18

Well of Loneliness

I was unwell. Having always been a good sleeper, my nights were now broken by nightmarish dreams, sweats and long periods of insomnia. On waking, I was nauseous and had been sick several times. I thought I might be pregnant, and knew that no matter how dangerous or inconvenient that might be, I could not contemplate a termination.

We were registered with a young Portuguese doctor who said I was not pregnant, and my disturbed sleep was in all probability caused by stress; he prescribed a short course of antidepressants. My blood pressure was raised and he took the menopause into account. He did not enquire about my drinking, but I concluded that the symptoms emanated from not eating adequate evening meals, and drinking a lot of whisky at night after Michael went to bed. The nausea was a form of alcohol withdrawal, and ceased as soon as I downed a stiff drink. I had yet to learn that after the initial boost alcohol gives, it acts as a depressant. Each morning I gave Michael breakfast and prepared his packed lunch before driving him to school, then stopped on the return journey for groceries and another bottle of something or other. No wonder I was gaining weight when I recall the alternatives I downed in an effort to cut back on spirits: cassis, Cinzano, Campari, crème de menthe, Drambuie, Benedictine, chartreuse – you name it, I drank it.

Nonconformists had always attracted me, and I made a few acquaintances through Michael’s playground friends; one was Karen, a German girl who lived with a married Frenchman and his two children in the same block as M. Rossi. She worked from home, translating German into French, and both languages into English, sometimes having a surfeit of the latter, which were passed to me. My school French was adequate to translate French to English, but not the reverse. I learned a great deal about cattle-breeding in Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Belize – all the Panamanian isthmus countries in fact.

Through Karen I met Eva, who had a flat at the end of our corridor. She was Austrian, tall, red-haired and strikingly good-looking; of a certain age, she could well have modelled for a Gustav Klimt painting. She had an office job in Nyon but supplemented her income by doing translations; her weekends were spent with a French national who lived in an ambitiously designed villa near Gex. From what I gleaned from Eva, their drinking began every Friday and ended late on Sunday, in order to sober up for the next week’s work.

On a misty early autumn walk near the yacht club, I was calling the heedless Oscar when a voice rang across the water asking if I was English; on hearing that I was Irish, he answered: ‘So’s my wife.’ A working-class lad, Jim had a first-class Oxford degree in political history and three boys at the International School, and his wife had spent her formative years in Brazil. He worked for the International Labour Organization and lived near Ferney-Voltaire. Expansive in the way of an alcoholic who has drunk just enough to prompt generous impulses, he was determined his wife and I should meet.

Shortly before Fergus returned to the Congo, we had met the owner of the apartment whose entrance door was nearest to our own. Horst was an Austrian in his early sixties, who came to Divonne twice a year for ‘the cure’. He spoke impeccable English, was clearly from the upper echelons of society, and insisted we join him for dinner at one of the more exclusive local restaurants. He drove us there in his immaculate Mercedes, which outclassed all the other vehicles in the car park. It was a pleasant evening, despite the food being unremarkable. That, however, was of little concern to Horst, who concentrated on the wine list.

What did this succession of encounters with alcoholics mean? Did Fate, about which I was ambivalent, have a hand in this? Was some alien force trying to tell me something? Or was it simply that drinkers gravitate to drinkers?

Regular drinking since Fergus’s heart attack in 1971 had led to dependency and I wanted to put a stop to it, so I decided to conduct an experiment. On returning from the school run and Oscar’s morning walk, I put a bottle of whiskey in the centre of the dining-room table, resolving not to touch it until noon. Like a scene from the film Woman in a Dressing Gown, I walked around it, intoning: ‘I’m not going to open you, I can resist you, I hate the taste and smell of you, and I’m not going to drink you ever again.’ At eleven o’clock I downed a gin and tonic. Thereafter, as gin too could be detected on the breath, I changed my allegiance to vodka, in the false belief that it was odourless.

Something radical would have to be done. I knew that AA had groups in every country of the world. Only a degree of courage was needed to ring the number given in the Geneva telephone directory. A gravelly male voice answered in an East Coast American accent. His name was Dick, and he would be happy to meet me on Tuesday evening at seven thirty in the foyer of the Intercontinental Hotel, before escorting me to a meeting. I did not have anyone to stay with Michael, but told him to go to Eva if he was worried about anything. He had a load of homework to do, always worked independently, and did not seem at all fazed by this arrangement. Only long afterwards did I realise how irresponsible it had been to leave him alone: Fergus was in Thailand, my mother in Ireland, and nobody knew where I would be in Geneva. Worst of all, there was always alcohol in my bloodstream, and I kept a miniature bottle in the glove compartment of the car.

I knew immediately it was Dick when a tall, middle-aged, weather-beaten man in a dark blue blazer appeared in the vestibule. He ordered two bottles of mineral water, and said I did not look like a terminal drunk. I replied that this was not a positive factor, probably even encouraging me to continue on the slippery slope. When I told him that Fergus was not aware of my dependence, he asked caustically: ‘Something wrong with his nose?’ I said that on his return for Christmas, I intended to confess the extent of the problem and my resolve to tackle it by attending AA meetings on a regular basis.

Meetings were held in a quiet backwater of the old town. The entrance was unobtrusive and the atmosphere thick with smoke. Dick led the way to a room with a billiard-sized central table, over which hung a low lamp with a faded, pleated silk shade, evocative of scenes from early films where Mafia men gather to play ruthless card games. He introduced me to the man who was to chair the meeting, another American, and his subdued wife, who had seen better days. Their accents were southern, and his manner crude, peppered with unnecessary epithets, but they said in harmony: ‘Glad to meet you, you are in the right place.’ Framed exhortations hung on every wall – ‘Let Go and Let God’, ‘Keep it Simple’, ‘One Day at a Time’, ‘First Things First’, ‘Live and Let Live’, ‘Take it Easy’, ‘Keep coming back, it works if you work it’. A giant photograph of Bill W., the Akron stockbroker who with his friend, Dr Bob, had founded the fellowship in 1935, dominated one wall. I hated the word ‘fellowship’ – it smacked of joining something and I was essentially a loner. I was soon to learn that this was characteristic of many alcoholics.

People were filtering in, perhaps a dozen men of assorted ages and half that number of women. None appeared the worse for wear, but a few were withdrawn, in contrast to the rest who were laughing and relaxed. Dick whispered to me: ‘Try to keep an open mind, and take the cotton wool out of your ears and stick it in your mouth.’ The chairman rose and asked us to ‘Stand for a moment of silence, to remember why we are here.’ Next, he asked one of the men to read the preamble, which said that Alcoholics Anonymous was a fellowship of men and women who shared their strength, hope and experience, and hoped to carry their message to others less fortunate. So far, no mention of God. A women was asked to read something called ‘How it Works’, to which Dick advised me to pay particular attention. God came on the scene then – referred to as ‘One who has all power’, it was hoped that we would find him now. When she read the Twelve Steps to Recovery, I could see immediately that Step 3 – I was to turn my life over to the care of God, as I understood him – was going to be particularly sticky, as I had no spiritual foundation on which to build, vacillating between atheism, agnosticism and humanism. (Much later, by replacing the dreaded word with ‘Good’, I made some progress.) When all the steps had been read out, there followed a paragraph:

Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path, those who do not recover are those who cannot, or will not, adopt a manner of living which requires rigorous honesty. There are those too who suffer from grave emotional or mental disorders, there are such unfortunates, they seem to have been born that way, but many recover in time if they have the capacity to be honest.

