Precious Lives

by Margaret Forster

  This time he wasn’t in Ward 20. He was in Ward 16, a general geriatric ward arranged on the old layout of long rows of beds – no cosy little cubicle for him to make his own. He reacted badly to the lack of privacy and to the absence of the kind of interested attention he’d enjoyed before. Depression set in quickly in spite of Pauline’s devoted attendance and Gordon’s visit. ‘Get me out of here,’ he began begging, and after ten days the hospital authorities began to say much the same thing. There was nothing they could treat him for. The presence of coeliac disease was not proven, but the gluten-free diet he’d been put on had cured the diarrhoea and resulted in some weight gain. His blood pressure and heart sounds were normal. They needed the bed for someone who had treatable symptoms. But where was he going to go? Not back to his bungalow. I hadn’t set up the wonderful support system I’d envisaged, with a live-in carer. He would have to go into a home, into the home Pauline and I had inspected.

  How very naïve of us to think it would be as simple as that. While my father became more and more disorientated, a nightmare sequence of negotiations began, with social workers, with the matron of the home, with the hospital. Money featured heavily. We were warned, when we were already well advanced in our arrangements with the home, that if we took my father there without the agreement of the local authority in charge of such decisions, he might not be funded. He had no money of his own, which we had thought meant he was the responsibility of the welfare state, but it seemed the choice of home was not his alone (or rather ours, because he was past choosing). And that is what happened: the local authority chose another type of home for him. A residential home was perfectly suitable, they said, and he didn’t qualify for the nursing-home we’d chosen. Fine, I said, I’ll pay the difference. No, they said, you must pay it all if he goes there. In a rage, I said I’d take this to arbitration. I hated doing this, especially since I could afford to pay for him and was willing, but my brother and sister objected strongly to my doing this – they could not afford to contribute, but more important to them was the fact that my father was fully entitled to be cared for by the State, from whom he had taken so little.

  Pauline patiently explained to my father, in one of his increasingly rare lucid moments, that he was going to convalesce in a very pleasant nursing-home. She showed him a brochure and he said he’d give it a go, he just wanted out of hospital, she could take him now. But she couldn’t. I had been on the telephone for hours every day trying to organise his transfer, but what I hadn’t realised was that the vacancy there had been filled in the meantime and that in any case my father had first to be assessed as suitable. There followed a terrible day when the matron visited my father in Ward 16 and found him so confused she wondered if senile dementia had set in. If so, he’d have to go to the Alzheimer’s wing of the home, and that wing was full, with a long waiting list. Desperately, I pleaded the effects of hospitalisation as the reason for my father’s apparent confusion, assuring the matron that once he was in a different environment he would be back to his sharp self. Pauline and I both stressed that there had been no sign whatsoever of dementia up to now and so, doubtfully, the matron agreed to give him a trial when there was a vacant room … which at the moment there was not.

  Marion, who was staying with us again for a weekend, guided me through how to handle this. As a social worker herself, she was well acquainted with the rules and regulations governing the financing of care for old people like my father who had no money of their own. With her help I set about going to arbitration (and, after many months and an appearance before a tribunal, won my case). And meanwhile a person in the home we had selected died, and on 22 February my father was moved into it by Pauline and her husband. They had first furnished and decorated this room with such skill and attention to detail that it was almost a replica of his living-room, minus the fire. His precious bureau was there, in prime position facing the armchair. It was only a cheap article, made of a wood little better than plywood which had been varnished to look like something superior, but it held all kinds of memorabilia my father valued and loved looking through on wet afternoons – a great mess of photographs and postcards and bills and certificates, and any letters he had failed to tear up and throw away (mine arrived every week on Tuesdays and were torn up on Wednesday unless they somehow escaped this rigorous tidying up). He invested this humble, unlovely bit of furniture with some status and had always polished and dusted it enthusiastically. But none the less it was now patchy and faded-looking, the little brass handles dulled and forlorn. Once my mother had cleaned them with a toothbrush dipped in Brasso and rubbed them till they shone.

