A Liverpool Song

by Ruth Hamilton

  Quite often, a saved column from a journal ended in a jagged tear halfway through a sentence, while his notes in margins made little sense. ‘He’s a doctor,’ she told herself often. ‘They can’t write properly, since that seems to come with the territory. They take exams in how to write illegibly.’ He couldn’t be ill. Wouldn’t someone at his work have noticed? But she knew only too well that the person closest to a patient usually saw symptoms first, and she was very close to her sweet, precious man. They still made love. He still read to her, wrote for her, made breakfast on Sundays, fed the cat. No, the cat had gone, had moved upstairs with Andrew. So many changes, some glaring, others so subtle as to be scarcely noticeable, except to Emily.

  When Andrew and Mary were settled in the flat after their return from Cornwall, and when Mary’s parents had left Liverpool, Emily asked her husband to come across and see her while Geoff was still at the children’s hospital. For many years her closest and dearest friend, Joseph had been trusted with any information she chose to impart. While waiting for him to come, she hoped he wouldn’t find her ridiculous, because her lover was still fine when it came to verbal expression. It was just . . . just things. And sometimes, an expression approaching confusion in his eyes.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Joe asked as soon as he arrived. ‘You look worried halfway to hell.’ She was pale, as white as a bleached sheet. ‘Come on, kid, tell our Joe.’

  And it poured. ‘There’s something very wrong with Geoff.’ Just those few newborn words took a little of the dead weight from her shoulders. ‘Toodles has moved upstairs to live in the flat with Andrew and Mary. Cats know things, Joseph, and she’s a particularly clever old soul.’ She then told Joseph about the bits of printed articles found in strange places, Geoff’s tendency to shut himself in his messy room for hours on end, his new habit of examining carefully every forkful of food before allowing it to enter his mouth. ‘He’s not Geoff any more. I found his new socks in the bread bin. And he keeps buying pens. He must have at least fifty. Joseph, he’s just odd.’

  Joe took a sip of tea. ‘At least they were new socks. Better than dirty ones in a bread bin, I suppose. But Em, what about his job if he’s losing the plot? I mean, he carries a lot of responsibility, and he’s accountable if anything goes wrong with his work.’ Geoff loved his job, loved kids, too. If he lost his position, would the poor man cope?

  ‘I know. Believe me, I’ve been worried sick. One mistake could cost a child’s life. But I can’t talk to his bosses about it. What if I’m wrong? He’s always been a bit of an absent-minded professor. That’s why he’s had a special room for his books and his junk. He knows we don’t want rubbish all over the house, especially when people come to look at the kitchens and the furniture you’ve made.’

  Joe stood up and began to pace back and forth. ‘I know some people think we’re mad, the three of us, but I’m fond of the daft bugger. Still beats me at chess, so the intellect’s right enough. What do we do, love? Where do we start? I mean, I’m just as lost as you are on this one. But we need help. Where from, though? Where do we go to talk about something as serious as this, Em?’

  She started to cry. ‘I think we probably pay a visit to our GP. Luckily, we’re all with the same practice. But I shan’t know how to deal with Geoff. What if it’s a brain tumour, Joseph?’

  ‘Oh, Emily.’ He held her for the first time in years. She was weeping for another man, but Joe was her refuge. ‘I’m here. I’ll always be here for both of you. Tell you what, stick an extra plate on the table and I’ll come back for my evening meal and see what I think.’

  Emily dried her eyes. ‘You can’t tell there’s anything wrong if you’re talking or listening to him. It’s just this putting bits and pieces in wrong places and buying stuff he doesn’t need, like all the pens and lots of new socks. Will you be here while I tell him what he’s doing? If I pluck up enough courage to tell him what he’s doing, that is.’

  ‘You know I will.’ He waited until she was calmer before returning to his own house across the street. Geoff was still in his forties, and men in their forties didn’t get senile dementia, did they? But there were cancers in his family, which fact had caused Geoff to render himself sterile . . . Bloody hell. Geoff, being a doctor, had little time for the breed. According to him, general practitioners made more mistakes than the government, and he seldom visited the surgery.

