You Have Not a Leg to Stand On (2 page)

Hello Babe

I was six weeks in Nairobi hospital on a special type of bed called a Stryker bed which turned me from my front to my back every two hours to avoid pressure sores. My Brother-in-law, a stockbroker on the London stock market, found it amusing I was being turned over every two hours as that's what brokers do to generate extra fees! So he bought my mother a few very cheap shares, on the New York exchange, in a small medical company called Stryker. In a few years those shares were to become so valuable they kept my mother in relative comfort for the rest of her life.

I don't quite know how I got from the crash site to the hospital where my wife eventually found me. It was a little African hospital in the town of Nyahururu with two of us in most of the beds. I awoke and looked straight into the eyes of an old African in an army greatcoat, carrying a paraffin lantern. He said to me in Swahili, that I had a severe wound on my leg and he was going to sew it up. I looked down, and indeed there was a nasty wound, a gash opening up to the bone, on the knee and right down the side of my leg. He had a huge needle and thread and proceeded to sew. It occurred to me I should be feeling a modicum of pain, so I assumed he'd injected a local anaesthetic, but there was no sign of any cleaning bowl or syringe. I drifted off. I awoke again looking into the face of another younger African in a white uniform. He spoke to me in English, ‘You have broken your back, and you will never walk again.' I asked, ‘Is my wife here?' He said, ‘No, she doesn't know where you are, but we are trying to contact her.' I drifted off. I awoke again and looked straight into my wife's face. The feeling of relief was so intense, it took my breath away. I said ‘Hello Babe, I've broken my back, and I'll never walk again.' She turned away aghast. The African nurse with her said, ‘Be calm Mrs. Mayers he will be perfectly alright.' My wife later told me, she ran to the loo, getting there just in time before the total contents of her bowels emptied themselves. If that nurse could see me now, in our beautiful converted barn. Sitting at the kitchen table, looking out on to a lovely, sumptuous courtyard garden, she'd have the right to say, ‘I told you so.'

But that would be after years of devastating trauma yet ahead. I'm sure Africans generally cope with disasters much better than we do here in the first world as they live so close to it, in their everyday lives.

Somehow it was arranged by my wife and our great friends Jill and Renaldo, for Peter and Jo, with whom we'd stayed so often, after delicious suppers and too much red wine, to come at daybreak. Driving the 100 miles from Nairobi to Nyahururu to collect me. We then made the long slow journey to Nairobi hospital, with me lying flat on a door and drugged to the eyeballs, in the back of Peter's Range Rover.It seemed an eternity for my poor little wife crouched in the back, but I was ‘out-of-it'. Later I asked her how she'd found me, and what happened to the car.

Earlier that evening she'd had a faint, faraway telephone call, from a man with a strong, almost unintelligible Kenyan accent, briefly shouting down the line, ‘Mr. Mayers has been involved in an accident, he is in hospital. Then the line went dead. She had no idea to whom she was speaking or to which hospital he was referring. All she knew was where I was headed that afternoon so I might have been in Nakuru hospital, where I was born, or I might have been in Nyahururu Hospital. They were sixty miles apart.

My Parents were away on a much-needed, long-awaited holiday in England, so we were living in the family home, my wife running my mother's business of Maasai Dancers. Busloads of tourists, from all over the world, would pour down the side of the valley every afternoon, to watch a troop of Maasai Moran (young warriors) performing their tribal dances.Then the tourists had an English tea with scones and cake, on the green, soft expansive lawn. To help her, living in the annex, she had a lovely young blond English girl, on her gap year, called Fiona. Fiona could never, ever have imagined the drama in which she was about to be involved.

My wife and Fiona set off into the darkness not knowing where they were going. After about two hours driving, they stopped at the turning to Nyahururu. Should they go on to Nakuru, or turn off to Nyahururu. By now my wife was beginning to panic. She took the turning to the latter. It was after midnight when they crept into the small, dirty, pitch-black darkness of Nyahururu. They stopped, not having a clue where to go. Out of the dense blackness, into the beams of the car headlights, emerged two young African men. She knew she was taking a risk, but she had no alternative. She wound down her window a few inches and as they passed asked in Swahili, could they please tell her the way to the hospital. They started to explain while coming towards the car. They bent down to look in. On seeing two girls by themselves, they both made a grab for the door handles trying to get in. My wife had the presence of mind to have already engaged the car in first gear. She surged forward, the two of them running after the car. Quite by chance, not far ahead, hardly daring to slow down, they spotted a small sign pointing to the hospital. The relief was short lived, as you now know what she was about to encounter.