It shattered me to the core.

The meeting was then declared open and several hands were raised, indicating a wish to speak: each began with the formula ‘My name is —— and I’m an alcoholic’, with the exception of a small mousy woman who substituted ‘and I am powerless over alcohol’. They spoke of blackouts, of memory loss so severe that whole days had been erased. In one case the speaker had landed, after an overnight flight, in another country. One woman had lost her sight for several days, and hair loss was common. Some were medically qualified and had continued to practise until shopped by colleagues. Less dramatically, others woke in the bed of a stranger, or found themselves in police custody – these were all professional people, many multilingual. The Geneva groups, for some incalculable reason, were seldom attended by what were known colloquially as ‘skid-row bums’. It terrified me to contemplate the fact that the corridors of world politics might be crawling with active alcoholics, whose fingers, metaphorically speaking, could press the Red Button.

Shortly before the meeting closed, the chairman asked me if I would like to say something, so I followed the pattern, giving my name followed by the declaration ‘and I’m an alcoholic’. I thanked him and the rest of the group for their varied stories, saying, with truth, that I had learned a lot. The meeting closed when we were asked to stand and say the Serenity Prayer – ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ As we left, a statuesque woman approached me, saying she hoped to see me at the next meeting, ‘by which time your brain should have cleared a bit’. I found her implication offensive and her manner overbearing. Dick said she was a Finnish national who meant well, but that she could indeed be abrasive. I was handed several leaflets and bought a copy of the Big Book – the AA bible, now dated, though the underlying philosophy remains sound. On parting from Dick, I expressed my gratitude, saying I had been impressed by the sincerity of the group, and would return when I had digested the literature. Before driving off, I took a swig from the bottle in the glove compartment.

One of the leaflets, titled ‘Who Me?’, contained a list of questions for the reader wishing to confirm whether he or she was an alcoholic or merely someone who drank too much on occasion but could stop at any time without suffering withdrawal symptoms. It emphasised that nobody else had the right to affix the label – it was entirely for the drinker to decide. There were about thirty questions, such as ‘Do you drink alone?’ and ‘Do you crave a drink at certain times?’; my answer was affirmative to all but three, so it was clear my worries were founded. I read the literature avidly, with a strong drink beside me. I had not understood the simple message that the programme demanded total abstinence. I read the horror stories in the Big Book with special attention, and concluded that my own case was mild in comparison: I had never passed out, had memory loss, hallucinations, or a car accident. I was not violent, verbally or physically. But there had been an incident when oil in an unattended frying-pan had caught fire, and Fergus had extinguished it with a damp towel: my reactions had been slow as we choked in the smoke-blackened kitchen.

Having been to several meetings, I was still drinking almost as much as before, although I remained silent about it. Nobody in the group challenged me, but they all knew and were clearly disappointed. However, one visiting Canadian, Ted Hooper, to whom I owe eternal gratitude, gave me a stern lecture. He said that it was clear I had not ‘reached bottom’ – in other words, I had not yet suffered enough. He was sorry, not just for me, but for those closest to me, who would also suffer unless I was able to accept, as well as admit, my powerlessness. He said: ‘It may well be that you need a “convincer”, and it may take some time, even years, for you to reach that stage.’ He told me that he had been sober for some years before having what in AA is called ‘a slip’, which reduced him in a matter of weeks to a state of suicidal despair – he mentioned lying in a bath, a loaded pistol at the ready. But with the support of his family, who belonged to the Al-Anon group for relatives, colleagues or anyone who has suffered, or continues to suffer, because of someone’s drinking, he had been given a second chance. He said that only a small percentage is so blessed, and that only ten per cent of people who come to AA for help attain long-term sobriety. The recovery rate for those who have had an extended period of sobriety before ‘slipping’ was even lower.

Now I was really frightened, particularly as I had identified myself as one ‘of those unfortunates’ mentioned in ‘How it Works’ who do not succeed. However, Ted never gave up on me, no matter how discouraging my behaviour, having a hunch that I might just make it in the end. There were aspects of the programme I could accept, on which I began work. I knew my mind was far from open, that I was intolerant and full of prejudices, that AA also stood for Altered Attitudes, but I was still treating it as an intellectual exercise, rather than a life-saving commitment to abstinence.

When Fergus returned from Thailand, I broke it to him that I had the same disease that had led to my father’s premature death. He was shocked, having suspected nothing more than that I was stressed by sustained uncertainty about our future, and the onset of menopause. He was particularly apprehensive because of what he had seen during his years in Northern Rhodesia – marriages destroyed and childhood disrupted by the excessive drinking of one, sometimes both, partners. I told him how impressed I was by AA, and what I had learned at the Geneva group meetings, and advised him to join Al-Anon. He soon became a regular member of the small, largely female group, which met at the same time and in the same building as AA, thus ensuring that at least the driver of our car would be sober.

I had begun to listen with more attention to speakers I would previously have dismissed on superficial grounds. An overpowering American woman, rather showy in her manner of dress, spoke of being grateful she was alcoholic, because of the enlightenment AA had brought to her existence. She reiterated what Ted had said: ‘If you’re not convinced, go out and try some more controlled drinking.’ But it was weeks before I noticed that ‘The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking’. I was not a member; I was merely attending meetings and learning a great deal about my condition. Still defiant, I clung to the hope that I might conquer the demon by my own efforts. I had been told to seek help, but the very idea was anathema. The word ‘denial’ was freely used in the meetings – a word I was never able to utter. Another American woman, who, outside the group, ran a counselling service, spoke to me with some venom across the table: ‘You’re in such denial, it’s beyond belief!’

So parochial was the English-speaking population in the Canton de Genève and the Pays de Gex that anonymity would sooner or later be breached at some level. Failing to remember Dick’s instruction to put the cotton wool in my mouth, I voiced the opinion that anonymity was unnecessary, as we suffered from a disease. It was drawn to my attention that if we were known to belong to AA and then ‘slipped’, it would not be a good advertisement for the fellowship. Point taken; but many months, as predicted by Ted, were to pass before the next stage in the relentless progress of the disease set in. Dick added to the horror stories in the Big Book, telling me about a woman, now confined in a Geneva mental hospital, whose drinking had led to Korsakoff’s syndrome, commonly termed ‘wet brain’. He had known her when she was a diplomat, renowned for her sharp wit and intellectual capacity. He no longer visited her, as she had no idea who he was.

