Our Time of Day

by Kika Markham

  Corin’s Diary

  Sunday 14 August 2005

  My second visit of the day. We arrive about 1.00 p.m., as England plough, not very successfully, through their second attack. No hook on the lavatory door to hang one’s jacket on. But too much bustle and noise at the bar to complain.

  Kika has a lager and lime. Very nice. I joined her. Delicious. After lunch we lay down half hopeful of sleep, but for some reason it didn’t come. So many thoughts jostled for expression on the way back, but too many to be remembered. It was lovely to walk with Kika on a Sunday. Something to remember and bear in mind for the future. With her I can be happy. That’s my best thought for the day!!!!!

  But sometimes he would confuse me with Deirdre his first wife and would ask where Kika was… One day Vanessa invited Petra over for a fantastic lunch. Tomato and mozzarella salad, floury potatoes, poached salmon with an Elizabeth David amazing green sauce and stewed mulberries from Eileen Atkins’s garden with cream! She told us about a disastrous trip to China she had once made and we were mesmerised.

  Another day we listened to a radio play by Corin, My Sister Under the Skin, based on a real event about a woman who believed she was Corin’s half-sister. Corin is moved to tears by the story, and me as Sylvia, and had completely forgotten that he wrote it.

  I don’t know if Corin understood why he was staying at Vanessa’s. He doesn’t like it when I go back to Balham and indeed it’s gut-wrenchingly horrible when I have to say goodbye.

  Vanessa says that his not going home is depressing him, and I’m aware that all the family want him to come back to Balham, so I feel under enormous pressure.

  Kika’s diary

  Monday 15 August 2005

  Fear of being stuck. Trapped forever! Trying to find a way to move forward.

  On the positive side I like helping him, but I don’t like ‘nursing’. Guilt at being cross and wanting to escape. Guilt at my shortcomings. The irritation of Corin mixing me up with Deirdre and forgetting he’s seen me.

  Not making his own cup of tea. Walking in small steps – is he exaggerating his frailty? When I point it out to him he suddenly zooms ahead with great long strides and I have to run after him. The old Corin…

  Sometimes I wonder if he’s faking the whole thing.

  Not being able to grieve for him as he was.

  Too painful. Again denial. This is not happening.

  Thursday 18 August 2005

  We succeeded in getting an interview again with the Wolfson, but they were wary of taking Corin in because of the incident at Queen Square. Anyway, Corin didn’t want to come as a live-in patient, and, ‘Unless the patient feels the need to have treatment and has the will to want to work with the OTs (occupational therapists) it will not succeed – better to wait until he is ready,’ said Martin van den Broek, the chief consultant at the Wolfson.

  Corin talks ceaselessly throughout the interview, an angry stream of words – ‘People pay to see me… I am special, I am a genius… and ‘specialist’. Not like others. I am a soloist, a musician. But nobody understands the music I’m playing!’ He is very angry.

  Van den Broek listens attentively, and sympathetically never patronises. He impresses me, he’s detached and professional.

  After the interview, Corin bursts into tears. I try to comfort him by saying that we’re on a journey of discovery together; it’s not just him alone, that he will find new parts of himself, that it’s a ‘process’. This word seems to comfort him. Harvey arrives and gives calm practical and sympathetic advice. He, too, is coping with worry and sadness about his dad’s condition. I am so proud of him.

  Sunday 21 August 2005

  We all thought work was a key factor in Corin’s recovery. After a few months Vanessa took Corin to meet with John Barton who was writing The War That Still Goes On, based in part on Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War. Corin starts to work with John and enjoys it hugely. It’s his first work since the heart attack and the first time I see him happy. The paradox in the background is that he has no idea where we live or what our address is, or even where Balham is. His world is entirely with Barton and Vanessa. However it became clear that it was too early on in his illness to begin work. Corin found it too hard to sustain his concentration. He never got to perform the readings.