It must have been around 2 am when there was nothing else to be heard, nothing else to be told and nothing else to be done. They were overcome with tiredness, but there was nowhere to go. The hospital had no spare beds. They remained sitting beside my bed in upright hospital chairs trying to get through the night. In the morning, my wife came with me, in Peter's Range Rover and Fiona drove the car back to the farm.

The everyday routine of hospital life quickly took over. Rolled from my front to my back, and stretched-out, with weights under my chin, and pulled by the ankles in the vain hope the spinal cord would have space for healing. Our friend Jill ran a little nursery school in Karen, an area named after Karen Blixen, who wrote ‘Out of Africa'. During a painting class she asked all the children to paint pictures for a dear friend of hers who was in hospital and needed cheering up. She arrived the following afternoon with piles of paintings which she proceeded to stick on all the walls and on the ceiling. One very complicated one on the floor, which I could analyse while rolled on my front. I'm sure this sort of therapy could be very therapeutic for anyone in my situation. Just by chance, and not that I knew at the time, one of those pictures was painted by a tiny tot called Natasha Kaplinski. Years later this close friend was staying with us in our barn in England. While idly watching the news one day, she said with utter amazement, ‘Natasha Kaplinski, how on earth can that be?'

Meantime, my poor little wife was having a harrowing time. She was with me every waking hour, and being ferried back and forth to Peter and Jo's house, by kind, gentle, caring friends. Jo was waiting each night ready with a warm drink and a sleeping pill.

Kind, caring, gentle Fiona, slept in the next bed, to be with her when she suddenly awoke with crowding fears of unknown things to come. As far as my wife was concerned our life had ended. What on earth would we do now? Was it feasible to stay in Kenya? What would we do in England? The structure of our life had fallen apart. To add to this catastrophe, she had a telephone call from her brother to say her father had just died from colon cancer. The only way of coping with a horrific set of circumstances such as this is to think short term. Broken back? Stoke Mandeville. How to get there? Waiting list? Yes, of course. My Brother-in-law, in Kenya, was a doctor and had qualified with a friend who was at present at Roehampton Hospital in Richmond outside London. They were famous for treating the limbless but had less experience with paraplegia, but accepted me to see how I'd get on. I didn't get on very well, but it was while there, at Roehampton, we had an enormous change in our fortune. We met a woman called Marriott White.

Marriott's husband was paraplegic and had recently died. Her house in Notting Hill Gate was converted for him. So instead of moving, she decided to let it to people in wheelchairs from abroad. Talk about fitting the bill! We went for the weekend and stayed with her for five years.

I did go to Stoke Mandeville Hospital for five months, and what I was taught there was invaluable. I'll expand upon that episode later.

Bangalore

It was when living with Marriott we decided to go back to Kenya for a while, to be with my parents. It was on this first visit after the accident a friend came rushing to our valley with a book she desperately wanted us to read. It was supposedly a true account of ‘miracles' being performed by an Indian Guru called Satya Sai Baba. He had a group of devotees in Nairobi, who were quite adamant that he did perform miracles, raising from the dead was documented, so making someone walk again, would be a doddle.

They helped us with all the contacts we'd need, and we were on our way to the Ashram in Bangalore in the next few days. There've been so many accounts and documentaries about India, you feel there'd be nothing new to say, but being there is quite different. There's never any quiet, you feel as though you're within a cauldron of people. The only peaceful things are the cows standing in the middle of the road. The cars never stop hooting, and they rush everywhere as though they'll be late for the next stop. Our contact in Bangalore was a dizzy Princess called Princess Devi. She was also a faithful devotee of Sai Baba.

The Ashram was relatively quiet and very well organised around the daily appearance of the man himself. The quadrangle he'd wander through was maybe a couple of acres, and the sea of people was divided into perfect squares by newly picked paths of bougainvillea petals. They were so thickly laid; his bare feet didn't touch the bare earth. The men and women were in separate squares, all sitting cross-legged, and all bowed as he slowly passed through us. Every now and again he'd stop, put his hand out, palm down, over a fortunate favoured one. He would move it slowly in a circle and ash would fall out, into eager stretched out hands, and be eaten there and then.

