Reflections of Sunflowers (16 page)

I took Judith to market where we met Miranda, Jonathan and Abie, who would take Judith back with them later that day. We all returned to Bel-Air where we found Hugh, Sally and Guy, just finishing the transformation of our jungle of a garden. In the broiling heat, they had apparently appeared out of the blue and, after spending time with Mike, had just got to work.

‘We knew we wouldn’t be able to cut it all back if you’d been here,’ teased Hugh. I looked at my tidily clipped-back laurels and my weed-free terrace round the pool, the neatly cut lawns; and I forgave the few chopped down daisies, the little pink
guaria
that hadn’t been noticed. Such kindness, in this intolerable heat and when they had so much to do at the golf course, was very moving. We rustled up a huge
salade niçoise
while they showered off the sweat and grass.

The next day I realised that there was something wrong with the pool pump. It was making a grating noise and the water was getting cloudy. We rang M. Escoffier who promised to come the following afternoon, which was Sunday. We had been invited to lunch by Ruth Thomas and I knew that, if I could persuade him to go, Mike would enjoy it. Delicious food and good company put him in a more relaxed
mood, which was just as well, for M. Escoffier took one look at the pump, left and returned with a new one, costing over £300.

On Monday morning we were up early to go for a blood test. Dr Rouquié was jovial and reassuring. ‘Well, at least it’s you coming to see me, rather than the other way round,’ he said to Mike. ‘That has to be an improvement.’

After the surgery we shopped briefly and went home. Even this short excursion had worn him out. Raymond came by and they sat together on the porch. Then Jean appeared with two new friends, Andy and Maggie, who had recently bought a house not far away. We had seen the work on their house being carried out
en passant
and knew that Andy was a doctor and that they intended to live permanently in France on their retirement. We liked them at once and Raymond was very glad to meet them. Ordinarily Mike would have enjoyed holding court but he soon made his excuses and went to rest. I felt reassured to have a doctor not far away, even if he wasn’t legally allowed to practise in France.

Later that afternoon Mike was anxious to make a booking for our return on the last motor-rail in the middle of September.

‘I don’t feel that I shall be well enough to drive home,’ he said. He fretted until the booking was made and then seemed to relax. That night the heat
was intense. There was not a breath of air. The next morning I opened all the doors and windows before seven but had to close them within an hour and by midday, the temperature in my house, with its
metre-thick
walls and all the shutters closed, was eighty-five degrees. In the afternoon, while Mike slept indoors. I took my chair and lay under my ash tree, depleted by the storm. The cows were lying down some three metres away. I covered my legs and arms with an
anti-insect
spray and fell asleep, my finger on the button. I woke to find the cows, the large mother cow in front, standing in a line close to the fence, all looking at me. They stayed immobile for several minutes before the mother nudged the others away for more cropping of the sparse, fast-yellowing grass. She remained alone, her large horns giving her a serious air, just sniffing me from a distance. Her great flanks quivered under the hordes of flies. I wondered if she could smell the insect spray. At last she moved away into the baking sunlight to join the others. The strong light on their backs, their muzzles away from the sun, patiently munching in a circle, they then inched back toward the shade from the tree, ears constantly flicking, now one, then the other, tails tossed languidly across their massive rumps.

The following day we had an appointment with the dermatologist in Villeneuve. We have air-conditioning in the car and when we parked and stepped outside,
the town was like an oven. Dr Unanoe, a Basque, was very pleasant and read the notes from St George’s Hospital without difficulty. He did not even examine Mike but I imagine that he could see that the blisters had gone. He seemed more concerned about reducing the steroids immediately and clearly thought that this should already have been done before we left London. ‘Otherwise, Monsieur, your muscles will be badly affected,’ he said. He then rang through to get the results of the blood test from Dr Rouquié and he looked grave. ‘You have a slight kidney infection, you must continue with the antibiotics.’ What else could go wrong? I thought. As we left Villeneuve I remarked on the smell of the drains, supposing it to be the result of the heat. However the smell seemed to persist and it was not until I reached home and opened the boot that I realised that I had carried a sack of rubbish, intended for the large
poubelle
in the village, all the way to Villeneuve and back. I was losing my grip.

Mike slept most of the rest of the day but in the evening announced his intention of going to the market in Monflanquin the following morning.