I persuaded my mother to get a passport and she flew to Geneva for Christmas. Now eighty years old, it was her first flight since 1927, when I was in utero and she took pictures from a Tiger Moth of the Collon House where I was born some months later. She appeared in a wheelchair, escorted by a solicitous flight attendant, impressed by the efficiency of air travel, if not by the packaging of milk in ‘fiddly’ little plastic tubs that she had found hard to open. During her stay, we took her to the old part of Geneva, the Jet d’Eau, lunch at our favourite pizza restaurant, the Palais des Nations, and to see WHO headquarters, where Fergus now had an office in a new block – the original building, with its massive, gravity-defying, concrete-canopied entrance, having been found too small shortly after completion. Fergus drove her up the corkscrew road to Saint-Cergue, then into Switzerland, along the ridge of the Jura, and back to Divonne by another equally tortuous route with panoramic views to Lac Léman, Mont Blanc, and the Alpes Maritimes. I coped with preparation of a traditional festive meal, and had a rooted Norwegian blue spruce on the balcony lit by tiny coloured bulbs and decorated with baubles, some dating from the Boston days. But often I was tired and would retire to bed for a prolonged siesta, pleading exhaustion from cooking, shopping and other chores, leaving the others to their own devices. My mother remarked that I seemed to have little appetite for the delicious food I prepared, and was surprised at my burgeoning weight; my bouts of irritability, facial flushes and girth were attributed to the menopause.

In the early months of 1977 Fergus undertook a six-week mission to China to make an assessment of the schistosomiasis problem in the hinterland of both Beijing and Shanghai. By and large I was coping at all levels, and continued to type manuscripts and translations, in order – if truth be told – to earn conscience money to pay for my drinking. A rough calculation put my annual expenditure on booze level with a year’s boardingschool fees. One reason I seldom had a hangover was that my system was permanently topped up. Not only was the quantity increasing, the alcohol content was also escalating. No longer did a glass of wine or Martini deliver the kick-start required – it had to be spirits. Anxiety about a dwindling supply would make me irritable and incapable of giving my undivided attention to anything or anybody until I had stashed away what I calculated would be enough. I began, squirrel-like, to secrete emergency supplies to see me through public holidays. Small bottles in the bathroom, ostensibly of nail varnish remover, might contain vodka. A few years later, when temporary loss of memory had set in, I would search fruitlessly for a hidden bottle. Disposing of the empties became a problem; rather than put them in the communal bin, I took them to a bottle bank elsewhere in the town, or into an area where I did not risk being recognised.

Fergus and I had decided to look for better accommodation and I came across a small notice in the weekly local rag: ‘À vendre, Villard, dans une ferme, pied de la montagne, grande appartement, 4 pièces, cuisine, salle de bains. Vue imprenable sur lac, jardin, potagère.’ I asked Eva what ‘dans une ferme’ signified and she said it was probably part of a large traditional house. On the morning Fergus returned from his trip to China, we drove straight from the airport to view En Barye, as the property was called. At the top of the town, under cliffs beside the municipal campsite, it proved to be the precisely divided half of a stone house, built in 1857 on part of a glacial gravel deposit, and in need of substantial repair and renovation. The other side was a vast grenier, containing straw, the remains of six cattle stalls, and three rooms on the ground floor, occupied by a retired shepherd, M. Marc-Joseph, who could be seen observing what was going on from a small, pine-topped eminence on the opposite side of the road. The owner lived in Provence but her nephew, a schoolteacher who no longer used the house as a summer retreat, had been delegated to negotiate the sale. Now retired, he was moving to Provence where his aunt lived. As we talked, a pair of buzzards circled above the house; occasionally, we were told, they were joined by red kites searching for small mammals. There were red squirrels, noisy green and pied woodpeckers, a variety of finches, and tits, as well as a busy pair of nuthatches. To an extent it was these attractions that blinded us to the house’s numerous disadvantages. And on April Fool’s Day, in a notaire’s office, we signed a complicated document formalising our ownership.

In retrospect only someone touched by insanity would have undertaken this project. It demanded determination, attention to detail, and energy, and most of the decisions would rest with me, as Fergus, hitherto to a large extent his own master, was working for the first time at the hub of a giant bureaucratic machine. Headquarters staff tended to regard those who came ‘in from the bush’ with suspicion, as some proved difficult to tame. We engaged M. Gaston, who did not look like an architect, apart from the suede shoes and yellow waistcoat. He was rotund, rather like David Suchet’s Poirot, and at our first site meeting jumped up and down on the living-room floor, plunging his penknife into floor and skirting before pronouncing them sound. He recommended contractors and subcontractors, and supervised the site in general, but even with my experience of properties in Ireland, it was a formidable undertaking. A convivial atmosphere pervaded the house throughout the summer – several of the workmen were bon viveurs with florid faces, their radios blaring incessantly. Gauloise smokers to a man, they never turned lights off during long lunch breaks, and their arrival was unpredictable, but they knocked off on the stroke of 5 p.m. As in Africa, they had honed their skills in the art of incomprehension – always with the excuse that my French was so deficient there had been a malentendu.

By Christmas, however, work was well advanced, and just before the girls joined us for the Easter of 1978, we moved in with another load of furniture from Ireland, as well as what was in the apartment. It had been sold to a master butcher, who complained of a mauvais odeur du chien, but paid the asking price, saying there were ways of getting rid of the smell. I was taken aback by his comment, finding it unnecessarily forthright – albeit true. A dose of my own medicine, no doubt.

My fiftieth birthday had been a few days earlier, and the gnarled wild cherry tree that canopied the access drive was in full flower on the day of the move. We were told it was traditional to plant a cherry, a walnut and a lime to celebrate the completion of a house, so the cherry, the giant walnut on the Jura side of the house, and a towering lime tree outside the kitchen, had probably been planted on the same day in 1857. So there we were, an ideal family, husband secure in a UN job, three happy, healthy children doing well at school, cute dog, and superwoman mother – the struggle to settle in Europe over at last.

When Fergus was not away on duty travel, we went twice a week to AA and Al-Anon meetings in Geneva. Pride inhibited me from getting a sponsor, nor did I warm enough to any of them to ask. I might well have met with a refusal, as it was plain to see that, while I was familiar with the programme, I had not progressed beyond mouthing the truth that I was an alcoholic: about the rest, humbly seeking help, asking for protection and care – that was alien philosophy. I doggedly stuck to the view that my life was still manageable, I did not need restoring to sanity, and I had got through half a century seldom seeking either help or advice from others. So I was not a member of AA – I merely attended meetings as an interested observer. But my pride and compulsion to control situations and people ensured that the agony would be prolonged, not only for me, but for the rest of the family, including Oscar the dog, who was sensitive to mood changes and raised voices.