After some time of making the same exhausting, ritualistic journey every morning from the centre of Bangalore to Whitefields, the home of the Ashram, our Princess managed to elbow herself into a position on the edge of one of the squares, along a petalled path. So when the ‘Great Man' happened to pass by, she threw herself in front of him and begged for an audience. He gave a small nod to a minion who contacted her later, and a privileged date was arranged. Much celebration ensued over the next few days. Parties were held at the Princess's palace, a little cottage on the edge of her father's little garden. Who was I going to give my wheelchair to when we left Bangalore? It would be a privilege for anyone else to sit in it. The state of elation really was quite infectious. Finally, the great day was upon us. Her father, the Maharaja, well, the brother of a deceased Maharaja, was persuaded to drive us himself, in his poor tired old Mercedes that had seen many a better day, to the meeting.

The inner gates to the sanctum were solemnly opened by two devotees, dressed in the ubiquitous white cotton uniform, with praying hands together and a little bow, as we slowly swept by. Other ‘devotees' greeted us at every turn, with praying hands together and a little bow, and finally entered a small anti-chamber with a dozen plastic chairs facing a gold painted armchair on a dais. After a few minutes of silence and nervously exchanged glances, the door opened and the little man appeared. He was no more than five foot four, with a long afro hairdo that formed a black halo around his head, and a smiling friendly face. He was dressed in a bright orange floor-length gown. He wandered in and tucked himself into the gold armchair. Our Princess was on her knees speaking to him in Hindi. He looked at me and threw me a gunmetal medal with his name on it, one of the many abilities attributed to him was to materialise all sorts of things there and then. There was a gasp from the Princess. He then added, ‘Complete cure.' Our Princess couldn't contain herself; she prostrated herself, full length on the floor in front of him. He then turned to my wife, and as a throwaway line said, ‘You are a wonderful woman and you will have a son.' The Princess was overwhelmed. She screeched for joy, tears pouring down her cheeks. The audience was over; he gave us a little grin and left the room. The Maharaja drove us back to Bangalore.

What on earth do we do now? We'd waited six weeks for this news. Do we wait for the miracle to happen; having a son wasn't something I'd bargained for. No, no, just go home and rejoice; if he said it would happen, it would happen. So we did; go home that is. The Maharaja suggested, as we had to change our flight at Bombay, we could stay a night at the famous Taj Mahal Hotel. He'd give a little nod in the right direction, as an introduction. True to his word we found ourselves in a beautiful suite in the original part of the hotel. Incredible.

That six weeks in India, especially having never been there before, was the most extraordinary experience we've ever had. Needless to say, thirty years later, we're still waiting for the promises. Did we really believe I would walk again? No, of course not. So why did we go? We went solely because of peer pressure. There are many people, even within my own family and close friends, who'd have said to one another, ‘He was offered a chance to walk again, but he chose not to take it.'

By some extraordinary misguided belief system, we were persuaded, by the same people, to go again. Can you believe it? Because Sai Baba's birthday is the same as mine, it was considered some sort of great significant omen. We were tied together. Only by being there, with him, in the village of his birth, on his birthday, would we know what he actually meant. So this time we made the long, seemingly endless journey, with our new dear, dear friend Marriott, with whom we were now living.

It was a hundred-mile drive from Bangalore, the road was appalling; dodging enormous potholes, missing oncoming vehicles by a whisker, and weaving between broken down trucks every few hundred yards. On arrival we were deposited in a completely bare concrete box, in a block of concrete boxes. It was on the third floor, no lift, and a cold water tap next to the squatting hole in the corner. The remote, tiny village of Puttaparthi is somewhere in the hills of South Central India.

I wheeled out of the box into the communal passage and looked down on to an incredible sight. From the edge of our building was a sea of bright, bright, colourful saris milling slowly about, tent after tent, marquee after marquee. In the middle of the huge, tightly packed square, with a range of blue hills in the distance, was a gleaming white house, ornately decorated, in what could only be described as baroque. Two huge domes with gold pinnacles, all built by the faithful devotees of the man we'd come all this way to see.

We'd been allocated a nice, white-suited student to push me about, and lift me up and down the three stories of our concrete block. We had one little room, about 12x12 to sleep in and the other small room was the squatting room with a cold water tap for ablution. There was nothing at all in the sleeping room. We three lined ourselves up on the concrete floor and there we were for about four nights.

