Читать книгу Conspiracy of Secrets - Bobbie Neate - Страница 13

The morning after my mother suffered her stroke, a cheerful district nurse came through the blue gate. She had organised a rapid-response team of nurses to call at various periods in the day and night, and she went off to find Louis to tell him the good news. I worried about the series of nurses finding their way around the rambling house in the dark. So, despite leaving my two younger children to fend for themselves, I declared I would be staying another night and busied myself with jobs around the house as I waited for each new set of nurses. I allowed myself to lie down and wait for the team that would arrive between two or three in the morning. I listened for the familiar bell above the blue gate to warn me they were here. When it jangled I looked down from the landing window as the team hesitated in the yard, I flung open the narrow window with its blue shutters but they failed to see me as they bent their heads low to avoid the wisteria branches. I had never leaned out of that window before. Mum or Stepfather had always used that upstairs position to wave goodbye to each other if either was leaving the house for an hour or two. Stepfather did not like his wife to go out without him. She went only when she was buying essentials for our schooling. Standing at my mother’s back door welcoming the nurses was even stranger. I had replaced my mother. I prayed it might be only days before she could reclaim her role.

Relief spread through my tense body as I welcomed the two smiling nurses, one male and one female. I admired their cheeriness at such an hour as they chortled their way up the stairs. It did not seem kind to break their relaxed mood but I felt it important to warn them that Stepfather could be difficult.

‘Oh, don’t worry. We’re used to that. Nothing fazes us. You wouldn’t believe what we have to face,’ the fresh-faced young man replied, catching the eye of his colleague.

As I pointed out the door to my mother’s room, he sent me to find a suitable basin, which could be filled with hot water. When I returned they were still standing outside the bedroom door.

Stepfather’s domineering voice came from within. ‘I expected a nurse, not some namby-pamby who calls himself a man. Get out and leave us alone.’

I looked at them nervously. The youth was the first to recover his composure. ‘I’m the only qualified nurse. My assistant has not even done the basic training.’

‘I’m not having a man in this room. Just keep out.’

I poked my head into the doorway to start to negotiate but Louis pointed his thick fingers at me. ‘You can go away.’

The male nurse was not going to give up so easily. He kept up a continual chatter through the doorway, eventually negotiating that his unqualified assistant and I should be allowed in the bedroom with the door being left sufficiently wide so that we could hear his directions. The water I had collected was now cold, so I went to fetch more.

There was more trouble on the following morning and I hung my head in shame when the cheery district nurse was sent packing. She had dared to suggest that Mr Stanley had to accept the nurses who were on duty, whichever their gender. Things were looking grim.

The consultant in geriatrics arrived at the house the following afternoon. His prognosis: my mother’s swallow reflex was weak and in three days’ time she would be dead. She would drown in her own mouth fluids. Stepfather reacted calmly.

I was in utter shock. She appeared to be making progress but I had to accept the expert’s verdict. I thought of my first night in the house. How had she managed to swallow the painkillers with our drops of water? As the consultant had ordered her to receive nil by mouth, I worried whether our helping her swallow paracetamol had done her damage.

The district nurse took me and my siblings aside. She said the words I hoped I would never hear: ‘If your mother was to start to fail would you want her to be kept alive?’ The words were hard but the decision was easy. We told the nurse about my mother’s living will.

I wanted to help Louis as much as I could. I knew it would be hard but my mother would have wanted me to be by his side. I rushed home to my own family and grabbed some essentials, sorted out my children’s arrangements and was back on the road within minutes. As I drove back to Cambridge, I thought soberly of what a tough few days it would be.

Two days later I had another shock. On the stairs I met Pauline, one of the nurses, and asked if I could help her, but she backed down the steps away from me holding a tray covered by a teacloth.

‘Can we go somewhere quiet?’ Puzzled, I took her into my old playroom. ‘I found this under the bed,’ she said, and she lifted the teacloth and showed me a menacing pistol.

‘Oh, it’s the gun!’ I responded, trying not to sound as shocked as I felt.

‘Did you know about it?’ she asked. ‘I was going to show it to my managers.’

‘Oh, Mr Stanley always told us he had an air pistol. He told me he kept it beside his bed in case of uninvited guests. It’s nothing to worry about,’ I said, hoping I sounded convincingly light-hearted. I looked at the gun again. It didn’t look like a harmless air pistol to me.

My mother’s fighting spirit proved the consultant’s prognosis inaccurate and she began to make some sort of recovery. But my problems were only just beginning.

For, although the district nurse had persuaded Stepfather to order a lifting hoist and a hospital-style bed, within an hour he had changed his mind and cancelled the orders. The ordering of the bed and hoist in the next few weeks was to cause the nursing staff numerous problems, because Stepfather would not stick to any fixed arrangement. He was back to his old forceful self.

I thought about him and I realised I hardly knew the man. But over the years I had watched my mother cajole him to behave, so maybe this was the best way to deal with him.

The NHS struggled to organise more suitable nursing care and the rapid-response team continued to call, but things were not going well. By Week Two, Stepfather was not listening to family or medics and just repeated, ‘Thank you, but no, thank you’ when offers of help were made.

