I remember feeling alone and very resentful: part of it, I think, was missing work and in retrospect, the effects of the MS (not that there was any time to pay attention to it back then). Not only was I a new mum, but I had chronic fatigue too and my soul was yearning for green. Though I liked London life, I missed the countryside. When Peter was six months old, I went back to work part-time but with the same caseload.
We had a big plum tree in the garden at Catford: our little patch of green in London. For Peter’s first birthday we bought him a swing that we hung under it. Around the same time, I applied for – and landed – a part-time job setting up and running a healthcare project for gypsies with a district nurse in Maidstone, Kent. Although the journey was nearly an hour long, I rejoiced in getting us both out into the countryside surroundings. As I looked back from the hill where the nursery was located, I could see the Canary Wharf Tower semi-masked by yellow, polluted haze. Andrew used to cycle to work into the thick of it. In vain, I begged him to wear a mask.
Every time we drove up to Scotland, we would return with a growing sense of gloom. As soon as we hit the old M1 and the build-up of concrete and looked at London again, I’d feel a pit of dread in my stomach. Then I’d start to cry. My longing for green had been there ever since I started work at Guy’s; it was the same sense of claustrophobia that made me go out and buy big bunches of daffodils from the local flower-seller and arrange them in vases all round the flat.
One day, on the way back from work in Maidstone I spotted a derelict property in Beckenham. It was a Victorian end-of-terrace with bow windows, a big garden and a lime tree in the front. I told Andrew to go and take a look. The next day he peered over the fence. We rang the estate agent and put in an offer without even going inside. It turned out to have sixties’ mustard nylon carpets and peeling wallpaper; also the loveliest veranda at the back, glass-roofed and covered in vines. Depending on your point of view, this was a homeowner’s dream (or nightmare). Luckily, the vendors were very understanding and allowed us to start work before completion: the whole house had to be rewired and have gas and central heating installed.
My family means everything to me. It’s full of snapshots, moments entirely unplanned and often it’s the small ones that stand out most.
Here’s one: Peter and I are sitting on the steps outside the new house on a dark morning. I’m on my way to work but we’re waiting for the gasman to show up. We’re having a ‘Paddington Bear’ breakfast: eating Marmalade sandwiches out of a suitcase (lunchbox). I’m drinking tea from the flask. Peter decides to go off exploring with his Thomas the Tank Engine torch. He opens the door to enter the house and falls into a hole in the floor. Thankfully, he isn’t hurt – just a couple of scratches – but the expression of surprise and relief on his face as I yank him out makes my heart melt.
He’s my little soldier. Still is.
At last we moved in. Even though the house was chaos, I was so much happier. What’s more, we managed to rent out the Catford flat to avoid negative equity. We put Peter’s wellies by the back door: at the age of two and three-quarters he could open the back door, put on his wellies and wander off into the walled garden.
Peter was lucky to be alive, or rather I was lucky to have him alive. Just before he was two we’d had a nasty scare that still resonated for all the usual parental reasons: the ‘what-ifs’ and the ‘if-onlys’. Peter was an allergic child. As a baby he’d suffered severe eczema and so I switched his milk to soya. One afternoon, we’d gone along to our local Turkish delicatessen to pick up a few things for supper and a snack for Peter. I bought him a carton of apple juice and some halva, which he’d never tried before: as sesame seeds are full of calcium, I thought it would be a fantastic healthy snack. It looked so delicious lying beside the counter in the tray that I couldn’t resist.
Peter was in his buggy. I paid the man, gave my son a tiny piece of halva to suck on and left the shop. He began making a choking sound as if something was stuck in his throat and so I leant over the top of the buggy and gave him his juice.
‘Take a sip, love,’ I said.
He started to scream. I rushed round to find him covered from head to toe in hives; it looked like a nettle rash. Thanks to my professional training, I recognised it at once as anaphylactic shock. The next sequence of events seemed to last forever; it was life in slow motion. I ran down the street to the cab firm with no money in my purse and told the driver: ‘I’ve got to get my son to the hospital now!’
While we were driving, Peter stopped breathing. I started to resuscitate him. The driver, a Jamaican man, kept his hand on the horn. We went through red lights, down side streets and into the hospital emergency drop-off. I picked up Peter, ran into hospital and like a miracle, found a registrar standing there and handed him Peter.
‘He’s in respiratory arrest. I think it’s an anaphylactic shock,’ I said.
I had to sign a consent form for a tracheostomy. Peter was awake but needed IV antihistamine. They checked his oxygen levels. Then the Sister asked, ‘Where’s his dad?’
Everything is OK … Oh no, they want his dad! Things aren’t OK.
That day, Andrew was working in the centre of London. I rang him and he called someone else from our church to ask, ‘Can you go and support Sally while I make my way there.’ By the time he had borrowed a car to get there, Peter was out of the resuscitation area: he was tomato-red from head to toe and couldn’t swallow because his throat was so swollen. He was placed in a ward in a cot and I was terrified to let him out of my sight. But then the curate from our church appeared: he stayed with Peter while I got something to eat (I wanted to spend the night on the paediatric ward). Back then there were no beds for parents and so after sending Andrew home to sleep (he had work in the morning), I spent the night sitting beside the cot.
The next day, as Peter was discharged with adrenalin and syringes, we were given our lives back. It was a terrifying way to find out that halva contains sesame and peanut oil and Peter is allergic to both.
I was newly pregnant at the time, with the baby due the following February: we had been sure that we wanted a sibling for Peter. Again, I was lucky and my health was excellent during the pregnancy apart from a severe pelvic muscle pain that made walking difficult but I did it. Mums do, don’t they?
* * *
It was courtesy of a gypsy that I found out that I was carrying a girl. Just before Peter’s first birthday I spotted an advert in the Nursing Times for a gypsy project in Kent:
Wanted: A Health Visitor to join a district nurse already in post to care for the travelling population of Maidstone district.
Or words to that effect. It was such a tiny advert. When I imagined rural Kent, my mind filled with fruit farms, trees and fields. I’d had enough of the concrete jungle. Great, it’s a job I can do in wellies! was my first reaction; my second thought was that establishing trust was key to this particular role and from the experience of working in Lewisham I knew this to be one of my strengths. Kent Family Health Services Authority wanted to establish outreach primary care services for traveller families in mid-Kent. Put simply, someone had carried out a study and subsequently realised the infant mortality rate in their community was way too high: something needed to be done.
Elvira was the clan’s matriarch. Traditionally, the matriarch of a site is responsible for sanctioning relations between healthcare workers and the gypsies. An amazing woman with waist-length, jet-black hair, she had a mother who lived with them whom I saw rarely but who seemed ancient as the woods. They lived in a tolerated site (illegal but hidden away, where no one would move them on) in the middle of some woods, up a dirt track. In the clearing were six mobile homes and one or two temporary
