No! I Don’t Need Reading Glasses!

by Virginia Ironside

  The sad thing is that far from being more tolerant now I’m older I find that I’m just as intolerant as my younger self. And now I have actually to live with this increasingly unappetising person, live inside her, be her, myself. So that’s why I’m scrupulously clean, paranoid about getting stains on my skirt, pernickety about never going out without my make-up, and always making sure that my hair is not only well cut and well-coloured, but also always brushed into some kind of shape.

  Anyway, back to the motorway. This bit of whatever it was stuck in my teeth was really maddening because, although I’m not the safest driver in the world, I do think that flossing your teeth on a motorway might not be very sensible, so eventually I pulled onto the hard shoulder and did it there. Luckily, no policeman came to ask me what I was doing because I’m not sure that flossing is a valid reason for stopping.

  My satnav got a bit confused when I parked. The screen blinked a bit and I was all prepared for my lovely man to ask What The Hell I Thought I Was Doing, but luckily he kept quiet. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind marrying my satnav. He takes me to such lovely places. And he never gets cross when I get lost. He just says, ‘Turn around when possible,’ in a low, sexy, reassuring voice. Imagine going up the aisle with your satnav. ‘Continue for 25 yards … ten yards, five yards,’ he would say, until you reached the altar. And then: ‘You have reached your destination.’ And then, when you were married, he’d say, ‘Turn around when possible,’ and we’d go speeding back down the aisle and out of the church.

  Satnavs are so safe, too. What a boon they are as you get older. Honestly, when I used to try to look at the map while driving on a motorway and had to change into my reading glasses when speeding along at seventy miles an hour to check the route, I’m amazed I didn’t cause a pile-up of such newsworthiness that it would have made the Daily Rant. ‘OAP CAUSES MOTORWAY CARNAGE HORROR!’

  Penny was horrified when she discovered I’d chosen a man’s voice for my satnav. I’d asked the man behind the counter at the Motor Accessories shop to put in all my details like my name and address. He then said, ‘And you probably want a woman’s voice, madam?’ And I heard myself saying, ‘Certainly not! Women have no sense of direction.’ Whoops! Glad Penny wasn’t there at the time. I wouldn’t have heard the end of it.

  Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, visiting Archie. Well, he’d managed to communicate to Sylvie that he wanted some papers from his desk at home.

  ‘God knows why he wants them,’ she told me on the phone. ‘He can hardly read. But anyway, he’s been banging on about them for days, so if you could get them that would be great. They’re in a green folder, it seems. If you can’t find them it doesn’t matter.’

  So before I went to visit, I popped into Archie’s house. It looked so sad and lost all by itself, with its enormous Victorian-gothic windows and ancient porch, standing in its huge park, with no Archie inside it. It was a grey overblown sort of day, full of dark menace as if there were going to be a thunderstorm later. I noticed, sadly, that the grass on the front lawn was overgrown.

  Mrs Evans came out looking twice her age, and, rather surprisingly and touchingly, flung her arms round me. ‘Mrs Marie!’ she said. ‘Oh, we have missed you. And Mr Archie of course. I’ve tried to keep the place nice for when he comes home, but that’s never going to happen, is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I said. ‘Not unless they discover a miracle cure in the next year or so.’

  ‘Isn’t it awful?’ she said. ‘I don’t want to hang on like that, do you? I want to die in my sleep, that’s how I want to die. Or drop down dead while I’m peeling the spuds. Or do it myself when the time comes. Or get a doctor to give me an injection. When it comes to euthan – you know, can’t pronounce the name – I don’t know what all those people are going on about, saying it’s the thin end of the wedge. Why shouldn’t we decide when to die? It’s shocking. I don’t want to be a burden to my children and have them spend all my money keeping me alive on a machine so they don’t have no inheritance. No, I want them to have good memories of me … It’s quality of life that’s the thing isn’t it, Mrs Marie? Not quantity. They say if you stop smoking you’ll live a year longer – but it’ll feel like ten!’

  ‘I quite agree,’ I said.