Unfortunately, my mother’s stroke had occurred at the busiest time of the year for the NHS. They could not supply a steady rota of nurses and, as the shock subsided, Stepfather began to throw his weight around. Worryingly, he was not listening to medical advice, nor was he listening to us. He was making decisions on his own. When our offers of help were made he just repeated, ‘Thank you, but no, thank you.’

First, he announced that he was going to employ a private nursing agency but at that time we, as our mother’s children, still felt involved. The nursing agency’s manager approached my siblings and me, and asked for our views. It was agreed that the ideal arrangement for my mother was to supply one trusted capable nurse so that a friendly bond could be made between patient and carer. Little did I know that this would be the last time we would be asked our opinions.

However, the time of the year was working against us again and the agency could not find any permanent live-in nurse who could start before Christmas. So, strictly as a temporary measure, they supplied nurses in an eight-hour shift rotation throughout the day and night. But, as the festival approached, gaps began to appear in the nurses’ rota, so my siblings and I agreed among ourselves to cover for the times when there was no care. As we were not medically trained, it soon became obvious that more consistent help was needed.

Stepfather was moody and he had taken one of the burgundy tub chairs that had sat in the hall for years and placed it on my mother’s better side. It was cumbersome and its placement made it difficult to get close to my mother. I also noticed there were grumblings from the visiting nurses about having to cook proper meals for Stepfather, who was becoming ever more demanding. So I suggested to Stepfather we find a live-in carer who could cook and would supplement the visiting temporary nurses. We children would fund her. Stepfather happily agreed to my plan. So, even though he had rebuffed me, at times like this I felt the team spirit was not entirely lost.

After ringing round a number of the caring agencies I struck lucky: an experienced Scottish lady had become unexpectedly free and was happy to stay over Christmas and New Year. ‘Your mother will love her,’ the agency owner enthusiastically briefed me. ‘She can travel down tomorrow.’ With a burst of energy, I went to prepare Janet’s old bedroom. For forty years the room had not lost its original nomenclature. Janet had been our mother’s help all those years ago. As I tidied, I looked at the décor. My mother had converted it into a fun room her grandchildren adored. It was up two short flights of steps and it was like visiting a turret. A fireplace took up much of the room. Blue wallpaper covered the walls and on the ceiling she had painted gilded and bronze flying swallows, which circled ever closer to the central light rose. Over the mantel hung a hand-painted mirror. Around the looking-glass pond my own grandmother had painted bulrushes and swans hiding among the meadowsweet. I could still hear my mother’s voice explaining the artwork to my children as they snuggled under the turquoise duvet covers. As I smoothed the cover over the freshly made bed I hoped the carer would love this pretty little room.

From the bus station, I collected our carer, Bonnie, who had travelled down from Edinburgh on the overnight bus. As she dropped her duffle bag into the boot and climbed into my car, I warmed to this spirited Scot. She enquired sensitively after my mother’s health and it became obvious as we drove that she had a keen sense of humour. I was sure Mum would grow to love her. Her broad Highland accent reminded me of Louis’s past boasts about living as a resident in Edinburgh’s Caledonian Hotel. He knew the North Berwick coast well and talked knowledgably about the seabirds on the Bass Rock.

Christmas had always been the highlight of my mother’s year. She made every effort to make the house and especially the table look gloriously overburdened with tinsel and crackers. Christmas 1962 was highly memorable as it was the year BRM won the Constructors’ World Championship. That year the last race of the season was to be held in South Africa on the day after Boxing Day. There was no live TV coverage, just radio updates and phone calls. My mother decided to keep the tension at bay by pretending it was a ‘second’ Boxing Day. So the dining table groaned with food and crackers as we sat waiting for news. Luck was with us that day and Graham Hill cruised home in first place.

But Christmas was very different this year. Mum lay paralysed on her bed, so, instead of much to-ing and fro-ing through the blue gate by family laden with presents, it was nurses arriving and departing. Mum had already decorated the dining room and had prepared the decorations for the table before she was struck down. So I cooked a Christmas lunch and Stepfather came down from my mother’s bedside and joined us for the meal.

In many ways it was an awesome Christmas as Mum was making such good progress: her speech was good, her face had no signs of paralysis and her personality was unchanged. I enjoyed helping Bonnie look after her. That evening she smiled at me as I helped turn her from one side to another. She was almost like a Christmas rose blossoming. ‘That’s a good smile, Mum.’

‘Well, you gave me such a good smile I had to smile back.’

I felt I was getting my mother back. As the New Year arrived, she was in less pain. She could sit propped up and her brain was active. Her left side was paralysed but the doctor was hopeful she would recover most of her movements with manipulation from a physiotherapist. The system of three nurses visiting for eight hours each was clearly not ideal, because they were not consistent, but, since the holiday period was over, I was hopeful Stepfather could find a quality live-in nurse who could be ably assisted by Bonnie, now everybody’s darling. Stepfather liked her and she had developed a fine strategy with him, for she knew he liked to talk about Scotland, especially the seaside town of St Andrews. Louis knew everything there was to know about this town.

