When Evelina leaves the room, I ask about Dr Pearson.
“He came to see you this morning?”
My father scowls. He’s trying to trace the line of the catheter beneath his trousers. He hates it, I can tell. I ask about the doctor again.
“No.”
“No, what?”
“I didn’t see him. I couldn’t. I’m never here.”
This is truer than he knows. What’s left of his brain is imploding. When Evelina comes back with the tea, he’s mumbling incoherently about weekend arrangements, and getting everyone together, and the iniquity of me going to the races. None of it makes any sense and in the end Evelina agrees that bed is probably the only solution.
At this point, I’m more than happy to slip away but guilt keeps me at the bedside. Evelina sends for another nurse. Together, they take off my father’s socks and trousers. His feet are nearly black, the nails yellow. His legs are shrunken, the muscles flaccid. Naked below the waist, he insists he wants his non-existent trousers off. Deeply shocked, I can only stare. Next comes his shirt. Hidden from his room mate by a folding screen, he submits to a toothclean. Evelina holds the bowl beneath his chin. His eyes closed, he opens his mouth. The stand-off lasts several seconds before Evelina steers his hand towards the toothbrush. When he finally picks it up, it’s the wrong way round, and before anyone can correct him, he puts it in his mouth. Pathos, real pathos, is the clack-clack of plastic against my dad’s front teeth.
Transferring him to bed, even after all the weight loss he’s suffered, is hugely complicated. The use of a hand-pumped hoist involves a lengthy battle with a cat’s cradle of webbing. One strap over his left shoulder, another over his right, a towel between his thighs to protect his privates, then another two straps looping up around his thighs. By the time he’s in mid-air, dangling from the hoist, his eyes are closed and a kind of peace has returned to his big, slack, troubled face. He hangs there for a moment or two, a sack of a man, emptied by age, shrivelled by infirmity, a soul in torment.
The two women wrestle him onto the bed. He wears nothing below the waist and a brief glimpse of his pink buttocks reminds me suddenly of my oldest son when he was a baby. This, though, is a very different kind of vulnerability, totally without dignity and seemingly without hope. This is truly terrible. Why do we let him suffer so? How long will this go on?
That night, Lin, mum and me have supper together in my mother’s flat. On the menu is her favourite meal: hard-boiled eggs, new potatoes and salad. She manages perhaps half a dozen mouthfuls before carefully putting the plate to one side. She’ll eat the rest tomorrow and the next day. For now, she just wants company and conversation. After the nine’o’clock television news, we put her to bed. Lin helps her undress. She still can’t get over the bedroom, so frilly, so feminine. Every time she opens her eyes, she’s seeing it for the first time. The blessings of dementia are rare enough but this is definitely one of them.
Twenty Six
The following morning, with some misgivings, I at last wheel mum around to see dad. I’ve warned her that he’s finding it hard to cope but it’s been more than two weeks since they’ve seen each other and the simple truth is that she misses him. Not since the war have they spent so long apart.
At the corner of the street, I brace myself for another volley of anguished complaints but when we finally get mum into the nursing home, dad is almost peaceable. Adjustments have been made to his medication and a strange chemical calm seems to have descended upon him.
I push mum into dad’s room. Len, his first room mate has sadly died, and Clem, the new occupant of the bed by the window, is sitting outside in the sunshine. This means that mum and dad will be able to spend a bit of time together alone.
Dad stares across at her. I wonder whether he’s been rehearsing this moment.
“Now then, how’s the leg?”
There’s a definite edge of reproof to this question. It’s as though she’s been doing something foolish, the wayward child. I try and manoeuvre mum’s wheelchair beside the blue recliner but neither of them can reach forward. Even their hands can’t manage the journey and as a result the reunion is awkward and graceless, as I suppose it must be. Fran suggests that my mother transfers to the sofa beside dad. Then she can hold his hand. Mum looks alarmed for a moment - the physical contact? the emotional implications? - then follows Fran’s instructions. Stand. Hold onto Fran. One step forward, twist a little bit sideways, then sink thankfully down.
Dad watches, uncomprehending.
“Have you been to work?” he inquires.
Fran calls me away and we talk for a while in the hall outside. She’s more than happy to look after mum as well. She’ll get a bit of lunch and tea whenever she wants it, and a hand to the loo. As far as picking her up afterwards is concerned, I can leave it as late as I like.
Back in dad’s room, more grateful than words can express, I find my father and mother locked in their usual silence, she looking one way, he the other. When I return in mid-afternoon, neither appear to have moved.
Two days later, I fix for mum to go round for another visit. Because it’s Saturday, I plan to get them both fish and chips for tea and then wheel her back home afterwards. This tiny echo of a previous life together might, fingers crossed, bridge the ever-widening gap between them. When I take her in, dad seems calm enough and the prospect of fish and chips even brings a smile to his face, but when I come back later with the food, he’s red-faced and raging. Where the hell do I think I’ve been?