  On the walls of his new room were all the pictures he valued most, though not always for their artistic merit. There was an oil painting of a village in the Lake District which I’d given my mother years ago and which had always hung over the fire (slowly melting the paint); a print of a Gainsborough beauty (my mother had admired the real portrait in Kenwood House and the print was a birthday present); a watercolour of a road leading to the sea (place unknown, but the painting had been bought on a rare holiday my parents had taken); an oil painting of our house in Loweswater, and another of my father himself. The family photographs, a grand total of thirty-one, were all fitted into the remaining wall space or decorated the long windowsill, the top of the bureau, and every other available surface. What a show of deep family solidarity it was – weddings, christenings, degree ceremonies, the lot. There was his own television, given to him by Gordon and much bigger than the ones the home supplied, and there were two mirrors and several jugs and vases for flowers. There were flowers already in them, early tulips and daffodils. ‘Good,’ he said, as Pauline took him in: ‘flowers. From Margaret, likely. Where’s the letter?’ It was a Tuesday, so there had to be a letter. Moment of panic, but then it was found, resting on the pillow.

  So there he was. In a Home. It had happened. He hadn’t just popped off. He was ninety-four years and two months old and he hadn’t popped off in time to escape a fate he had never thought would be his. He hadn’t been pushed over a cliff either. He was alive, but dependent on others. Did this mean, was it going to mean, that life was not therefore worth living? Would he metaphorically turn his face to the wall and give up? Of course not. He set himself to adapt, to carry on the long tradition of managing, and he did it so successfully that the matron, who had judged he might be senile, was astounded. ‘He’s marvellous,’ she confessed at the end of the first week. ‘He just gets on with it, and the men don’t usually – they moan and groan and don’t settle like the women do.’

  He had imposed his own routine at once. Not being able to find an immersion heater to switch on first thing for his hot water had puzzled him, but when he discovered that hot water came out of the tap all day anyway, he was content. He shaved himself, no bother, dismissing all offers of help scornfully. Not then being able to find a kitchen and his frying pan was far more of a worry, but once he’d been directed to the dining-room and given his first breakfast, his anxiety vanished. What a feast was laid before him – not just bacon, but fried egg and sausage and fried bread and as much toast and butter as he could eat. He had to admit it beat his own breakfast. He had to admit it beat Ward 20’s. The only drawback was having to eat it in the company of those he referred to with chilling accuracy as ‘slaverers’. He maintained he was surrounded by them, folk who couldn’t speak or eat properly, folk with spittle drooling out of their mouths: slaverers. But he wasn’t going to let them ruin such a magnificent breakfast. He just kept his eyes on his full plate and ignored them.

  Breakfast over, he walked back to his room, quite pleased with the exercise. It was foul weather that first week, raining heavily outside, and he knew that if he’d been in his own bungalow he would have been a prisoner, unable to walk anywhere or see anyone. The walk to and from the dining-room interested him, though he was careful not to betray this. He had to go through the main entrance hall and there was always something going on – visitors arriving and d
eparting, people delivering things, a bit of life in general, a feeling of being at the hub of something. Then there were the offices to peer into. The matron (or home manager as some called her) had one office, the secretary another. The doors of both were almost always wide open. My father could see the matron sitting at her desk, usually on the telephone. She was quite young and wore ordinary clothes, which he didn’t quite approve of (any kind of matron should be in uniform), but she was cheerful and pleasant and always acknowledged him with a wave, which actually made him move on as quickly as he could – he liked to think he was invisible. It was a nuisance that on the next stretch back to his room there were often two or three of those damned wheelchairs in the way, but a hard push was enough to send them flying satisfactorily in the opposite direction to which he was going. If someone was in them, of course, this tactic was no good and he had to brace himself to pass them. The old folk sitting helpless in these wheelchairs looked pathetic – he hated the sight of them and was never going to be coaxed into joining them in the communal sitting-room. He’d rather be dead. Every time he passed this room he averted his eyes. The place and its occupants made him shudder.

