How Many Camels Are There in Holland?: Dementia, Ma and Me. Phyllida Law
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petrol, and planned our tactics. Tactful tactics.
Mother had plans to make presents of various items lurking among the piles of ‘stuff’ in the morning room. She was particularly keen to give all the old mattresses to her favourite people. ‘Jock and Alistair would love one,’ she said. She was adamant. Mildew persuaded her to relinquish the idea because they were stained with blood and pee. That did it.
We borrowed ‘the blue van’ and made quite a few alarming journeys to the dump. Every time I put my foot on the brake a mattress and assorted rubbish fell on our heads and the back door flew open. We secured it with a discarded pair of Uncle Arthur’s trousers.
A plumber had to be called to the cottage urgently as someone had pushed a Sorbo rubber ball down the loo.
There was a young plumber of Lea, Who was plumbing his girl by the sea. Said the lady, ‘Stop plumbing, There’s somebody coming.’ Said the plumber still plumbing, ‘It’s me.’
We did a lot of measuring with an alarming metal tape measure. We ordered shelves, handrails and carpeting for the narrow cottage stairs, and installed ‘daylight’ strip lighting in the kitchen. Frightful, but Mother needed an even light as her glaucoma had raised an ugly eye. Sunlight or spotlights or lamplight blinded and confused her. Mildew got extremely bossy and said Mother needed a white stick to warn people that she was a bit dodgy in the eye department, and she would walk down the middle of the road as if it was hers. Thank goodness she wasn’t deaf and heard the local bus. We tried to paint her walking stick with white gloss, but it didn’t take on the varnish, so Mildew wrapped it round with white Fablon, like a bandaged leg. Not elegant, but serviceable, and Mother was charmed. I think.
Mildew’s gift for creative bullying was such a help. We were to get up at six thirty sharp, no breakfast, so we’d get through the lists we’d made at midnight.
The weather, as so often round Easter time, was glorious and sometimes we sat at the cottage against the warm wall of the outside loo, drinking tea, picking dirt out of our fingernails and discussing battle plans.
It was all those books, the china cupboards, the drawers of odd clothing, and the boxes to be marked up. What was to go in the first lot, and what was to be left till last, and would they come in time to mend the heater in the hall, which ought to be on now? We hadn’t enough labels.
And we should arrange food and the fridge, I thought. Mother boiled a wine cork with the potatoes yesterday. Her poor eyes were a bit like Grannie’s were – she couldn’t judge distance accurately. Grannie used to wave her little paws about near objects of interest, like cakes, and leave her footprints on the icing, and Ma was now missing her target as she made tentative efforts to help, a little like a polite child playing blind man’s buff. Mildew said I must learn to put things back exactly where I found them, however odd the place might seem, and I wasn’t to get ‘creative with the cutlery’.
Uncle Arthur wasn’t loving this bit but he loved Mildew and sometimes put his hand up to stroke her cheek. He never did that to me. He said he’d ‘just like to know what’s going on’.
Poor Uncle Arthur. I think I killed him.
DECLINE AND FALL
Well, I made it. Just. The flight was frightful. Approaching Glasgow, the big Boeing 707 started to bounce about like a ping-pong ball. We thumped to the ground and juddered to a halt in a puddle the length of Loch Long. The pilot apologised. ‘It was like handling a light aircraft,’ he said. The rain was horizontal and my hired Fiesta kept doing the ‘pally glide’ as the wind hit her about. Then I got stuck in Gourock behind a parade of Boy Scouts going to the war memorial very slowly, kilts dripping, bagpipes wailing and water-logged.
It was dark when I reached the ferry and the queue was enormous. I rang Mother from the phone box to tell her I might have to stay the night at the hotel along the coast that looked like a set of shelves and I’d catch the early ferry but she’d left the phone off the hook again. She will do that.
Anyway, I stopped trying as the queue started to move, and I squeaked on last, into a spot where salt water smashed over the car at regular intervals with such a thwack I didn’t dare go to the loo. Out on the loch there was sheet lightning. Weird. A bit like the Northern Lights only blue and with rumbling thunder.
Sometimes it seems that news of the death of a contemporary gives a spurt of renewed energy to the ancient hearer. They have won. They are still here. I had knelt by Mother’s chair to tell her about Uncle Arthur’s ‘passing’. She took the news with calm acceptance and stroked my head gently, seeming more concerned for me.
I suppose she’d had quite a few rehearsals. He had been in and out of hospital and lately it’d been many long weeks. I think she had grown accustomed to his absence.
But the thought of her on her own was really dismaying. They’d propped each other up. His brains were hers. Who would she shout at to ‘open a bottle’? Who was going to find phone numbers and check the grocery bill?
I found out later that we were the last ferry to dock that night. The next one had to spend the night plying up and down the loch till the storm subsided, and two caravans got whisked away from Gairletter Point and dumped across the water at Kilcreggan. A third swayed about in the middle of the loch for a day or two with its wheels in the air.
Haven’t found out about the funeral yet.
Ma and I were sitting watching the TV on Wednesday night when the phone rang. It was Stew-art from Falkirk sending his condolences and saying there was a parcel waiting for me on the porch.
It was Sophie. She had come up the path and peeked through a gap in the curtains to see Ma and me transfixed by Delia Smith. Not daring to disturb the peaceful scene, she actually went down the road to the phone box and asked Stewart to ring us.
It has raised our spirits greatly, which reminds me: I must check on the booze supply. Mildew will arrive tomorrow so I’ll pick her up from the ferry and we’ll do a major shop at the Co-op. Sophie is in charge of décor: the sitting room is in need of attention as the minister is to give his peroration there after we get back from the ‘creamer’ in Gourock. Family will go over the water and we’ll be back for the village party.
Mrs Waddell is going to stand on her head. She was a PE teacher and will stand on her head anywhere without notice. I can’t wait.
Dear Em!
It would be good if you phoned around 6 p.m. when I fully intend to be thoroughly inebriated and Ma will have had her G and T. She is remarkable really. Tonight she is cooking a new recipe she found and wishes me to sample and pass comment. I don’t like to tell her I have had it every visit for the last couple of years. It is fillet of fish – I think it is cod – and she bakes it spread with tomato ketchup.
I know. Sounds disgusting.
Sophie and I will contribute to the funeral baked meats. Looking up Mother’s recipes in the old filing box I found this re game: ‘Daudet compared its scented flesh to an old courtesan’s flesh marinated in a bidet.’