  He wouldn’t go to the doc, that was the problem. He would simply put his foot down and apply the brakes. The man was impossible when it came to his own health, and there was no shifting him. As far as Joe, Emily and Andrew were concerned, both Doctors Cawley were good folk. The father had lengthy experience, while the son was still close to his books and up to date with new developments. They were an ideal combination. But Geoff’s opinion was very different from theirs.

  What then? What about when Geoff refused to see a doctor? Get him certified, have him dragged away to the asylum? Poor Emily. She was going to have her work cut out with the problem, that much was certain. He wondered whether Geoff had begun to move things about in the hospitals, but there was no way of finding out without endangering the man’s position. The more Joe thought, the more confused he became, because he kept hitting brick walls.

  He sat at the table and scratched his head. There was no set-in-stone method of telling a bloke that he might be going crackers. Emily would probably find a way of framing the message, because she was close to the man and very good with words. Even so, it would be no walk in the park. And if poor Geoff was losing the plot, he would need looking after, and who was free to do that job? Paid help would be needed, and Geoff would hate that, too.

  Well, it was best to keep quiet for now, best if just he and Emily knew. There was no point in dragging Andrew and Mary into it at this juncture. Perhaps Geoff had an explanation for his behaviour. ‘Don’t jump the gun, Joe. Read your newspaper and play it cool, as the kids say.’ He made a pot of tea, but he couldn’t settle to read his paper, couldn’t face the crossword. The custom-built dining table screamed for a bit of beeswax, yet Joe couldn’t bestir himself. And he had some paperwork to do, but that, too, would have to wait.

  He bathed, had a shave, and changed into clean but casual clothes. Going across for a meal in shirt and tie might seem a bit funereal. He allowed himself a tight smile. Andrew’s stag night had been one to remember, all right. Mary was funny. She awaited the promised reprisal with dread, because they were both tinkers when it came to practical jokes. They were great together. Joe was glad that his son had found a good, happy, hard-working girl.

  He sat down and sighed sadly. The tea was cool and stewed, but he couldn’t be bothered with a new brew. Hang on. That book of Andrew’s was somewhere in the sideboard under tablecloths. He rooted about, dragged it out and looked for something he’d skimmed before. Ah, here it was. In 1906, Alois Alzheimer had treated a patient with . . . No, it was further down underneath all the waffle. Only at autopsy was his patient’s behaviour explained. Her brain had shrunk. It had bits missing, bits that governed memory, speech, coordination. Oh, bugger. It couldn’t be that, mustn’t be that.

  He turned the page. The cause was a build-up of deposits on brain cells and some fibrous developments inside cells that eventually led to total dependence and death. He threw the book across the room. Research was being done, but there was, as yet, no sensible treatment for the condition. Poor Em. Poor Geoff. Was he aware of the changes in his own behaviour? One sentence in the thrown book stuck in Joe’s mind. ‘Alzheimer’s cripples not just the sufferer, but whole families. A patient can live for many years . . .’ He’d forgotten the rest, didn’t want to bloody remember it.

  In a way, a brain tumour might be preferable, because there could be a chance of surgery and improvement, but this other thing . . . Geoff would lose his job, and Em would need to give up hers. Andrew and Mary, in the flat above Em and Geoff, might well be dragged in for stepfather-sitting duties. ‘So will I,’ he said aloud. ‘If it’s that bloody d
isease.’

  Praying for somebody to have a brain tumour seemed strange, but Joe had a word with a god of whose existence he was not entirely sure. ‘Let it be something mendable,’ he begged, ‘or she won’t survive.’ Emily would never bear the loss of Geoff. She bruised easily on the inside, so something as huge as Geoff ’s death could finish her off altogether.

  He went across the road for his meal. Geoff greeted him in the usual way – ‘Anyone for chess?’ – while Emily carried on cooking in the kitchen. Joe knew that she was hanging on to every spoken word, because the rattling of utensils became quieter.

  ‘We’ll eat first, eh, Geoff?’ Joe sat down. ‘What’s on the menu tonight?’

  ‘Fish pie. Our missus does a grand fish pie.’ Geoff placed himself in the chair opposite Joe’s. ‘And how are the kitchens coming along? Hardly a day passes without me seeing one of your trucks on the road.’