  We drive down to Lear Cottage on Ashdown Forest to see my mother with Vanessa. Mum adores her and Corin. She is quite frail today, and has hurt her arm from one of her strange shaky attacks. Vanessa makes her a sling very deftly out of the scarf she wore as Hecuba, and my mother wears it with great pride, in fact for days after. Corin, looking pale and tired, sleeps in the old fat green armchair in the dark sitting room by the fireplace. I sit on the grass under the pine tree’s shade and Mum sits on a chair. We have a cry and hug each other.

  ‘God, Mum, we’re both crying.’ ‘I know,’ she says, ‘isn’t it lovely.’

  Monday 22 August 2005

  Very sad, very near the edge, can’t stop crying. Big Jehane [West] said I’m grieving for the old Corin and haven’t got used to, or don’t yet know, the new one.

  I felt too ill to go to Chiswick and stay at home to encourage Arden and Vedran Taslaman (his best friend), who are painting the spare room and putting up shelves to make it into a study for Corin, something he’s always wanted. From the kitchen I can hear a lot of arguing and laughter from them, which is very cheerful. The talent for DIY is severely lacking in both the Redgrave and Markham families, whereas Vedran, an engineer of promise, can do it in his stride. This afternoon, the garden is filled with theatrical bric-a-brac; boxes of books, photographs, pictures, which we have to either find a place for or throw out. I must be mad to try and do all this before Corin comes back.

  Thursday 25 August 2005

  Lovely evening with Corin. He talks about writing a play or account of a man who’s lost his mind but is trying to re-find reality. We sleep in the same bed, an awful bucket but very friendly and comforting being together.

  Friday 26 August 2005

  3.00 a.m. I am waiting for the sleeping pill to work and listening to Retha Hofmeyr talking about how she uses tortoises to research climate change. We have had a catastrophe and Corin is in Charing Cross Hospital. Earlier this evening, at Chiswick, Corin took me into his bedroom and asked me what drugs he was being given. He pointed to the wardrobe saying he could hear voices. I opened the door and showed him that there were just clothes hanging there. His eyes looked frightened, rolling a little – icy. I managed to get Vanessa and their cousin Robin Kempson, who was staying with her, on their own and tell them that I was frightened about the way Corin was acting, and was going home with Tom who would drive me back.

  This was the sequence of events:

  Kika’s diary

  Friday 26 August 2005

  Sometime after I left, Corin, now believing Vanessa and Robin to be his ‘enemies’, walks out of the house and into the road, threatening them with violence if they try to stop him. An ambulance is called by Vanessa, but he won’t go in it unless he is accompanied by police, and he wants their protection. He then manages to flag down a bus (it’s now about 10.00 p.m.) and gets on it, followed by Robin who starts to explain to the driver to wait until the ambulance comes as Corin is unwell.

  The driver thinks it is Robin who has gone off the rails as he is wearing a green towelling dressing gown and slippers (he’d gone to bed early).

  The driver tells the passengers to get off the bus and the policeman manages to reassure Corin and go with him to Charing Cross Hospital. Later, Vanessa rings me and tells me to come to the hospital straight away. She doesn’t say why and I think Corin has had another heart attack and sob all the way there in the taxi. Corin is in an anteroom somewhere.

  I could hear him asking to be released. My heart was cracking; Vanessa’s too. He must have felt so alone and scared. We were told not to see him as it would distress him more, and advised by a senior medical consultant that Corin needed to be under constant superv
ision which would probably mean having to section him, as he did not think Corin would stay anywhere voluntarily. He suggested Springfield University (Mental) Hospital as it was near our house and it would be easier to visit him. They also said it would be less confusing if Corin were taken there without Vanessa or me and promised that the nurses would be very kind to him.

  Robin came back home with me and slept in the spare room. Vanessa went home alone, and Corin was taken to Springfield Hospital.

  * * *

  September 2005

  Corin’s time in Springfield was so traumatic for us all that I couldn’t even write about it at the time. He had a tiny room with a bed and a chest of drawers. There were bars on the window, not unlike a prison cell, or a room in a workhouse. I brought him bedspreads, cushions, photos, and mugs from home to brighten it. His moods were extreme and unpredictable: from black despair through elation to anger. He was greatly helped by the kindness of Professor Ian Robbins who came and talked to him, listened to him and comforted him. I have still to thank him for this.