Sybil and Iain came with their two boys and camped in what passed for a garden, before Fergus had transformed it to what would, in the UK, have qualified for opening to the public. (The French, in general, don’t ‘do’ informal gardens. There is little between a peasant plot and the formal gardens of a chateau, but regrettably some of the French now emulate the garish awfulness of UK suburbia, aided by most of their hypermarchés, which always have a garden centre.) Reminiscing years later, Sybil and Iain recalled sensing something was wrong, but could not identify what it was. I had been there in body but not in spirit, distanced by thoughts of the next ‘fix’. The children, aware of my dependence, were apprehensive about how I would behave in front of their friends, and were guarded about whom they invited to stay during school breaks. By their late teens, mostly only friends with an active drinker in their own family came to stay. Once, when Michael invited a rugby fanatic for the afternoon and evening meal, I served the food all the while delivering a diatribe about the thuggish nature of the game and the mental capacity of its followers. Michael was mortified, and his eleven-year-old friend was distressed to the point of tears; he clammed up, ate little, and never wanted to come again. He told his mother, a nice woman, who confronted me when next I met her at the school. I was genuinely ashamed, and when apologising confessed to a drink problem which I was dealing with by attending AA meetings. I trusted her discretion not to broadcast this fact, but suspect she did, knowing that often children other than my own were in the car with me and would have been at risk.

An appointment was made to consult a liver specialist in Geneva. The vibrations, as they say, were not good: he was a shrivelled, diminutive man who made no attempt to hide his disdain for people, women in particular, who drank to excess. In his opinion it was all a matter of strength of mind. The liver function tests were normal, and he advised me to pull myself together while my liver was still intact. Shortly after that I gave it a real bashing, called our Portuguese doctor to the house, and asked him to help me dry out at home rather than occupy a hospital bed. He gave me an intramuscular injection, and prescribed a short course of muscle relaxants and tranquillisers. Not in the least censorious, on leaving he said: ‘Courage, madame, c’est une maladie difficile.’ Michael came and sat on my bed, the first of many times, hoping that this time I would succeed in stopping drinking. Oscar lay on the floor, or, if he could get away with it, beside me on the bed. Fergus returned from work anxious to know how I was feeling. Somehow I managed to crawl down to the kitchen and prepare their evening meal.

Repeatedly, after sobering up, I would return, shamingly soon, to drinking. Five days were spent in the psychiatric wing of one of the Geneva hospitals; another time I was admitted to hospital in Annemasse for detoxification. I was taken to a private room at midday, but by three thirty no member of staff had appeared, I had no supply of alcohol with me, and time was running out before the tremors would start. So I panicked and called a taxi, for which I did not have enough cash. The driver, pleased to have such a long run, and assured that he would be paid on arrival, drove me back to Divonne, weak with lack of food and shaking, to be met by a grim-faced Fergus, who was preparing the evening meal. The drying-out process was better conducted in nearby Nyon hospital. The message was the same: my liver was functioning normally, but from what I had told them, total abstinence would be the only cure. Medical costs for the treatment of alcoholism were not then covered by WHO health insurance. The organization was soon to review its policy on the treatment of what in the US was recognised as a disease, and footed the bill for my later incarcerations in Bristol and Surrey.

Most social occasions were agonising. During the Christmas and New Year break of 1978–79, we were invited to stay for two nights at a chalet near Martigny, owned by Inge, an Austrian woman in Al-Anon whose American husband, Terry, like me, was supposedly ‘in recovery’. The scene, when we got there, was an amalgam of every festive card ever printed. In dazzling sunlight the temperature was sub-zero, and thuds and scrapes of skaters echoed over the ice of a small lake, fringed by snowladen conifers. Inge’s dog, a spayed bitch not unlike Oscar, welcomed his company, and our hosts’ two children got on well with ours. Inside the chalet a roaring fire had been lit, and preparations for the evening meal were under way. Fergus, who always suffered from cold extremities, was glad to be inside, but an element of caution inhibited adult exchanges, and bonhomie was not entirely spontaneous. The chalet was decorated with berried holly and mistletoe, there were crackers for the children, roast suckling pig, a large boiled ham stuck with cloves, many seasonal dips and nibbles, as well as thin frites of the sort I shall always associate with the Café de Paris in Geneva. Terry and I were offered a choice of mineral water, apple or cranberry juice, but for Fergus and Inge there was wine. (Early in the AA programme we are told that what other people drink should be no concern of ours: they are normal drinkers, entitled to drink whatever they choose. Most newcomers to AA fear their abstinence at social functions may bring unwelcome attention, but in reality few people, other than those who have a problem themselves, will attempt to force alcohol on others.) The truth was that Terry groped his way during the night to a cupboard where he knew Inge stored bottles of schnapps and other liqueurs, while I had to ration a small bottle of vodka concealed at the bottom of my grip. Not until a decade later, with four incarcerations in rehabilitation clinics between us, did Terry and I feel ready to share the memory of our misery that night at a group meeting. The children and the dogs had really enjoyed themselves, however, which must have rewarded Inge to some extent for the herculean effort she had made to maintain a normal lifestyle.

In the summer of that year, no discernible change having taken place in my behaviour, Fergus, two friends from Al-Anon, two AA members, and the children organised a confrontational meeting to take place at home. The aim was to convince me that my recalcitrance was such that they thought I should go to the Broadway Lodge rehabilitation clinic in Bristol for at least one month. At a practical level Katharine, who had just sat her O-levels, would be at home and could take care of the house, the two younger children and the dog while Fergus was at work. I put up no resistance, having come to the same conclusion, and encouraged by the recent return to the group of a woman with multiple dependencies who had undergone a radical transformation. I was so confused that even packing a suitcase was a challenge; simple decisions were daunting, and I remember gyrating with twitching fingers in the middle of a mess of disordered clothing. Fergus flew to London with me, and by the time we landed at Heathrow withdrawal symptoms had begun. Reluctantly he agreed to buy a half-bottle of vodka to sustain me on the journey to Bristol. I took periodic swigs from the bottle in the juddering, insalubrious lavatory of the train to Temple Meads.

Not far from tears, we clung to each other in the pillared entrance foyer of the clinic, aware that options were running out and that survival of the family was at stake. A nurse appeared to fetch me, and informed Fergus that on no account was he to telephone me, nor was I to telephone him, for the next month. Letters were permitted. Fergus then left for his return flight to Geneva.

I was taken to a long room reminiscent of a school dormitory, in which there were ten beds, each with a locker, and a curtained hanging space for clothing. Familiar AA literature, a flask of water and a glass were on top of each locker. At the far end of the room, where the bathroom and lavatories were, was a desk at which a patient sat scribbling diligently. One or two women sat on their beds reading notes; none looked at me until the nurse had left, saying: ‘One of the girls will help you unpack; then the doctor will see you in about an hour.’ My fellow inmates then came to life, asking where I came from, and how I was feeling, because I did not look too bad. True to form, I had done a good cover-up job, but knew the shakes would soon begin, and very little vodka remained. The bottle was found when a skeletal woman about my own age opened my case. ‘You’d better get rid of that pronto,’ she said. ‘I’m surprised the nurse didn’t ask if you had any alcohol in your baggage.’ So I took it to the bathroom, wondering if I could gulp the remainder without being discovered in the act, but decided to play safe and pour it down the loo. Besides, there was not enough to stave off the tremors for more than a short time.