‘I’ll just sit in the square while you shop,’ he said. He got up early, showered and shaved, and off we went. But he found it hard to even walk to a table and sit. I scurried round the stalls, we had a brief chat with the
ancien Maire,
and we came home. His temperature was up again. I called the doctor as instructed.
‘Mais,
le Docteur Rouquié est en vacances’,
said the secretary. Of course! It was the week of the medieval festival and in his other role as Deputy Mayor, Dr Rouquié was well known for the splendid costume in which he welcomed the arrival of Richard Coeur de Lion at the opening of the festivities.
La Doctoresse
, it was explained, had just finished her rounds and was about to eat. She would come as soon as she could. I sponged him down which made him shudder and Andy came and gave me moral support. When the doctor arrived she decided that the best solution was a few days in hospital on a drip. ‘He’ll soon be much better, you’ll see,’ she encouraged.

She began ringing round. Half an hour later she was still trying. There were three different medical teams who shared the Hospital St Cyr, in Villeneuve, we learnt, and none had a bed. We didn’t realise then that we were just a small part of the crisis occurring in hospitals all over France due to the excessive heat coinciding with the annual holidays. Eventually she was advised that A&E would have a bed the following day if she could get him in now by ambulance. Another session of phone calls to find an ambulance. The eleventh one was successful. By this time, Raymond, Véronique, Jean, Hugh and Sally had all arrived and Mike was cheered as he was carried out across the parched grass into a luxurious ambulance. There was no room for me so Jean drove me to the hospital.
‘Bring a book,’ she said, with great forethought.

I felt completely unreal as we hurtled through the countryside. When we reached the hospital we found Mike, in his pyjamas, sitting in a small, but mercifully air conditioned, waiting room. He sat, without complaining, hands folded on his primitive walking stick, which he had cut in the wood years ago, and taken to using since he became so weak. We sat for four hours on hard metal chairs. We saw a young man whose ear had been gored by a cow, a little boy with a broken arm, a woman who carried a plastic bowl to vomit in; luckily she didn’t need it.

Mike seemed calm and stoical, just longing to be in a bed under medical care. Jean and I read, which seemed to puzzle the other people waiting. I practically finished
The Master,
by C. P. Snow. I’m not sure if I would have bothered, in other circumstances. At midnight we saw the doctor. He was wisely not hurrying as he was the only one on duty with a long night before him. He was big, black and smiling, from Nouvelle Calédonie. By this time Mike had perked up. His fever had gone down a little. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ queried the doctor. But when the results of a blood test came through within the hour, a kidney infection was confirmed and he was admitted. I handed all his medication over and Jean and I walked out into the hot, stifling night and came slowly home. It was almost three o’clock when she drove me up over the brow of
the hill to Bel-Air. I was too exhausted to wonder if I would be nervous in the house on my own.

I awoke at seven and felt very wobbly. I had a shower and washed my hair. Raymond offered to drive me in at ten-thirty and we whirled along. Raymond was familiar with the hospital and we soon found Mike looking very cheerful in a spotless white gown, on a drip, in a lovely room with an en suite bathroom. There was one other bed but no one in it. I spoke to the Sister about his medication and everything seemed under control. He already looked so much better. We left at midday and Raymond offered to drive me in again later but Mike said that it wasn’t necessary. He was clearly very content to be in safe hands and preferred to rest rather than make conversation. ‘Not that I don’t enjoy looking at you,’ he said.

When I rang early that evening he told me that there was someone in the next bed who was very quiet. He said the nurses were super, and that he had enjoyed his lunch, which had consisted of soup, smoked salmon and prawns, grilled fish with courgettes and macaroni, green salad, cheese and dessert.

When I told Raymond, he laughed.
‘C’est parce que
c’est le quinze Août,’
he said. Of course! It was the feast of the Assumption. ‘He won’t be eating like that every day.’

It was a heavenly evening. I watered the hanging baskets, tested the pH in the pool. There was a gentle
breeze, such a relief. And only 76 degrees on the porch. The sky was a hazy blue with puffs of white cloud shading to the faintest pink as the sun began to slide down. Jean-Michel’s pigeons who had croo-crooed all afternoon on my roof had flown home to roost. I looked through the open door, and straight through the house. Out of the window, framed in creeper, I could see the tops of the maize caught in the evening light, and the grey, purple haze of the hills on the far side of the river Lot. A small green tree frog plopped onto the leg of the table, clambered up slowly through the umbrella hole, paused for a moment then took off again, landing on my hand. There he just sat, being cool. I waited until he jumped off again and went to bed.

