Читать книгу Blow by Blow: The Story of Isabella Blow - Tom Sykes - Страница 13

Just under a year after their marriage, on 4 February 1975, Evelyn went into the private block of the North Staffordshire hospital at Stoke-on-Trent hospital to have an operation to remove a varicose vein and some lumps on his left leg. On 5 February 1975, he had the operation. A day later, he had swollen up like a balloon – gas gangrene had broken out in the hospital and three other patients in the private wing died. Fighting for his life, Evelyn was prescribed morphine, hydrocortisone, diuretics and antibiotics to reduce the swelling.

Five days later, to try to stop the spreading gangrene, the surgeon amputated his leg below the knee.

Issie firmly blamed Rona for the disaster claiming that Rona pushed him to have the operation because she thought his varicose veins looked unsightly on the beach.

It was unfair of Issie to blame Rona for the operation, for her father medically required it. But, by 24 March 1975, death was a real possibility, and Evelyn signed a new will in the North Staffordshire hospital, witnessed by the orthopaedic surgeon and a nurse.

In fact, Evelyn survived, but the change to the will was permanent. The dramatic secret of what he had written would not be revealed until his death in 1993.

On 9 April 1975, Evelyn had a second operation amputating his leg above his knee.

There was some discussion of suing the hospital for negligence. But Evelyn was having none of it. The hospital had far more money than he did to fight in court. Besides, the surgeon was a friend of his; they shot together in Staffordshire.

Indeed, the shoots after Evelyn lost his leg were one of Issie’s happier memories. With his artificial leg, he needed Isabella to hold him in case he fell over while shooting a ‘left and a right’ bird. For Isabella, it was a special time. She had her beloved father to herself.

With his leg stub rubbing against his artificial leg, Evelyn was to be in constant pain for the rest of his life. The pain and handicap were borne by him bravely and with dignity and there was rarely any complaint or fuss. Emotionally he may have been a weak man, but physically he was brave. Isabella inherited her father’s physical courage.

What really irked Isabella was the fact that Rona had not allowed her to see her father when he was in hospital. Thirteen years later in 1988, when Isabella took me for the first time to meet her father and stepmother for dinner at their home in Kensington Square, the subject came up. Rona explained to me that, in her judgement, Isabella was too young to deal with the sight of Evelyn in hospital with gangrene. I disagreed. Isabella was over 15 years old at the time and, I felt sure, old enough to have witnessed the admittedly distressing scene. Issie and I had both been brought up in the countryside where blood, gore and death are very much part of life. Rona had grown up in the city and town, and had the sensibilities of a city dweller.

But Evelyn had lost his leg. In less than a year, Rona’s fairy-tale marriage to a rich, older, titled man had turned into a nightmare – she now had six children to look after and a husband with one leg in a wheelchair. Despite his efforts to carry on as if nothing had happened, Evelyn was now severely handicapped and heavily dependent on Rona, and she was to care for him for the next 18 years until his death.