The Coming of Age. March Part 2.

I don’t know why it is but although I drink about a quarter of my usual morning tea when I go to visit mother – it is about five hours door to door – I still need to spend a penny almost as soon as I have got in the car. I cannot understand it. Then I have to hang on desperately for two hours. With luck I have then reached the only Motorway services for miles. Today however there are roadworks about a mile before said Motorway Services and a tailback of about four miles. The traffic crawls and creeps and I am getting anxious.
I decide that mind over matter is the only thing. I will repeat my affirmations. I have swapped ‘I have an exciting life’ for ‘ I have a full life.’ But this only reminds me of my full bladder. ‘I am in perfect health’ also reminds me of my body and from thence, it is but a short trip to my bladder again. I switch on the car radio. There is a very interesting discussion on Woman’s Hour on Cystitis.
The traffic inches forward again. I decide to put on a tape. I try to take a tape out without taking my eyes off the road and end up with my Mario Lanza’s best hits, a hangover from my teenage years, and out comes The Drinking Song from The Student Prince.
‘I have all the money I need,’ I say to myself. But alas not enough for a helicopter at this point. No wonder I don’t visit my mother as often as I should.
I exercise immense control and arrive free of shame at the Ladies giving thanks that I am not in a theatre, concert hall or cinema where there would be two loos and a very long queue. I could have written War and Peace while queuing outside Ladies loos throughout the length and breadth of Great Britain. This is surely the reason why I do not have any noteworthy achievements to my name.

I arrive safely at Mother’s flat
‘What on earth have you done to your hair? It looks funny.’
‘Can you switch your chair off? I can’t hear.’ I can hear perfectly well, I would just rather not.
‘There’s no need to shout. I’m not deaf.’
Then she tells me I am to meet not only Toyboy on the morrow – he is going to take us both out to lunch - but also her solicitor and financial adviser. It’s a pity about my hair she says.
‘I thought we sorted everything out with them last year.’ I say.
‘I got rid of those. These are new ones.’
This happens on almost every visit. I worry that soon she will have had every financial adviser and solicitor in the county and then will plan to move again. It has happened before.
‘That financial adviser. I could never get him on the phone,’ she says in an aggrieved tone.
‘I thought you had set up an arrangement where he would visit you every month and do all your finances and bills then.’
‘Yes but I get things in the post everyday and I don’t know what to do with them. They tell me to buy Isas and say I have to do it straight away because it is an unrepeatable offer.’
I suggest that I look through the post and sort it out. Most of it will be people trying to sell her things which she doesn’t need but will probably order like a Stannah Stairlift and something that makes a noise and kills flies. She’s getting obsessed about flies.
‘I don’t want you looking through my private things. He’ll do it tomorrow.’
Help, does she mean Toyboy? Does he have access to her finances? Perhaps my cousin was right. But no, she means her new financial adviser. They are in the honeymoon phase and she cannot speak highly enough of him.
She has just bought a new walk-in bath. It hasn’t been fitted yet. It costs a few thousand but will mean she doesn’t have to rely on the staff to give her a bath. She has also bought a new battery car. This is another expensive item – the third she has had in less than a year.
‘What was wrong with the last one?’
‘I didn’t dare cross the main road in it. This one is much easier.’
‘So have you been in to town on it?’
‘Not yet. I am waiting for the weather to get warmer.’
The Solicitor and the Financial Adviser arrive. I suggest Mother switch off the vibrating chair so we can all hear ourselves speak. She has made another will, which seems more or less identical to all the others, and this has to be signed and witnessed and the adviser then tells me the arrangements he has made for mother. I do not understand but try to look intelligent. I do this quite well. I had lots of experience with Martin.
Toyboy arrives to take us to lunch in a spanking new 4 by 4. He is not remotely toylike being over six feet tall and weighing in at 22 stones, but quite nice and obviously, I think, with a car like that, not after mother’s money. We have an interesting talk about the Disabled Living Allowance and mother sulks. She is not interested in The Disabled although she is now one of them. At one time she would have said to me ‘I don’t know why you think anyone is interested in what you’ve got say.’ Now she just sulks.
Over lunch I am asked about my husband. ‘Martin,’ I say brightly, ‘he’s an academic. It’s a busy time of the year for him.’ Well I didn’t actually lie. Both statements were true. It’s just that he’s not my husband any more.
At four thirty Mother suggests a drink. I think a cup of tea might be nice. No, I never drink the stuff. There’s Baileys, Whisky or some red wine if you can open it?’ Dare I ask for tea? I decide to hit the bottle with her and search for a corkscrew.
This is the signal that the evening has already begun. The television is switched on and I sit down dutifully with my glass of wine and some crisps and worry about my waistline and cholesterol level.
‘How is whatisname opposite’, I ask.
‘Who?’
‘The one who brought you the bananas.’
‘I’m not talking to him any more. He did some shopping for me and gave me the wrong change.’
‘Perhaps it was a mistake?’
‘No it was deliberate.’ she says dogmatically.
I bring out my tapestry cushion kit, thinking this would be more acceptable than trying to read a book or do a crossword while the television was on.
‘Hmm. What are you doing?’
I show her.
‘They’re very dull colours.’ I think they are pretty, subtle greens and blues.
‘I used to use a frame. That’s the way to do it properly. It’s the only way. You can’t do it like that.’
I keep on stitching. It looks all right to me.
A carer comes in to give Mother her evening pills.
‘Look at her’ says Mother pointing to me and addressing the carer. ‘She hasn’t got a clue.’
I put the embroidery away. Any pleasure in it has completely gone.
Mother is more cheerful next morning. Two male residents who live on her corridor come out with walking stick and zimmer frame, and flirt with her as I am getting her out of her wheel chair and into my car. By the time I have got the wheel chair in the boot, and then done the process in reverse in the town, and then done the whole thing all over again to get her home and into her flat, I am sure I have pulled a muscle in my back. I shall probably be bedridden myself in no time. Never mind, Mother is still in the afterglow of flirtation and does not make any cutting remarks about my clothes or my abilities for the whole day.
After two days I am looking forward to the quiet journey home. There is a petrol station where I stop to fill up just half an hour away, with a loo. This quick stop throws my bladder off course. It does not know quite what to do next and with luck I usually reach the Motorway Services in comfort.
Spend following day recovering. Ring Harriet. Get Russell. ‘She’s in bed,’ he says. ‘No, no problems, she just gets very tired after work.’ Ring Alex. I have to get my visit to Mother out of my system. He is not there. I start rambling on to his answerphone but have not said nearly enough before the message time runs out. I could talk to myself but it’s not the same somehow.