The Little Girl in the Radiator: Mum Alzheimer's & Me (8 page)

Bruno pulled on the lead with his nose to
the ground, like an old-fashioned police bloodhound, and as we went on I
suddenly saw a figure way in the distance; a small figure in a light-coloured
raincoat. I knew it was mum straight away.

‘There she is!’ I said, and I noticed that
Bruno had stopped and was staring at the figure, too. Mum was walking towards
the far end of the park, where there was a small gated exit, which would lead
her out onto the main road. If she managed to get onto a bus, we would lose her
completely.

I knelt down and stroked Bruno. ‘Go see
mum!’ I said to him, pointing towards the distant figure, and let his lead go.
Bruno took off like a missile, with his lead flying in the air behind him.

I began to run behind him, but I was quickly
out of breath. Bruno was surprisingly powerful and quick, for his size, and he
covered the distance between us and mum in less than 20 seconds. I stopped to
take a breath, and when I looked up Bruno had already reached her and was
barking and running around her in circles. The smile of relief was just forming
on my lips, but it froze as I saw mum reach down and pick up Bruno’s lead
before, to my horror, the two of them continued to trot off in the same
direction, Bruno walking calmly beside her towards the park exit.

‘Oh no!’ I said, gasping for breath. ‘You
stupid bloody dog! You’re not supposed to…’

I shouted Bruno and whistled him. I could
see Bruno stop, and look back at me. I whistled him again, and this time he
started to pull on his lead in the other direction. He was so much more
powerful than mum, I could see her stop, and stand still as Bruno tugged on the
lead; her whole body jerked as Bruno repeatedly pulled on his lead. I could see
him pulling her right over, but eventually she went with him and changed
direction. They started back towards me. I began to run again.

I could see mum looking towards me, and I
waved. She waved back, and let Bruno go. The dog came flying back towards me,
and began to bark when he reached me again. He seemed to enjoy this game. I
picked up his lead and we hurried forwards to where mum was. Eventually we all
met in the middle of the park.

I was determined not to fight with her.
‘Where have you been all day?’ I said, breathlessly.

‘I don’t know,’ replied mum. ‘I’ve been
looking for the hairdresser’s, but they’ve moved the shop.’

I couldn’t help but laugh.

‘It’s not funny!’ said mum. ‘I haven’t had
my hair done in weeks. You don’t understand!’

‘I’ll take you tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Is that
okay?’

‘Yes,’ she said, and we all began to walk
back to the other end of the park.

‘I have to call into Harry’s,’ I said. ‘I
have to tell him something.’

‘Can we get some chocolate biscuits?’ asked
mum.

‘As many as you like,’ I replied, ‘and a big
bone for Bruno!’

IN THAT STRANGE no-man’s land between
being half awake and half asleep, I could hear the familiar sound of the front
door rattling. I started to slowly drift back into wakeful consciousness.

‘Martin, the door’s locked, I can’t get
out,’ came mum’s familiar voice from the hallway.

It was a quarter past four in the morning
the day after our escapade in the park. I groaned and turned over.

‘I have an appointment with the hairdresser,
and the door’s locked,’ she called again.

I took a deep breath, and hugged the pillow
even tighter.

‘Martin, the door’s locked. I can’t get to
the hairdresser’s.’

‘It’s too early,’ I said. ‘Go back to bed.
We’re not going to the hairdresser until midday.’

‘I can’t get out!’ called mum from the
hallway.

‘Go back to bed!’ I groaned. ‘I’ll tell you
when it’s time.’

‘You might forget.’

‘I won’t forget. Go back to bed,’ I
answered. I was wide awake by now.

‘You might forget,’ she said again.

‘I won’t forget!’

‘How do you know you won’t forget?’ asked
mum.

‘
What
?’ I asked. I couldn’t believe I
was actually having this conversation.

‘How will you remember not to forget?’

‘I WON’T BLOODY FORGET! GO BACK TO BED…
PLEASE
!’

Bruno landed on the bed with an almighty
crash. The whole bed shook. He had his new bone in his mouth, and staggered
towards me, growling. I had learned to identify his different growls, and this
was a friendly, ‘Look at my lovely new bone!’ sort of growl.

‘Bed, Bruno!’ I shouted. ‘And mum, you go to
bed too!’

Bruno sprang off the bed. I could hear her
go back along the hallway, muttering as she went. ‘You might forget,’ I heard
her say as a parting shot.

I sighed and turned over.

Some time later, I opened my eyes to see mum
sitting on the end of my bed. It was a quarter past five. She was dressed to go
out again, in the same raincoat and scarf. When she saw me look at her she
said, ‘You might forget. I’ll wait here, just in case.’