I unwrap the haddock and do my best to explain but in this mood there’s no stopping him. Mum crouches on the sofa beside the blue recliner, sending me a silent SOS. She wants to go home. Her leg hurts. She’s had enough. I promise to get her back the moment she’s finished with the meal and then settle in a chair beside the bed to watch them eat together. Even my father finds it difficult to lay the law down with a mouthful of battered haddock but the sight of his body slumped almost horizontal in the chair is infinitely depressing. Between us, Fran and I haul him upright a couple of times but the moment she goes he just slides down again, his fingers probing blindly for shreds of fish, his head at a funny angle wolfishly eyeing mum’s left-overs. The meal passes, like the old days, in almost total silence. I prattle on about the hour I’ve just spent on the beach but my parents just stare into the middle distance, chewing, totally oblivious.
No longer hungry, my mother gathers her uneaten, cooling chips into a neat pile at the edge of her plate. My father, remembering dimly how to be stern, tells her to save them for her supper. When I wheel in the chair to take her home, he gives us both another volley. Where the hell does she think she’s going? Why all the hurry? All the fuss? I tell him that Lin and I have been invited to a barbeque. We’re going out. To enjoy ourselves.
My father stares at me, baleful.
“Don’t do anything so damn silly” he snarls.
The memory of this visit stays with my mother for days. Her mind is beyond retaining specific details but when she says that seeing dad is more exhausting than breaking her leg, I’m inclined to believe her. Between us, somewhat guiltily, we agree that she deserves a spot of compassionate leave. She doesn’t venture back to the home until late the following week.
We can hear dad from half way down the street. He’s had enough. No one cares. No one answers him properly. He might as well be dead. One of the nurses helps me bump mum up the steps and into the home. An old lady stands trembling in the hall. She’s nursing a cup of coffee. Catching sight of my mother, her face comes alive.
“Peg! We have missed you!”
My mother, who hasn’t a clue who this lady might be, looks delighted.
“This feels like home.” she says, beaming.
My father is still bellowing. We approach with caution. Pushing mum into the room, we find him sunk in the armchair. His arms are flailing.
“I don’t want any dinner” he yells.
“This isn’t dinner. This is mum.”
“Mum. Your wife.”
“I want to go to the toilet. I don’t want dinner.”
“Mum” I insist, “And me.”
Eventually, he calms down. He says he’s been crawling around on his hands and knees in his pyjamas. No one comes. No one cares. This is the plainest nonsense. He’s sitting there, dressed.
“How did you get up?” I ask him.
“Yes,” he says. “Half past eleven. Half past eleven. Open that door.”
His hands are out again, plucking at thin air. He seems to be pointing at one of the wardrobes. I open it. His trousers are hanging from the rail.
“They’re bringing 400 frogs in”, Clem mumbles from the other bed, “400 of them.”
This is surreal. I turn round. Fran has manoeuvered my mother onto the sofa. She’s physically shrinking, cowed by my father’s craziness, by his anger, by his rage. Is this the man she married? Is this what awaits her if, God forbid - she ever has to join him in a nursing home?
Fran brings the commode while I mutter about coming back later. My excuse, as ever, is work. My father was never happier than when I was busy working and it’s ironic that this obsession of his that I should stay out of mischief has now become the ditch that I dig between us.
He stares up at me, wild-eyed.
“Where are you going?”
“To work, dad.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re going for a drink, I know you are. You’ll damn well stay here, with me.”
Fran and I exchange looks and mercifully the screen closes around him. I tip-toe from the room. Good luck, mum.
I return to collect him an hour and a half later. An ominous silence has descended on the staff in the hall. Nearby, I can hear him raving. It seems that his toe has got caught in the mechanism of the reclining chair. When I go into his room, there’s a spot of two of blood on the carpet. My poor mother is doing her best to comfort him but her ministrations meet with a torrent of abuse. For the past hour, he’s been telling her to get the money. The money appears to be on top of the wardrobe. There is no money, of course, and in any case my mother can’t walk but my father isn’t interested in excuses. The plain fact is that my mother won’t do what she’s told. Like everyone else in the nursing home, she’s part of a world that’s turned against him. No one does his bidding any more. No one bloody cares.
“I want to walk out of here and throw myself under a bus.” he shouts.
We’re all looking down at the blood beginning to seep through the bandage around his big toe.
“What kind of bus?” Fran says thoughtfully.
Later that evening, battle-worn, Lin and I have a consolatory drink with mum to sluice away the memories of the day but try as we might, the conversation keeps drifting back to dad. How the straightest line connects his past to his present. How his dementia isn’t an accident, the consequence of a blown fuse in his brain, but simply the destination to which he was always bound.
Since I can remember, he’s been over-bearing, self-obsessed, and perpetually right. He was the man who demanded an audience but always refused to listen to anyone else. He was the man who lived his entire life in the sure expectation that disaster was more or less inevitable. As it turns out, he was right, but the difference now is that no one listens to him any more. That, alas, has driven him potty. And the evidence is with us daily.
Twenty Seven
Four days later my mother phones from across the road to say she wants to see him again. Eleven’o clock sounds good to her and I go over half an hour early to rustle up some breakfast. When I return from the kitchen with the toast, she’s in tears in the armchair. She thinks she’s useless. She says she can barely get to the loo.