  But he was intrigued by the nurses’ desk, and behind it their small staff-room, opposite the sitting-room. He liked to pause here, before the last corridor to his own room. This was where the nurses and carers reported to, where they answered the telephone, and where they were given their briefings at each change of shift. He was curious as to how everything was organised and liked to listen, if he could, to instructions being given. He wanted to know why some of the women wore blue uniforms and some pale green, and who was superior to whom. He slowly took in the differences (blue was for qualified nurses, green for carers with NVQ certificates) and learned names. Every hand was duly inspected for rings, every head of hair for signs of being dyed, every face for the presence of spots (and every spot was a barnacle), every body for being over- or underweight, every ear for rings and piercing. It was sport, of a kind.

  Back in his room after all this stimulation he was admittedly at a bit of a loss, but then he acknowledged he had been for some time now in his own home, ever since he’d had to give up the daily routine of going shopping to Denton Holme. He’d been restless, mid-morning, for a couple of years, but then he’d usually managed to think up some job in the garage. Here there was no garage. Worse still, his tools were missing. This shocked him. Where were his tools? He demanded them loudly; he wanted his screwdriver in particular, to fix a loose catch on his window. If he didn’t have his tools, how could he see to anything that needed to be mended? He had made them himself when he was an apprentice, and they were of excellent workmanship and durability. The most complex of them was a vice, very finely finished and inscribed with his name. Then there were his chisels, his thread gauge, callipers for measuring circular objects, and the screwdriver he wanted so badly. These tools, which he’d had for eighty years and used constantly, all had his initials or full surname engraved on them. What he’d forgotten is that he’d given them to Pauline’s husband, who he knew would use and treasure them. David was a skilled handyman himself (though not a professional) and when he’d admired these tools my father had said he could have them, because he didn’t suppose he would need them where he was going. But now he did need them, and on bad days there was the faintest suggestion he’d been tricked into going into a place where his garage and his kitchen had been stolen from him. He also complained that he had been promised he would be surrounded by children. Nobody of course had promised this, but the brochure Pauline had shown him had a photograph on the front of an old man in the home being visited by grandchildren, and my father regarded that as a guarantee.

  There was nothing to do but sit in his chair and read the Daily Express, or the Cumberland News, and mark any horses he could bet on. But that was another problem: how could he put bets on, stuck in this place? We’d anticipated this and when we’d had a telephone installed by his bedside, we suggested he could do it by phone. We’d make an arrangement with a bookie of his choice. He was offended at the very idea. His betting was private. It was between him and the bookie, or whoever was behind the glass partition in the betting shop. He said he would manage. Maybe he did. Maybe he co-opted one of the nurses or carers or a visitor into putting bets on for him, but if so no one confessed. The deviousness of this, if it happened, would appeal to him – the swearing to secrecy, the whispered instructions, the furtive giving of money. He had to have some excitement to make life worth living.

  There was none outside his window. No trees, no shrubs. He looked across to the dining-room and soon had worked out the significance of various movements within it which indicated that lunch or tea was about to start, and this gave him some satisfaction, but otherwise there was nothing doing. He lamented the absence of birds, which was one thing at least we could rectify. A bird table was put in front of his window and nuts and grain bought, and now he had a little entertainment. He counted and identified all the birds that came and sent the staff (whom he had a bad habit of calling ‘the servants’) out to spread more food and refill the water container. They were not allowed to do it on their own initiative – they went only when he sent them and had to do precisely what they were told. All phone calls to us now began with descriptions of bird life and what a blessing that was.