A crisply mannered doctor remarked, as had all the others, that I did not look as if I had reached the terminal stage of alcoholism, asked if I had ever smoked, tested my motor reactions, prodded the area around my liver, and took a blood sample. I told him how much I had drunk over the last few hours, and my dread of acute withdrawal symptoms. He assured me the nurses would look after that, before ushering me out of his office with the words: ‘Good luck. Listen, learn and try to do as you are told.’ Then the nurses took over: their attitude was censorious, and small talk was discouraged, so I was snubbed when I admired a ring worn by the one who was injecting me. Further ‘medication’ would be given later, and I was now to go downstairs for the evening meal. Prison guards came to mind.

The male dormitories were in another wing of the house, but at meetings and mealtimes the sexes mixed. In the dining room it was clear that a pecking order had been established for preferred seats and neighbours, so, as the last to arrive, I had to fit in unobtrusively. A square-set woman, with cropped, irongrey hair, said grace in an upper-class drawl. Conversation was limited to the barest civilities and please-pass-the-salt level. I had little appetite, and had begun to feel distinctly woozy; later I thought I was going to faint in the bath. Some nameless pills, which I had to swallow under supervision, were brought just before I lay down on a very hard bed in the muffled atmosphere of the dormitory. Fergus would by this time be back in Divonne, probably mowing the grass in the fading light – it all seemed very distant.

After breakfast, at which each morning a different member of the group read ‘Thought for the Day’, one of the counsellors gave me a folder containing more literature, a lined pad of foolscap paper and a questionnaire to complete. It asked if I had ever imagined voices, had hallucinatory dreams, suffered memory loss over an extended period, lost bladder control, vomited in public, lost consciousness or been physically violent. Was my drinking of the binge variety or did I drink on a daily basis? Was I a social or a closet drinker? The IQ test was of such simplicity I wondered if it contained a hidden catch. Then the entire group was summoned to the smoky common room. At that time it was thought too much to ask inmates to give up cigarettes while they were being weaned off alcohol, heroin, cocaine, sleeping pills and tranquillisers, glue sniffing, and in a few cases food and sex. Most of my fellow patients were multiple addicts; my addiction was to alcohol.

A blackboard, with the Twelve Steps written in coloured chalk, hung over a late Victorian marble fireplace. One of several counsellors, most but not all of whom were themselves in recovery, addressed us. First, we learned it was not acceptable to refer to a recovered alcoholic – an addict remained ‘in recovery’ for the rest of his or her life. The first thing I wrote on my pad was the danger of replacing one addiction with another. The warning was clear; the risk of shifting from one panacea to another was high. I learned that many substances lingered in the system, detectable in the nails and hair for months after a period of abstinence. We should be alert to hidden risks in substances such as cough mixtures, mouthwashes, tonics and painkillers.

The role of heredity in alcoholism was not proven, but I had drawn my own conclusions from observation of groups in Geneva. A head count over many months, in groups averaging eighteen people, revealed at least two-thirds had a close relative who was alcoholic, and that an astonishingly high proportion were of either Irish or Scandinavian stock. At one meeting of ten people, seven were of Irish extraction. One Dublin woman came from a family of five boys and three girls, whose father had been alcoholic; two of the girls and three of the boys became alcoholic. All had witnessed their father’s battle to stop drinking, which he eventually did without the help of AA, but the family consensus was that he became ‘a miserable old codger, dry, but not sober’ – ‘sober’ in the widest sense of the word. A fine line, the full implications of which I did not understand until many years later. I kept quiet about my studies, knowing they would provoke more accusations that I was intellectualising my problem and should concentrate on getting to grips with this ‘simple programme for complicated people’, that I should look for similarities rather than differences, and rid myself of the delusion that I was in any sense special or different. Protests that I had never done this or that were invariably parried by ‘No, not yet’. There was much wisdom in those despised American exhortations. ‘Keep it simple, Stupid,’ I told myself.

We had been cautioned about the perils of lying about how much we had been drinking, or the level of drugs we had either been swallowing or injecting, as this would result in underprescription of medication, with possibly fatal consequences. A few days after this warning we had a demonstration of what could happen. I was talking to a middle-aged, tall, sinewy, undernourished-looking American who was unsteady on his feet, attributing this to ‘that damned medication they’ve gotten me on’, when he pitched forward, striking his forehead on a sharp corner of the marble hearth. He was having an epileptic seizure and nurses came quickly to the scene. Cross-examined the following day by his counsellor in front of the assembled patients, he confessed to having grossly understated his alcohol intake. This was his third incarceration in a clinic. He worked for a major international drug manufacturing company and should have known better.

Some male inmates were there at Her Majesty’s expense, having been offered the choice of a jail sentence or entering a treatment facility; most came from mining or fishing communities around Cardiff or Swansea. My counsellor, Ed, was also Welsh, and of those who helped me over the years, it was his judgement I came most to respect. The wide spectrum of social background among the patients surprised me, though one of the tenets of AA is that alcoholism is a great leveller. I found the Welshmen sensitive, highly intelligent and articulate, regardless of the fact that many left school at fourteen. Roughly half of them were serious in their commitment to kick their dependency; the others regarded treatment as a soft option. One man, the visible parts of whom were so finely tattooed in red, green and blue oriental dragons, birds and serpents that little natural skin remained, had spent years in the French Foreign Legion; later, during a heatwave, his entire upper body was seen also to be tattooed.

After the evening meal, on completion of written assignments, a period was set aside for socialising. This took place in what had been an elegant drawing room with early nineteenth-century plaster cornices and ceiling roses. Now it had acquired the same institutional atmosphere that pervaded the entire building: chairs covered in uncut moquette were grouped around low tables with overflowing ashtrays in the centre – an indication that someone had not done the house task allocated to them, which would come under scrutiny at the next group meeting. These meetings were chaired by one of the counsellors, who, after summarising what had been covered the previous day, would ask each patient to give a short account of what stage they had reached in the programme, what step they were working on, and how they felt their handwritten life story had been received by the group. The opinions expressed were always to be respected, no matter how hurtful, as they were made in a spirit of love and hope that the author would achieve sobriety. This generality was idealistic and far from true: after a week I could see that some patients took a fiendish delight in the discomfiture of others. Two in particular, nearing the end of their stay before going for ‘extended’ time in a halfway house, would set traps for an unwary newcomer, who would then be grilled by a counsellor, as well as by the rest of the group. In retrospect, I am sure their behaviour was recognised by their counsellor, and was one of the reasons they were going to remain under observation. Without warning, the spotlight would switch to another victim, the accusation often being of trying to keep a low profile, wearing a cynical expression, not contributing enough to discussions, or continuing to be in denial.

