‘Not at all, Miss Matthews,’ Mr Gresham said brightly and smiled at her even more brightly, but she wasn’t looking at him and he sighed softly and returned to his own notes. ‘Sister Barber, you were just saying?’
Betty Barber launched herself into a prolonged whimper about the sort of locker accommodation being provided for the nursing staff at the Pattison Way hostel on the Larcombe Estate on the other side of the motorway, and Joe Labosky detached his attention from the meeting gratefully, and carefully, in case she should notice, looked sideways down the table.
There she sat, her dark head, with the thick glossy hair pinned into an untidy bun on the top of it, bent as far as it could be over the agenda – which she could have read a dozen times by now – and her eyes very deliberately lowered. And he felt his chest tighten a little as he stared at her.
She wasn’t looking at all well, he decided. And a word his mother had been used to use came into his head: peaky. That was it, she looked peaky. Pale, except under her eyes where there were smudges of violet shadow, and her mouth drooped so that she seemed about to weep. But then she nearly always looked like that, as though she were on the edge of giving way to some vast grief that was pushing at her from within. She had looked like that as long as he had known her and he remembered, as he almost always did whenever he saw her, the first time they had met.
She had been standing defensively beside her mother, staring at him with her eyes wide and suspicious, and that downturned sad mouth, and as he had walked into her living room she had said abruptly, ‘There is no need for you to be here. I told Dr Weightman that, but he thought he knew better. Well, no one knows my mother better than I do; and she doesn’t need you.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he had said equably, standing there in the doorway of the cluttered room, very aware of Dr Weightman behind him, moving from one foot to the other in an agony of annoyance and embarrassment. ‘But if you attack me so ferociously before I even say good morning, you make me wonder if perhaps you need me.’
She had made an odd little sound between her teeth at that, the sort of irritable exclamation that mothers make when their children have said something absurd and he had smiled and held out his hand. ‘I’m Joe Labosky. I haven’t come to make a nuisance of myself. I came because Dr Weightman thought I might be useful to you.’
‘I don’t need anything,’ she had said, trying to ignore the outstretched hand, but then as her intrinsic good manners overcame her sulkiness had held out her own and they had shaken in a perfunctory way. He could still remember how her hand had felt; hot and dry and a little tremulous.
‘I see a great many families facing dilemmas like yours, Miss Brady,’ and he had quirked his head, needing very much to make her smile back at him, to disarm her hostility in any way he could.
But that hadn’t worked. ‘My name is Annie Brady Matthews,’ she had said loudly, and her hand had come down protectively on the shoulder of the woman in the chair. ‘My mother is named Brady. Miss Jennifer Brady.’ And he heard the challenge in her voice and though he was fascinated to know why she had made such an issue over their names and their marital status he didn’t rise to it.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Matthews. Now, is it possible to discuss this situation and see what I can do about it?’
Dr Weightman had bounced forwards at that. ‘It was my suggestion you should do a domiciliary for Mrs – er – Miss Brady, Dr Labosky,’ he said, his rather high-pitched voice filling the room with fussiness. ‘I told Miss Matthews that I could not go on being responsible for either her mother’s care or her own unless she agreed, so that was why I called you, though I have to say Miss Matthews has not been at all cooperative, not at all. To tell the truth, you’ve made matters often worse than they need be, Miss Matthews, and I’m not afraid to say so, if others are –’
‘I’d rather you told me about it all,’ Joe had said, and he had walked into the room and hooked a chair forward with one foot and sat down in front of the still silent woman in the big armchair. ‘Or will you tell me, Miss Brady?’
‘Miss Brady is in no state to –’ Dr Weightman had started and then the woman in the armchair had stirred and lifted her head, which hitherto had been slumped forwards on her chest, and looked at Joe, and said in a thick hoarse voice, ‘Tell you what?’
He had felt rather than seen Annie’s amazement as he carefully fixed his gaze on the older woman and smiled at her. She had looked back at him with dull glazed eyes the colour of pebbles at the bottom of a peaty stream, brown with flecks of amber in them, and her puffy cheeks had moved a little as she worked her mouth, as though she were about to speak again. She was heavy with the collected weight of years spent sitting doing nothing; she exuded torpor, Joe had thought, and felt irritation stir in him. Why do they let it happen to these people, he had thought then. Why? They need to be prodded, encouraged, made to try to go on living as much life as they have, not left to rot in chairs like this, and he had looked up at Annie beside the armchair, the words of criticism already forming on his lips. But they died there when he saw her face; she was staring down at her mother with an expression that was so full of pain and distress, and yet of anger and frustration, that he was once again fascinated. Heaven knew he saw enough cases like this; as a consultant in geriatric psychiatry he went to case after case of Alzheimer’s disease and he thought he knew every nuance of family reaction to it. But this household was different.
It wasn’t just the look of the room in which they were, with its great clutter of furniture and ornaments and gewgaws of all kinds, ranging from the very good to the frankly appalling, nor was it the look of the patient herself, with her great mane of dark red hair cascading in curls down her shoulders and her wrapper of clearly very expensive feather-trimmed blue silk. It was the girl, with her square-shouldered straightbacked stance and her sharp-edged profile. She had a strong nose with a small curve on the bridge, and those drooping lips were wonderfully shaped. She looks a little, just a little, like my Barbara, he had thought and then, furious that such an idea could escape from the depths of his mind, had slammed it back and bolted the door on it.