  Although Corin doesn’t consciously remember any of his time at Springfield, two years later when he performed Wilde’s De Profundis, I understood that the sorrow and truth in his portrayal was not ‘acted’ but had been experienced at a deep level.

  I only have to think of Corin, face at the window, behind bars, and my chest tightens; I stop being able to breathe, even now. It is truly terrible to see a distinguished-looking ‘civilised’ older man crying without restraint in bitterness and sorrow because he cannot understand what is going on or why he is being held prisoner. It must have confirmed all his worst fears.

  I came to deeply respect the nurses at Springfield. Again, these dedicated people who deal with mental traumas and appalling psychological difficulties in shabby, primitive Victorian buildings, are true heroes.

  I liked the way his consultant, Dr Hughes, Irish and softly spoken, talked to Corin in a compassionate and direct manner. Corin liked the food well enough: meat pie and two veg, and jam roll and custard. Having been at a public school had made him very unfussy about food – unlike me.

  He made friends and started smoking roll-ups with them in the small grassy area outside, where you could sit on a bench and feed the sparrows. I remember one late September day my brother-in-law, Roger Lloyd-Pack, Jehane, Corin and I took a rug and had a picnic there, and talked about theatre.

  After some weeks, he was encouraged to come home for afternoon visits, and on one of those days I was alarmed to hear him shouting for me to come quickly. He was standing over the loo which was filled with blood. Both of us nearly fainted. I called an ambulance and he was rushed to St George’s Hospital, which we knew only too well. He had been treated there for prostate cancer by Roger Kirby, and this time some of the nurses remembered him. He’d had a crush on a beautiful nurse from Lagos, Nigeria and had written Saint Lucy, a searing, truthful and funny play about it and what it was like to have prostate cancer. Aicha Kossoko played the nurse and I played his wife. I was never so happy as when he was writing a play because it meant that he stayed at home, and that I got to have a juicy part as well!

  Luckily, the horrifying amount of blood was not as dangerous as it appeared. He was soon ready to leave hospital and I made arrangements for him to come home. The need to look after him became stronger than the earlier fear of what could happen – brain injury is unseen and unknowable. Blood, vomit or shit are your friends in comparison.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  OCTOBER 2005

  Rehab

  Once home, Corin was inclined to stay in bed all day until, after much prompting, he would sometimes come downstairs to dinner. But wherever he was, in bed, on the sofa downstairs, or sitting under the tree in the garden, he kept very, very still. Not a muscle moved. His eyes wide open, thinking, puzzling, puzzling and thinking. What had plunged him into this darkness, this half-world? He who ‘knew everything’ now understood nothing. It must have been a terrible suffering, yet he never complained.

  The one thing he couldn’t bear was noise. People talking, the television and radio. I couldn’t even play music, something we had both listened to every day of our lives. The world became silent. I cooked and washed up as he sat in silence at the kitchen table.

  I swung from anguish to rage to wanting to laugh. We seemed like figures in a bad production of Strindberg. For the first time in our relationship we were unable to communicate with one another through familiar ways. We waited like orphans until our guardian angels, Harvey and Jodie, came back from work. They were staying with us until ‘things settled down’, and the moment they came through the door the atmosphere became easier.

  I dreaded the moment when it was time for Corin’s pills as he didn’t understand why he should take them. He still didn’t believe that he’d had a heart attack. Sometimes he thought I was part of a conspiracy and was trying to kill him and would throw them across the room. Often, it wasn’t until I’d rung our GP at his home and got him to talk to Corin and explain that he’d had a heart attack that he would accept his medication.

  Eventually, in desperation, I rang Springfield. They explained this was a common occurrence following brain injury and that they would send the ‘Team’ around. The ‘Team’ consisted of two nurses, I think Malaysian, man and woman, who had a sort of relaxed authority and could sum up the situation in a flash. You wouldn’t want to mess with them. They arrived at 8.30 p.m. ‘Hello Mr Redgrave! We have your pills for you now’. And Corin would take them, meek as a lamb and bid them good night with a friendly wave, seeing them to the door. This happened every night for several weeks.