  ‘Trouble is,’ she went on, ‘these laws are made by young people. They don’t want to die. But you find when you get to my age, the idea isn’t so bad after all. It’s just something you do. By the time all these young people get to my age and decide we were right after all, it’ll be too late. There’ll be another bunch of young people deciding what’s good for old people and what isn’t. Interfering busybodies!’

  I tried to find the folder Archie had been talking about and, while I was leafing through the papers on his desk, I found a pile of old poems he’d written. I sat down and read them. They were all about death. And one struck me with a dreadful poignancy. It was called ‘Neither Here Nor There’. And it was in Archie’s handwriting:

  Once he was young and strong.

  He’d lived and loved.

  He was a man looked up to by his peers

  Till, under the cover of advancing years

  Others crept up and seized him unawares,

  Right at Death’s door.

  Pulling him back without a by-your-leave

  They hustled him on, ignoring his pale cry,

  Into an ante-room to wait and lie

  Hopeless, wishing God had let him die

  The night before.

  They were not enemies; they were not friends

  Watching by night and tending him by day;

  With one cold hand they took his life away

  And with the other they kept death at bay

  For evermore.

  I felt so moved by it that I showed it to Mrs Evans – who appeared to be polishing an unwalked-on floor. I needed someone to talk to. She read it slowly and then burst into tears.

  ‘Oh, this is so true,’ she said, in a wobbly voice. ‘I hope they don’t keep him hanging on like an old vegetable, excuse me, you know what I mean … how very sad. It’s as if he predicted his own fate.’

  ‘I know you understand, Mrs Evans,’ I said. ‘It’s so good you’re here. You’ve been so wonderful. By the way,’ I added, as Hardy came up to me, eagerly sniffling at my skirt and looking up at me, waiting for a pat. ‘What’s happening to Hardy?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve got him now. He’ll go to Mrs Sylvie soon. But at the moment she’s so busy. My husband takes him for walks. You can tell he misses Mr Archie, but he’ll be fine.’

  She looked out of the window. ‘You’ve probably noticed the lawn. My husband’s going to do it as soon as he can, but his hip’s not what it was.’

  The close air had made everything become even more claustrophobic when I arrived at Archie’s Eventide Home that afternoon. It emphasised the slightly sinister atmosphere around the whole of the place. It’s so eerily calm: there are no screams here, not even muffled ones. No conversation. No machines whirring away. No life. Inside, there are deep-pile carpets and sheets of paper pinned up on notice boards listing future events – Old-Time Singing with Roger and his Violin in the Green Room on Thursday, Card-making with Gina on Wednesday in the Sitting Room, and Take a Stroll Down Memory Lane with Bernard on Friday in the Dining Room. Gina, I noticed, also took Going for a Walk on Saturday, for those who could walk, I presume, and there was Have a Hair-Do on Sunday for those with enough Hair left to Do, with Roger.

  In one way, Eventide couldn’t have been a nicer place. The only thing was that to live in this particular bit of the nursing home, you had to be in a really parlous state. Despite the engraving on a brass plate by the reception area, reading ‘The Age of Dignity’, there’s not a lot of dignity in being spoon-fed and having your bottom wiped.

  I made my way down the overheated corridor to Archie’s room. Full of his things, it looked really nice. There was a photograph of Sylvie in a frame on the chest of drawers, and one of Philippa. I noticed there wasn
’t one of me, but as we’d only been together for a few years, I couldn’t complain. The walls are a pale yellow, and Sylvie has draped great Indian throws over the hospital chairs, which gives it more of a feeling of home.

  There are some things that can’t be disguised, however. The plastic locker by his bed. The cheaply varnished chest of drawers. The glimpse through to the over-lit and matless bathroom, with its toilet bolstered by a raised plastic seat, the sinister strings, hanging from the ceilings in both rooms, with a crimson alarm pull at the bottom.

  Apparently, as the place is packed with women – we live longer – he’s completely inundated by wobbly lady visitors, who imagine they’re in love with him and endlessly totter in to engage in flirtatious banter. He’s only been there a few days, but it’s amazing how the roar of sexuality still drives people of the most unimaginable age. Archie’s so very polite, it’s touching. Even though he’s now got very frail, he still always tries to get up when anyone comes into the room, bursting into a smile and saying, ‘My dear! How lovely to see you! You’re looking more beautiful than ever!’ He does this to everyone: cleaners, consultants, me, and has even started to do it to the man who comes round every day with the newspapers. Of course he doesn’t read the paper but he does manage to turn the pages and gaze vacantly at the pictures.