The next morning I phoned at eight-thirty. A faint voice answered but I could not make out what he said and, thinking that it must be the quiet stranger in the next bed, I apologised and rang off. Within five minutes my phone rang. It was the doctor. She said something that I did not understand then added, ‘Your husband cannot speak. He needs you, Madame. Please drive carefully.’

I stood, shaking, then rang Raymond who told me on no account to drive myself. He raced Jean and me along the winding road to the hospital. At one point in the twenty-minute drive he was so frantic I had to calm him.

We knew now that Mike had had a stroke and found him at last, in a different, single room on the second floor, flushed and dreadfully restless. He had difficulty
breathing and I thought he was going to die within the hour. I just wanted to reassure him somehow and sat, holding his hand, talking, almost willing him to die peacefully. I couldn’t bear that he should have to suffer anymore. Gradually he grew calmer.

The young doctor whom we called Doctor Blue Eyes did her rounds. We never could remember her name but her astonishingly beautiful eyes were intelligent and sympathetic.

‘If he survives today there is hope,’ she said. We sent Raymond home. By the evening Mike’s breathing had improved. He knew us. We had established one squeeze of the hand for yes, two for no. That evening I was told very firmly to go home and rest. Our new friends, Maggie and Doctor Andy brought up a basket containing the most delicious meal for Jean and me. They had guests and wisely knew that we would be too exhausted to want to eat with others and make conversation. We were both surprised to find that we were ravenous.

The next morning while I sat by his bed, my two sons walked into the room. It was like the cavalry arriving. Hugh and Sally came later, Claudette and Raymond during the afternoon and Jean; and so began a routine of arriving at ten and leaving at eight-thirty. I sang to him a lot, quietly, especially before leaving him, as much to keep up my own spirits as for him.
We took short breaks for food when others took over our vigil. We were entitled to a ticket for a subsidised meal in the hospital canteen but the food was pretty basic and we preferred to go out into Villeneuve. Just spending twenty minutes away from the hospital in a world where people went about their normal business of the day was a relief.

The nursing was very efficient. At first it was difficult to distinguish the nurses from other staff as they all wore spotless white. Gradually faces became familiar. Mike’s bed linen and chemise were changed every day, and twice if necessary. He had always already been washed and shaved when I arrived. There were two senior nurses, one optimist, the other not. Miss Pessimist, as we dubbed her, took us aside after the third day and said that Mike was unlikely to ever speak again or even to regain enough movement to be accepted in a rehabilitation centre. We all cried. Putney Home and Hospital for Incurables, euthanasia, we thought about it all.

Hugh and Sally, with Guy, were the optimistic brigade. They brought pencils and a drawing block. Although it was his left side that was paralysed, the right hand, once so skilled at drawing, careered all over the page. But we did have some success and he greeted me the following day with a very slurred ‘How’s the pool?’ He began to massage his left arm and do face exercises. Sometimes he spoke, seldom coherently, at
others he just slept. Daily physiotherapy began after he had been hauled out of bed with a hoist and tied in a chair for an hour.

‘I want to go home,’ he said very clearly and grumpily one morning. The next day there was no response at all. Adam had looked up information on the Net and learnt that stroke patients often made strides at three-day intervals, the other two days being just recuperation.

While he slept we did crosswords to pass the time. At one point Matthew said, ‘I don’t actually know what ‘salacious’ means.’ A voice from the bed said croakily, but clearly, ‘Dirty-minded.’

‘No, Dad,’ replied Adam, airily. ‘That won’t do. It’s something R, something R, something, something, something.’

There was the briefest of pauses. ‘Prurient,’ said Mike.

We treated ourselves to a meal at the Vietnamese restaurant that evening to celebrate. We finished with liqueurs, which when drained revealed, I was told, very rude marbles in the bottom. They were lost on me, as I couldn’t see them without my glasses.

