Part 7 in an occasional series about my
early years as a social worker in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Written down before I forget.
Aggie was in her early 60’s. She lived with
her 97 year old mother on a smallholding in a particularly remote part of the
Charwood Social Services catchment area.
The smallholding consisted of about 10
acres of small fields and meadows enclosed by hedges, an oasis in the midst of
the vast, open, intensively farmed fields of an industrial style farm.
To reach her home, you had to drive a
couple of hundred yards along a track across one of these huge fields, ploughed
over in the winter, and swaying with wheat, or barley, or oats in the summer.
Once through the gate of Aggie’s
smallholding, you had to park up and walk the rest of the way through meadows
full of wild flowers, where her small herd of cows grazed, until you reached
what she referred to as the farmhouse.
It took a leap of imagination to see this
structure as a “farmhouse”. In reality, it was a single storey timber clad barn
with a corrugated iron roof, a few small windows, and a dilapidated door that
led into what passed as her kitchen cum living room.
It had been built by hand about 50 years
previously by her father, who had a little money after serving in the 1st World
War. He bought a few acres in the tiny hamlet and decided to raise his family
there. He had died many years previously, but his daughter and wife still lived
there.
Aggie and her mother lived in the most
primitive conditions imaginable. They had no electricity or running water. All
their water was obtained from a well just outside the back door. There was a
tiny corrugated iron outbuilding which contained a plank of wood with a large
hole in it and a bucket underneath the hole.
The interior of the “farmhouse” consisted
of the kitchen cum sitting room, which contained an ancient and inefficient
coal fired range that was kept alight all the time. It was the only heating or
cooking facility they had. In the winter, the temperature rarely rose above 10C.
Unaccountably, the room was furnished with
a range of fine antique furniture, all of it now very dilapidated and wormy.
There was also a piano, and on the walls, in the dim light, could be seen huge
Victorian oil paintings, some of them reaching from floor to ceiling. It was
almost impossible to tell what the subjects of these paintings were, as they
were covered in a film of soot from the oil lamps which were Aggie’s only
source of light.
There was what Aggie called a parlour, but
which she mainly used as a store room, and there were two bedrooms. Aggie slept
in one, and her mother slept in another.
Aggie always took pride in introducing me
to “Mother” during my visits. This meant a visit to the bedroom, where Mother
appeared to spend her entire life.
Mother had had a number of strokes. This
had left her almost completely immobile, and apparently incapable of speech. I
certainly never heard her say a coherent word. She probably had dementia as well, but it was hard to tell.
It is very difficult to adequately describe
Mother’s appearance. She was very obese, and very pale. Folds of flesh covered
her face. Her eyes rarely opened. Her body was covered in tattered and ragged, mainly
white layers of old fashioned nightdresses, which put one in mind of Miss
Havisham in Great Expectations. In fact, the entire experience of visiting Aggie
and her mother was exactly like stepping into a Dickens novel.
Mother was incontinent, and Aggie’s
solution to this was to cover the mattress with roofing felt. As well as
protecting the mattress, this also served the function, she would tell me, of
preventing Mother from slipping too far down in the bed.
During these visits, Aggie would introduce
me to Mother, and then prop her up in a sitting position. Mother very
occasionally would open one eye to examine me, and even more rarely would make
some sort of noise in response. I was never sure she had any idea what was
going on, but Aggie would delightedly interpret these possibly random
utterances as insightful comments about the weather or current events.
Aggie tried to keep alive the dream her
father had of living the good life off the land, but to be honest, she was not
very good at this. She kept chickens,
and tried to grow vegetables. She had a grape vine and would attempt to make
wine out of the juice come the Autumn. She once offered me a bottle of this
concoction, but I could not bring myself to try it.
She also used to make jam, with a minimum
of sugar, as it was expensive, which meant that a layer of mould would soon
appear on the top. I know this, because she once kindly gave me a jar. She also
made various medicinal preparations using traditional recipes. One of my
predecessors had once been reckless enough to try one of Aggie’s special complexion
ointments, and had come out in a rash.