I bend over her, trying to fathom this totally uncharacteristic outburst. My mum’s always been made of iron. She never lets her real feelings show. Now, though, it’s different, and as I slowly coax out the truth it dawns on me that it’s not her physical state that distresses her, but the thought of having to pay another visit to the nursing home. She can’t do it, can’t make it. Even the prospect of half an hour in his company - the insults, the abuse, the madness - have reduced her to tears.
When I tell her there’s no need to go round there, she says she feels guiltier than guilty. I promise her it won’t be a problem.
“He’s well looked after, isn’t he?”
“Of course he is.”
“He’ll be alright, won’t he? Without me there?”
“No question about it.”
“They are kind, aren’t they?”
“Very kind.”
I push the spare armchair towards the window and settle her in a pool of sunshine near the open door. At lunchtime, a light salad and another cup of tea, but definitely no need to go round to the home. She peers up at me, her eyes still shiny with tears
“You are kind” she says, “You’re a good kind boy.”
Twenty Eight
In the early evening, after a swim, Lin and I walk home, barely outpacing a thick grey ledge of cloud, delivering tomorrow’s weather. The temperature, already, is perceptibly chill. I find a sweater and set off for the nursing home.
Evelina lets me in. Something’s happened. I can tell at once. It turns out to be dad’s room mate, Clem. He’s had a massive stroke. Evidently, my father’s been wonderful, standing - or perhaps sitting - guard, telling people to hush, to take care, to lower their voices because Clem isn’t very well.
All this warming concern vanishes the moment I turn up. Within minutes, he’s crying again. It’s the old plaint: he can’t cope, no one cares. I try and calm him but what works best is mention of Clem. Dad’s room mate lies in bed, hugging his pillow, his breathing very shallow. Sight of his motionless body quietens my father but soon he’s off again. How nobody understands what it’s like inside his head, how nobody takes any notice of him any more. He keeps reaching across to grasp at the bedclothes. He wants to rearrange the fluffy underblanket, to find the label on the sheet, to assure himself that everything’s in its rightful place. Soon he has to go to bed. There’s no time to prepare properly, no time to think. This, of course, is crazy. The one thing we have lots of is time. But he won’t be comforted.
Suddenly he points at the wall.
“In three weeks time all of that will be gone” he says tearfully, “There’ll just be a pair of pyjamas and a dressing gown. Everything gone. All of it. Gone.”
“Gone where?”
“What?” He stares at me blankly, yellow teeth bared, misery incarnate. “What did you say?”
Next he starts to fret again about the money. Where is it all? What’s happened to it? I try to calm him with the old message. No need to get upset. Everything’s under control. Then I mention my youngest son, Jack. He’s just passed his “A” levels. He’s off to Manchester University. This news at last stirs a positive reaction.
“I suppose I’ll have to give him a £100 or something,” my father grunts, “We’ll see.”
Evelina comes in to check on Clem. While I’m asking how he is, dad butts in.
“He’s had a stroke” he says, “Just after mine.”
“You had one this morning, too?”
“Yes.”
My father’s uncertain grasp on his own medical history weakens still further with the announcement that Clem’s stroke is in fact his own, and the scene gallops beyond the surreal into a strange metaphysical twilight, my father determined to convince us that he’ll soon be dead.
“I don’t want to be,” he keeps saying, “But I know it’s going to happen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I do, I do.” He begins to howl again. “I must have been a buggar” he says suddenly, “All this.” He flaps his hand vaguely at the opposite wall. A picture frame containing two cut-outs of Princess Di hangs crookedly over what must - once - have been a fireplace.
“Why?” I inquire.
“Having to be here. Like this.”
“It can’t be easy.”
“It isn’t.” he shouts, “It’s terrible. It’s shocking. No one knows. Only me.”
I ask him to be quiet on Clem’s account and he obeys at once, like the child he’s become.
“So do you think you deserve to be punished?”
“No.” Emphatic again, his voice rising. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“But it feels like punishment?”
“Yes.” he peers round at me, grasping for my hand. “You’re a sweet boy, coming like this. No one else comes.”
“Mum comes. Lin comes.”
“Do they?”
“Yes.”
“But what about.....?” He flails around, hunting for a name. “....the lady with the sheets?”
Sheets? I prepare to beat a retreat. He reaches for my hand again, agreeing that I should be on my way.
“Are you going out tonight?”
“No, not tonight.”
“Thank God.”
He collapses back in the chair, his eyes closed. I begin to creep away.
“I’ll be dead before you come back.” He whispers. “Look after Kay for me.” Kay is Dad’s sister. She lives in Devon.
Twenty Nine
As August draws to a close, I continue to pay daily visits to the nursing home. My father has been so disturbed that Evelina felt obliged to call the doctor in. He listened to her description of the way it’s been, then doubled his ration of tranquillisers. Dad’s only been on the extra dosage for a day and so far it seems to have had little effect. He lies in bed in the early evening while poor Clem - paralysed and speechless - watches television.
Estuary Page 10