  ‘Fine, thanks. Fleets of lorries all over the place, a lot of blokes with jobs, and that has to be a good thing. We’re opening in the Midlands and the south soon.’ He paused. ‘What about all your sick kiddies?’

  ‘Always a worry,’ was the reply. ‘We can only do our best, but we win some and lose some. Fortunately, we win more than we lose.’

  Nothing in Geoff’s verbal or body language betrayed him. Had the situation involved anyone other than Emily, Joe would be planning to question what had been said. The proof of the pudding was in the fish pie. She was right; the man did examine food before eating it.

  Braver with Joseph at the table, Emily spoke up. ‘Am I poisoning you, Geoff?’

  He froze, fork halfway between plate and mouth. ‘What?’

  ‘You study your fork as if it’s loaded with arsenic.’

  ‘Oh, sorry. I’m testing my blood, trying to assess the effects of various quantities of various foods on my sodium and potassium levels. I write down what’s in the meal, and try to judge the amount I’ve eaten, the weight of fish, potato, asparagus and so forth. Because I believe some severe illnesses are triggered by imbalance in the blood.’

  ‘So you’re a guinea pig?’

  ‘I am. Well, I can hardly practise on my patients. A couple of my colleagues are testing themselves, too.’

  ‘Are you endangering your health?’ Emily asked.

  Joe simply listened. So far, it all made perfect sense to him.

  ‘No,’ Geoff said, ‘because we seem to stay pretty level whatever we eat. But it may teach us something when compared to the blood of our patients. It’s a good idea to find the normal in order to treat the abnormal. I think it may be too broad a field, yet it’s worth a go.’

  Emily couldn’t eat. ‘Geoff, look at me.’ She put down her cutlery.

  He looked at her. ‘What now?’

  So she told him about the socks, the pens, the notes hidden all over the place, the mess spilling out from his chaos room. ‘You’ve changed,’ she concluded.

  ‘But you know I’ve always been absent-minded. I lose pens all the time. I do research and hope to publish one day. I walk about with stuff in my hands, put it down and lose it. It’s not intentional, and I’m sorry.’

  She looked at Joe as if begging him to speak.

  He spoke. ‘Put her mind at rest, Geoff. Go and see the doctor, tell him you’re more forgetful than you used to be, and just get yourself checked.’

  Geoff looked from one to the other a few times. ‘Have you two been discussing me?’

  ‘She’s worried,’ said Joe in his wife’s defence.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About how you’ve changed. You got given your messy room, and your messy room’s started walking all over the house. She’s up and down the stairs like a scalded cat because she’s a worrier. I don’t know, do I? Em might be thinking anything from . . .’ He left a deliberate pause. ‘Well, from brain tumour to some kind of premature dementia.’

  Geoff laughed. ‘And you want me to go and see a man who’s a quack? He doesn’t know an eye infection from athlete’s foot. There is nothing wrong with me except tiredness. I’ve been researching too hard.’

  Emily felt foolish, but Joe didn’t. While it was true that nearest and dearest often noticed first when something was wrong, a person who came and went had value, since he began to see the subtler differences that occurred during short absences. The man had altered, though Joe couldn’t put his finger on the problem.

  Geoff laughed again, but there was a hollow quality to the sound.

  The other two occupants of the room would hear that laugh for the rest of their lives. Because just over a year later, Geoff was dead.

  Andrew and Mary were living their dream. When not at work, they ate and studied, but continued their honeymoon period for what Mary declared to be ‘a time of total self-indulgence’. But their euphoria was ended abruptly by the deaths of two children. The first was not developed, as it had existed for just a few weeks in Mary’s womb and didn’t have an identifiable gender, but the second was the fault of staff at Liverpool’s children’s hospital, and it was a four-year-old girl disabled by serious heart problems.

  Immediately, Emily and Joe visited Dr Charles. His real name was Cawley, but as his father still worked at the practice the younger man used his given name. ‘What can I do for you two?’ he asked. ‘Aren’t you living with Dr Shaw, Mrs Sanderson?’