Some people seem to have endless amounts of
patience. People who build models of the Eiffel Tower out of matchsticks, for
instance, or anglers – it must take enormous patience to sit by a riverbank for
hours on end, waiting for a passing fish to bite. I had never envied people
like that until mum got Alzheimer’s; then I realised I just wasn’t made like
those saintly souls. In fact, the fuse of my temper was getting shorter and
shorter every passing day. Looking back now, I realise I was in as much trouble
as mum was, only I couldn’t see it. Early on we’d had some support from social
services, but the social worker had long since stopped visiting us and there
was no-one else for us to talk to. I wasn’t aware of any carer support
organisations at that time, and I seemed to spend every day and every night
standing with my toes sticking out over a cliff edge. I wonder how much of a
final push I would have needed to have gone over for good.

I threw the covers back, and got out of bed.

‘Are we going now?’ asked mum.

‘I’m going to make some breakfast,’ I
replied, putting on my dressing gown. ‘I’m not going to be allowed to go back
to sleep, am I?’

‘I just didn’t want you to forget,’ said
mum.

‘I know,’ I said. It wasn’t as though she
could help being this way. ‘Do you want some eggs?’

‘Have we got time?’ asked mum.

By the time my 7am alarm went off a couple
of hours later, it seemed like I had been up for days. I telephoned work and
told them I wasn’t feeling very well and I wouldn’t be in. I had been taking a
lot of time off lately, and I was running out of excuses; I got the feeling
that my employers, like me, were losing patience. If I lost my job, God knew
what would happen to the pair of us.

Mum sat at the kitchen table with me, and
ate a hearty breakfast, still in her raincoat and headscarf. She wanted to be
ready to leave at a moment’s notice, as soon as I said it was time to go.

I had told her that she had a hairdressing
appointment at midday, but to be honest that was just to shut her up and get
her back into bed. So I trawled through the local Yellow Pages until I found a
local salon who could fit her in that morning. The appointment was made for 11
o’clock; with 15 minutes to go we set off.

The salon was one of those trendy modern
ones, all black and stainless steel, and when we arrived one of the
hairdressers – who were also all dressed in black – came over to us.

‘Hello,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I’m Tracy. Can I help you?’

‘We have an appointment for 11 o’clock,’ I
said. ‘Mrs Slevin?’

Tracy
looked in the
book. ‘Oh yes, that’s fine. Can I take your coat and scarf, Mrs Slevin?’ She
hung mum’s things on a steel hook. ‘What can we do for you this morning, Mrs
Slevin?’

‘I’d like a perm, and some colour,’ replied
mum. ‘Can Barbara do it? I always have Barbara.’

Tracy
looked
confused. ‘We don’t have a Barbara here,’ she said.

Mum started to put her coat back on. I
intervened quickly.

‘Mum, Barbara said Tracy can do it for you,’
I said.

‘Oh, that’s all right then,’ agreed mum. ‘As
long as Barbara said it’s all right.’

She took her coat off again.

‘Who’s Barbara?’ whispered Tracy.

‘I have no idea,’ I replied truthfully. ‘She
gets a little confused sometimes, that’s all.’

Tracy
nodded
conspiratorially. ‘I understand,’ she said.

‘Come and sit over here, Mrs Slevin,’ said Tracy, indicating a free seat by a basin.

‘Thank you, Barbara,’ said mum, following Tracy over to the station.

I picked up a magazine and started to read a
three-month-old gossip column.

Tracy
fussed about
and mum was smiling broadly.

‘Have you retired, Mrs Slevin?’ asked Tracy.

‘Call me Rose,’ replied mum.

‘Have you retired, Rose?’ asked Tracy.

‘No, I’m a first class seamstress,’ replied
mum, proudly. ‘I make curtains for Princess Margaret.’

Tracy
stopped what
she was doing. ‘Really?’ she gasped.

‘Oh yes,’ went on mum. ‘I haven’t been
working lately because I’m being kept in a strange house. When I escaped they
sent the dog out after me.’

Tracy
was
motionless, so were the other girls in the salon. I thought it was funny. I
didn’t say anything and continued to read the magazine as though I hadn’t heard
any of this.

‘All they give me to eat is chocolate
biscuits, and they make me very confused with all the shouting, and the comings
and goings. We have a band though, and they play for me some evenings. Has your
house got a green floor in the kitchen, Barbara?’

‘No… no, our kitchen floor is cream,’
replied Tracy.

‘That’s not it, then,’ said mum, shaking her
head sadly.

Tracy
stood there
frozen to the spot with a brush in one hand and a comb in the other. ‘Sorry…’
she said.

I had to smile. It still amazes me how far
off-kilter people are thrown when confronted by a person with dementia. They
never seem to know how to proceed or what to say.