The life story had to be given to one’s counsellor, who then passed a copy of it to each member of the group. Each patient’s task was to write a letter to the author, giving their comments, and listing defects of character detected from the story, or perceived at group meetings. Having listened to the letters written to other patients, I prepared for a vitriolic response. Most letters to me were censorious, and several emotional: my story read like a Barbara Cartland novel; it was pretentious to mention living near Geneva; my accent was affected; I was full of anger and resentment, and had fabricated much of the story; I was vain, attaching too much importance to my appearance; I talked too much and didn’t listen; I was inordinately proud. On the positive side, I was seen to be generous, helpful, essentially good-natured, and possessed of a saving sense of humour. Several implored me to ‘Let the barriers down and show your vulnerability’, ‘Get out of the driver’s seat’, ‘Get honest with yourself and others’, ‘Stop the denial and face reality’. Nobody seemed to have detected my intolerance and inflexible attitudes.

At evening gatherings several nurses, and a trainee counsellor, sat on the sidelines observing the behaviour of the animals in the zoo. I was not alone in resenting this, as it was clear that among them, a few saw us as inferior specimens of the human race. Their observations were passed to the counsellors, who would discuss them in group the following day. It was not long before I came under fire for having stuck throughout the evening with an all-male group, perceived to be my social equals. In fact, we had discovered many common interests. As for social exclusivity, I had little in common with the hunting, shooting and fishing females. The women belonged to the landed gentry, with few interests outside shooting parties and the sporting achievements of their husbands. Talk was of house parties, dogs, horses, estates, boarding-school holidays, and periodic forays to Ascot, Henley and Cowes, who had married whom, and whose marriage appeared to be on the rocks. Passing reference was made to stately homes and members of the aristocracy whose exploits had exposed them to the savagery of the tabloid press. A subtle form of name-dropping prevailed – ‘When I was a page at the Coronation’, ‘When we attended my brother’s investiture at Buck House’, ‘My uncle, the High Sheriff’, and so on.

Periodically minor royalty appeared at the clinic, supposedly incognito, as did pop idols: it was emphasised that these individuals suffered the same affliction as ourselves, and their anonymity must be respected. Particularly poignant was an ashen-faced withdrawn young woman, wearing a shabby raincoat, nondescript jumper and skirt, with shoes so worn the soles were holed. She scarcely exchanged a word with any of us and was transferred to a more exclusive retreat within a few days. There was much whispering among the county set that she came from the Scottish Borders, and was a distant relative of the queen.

Twice during my stay house rules were seriously breached. The first incident was the discovery of an empty vodka bottle in a flowerbed under a window in the men’s dormitory. An emergency meeting was convened, at which my counsellor, slamming the offending bottle down on his desk, demanded that the culprit confess. There was no point, he added, in keeping quiet, as the staff knew not only his identity, but how and where the bottle had been obtained, as did several of his room-mates, a few of whom had taken a swig. This was also an exposure of group guilt, and the chief culprit was told to leave within two hours.

The next incident involved a young woman I had got to know quite well. A heroin-addicted, alcoholic, chain-smoking call girl from London, she confided to me what had triggered her deterioration. I was appalled when she showed me the extent of scarring on her arms and inner thighs – a preferred injection site. Some male patients took a delight in exhibiting their scars, but it seemed bizarre in a woman who had not yet lost all interest in her appearance. She told me the cost of her treatment was being borne by an Arab benefactor in the hope that she would soon be well enough to join him in Saudi Arabia. (I have to admit that I rather doubted this part of her story.) She confessed to having been on the game, but now intended to go straight. I was therefore further shattered when four patients, who had been out on day release, reported seeing her, carrying nothing more than a handbag, trying to hitch a lift from drivers heading in the direction of London.

At the end of three weeks I had completed the written part of Steps 1 and 2, but was firmly mired in the third, which required me to hand my life over to the care of God, as I understood him. Ed told me how he, too, had been stuck on Step 3, but had been ‘enlightened’ while sitting under an apple tree in the grounds at Broadway. This was so preposterous that I had difficulty suppressing a giggle; given Ed’s down-to-earth personality, this revelation was hard to credit.

At this point in my recovery I broke the house rules. I decided to telephone Fergus. Early one morning I crept furtively from the dormitory, and down to the telephone in a niche near the kitchen. He answered immediately, shocked that I had broken the rule he too found hard to observe. I told him I was genuinely stuck in the programme, and felt I could make no further headway. A male patient, up equally early, was in the kitchen and overheard the call; no doubt in a spirit of love and helpfulness, he reported my transgression. I was given the statutory two hours in which to find a room at a nearby guesthouse, and leave. After a late breakfast at my new abode, I met a couple who mentioned they had come to visit their son who was in a nearby clinic. From what they said, I deduced it was the one I had just left. I told them what a good reputation it enjoyed, and how its success rate was above average. ‘Honest with themselves and others’?

Ed did not delay in telling Fergus that I had not ‘reached bottom’ and warned him of worse to come, expressing sincere regret that he and our children would continue to suffer. Almost word for word what Ted, now back in Canada, had foretold. Ed wrote a long letter to Fergus stating his opinion that I would ultimately come to accept the fatal nature of the disease, and abandon all reservations about the Twelve Steps. He hoped only that my mind and body could withstand further punishment, writing: ‘Unbelievable as it may seem, she’s not yet ready.’

That hot, dry summer was almost at an end. The girls had coped well in my absence, and would soon return to school, while Michael would start his O-level year. I was ashamed, subdued and withdrawn when I got back. My mind had cleared to the extent that getting a flight back to Geneva had gone smoothly, despite my now more restrained need for the odd fix. The children must have longed for those happier times when I had been stimulating company, before I began to see myself as little more than a domestic drudge, before I had hurled an iron casserole from the terrace into the garden, narrowly missing a car, screaming, ‘Food, food, fucking food!’ They were glad to see me, but conversation was guarded – there were too many unspoken fears for it to be otherwise. Fergus sought refuge after work in his garden, and I resumed the role of housekeeper. We still attended meetings, but I did not speak openly about what had happened during my treatment, nor could I bring myself to share my impasse at Step 3. Had I done so, it might well have helped me, and other defiant individuals new to the AA programme of recovery. Sober AA members sensed that I was still drinking furtively, and that it was just a matter of time before there would be a serious incident.

Mary invited a boyfriend to stay for the last week before the autumn term began. My reaction to this young man was one of scarcely concealed horror. Unhealthily pallid, James was tall, lanky and unkempt; he had a Mohican haircut with a thin pigtail, wore grimy plimsolls without socks, and the rest of his clothing was greenish-black, reminding me of Oxfam shops or the RUC uniform. One fingernail was repulsively long, arousing the unspoken question – was it for scratching the Mohican or plucking an instrument? In his favour, he spoke well and was mannerly. Fergus better concealed his dismay, enquiring what subjects James studied, but found himself lost for comment when the answer was Caribbean poetry and music.

