The O’Hara Affair (22 page)

Dervla took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to do it,’ she said.

‘You!’ Setting down the teapot, Nemia clapped her hands. ‘What a fantastic idea! Why didn’t we think of it before?’

‘It does seem like the obvious solution.’

‘But of course it is! Will you move Daphne in with you?’

‘No. We don’t have a spare bed yet, and she’d find the stairs hard to manage. I’ll move in to your room here – that is, if you don’t mind?’

‘Of course not. What about Christian?’

‘He’ll be away for that fortnight.’

‘So you will be here on your own with Daphne?’

‘Yes.’

Nemia looked doubtful. ‘Are you sure that you will be able to handle it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It can get pretty lonely.’

‘Oh.’ Dervla felt guilty, suddenly. She really ought to have made more of an effort to befriend Nemia. ‘How do you manage?’

Nemia shrugged. ‘I keep myself busy. I have my Tai Chi, and I spend a lot of time in the evening online. I have many friends to Skype.’

‘Friends in Mauritius?’

‘Friends from all over. I have Facebook. I have Twitter.’

Dervla thought about who she might talk to while Christian was away. Río, obviously, and Fleur. But aside from that, there was virtually nobody. In her estate agent days she had had numerous contact details in her organizer, but they were all business contacts. Dervla had been too busy making money to make friends.

‘I intend to keep myself busy, too,’ she said, with a bravado she did not feel. ‘I’ll be working on my book.’

‘That’s a good idea. Hey – this could really work out, couldn’t it? Maybe, if I needed more time off, we could take turns? Share the caring?’

‘That’s exactly what I had in mind.’

‘Fine, fine! It is better for Daphne, also, you know, that she is looked after by somebody she knows and likes.’

‘Daphne likes me?’

‘Sure. She says you have a lovely speaking voice and excellent manners. The way people talk to her is important. Once,
in London, I organized a girl to replace me for a week. She was from Texas, and Daphne just hated her. She could not bear to listen to her, and even refused to eat for her.’

‘Refused to eat?’

‘Yes. You know, like a spoilt child. She can be very childish sometimes. You will find that sometimes you will just have to put your foot down. And of course, bribery helps.’

‘How?’

‘Well, for instance, if she refuses to go to bed, I tell her that she will not get a story until she is there. Sometimes she wants to stay up until midnight, and that is too late for me. I like to make time to record
Eastenders
and watch it on my own because she cannot bear it. She hates the way they talk, and just sits and shouts at the television.’

A timer buzzed, and Nemia reached for it and turned it off. ‘My stock is ready,’ she said, taking the pot off the hob. ‘I’m making tomato soup. It’s Daphne’s favourite.’

Dervla felt inadequate. She’d have to make sure the freezer was stocked with ready meals before Nemia headed off on holiday. She’d taught herself to cook since marrying Christian, but her repertoire was limited to one-pot meals and pasta sauces.

‘It smells delicious.’

‘My grandmother’s recipe. I miss her cooking. She made the best
gateaux piments
I ever tasted.’

‘
Gateaux piments
?’

‘Chilli cakes. A Mauritian speciality.’

‘What made your family leave Mauritius?’ Dervla asked. ‘I holidayed there once, and thought it was heaven on earth.’

Nemia shrugged. ‘Economic necessity.’

‘I need help here.
I need help
!’

It was Daphne’s voice, coming from the sitting room.

‘Oopsie.
Coming
!’ Nemia swung out through the kitchen door.

‘What’s the problem, Daphne?’ Dervla heard her say.

‘
I can’t hear it
! I can’t hear the television. There’s something wrong with it.’

‘OK. No worries.’ The decibel level of the television rose a notch. ‘That better?’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

‘Oh – you’ve finished all your apple juice, Daphne. Do you need to spend a penny?’

‘Do I? Yes, maybe I do.’

‘Let me help you.’

‘Oh! Your hands are like stones.’

