The whistling has stopped. Furtively, I watch Grandma from behind my book. She has swung her legs down and is inching herself towards the edge of the sofa. My instinct is to jump up and help her. My experience tells me not to. She knows, at this moment, what she wants to do and it is better to let her get on with it. She is almost on her feet, finally makes it. She stoops, lifts up the shawl that has covered her and begins to fold it. She loves folding. Mum gives her the washing to fold and she does it beautifully. She folds and folds and when the shawl is in the smallest possible square she gives it a triumphant pat. Then she drops it. She says she must be off, the men will be in for their tea etc. She says her mother will be looking for her. I know not to remind her that her mother died thirty years ago. She wouldn’t believe me anyway, she’d ask me if I had anything else ridiculous to say while my mouth was warm.
Now she is walking round the room, lifting objects up and examining them. She is searching for a cigarette or as a poor substitute a mint imperial. She will find the mints in due course. She is near now, slowly opening the desk drawer, peering, fingering, closing it. Next stop and she’s there. Ah. Beside the flower jug, in the wooden box Dad brought back from Egypt. She prises open the lid and sees the mints. She pauses, looks round. I read my book studiously. Gently she takes the packet of mints out, the cellophane making a crinkling noise which makes her freeze for a minute, and slips it into her cardigan pocket. She continues round the room and ends up where she started. She asks me if I am coming for a wee walk. I say no, and that Bridget will be here soon. Grandma asks where the devil Bridget is anyway.
I haven’t seen that Bridget for ages, the hussy.
She spent the night with you, Grandma.
She did not, the nonsense.
She lives in the same house as you.
Listen to the child.
Bridget sees you every day.
I haven’t seen that Bridget for ages, the hussy.
She shuffles off, finds the door, goes through it. There is a long silence. She will be looking in every room, maybe even transferring the mints to the toe of a wellington. There is no need to do anything. Mum comes through, asks where she is. I say wandering. Mum sits down and sighs. I ask what’s going on, what’s the sighing for and the funny atmosphere. She tells me about Grandma falling in the night and how she thinks we should be getting prepared. For what? For Grandma going into a Home, Mum says. I laugh. It’s such a waste of energy. About twice a year we go through this one and nothing ever happens. Nor should it. I agree with Bridget. For heaven’s sake, Grandma’s happy in her own way. All this ‘strain’ Mum and Dad go on about is absurd. What strain? I can’t see it. It isn’t as if she’s living with us. If there’s any talk of strain, it should be from Bridget and there never is. Mum is a kind person but she seems to have a block on this one. Grandma isn’t an intolerable burden as far as I can see, yet Mum acts as if she is. It disgusts me.
I suppose it shows. Mum colours. She says she hopes I know how fond she is of Grandma. I say I do (do I?). But we have to think of the future and of Bridget’s future. Bridget’s future? Yes. If Grandma does not go into a Home while she is reasonably fit, then she won’t get into one when she becomes impossible to look after. What is this, I ask, what are we talking about? Schools? Mum says it is like schools. You have to get your name down. Oh, excuse me, I say. What is this, are we talking about private schools, private homes? I’m sorry but I thought we were proud of having no truck with private education, private health. This, Mum says, is different. The State provision for old people like Grandma is limited. This is getting too deep for me, I say sarcastically, and I don’t think I want to talk about it. Who does, Mum asks, and looks miserable.
Grandma comes in, her skirt pulled up round her waist after a clearly successful visit to the loo. She looks lost, she is lost. Mum springs up, adjusts Grandma’s skirt, suggests a nice cup of tea. She leads her into the kitchen. Nobody could accuse Mum of not being tender with Grandma, of not treating her, at all times, with immense consideration, of not showing she cares. But watch Bridget with Grandma and any fool can see the difference. Bridget is rude, she is cheeky, she tells Grandma off sharply on occasion, but she is natural. Mum is not. Her attentions stink of effort. There is nothing effortless about her solicitude. She is thinking that Grandma would enjoy it, appreciate it, love it if she did x, y and z. So she does it. And Grandma does enjoy, appreciate and love this evidence of being valued. But she also distrusts it. It is too obvious. Instinctively, Grandma can see through it. No matter if Mum bakes her favourite gingerbread, trails to a special shop for the only kind of mint imperial she likes, knits a cardigan in violent violet, Grandma’s favourite colour – it is Bridget, who never bakes, tries not to shop and can’t knit, it is Bridget who gets the smiles.
