How Many Camels Are There in Holland?: Dementia, Ma and Me. Phyllida Law

      She did it. Mrs Waddell. In the middle of Rev. John’s eulogy she sidled up to me and whispered, ‘Shall I do it now?’ and she did it. She tucked her tweed skirt between her legs and up she went. Just like that. It was a great success. Such a useful talent. Besides which she knits toys. I have a spectacular policeman and a very good Shakespeare in pink and green with waggly legs and a tragic expression.

      Rev. John was a star. He was utterly unfazed and very funny about Uncle Arthur and the price of soup in Heaven. The village was there, of course, all the chaps in their black ties, and one nurse from the ward brought her husband in a kilt. Mother was very gracious.

      ‘He had the time of his life in hospital,’ she said. I blew my nose. He was vitriolic to the doctor, rude to the old man opposite and insulting to the nurses. A couple of pills for depression, and they all got a handsome apology, or so they say.

      Mrs Pennycuick (the one who can’t reverse in her car) came with a photo of her new grandchild. Mother peered at it with her monocle, cooed a lot and asked how old the puppy was.

      There was a bit of a panic when wee Mrs Wishart asked for a sherry and we had none. Mildew saved the day by mixing Southern Comfort with the dregs of some posh dessert wine she found. Apparently it was delicious.

      After a noisy search in the herb department, she found a quarter-bottle of rum behind the Branston Pickle. We must always remember to keep some, as Eric the builder drinks nothing else and he has been so brilliant. He came along immediately when Uncle A pulled the radiator off the wall. The other booze held up very well, which was a blessing as Ma made me promise not to put a kettle on. Too much trouble. ‘Open a bottle!’ she used to shout at Uncle A. ‘Open a bottle.’ And there, helpfully, is the handle he hung on to when going into curtsy-sitting to view the ‘cellar’ (i.e. a box under the stairs).

      They used to shout at each other a lot and I think they enjoyed it thoroughly. ‘How do you find your mother?’ he asked me, last time I was up.

      ‘Not good,’ I said. ‘She hasn’t slept well, she felt sick this morning and she says you’re a shit.’ He fell about.

      I always loved his silent fits of giggles. They were the best bit when I was young, for he wasn’t cut out to be a stepfather. He distrusted the young and treated them like unexploded bombs, which always indicates, I think, a misspent youth on the part of the critic, tho’ it must be frightful to inherit prefabricated children. I was thirteen and away at boarding school when Mother married Uncle Arthur, and affection only blossomed between us when I could cook. And drive a car. I drove him across London once and he never quite recovered.

      Why do funerals make one HUNGRY? I have just wolfed a huge slab of flapjack. Mother went to bed flattened but pleased ‘the party’ had gone so well, and she isn’t wheezing very much at all now. She always used to get bronchitis on any large family occasion. My childish heart got very heavy when I heard her clearing her throat and checking on her breathing. She gave up smoking years ago, but what I didn’t know was that saltwater is very bad for people with ‘chests’ and what is more Ma used to plunge into the loch every day. Dorothy-next-door and her husband both had emphysema and the doctor told them they should move inland and as far from saltwater as they could go. Too late. I can’t move Mother again. Anyway, she’s safely tucked up now. Last night there was a glorious burst of wheezing hysterics from her room when Soph pinned her down to remove some visible whiskers with my eyebrow tweezers. And then, after a peaceable silence, there were yelps of laughter from Soph, as Mother, hoping for an early bed, said suddenly, ‘Time is on the wane as the man said when the clock fell on the baby.’ (Wain is Scots for ‘baby’.)

      How is it that elderly people are so surprisingly cheerful about death? I remember dreading to tell Gran that Aunt Min had died but it seemed to give her a new lease of life. I suppose shock comes into it. Or George Mackay Brown’s ‘undersong of terrible holy joy’.

      Em rang. We are keeping all the details till later. Told her the flowers were fabulous and so they were. Soph found an eccentric amount of tins, jugs and enamel basins to fill the cottage. Em gutted, of course, but Uncle A would have thought it mad to board a plane from America even if she could, and he wouldn’t have hung around for anyone. He was fed up last time I saw him in the garden here. He was standing, stick in hand, fastidiously dressed, tie neatly knotted, smelling of Vetiver. ‘There’s no decency left in the world,’ he said, and left for lunch with Jim Thomas.

      I know we’ve done the easy bit. Tomorrow is another day. Who said that? Shakespeare? Scarlett O’Hara? Soph has to leave tomorrow, so I’ll drop her at the ferry, have a quick sob, and go into the solicitor’s with Uncle A’s attaché case. He told me it holds everything and in perfect order. I don’t doubt it. He had a degree in financial integrity.

      Got to go to bed.

      Peerless morning. Typical. Waved Soph off on the ferry, slicing its way through satin smooth water. Did a big shop at Co-op and called on the solicitor. (He’s the one who defended a guy who wore a balaclava and stood in the queue to rob the bank on the corner of Argyle Street.) It took relentless bullying by both of us to get Uncle A to sign his will. What is it about men and wills? They think they’re going to snuff it while signing, I suppose. Must check Mother’s. Where on earth will it be? Perhaps I needn’t tell her that I saw Uncle A’s latest bank statement. He had precisely £309.56 left in the world. No wonder he worried about the price of soup.

      Came home to a quick lunch of leftovers. We dipped all the sandwiches in beaten egg and fried them. Delicious. Still tidying up. Found a copy of J. B. Priestley’s Delight lying face down in the bothy. It was a bit rumpled but it had fallen open at a passage in which he said the book was a penitence ‘for having grumbled so much, for having darkened the breakfast table, almost ruined the lunch, nearly silenced the dinner party – for all the fretting and chafing, grousing and croaking, for the old glum look and the thrust-out lower lip’. Uncle Arthur to a T.

      Uncle Arthur had a stutter quite as bad as good King George’s. This made chatting rather hard work at first, and I never sat and questioned him in a companionable way. I knew he had followed his father into the egg trade, because he had an obscure relative who marketed eggs on the hoof, as it were, by driving flocks of geese, turkey and hens across Russia, wearing little shammy-leather bootees to protect their feet. He would herd them onto ships, where, safely ‘cooped’ they laid their eggs for weeks all ready to be sold on arrival. And he had a scary aunt Dodie, who taught English to a posh family in ‘Leningrad’ and was paid in Fabergé eggs.

      She auctioned them for the Free French and they made a fortune, unlike the eatable variety. I don’t think there was much money in eggs. During the war, of course, they were nationalised. Uncle Arthur remained attached throughout the duration, and enjoyed his business life. ‘He’s a man’s man,’ Mother would say, and ‘What did you have for lunch today, dear?’ There was always ‘lunch with the boys’. Beef olives seemed popular. I’m not sure what they are. Nothing to do with olives.

      I met him once, Priestley. He came to the Glasgow Citizens Theatre during rehearsals for one of his plays. Was it Mr Gillie? No, that’s thingummy whatsisname – Bridie. We all had lunch and he seemed really affable. Glorious voice, and the pipe, of course. I nearly ran him over outside Stratford once. He was crossing a country road near his home, Kissing Tree House. You have to love someone who lives in Kissing Tree House.