Читать книгу Sun On The Water - The Brilliant Life And Tragic Death Of My Daughter Kirsty Maccoll - Jean MacColl - Страница 17

1967–1968

‘I watch you lie asleep, watch you breathing.’

KIRSTY MACCOLL, ‘TOMORROW NEVER COMES’, 1994

I was no longer able to work full time, but I did take on occasional day or weekend courses. The National Association for Gifted Children wrote to me one day, asking if I might like to take some movement classes for them at weekends. I jumped at the chance and took Kirsty with me.

She seemed to enjoy these trips and participated in the various activities laid on. I hadn’t worked with children before and found them very receptive, enjoying the sessions immensely. There was one youngster who was musically gifted, but was unable to use his imagination in anything other than his music. So in my movement class he floundered, and the other children seemed surprised at his inability to enjoy creating a different world. It later transpired that all his time was spent playing the piano: when required to move along the floor like some strange creature, he said his mother wouldn’t like him to get dirty. He found it very difficult to mix. Kirsty, on the other hand, had no problems mixing and took a serious interest in everything. She also expected very high standards from those in charge.

One weekend course was held at the Yehudi Menuhin School and I was taking another movement class. I had asked the children to move like various creepy crawlies, either real or imaginary, and we would turn it all into a dance. I gave encouragement where necessary to make those imaginative ‘creatures’ come alive. I noticed that Kirsty was standing upright, though everyone else was down on the floor, crawling along. As the session ended, I went up to her and asked what kind of insect or small animal she was. She replied, ‘An elephant’! On the way back I apologised for not giving her more help or attention, but said I felt the other children needed me more. She said she understood that, but I shouldn’t have ignored her completely; she had a point. With only a little help from me, at the next session, the ‘elephant’ turned into an exotic insect along with the others.

It was partly as a result of these classes and of my hearing of the difficulties that some parents had, that I decided to have an independent IQ test for Kirsty. A psychologist was recommended to me and we drove to Essex for our appointment. Kirsty had not had a good night and because of heavy traffic through London we arrived late for the test. The psychologist explained that her fatigue had affected the result and that the assessment represented only a minimal level of her actual reasoning ability. For all that, seven-year-old Kirsty achieved the very high IQ score of 168, which represented a mental age of 11 years and 8 months. Tests vary, of course, but the psychologist said she was the brightest child he had ever tested.

‘This much is certain,’ he said. ‘Kirsty is a charming personality of extremely high intelligence who is unlikely to have all her academic and intellectual needs met by the provision currently made in the ordinary school.’ He also raised an issue that I had been concerned about myself. ‘She needs,’ he continued, ‘especially in view of her extended absence in the past, opportunities to grow in the social and emotional senses as well.’

It was this comment that made me finally decide not to take advantage of a scholarship to Millfield School. Like most parents, I wanted the best for my child and would have felt very sad if she had gone away to board at such an early age. I felt she was too young to leave home and I also heard that the young boarders were expected to care for a variety of animals such as rabbits and gerbils. I was beginning to associate animals with the asthmatic attacks, although Kirsty’s doctors had not yet reached that conclusion since, confusingly, she sometimes had attacks when she was nowhere near an animal.

I felt reassured and justified that what I had been doing over the previous few years to help Kirsty through her illness had been the right approach. Academic studies were not important for the moment: so long as she was interested in something and was free to work at her own pace, she seemed not to suffer any stress. I also wanted to share as much time with her as possible, since her illness had so often robbed her of the friendship and companionship of her contemporaries. I also made a decision that I would never foist my views on her. I would always say what I thought but at the same time try to leave things open for her to form an opinion for herself.

Ewan was politically biased and had strong ideas about music. (According to him, there were only three types of music: folk, classical, and jazz. He hated ‘pop’.) Although I shared some of his views, I would often argue about others. I also felt strongly that children should be able to make up their own minds; after all, with time, they would do so anyway. That was not to say that Kirsty did not share my values, or was unaware of them, and I think she demonstrated this clearly later in life. What was important, though, was that she had come to them through making her own decisions.

In other ways, though, Kirsty was a happy and normal child, taking great pleasure, for example, in a Barbie doll that Joan sent one day from New York, where she and her partner Gerry were then working. The large parcel contained the doll, some Barbie clothes and a Barbie bedroom suite. Kirsty loved changing Barbie’s clothes – though this was the only doll she was ever interested in. Years later, when her own children were little, she used the same doll for the fairy at the top of her Christmas tree. I still put Barbie up there on my own tree now.