We were instructed to sit on Mike’s paralysed side to stimulate the damaged side of his brain. He was propped up as there was a danger of the chest infection returning. He had lost so much weight that his ring kept slipping off and he gave it to me for safekeeping.
When we got home that night, I swam to relax my tired muscles. I awoke at two o’clock and realised that the ring was no longer on my finger. In a panic I got up, put on the pool light and ran out into the garden. It must have come off in the water. Could it have gone into the skimmers? I had no idea. How could I have been so careless? The ring was one of a pair with my wedding ring, and had been specially designed for us by a friend, so many years ago. It seemed a terribly bad omen. But as I ran up the steps, something glinted in the moonlight. There, by the side of the pool where I had dried myself, lay the small thick, decorated band of gold, which matched my own. I picked it up and slid it onto the chain round my neck. I sat outside in the moonlight, until, in spite of the warmth of the night, I began to shiver.

Adam had to leave after a few days but promised to return at the weekend with reinforcements. He and Caz had already booked for their annual holiday at Bel-Air and Elliot and Thomas badly wanted to come. Until they arrived, Matthew, who was officially on holiday from working on
Bombay Dreams
and could stay, took turns with me at Mike’s bedside, and other friends and neighbours gave us constant support. We returned to Bel-Air one evening to find the most beautifully arranged vase of sunflowers outside the door. Ruth Thomas arrived with a radio for Mike and the cousins who lived in Villeneuve offered us a bed,
anytime. But strangely, as I became used to it, the drive home at the end of the day was quite soothing, after so many hours of anxious inactivity while Mike slept. Fields of sunflowers were already turning colour, their heavy heads bending over. The road was especially beautiful where it curved between two great expanses of maize. On one side the soft, fluffy, pale green duvet of flowers of the edible variety; on the other, that for cattle feed, the rows more rigidly defined with spiky, pinkish red flowers.

Matthew and I cleared out the boys’ room and made the beds. I wondered how they would cope with their sick grandpa. While we existed in a small world between home and hospital, village life went on. There was a grand wedding at the big house. As the family were Protestant the ceremony was to take place in the Temple in Monflanquin and Raymond was engaged to chauffeur the bride in the old car, suitably decorated. He had to buy new trousers.
‘Farce qu’il a trop mangé,
’ teased Claudette. ‘It’s not true,’ grunted Raymond, then he shrugged and smiled.

It was market day at Villeneuve, and Miranda and Jonathan left Abie with friends and came to see Mike. He smiled at Miranda looking so beautiful in her long orange dress. We saw another doctor, newly returned from holiday. He was pleased with Mike’s progress but worried about signs of atrial fibulation. I explained that this was an old problem, which he
had developed many years before when he was trying to combine occasional commuting to teach in an American university with working on BBC children’s television, while also teaching at Goldsmiths.

‘We would like to give him an anticoagulant,’ said the doctor. ‘But it could make the bruise in his brain spread, so we can’t risk it.’ He sighed.
‘Courage, Madame.’

Hugh and Sally arrived at lunchtime and banished us from the sickroom to go and eat. The pavement cafés were crowded. The waiter, recognising us, squeezed us in, but when Jonathan ordered cheese with his
omelette
aux cèpes
his eyebrows almost disappeared. ‘
Sacrilège!’
he declared.

It rained hard in the night but the temperature did not fall. With the air so moist it felt more like the Caribbean. Raymond and Claudette came in to see Mike, with Jean-Michel and Véronique. They also had another patient in the hospital to visit as the young man who usually drives the combine had slipped while vaulting over an electric fence. Unwisely he had grabbed the live
piquet
, which gave him a shock and caused him to fall so awkwardly that he had broken his femur. Mike seemed very sleepy and it was difficult to rouse him.
‘Ouvrez les yeux,
Michel!’ yelled the nurses each time they came along. He would make an effort but not for long. We drove home hoping that the grandchildren would get a better result the next day.

Jean had taken the day off to cook a huge lasagne and she brought it up just before they arrived. The boys tumbled out of the car, which I was surprised to see was chauffeur driven. The TGV had arrived on time in Agen but the office for the already booked and paid for hire car was shut. Adam learnt, next day, that the car keys had been left with the man who runs the station buffet. As there was no way he could possibly have known of this cavalier arrangement and as the taxi had cost eighty pounds he was not best pleased. The hire car arrived in Villeneuve the next morning and he did, eventually, get his taxi fare refunded.

