by J.A. Skinner
I drove back to the Motherwell office in a bit of a dream, not watching the traffic properly and thinking about Mags, she really is a cracker, but it’s ridiculous to still feel like this about her after so long. What a bit of luck, her being divorced. I remember gazing at her in the playgroup meetings and having several fantasies about her suddenly becoming available. It seems only like a few months ago, not five years. I don’t want her as a client. I also don’t want mixed up in the Huntington’s Catholic conspiracy, but it would be nice to have a chat with her, just the two of us.
She is lively, funny and a wee bit flirty, just the way I like. I also know her sister Kate, a horse of a different colour, who’s ploughing her way through the adoption procedures. Kate and her husband Philip seem like perfect adopters. Unfortunately, the thing is, we don’t have a lot of babies around at the moment. We have dozens of scruffy teenagers and a few reprobate nine year olds and an eight year old pyromaniac. Sadly, we also have a badly institutionalised five year old boy who was recently moved to foster parents and kept wandering about the house looking for the office as if he was still in a children’s home. None of them are a good match for Kate and Phillip.
The Coyle family don’t have a good family history, health wise, so it’s a blessing that Kate and Philip are trying to adopt.
John Coyle was part of a tragic group of patients who, though strictly not mentally ill, do in the end suffer hallucinations and dementia. I’ve read some of the reports.
How the details can still be a secret in this family says a great deal for the Catholic Mafia code of silence. Of course, if you know you have the nasty gene you could wipe out the disease in one generation with genetic counselling and contraceptives, but of course deliberately not having children would be a mortal sin
Illness of this kind has always been a stigma and embarrassment for some families, who feel they should be able to cope with most things by living well and looking after each other, so a lot of ‘cover up’ goes on. Thank goodness my mother is a spiritualist and didn’t try to burden me with any of that guilt stuff when I was growing up.
I arrive at the office to be greeted by Aileen, our receptionist, smiling as usual,
‘Having a good day sweetie pie,’ she says.
‘Yes, not bad, and all the better for seeing you,’ I reply.
Aileen has an endless store of endearments for almost everyone in the building, and although people think her a bit nutty, they would all miss her ‘sweeties’, ‘chicken pies’ and ‘honey bunches’, if she ever stopped or heaven forbid retired.
‘Well, we have a wee situation here that you may have to deal with urgently,’ she says, ‘I have to go into an interview room now but here’s a message.’ She hands me a small red sticker.
‘In my office at the double, signed The Boss’.
Red means something terrible has happened, or I have forgotten to do something very important. I hurry up the two flights of stairs to my manager’s office, losing my breath like an asthmatic and racking my brains for what could be wrong.
His office is a square spacious room painted in graduated shades of pink. ‘The Boss’ is Harry Wang, a Scottish Oriental mix of good sense, humour, and mixed metaphor philosophy.
Before moving into his office last year, he had a Feng Shui expert practitioner give it the once over, and for a large fee, he got lots of advice on colour needs, furniture style and plants. When Wang presented his plans to the borough council the office maintenance men shook their heads put their hands deep in their pockets and gazed at the floor for a while.
‘We’ve only got the pink,’ the spokesman said very gently, he did not want to upset Wang, imagining him to have a black belt in some Chinese unarmed combat discipline.
‘We also only have a regulation desk, chair and bookcase, second hand of course, but very nice.’
Poor Wang, hopes dashed, he pulled himself up to his full 5 feet 3 inches, accepted his defeat like a man and said,
‘Life is not a bowl of strawberries,’ one of his favourites, and,
‘Sure as rain in Glasgow, these council workers can ruin your dreams,’ one of his own.
‘Do your best with the pink,’ said Wang who had been Feng Shui-ed in shades of cream, lime and mango. What he didn’t know and wasn’t told, was that there wasn’t enough pink, so the tins were watered down somewhat unevenly, thus the graduated effect.
The cause of the urgent summons is a dead body in a car, in the car park. So much for Aileen’s ‘wee situation’. This is obviously quite a shock, and Wang’s nerves are popping out of the top of his head. The story so far for is that a young man came into the office and said his Granny had checked out in the back seat of his car.
He had been in a terrible state, inconsolable, and was at present in an interview room being comforted and ‘bubble-pied’ by Aileen.
First things first. Malcolm, our intrepid social work secondment from R.S.P.C.A. is sent down quickly to guard the body and the car till the police and ambulance come, then I go to interview the bereaved,
‘It’s Wednesday, like, her bingo lunch at the oldies centre.’ He was breathless from crying,
‘She loves it, a’ they widows gossiping, missing their numbers and winning tea sets they’ll never use.’
With a huge sigh, he goes on to relate that when he had picked her up before lunchtime she’d been a bit quiet, but not ill looking. Then, halfway on their journey, she got really quiet and when he turned round to check on her, she was keeled over in the back, only her seat-belt holding her on the seat. He had stopped the car and got in the back seat beside her, he felt for her pulse but there was nothing, and when he tried to give her a cuddle, he said she felt as light as a wee bird, nothing really there at all. He stopped talking and sobbed painfully and I wondered distractedly what on earth had possessed him to bring his dead Grandmother to our office, instead of the Police station, a hospital, or as a last resort, a funeral director, all whom have more experience at this kind of thing than we do.
Added to this problem is the particular one with our car park. It is secluded behind the building, away from the main road, and social workers nice new shiny leased cars get stolen from it on a regular basis. Please God don’t let anyone have stolen this makeshift hearse before Malky gets down there.
In the end all the logistical problems are dealt with quickly by activating the police, ambulance and other members of the family. A somewhat calmer grandson is given tea and two paracetamol from the back of Aileen’s drawer, and dispatched to the community centre to break the bad news to his Granny’s mates. They are most likely by now fearing the worst anyway. After all, if some women don’t know the whole story, they will surely make it up. Harry calms down and tells us we’ve all done a good job dealing with this unusual emergency, Malky comes back up the stairs to tell us the remains have been moved to the undertakers and we all have a break and a cup of tea.
Social workers don’t ever get good press, at least not in the Scottish rags. Only the stupid or irresponsible things that happen once in a while get into the newspapers. The day-to-day bread and butter social care is never usually sensational enough, this might not be nine o’clock news calibre, but it may be unusual enough to make the Wishaw Press.
Harry is well pleased that everything is under control,
‘It’s an ill wind that blows in here,’ he says mysteriously, wrong as usual.
‘No, Harry, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.’ I correct him. He writes this down, which is really scary.
For a bit of relief I spend some time telling Harry about the Coyle family funeral, and Mags request for help to get information about her Uncle’s death. He states, correctly I must admit, that just because I have some knowledge of the Huntington condition and some of the people involved, it does not give me the right to reveal any of this information.
‘Even if this means more children being born with this defect and more covering-up goes on?’ I ask.
‘Don’t get carried away, Tom
my, you’re not God, you’re not even Catholic, so don’t go looking for trouble in Carfin.’
He gives me a straight look and no cliché, so I know he is deadly serious.
‘You’re already involved with the sister on her adoption so why don’t you pass on Ms. O’Hara’s request for help to another worker.’
‘Don’t worry, I can handle this, no complications, I promise.’ Aye right, my fingers are crossed behind my back, just in case.