Hamish often lost out on my attention, of course, although I tried to do my best for him. One could simply never be sure that Kirsty would have a good day. I had naturally pinned my hopes on the forecast that Kirsty’s asthma would clear up by the time she was seven, but it would be another three years before it at last began to ease. Hamish and I had our own happy times, though. He had made a number of friends who often came over and they were always very nice to Kirsty. It wasn’t long before he had his own special girlfriend. She was very interested in tennis and Hamish, who had never shown any interest in the sport, went with her to Wimbledon to watch the tournament.

Ewan continued to come for lunch every Sunday, for the most part remaining a weekly visitor. Our lifestyles had become very different. While he was happy enough to talk about his own work, he found it difficult to relate to his children on their everyday level and didn’t always understand the seriousness of Kirsty’s condition. He once even suggested – meaning it quite kindly, I’m sure – that I should take the children on a camping holiday. True, he and I had taken Hamish camping as a youngster and enjoyed it – but now? A one-parent family with an asthmatic child? Even with Hamish’s help, I would still have to drive, supervise the erection of the tent, cook the meals and clear up, always keeping an eye on Kirsty’s health. It didn’t sound much of a holiday to me.

I went with Kirsty on a long weekend visit to Clymping, near Bognor Regis. We stayed at a hotel near the beach which had been recommended to me. It was a listed building with beautiful old furniture and was also a popular haunt of minor celebrities. Kirsty had fish for dinner, but when it arrived, whole, with its beady eye and its tail still attached, she looked at it with some disgust. I had always had problems trying to get her to eat, so in some desperation I said to her, ‘That looks lovely.’

‘It might be all right,’ she replied, ‘but I think it’s an exaggeration to call it lovely.’

Later that evening she struck up an unlikely friendship with the minor film star (and former beauty queen) Anne Heywood, who was staying there with her husband and little boy. One evening she swept into the dining room in a white fur coat with her poodle on a lead.

‘Hello, Kirsty,’ she said.

‘Hello, Anne,’ Kirsty replied. ‘Look, your dog’s got a flea on its back.’

After a few weeks without a crisis, I began to feel reasonably optimistic about Kirsty’s health, so I decided to throw a party with my friends from the theatre – the first such party since my break-up with Ewan. We all looked forward to it. Meanwhile Kirsty was full of excitement about a forthcoming school fundraising day. There were to be stalls, races for children and adults and, best of all, horse rides! The horses duly arrived and were led into an adjoining field, where the children spent a lot of time stroking and feeding them.

When Kirsty returned from school that Friday afternoon she was unwell. She had a bad night, no appetite and couldn’t keep fluids down. I tried tapping her back gently to ease her breathing, but soon realised that she was too poorly even for that. On the Saturday I rang the doctor’s surgery and was put through to his locum who told me to dress her in two coats and send her out to play. I looked at the small, hunched figure in the bed who couldn’t even sit up properly. Somehow we got through another day – with a little help from Horatio.

By Sunday evening I knew I couldn’t afford to wait much longer for medical help. I rang back again and my new doctor answered. He was unwilling to come out, but when he heard the details he reluctantly agreed to visit and gave Kirsty an injection.

‘Everything will be all right now,’ he assured me. ‘She’ll get a good night’s sleep.’

‘But if she isn’t any better?’, I asked.

‘It will be all right… well, if it isn’t, ring me at the surgery at 9am.’

His visit seemed to have been terribly quick – or was that my imagination? Was I being overly anxious? Everything told me that they were all wrong. And she wasn’t better. Everything was not all right. In fact, she was much worse. The vomiting went on and she began hallucinating. On Monday morning I rang the doctor at his surgery on the stroke of 9am.

‘She’ll have to go to hospital,’ he now said. ‘She’ll be dehydrated by now. Come and get a note to take with you. I’ll call the ambulance.’

‘But I’m alone with her, and she’s hallucinating!’ I managed to reply. ‘I can’t possibly leave her alone in this condition. She’s only a little girl.’

‘I’m afraid you’ll have to,’ came the answer.

In desperation I rang my neighbour, Margaret Spurring, who, thank God, happened to be in. She was also a registered nurse and she rushed to the surgery where she was told, ‘You can’t disturb the doctor, he has a patient.’

‘If you won’t go in now and get the note,’ she replied, ‘I’ll walk right in myself.’ The shocked receptionist got the note and brought it back.

Over two hours later we were still waiting for the ambulance. I was now at my wits’ end and, clutching at straws, so I rang my previous doctor, my friend Arron Rapoport. He was in his surgery some five miles away.

