The Stone House (32 page)

The staff were noncommittal.

Romy squeezed her mother's hand, elated that even though Maeve couldn't speak she at least knew she was there.

Her mother would recover. Every day get a little bit better.

There were tests and more tests, her mother now awake, scared, having nightmares, her right side useless, her eye and face slightly twisted. Her breathing heavy, her attempts to speak slow, slurred. There wasn't any huge change from day to day but the three of them were confident she was at least holding her own. They were shaken when Dr Healy the Registrar let slip there would be no improvement. Maeve Dillon was not expected to recover.

DR CARNEY, THE
consultant, had called them into his office, a spartan white room with two filing cabinets and a desk with a computer and screen and printer on it. They felt like three bold schoolgirls waiting to be admonished by the elderly medic as he sat back in his swivel chair.

‘I've looked at your mother's file. As you know, we have done brain scans and an extensive range of tests, but unfortunately the results show there is evidence of a slight further bleed and indicated weakness of blood vessels in the vicinity.'

‘Can you do anything to stop it?' asked Kate.

‘There is no question of surgery on someone in your mother's condition. At the moment she is considered stable but I'm afraid there is not much else my colleagues or I can do for her here in the hospital.'

‘What do you mean?' they remonstrated.

‘What I mean,' he said slowly, ‘is that your mother's prognosis is poor. Maeve is in need of high-dependency nursing care but she does not need for the moment
to be in an acute hospital. We need to move her.'

‘Move her!' exclaimed Kate.

‘Home, perhaps?'

‘But Mammy lives alone. I'm working in Dublin, Moya's family are in London and Romy has just flown in from New York.'

‘I see, well then, a step-down facility, maybe a nursing home or the Hospice? Beds are difficult to find. I'm sorry but you must know the pressure there is on the hospitals these days with cutbacks and closures and bed shortages.'

‘When?' asked Moya, fiddling with the pearls around her neck.

‘As soon as we can organize it.'

‘Where do you suggest?'

‘I can give you the name of two or three places in the county, there's one on the Dublin side of the city, Ardnamone, and one in Tramore. The social worker Clare Maloney will know a few more.'

He stood up to signal that the meeting was over.

‘You do realize that your mother is not expected to recover but we do want her to be as comfortable as possible for the short time that's left. I'm sure we are all agreed on that.'

Numb, they had sat in the hospital's small coffee shop, sipping tepid coffee from plastic cups.

‘What are we going to do?' sighed Moya. ‘What's going to happen to her? If we lived closer I'd willingly have her.'

‘You couldn't swing a cat in my place. Molly sleeps in the converted dressing room!'

‘Maybe we should go and see the place the doctor mentioned,' suggested Romy.

They drove out to see Ardnamone, a modern purpose-built nursing home three miles from Waterford city. The door was locked so they had to ring and ring for admittance. The matron, in her nurse's uniform, let them in. She offered to show them round. Small single rooms with a nice view of the garden and parking area, a TV positioned on the wall opposite the bed.

The dining area, where the residents came to lunch and tea, was a bright and airy room with a conservatory to one side; the large sitting room, filled with elderly residents sitting in an assortment of couches and armchairs, was dominated by a giant-screen television, which was showing a cookery programme.

They explained to the matron that their mother had had a serious stroke, and loss of function, was classed as highly dependent and would need a lot of nursing.

The middle-aged woman was at least honest with them.

‘I have three patients like that at the moment. I'm afraid with my staffing levels I couldn't take on a fourth. Maybe in a few months' time, but for now, I'm afraid no. We couldn't offer your mother a place.'

She walked them to the door, wishing them luck.

Ardrigole, the old Edwardian house overlooking the sea in Tramore, was more like a hotel from the outside than a nursing home. Inside a warren of corridors and high-ceilinged lounges and a dining room with heavy dark furniture and an overpowering smell of cabbage
greeted them. The residents seemed ancient, some wheelchair-bound, some strapped in special chairs.