Through the student, we asked if it might be possible to put in a request to be allowed another audience with the great man. The request was duly forwarded, but we were warned there were three thousand people ahead of us.

The time we were there, and the reason we were there, became for me, a blur, rather like being at school again. I wanted the whole thing to end. I didn't mean just this to end, I meant everything to end. But the whole of this event, culminated with the great celebration of our birthday, his and mine, and of course, the whole reason we were there.

The day was suddenly upon us and the Great Hall, where he'd be making his special appearance, began to fill, pack, would be more appropriate. In one section were the wheelchairs, hundreds of wheelchairs. I've never seen so many wheelchairs in one place ever again. Would it be possible they'd all had the same promise; and how many shared our birthday I'd like to know.

Once we were packed to the gunnels, as for a true superstar, we waited and waited, and waited. Why do they do that? He only had a hundred yards to walk from his white domed house. When he finally made his entrance, it was so undramatic. He slowly walked in from the very back of the hall, through the middle of us all. It didn't seem to be expected. Apart from us in wheelchairs, everyone else was seated cross-legged on the ground facing the stage. He stood there, at the back, patiently waiting for people to be aware of his presence, a little half smile on his face. As the people nearest him made double takes, they either stretched out their hands for his holy ash or bowed their heads to the ground. By the time he reached the stage the applause was shattering. He just stood there, with his half smile, in his floor-length bright orange silk gown, his arms hanging down, hands crossed in front, waiting. When the applause started to die down, he turned and walked slowly to the side of the stage to an ornate garden swing chair. The sort of thing you'd see in B&Q for £99.99 on pensioners' day. He didn't say anything, he didn't do anything, he just lay back on the swing chair swinging back and forth, smiling at us. I couldn't think what on earth was going to happen, surely something would happen, after all, this was the whole reason we'd come all this way. I turned to look at my fellow devotees for some indication. Nothing was forthcoming. They were all gazing at him with beatific smiles on their faces. Nothing else did happen. After quite a long time of smiling and smiling and swinging and more swinging, he stood up to further tremendous applause. He moved to the centre of the stage then walked slowly down through the middle of the hall and wandered out the way he'd come in. Was that it? That can't be it. I must have missed something. I must have fallen asleep. The whole hall started to fill with excited chatter. An elderly woman in a wheelchair next to me leant close and said in a hushed, conspiratorial voice, ‘Vasn't that vonderful.' I said, ‘It vas vasn't it.'

The following morning we started our long, long journey back to Bangalore, Mumbai and London.

The rent we paid for our little converted house was one case of Beaujolais wine a week. Most evenings our amazing friend invited us through to her adjoining house for supper, always accompanied by a couple of bottles of Beaujolais. This little house, with Marriot just a sliding door away, was our haven for five years. I'm not quite sure how everything we did over those years fitted together. We were lost. How my poor little wife put up with me, I really don't know. I was constantly ill with urinary tract infections, I couldn't eat, I was in constant, burning, exhausting pain and every morning I retched and retched before having a bath and getting dressed.

However ill someone is, however much they're suffering, a companion can't be expected to be with them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for years on end, with no prospect of any change. Yet my wife was always with me, she looked after me in every respect for all that time. She wasn't offered any help nor did she ask for any help. However, over the next thirty years we completed two huge building projects. Converting a burnt-out warehouse on the river Thames in London into three flats and a roof garden, and converting a disused old barn into a beautiful house for which we received a Sunday Times Award. We planted and ran our own 12-acre vineyard, and we travelled again to India, Rajasthan this time, then the Far East, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand. In Australia, starting in Western Australia, Perth, the train took us across the Nullarbor plain to Adelaide, a campervan from Adelaide to Melbourne and on to Sydney. A little aeroplane flew us from Sydney to Tenterfield in Southern Queensland for Christmas with dear relatives, then it was on to Cairns where my grandfather made his fortune in sugar. He left in 1918 to go, with his whole family of eleven children, to do the same thing in East Africa, Kenya where this agonising tale starts. We then completed our journey across the Pacific to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and back to London. We'd also been back some times to stay with my poor mother in our beautiful Kedong Valley. We've been to so many different places since my paraplegia I can't put them in order. Each place is a separate little story, with a beginning and end, its own entity.