  ‘Joseph and I are still legally married,’ Emily said. ‘It’s an unusual situation. And Geoff . . .’ She could say no more, as she began to sob. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘A zero too many,’ Joe said. His own voice was shaky. He explained as best he could the arrangements in his wife’s house, Geoff ’s untidy ‘cave’, his increasing forgetfulness, his deteriorating behaviour. ‘It started off with the mess spreading a bit, and Em just shifted it back to the chaos room. He’s always had a room like that, it’s been part of who he is. Or was. Emily? Shall we come back later when you feel a bit better?’

  She managed a degree of control. ‘Then my daughter-in-law heard him talking to himself.’

  Joe shook his head. ‘No, love. She told you he was talking to somebody who wasn’t there. When I’m drawing a piece of furniture, I talk to myself all the time. A lot of people do that – it’s instead of making notes. It was a nurse who wasn’t there. She’s the one who followed Geoff ’s instructions, and she gave a hundred measurement of something or other instead of ten. The kiddy died. Everybody blamed the poor nurse till they saw Geoff’s notes with the extra zero. See, up till now, Doc, it’s just been like eccentricity and absent-mindedness. But it’s changed lately. My son has had to sit with him while we came here, because we believe he soon won’t be fit to be left. And my son’s wife’s just lost their first baby, as you already know.’

  Dr Charles listened intently.

  With each prompting the other, they placed the whole truth before him. Geoff was getting up in the middle of the night, making toast and tea, then setting off for work, sometimes in his pyjamas. He was easier when out of his mind, because each time he returned to his senses the fact that he was suspended from work crashed into his head.

  ‘Does he talk sense to you?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘He says very little now,’ was Emily’s reply. ‘He examines all his food before eating, something to do with research, and I’m thinking of labelling the cupboards. I found three cups in the oven yesterday.’

  ‘Can you bring him here?’

  ‘No,’ they chorused.

  ‘He hates doctors,’ Joe added.

  ‘Most doctors do,’ Charles said. ‘Then the mountain must move. Go home, and I’ll be with you shortly. I know this is easy to say, but try not to worry.’

  For the first time in four and a half decades of life, Geoff Shaw turned nasty. ‘Bring my family,’ he yelled at Joe. ‘They live in West Derby.’

  Emily spoke. ‘They moved to Northampton, darling, to be near your nephew. Remember?’

  Geoff blinked. ‘Emily, don’t let the doctor do this to me. I didn’t write that extra
zero.’

  ‘I’m doing nothing,’ Dr Charles said. He had already sent for a second medic and an ambulance. ‘You aren’t functioning properly, Geoff. You need your engine looking at, maybe your battery charged. No hospital, I promise you that.’ This was the truth, because Joe was paying for a private facility between Liverpool and Southport. Technically it was a fully equipped medical centre, though it presented itself as a top-class hotel, especially in public areas. ‘We’re concerned for you and want to help you get better.’

  ‘You can piss off,’ was Geoff ’s answer. ‘I don’t mean you,’ he said to Joe and Emily. ‘I mean this bloody quack. Doesn’t know his housemaid’s knee from his tennis elbow. Waste of space.’

  The quack moved closer to the patient. ‘Calm down.’

  ‘You calm down. What the hell are you doing here?’

  Charles Cawley was probably keeping Geoff out of court, though he said nothing. The possibility of this paediatrician’s being tried for negligence or even manslaughter was very real. The press had been told as little as possible, though the little girl’s parents had not been gagged. ‘I’m trying to help you,’ he said. ‘Believe it or not, this is all for your own good.’ The Royal College of Nursing wasn’t best pleased about one of its members being blamed, however briefly, for the death of a child. That weighty power might swing into action any day now, because the nurse in question was suffering from nervous exhaustion.

  They came for him. Three big bruisers in white coats dragged him kicking and screaming into the private ambulance. Andrew and Mary, who had sat on the stairs through the whole palaver, held on to Emily while her lover was taken away under certification. Joe simply wept. He curled into Geoff ’s fireside chair in Emily’s drawing room and cried like a newborn. He’d just found yet another pack of cheap ballpoint pens under the cushion. Oh, yes. There was something wrong with that poor lad.