He gave me the number of the ambulance and I called to hear the driver saying, ‘We’re looking for a very sick child, it’s an emergency call and we can’t find the bloody house! We’ve been looking for two hours.’ I cut in and gave him my correct address. The ambulance arrived at the same time as Arron, who had left his surgery to take Kirsty to hospital himself.

At the hospital, the woman doctor blamed the ambulance men for the delay as they arrived and we were rushed through into a small consulting room. I was left alone with Kirsty for a moment but when she started twitching I shouted for the doctor, who rushed back. I was asked to wait outside while they set up a drip and did whatever else they had to do. I noticed a couple standing some distance away. The woman came up to me and told me how marvellous the hospital was and how sure she was that my child would be all right. I turned away from her – she didn’t know, and I was not ready for platitudes. It was churlish of me: she had meant her words kindly and I soon regretted my behaviour.

Memory plays strange tricks: my conversation with this stranger is the last thing I remember of that awful Monday morning. But Kirsty recovered, of course, and soon returned home. When Mr Norman, our marvellous consultant, heard of our terrible experience, he made special arrangements for me to prevent anything like it happening again. I was given his private number at the clinic and he promised to dispatch an ambulance from the hospital immediately; Kirsty would always be admitted to Great Ormond Street Hospital without delay.

Of course, the planned party had to be cancelled, but when one of the guests, Harry H Corbett – the younger star of Steptoe & Son – heard that Kirsty was home, he said he would like to see her. He arrived carrying a small umbrella as a present and told her that he had been ‘fighting off Cowboys and Indians’ as he drove down our unadopted and very bumpy Beech Way. This endeared him to Kirsty.

My neighbour, Dr Richard Spurring, whose wife Margaret had been so helpful, now became our new GP. His family had moved into Beech Way a short time after us and they had three children, who all played with Kirsty. On one occasion she was invited to sleep over at their house. In the morning she was suffering from such severe asthma that I had to take her bicycle over so she could sit on it while I wheeled her back. As we came down our driveway it started to rain and Kirsty said, ‘Mummy, you have no idea what it is like – I wish I was dead.’

I had never before heard her express herself so negatively and I felt the tears welling in my eyes. I promised her that these attacks, painful as they were, would clear up. Dr Spurring recommended a inhaler to be used hourly. At night, when we were both very tired, I could not remember whether she had used it or not and would try and keep her mind occupied with stories or chatting until another hour was up.

Things slowly seemed to improve. Kirsty attended the school for physically handicapped children fairly regularly. Joan asked me to do some choreographic work in the theatre and suggested that we should both work with children in connection with her Fun Palace – an educational project that was to be built on derelict land in Eltham (though this never materialised). I also gave some movement classes at Hamish’s request for him and a few of his friends who were interested and for this we hired a local hall. Hamish was a good mover and enjoyed dancing. Lisa Ullman, Laban’s colleague and godmother with Joan to both my children, also visited.

On one of my birthdays, Hamish gave me a sketchbook and some drawing pencils; Kirsty bought me a pair of Wellington boots and a trowel! I even found time to make a small pond in the garden, line it and put some brickwork around it. It was on the slope so it took me some time to work out the mechanics of the problem – at least until I borrowed a spirit level.

Visiting a neighbour one day in 1968, Kirsty suddenly arrived to call me back. ‘A lady is on the telephone,’ she said, ‘asking for Mrs MacColl.’ The ‘lady’ had telephoned from the hospital: it was urgent. I flew down the drive to my house and picked up the phone.

‘Are you Mrs MacColl? Do you have a son called Hamish? Can you get to the hospital right away?’ She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.

‘Is he badly, badly hurt?’

‘No, come quickly.’

I braced myself, and dared to ask, ‘Is he dead?’

All she would say was, ‘Just come immediately.’

I called to Kirsty and told her to bring something to keep her occupied in the car: Hamish had met with a ‘slight accident’, I told her, and we were going to Croydon Hospital. (This was where the little boy had died, two years before, when Kirsty was there.) I kept my voice as calm and quiet as possible. She asked no questions but came straight away with a few books. Arriving at the hospital, I briefly left Kirsty in the car to find Hamish.

I was taken to a small room adjoining the ward. A matron came in and told me as gently as possible that Hamish had met with a serious accident. Part of his right hand had been blown away. But how has this happened? They needed to know when he had his last meal before they could operate. I tried to think, but… I don’t know: this is so important, but I just can’t help them… He was out at lunchtime with his friends, I told them – and then I was suddenly aware of him through the open door. Maybe they can’t give him morphine until they know? Yes, I could see him, but I was not allowed to stay… I looked at my handsome son, and once again experienced that same terrible feeling of helplessness and utter desolation. First Kirsty and now Hamish… Why?

