And then comes the day when you no longer believe such words. You no longer believe that she is still the same underneath. You believe that being ‘not herself’ is her new self. You fear that she is, finally and utterly, doing her disappearing act.
But you make one final effort, and she does too. You get her admitted to hospital. Not the National Temperance, as you had hoped, but a general, all-female ward. You sit her down on a bench while they are admitting her, and explain gently, once more, how it has come to this, and what they will do for her, and how it will help.
‘I’ll give it my very best shot, Casey Paul,’ she says sweetly. You kiss her on the temple, and promise to visit her every day. Which you do.
At first they put her to sleep for three days, hoping to peaceably flush the alcohol out of her system, while also calming her disturbed brain. You sit by her lightly sleeping form and think that this time, surely, it will work. This time, she is under proper medical supervision, the problem has been stated clearly – even she isn’t ducking it – and at last Something Will Be Done. You look at her calm face and think of the best years of your time together, and imagine that everything you had back then will now return.
On the fourth day she is still asleep when you go in. You ask to see a doctor and some twenty-year-old houseman with a clipboard presents himself. You ask why she is still sedated.
‘We woke her up this morning, but she immediately became disruptive.’
‘Disruptive?’
‘Yes, she attacked the nurses.’
You don’t believe this. You ask him to repeat it. He does.
‘So we put her under again. Don’t worry, it’s a very light sedative. I’ll show you.’
He adjusts the drip slightly. Almost instantly, she begins to stir. ‘You see?’ Then he adjusts the drip again and sends her back to sleep. You find this deeply sinister. You have yielded her care to the authority of some youthful technocrat who has never met her.
‘You’re her…?’
‘Godson,’ you reply automatically. Or maybe you say ‘Nephew’, or possibly ‘Lodger’, which at least contains four correct letters in it.
‘Well, if we wake her up and she’s that disruptive again, we’ll have to section her.’
‘Section her?’ You are horrified. ‘But she’s not mad. She’s an alcoholic, she needs treatment.’
‘So do all the other patients. And they need the nurses’ attention. We can’t have nurses being attacked.’
You still don’t believe his initial allegation.
‘But… you can’t just section her by yourself.’
‘You’re right, there have to be two signatures. But it’s just a formality in cases like this.’
You realize you have not brought her to a place of safety after all. You have delivered her over to the kind of zealot who in the old days would have prescribed a straitjacket plus a course of electroconvulsive therapy. Susan would have called him a ‘little Hitler’. Who knows, perhaps she did. You partly hope so.
You say, ‘I would like to be there when you next wake her up. I think it would help.’
‘Very well,’ says the curt young man whom you have already come to hate deeply.
But – such is the way of hospitals – this arrogant little shit isn’t there when you next come, and you never see him again. Instead, a female doctor operates the drip. Slowly, Susan wakes. She looks up, sees you and smiles.
‘Where’ve you been all my life?’ she asks. ‘You dirty stop-out.’
The doctor reacts with slight surprise, but you kiss Susan on the forehead, and the two of you are left alone together.
‘So you’ve come to take me home?’
‘Not just yet, darling,’ you say. ‘You’ve got to stay here for a while. Until you’re cured.’
‘But there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m perfectly well and insist on being taken home at once. Take me to Henry.’
You grasp both her wrists. You squeeze very hard. You explain that the doctors won’t release her until she is cured. You remind her of the promise she made when you brought her here. You say that the last time they brought her round, she attacked the nurses.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says, in her most distant, genteel manner, as if you are some ill-informed peasant.
You talk at length to her, asking for her promise to behave until you come back tomorrow. At least until then. She doesn’t respond. You press her. Then she promises, but with a stubbornness of tone you are all too familiar with.
The next day, you approach the ward expecting the worst: that she’s been sedated again, or even sectioned. But she is looking alert, and her colour is good. She greets you rather as if you were her guest. A nurse walks by.
‘The maids here are frightfully good,’ she says, giving a wave to the passing figure.
You think: What’s the right tactic? Go along with it? Challenge it? You decide that you mustn’t indulge her dream world.
‘They’re not maids, Susan, they’re nurses.’ You think she might have confused ‘hospital’ with ‘hotel’, which after all would not be much of a verbal slippage.
‘Some of them are,’ she agrees. Then, disappointed with your lack of perspicacity, adds, ‘But most of them are maids.’
You let it go.
‘I’ve told them all about you,’ she says.
Your heart sinks, but you let that go as well.
The next day, you find her agitated again. She is out of bed, sitting up in a chair. On the tray in front of her are five pairs of spectacles and a copy of a P.G. Wodehouse novel she has mysteriously acquired.
‘Where did you get all those glasses?’
‘Oh,’ she replies casually, ‘I don’t know where they come from. I expect people have been giving them to me.’
She puts on a pair which are evidently not hers and opens the book at random. ‘He’s frightfully funny, isn’t he?’
You agree. She has always enjoyed Wodehouse, and you take this as a good, if slightly confused, sign. You tell her what’s in the newspapers. You mention a postcard you’ve had from Eric. You say that all is well at Henry Road. She listens idly, then seizes a different pair of glasses – though still not her own – opens the book at random again and, probably seeing it no more in focus than the previous time, announces,
‘It’s frightful rubbish, this, isn’t it?’
You think your heart will break, now, here, immediately.
The following day she is again under sedation. The woman in the next bed chats to you and asks what’s wrong with Your Nan. You are so weary of it all that you answer,
‘She’s an alcoholic.’
The woman turns away in distaste. You know exactly what she is thinking. Why give a good hospital bed to a drinker? Furthermore, a female drinker? One thing you have discovered is that male alcoholics are allowed to be amusing, even poignant. Young drinkers of either sex, when out of control, are indulged. But female alcoholics, old enough to know better, old enough to be mothers, even grandmothers – these are the lowest of the low.
The next day she is awake again and refusing to look at you. So you just sit there for a while. You glance at the tray in front of her. This time, her nocturnal ward-rambling has netted only two pairs of other patients’ glasses, plus a tabloid newspaper she would never have in the house.
‘I do think,’ she announces finally, ‘that you will be remembered as one of the greatest criminals in the history of the world.’
You are tempted to agree. Why not?