Oh Dear Silvia (24 page)

‘So, h’anyway, ’im say “Leave it to me”, and ’im tek mi phone number. When ’im leave, mi finish mi shift an’ go home, but allatime since mi talk an’ reason wid h’Edward, mi honestly feelin more … safe … jus to have ’im support feel good. Becaa ’im properly lissen. Lissen an’ care.’

Winnie opens the tub of cream on the shelf and, with skilful manoeuvring, starts to apply it to Silvia’s lips, and back and heels and, eventually, bottom. All the time, she is gauging the warmth and dryness of Silvia’s unresponsive body. It has, on rare occasions, been in an intimate moment like this, where she has a good deal of physical interaction with a patient, when virtually imperceptible but nevertheless present signs of response can occur.

A groan, a flickering eye, the wiggle of a finger.

Winnie has never failed to be excited when this happens even though she is well aware that it may ultimately signal very little. But then again … it may well be the tiny start of something seismic, and the thought of missing that is too awful.

Although Winnie is talking and what she is telling Silvia is urgent, she never for a second loses sight of her purpose in this room, and she is vigilant at all times. It’s with her innate
and natural instinct and her eagle eye that Winnie notices the clamminess around Silvia’s neck and at the top of her back. She notes it and makes sure she washes and dries these areas with extra care.

‘So, mi at home cookin up dinna an’ checkin Luke getting ’im spellins done when h’Edward text mi an’ arks where mi live becaa ’im wan’ to show mi something h’important. Well, is no time at all before ’im knock ’pon mi door an’ ’im come in, jus’ in time to share mi Saturday soup. Usually mi mek it onna Saturday, but it Lukie’s all-time favourite, so mi mek it fi ’im yesterday to help soothe mi lickle man from his tribulations. H’Edward like it. ’Im nyam it quick an’ clean de bowl out, like ’im wan’ eat dat too!

‘So, den ’im give mi a letter to read, an’ ’im tell mi ’im compose it fe mi to write out in mi h’own handwritin’, sign an’ give to de school today. Mi have de h’original here in mi pocket. You wan’ mi to read it? OK …’

Winnie unfolds the sheet of A4, and reads it out.

Dear Headmaster,

I write to bring to your attention an alarming incident concerning my son, Luke Dixon, who attends the primary school. He was waiting innocently at the bus stop on Tuesday morning when three young women from your senior school harassed and then attacked him, causing him considerable bodily harm and emotional
distress. I have had to keep him at home since then, due to his profound anguish after this appalling persecution. The behaviour of all three girls, representatives of your establishment, is not only sickening in its malevolence, but worryingly indicative of a serious disrespect for the bullying charter you surely must implement at your school. A charter which, incidentally, I would like to have the opportunity to view and share with other equally concerned parents, at your earliest convenience.

I am sure, in your capacity as supreme legislator at your school, you are aware of the law concerning hate crime. The law is indeed especially muscular concerning environments such as schools, where appreciating diversity is key. Should one’s establishment be deemed ‘institutionally racist’ for instance, I feel sure it would be appropriate to instigate an investigation involving all school personnel, and should the school be found guilty of, say, neglecting to counteract any bullying/racism/homophobia, that might well be interpreted as aggravating the offence – the sentence for which, I believe, if tried on indictment, could be 5–7 years. A sobering thought, and one I hope you might dwell upon, albeit briefly, before you dismiss any chance of your school being identified as such a repugnant bed of worms.

Might I remind you that a hate crime is any criminal offence motivated by hostility or prejudice based on
the victim’s race, colour, religion, size, sexual orientation etc. Really, it is any incident that is perceived to be prejudiced by the
victim
or
any other person.
In this case, my small son is most definitely the victim, and I would be proud to step forward as ‘any other person’.

I am sure the elimination of harassment and hate crime is a priority under your jurisdiction and therefore you would be bound to extinguish any trace of a hostile environment. I hope I can count on your support, and I am more than willing to come and meet with you along with my representatives to those ends.

I intend to furnish the Office for Civil Rights, the Department of Education, and the National Union of Teachers with all above information, including the names and addresses of all three culprits, and of two further witnesses should they require.