She gets them now. In she comes, still in her uniform, all bustle and noise. Grandma’s face is radiant. She says hello, pet, are they good to you, and Bridget says no, they damn well aren’t . . . Mum seems to shrink, become invisible. Bridget is having hysterics over something Grandma said to her last night. She wrinkles her nose and throws her head back and laughs as she tries to repeat this gem. Mum smiles politely, unable to see the joke. I’m not sure I can see what’s so funny myself but it doesn’t really matter. It’s nice to think Bridget and Grandma can have such good times. I wish we did, I mean I wish we had that particular kind of good time, that we had the fun Bridget sometimes has. Bridget often says she’d rather have an evening with her mother, in the right mood, mind you, than with anyone else in the world. Bridget is still telling us what terrific form Grandma was in, as though she was a race-horse. This makes me smile, thinking of Grandma as a horse but a big lumbering cart-horse not a race-horse and that makes Bridget think I am appreciating the jokes she’s relating, the ones Grandma made. Mum still isn’t smiling. Bridget finishes the saga and asks Mum doesn’t she find it funny. Mum shrugs. Bridget flicks ash and tosses her head and says well she thought it hilarious.
Then they start talking in the way I hate. Bridget, lighting her fag, asks how ‘she’ has been and Mum says ‘fine’, ‘she’ has been quite cheerful this afternoon and so they go on, talking about Grandma as though she was an inanimate object. It is outrageous. I have told them both. But still they do it, every day that Bridget collects Grandma. They do not attempt to include Grandma in their chat, they talk about her and over her, discussing what she’s eaten and how many times she’s been to the loo as though she was a baby. It is Bridget who insists Grandma is perfectly normal and yet there she is, treating her like an idiot. Who can blame Grandma for getting querulous and in the end shouting for a ciggie? In the end, Bridget gets up and I fetch Grandma’s coat and off they go. Mum wishes Bridget good luck tonight but Bridget says she has swopped with Mildred: she needs tonight off. Mum looks at her significantly. Bridget smiles and says no, nothing special, only going out for a meal. With? Mum asks. Yes, Bridget says. Then have a good time, Mum says with, it seems to me, great emphasis.
Bridget’s personal life is shrouded in mystery. I don’t understand it. Surely, in this day and age, no one thinks it necessary to conceal the fact that Bridget is having an affair? It’s crazy. Yet, when I ask, I get shrugs and am told it is Bridget’s business, ask Bridget. But I somehow can’t. It embarrasses me, it never comes up naturally. How can I be so crass as to ask my aunt if she has a boyfriend? Why doesn’t it just emerge? If she has, why is he not part of our life? Why have I never seen her with a man or found a man in her flat? Men are sometimes referred to, it is true, but always to do with work. None of them are ever produced. Bridget is forty-three and unmarried. She always seems perfectly cheerful about this, never bewailing her lot or going misty-eyed over children. Though I do remember that when Paula had Alistair, and Bridget was holding him and I said to her, being young and thoughtless, would she like her own baby, Bridget did look odd before saying she had plenty of babies at work and all the cuddles she could use.
What I wonder is:
Did Bridget not get married because of Grandma?
*
This time, it’s me that hears the telephone. Ringing and ringing, nobody moving. I get up, go downstairs. Mum’s door is closed. Mum likes it open, Dad likes it closed. I lift the receiver. A lot of panting. Oops, I think, about to replace it, obscene phone call, but then Mildred speaks, the awful Mildred. She says Grandma is on the floor and she can’t lift her and the doctor said to her only last week, Miss Bronson he said, Miss Bronson you must not lift so much as an iron with your back – I break in. I’ll be right there, I say. She tells me no, to wake my Dad, a young girl like me should not be out in the street in the dead of night or anything might happen and she will not accept the responsibility which she has been too quick to do all her life, accept responsibility that is, such as for Grandma, which many people would not, and she is going to have to re-think that, indeed she is – What an old bat she is. I scribble a note, just in case Mum hears me go out and take Grandma’s key from the hook behind the door. It has a heavy brass tag on it saying 10 Downing St. In the days when Grandma was at liberty in charge of a handbag she was always losing her key so Dad took the real address and name off it.