The voices receded as they trundled along the corridor, and Dervla turned her attention to the cork board on the wall. There was a list of memos and contact numbers, postcards, a flier for fitness classes at the Lissamore community hall. Maybe Dervla should start attending, as Fleur had suggested? She could choose from Tai Chi, Kick-boxing, Irish Dancing, Strength Training, Aerobics and Yoga. But Dervla practised yoga every morning before her run. Maybe she should start up some classes herself, on the property market. But would there be any takers for night classes on home improvement with a view to selling? She suspected that nobody in their right mind who lived in Lissamore would ever dream of moving elsewhere. Since she had moved into the Old Rectory – even though the place was unfurnished – she felt as if she had come home at last.

Beside the flier was pinned a brochure featuring aids for the elderly. It included such devices as safety frames, ‘donut’ ring cushions, alerting devices, long-reach toenail cutters, lotion applicators and Bottom Buddies. Bottom Buddies? Oh, OK. Let’s not go there, thought Dervla, pinning the
brochure back onto the cork board as Nemia came back into the kitchen.

She was wearing a broad smile. ‘Well! Daphne actually remembered to say thank you! She forgets, sometimes, to mind her manners.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

‘The worst thing is when she whistles for you, like a dog.’

‘No! She doesn’t, does she?’

‘Sure. But you can’t let it upset you. I just say, “Look, Daphne – I am not a dog, OK?”’

Dervla had to admire the girl’s laid-back attitude. Her sanguinity verged on the saintlike. She watched as Nemia strained her vegetable stock through a colander, then added a little ground pepper. Stock from scratch! The only ‘home-made-style’ soup that Dervla had ever prepared had been the kind you got in the fresh soup section of the chiller cabinet in Tesco.

‘So, how does your routine go?’ she asked.

‘Let’s see. In the morning, I bring her breakfast in bed. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes, with a little banana chopped up, or strawberries. Tea and toast, buttered already and with marmalade. That gives me time to do my Tai Chi, and have a shower. Then I get her up and wash her—’

‘You wash her?’

‘Of course. But sometimes she tells me no wash, and I leave her alone because I do not want an argument. Arguments are a waste of energy. It’s OK to leave her for one day with no wash, but no more, because then she will start to smell.’ She tasted her stock, and made an appreciative face. ‘Mmm. It’s good.’

‘Oh, God. How do you manage it?’

‘Manage what?’

‘The washing.’

‘I put her standing by the basin in the bathroom because that way she has something to hold on to. I do her face with a flannel, and use a sponge for under her arms and between her legs. Front bottom first, then back. And sometimes I give her a toothbrush and ask her to do her teeth. She hates to clean her teeth, so any time I see her dentures lying around, I grab them and give them a scrub.’

Dervla sucked in her breath. ‘What about dressing her?’ she asked.

‘There’s no need to bother fussing around with buttons and zips – except if she is going out. She finds dressing too exhausting.’ The strained vegetables went into the compost bucket, the colander into the dishwasher. Nemia helped herself to a Sabatier from the block, and started chopping onions. ‘Most days I just put on a clean nightdress, and a gilet or a long cardigan. She prefers the cardigan to a dressing gown. She says it is more elegant.’

Dervla remembered the nappies she’d seen on the day Daphne had arrived, and gave an internal shudder. ‘Has she had any – um – accidents recently?’

‘No. She is good. But sometimes early in the morning she gets out of bed and does poo poo before I am awake, and I cannot wipe her.’

‘You
wipe
her?’

‘Sometimes. She cannot do it herself, see? I use baby wipes, and there are disposable gloves on the shelf above the loo.’

Dervla just stopped herself from saying
Gross
! ‘How often do you change her bed linen?’ she asked instead.

‘If things go good, once a week. But you check every day to see if they need changing. I have a complete fresh set ready to go in a plastic bag in the airing cupboard, in case of accidents. And there are pants with pads in the top drawer
of her chest of drawers, in case of emergency. In case a urinary tract infection kicks in.’

‘Does she wear them at night?’

Nemia laughed – a warm gurgle of a laugh. ‘I have tried, but she just yells and throws them at me. She’s not used to wearing panties in bed.’

‘She
throws
them at you?’

‘Sure, sure. She has a temper! Sometimes she uses bad language. She say things like “Fuck off you fucking bitch – who do you think you are, ordering me about?” But I just say: “Don’t talk to me like that, Daphne. I’m just trying to take care of you. Don’t you know how lucky you are to have a family who care so much about you that they make sure you are comfortable in your own home with someone to wash you and cook for you?”’ Another laugh. ‘And then she says, “I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, thank you. And I’ll have you know I’m an excellent cook.”’ Nemia mimicked Daphne very well, but in an affectionate way.