I am convinced you will appreciate the sensitivity of such an issue for my dear son, and I trust whatever course of serious action you choose to implement, you would not in any way embarrass or compromise him. Such an outcome would only compound his troubles, and further victimize him.

I look forward to hearing your plan in the very near future, and I urge you to do the right thing, and declare war on hate crime in your institution. A man of your
experience, stature and position should surely need very little persuasion in this particularly crucial endeavour.

With the greatest of respect and in full anticipation of a positive outcome.

Yours sincerely …

‘An’ den dere is de place fe mi to sign. Phew! What you tink bout dat letter?!! Eh?! H’Edward is very very clever. ’Im put dat headmasta inna h’impossible to get out of position. ’Im gotta dweet, int it? ’Im definitely gotta punish dem evil gyals. An’ jus’ in time, mi tink, becaa dey jus’ the type to keep on bullyin ’til one day somemoddy get kill. So mi tink dat H’Edward could be savin a life or two wid dis letter.

‘I write it out h’immediately an’ sign it. H’Edward is laffin alla de time, tellin mi ’im not really sure ’bout de law on hate crime, but ’im try to sound convincing so de headmasta sit up an lissen. He he he! We laffin togedda but mi see a lickle sparkle in ’im eye, an’ mi tink dis letter very h’important fe dat man to write. ’Im workin something out. Mi no know who might have bullied ’im in de pass, but something like dat gone on, an’ ’im putting it to res’ writin dat letter.

‘So, I tek it right up to the headmasta secretary an’ place it bang on ’er desk an’ mi look ’er in de eye an’ say calmly “Dis matters”. She nod, an’ mi gone. So Silvia, we wyait an’ we see, yes? We let time an’ nature tek it course. An’ we let God do ’im work. An’ wid h’any luck at all, dem tree h’ugly bitches drop
dead in h’unbearable h’agony … wid dem h’eyeballs sting an’ dem hair on fire!! Ha ha! Now mi not so Christian, eh?! Ha ha!

‘No, but serious, mi grateful to you Silvia, becaa if you not in here, me nevva meet h’Edward and ’im nevva help to protec’ mi boy. It was a good sight to see dem sittin dere togedda las’ night talkin about dose nasty gyals. Luke able to speak ’bout ’im feelins more wid another man. An’ ’im see it not weak to feel terrible, an’ ’im see dat true strength is in de gentleness of a man, not de fists an’ fury. Yes. Yes Lord. Dat is truut.

‘So. OK. Now. Mi wan’ to get anudda nurse to help turn you a lickle bit, an mi can see you feelin a bit hot again Silvia, an’ ya temperature bit high fe me, so lissen darlin, mi gonna get de doctor in to have a lickle check on you. Don’t worry, Silvia, it probably nuttin. But we gotta be sure. Better safe than sorry. Yes. Better safe. You hold on dere darlin. Mi sort it …’

And so exits the room probably the only person in Silvia’s present who has no axe to grind, no anger or hate or questions. Winnie wishes only good things for Silvia. Winnie hasn’t even stopped to consider what it might be like to wish good things for herself.

Good things like, perhaps, Ed.

Thursday noon

The quiet fug of the room is shattered by the clatter and clank associated with getting a 92-year-old man into a hospital isolation room like this. Jo has used one of the pound-a-time wheelchairs stored at the front door of the hospital, and they are notoriously unwieldy. She felt misguidedly confident that it would all go smoothly. She picked him up from the Poppy Park care home where he lives and, as requested, the carers there had made sure he was up, fed, washed, shaved and dressed ready to go.

Jo has several times in the past attempted these tasks herself, but she finds it disturbing when her father occasionally slips into a temporary bubble of his dementia and is inappropriately rude or lewd. The carers at his home are used to it and shrug it off, but Jo spends a good deal of the short time she shares with her father dreading the next awkward moment.

She so wishes she didn’t, she wishes she was truly the kind of Earth Mother who can deal with anything that comes her way. She didn’t have kids, so she missed out on the cute, palatable sick and shit and snot that motherhood brings. Instead, she seems to have skipped directly to the entirely intolerable sick and shit and snot of old age that daughterhood brings, and she is immeasurably grateful to the angels at Poppy Park for doing so much of the difficult stuff.

