If you’re a patient who isn’t positively going to die, so that sooner or later your condition is likely to improve, then the chances are you’ll be on the receiving end of whatever treatment is currently the fashion. In the seventeenth century I would have been bled. In the 1950s the prevailing wisdom required no special equipment. I was simply put to bed. Bed with no supper was a punishment. Until you say you’re sorry. Bed rest till you’re better was doctor’s orders, however long it took.
2 Butter Melon Cauliflower
My bedroom wallpaper was yellow roses. I turned my face to the wall and I stared at the yellow roses.
Every joint was swollen, and pain came in leisurely waves and sudden spasms, the spasms riding on the waves. I couldn’t endure the contact of the bedclothes, even a single sheet on a warm night. Mum had trained as a nurse, even if she didn’t have anything you could call a career, and she knew about things like cradles devised to take the pressure off skin that couldn’t bear to be touched. She improvised one by fetching the fire-guard and putting it over my legs. Then she draped the bedclothes over the fire-guard. It had the right curved shape, and provided a good gap above my legs. The gap had to be small enough for the volume of air underneath to be heated by my legs relatively quickly, so they didn’t get cold.
It wasn’t just the bedclothes. Even the lightest hug brought as much pain as comfort. In my chosen family, hugs were emergency measures, not for every day. I wasn’t used to them. I’d hardly experienced them, or seen them happen. Dad would say, ‘Cheerio, m’dear,’ in exactly the same way whether he was going out for five minutes or on a tour of duty which might last months. Hugs might just as well have been kept in the medicine cupboard, so as not to lose their effectiveness by over-use. They were like the little bottle of brandy that lived in the kitchen cupboard, dire treatment for shock, shocking in itself.
I kept myself mentally occupied for most of the first week in bed by playing my favourite game, which was quite an achievement, since it was ‘I Spy’. I must have driven Mum mad. It was a bare room. Apart from the wallpaper and the curtains (a design of vintage cars) there was no ornamentation to engage the mind. There was a wardrobe and a chest of drawers with a mirror on top of it, but there were only two objects in the room which could honestly be said to reward attention: a night-light in the form of a sailing ship and a miniature brass ashtray with a farthing set in the middle of it, which both lived on a bedside table. The sails of the night-light were made of a sort of primitive plastic that was textured like vellum — the bulb shone dimly through them. S for Ship, S for Sail. With my little eye. There was a little cabin, with a little low railing round the top. The ashtray must have been brought in from another room to tickle my visual palate, since smoking in a sick room was discouraged even then. I liked the little wren design on the farthing. A for ashtray, R for Wren.
I wasn’t allowed to feed myself — Mum had to do it for me. The only self-feeding I was allowed to do was drinking milk from a ‘feeder’. It was like a teapot with a spout and no top. Mum would bring it to me and put it on my chest, and then I could drink without having to get up. She would say, ‘Drink it all down, John, there’s a good boy,’ but I didn’t want to. I’d take a little sip, but that was all I wanted. For some reason I thought that if I drank from the feeder all the way to the bottom, the way I was supposed to, something terrible would happen. I didn’t have an idea of dying, but that was the feeling, of death as the dregs in the feeder. It was as if I was losing my trust in Mum. The feeder had milk or Horlicks in it. I didn’t like milk or Horlicks. What I wanted was what Mum drank, was tea, but I wasn’t allowed it.
Mum had a few hours’ domestic help every week. This was ‘the girl’. The girl who ‘came in’. She was ‘the girl who came in’ from the village. She was a teenager who came in and changed her smart shoes for some shabby ones that were all worn down at the back, then put on a housedress that must have been her mother’s.
I got these details from Mum, since the girl changed in the kitchen. I soon got used to being satisfied with second-hand information. The other sort was in short supply, although one day the girl came into my room in the act of pulling a dressing-gown cord tight round the housecoat, redeeming its shapelessness by giving her narrow waist some definition. She winked at me then. She told me her name was Polly. Mum didn’t seem to know her name — or at least she would say to her friends, ‘I have no help at all, except for a girl who comes in.’
I pleaded with the girl who came in to let me have tea, but still it wasn’t allowed. One day I was particularly upset that I was going to be made to drink from the feeder until I got to the bottom and died. The girl came in with the feeder full of hot milk. I pleaded in tears for tea, but she said in a loud voice, ‘I’m not allowed to give you any!’ This was torture, since I could hear the clink of a tea-cup in the kitchen where Mum was drinking it, though she was probably crying herself.
Then a marvellous thing happened. The girl bent down and whispered in my ear, ‘I’ve put a splash of tea in it, just to stop you moaning. But don’t say a word, or I’ll get a big telling off from your mum!’
I thought she was probably fibbing, but even so I was grateful. The little conspiracy between us did me good. It meant she was on my side, and it meant that even when I was very ill I could still make things happen just a little bit. And when I sipped from the feeder, I found Polly had been telling the truth. It was milky all right, but somewhere in it there was the tang of something else, something that must have been tea, and I drank it to the last drop.
After that the girl would give my milk a boost of tea on a regular basis. I would hum a tune to tell her what I wanted. The tune was perfect because it kept what she was doing a secret. It was just a tune, and anyone can hum a tune. The tune was ‘Polly put the kettle on’. And we’ll all have tea.
It may even have been that Mum was in on the whole thing. It’s hard to believe that she would have come down hard on a drink that was still largely milk.
Fairy cabbages
As for food, I didn’t have anything that could be called an appetite, and Mum had to coax me to swallow every mouthful. Even before I was ill, I’d been a fussy eater. Meat in particular I instinctively disliked. The idea of chewing it disgusted me, so I would spit it out, politely if possible, if not, not. This was the heyday of the British Sunday joint, with leftovers in various forms being made to last much of the week, but if I hated the theme then I could only hate the variations on it. It was still hateful meat, however behashed or enrissoled.
It wasn’t likely that I would work up an appetite while I was lying still all day, so Mum became expert at working one up for me, using presentation as much as the promise of flavour. She learned not to put too much on the plate, which was sure to put me off. I could eat maybe a quarter of a boiled egg and a single finger of toast, a solitary soldier cut off from the company. Half an egg on a good day. An egg was a special thing in the domestic economy so soon after rationing, but I didn’t know that, and its aura wasn’t enough in itself to stimulate my appetite. An ice lolly, though, was a tremendous treat, well worth the trouble of licking. I couldn’t bear anything heavy — a little mouthful of sponge pudding and custard would be the most I could manage. Mum learned to tempt rather than scold, and to resist turning the whole subject of eating into a psychological minefield by striking too many bargains (if you finish your egg I’ll brush your hair — that sort of thing). She told me Brussels sprouts were ‘fairy cabbages’, knowing that the nick name would draw me to that disregarded vegetable. She was like an advertising executive, trying to crack a one-child market.