the air-con in your hotel, they never clean the filters and you can pick up germs that way.”
Chapter 10
The first time I described what I thought of as my angel costume to George, he said, “Angel? You were Cupid.” The costume I was describing – wings, bow and arrow, G-string and a flimsy bra – was the one I wore when I was working in Murray’s Cabaret Club. It was 1953 and I was nearly sixteen. The club employed hostesses and if you could dance at all you could double up as a dancer. My part as an angel in the wedding scene was a small one. I had to flit across the floor, pointing my bow and arrow at the bride and groom, do a few twirls, then stand very still at the back of the stage and whip my bra off while the curtains closed to hide my skinny body from the audience. In those days you could be naked on stage as long as you didn’t move and it looked “tasteful”.
My other role was as a nurse in the London Town scene. I decided to tell my mother only about this part. My previous job had been working in a grim little shop in Oxford Street, and although she was pleased that I seemed less grumpy and was earning more money, she worried about the nature of the job. But a nurse! I didn’t mention the brevity of the dark-blue cape that showed my G-string while I tap-danced across the stage in the London Town scene. And for the first month I didn’t tell her that when I wasn’t on stage I was sitting with a customer who was being cajoled into buying me cigarettes and flowers. And dancing with them too, if you could call it that; I don’t think Raymond or Dino would. The night club shuffle was easier than sitting with a customer and trying to think of something to say.
The cabaret club job had been advertised in The Stage: “Good looking girls, 5’ 6” minimum height with some dancing experience required in well-established West End night club”. I thought my three years learning ballet and acrobatics with Miss Betty Brooks could count as experience. I was quite good at ballet and passed my grades with top marks. My acrobatics were very good. I could do the splits with either left or right leg in front and I could bend over backwards and pick up a handkerchief with my mouth. I could turn cartwheels in a neat circle and walk across a room on my hands. I wish I could still do those things, but no longer do I wish I could run away and join a circus.
We lived in a village with no cinema, but there was a hall owned by the British Legion and every Christmas Miss Betty Brooks put on a show. I expect there were lots of acts but the only one I remember is mine.
Wearing green satin pants and bra and covered with a black net see-through slip, I pranced and high-kicked across the stage while the teenage boys whistled and shouted from the back. The acrobatic skills have helped with yoga, but more importantly, Dino said the ballet would help with the ballroom dancing.
Recently I turned up for a lesson with Dino without my shoes. The traffic had been too bad for me to think of going back for them, and anyway, I’d remembered that Dino had told me to practise barefoot.
“Wonderful, darling, I’ll teach you to dance with your feet.”
In his studio he taught me how to use the balls of my feet as we practised the rumba. I had to point my feet and he showed me when to use the outside or the inside edge. He explained that in any Latin dance my weight should always be forward. I got lots of “good girl, good girl”. Or when it wasn’t quite perfect he said, “I’ll accept that.”
I was looking forward to the next tea dance when I could show off my new skill.
But the tea dance at the Porchester was a failure. Perhaps I can only do the rumba in bare feet.
We went out for a coffee afterwards.”What happened?” said Dino. “No tidy feet, butcher hands and you got all tense.” I felt miserable.
It’s not that Dino teaches complicated steps or routines. What he cares about is timing and musicality. But there is a conflict between my brain trying to remember the steps and my soul needing to respond to the music. These days if I wake in the night, ten past three is my usual time, instead of counting backwards from a hundred in sevens I say walk, swivel, change weight. Walk, swivel, change weight.
I think Dino has imagined those few years with Miss Betty Brooks to be something they were not. “Ballerina!” he says. “Posture, stick out your tits, point your feet.” I point my feet and thrust my very flat chest forward. Its quite hard doing all that and relaxing at the same time.