  This afternoon Archie was sitting in his old chair with a blanket over his knees. He looked extremely gaunt and bony, and kept peering anxiously out of the window. I was amazed at how quickly he’d deteriorated after his strokes. I suppose institutions don’t help. Put me in one of them and within half an hour I know I’d be sitting, craggy-faced, with a rug over my knees, sucking my gums, and unable to remember my own name let alone the name of the Prime Minister. When I came in he said the usual, ‘My dear! How lovely to see you! You’re looking more beautiful than ever!’ But then it became clear he didn’t have a clue who I was.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked, rather meanly. I sat down.

  ‘Philippa?’ he said, nervously. Then, ‘No, Marie. Where is Marie?’ he said.

  ‘I’m Marie,’ I said, taking his wizened hand and giving it a peck. The skin on it was so thin I felt I was kissing his very bones.

  Then he pulled me towards him conspiratorially. ‘Marie stole my … my …’ He grappled around for the word, plucking at his dressing-gown … ‘my … pin … my …’

  ‘Brooch?’ I said, guessing.

  ‘Yes, brooch. She said it was the cleaner, but she stole it, you know.’

  We talked a bit. Or rather I talked. With one eye, I have to say, on my watch. It was just so hot in there. I got out my knitting, just to keep my mind busy, and did a bit more work on the front.

  ‘Look at this!’ I said to Archie, showing him the border. ‘These are elephants, like the elephant game we used to play with Gene.’

  ‘Jean?’ he said. ‘Who’s she?’

  A sour-looking nurse put her head round the door and Archie said, ‘My dear, how lovely to see you! You’re looking more beautiful than ever!’ making a faint attempt to rise.

  ‘A cup of tea, Mr Archie!’ she shouted, suddenly, beaming at the compliment. ‘You like a nice cup of tea, don’t you! And a nice biscuit, too?’

  Archie started to get upset. ‘No biscuit,’ he said. He shook his head, distressed.

  ‘No, no …’ She bustled around. ‘No biscuit,’ she said, winking at me. ‘But perhaps your guest will want one?’

  ‘No, no …’

  ‘Whatever you want, darlin’.’

  ‘Are you doing the crossword?’ I said, noticing the puzzle in his paper. I thought perhaps we could do the crossword together, like we used to. I filled in a few clues and then said, ‘Now, come on, darling, you can get this, I know. ‘A vessel bearing right flag. Eight letters beginning with s.’

  ‘Streamer,’ he said, quick as a flash. ‘Steamer with an “r” in it.’

  That’s what so sad about Archie. You talk for ages and it’s all incomprehensible meandering nonsense, full of repetition and redundancy, and then suddenly the synapses click together and there’s a flash of the old person you used to know. But is it really worth it? Being alive for the very odd moment – perhaps only once a week and only lasting a second – when you’re back to your old self. My heart suddenly lurched as he smiled at me, his old smile. And then he went back to his own unknowable interior world again, a world in which I have no place at all.

  Luckily Sylvie came at five o’clock and I was as delighted to be seen visiting her father as she seemed to be to see me.

  As I left, she said, ‘Thank you so much, Marie. But where are you staying?’

  I told her I’d booked a B&B.

  ‘No, come and stay with us … do. Oh, God, tonight’s no good, Harry’s sister’s staying, but next time, will you promise?’

  I was very touched at this offer, and kissed her and Archie goodbye. I could feel the skull beneath his skin. ‘Goodbye, Philippa,’ he managed to say. And that was it.

  I headed off into the now-breaking thunderstorm, clutching the Daily Rant over my head to protect me from getting drenched.

  21 August

  Very grim time at the B&B so I’m delighted that next time I shall stay with Sylvie. It was one of those places so filled with knick-knacks you didn’t know where to move. Every chair in my room was occupied by a ceramic pierrot doll with painted tears running down its face, and the box of tissues was covered by a quilted chintz case – to match the cover for the lavatory paper in the bathroom. In a bowl lay some very dingy-looking shavings of wood impregnated with a sickly scent that pervaded the room, and all the drawer handles had plump red tassels hanging from them.