I went to Nyon in search of fresh fish for our evening meal. Despite all I had heard about the risk of mixing drugs at times of particular emotional stress, I occasionally took some Librium capsules prescribed for Fergus (which he never took), in the hope that they would calm me and lessen the urge to drink. On this day I mixed them with vodka. Emerging from a side road near the frontier post at Crassier, I put my foot on the accelerator instead of the brake. The Volvo shot into the path of an oncoming vehicle driven by a Swiss woman who had been speeding. Neither of us was injured, but the passenger side of our car was crumpled, and the bonnet of her tinny Fiat concertinaed. The gendarmerie was quickly on the scene to take measurements, and a statement from the Swiss woman, who stood fulminating by the roadside. I was driven to the police station in Divonne, to be cross-questioned by the officer in charge. On his desk stood the half-bottle of vodka they had found on the passenger seat of the Volvo. Incriminating evidence, if ever there was, making my protest that the other driver had been speeding inconsequential. A blood test was taken. When Fergus came to collect me, the officer told him the law would take its due course. We drove home in a silence rare between us. Negotiations ensuing from the accident involved both insurance companies. Despite looking all right, our Volvo’s chassis was said to be so distorted the car was deemed a write-off.

I watched our postbox for weeks, waiting for a letter summoning me to appear in court at Bourg-en-Bresse, but when at last an official letter came, it contained only the results of the blood test, sent to me in error. After some deliberation, I burned the evidence and was never called to court. The Swiss woman got a new car to replace her ancient Fiat and was placated. Fergus ordered a replacement for ours, which would not be available for some weeks, so I was reduced to a bicycle, a sedate model with a wicker basket, unearthed in the basement when we bought the house. Its brakes were worn, and it was heavy, reminding me of the Hercules I rode to school during the war. It was a two-mile downhill run to central Divonne, but a stiff climb back no matter which route I chose. Michael went to school with Fergus and got a lift home with a family recently moved to the town, whose children attended the same school. For large scale shopping I could hire a taxi once a week, but this imposed a limit on the number of bottles that could be bought without arousing comment. Disposing of empties was now even more difficult: it looked odd taking a clanking bag with me on walks with Oscar to the nearby quarry, where there was a small lake. It was a popular area with local people, so the likelihood of being seen flinging bottles into the water was high. It did not occur to me that the water level was seasonal, and in spring, as millions of tadpoles lost their fight for survival, many bottles would be exposed when the water dried up. There was a bottle bank on the road between Villard and the town centre, but a limit to how many I could take on the back of my bike, and any passing car or pedestrian would spot me. My life had become little more than a haunted existence – an insult to the many people who cared for me.

One bicycle trip to town was particularly eventful. On the way down I managed to let a deep pothole unseat me, and on the way back I subsided into a ditch to escape a speeding lorry which passed perilously close. Neighbours rushed out having seen the incident, unanimous in loud condemnation of the driver. My bicycle was slightly damaged, the contents of the basket – including two bottles of vodka – were strewn at the roadside, and I felt a sharp pain in my right shoulder. Michael, who was studying at home, was summoned to the scene. From his expression it was clear that, while concerned, he knew the real purpose of my shopping expedition. He escorted me home, where I collapsed shocked and exhausted on our bed. Then he put the sensible purchases away and hid the bottles, in contravention of all he had been told about the ineffectuality of trying to control an alcoholic’s drinking. In truth, he was nearing the end of his tolerance, and later confessed that despite his love for me, he could have wished me dead rather than witness the protracted destruction of his mother and family.

The shoulder was broken, though this was not confirmed for several days. It was a complicated break requiring an operation to knit it together with metal pins; this was done at Nyon hospital, where I was known, having had liver tests and a dryout. Several AA members visited me; they did not mince their words and some were running out of patience. Now, when Fergus was away, I had to ask an AA friend to drive me to meetings. Once, after a meeting at which I had not spoken, my withdrawal symptoms were so severe I was shaking by the time we got home, and was sick on getting out of the car. My driver was sympathetic, having been at that stage himself, despite the example of two alcoholic parents, both of whom had died in their mid-fifties.

My behaviour had become more bizarre, particularly when Fergus had to leave on an overseas tour. I knew his absence was inevitable, and that he enjoyed visiting such places as St Lucia, the Philippines and Beijing. I was also aware of his concern that I was an unfit guardian of Michael, now fourteen, while he was away. One winter evening I threw his briefcase containing travel documents and passport out of the kitchen window. Worse, another time I stuck hairpins in the locks of his car, before hiding in the back of the other one in the car port; I was not far from hypothermia when Fergus found me, drowsy and incoherent, curled up on the back seat. The following morning he took a taxi to the airport rather than risk being driven by me. Full of remorse, I vowed never to behave so badly again. When he rang from Beijing, the call came late at night, and he knew instinctively that I had been drinking. I had sounded insouciant, assuring him we were both well, missing him, and looking forward to his return and the arrival of Katharine and Mary for the Easter holidays.

The shooting of Oscar triggered probably the most deranged act of my drinking career, leading me, much later, seriously to question my sanity. It was a beautiful Saturday morning in early summer. I was sober and busy preparing our midday meal; Fergus was working in the garden with Oscar as company. Only when the dog appeared beside him wounded and bleeding did he realise that he had sloped off in pursuit of Vinette, M. Ganeval’s bitch, with whom he was wont to take off into the forest. M. Ganeval, a retired chasseur, and his tiny crippled wife lived in a roadside farm, just over the hill from us. Marc-Joseph feared him, saying he was a trigger-happy alcoholic, and that he never went near that house. We had not taken much notice of this, as Marc-Joseph himself spent every weekend boozed up with his card-playing mates. Fergus telephoned the vet, who knew Oscar well, and was told to bring him straight to the surgery. I sat in the back of the car with Oscar, now in shock, cradled in a blanket. I do not remember where Michael was, but we were glad he was not there. They sedated Oscar and told us to ring in the afternoon when they would know the extent of his injuries. He had been shot through the bladder, and never regained consciousness. I insisted on going to see him, curled up like a hedgehog, and broke down hysterically in the surgery. Michael was devastated; he adored that dog.

Not long after, I saw a gun lying on top of the woodpile outside the entrance to Marc-Joseph’s room; noises of merriment came from within, where his friends had gathered to play cards and down several bottles of red. On impulse I grabbed the gun, put it on the back seat of the replacement Volvo and drove up the narrow corkscrew road from Vesancy, past a little pond where we had skated during the previous winter, almost to the foot of the cliffs above. Here I hurled the gun into the undergrowth and returned home. When Fergus enquired where I had been, I was evasive. When Marc-Joseph’s party began to disperse amid much cackling, the theft was discovered. The owner came to ask Fergus if he had seen any stranger passing, as the precious gun, which had belonged to his father, had disappeared. Fergus truthfully said he had not seen anybody suspicious, and suggested that one of his friends might have taken it as a practical joke.