Mildred is in a state of righteous indignation. She is more concerned about what she has ‘been through’, as she puts it, than anything that has happened to Grandma. She looks terrifying in a dressing gown of lurid plaids and with her hair concealed under a thick black net. She tells me at once that Miss McKay is apparently, apparently (sniff), not in. Or not answering. She has knocked on Miss McKay’s door, because that was the understanding when she assumed responsibility for Grandma at night, it was clearly stated by Miss McKay that she would be just across the hall in case of emergency. This was an emergency, and was Miss McKay across the hall? Well, if she was, she had locked herself in and was not letting on. When I could get a word in, I said maybe Bridget was on night duty, she worked so hard at the – No, Mildred flashed back, and flourished a rota pointing out that on Wednesdays Miss McKay was off. I had not yet got to Grandma. I said to Mildred that I was here if my aunt wasn’t and that I had come at once and where was my Grandmother. Mildred stalks ahead. Grandma is on the bathroom floor, curled up. At least Mildred has covered her with a blanket. Grandma is snoring. I smile. Mildred is livid, tells me that it is no laughing matter, young lady, that it is three in the morning and some people need their sleep and are not paid for this sort of thing. I say it seems a shame to waken Grandma. The bathroom is warm. Can’t we just leave her? Mildred is appalled. Leave her? On the floor? Where do I get such ideas from. So we waken the poor old soul. Mildred is all for brute force, one of us either side and a good old yank, but I have learned from Mum. ‘Time to get up,’ I whisper, and, ‘the men will be late for their work,’ and, ‘it’s seven o’clock and the porridge not made.’ Slowly, grumbling and groaning and complaining about bloomin’ men, Grandma heaves herself up with the minimum of effort. We walk her through to the bedroom and tuck her up. It was easy, really. Dealing with Mildred is much worse. I know I must apologise, I must grovel and be smarmy and praise Mildred’s competence and grossly exaggerate what she has gone through and thank her very, very, very, very much. I know helpers are hard to find and that, whatever else she is, Mildred Bronson is utterly reliable and would be almost impossible to replace especially at short notice.
On the way back down the road I meet Mum, running. She screeches to a halt and grabs me, says I should have woken her, that I shouldn’t have gone, and had Grandma fallen? I say, yes, and tell her what happened, minimising Mildred’s indignation. We walk back into the house together. Mum hasn’t asked where Bridget was. I go straight back to bed. It is hard to get to sleep. I can foresee the next day’s discussions.
If Grandma is going to fall every night then Mildred will leave.
If Mildred leaves somebody else must be found.
If someone else is found they must be told the truth.
If they are told the truth they may not want to do it.
I begin to feel like Mum.
*
Mildred has given notice. In writing. Full of ‘owing to’ this and that and ‘unforeseen circumstances’. Unequivocal. Dad said he would offer more money to cover what Mildred referred to as ‘night disturbance prejudicial to the health’. He did. She took the greatest pleasure in turning down the extra £10 a night. She told Dad that an agency would not consider charging less than £50 a night.
Bridget is furious, livid. She sits in our kitchen raging. I come in from school, make myself some tea, shrink into a corner to shelter from the blast. ‘Bloody damned cheek,’ Bridget says to Mum, smoking manically. ‘Prejudicial to the health! My God! Let her spend one night on my ward and see about her health. What a fuss, what a silly fuss, making a drama out of nothing.’ Mum says nothing, she knows better. No point in arguing with Bridget, no point in being fair and urging her to consider Mildred’s position: she is old herself and only took the job on to keep Grandma company, not as her nurse. Gradually, Bridget winds down. Mum says she has put notices on all the local newsagents’ boards and she is sure we will get plenty of replies because we’ve offered £40 a night. Bridget winces. ‘If Mum knew that she’d have a fit,’ she says. Mum shrugs, says that is the going rate, that Bridget mustn’t forget 6 p.m. to 8 a.m. is a long time not counting the night disturbance. Bridget sighs. She says she’d do it herself if only she wasn’t on night shifts sometimes. Nobody says anything. Mum is not going to say she will do it. Dad has said she mustn’t. He has talked about forcing Bridget’s hand. I think, looking at my aunt, that I wouldn’t like to force her hand. Bridget is tough, Bridget is strong, Bridget is a match for anyone. She exposes our hypocrisies, our faint-heartedness, our downright lies.
