Dedication

 

Alfred used to book himself and his wife, Katie, early every year.  Katie was the poor paralysed victim of three or four strokes on her ‘good’ side.  Alfred had insisted on having her home each time after her attacks and had adapted his home and his way of life to the convenience of them both.  He was never depressed, agitated or discouraged; he worked like a beaver.  Not only did he do all the housework, the cooking (which included special dietary requirements for his wife), washing all their clothes, including wet sheets when Katie had an accident, but he had built a wall of hardboard to make a downstairs W.C. in the corner of the living room, which housed Katie’s commode.  He had divided off the other side of the living room to make a passage between the front door and the kitchen, to give them some privacy in the room which he had turned into their bedroom.

 

His garden was immaculate.  He grew all their vegetables and cultivated flowers in the small front garden so that Katie could have a vase of blossoms to look at and to smell.

 

Each time Katie returned from hospital, Alfred was told that she would never walk again, would never recovered the use of her bladder muscles and he would never be able to manage her but he always did.  He taught her to walk with her tripod.  He got her using her commode regularly almost to order and have her back her zest for living.

 

Once a week he used to dress her in her outdoor clothes, put her into her wheelchair at the front door and push her into Uxbridge and back for their weekly shopping expedition, a distance of four miles there and back.

 

He knew all about a ‘reducing’ diet and a diabetic diet.  He could work out a properly balanced meal to give Katie.  He made her feed herself after he had cut up her food into mouthfuls and had ensured that she could impale each mouthful on her fork.

 

It was while we were visiting them one evening making arrangements for their forthcoming annual jaunt, that our attention was caught by a small framed certificate on the wall of the back room.  We read it carefully.  It was brown with age and faded.  We queried its authenticity but the name was clear.  It was Alfred’s, but how had he justified the award of the Belgian Croix de Guerre – the Belgian V.C.?

 

Alfred’s response was characteristically casual.  “Oh, I don’t know, I can’t remember”.  It was two visits later that we had a little more of the story.  Alfred produced a tattered newspaper cutting and a citation.  He had rescued several Belgians from no-man’s land, under heavy fire and one happened to be a Belgian Captain.  We read the account with interest and awe.  Alfred had been presented with his decoration by the King of the Belgians.  He was somewhat embarrassed by our interest; he tucked the relics away in the drawer from which he had produced them.  “I couldn’t do it now”, he said.  “I  should be too frightened”.

 

On holiday we had little to do for Katie.  She would be outside the chalet in her wheelchair by 7.30 a.m. warmly wrapped in a large stripy blanket, a woolly hat with a multi-coloured pom-pom on it, which Alfred had knitted especially for her holiday.  We would look in at the chalet door to say “Good-morning” to Alfred and there he would be, an identical woolly pom-pom hat perched on his head, stripping Katie’s bed.  His would be tidied, with the counterpane tucked with envelope corners neatly arranged.  The commode would be emptied and scoured out.  Katie’s previous day’s pants and stockings would be in detergent and water in the basin in the bathroom, and Alfred would be singing in his husky voice some bawdy ditty.  He would suspend work for a few seconds and peruse us with a bright alert expression.  “Do you know what I want to be when I die?” he would enquire; anything less like dying would have been hard to imagine.  “No!”.  “I want to be a cock angel in Heaven”.  Our astonished stares were just the reaction he had hoped for.  “I bet they have much more fun than hen angels”, he would guess, “so that’s for me, a cock angel!”.

 

We watched him stripping the wet sheet off Katie’s bed.  “Why don’t you leave that to us?”, we asked.  He gave us a jaunty grin and, pulling his woolly hat tighter down over his ears, turned the bottom of it up in a wide upturned brim, while the only part of his head left covered was a small circle of crown about the extent of a monk’s bald patch.  He kicked the discarded bedclothes up against the wall just inside the chalet door.  “I’m on holiday”, he declared, “so you can do that lot for me”.  He pulled open the top small drawer in the chest and exposed a cardboard container with bottles, litmus paper and tweezers.  “I tested her water this morning”, jerking his head in the direction of his wife’s chair just outside the door, “and it’s green.  I shall have to keep an eye on her grub or we’ll be getting it orange, and then we shall be in trouble”.

 

We left him.  It was apparent that we were only to be permitted to carry out the most menial duties for the pair of them.  We would never be trusted to test his wife’s urine or to feed her or to dress her.  Towards the end of the week, we were privileged to “wife-sit” for him.  He undressed her, and ‘potted’ her, and left her sitting up in bed against a wall of pillows while he had an evening out at the wrestling match in the ballroom.  Within minutes of walking in among the hundreds of holidaymakers thronging the vast floor, Alfred was in the thick of preparations and by the time the contest started, he had a towel draped round his neck, a small stool under his bottom and a bucket and sponge beside him at one corner of the roped square.  He tipped the stool back on two legs at a dangerous angle while surveying his contestant.  The fight started and everyone began shouting strategic advice.  Alfred had now tipped his stool right forward and was peering through the two strands of tope.  The pom-pom on his hat bobbed agitatedly and, finding his guidance on the contest apparently ignored, he pushed his head right through the ropes only to have it rammed back by the backside of one of the wrestlers, much to the amusement of the audience watching his antics.

 

At the interval, Alfred started on his contestant with energy and enthusiasm but little finesse.  The foam sponge splashing water for feet around, was applied haphazardly all over the unlucky wrestler until, within seconds, he had been subjected to a complete cold bath all over.  Just as the bell clanged for the next round, Alfred, anxious to make the best use of his bucket of water, pulled out the elastic top of his contestant’s shorts, and shot the rest of the deluge down the front.  Then, sitting himself back on his stool in the centre of the miniature lake, he prepared to enjoy the next round.

 

Meanwhile, Katie was sitting up against her pillows in the bed.  A small radio on the table beside her played dance music.  On a plate was an orange, carefully peeled and pulled into sections and a peeled apple, cut into portions, now taking on a pale brown surface.  She looked up expectantly each time someone glanced in on her.  “Will Alf soon be back?”, or “What is the time?”, she would enquire.  She was not unhappy or worried but she missed her constant companion and was awaiting his return with all the patience she could muster.  She ate the little pieces of fruit popped into her mouth obediently but was too preoccupied to help herself.

 

One summer we missed Katie and Alfred.  He had become ill and it had been discovered that he had developed leukaemia.  For two or three weeks at a time he had attempted to maintain the old routine, looking after them both but sheer determination and will-power were not enough.  After less than a fortnight in hospital, he died.  Katie, in the next ward to him, heard the news but refused to accept it for some weeks.  Gradually she was convinced and her spirit evaporated.  There was no-one to encourage her to ask for her commode or to take a pride in her lovely clean dry bed, so Katie became a vegetable and some months later she followed Alfred.  There was nothing on earth left for her to live for.