  I put my head round the bedroom door. ‘Do you feel like getting up?’

  There are a hundred ways of asking this, a hundred tones of voice. This time I had an encouraging tone.

  ‘Soon…’ And as I sigh, and trudge back downstairs, his beautiful unchanged voice floats down, ‘And I genuinely mean SOON!’

  At first I was Corin’s full-time carer. Then through Equity, my union, we received a life-saving amount of money every month, from the Royal Theatrical Fund and the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, to pay for a carer. Brendan was a capable, sensitive man who was trained as an actor and a nurse, specialising in mental health care: a useful combination.

  On one occasion Corin, not remembering who Brendan was, threatened to punch him if he did not get out of his bedroom. Brendan wasn’t fazed. He did a fair stint with us. Then he was offered an acting job. It was now down to me to be a full-time carer again.

  We weren’t getting any rehab yet. Corin didn’t have a reason to get up. Having a shower was complete misery as he hadn’t regained his co-ordination and balance and felt clumsy. The most telling thing was that he no longer cared about his appearance. He was very depressed – and cross; we both were. When he did eventually come into the kitchen for his dinner, still in his dressing gown, he admonished me in a clear voice:

  ‘This is going to end in divorce Kika.’

  ‘OK then,’ I would answer, in a horrid, bright voice.

  I was warned by Peter Amoroso and a consultant at the Heart Hospital that one should try not to be the chief carer, as it would be detrimental to our relationship. I shouldn’t try to be his memory or let him become dependent on me. His independence was paramount.

  I wasn’t adjusting – I was so, so full of grief, self-pity and rage that Corin couldn’t comfort me. He needed comfort so much himself. During all this time Corin’s consultants at Springfield and the Wolfson were constantly adjusting his medication, which was crucial in helping him live as normally as possible. There were signs that he was in the depths of despair. A photo of him holding my mother’s hand at the cottage in Sussex is unbearably sad. At Christmas 2012 I found two scraps of paper, undated, from one of his journals, which fluttered out from one of his favourite books, Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald:

  Even Glenn Gould, our friend and the most important piano virtuoso of the century, only made it to the age of fifty-one, I
thought to myself as I entered the Inn.

  The Loser, Thomas Bernhard

  Suicide calculated well in advance, I thought, no spontaneous act of desperation.

  The Loser, Thomas Bernhard

  His writing is shaky and small, which is how it was in the first year of illness. How I wish I had found them before. Suicide? Perhaps we could have talked about it, but then again… perhaps not.

  On one occasion Vanessa and I had both been trying to get him up, with no success. We were in the kitchen and I was preparing a tray of breakfast to take upstairs. I didn’t want him to take pills on an empty stomach.

  ‘Do you think that a good idea?’ she asked.

  I reacted wildly: ‘Don’t criticise me so quickly, we’ll never manage to live together…’ (an idea we had discussed some while back).

  ‘But he’s not like that with me. It’s because you look so anxious all the time and you haven’t got a ROUTINE!’

  It was all true, which didn’t help. It was another thing that I was being endlessly advised on, ‘Get a Routine, a structure!’ God, how I hated those words. I had avoided routines all my life, except in the WRP and, of course, when rehearsing a play. I was forced to admit I needed a daily plan of some sort now. But a group of friends were already becoming part of our daily pattern. There was hardly a day when Tom didn’t turn up, either to run us to the hospital, or clean the kitchen or watch Arsenal on TV. Our Bosnian friends Bina and Sead came often. We had always walked together in the evenings, and Corin and Sead had played tennis to the bitter end, both men being highly competitive. We had three Commons to choose from: Tooting, where we had taken the boys when they were little, and was closest to home; Battersea; and Wandsworth. On our first walk in Battersea Park, Corin asked where we were. He didn’t recognise anything. Not even the river. Or Battersea Power Station. We could have been in Vienna or Budapest – we were walking in European parks not English ones, like a Hitchcock film where you have no idea where you are but it’s so familiar to everyone else that you think you are mad. And sometimes Corin did think that.