  Lunch, the main meal of the day, came before he was the least bit ready for it. He went obediently enough at first to the dining-room to eat it but didn’t enjoy it. There was too much food, all delicious, but after his big breakfast he had no appetite. He was glad to get back to his room, where he promptly fell asleep in his chair. When he woke up, the rest of the day wasn’t too bad. Nurses and carers came in and out, bringing freshly laundered clothes and taking away dirty ones, bringing his medicines, and so on. Their standards amazed him – ‘One spot of gravy on my shirt and they bloomin’ have it off me.’ He protested this was ridiculous but nevertheless he was impressed and he liked always being spotlessly clean.

  His room was equally pristine. Every day the carpet was hoovered, the surfaces wiped, the bathroom scrubbed. No dirt had a chance to take hold – ‘There’s not a speck of dust to dust away but they never stop.’ Daft, all this excessive cleaning, but it gave him the opportunity to interrogate the cleaners. He talked to them all and luckily they were amused and even glad – not many of the patients engaged them in any kind of conversation, either because they could no longer speak, after strokes, or they were too ill and didn’t have the energy, or simply because they had no interest in life any more. My father was becoming popular after the first week and his room a place where the staff chose to hang about and chat. And, of course, Pauline had made it attractive, his room, in contrast to many of the other rooms which lacked all his personal clutter.

  The man next door to him had nothing decorative in his room. He had the furniture which the home provided and that was all. His walls were blank, his windowsill bare. He’d been put next to my father in the hope that the two of them would become friends and give each other some welcome companionship. They didn’t know my father. Friends? What for? The whole concept of friendship had always been beyond him. He was deeply suspicious, even embarrassed, at the idea he should make a friend. At his age? When he was a young man, before he got married, he had sometimes knocked about in a gang, especially with other lads in the Boys’ Brigade, but not often. He met men in the pubs, once he was working, and in the Working Men’s Conservative Club later on, but they weren’t friends, they were just people he acknowledged out of habit. That was as far as friendship needed to go, in his opinion. His wife had been his friend, the only one he ever needed, and when I was young I was a friend in the sense of being his chosen companion.

  His neighbour, it seemed, had come in to my father’s room to introduce himself, eager to initiate a friendship. My father was actually irritated – ‘Fellow comes in here, says his name, and gives me this magazine about birds, says I might like to look at it, says it might h
elp me identify birds on my table.’ He snorted with derision at this point and repeated ‘Identify the birds!’ I asked what was wrong with that. ‘What’s wrong?’ he roared. ‘What’s wrong? What’s right, more like. I should hope I haven’t got to ninety-four year old without needing a book to show me the difference between a bluetit and a robin. Identify the birds!’ I didn’t dare ask what he had said next to his unfortunate would-be friend, but he told me anyway. ‘I sent him packing. “Thank you very much,” I said, “but I can identify birds, no bother.” And then, if he didn’t go and leave his bloomin’ magazine behind. Well, I’m not taking it back. It’s his fault. He needn’t think I’ll come running. The servants can take it back.’

  The staff, also treated to this impossibly perverse reaction, laughed. Like Marion, they found most outrageous things my father said funny. He was a character, awful but original. I went to see the man next door myself, taking the offending magazine, not to apologise for my father’s behaviour – that would have been too ridiculous – but to chat and thank him. He was a kind, gentle man, a Bible open on his knee and a prayer book on the table beside him. Whereas my father had from the beginning kept his door wide open, this man kept his closed. I was told he rarely had visitors – since he had had no children and there were no surviving family members – and even more rarely went out. But he was apparently quite content and the staff were fond of him even though he lacked the amusement value of my father. There were two other men in the home then (against sixteen women) but they, alas, came into the cruel category of slaverers and no attempt was made to make friends of them either by my father or his neighbour. Apparently they had tried to talk to my father at meals but he had told them straight out that he couldn’t understand a word they said – ‘Sorry, lads, but you’ve lost me.’ When they persisted in trying to communicate he had pretended he was deaf, pointing to his ears and shaking his head in a parody of deafness. So the staff quickly gave up hopes of introducing him to the hitherto unsampled delights of male bonding. He had made it horribly obvious he had no interest in any other patient.