‘And there’s a little girl that’s a prisoner
in there too,’ went on mum.

When mum started on the little girl in the
radiator, I knew it was going to be a long, and involved conversation. I got up
and walked over to mum and Tracy.

‘How long will this take?’ I asked.

‘Oh, a couple of hours at least,’ replied Tracy.

The Craftsman pub was directly across the
road from the salon, and it had just opened its doors. I had watched several
regulars troop in.

‘I’ll be back in a little while,’ I said to Tracy.

Tracy
didn’t look
very confident when she realised I was leaving.

‘She’ll be fine,’ I said to her. ‘They’re
just stories.’

Tracy
nodded and
smiled, but the smile wasn’t that convincing.

‘Mum, I have to go for a message,’ I said.
‘I’ll be back in a little while.’

‘Yes, that’s fine,’ said mum, ‘I’m just
telling Barbara all about Mr Jackson.’

I had never heard mum mention anyone by the
name of Mr Jackson before, and had no idea who he might be.

‘Yeah, okay,’ I said.

I left the salon and headed across the road
to the pub. It was a lovely, clear crisp morning, and a couple of pints in the
morning sunshine would go down very well.

‘Don’t normally see you in here this early,’
remarked the landlord, as I walked to the bar. ‘No work today?’

‘I’m off sick,’ I replied.

‘Yeah, you look sick,’ he replied, smiling,
as he placed a cold lager on the bar top for me. I paid him and carried it
outside, where I could watch the salon across the road. I felt a bit guilty
about sitting there drinking beer when I should have been at work, and I
suppose if one of my bosses had driven by at that moment and seen me, I might
have got into trouble, but I felt I needed it. When you care for an Alzheimer’s
patient, their fantasies and delusions spread into your life as well. I’m not
saying you believe the tales; you don’t, you often know them to be untrue. But
they still invade your time. You have to deal with them in one way or another,
and you end up living sort of half in the real world, and half in the patient’s
world of historical fantasy and distorted memory. Separating one from the other
each day is extremely tiring, mentally, and sometimes, like now, I just had to
steal some time for myself, no matter how I got hold of it.

‘Morning chap,’ said an elderly gent, as he
sat down at my table. ‘Lovely weather.’

‘Morning,’ I replied. ‘Yes it is.’

My companion opened out his newspaper and
began to read. Having gone as far as commenting on the improved condition of
the weather, he obviously felt he didn’t need to speak to me any more. I didn’t
mind. The lager was cold and crisp, and I sat there out at the front of the pub
just enjoying the peace of the moment. I knew mum was having a nice time across
the street in the hairdresser’s, and all was right with the world.

I finished my pint after a little while,
and, working on the principle that no bird ever flew on one wing, I went back
into the bar for another. Glass replenished, I came back out and resumed my
seat. My companion looked up from his paper, saw me and nodded. A man of few
words, obviously.

I was about halfway down my second beer when
my friend suddenly pointed across the street. ‘Aye, aye,’ he said, ‘something’s
happening over there!’

I followed his gaze, just in time to see mum
running up the road. Her head was covered in a bright blue plastic cap, with
her hair sticking out of it in all directions, and behind her was flapping a
matching, bright blue plastic cape. Behind her in dogged pursuit was Tracy, and
the other girls from the salon, all in black and running after mum in single
file. They looked like a line of crows moving over a field.

‘Oh, hell!’ I said, ‘I’ll be back in a
minute.’

I left the pub car park, and raced across
the road. Tracy and the gang had caught up with mum by the time I reached them.

‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

‘She just got up and ran out!’ exclaimed Tracy.

‘Come on, mum,’ I said. ‘The girls haven’t
finished doing your hair yet.’

‘I saw somebody I knew,’ explained mum.
‘Somebody I used to go to school with.’

‘Yeah, well, you can talk to her later,’ I
replied, ‘but right now you have to go back with Tracy to have your hair
finished.’

‘Oh yes, of course,’ agreed mum. ‘Come on,
Barbara.’

With that she led the little procession back
to the salon.

When we all piled back into the
hairdresser’s Tracy was looking seriously concerned. ‘Can you stay with her?’
she said. ‘In case she decides to run off again?’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said, reaching
around to my back pocket as though to retrieve something from them, ‘take my
handcuffs, and if she gives you any more trouble, just cuff her to the chair.’

Tracy
’s face was a
picture. Her mouth fell open and she recoiled physically backwards in horror.
‘We can’t do that!’ she gasped, ‘she’s a customer!’

‘They always cuff her at the other place,’ I
said, innocently.

‘Indeed they do,’ agreed mum, helpfully.

I thought Tracy was going to cry.

‘I’m only kidding,’ I said.

Tracy and the other girls laughed – a little
too enthusiastically, perhaps.