She and her mother lived a life of most
extreme poverty. Their main source of income was their pensions, and although
periodically Aggie would arrange for one or two of the cows or calves to go off
to market, I suspected that the herd cost her more to maintain than the income
she obtained from it.
Because of their isolation, several miles
from the nearest shop, Aggie relied on a local grocer who would deliver in his
van to obtain her weekly groceries. She had a standing order which would be delivered
every week. She was fearful of changing this order for fear of upsetting the
grocer and losing their lifeline.
One of the consequences of this was that
she would have a carton of salt delivered every week without fail. She once
showed me her stockpile of salt that she kept in the parlour. It occupied
nearly half of the room. Even though she now had enough salt to last her the
rest of her life, she would not entertain cancelling this part of the order
“just in case”.
Aggie was very frugal and economical. If
she wore out the cuffs of a shirt or blouse, she would simply cut off the sleeves
up to the elbow and then attach some other sleeves using large stitches of
wool. It didn’t matter whether or not the fabric matched in any way.
Despite apparently living life in the past,
Aggie had a portable radio and would listen to Radio 4 all day long, so she was
always up to date on national and world events, and actually had a keen and
intelligent mind.
Although she had never seen a psychiatrist,
Aggie probably had schizophrenia. She would often suddenly start whispering in
the middle of a conversation, pointing to the ceiling and muttering under her
breath about how the neighbouring farmer had fitted listening devices and was
spying on her.
At this point, you may be wondering exactly
what good a social worker was doing for Aggie and Mother. What I was
endeavouring to do was to preserve the lifestyle they had chosen, and at times
to deflect demands for “something to be done”. I would make sure that they had
the benefits to which they were entitled, and my regular visits also monitored
Aggie’s needs as a carer and provided Aggie with an outlet in which she could
engage in an adult conversation.
One day, I had a phone call from Aggie.
This took quite an effort for her. It meant she had to cycle the mile to the
nearest public phone box.
She was beside herself. Mother had had
another stroke. She needed a doctor.
I phoned Mother’s GP. I arranged to do a
home visit with him.
I met him at the “farmhouse” and he
examined Mother.
He agreed that she had had a stroke and
that she needed to be in hospital.
This horrified Aggie.
“Mother won’t like it in hospital!” she
wailed. “She won’t be able to hear the lowing of the cows, and the dawn chorus!
She’ll pine away! She needs to stay here!”
But the doctor was clear. She was ill and
needed to be in hospital. He was off to the nearest phone box to call them.
But I was thinking. What was in Mother’s
best interests?
I knew for a fact that, once she was in
hospital, she would never be allowed to return to the Victorian hovel that
Aggie regarded as home. A district nurse would take one look at their living
conditions and would refuse to allow it.
I was convinced that Mother would die in
hospital if she were to be admitted.
Aggie offered Mother love and uncomplaining
round the clock care in the environment that Mother had always known. So far,
she had managed to keep her alive despite her poor health and extreme age. It
wasn’t all about the physical environment.
I argued this case to the GP. Although he
was clearly looking at the situation from the point of view of a medic who sees
a medical condition and has a set of routines for dealing with it, he did
nevertheless listen to me. He could see my point.
In the end, it was agreed that he would
drop in on Mother over the next few days to observe her progress. She would not
be admitted to hospital after all.
I felt pleased. I told Aggie the good news.
But she was so distressed by the threat that she felt she needed to focus her
distress on someone.
“It’s your fault!” she said. “You’ve come
here wearing grey. Grey is an unlucky colour! You’ve put a jinx on Mother! This
would never have happened if it wasn’t for you!”
And despite my successful efforts to
produce an outcome that would be best for Mother and for Aggie, Aggie refused
to see me again.
You don’t often get thanks as a social
worker. But that’s all part of the job.
Miss Havisham was in Great Expectations! Tsk!
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
Have corrected it. Thanks!
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