Now we were a complete family and Matthew was able to take the odd morning off. He had been such a strong support but the constant anxiety was beginning to take its toll. He and Thomas swam. Elliot too, swallowing a lot of water as he chirped away with an endless recital of interesting information. The whole world fascinates him. Long may it last. Claudette appeared with melons, and an egg loaf. She had obviously got the idea from the
pain poisson
we had eaten at the tenth wedding anniversary. This one was made with ten eggs mixed with small pieces of courgette, carrot, onion and lardons and cooked for forty-five minutes in a very slow oven. ‘In a
bain-marie
?’
I asked.
‘Non
,’ she replied, simply. It was delicious.

We established a visiting rota, which gave all of us
a little time off. On August the 27th Caz and I did the late shift and Mike was more animated. As I adjusted his pillow he looked at me with his eyes wide open.

‘It’s a big stroke,’ he said, refuting what I had told him at the beginning. The physiotherapist had been again and was pleased with the improvement in his movement on the paralysed side. ‘He is really trying hard,’ he said. Only his chest was still causing concern. I sat listening hour after hour to the hiss of the oxygen and wondering how soon we could get him home. Adam had been in touch with our GP who promised to do her best with the stroke unit at St George’s. As I drove back later to Bel-Air with my
daughter-in
-law on another beautiful evening, I compared the drive with that from Clapham to Tooting and tried to count my blessings. When we got home we found a barbecue prepared for Matthew’s birthday. We ate the last of the
pain aux oeufs
for a starter. It was even better after three days.

The next day, after a long session with the hospital administrator, we began to make plans to fly Mike home as soon as the doctor would release him. Clearly his recovery was going to be a slow and lengthy process and we had already run up a sizeable bill, only part of which would be covered by the E111. We had already established that our travel insurance would cover neither this, nor an air ambulance. The insurance company had contacted our GP and it was clear that Mike had
forgotten to add to his form the latest medication for the angina. I sat, for my twenty minutes off duty, by the fountain in the garden of the hospital, great cedar trees bordering the shady lawns. I thought how unimportant the money was. We were fortunate to have some savings. What else were savings for?

It was almost the end of August and, although it was still summer heat, the leaves were turning. Jean, who had been such a wonderful support, had closed her studio and her little house and left for England, and Maggie and Andy had to leave later that day. We know how hard it is to go when the weather is so beautiful. We continued with our daily vigil. We drove into the hospital every morning, past the unusual and somehow curiously reassuring statue of the mother lion and her three cubs at the wide entrance. We now took a short cut up to Mike’s room. There was a door in the corridor which said
FUNERARIUM
. We had made grim jokes about it when we first passed it. Now one of the nurses had shown us that if we pushed open this door and walked up the back staircase, it opened almost opposite his door. The boys came for a brief visit every other day. Elliot chatted but Thomas found it hard. Every so often we were gently expelled from the room while some procedure was carried out. Doctor Blue Eyes showed me the results of a chest X-ray. They did not look good. The nurses came yet again to aspirate his chest. His breathing was laboured. I sat
in his room hour after hour just willing the new and stronger antibiotic to do its work. But he looked so tired and frail, as though he was just too exhausted to battle on. And still I hoped.

On the last day of August, Caz and I stayed for the evening session. His breathing was much better but for the first time for weeks there was a little breeze outside and his hands seemed cold. I closed the door onto the small balcony and lowered the blinds. Before I left I asked the nurse for a blanket, kissed him and gently covered him. Did they know? I’m not sure. Had they hinted, I would have stayed. But they didn’t and I left, as usual. The next morning, before eight o’clock, they rang me to say that my husband had just died peacefully in his sleep.

Matthew, Adam and I walked up the stairs for the last time. Mike lay, so thin, under the snowy sheet, like an effigy. They had propped up his chin with a folded cloth, but too high. It made the corners of his generous mouth turn down as if he thoroughly disapproved of dying. We kissed him and tried to comprehend the incomprehensible. One of the staff came in and asked if I had brought his clothes. It had never occurred to me to do so. His clean pyjamas were in the cupboard, which he had never worn since his stroke.