‘So…she’s abusive?’

‘Sure. Sometimes she can be violent. If she does not get her own way, she pulls my hair, and pinches me. She grabs my arm if I’m on the phone, in how do you say? – a Chinese burn, yes? – and takes the phone from me. She gets jealous, you see, that I am talking to someone else and not giving all my attention to her. She throws water at me when I try and get her in the bath—’

‘How often do you bathe her?’

‘Once a week, on the electric chair.’

‘The electric chair?’ There was a joke to be found here somewhere, but Dervla didn’t bother to go looking for it. ‘You know – the chair in her bath that raises her and lowers her electronically. I call it her throne.’

Dervla pictured a naked Daphne sitting on her bath chair
– a parody of Aphrodite rising from the waves – and felt a surge of something between laughter and revulsion. Nemia seemed utterly impervious to the fact that this was – from Dervla’s point of view – the job description from hell. But it was too late now to back out. She’d promised Christian she’d do this thing, and she would damned well do it to the best of her ability. Besides, they had no choice.

‘You look nervous, Dervla,’ remarked Nemia. ‘There’s no need to be nervous. You’ll do fine. You can handle her, no problem.’

Dervla managed a nod. ‘Where did you train, Nemia?’

‘Train?’

‘To be a carer?’

‘I have no training. Just experience. I helped my mother care for my grandmother in Mauritius, before we moved to London. I joined an agency there, but then decided to go freelance. The agency was taking too much money. I worked for an old man who used to expose himself to me—’

‘No, Nemia! Are you serious?’

‘Oh, yes. You learn to live with it. You know? The behaviour of demented people ceases to be shocking after a while. They can’t help it. But sometimes I think that the Japanese had the right idea. They used to take their old people to the mountains in winter, and leave them to die there, from exposure. They were talking about it on the radio earlier, on the Ryan Tubridy show.’

Oh! Dervla found this shocking, coming from the mouth of a woman whom she’d just compared to a saint.

‘But isn’t that a form of euthanasia?’

‘I guess so.’ The smell of cooking onions intensified. ‘But it was an established tradition in Japan – and in many other countries, before political correctness became commonplace. Old people didn’t want to be a burden to their young any
more than the young wanted to see the elders they loved and respected become ruins of themselves. It makes sense to me. I’d hate to see my mother infirm and incontinent, and she would hate it even more. She’s always been a strong, independent woman.’

Dervla remembered the story Corban had told in the pub the other day, about his mother filling her house with flowers and knocking back a glass of Bordeaux along with the pills that would kill her. Not a bad way to go, all things considered. She’d seen a fly-on-the-wall documentary recently about state health care and the elderly. It had shocked her to the core – but after what Christian had told her about the homes he’d visited, private health care didn’t seem to be very much better. Nemia had been right when she’d said earlier that Daphne was lucky to have a family who looked after her.

‘Go on,’ she said, ‘telling me about your routine.’

‘Well, after she is washed and dressed, I bring her out to the patio if it is fine, where she can sit on her swing seat and listen to the radio, or into the sitting room, where she can have the television. Any time you find a programme about gardening, record it. She adores gardening programmes. She says she always wanted to be a gardener, not a stupid model.’

‘She did?’ Dervla was reminded of Fleur’s niece Daisy, who had chucked in modelling and gone off to work on the land in Africa.

‘Yes. But her husband didn’t approve. She talks to him sometimes, you know.’

‘Sorry? Who does she talk to?’

‘Her dead…husband.’

The slight pause made Dervla wonder if Nemia knew about Daphne’s true love who had died so tragically.

‘Oh, Christ. Isn’t that really spooky?’

‘It’s like everything. You get used to it.’ Multi-tasker Nemia stirred the onions in the pan with one hand, poured boiling water into the teapot with the other. ‘Around half-past one, I serve lunch. And then I am free again until four o’clock, when she has tea and a biscuit. I usually try and have dinner on the table at seven.’

‘It all sounds pretty regimented.’

‘It’s better that way. Establish a routine and stick to it. It will make life easier for both of you.’

‘Do you enjoy your work, Nemia?’