Breaking down

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the health and fitness of our ‘oldies’, my mother, Peter and Carmen, inevitably started to break-down. Carmen, who was the brightest, quickest, wittiest of people began to show signs of some sort of character change. Peter couldn’t put his finger on it. An X-ray revealed an enormous tumour, the size of a golf ball in the centre of her brain between the two halves, not attached and very fortunately, not malignant. With careful surgery, it could be removed. The Maudsley Hospital in London performed the delicate operation. However, although she recovered well, Peter said it was from then her personality slowly began to subtly alter. In only about three years Peter, with awful remorseful regret, was forced to conclude he could no longer look after her. He felt he was letting her down, letting himself down, letting down the sixty years of happiness and devotion they had for one another. To put her into a ‘home’ specialising in the cruellest of illness, Alzheimer’s disease, was heartbreaking. He was by her side every day, even when she didn’t know him, for two years until she died.

After my father’s catastrophic, debilitating stroke, my brother made arrangements to leave South Africa, where he was living with his family, and move back to the farm in the Kedong Valley to help my mother with its running. He moved into a little cottage on the other side of the river with only one bedroom. This cottage was generally reserved for a manager or was let to weekenders from Nairobi. So for him to squeeze his whole family into this little house, while my mother rattled around in the main house, was hardly conducive to a satisfactory relationship.

There are often two sides to most family conflicts, so my poor mother could well have been the architect of her own unhappiness. In her life with my father, she’d often taken the initiative when he’d boxed himself into an unsolvable problem, and found the way out. I, as a child and teenager, had often presented her with a predicament of my own, knowing she’d have the answer. So now, to be part of the problem, why didn’t she take the initiative and clear a way through?

The answer was as plain as day; she had to give in, and swap houses. But my brother refused to make the changes she wanted to the house in which he was living, so, in turn she refused to move out of her house. My brother’s obstinacy matched her own. As a consequence, it was ten years of unnecessary deterioration to the relationship between him and my mother. She then became too frail to go back and forth from England to Kenya, and he finally moved into her house which he always assumed was his inheritance anyway.

My little wife began to feel crowded in upon. Between the five of us, my mother, Peter and Carmen and ourselves, she was the only able-bodied person. We all relied on her. She couldn’t get away. She had no space of her own. It was during one of these episodes of oppression, she spotted an obscure, two lined advert on the property page in the Daily Telegraph. It described a charming little one bedroom cottage, hidden away on its own land in the hills overlooking the sea near Brindisi, Puglia, Southern Italy. She had to see it there and then. This was the answer. She immediately rang the agent in Puglia. ‘I must see it tomorrow, how do I get there?’ I couldn’t deflect her. Literally, the following day, we were on a Ryan Air flight, costing one pound each, from Stanstead Airport to Brindisi in Southern Italy.

We were met at the airport by an Irishman called Justin. This meeting turned out to be the beginning of a five-year building project that still goes on to this day, ten years later.

The whole scheme emphasises if you want to go abroad for a holiday, stay in a hotel. Stay in a hotel for as long as you like, wherever you like. Stay in a five-star hotel, eat whatever you like, drink the best wines on offer every night. It will still be cheaper than owning your own house in a foreign country. If anything goes wrong, ring reception and it’ll be put right. If you step out of your room, by the time you get back, all the towels will be changed, the bed made up, the soaps changed, the bathroom sparkling and the minibar filled. If you don’t like staying in a hotel and you want to do everything yourself, rent a house. Rent whatever house you like, with a cook or without a cook, but whatever you do, please, please don’t buy a house abroad!

The advertisement was quite right, it was a charming little casa with views over the sea, standing in its own grounds. It had olive trees, almond trees, fig trees, pine trees - it was lovely. It had steps up to a flat roof for evening drinks. It was just as you’d imagine a perfect little cottage should be in Southern Italy. I couldn’t actually get into it. All the windows were too high for me to see out of. You had to buy water by the bowser-full. I couldn’t climb up to the flat roof for quiet evening drinks, but who was I to complain about such trivialities. We built our little house in Kenya in the middle of nowhere, without any services whatsoever. My little wife needed a break, she had to have somewhere to get away, be on her own, away from all the pressure crowding in. We bought it and everything was made accessible for me.

What we didn’t know at the time was, in Italy there are two prices for all agricultural properties. The first is an agricultural value and the second is a market value. The agricultural value is the sum stated as its real value at the time of purchase. The sum on which you pay all relevant taxes, stamp duty, commune duties, etc. is paid to the vendor, in front of the Notary and it’s signed and sealed then and there. At that moment, the property legally changes hands and becomes the property of the purchaser. The agreed sum is then seen to be given to the vendor by the buyer. There is also an English-speaking translator, in our case a girl from Birmingham, explaining all procedure as you go along. The Notary then stands, shakes everyone by the hand, and says in Italian, translated by the girl from Birmingham, ‘I just have to go outside for a few minutes; I believe you have a little business to discuss.’

Our agent, sitting at the back of the room, clutching our Banker’s Drafts, moved centre stage and formally handed the remainder to the vendor with a little bow. The vendor graciously accepted them likewise.

A part of the service our agent offered was to oversee all the building work on the properties they sold. I suspect they made that promise not realising how successful their business was about to become. At one stage I believe they were closing one sale every day of the week and each sale required an awful amount of work. Each transaction was, more than likely, to be one of the more important events in any purchaser’s life.