The matron eased me back to the small room. Someone brought a cup of tea. I could use the phone to ring my husband, she said. I remembered from somewhere that Ewan had a singing engagement in the East Midlands; I left a message for him. I also remembered that I was expecting guests for dinner, and that the oven was still on. Mechanically I made the calls. I rang Denise – she said she’d go and turn it off – and asked Judy to pick Kirsty up and take her home – poor Kirsty! I had almost forgotten her waiting outside in the car. I went out to her and tried to tell her, in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, that it was a little bit worse than we had thought but that Hamish would still be okay and that I had to stay on and wait for the doctor, so Judy would be coming to collect her.

Kirsty was very sensible and calm, asking a few questions – but I think she knew there was more to it than I had let on. I kissed her and returned to the small room. Denise had by now arrived with, among other things, a small half-bottle and so we sat together through the night, drinking occasional cups of tea laced with brandy. It had no effect: I was still very cold and shaking inside. I looked at my hands. Funny, they didn’t shake at all. In the morning I was told that there was nothing to be done but wait and in the meantime I should try and get some rest.

At last, the surgeon told me they were transferring Hamish to a training hospital in East London. He needed treatment in a compression chamber, which I understood would force his blood to circulate and so prevent gangrene. The journey was a nightmare. Attached to various tubes, Hamish lay propped up on a special bed in the ambulance for the long trip, but we travelled at a snail’s pace, lights flashing. Every bump in the road, every stop for the lights, brought a moan. On arrival, I found the compression chamber quite frightening – a vast cylindrical tank in which the patient was incarcerated for long periods on end. Hamish never complained.

After a period of treatment, he was moved to East Grinstead where he underwent further surgery. The specialist had every hope of saving the thumb, even though the fingers had gone, explaining to me that the thumb’s role was more important than that of the fingers. I drove down to see him in intensive care, and it was only then that I at last found out how the accident had happened.

Hamish and a group of his friends had been conducting an experiment, mixing weedkiller and sugar and pushing it into an iron pipe. It had failed to go off and so he went to have another look at it as it blew up. There was some good news: the thumb had been saved. I later heard that Joan had, with characteristic selflessness (and impracticality), offered to donate her own hand as a replacement.

Three weeks later, Joan and her partner Gerry Raffles helped us celebrate Hamish’s 18th birthday with him. As part of his convalescence, Hamish and his friend Rob went with their two girlfriends on a camping trip to Italy. On their return, Joan suggested that Hamish should have a vocational guidance test: it might help to clarify his ideas on a future career. Among other things, I learnt from these tests that Hamish was also a very gifted individual.

Meanwhile Dr Spurring made an appointment for Kirsty to attend the Wellcome Clinic, hoping that we might discover what was causing her allergic reactions. It turned out that my suspicions were correct, and that the worst culprit was the dander from cats, followed by dogs and other furry animals, including horses. Before she could begin a year’s course of weekly injections, we had reluctantly to say goodbye to Solomon II and our labrador Anya and find them good homes.

Kirsty’s interest in pets then stretched to rather more exotic beasts. A chameleon, a gecko and an American grass snake all joined our family. We also provided a home to some stick insects (who persisted in leaving their habitat and climbing the curtains). ‘Fred’ the gecko lived with us for many years, eventually dying of old age, I think, despite my best ministrations. The main problem with the chameleon and snake was their food: the former was choosy about his maggots, and the latter lived on a weekly diet of one suitably-sized goldfish. It was Ewan’s job to procure these from a pet shop near where he lived. After several visits, over a period of weeks, the lady assistant cheerfully asked after the ‘lovely collection of fish’ we must by now be enjoying. When Ewan explained why we were buying so many fish, she refused to sell him any more.

One day I looked out of my kitchen window and saw the local children gathered round an old tea chest in the garden, peering over its top with nervous excitement. Curious, I went out to join them to see a snake hissing and threshing about at the bottom of the tea chest. There was that age-old fear and fascination of snakes. They asked me to get Kirsty, which I did. She looked at the snake’s markings carefully and then explained that it was an adder and would only attack if threatened. You could tell it was an adder, she said, by the patterns on its back, and with that she tipped the chest over and the snake escaped into our garden. Although we lived surrounded by woodland and often went into the woods, this was the first time that the children had seen an adder; it was also the first time that Kirsty had seen one. She must have read up on snakes because she explained things in great detail.