At least Grandma’s not here. It is one of Susan’s days. We all like Susan. Susan’s a bit younger than Mum but looks older. She’s stupid and lazy but she likes Grandma and Grandma likes her mainly because she’s black and has a baby. Susan thinks Grandma’s sweet. She tumbles chaotically into Grandma’s flat each day, always smiling, whatever her tale of woe. She sits and gossips and her baby crawls round messing everything up and delighting Grandma. Who cares if sometimes Susan brings two, even three babies, and that it is obvious she is being paid, by us, as a babyminder? Who cares if she doesn’t do the light housework she’s supposed to do? Who cares that she feeds Grandma toast, jam and tea and precious little else? But on the other hand we do have to care that Susan is as unreliable as the awful Mildred is reliable. Susan is a slattern. She’s as careless as Mildred is precise. She arrives late, often, and this matters because Grandma is on her own. Mum has tried to get Susan to see the seriousness of her unpunctuality but she always makes such exotic excuses for it that Mum dries up. Susan’s whole life is a soap opera and Mum is outflanked from the start. As Susan says, she always does get there in the end (and implies that it’s over dead bodies half the time).
Unfortunately, just as I’m finishing my tea and Bridget has quietened down to a sad, resigned state, Stuart arrives. I’m the one who opens the door to him. It’s his day off, so he is not in uniform. I think, on balance, I prefer him in it. He wears such terrible clothes. Grandma says he is always smart, that both her sons are smart. It’s a kind of miracle to her that this is true. But, whereas Dad’s smartness is inoffensive and a joke and only for work, Stuart’s is a weapon. His stiff, shining white collars and knife-creased pressed trousers and brushed blazers with brass buttons – they are all designed to overwhelm his opponent. Stuart stands there, mountainously smart, cutting smart, and I almost jump clear. He comes into the kitchen, fills it, nods at Bridget, nods at Mum, and plonks himself down, trousers hitched at the knees as he sits. He asks how things are with everybody.
Bridget glares, Mum speaks. She tells Stuart there’s a little bit of a crisis at the moment. She outlines it. Stuart shakes his head and says he told us so, and he has washed his hands of it. Several times. Mum tells him we will find someone else and mentions the adver
tisement. Stuart asks how much. Mum tells him, he winces, hides his eyes with his beefy hand, and says anybody will be able to spot we are mugs, we’ll be taken for a ride, to the cleaners and several other clichés. It is, says Stuart, criminal. That is what it is as well as pouring good money down the sink and his mother in her right mind would turn in her grave. Bridget says Mum is not in her grave, that is the point. We are trying to keep her out of it. Her tone is acid, just on the edge of open contempt. Stuart is caught. I see he hasn’t the courage to say we should not keep his mother from her grave, that nice cosy little grave where surely she will be so terribly comfortable, but he’s reluctant to let his little sister score a victory, especially a moral one. So he says he stands corrected, that it was only a manner of speaking and Bridget knows it. Mum breaks in. She says there is no other way, it is no good moaning about the money, that we are lucky to have it. Bridget says if it wasn’t for Charlie’s money she doesn’t know what we would do. We would all have to take turns with Grandma and how would Stuart like that, how would Paula like it?
But Stuart is not upset by this implied criticism of his wife or by the deeper attack on himself. That’s the only thing I like about Stuart: he makes no excuses, sees no reason why he should. He knows he is not cruel. He doesn’t hate his mother, he doesn’t wish her to be unhappy, but he thinks, as he constantly repeats, that she has ‘had her day’ and should be ‘packed off’. Stuart’s heart doesn’t break when he looks at Grandma, he doesn’t melt as Bridget does. He sees everything in practical terms. There are no confusions. And, as for Paula, he always says don’t bring Paula into this and that it’s not her pigeon. Bridget usually replies smartly that no it’s not her pigeon it’s her mother-in-law: Grandma is Paula’s mother-in-law like she is Jenny’s mother-in-law. That, says Stuart, is Jenny’s business. Today, Stuart simply says that as Bridget well knows he wouldn’t take any turns and he hasn’t come to go over old ground again. He has come, it appears, to ask Mum a favour. He wants to take Paula to a conference in Birmingham. There is a police conference and she can come along. Will Mum have Alistair and Jamie? Mum says of course. Bridget asks what the hell Paula wants to go to Birmingham for? Stuart gets up, thanks Mum, Bridget asks if he is going along to see Grandma. Stuart says no, she doesn’t know who he is so what’s the point. Bridget says she would know who he was, as she knew who Charlie was still, if he visited her often and regularly. Stuart says he doubts it but that she can have her own way if she wishes, he’s not bothered. Then he leaves.
Have the Men Had Enough? Page 5