Justin’s agency consisted of himself and a brilliant, beautiful Armenian girl called Anna. If we were an example of any one of their clients, there weren’t enough hours in a day for them to deal with all our ever increasing expectations. Over the next five years the number of emails I sent Anna, and expected an immediate response, would have filled a library. When their involvement was finally over, I wrote her an email. I said how much we appreciated all the time and effort they’d put in, on our behalf and, ‘I’m going to miss our little chats.’ She wrote back, ‘I wouldn’t call them “little chats”, I’d call them Small Talks.’

We never did get our hideaway used for its original intention. By the time it was finished all our oldies had departed, “flown to others we know not of”. First, poor Carmen, then it was the turn of my poor mother to start to fade. She shouldn’t have been here, in this country. She should have been in my brother’s house in the Kedong Valley. But she was well looked after, sustained financially by those shares my brother-in-law bought for her, all those years ago when I was on that Stryker bed in Nairobi hospital.

She’d always been an avid reader, so one of the jobs was to supply her with at least seven books a week. But that appetite slowly started to decline, and television took over. In its turn the interest in television waned and she would just sit staring ahead, agitated, troubled, waiting for someone to come and sit with her. One afternoon we were both with her and she said, ‘Dr Davis came to see me this morning.’ We knew he was monitoring her so it wasn’t surprising. So I said, ‘That was kind of him, what did he have to say.’ She said, ‘That’s the curious thing, he didn’t say anything. He came in through the window, walked straight past me, and went out through the door.’ I said, ‘I must admit that is a strange thing to do, especially as your window is on the first floor.’ She said, ‘I’m glad you agree with me, I thought I was seeing things.’

She had another episode of seeing a pretty little girl, dressed in a white party dress with a blue satin ribbon tied around her waist. She was dancing about the room while one of the staff was making up her bed. The little girl disappeared into her cupboard just as the member of staff was about to leave the room. It turned out she was harbouring a respiratory infection and Dr. Davis really did have to make a visit, this time through her door.

She rallied after a short course of antibiotics and realised what had happened. She said, with a whimsical smile, ‘I do miss my little girl though.’

It is strange how, sometimes, wonderful things do happen at the very worst of times. As I know only too well. One of the other inmate’s daughter, would visit her mother most days and occasionally meet my mother around the house. They slowly found they were looking forward to seeing each other, so they arranged to have tea together once a week. This quickly turned into twice a week. Judith became a very close friend. My mother’s whole attitude changed. She’d unwittingly let herself fall into the depths of despair. She just wanted it all to be over. Then quite suddenly, up popped Judith. Her attitude changed. Rather than just sitting in her room staring at the wall, expressionless, waiting for someone to come in, she would get dressed, put on her trainers and pad about the house visiting others in their rooms. Judith and her husband Geoffrey, a number of times, asked her out for lunch to their intriguing farmhouse nearby. Geoffrey farmed beef cattle and occasionally he would cull a deer. He and Judith would prepare the whole animal for the freezer. This was an entire day’s work for two people. How could my mother ever have known, all these years later in England, she would be watching exactly the same preparation of an animal she had undertaken herself, after she had killed a Thompson’s gazelle when she first came to Kenya in 1937.

A glimpse of her former self, began to emerge. Since having to leave the Kedong Valley she’d become a depleted person, she became small and frail. In her prime, during all my formative years, she was a tall, strong, broad-shouldered woman able to take on anything.

I can picture her so well, when my father was away for weeks on end buying cattle in the northern frontier of Kenya. She and our Headman Marratim, he standing just outside the veranda on the lawn, and my mother at her table in the shade, updating a huge ledger, containing the health and well-being of all the cattle on the farm. Marratim spoke in a mellifluous, descriptive mix of Swahili and his own dialect, Nandi, and painted her a picture of the state of each animal in every herd. At any one time she could tell my father how many head were ready for slaughter, how many were not very well or underweight. Also, how many were calving and how many needed intensive care and feeding in the boma on the other side of the river from the main house.

She always had a project going on in the garden, expanding, improving. If she needed more labour for any expansion project, both Di Di and Marratim would vet anyone before they could be employed.

All these images came flooding back to her. Instead of being saddened, comparing them to herself in her present situation, I think she could look back with pleasure at all she had achieved. Now my brother was able to take advantage of all her extensive endeavours.

Although her frame had shrunk and her little shoulders were bent, a faint glint in her eyes brightened her face and she had the air of being so much more at peace with herself.

It wasn’t long before the cruel shroud of insidious old age settled over her and she could no longer leave her room. Nevertheless two afternoons every week, without fail, Judith was with her to lighten her day. Thank you, Judith.

When we were told by the excellent staff the end was close, we stayed on after her supper, consisting only of a few small sips of light warm broth through a straw. My wife gently held her small soft reduced hand, which every now and then gave a tiny squeeze of acknowledgement, until we fell asleep in our chairs. The night staff kindly found us a single bed in which we could gratefully curl together, and they said they would call us when the time came. Morning broke and her chest was still quietly, almost imperceptibly, rising and falling. So we went home to freshen up to come straight back.

One of the nurses looking after her was a tall, kind robust girl with a very gentle manner. The bed had been heightened to enable everyone tending her not to have to bend down, when changing sheets for example. The sheets needed changing. The tall, strong nurse carefully slipped her arms underneath my mother’s little reduced body and held her in her arms, while two others quickly renewed the sheets. While my mother was in her arms, she died. We arrived back five minutes later.

My little wife arranged a beautiful goodbye service, with all the flowers my mother loved the most, on a wicker coffin. I wrote the eulogy which my wife read out. We sent her ashes to my Brother in the Kedong Valley and he arranged another small service for the few close family still living there, and buried her ashes next to my father’s coffin.