  The pillows were those dreadful ones carved out of foam, utterly unyielding, like sponge boulders, and the sheets were made of some synthetic material so that within minutes of lying down one was drenched in sweat. On the bedside table was an electric clock with a blinking red light that I had to cover with a pair of knickers to stop it keeping me awake, and outside, early in the morning, the country road turned into a motorway for farm vehicles, with agricultural machinery grinding up and down.

  The owner was, as they always are, an utterly delightful woman with a disabled husband who was proud as punch of her ‘home from home’ as she called it. All of which made me feel like an ungrateful old sourpuss when I thought of how much I’d loathed my night there.

  To make up for my vicious thoughts I was effusive in my praise of the breakfast, which consisted of tinned mushrooms, bacon swimming in a white watery residue and scrambled eggs which must have been cooked the week before.

  Before I left for London, I popped in on Archie again. He was staring at the paper, sightlessly. He suddenly pointed to a picture of a tree. ‘Okay!’ he said, excitedly. ‘Okay!’ I looked at the picture. It was of an oak tree.

  ‘I think you mean “oak”,’ I said, gently putting my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Oak!’ he cried. ‘Oak!’

  So you see it’s pretty painful for all of us. Oh dear, I’m starting to cry as I write. It’s difficult not to. Does one just get more emotional as one gets older? Sometimes I think I’m turning into a tough old boot and the next minute I’m bursting into tears at the slightest thing. Pull yourself together, Marie.

  Of course it may sound very cold, put like this, but unless you’ve lived alongside someone who’s getting Alzheimer’s you can’t conceive how gradual it is. For a couple of years you can see the same old person shining through, and the forgetfulness, rambling conversation, muddle and confusion are just rather annoying bits of nonsense that surround them. It’s as if you had a really good friend who started to wear odder and odder clothes, until you could hardly recognise them, and yet you could still see little bits of them peeping out between the hats and veils occasionally, and still recognise them by their walk and the way they got up and sat down.

  And then one day you realise the person has completely disappeared. Gone. Well, they’ve never quite gone, but the
glimpses you get of them are so rare that they might as well not be there. Indeed, one never has a moment when one can actually mourn the time they disappeared because in a way they’re still disappearing. So very sad.

  It’s a kind of death, but a very slow death. I mean, if Archie had changed from being the old Archie on a Tuesday, to the new Archie on a Wednesday, I think I would probably have had a nervous breakdown. But as it all happened so gradually, over a period of years, I never had a single moment to actually feel the loss of him slowly disappearing. It’s hard to grasp.

  24 August

  Finally got my act together and booked tickets to New York.

  Later

  A bulb went in the hall light. As it’s a high ceiling I asked Michelle to hold the ladder while I clambered up.

  ‘My fazair ’e fall off a larder,’ she said.

  ‘How could your father fall off a larder?’ I said.

  Eventually we understood each other. If anything, her English seems to get worse the longer she stays here. Perhaps she’s not going to English classes at all and instead working as a call girl in the West End to fund her product habit. Last year I would have been worried sick. Now, frankly, I think she’s old enough to look after herself.

  But thinking about falling off a larder, and also with that ever-present faint but acute fear that the aeroplane might crash on the way over, and with the existence of Chrissie and Gene, I decided that, before I left, I should remake my will. No good my disapproving of Archie’s lawn, it’s my lawn I ought to be concentrating on. It looks like a forest. Pouncer can hardly be seen above the grass.

  SEPTEMBER

  1 September

  Well, I’ve just got back from the solicitor’s. He’s going to make a rough draft of the will. I’ve got a great solicitor – a real old-fashioned one who wears a suit and a tie and sits in a dilapidated office surrounded by papers. He’s called Mr Rankle, he’s got a white moustache, and all I can hope is that he lasts long enough to do all the paperwork before he croaks. The man doesn’t even have a computer on his desk. God knows how he copes in this day and age. He may not actually have a quill pen, but he looks as if he knows how to use one.