Even better than their patient understanding and handling of crotchety old men, is their patient understanding of crotchety old ex-army men. These are a particular breed of chaps whose needs can be difficult to understand. Men whose lives, in some cases, since the age of sixteen have been ordered and regimented. Men who are used to being ranked and barked at. Men who are more comfortable in male company. Men who speak the same coded language. Men who signed the Official Secrets Act. Men who fought for their countries and their lives side by side. Men who loved each other but weren’t permitted to acknowledge it. Men whose shared broad humour masked a thousand fears and inadequacies. Military men. Men like Stanley.

Most military men are never ‘ex-military’, it’s a lifelong commitment. The army is not a job, it’s a life, and so therefore whilst you are still living, you are army. You are ‘Pongo’ and much as they rarely admit it, absolutely EVERYTHING else comes second, including wives and certainly children.

For Stanley, army life was charging on as it should, the family moving from posting to posting, camp to camp, following his work, until the terrible day he discovered his wife had motor neurone disease. He loved his wife very much indeed, obviously not as much as he loved the army but still, very much. More than any other woman. He hadn’t wanted anyone other than her and was utterly faithful to her, even though some of his more exotic unaccompanied earlier postings presented plenty of racy temptations that various of his oppos couldn’t resist. Not Stanley. He was always fiercely loyal to Moira and his darling daughters, Jo and Silvia.

As the ferocity of Moira’s illness became apparent, Stanley had a shocking epiphany. Once, when she was going through a particularly distressing episode of muscle twitching and painful cramps, he put his arms around her and with all his brute force, he clamped her very close to him until her poor body stopped spasming. She was calm for a moment, and so he released his grip. And as if powered by giant batteries, she started to jerk and twitch once more. Again, he hugged her tight, again she relaxed. Again he released, again she started up. Although it was tragic, the undeniably comic rhythm of it simultaneously struck them both as hilarious and they started to giggle and then laugh uproariously. The juddering and the laughing intermingled and it became a strangely beautiful union that moved him deeply. In that instant he realized that a momentous shift had happened, and for the first time, an
astoundingly ironic time, he knew he loved this wonderful vibrant woman more than he loved the army.

And now,
now
, she was leaving him, in the most achingly traumatic way.

He had to witness the rapid and savage attack of the brutal disease on Moira’s poor body, without being able to protect or defend her in any way. He felt useless, emasculated. As the steady death of neurons in the motor cortex of her brain, her brain stem and her spinal cord kicked in, virtually all voluntary movement ceased, and she became a woeful sight, an exhausted tortured wretch. She could hardly swallow, and her breathing became increasingly difficult. It was at this desperate phase of the violently merciless illness that Moira experienced the particularly cruel symptom referred to as the ‘pseudo bulbar effect’, an emotional incontinence which meant she had sudden and inexplicable episodes of exaggerated, uncontrollable laughter or crying or smiling, usually at complete odds with her mood.

Stanley could see these extremes were very difficult for the girls to deal with, very confusing and upsetting, but there was nothing anyone could do. Least of all him, the husband and father, a man unable to help or save his wife. A useless man. A failed man. All of his dreadful helpless feelings troubled Stanley increasingly until Moira’s harrowing end, and they increased beyond. The sight of his two little motherless daughters was more than he could stomach. His sad situation reconfirmed for
him the army mantra that the army comes first. If he had truly lived by that, then surely this wracking agony of loss would be considerably less. He would’ve lost only his second love, not his first. That surely would’ve been more bearable. Anything would be more bearable than this, because this was seven kinds of hell.

He had no idea whatsoever how to cope with it. So he didn’t. He threw himself into army life, into his matey male friendships, and into a large bottle of whisky. There, at least, he could erase for a while the enduring images of Moira in her last, pitiful days, which plagued him in every waking moment. It was during these turbulent times that Stanley’s own mother stepped in and insisted the girls should come to her since he was so clearly not coping. His drunkenness was just about tolerated at work, where his colleagues felt so desperately badly for him that they were prepared to muddle through and cover up when they could. He had a few warnings and was eventually sidelined to a desk job where his deterioration wouldn’t be so public or obvious, and that’s how he limped on until his retirement.