‘We have a lot of Alzheimer's patients,' explained the young carer as she gave them a quick tour. The rooms were larger than in the previous home but were filled with a load of oversized shabby pieces, which looked in sore need of dusting. The thought of their mother abandoned and dependent in such a place drove them back to the car.

‘I don't want Mammy ending her days in any of those places,' Moya protested, almost in tears.

‘We're just not used to seeing them, that's all,' said Kate. ‘I'm sure they look after the old people very well.'

‘God, some of the patients looked about ninety!' joked Romy. ‘Please shoot me before I end up anywhere like that!'

They sat on the almost empty seafront, in utter silence.

‘I think we should bring Mammy home,' said Romy, staring at the waves.

They were all in agreement. It was what their mother would have wanted, what they all wanted. The problem was the mess of their lives and the commitment needed. Moya knew Patrick was already complaining about minding the children in London, and Kate was trying to get Patterson's to give her more time off work.

‘It doesn't matter. I'll be here,' volunteered Romy. ‘I've no husband or children.'

Moya and Kate looked at each other with relief, knowing that their mother would die in dignity in her own place, her own home. They would organize agency
nurses, carers, whatever was needed for Maeve and would help care for her as much as they could.

‘Romy, do you know what you'd be getting yourself into? Maybe you should think about it.'

‘I don't have to think about it. I'm not putting my mother into one of those fucking places to die. I understand you've both got kids, jobs, whatever, but I'll manage. I told you I'll do it!'

‘Romy, are you sure?'

‘I'll stay with her,' she promised.

THE STONE HOUSE
was unchanged. The paint around the windows weathered from the sea, the front door creaking, sand hidden in the crevices of the red and white tiled floor. Pale roses clambering round the porch and terracotta pots of blazing geraniums around the step. The house was quiet and still as Romy moved from room to room. New couch covers and a fancy reading light, a bluebottle dancing in the living-room window. The dining room hushed and bright. She went through to the kitchen: sunlight streaming in across the patio doors and warming the wooden presses and huge pine table, the teapot still on the table. She rinsed it out under the tap of the Belfast sink. Then along the hall to the glass sun-room – wicker chairs and couches and green plants wilting in the stuffy atmosphere. She opened a window before turning to her father's old study, where the large map of Ireland was still hanging on the wall.

‘The only geography you need to know is your own country.' He'd said it so often, jabbing at a river or the
mountains, trying to ascertain where new roads were being built.

Memory hung in the silence as she looked around her. In her mother's absence the tall grandfather clock in the hall had stopped and Romy reached for the silver key on the ledge. Moving the hand to the correct time she gently wound it, waiting for the comforting sound of the timepiece before going upstairs. Her bedroom, small and perfect with a view of the sea, she'd always loved it. Her cork noticeboard was now covered in pictures of dinosaurs and dragons and a painted rainbow. Flip-flops and a baseball cap flung on the bottom of the wardrobe.

She moved from room to room. The library books beside her mother's bed unread and overdue. The Royal Horticultural Society Garden Book, her mother's bible, left where it always was. From the back of the house she could see the orchard at the bottom of the garden was gone, the apple trees cut down, a high wall separating their garden and the tiled roofs of the new infill development. The land sold three years ago, time moving on.

She looked around. They had two days to ready the house for her mother's homecoming.

The ambulance men had been kindness itself, treating their patient, Maeve Dillon, like she was made of porcelain as they lifted her across the driveway and step, into the hall, Kate directing them into the dining room. They had stripped it of the chairs and big dining table and transformed it into a sunny bedroom with french windows to the garden.

‘Isn't it wonderful to be home, Mum, and able to look out into the garden?'

Fergus and Liam had lifted the heavy double bed into position in front of the french windows so her mother had a magnificent view of the herbaceous border and the purple bursting hebes and buddleia in the shrubbery, with the path leading to the vegetable garden only a yard or two away.