‘How do you feel, Miss Brady?’ he had said then, gently, looking again at the woman in the chair. ‘Tell me that.’ But the flash of responsiveness had gone. She was sitting staring into the middle distance, her lips still working, but there was no glint of awareness in her expression at all.
So, he had had no choice but to talk to the girl, and he had straightened his back and without turning his head had said kindly but with authority, ‘Dr Weightman, there is no need to keep you here. I shall come back to your surgery, if I may, to deal with the paperwork, but now just leave me here to talk to Miss Matthews –’ and though the little GP had tried to protest, had clearly wanted to be part of the importance of the Consultation With The Specialist, Joe had won and he had gone away and the two of them had sat there listening as his car went chugging noisily down the street outside, and the woman in the chair sat and moved her lips soundlessly, talking to herself inside her head but patently unaware of them.
‘I’d rather have tea,’ Joe had said then, and grinned at Annie. ‘This is the point at which most people offer me coffee, but I’d rather have tea. Earl Grey if you have it and I suspect you do.’ He had looked very deliberately round the room at the ormolu clock and the lustre vases with the crystal drops over the mantel with its old-fashioned open fire, at the red plush covered furniture and the peach mirrors, and then grinned. ‘And herb teas too, I’ll bet.’
She had reddened suddenly and said brusquely, ‘This isn’t me. It’s Jen. She never threw – throws anything away.’ She looked round too, and then turned back to stare at him. ‘And what does it have to do with you anyway? The way this room looks is none of your business –’
‘Oh, but it is.’ He had leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs. ‘I’m a psychiatrist and that means I’m trained to look at everything about my patients. Environment, clothes –’
&nbs
p; ‘We are not your patients. So this room is none of your concern.’
‘But you are and it is. Like it or not, I am here because your GP has asked me to make a domiciliary visit and assess your needs as a carer, and your mother’s as a sufferer from Alzheimer’s disease.’
She had frowned sharply then and said, ‘Alzheimer’s – what are you talking about?’
‘Your mother’s illness,’ he had said and then added quickly as he looked at her blank face, ‘You have been told, haven’t you? what your mother’s illness is?’
‘Dr Weightman didn’t say she was ill. He said it was just one of those things – that she’s just getting on a bit and having a few problems, that’s all –’
‘How old is your mother, Miss Matthews?’
‘Jen? She’s –’ She frowned. ‘Why do you want to know? I’m not cooperating with all this nonsense, you know. Jen’s all right. She’s just – just –’ And her hand closed on the heavy shoulder beside her and she had bent her head to look at the silent figure sitting there.
‘She isn’t old at all, is she? Looking at her – and at you – I’d guess fifty or so. Am I right?’
‘Fifty-two,’ she said grudgingly after a long silence.
‘Precisely. Of course she isn’t getting on and of course this isn’t just one of those things. It’s an illness called Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a tragedy, and I’m very sad for her – and for you – but it won’t be made less tragic by telling you lies about it. Weightman should have explained –’ He had stopped, angered at the way the need to protect a colleague came welling up in him, and then had gone on impulsively, ‘The man’s a fool. Has he made you think that she’s going mad or something of the sort? She isn’t. She’s suffering from premature senility. Very premature. There’s no stigma attached to it, it’s not something you will inherit and there’s not a lot we can do about the disease, though we can help her be more comfortable. And we can help you cope and stop you suffering more than you need. At least Weightman brought me here. Give him credit for that.’
She had stared at him with her face blank, and after a long moment had said, ‘I’ll get you some tea. And there is some Earl Grey –’ And he had grinned and said easily, ‘Thank you. No milk or sugar –’ and watched her go to the kitchen and took a deep breath of relief. Now he could begin to get somewhere.
And that, he remembered now, watching her covertly down the table in the big boardroom, had been the breaking of the barriers. Once she had been told what she needed to know about her mother, he had been able to find out from her what he needed to know to help them both, and as he had picked it out, with painstaking effort, over the next three years, so his anger for her had grown.
She has been abused by life, he had told himself passionately once, sitting beside her in his consulting room at Greenhill, once she had agreed to come there to see him, wickedly abused. But she won’t admit that; not she. As far as she is concerned, this is how it has to be. That damned fatalism of hers; will she ever be rid of it, ever take her life in her own hands and start to live it? She’s almost – and now he squinted down the table at her, and worked it out: just over six months since her mother’s death on Easter Monday, and then the three years before that; she’s almost thirty-three. No age, but it’s high time, for all that, that she started to be what she was meant to be. Someone who can laugh and be witty company all the time and not just in tantalising flashes, someone who will take control of her own reins – and he picked up his pencil and began to doodle with some ferocity on his agenda sheet.
