syringing to make you feel dizzy and a bit seedy. And it’s natural to be scared. He wondered if you ought to have a blood test you looked so pale but I knew it was terror. Also I don’t think the water was warm and he was so enthusiastic that he squirted it all over his suit. Serves him right, I say. Never mind, it needed doing. I held the kidney bowl under your ear and it was spectacular. Reminded me we ought to get the chimney swept this year.
While you were recovering there I asked him about deaf-aids and he agreed immediately to an appointment for you at the Royal Free. He says the box models are much easier for elderly people to manage because the controls are larger. It’s just circulation, I think. He thought we could stitch a pocket to your pinny on the bodice somewhere so the box wasn’t under the table when you sat down, but I think that would muffle the microphone. He said he would certainly sign a form for our disabled badge. He doesn’t keep them. You can pick them up at the town hall, he says.
We are getting one! When we get one I can drive you to the doctor’s and we can park in the Finchley Road, which means we won’t have to gallop across the road like that. Those traffic lights don’t give us half enough time to cross, do they? I remember I used to find that with the pram.
Oh, and by the way, he has had a very good wheeze about your pills. You can get the same medicine in liquid form, and he says he has an idea it works quicker. It must take ages for those depth-charges to dissolve in your stomach. No more choking them down or struggling to halve them.
The doctor said those large pills should be easier to swallow but Mother says Uncle Arthur keeps a hammer in his bedroom to smash his into little bits. He has trouble with his oesophagus, though. Not sure I’ve spelt that correctly.
The vet says it’s fur ball. Why should she suddenly get fur ball? I didn’t know ordinary black bring-you-luck type cats ever got fur ball. I thought it was only those fluffy Persian people. In fact, Dad and I paid £3 for a tiny bad-tempered Persian kitten from that pet shop in Parkway when something about the lecture we had on fur ball made us go back for a refund and buy Ms Boot, who was only thirty bob.
Oh, well. Change of life, I suppose. Apparently we have to brush her regularly. She is to be given a dose of liquid paraffin every day for a week, and then once a week as a general rule. Good grief. She seems quite to enjoy the brushing if it’s not too near her old scar but I don’t know how to get her to take the paraffin. I put one lot in her milk and she stepped in it.
I rang the vet and he says to squeeze her jaws at the corner when she will be forced to grin and then someone can fling it down on a teaspoon. Not much success so far. We’ve put the liquid paraffin in the cupboard above the fireplace by the way in case we get into a muddle—tho’, mind you, Mother used to use it for cooking during the war. She made a wonderful orange sponge with it when we were short of fat. Everyone loved it and it was beautifully light and airy so her cousin Joan ordered one for her baby’s christening, and all the baby guests loved it too, with very unfortunate results.
Funny to think of those days. It was 2 oz butter per person per week, wasn’t it? When we were staying at Granny’s Flora, the maid, would put our butter ration on little dishes by our places so as to be strictly fair, but Granny used to steal bits and give it to Major Reddick, an officer who was billeted on her, and whom she adored. Us kids loathed him. He used to take his teeth out before a meal, wrap them in his khaki hanky and keep them in his pocket till he was finished, when he would replace the teeth and dry his hanky before the fire.
Frightful creature. Flora said he wore a corset. Every morning after breakfast he would rise from the table and say, without fail, ‘Let’s see what the King has got for us to do today.’ Mother says he attacked her in the morning room and she told him she would scream for Mama.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he said. ‘Don’t you like men?’
I think uniforms are bad for people.
Darling, we are all terribly sorry. Truly.
I absolutely promise we were not laughing at you, and it was all my fault. Well, it was my fault originally but then Dad started making cheeky remarks and we all got hysterical.
What happened was this: everyone was discussing the merits of bran for constipation. Dad said he knew you hadn’t been, but I wasn’t constipated, was I, so why did I take it?
So I said, ‘Piles.’ Well, you know I get piles sometimes, don’t you? They started with Emma. Haven’t had them for ages but I take bran every day in case. It’s quite fashionable.
So then I told them a dreadful story I have never told anyone before.
Last summer, when you and I were visiting Mother, I was suddenly painfully afflicted, and there was no bran in the house. Uncle Arthur won’t tolerate it. Mother has tried to give him All Bran for breakfast but he just sits there with bits sticking out of his mouth like a bad-tempered bird building a nest. So, anyway, I had read somewhere that a very good remedy was to put a clove of garlic up your bum. So I did. For about a week—well, every night for about a week. The trick is to get rid of it in the morning, but on the day we drove back south I didn’t have time to go to the loo properly and the garlic was still up there, if you see what I mean.
Well, we left very early to catch the first ferry and round about the Lake District with no windows open I’m afraid I was forced to fart and the smell was simply frightful. You were very alarmed and thought there was something wrong with the car. I told you we were passing through farmland and it was probably chemical fertiliser.
Of course, when I was telling this disgusting tale, everyone looked at you and fell about. Do you see? I know you thought we were laughing at you, but really we were laughing at me and I somehow couldn’t get you to hear and Dad was being very wicked and making matters worse.
Please forgive me. I hope you believe we would never talk about you to your face and laugh like that. It’s just so impossible when there are a lot of people at table to persuade everyone to talk one at a time and of course your box picks up all the cutlery noise.
It must be horrible for you. I am so sorry. We’d all hate it if you didn’t come down to meals, darling. Please don’t do that.
Mrs Wilson is fine now, but a bit stiff. Mr Wilson drove to Glastonbury last week and brought her back some Holy Water in a petrol can.
She is keen to stick her wrist in that shrine somewhere near Sidmouth. There’s a sort of hole in a bit of stone and you put the injured limb through it and pray to some saint. Saint Monica or somebody, it could be. Anyway, it’s a woman.
Gran, have you seen a set of keys anywhere?
Not this Tuesday, darling. Next Tuesday. Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was Sunday when I said it and I meant not this Tuesday coming but next Tuesday, i.e. the Tuesday in the