‘We moved your bed down here so you will be able to see everything instead of being stuck upstairs,' Kate said, pulling back the bed sheets and covers as the ambulance men shifted her mother from the stretcher bed onto the mattress.

‘Now you're home,' she said, suddenly overcome with emotion as her mother's head flopped against the pillow. ‘Here, let's see if we can make you more comfortable.'

Moya carried her mother's handbag and the small weekend case with her few bits of clothing in her arms, trying to decide where to place them.

‘Here's your handbag, Mum,' she said, placing it on the bed in reach of her mother's fingers, noticing her mother's eye turn in the direction of the precious bag. ‘If you want we can look at it later when you feel a bit better.'

Kate fussed around getting towels and pointing out the beautiful John Rocha vase filled with tall blue delphiniums positioned on the sideboard, which now, instead of wine carafes and silver dishes and bowls and plates, held an array of family photos and her mother's favourite ornaments, including a papier mâché pig made by Fiona.

‘Do you like the room?' Romy smiled, sitting on the bed beside her. ‘We tried to do it the way you would.'

Agitated, Maeve Dillon tried to signal her approval.

‘I think you do like it!' Kate smiled, pleased with their efforts. ‘You won't be lonely or scared here, Mum, because with the door open we'll be able to see you from the kitchen.'

‘We've got a phone there beside your bed and a radio and the TV if you want it, but maybe you should rest quiet for a while.'

Their mother looked exhausted, a smaller, shrunken figure in the bed, forcing herself to keep awake.

‘Romy will fix us all something to eat.'

They could hear Romy clatter away in the kitchen singing as she washed and peeled and chopped, banging away at the pots and pans.

‘She used to work in a restaurant, waiting tables mostly but sometimes cooking. Can you imagine Romy being a chef!'

‘I heard that!' laughed her sister. ‘Might I remind you it never does any good to slag off or upset the cook, or God knows what you might find in your food.'

‘Temperamental too,' whispered Moya, imagining she could see signs of laughter in her mother's eyes.

They ate off the small side table in the room, potatoes and finely cut strips of chicken tossed with tomato and green beans. Romy had mashed up her mother's potato with milk and cut her meal into tiny pieces, adding a smooth gravy to make it easier for her to eat.

‘Nothing like home cooking, compared to hospital food,' she teased.

When they'd finished eating, Kate switched on the
news headlines, the three of them sitting in silence watching the flicker of images.

‘Mummy, Nurse Reilly, Brigid, is coming tomorrow morning to help wash you and look after you and make sure everything is all right.'

Maeve nodded her acceptance.

‘But tonight I'm going to sit up with you and take care of you so Romy can sleep. Anything you want or need, you know we are all here for you.'

Kate looked around the room: it was warm and cosy, filled with flowers and mementoes of a fulfilled life, pictures of her mother's childhood, and girlhood, her wedding to handsome Frank Dillon and photos of her with her children and grandchildren. So different from the crowded dining room set up for Sunday dinners and entertaining and parties, with the carpets rolled back to dance.

Her twenty-first, her parents' silver wedding anniversary, her father's funeral, Molly's christening. She looked at her watch. Derry was probably getting their daughter ready for bed, putting the toys away, getting a picture book out to read, brushing her hair, making sure she'd gone to the toilet and washed her hands and face and brushed her teeth. She picked up the phone and dialled. Derry answered immediately.

‘We're home from the hospital and Mum is tucked up nicely in her own bed,' she said softly, when Derry had filled her in on the day's events. ‘Is Molly still up?'

She could hear the giggles and laughter as Derry put her three-year-old on the phone, the shyness in her voice when she first said ‘Mummy?'

‘It's Mummy, pet. I'm just phoning to say goodnight and see how you are.'

Molly took a deep breath and began telling her every detail of the day from the minute Daddy couldn't find any clean pink panties for her to wear, to spilling orange juice on her new cardigan, to the boy who sat beside her being a cry baby because he couldn't match all his shapes on the board, and the new baby ducks she saw in the park after playgroup when Derry collected her.