When Kirsty was about ten years old, she read an article in the local paper about a nearby resident who bred butterflies. This interested her so much that she wrote to him, and this resulted in a invitation to visit him. He had turned one room into a butterfly house – full of light, warm and sunny – where we saw the most exotic and beautiful butterflies, of all colours and all shapes and sizes. This kind man was so impressed by Kirsty’s interest that he invited her back, on one occasion giving her a chrysalis to take home and look after. It sat on a cloth, with a small flowerpot over it, and we set it down on the carpet near the radiator for warmth. And waited…

Late one night, I saw the flowerpot move very slightly. Mesmerised, I watched and saw it move again. Rather squeamishly, I took the flowerpot partly off and saw that the chrysalis had started to change its form and I called Kirsty, who was thrilled, especially when it eventually turned into a beautiful butterfly. By this time, Beech Way was becoming something of a menagerie. I had to deal with a break-out by American grass snakes from their vivarium (I found them later in Hamish’s bedroom in a ringbound folder on his desk), relocate stick insects from the top of my curtains to the jam jars where they belonged, supervise the chameleon’s exclusive diet of live maggots and tend to the eggs in the laundry room sink, which rather successfully turned into baby trout needing running water. (Apparently we did better than the science lab at school who had supplied the eggs in the first place.) I was more at home with the tropical fish that Hamish introduced us to.

Meanwhile we had all decided that Kirsty might be well enough to attend a normal primary school for three days a week, remaining at her special school for the other two days. She therefore arrived in the summer term, just in time to take the end-of-term exams – and still managed to come near the top. Her first-term report was glowing and I congratulated her on the science comment, which simply said ‘Good’.

She replied in a rather dismissive tone, ‘You know, and I know, it doesn’t mean a thing.’ On one of her days back at the special school the nurse rang me to express concern that Kirsty had lost weight. The general consensus seemed to be, however, that she was happy at the new school and provision was made for her to attend the primary school full time.

Arrangements were also made at this time for Hamish to take his A Levels at Croydon College, but in the event this did not work out very well since they could not help anyone, they claimed, who could not keep up with note-taking, which Hamish of course struggled with after his accident. So in the end he took up Lisa Ullman’s offer to spend some time at her Art of Movement Studio before finally deciding to train as a doctor of Chinese medicine.

One evening towards the end of 1968, I got a call from my mother Norrie, by then in her late seventies. She seemed a little distressed and tearfully begged me to come over to her flat in Croydon. This behaviour was so unlike her that I left the children and drove over immediately. When I arrived, she was in bed and appeared to be asleep. I managed to wake her. It seems she had had ‘a turn’ and, realising the door was on the chain, she had crawled over to it and struggled for a long time to remove it before phoning me. I called her doctor – our friend Arron Rapoport – and he told me she had had a stroke, though the prognosis did not seem to be too serious.

I returned to Beech Way to collect Kirsty and a suitcase of clothes and we both moved into my mother’s flat while Hamish had a friend to keep him company at home. After a few days the invalid was sitting up and taking a keen interest in everything.

Meanwhile, Kirsty attended school daily and was appearing in a school musical. My brother Pip came down from Nettleham in Lincolnshire, staying overnight. He and Arron sat chatting to each other one evening over a glass of whisky. Arron said to my mother that it was better if she didn’t have any spirits just yet. She laughed and told me she considered it most unfair – after all, it was her whisky they were drinking!

The nurse visited every day and we all expected her to make a full recovery. We began to make plans as to who would do what for Christmas. Her pastry was always better than mine, so the mince pies were her responsibility. She looked pleased and said she was going to hold a party. In great spirits at overcoming this final ‘hiccup’ of the year, Kirsty and I went out to buy a pair of school shoes. On our return, a little later than expected owing to the Christmas crowds, however, my mother had lapsed into a coma. It was obvious she had been up and pottering. From then on it was only a question of time. She woke up once and smiled when I told her I loved her. ‘You love me too, don’t you?’ I said. She nodded.

I was alone with her when she died. There was nothing more I could do, so after Arron had certified her death, I slipped away to the school to see the last ten minutes of the Christmas musical, having promised Kirsty I would try to put in an appearance. I didn’t tell her immediately that her granny had died: I felt she had achieved so much, being able to attend regularly enough to be part of a school production and I didn’t want to spoil the occasion. My mother’s funeral took place immediately before Christmas. It was a very sad season for me, of course. She had become a great support to us and things were improving as Kirsty was able to lead a more normal life.