Dino is off on business for a week so I am taking advantage of his absence by having a sort of mini-lesson with Dora. This lesson will have many advantages. I won’t have that anxious-to-please thing that I seem to have with men, doubly so if they are also my teachers. We have arranged to meet on Saturday in Kensington Gardens, and as long as it doesn’t rain I’ll have my lesson there. We are meeting my friend Nell who is going to bring sandwiches and hold the dogs, hers and mine.
It’s wonderful. Only very small problems: Joey’s flexi-lead gets tangled up in my legs as I do the swivel bit, Bobby chases after a large German shepherd and Iris, Nell’s dog, tries to steal someone’s picnic. I feel quite pleased that I did the swivel correctly even though the grass is wet and the path is gravel. Also some small children seem to find my fan position hilarious. Dora then teaches me the heel turn, something Raymond in eighteen months never managed.
Chapter 11
There is quite a lot of competition for Dino at a social dance. Besides his girlfriend Dora, there’s me, Caterina, another of his pupils, a very glamorous Russian, plus all the other women who have noticed that Dino is the best dancer in the room. We are all in love with him and want to be No 1 in the harem. Watching Dino and Dora dance, we all realise we don’t stand a chance – their rumba would make a blue movie.
Dino is very Latin. He optimises care and control. He now controls what I eat and my dogs. Like most of my friends, he would like me to put on at least a kilo in weight. When I have supper with him and Dora, he butters little bits of crusty bread and offers them to me. When I seem to be getting stuck with a larger amount of food than I am used to, he divides what I’ve left on my plate and almost spoon-feeds me with one half, much like I used to when my children were refusing to eat their greens. “Just one more mouthful,” I used to say, and so does Dino. He doesn’t go as far as to raise a spoon in the air and move it towards my mouth making chuff-chuff noises.
Bobby and Joey are both fifteen, and rather blind and deaf. As a consequence, Joey, who isn’t coping very well with his old age, has become rather clingy. “He won’t go with you,” I say when Dino takes charge of the lead while we’re walking in the park. But like me, Joey knows there’s a lot of care with all that control, and when Dino decides Joey is getting tired, he allows himself to be picked up and carried. “He doesn’t usually allow other people to do that,” I say rather feebly.
Tonight a big party of us including Caterina, Dora, a young woman who calls her
self “the dance whore” and me are going to the Savoy for a black-tie dinner dance. I’m hoping not to be spoon-fed.
Evening socials often go on till midnight and can be more expensive. There’s a spring buffet run by Mr Wonderful in Kingston’s working man’s club that costs £15. Another one I often go to is run by Elizabeth Anderson, herself a great dancer. It takes place in the SouthSide Ballroom in Wandsworth and the £18 entry fee includes sandwiches, sticks of carrot and cucumber, delicious cake and prosecco plus a demonstration by professional dancers.
The Royal Opera House’s monthly tea dance with their own orchestra costs £11 for two hours and the Waldorf’s Sunday afternoon tea dance, also with a live band is £59 for three hours.
Dancing needn’t be expensive. If you’ve been dancing for years, are perfectly content with your ability and don’t want lessons, you can just go to tea dances, which, at only four or five pounds with tea and cake, are by far the best value. Most towns now have them, although I hear from Gill that this isn’t the case in Wales. It seems that there are just a few small church halls that host sequence dances.
Some lucky women who haven’t stopped dancing since they started at the Hammersmith Palais seventy years ago are never short of a partner. The other group who never sit down are the very pretty ones. There’s one young woman with two left feet that Raymond nick-named her titty bubbles. She’s never off the floor. “Call me old fashioned,” he says. Well, he’s not very PC either.
If like me you do want lessons, there are two options: group or private. Group lessons are usually about eight or ten pounds. You might get two hours followed by some social dancing, but you will often be dancing with people as hopeless as you are.
Private lessons will cost £40–60 an hour depending on how much the teacher is paying for the hall and what level he or she is at. With these lessons you might learn “the whisk with the promenade chassé”; that “the hockey stick” is nothing to do with hitting a ball. You might even attempt the paso doble in which your partner is a matador and you his cape.