However, Louis had been in foul moods with the visiting nurses and kept changing arrangements. Most worryingly he had changed his mind about a permanent live-in nurse. He had rung the nursing agency and made the excuse that there was not enough sleeping space, even though there was plenty of room. Instead, Louis wanted to continue the emergency arrangement of three eight-hour-shift nurses. I was upset. The various visiting nurses were pleasant enough, but they were not the same as having one friendly face for my mother. Also, the nursing organisation warned us that the cost difference was massive. Instead of one salary, Stepfather would be paying nurses by the hour on the ‘emergency rate’. The managers of the agency had never been under such pressure before and collapsed into agreeing to the bizarre agreement.

My siblings had all been working hard in their own way to help the situation and we all started to resume normal life, but we began to wonder why my mother had not been taken to hospital when she was first struck down. The hospital was less than five minutes away, so what had happened that night?

I began to ring the house both morning and evening to relieve Mum of her boredom. Stepfather gruffly answered the phone, just as he had always done. It was clear the nurses had been instructed not to touch the receiver. For the first few months after my mother’s stroke we had a courteous conversation before Stepfather passed the phone over to her. But then the excuses started. The reasons why I could not speak to my mother increased in variety and frequency: she was eating, having the bed changed, being dressed, the physiotherapist was visiting, she was sleeping. He asked me quite charmingly to ring back, but when I did the phone was engaged or went through to the answering machine. Siblings and cousins started to report similar problems. Just as with me, Louis promised he would ring them back but he never did. What did my mother think? Had he told her that family called? Or was she left to imagine we had all abandoned her?

Each month the difficulties increased. I was slow to realise it was a strategy. He asked me to ring at a certain time but when I did he refused to answer the phone. The following day he would innocently claim that Mum had needed attention when I called.

Every time I redialled the Trumpington telephone number, I was reminded of days when I was much younger. The phone had been a vital weapon in Stepfather’s armoury. The timing of his calls had been the bullet. He loved to make surprise night-time calls when more sensible people were already asleep. For his most seriously manipulative calls he employed his lowest tone of voice.

I decided that, if I could not speak to my mother on the phone, I must visit more often. Each time I made sure I took him a small gift and looked after his needs as well as my mother’s. All went well to begin with and there were times when Louis was pleasant. When he was in a good frame of mind I often stayed with them both until the night nurse arrived at ten o’clock and saw Mum settled down for the night.

But then things became more worrying. I could not get physically close to Mum. At first I just thought it was the awkward arrangement of the bed and his chair, but as things deteriorated I wondered if it was all part of his plan.

I had no option but to share Mum’s ‘good’ side with Louis. As she could not turn her head, sitting on the other side of her bed was not possible. Even giving her a kiss was awkward from this angle. Stepfather’s tub chair was always in the way, so holding hands was impossible, and across the void holding any sensible conversation was hard. He sat there like a large pudding, blocking my way. I had two options: to stand at the bottom of the bed and lean over so she could hear me or to sit on a stool at the foot of her bed. Leaning for long periods soon became very uncomfortable and when I was on the stool my mother had difficulty seeing me. Concentration was difficult, as both of us had to work too hard to hear each other with the TV in the background.

Louis dominated the situation. He sat in the tub chair, his long legs stretched out, obstructing me from pushing my stool any closer. My protestations were unheard. He just smiled or glowered according to his mood as if I had said nothing. He adamantly refused to move his seat. Nor did he ever leave the round chair. When I prepared to leave he would ask, ‘When can you come next? It’s so nice to have you here.’

But when I rang the next day to tell him I could come the following Sunday, he said it was not convenient and that I would have to book further ahead. A month later, weekends were not convenient and he said I would have to visit on a weekday. It began to be very stressful. It was a long drive and the traffic queues were appalling. To my work colleagues I was becoming unreliable and forgetful. I began to feel helpless and sleep eluded me.

Then at other times Louis rang me up to chat. He often sounded like a broken man. My emotions were in tatters. I didn’t know how I felt about this man. At times I wondered why he wanted to talk to me so intimately. Others were beginning to suggest he did not have our mother’s best interests at heart, but I continued to try to support him. I felt sorry for him. I did not realise I was caught in a trap.

I was upset that my mother did not have one regular nurse, as we had originally planned, but I was pleased that Mum had begun to build up some sort of relationship with her three eight-hourly nurses. Of course, she loved the bright character of Bonnie, who was allowed by Stepfather to help the nurses in the mornings, but he did not permit her to sit with Mum and chat.

Five months later, Mum was displaying her determination to rise to the challenge with her physiotherapist. She was struggling to walk again. As Mum could now take teetering steps around her bed with her frame, she would constantly ask when she was going downstairs. However, the more she recovered the more she began to feel trapped in her bedroom. A plan was devised so she could move downstairs. Here she would have the best room in the house, the one my mother had lent to Stepfather’s mother and ‘Auntie’ Mamie, both of whom are by this time, long dead. Once she was downstairs Mum would be able to be move from room to room and go into her beloved garden.

Meanwhile, Stepfather’s behaviour was more outlandish.