And it’s high time, he added severely to himself, that I stopped allowing myself to be so obsessed with a patient. High time I put her to one side of my mind where all the rest of my work lives. And high time I sorted out my own needs too. It’s been six years since Barbara died; but as ever that emergent thought was immediately pushed back into the deepest part of his mind. He couldn’t cope with it any other way.
Jennifer, he said to himself as Betty Barber still droned on. That pathetic stupid fool of a woman, why had she done it? Bad enough she had sacrificed her own life on the altar of her bloody obsession, but to give up her child’s as well? That had not been steadfastness and passion, as no doubt she thought it was; that had been selfish and stupid and downright wicked, and he lifted his brows as he thought that. Psychiatrists don’t believe in the existence of good and evil, remember? he told himself. But it made no difference. Jennifer Brady had been wicked in her dealings with her daughter, and the sooner Annie admitted that truth the better chance she would have of coming out of this dreadful miasma of depression in which she had lived for so many years. For all her life, in fact.
He had often tried to visualise Jennifer Brady as she must have been before her memory and her speech and her initiative had crumbled away with the death of her brain and nerve cells; that incredible red hair and the strong Irish profile with its crisp-cut jawline and its imperious nose, so like Annie’s own, and the brown and amber eyes; she must have been a beauty. It’s no wonder the man had wanted her, no wonder he had tried to hang on to her for so long. It would have been interesting to know Colin Matthews, interesting to see what it was in him that could inspire the sort of devotion that Jennifer had given him. Had he been good looking? Witty? Sexually attractive? There was no way of knowing, for Annie flatly refused to talk of him and had destroyed all his photographs after he had died, long before Joe had known her. But he must have had some very special quality when a girl who looked like Jennifer Brady must have done willingly immured herself for the whole of her life in a little suburban house for love of him and never ever spoke to another man again. Nor apparently had she ever made any attempt to get Matthews away from his wife and his other children. She had, it seemed, been content to be his mistress, a silent, adoring, uncomplaining, secret mistress, who had wrapped her entire existence around his occasional visits, and had made her daughter, Colin’s daughter, treat him in the same uncritical worshipful way.
No wonder Annie was so bitter and angry now, Joe thought, and again lifted his head to look at her. Her father had died before she had found the anger in her to fight back, to tell him what she thought of him and his fatherhood, which added up to no more than his name on her birth certificate and an occasional toy brought when he thought of it. Never at Christmas or on birthdays when it would have been blessedly normal and something to show off to the other children at school, but only at odd times that suited him, when the thing had to be hidden away, kept secret for fear someone would realise, Jennifer would tell the solemn little girl, for fear someone would know their business. Poor sad little Annie, and looking now at adult Annie, with her downcast eyes and her drooping mouth and her sulky expression Joe felt tears rise in him, tears of regret for her, and loathing for Colin; her long dead father, and fury for Jennifer’s stupidity and, he could not deny, for himself, because he found the girl so interesting.
‘Oh, damn it all to hell and back,’ he muttered under his breath and pressed so hard on his doodling pencil that he broke the point.
‘Yes, Dr Labosky?’ Gresham’s voice was raised and there was a note in it that made it clear that he had repeated his words more than once already, and Joe lifted his head, startled, to find them all looking at him, even Annie.
‘I’m sorry?’ he said and blinked at Gresham. ‘I was thinking – what did you say?’
‘I wondered if you had any ideas about what we might do in this situation. Perhaps if I recap? Yes – it might help us all –’ And he beamed round the table at them and ruffled his papers. ‘Just to set out the problems, then. And after that we can go round everyone and see what answers you all have to this particular dilemma.’
And he began to talk, and this time Joe listened.
2
April 1949
Maddie crying. Maddie with furious tears streaking her face because she couldn’t make him see how important it all was, and Jay smiling at her, his face creased and amused, and she for one moment hating him f
or that. It would be so much easier if she could hate him all the time, a little part of her mind had thought. So much easier to hurt a person you hate than to make a person you love do what you want him to do.
A person you love; and now Maddie sniffed and rubbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, wanting to show him the sort of face she should, the sort of face the magazines said a girl should show; smile gently, never be sulky, don’t nag or cajole or flirt obviously, men hate that, the magazines said. Just be sweet and funny and above all vivacious. And, Maddie thought now, it isn’t vivacious to cry. It makes men despise you.
But the magazines must have got it wrong, because he was leaning forwards and saying, ‘Now don’t you go spoiling your pretty little face that way! I had no notion it mattered so much.’
And now her tears stopped without any effort at all, and she could look up at him and smile brilliantly. ‘Matter? Of course it matters! I want to do it more than I want to do anything in this whole world!’
‘But why? It’s only a show, after all!’
‘Only a show? How can you say that, when it’s the greatest thing that’s come to London for, oh, years! And you an American and this a show all the way from Broadway – well, I just don’t understand you!’
Does he believe me? Does he think it’s just the show? Please let him think that, please, because once he does and we go, then I can make it all happen my way –
‘Well, I guess I’m not that crazy about Broadway shows, not having the chance to see many.’
‘Nor do I – and that’s why I’m so crazy about them. Is it such a very long way from Boston to New York? I mean, couldn’t you have gone to shows there if you wanted to?’
Maddie Page 2