Fergus knew intuitively that I had taken it, and when asked, I did not deny it – my unbalanced mind associated all guns with dog slaughter. Michael and he found the weapon after a long search; then the question was how to ‘find’ it without arousing suspicion of complicity. The hedge surrounding our garden was thick along the roadside and Fergus had been cutting it back, so he contrived to come upon it a few days later, stuck in a particularly dense bit of thicket. It was generally agreed that a passing prankster, knowing the owner was inside, had put it there. The thought that the gun might have been loaded had never crossed my mind.

Worse was to follow. A window in Katharine’s bedroom overlooked the road leading to M. Ganeval’s farm; glancing out one night when the moon was full and a dusting of snow had fallen, she saw me walking up the road. Sensing trouble, she put on her boots, and followed my footprints. She caught me preparing to stick a bundle of something into the ventilation hole of M. Ganeval’s grenier. There was a box of matches in my pocket. Ever since, I have searched my soul, and do not know to this day if I would have carried out the plan. Probably not, as I am a coward when it comes to taking radical action.

Writing this more than a quarter of a century later, I begin to lose patience with myself, knowing that were I an outsider, I would be tut-tutting about total disregard for other people’s feelings and their safety, irresponsibility, no moral fibre, lack of ethical standards, and how could she have been so stupid. Wise, sober, old timers in AA have been heard to say, ‘It took every drink I ever had to get me here’– they are among the 10 per cent who made it in the end. Ironically, family members sometimes say their lives have been enriched by the experience of living with an alcoholic, and that familiarity with the Twelve Step programme has helped them to cope with problems and find serenity in their own lives.

Each New Year’s Eve I confronted the face in the mirror and asked: where are you going to be this time next year? Dead? Much the same? Destitute? In a mental hospital? Suicide was not an option – I would be inefficient, and officious people would resuscitate me. I had been around AA long enough to see a few members die. One of my drying-out sessions had terrified me because, for the first time, I had a hallucinogenic experience. Lying in bed shivering and shaking, despite the heat of the day, I was convinced drops of water were coming through the ceiling. I could touch them, and called Fergus to touch them too; he said they were imaginary. Then I pointed to a climbing plant winding its way around one of the beams that supported the roof. The list of things on the ‘not yet’ list was shortening. I no longer tinted my long, grey and untidy hair, though from time to time I would try a new style. My face was puffy and my complexion almost permanently flushed; I now looked the part. Fergus said I resembled my contemporaries Simone Signoret and Jeanne Moreau, both raddled and wrinkled caricatures of their former selves. I remember a sunlit cobbled square in Calais, where we sat waiting for the ferry. Two scruffy figures of indeterminate gender came to sit nearby, between them a sack and a bottle, from which they drank in turn. Little divided us – I could easily have ended up a bag lady, had it not been for the love and support of my family. Sober members of AA would say: ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’

My mother’s health was in decline and her eyesight was failing. While in treatment, to excuse handwritten letters to her, I had resorted to deception, saying my typewriter was out of order. Later, when I confessed to having the same disease as my father, she merely said: ‘That explains a lot.’ I assured her I was dealing with the problem by attending AA meetings, even quoting from the literature, and implying it might help her deal with her addiction to Valium. I spoke of the lack of a spiritual element in her life, and suggested she get in touch with the local minister, a Derry man, who had known my grandmother and knew something of our family history. I gave him a partial version of my own predicament, and asked him to call on my mother. The poor man was out of his depth, and I cringe at the duplicity. However, a subtle change was taking place: I was less dogmatic, no longer switched off Thought for the Day or the Sunday service. I wrote to several speakers whose writings on different faiths interested me. That they had wrestled with lapses in belief throughout their lives impressed me, as did their frankness about the inner turmoil they suffered. In that era such an approach was rare; soul-searching at every level of society, before Facebook, Twitter and reality TV, was in its infancy. Austin Williams, then vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, wrote me a long, thoughtful letter, expressing his hope that I would eventually find a philosophy that would bring a degree of serenity and sobriety.

I now recognised that alcohol was inimical to friendship, and that loving relationships withered when one partner continued to drink compulsively. Our circle of friends had dwindled, and I no longer made the effort to go to concerts or the theatre. A family outing to the famous Knie circus was a disaster: I berated the ringmaster of eight beautiful, all-white, ostrich-plumed geldings, ridden by a sequin-encrusted female. So audible was my criticism of the cruelty involved in their schooling, people sitting nearby hissed ‘Shsshh’.

Michael, whose O-level results were good, was offered a place by The King’s School in Canterbury to study for A-levels: he was the second boy only to be accepted who had not come up through the junior ranks. Katharine came back to Divonne after her A-levels to do an intensive secretarial course at a college recommended by Eva, while Mary was in Bath about to begin a foundation course in book illustration and design. We took the elegant Mercedes that Fergus had bought from Ted to Plymouth to collect Mary at her digs in Bath and visit the McMahons, now in semi-retirement near Cheddar Gorge in Somerset. I told Rosemary, a devout Quaker, about my affliction, and her verdict was that ‘something’ would have to replace the void left in the absence of alcohol. My intake was reduced, but steady, and I felt hollow within.

We travelled on to Canterbury to coincide with the end of Michael’s first year at King’s, and to meet my mother at Gatwick. The wheelchair contained a tiny brown, owl-like figure in a crocheted woollen hat, clutching a capacious handbag. She would soon be eighty-six, and the spark had gone. In her prime she would have been thrilled to examine the Mercedes – I hated it, too big, with a fiendish hand/foot brake – and explore the cathedral precincts. Even the quaint streets and Tudor architecture aroused little comment, and her remarks tended to be negative. No mention was made of having enjoyed the flight, or how well she had been looked after. She said the airport was noisy and confusing, and the town too full of tourists, the stairs in the pleasant seventeenth-century guesthouse were difficult for her, and she certainly did not want a ‘full English breakfast’.

We sailed from Dover to Zeebrugge, and thence to the Ardennes region of France, passing on the way many wellmaintained war cemeteries. I feared my mother might become tearful on passing through battlefields of the 1914–18 war, but if she was thinking of Jack and his death at Passchendaele, she showed no emotion. This visit, which I had taken so much care to organise, was doomed to failure – quite simply, it was too late. Shortly after we got back to Divonne, she became unwell, and preferred Mary’s help and care to mine. That reveals a lot about our relationship, and I fear that she had become afraid of me. Not surprisingly, considering I had hidden her Valium capsules in a crazily wrong-headed effort to control what I believed to be her addiction. They were returned, but only after she had pursued me, brandishing her walking stick. Confessing to alcoholism, rather than improving behaviour, removed inhibitions, and to my shame I aired a list of longheld resentments, upbraiding her for my solitary childhood and feelings of being unloved. I should rather have concentrated on the good things she had done, and how dutifully she had reared an inopportune child born at the end of a disastrous marriage. Once, in a reflective mood, she said: ‘San was really more of a mother to you than I was.’

She now had stomach cramps and wanted merely to escape from me and return to Ireland. Katharine managed to get her ticket altered and drove her to the airport. Rosemary met her in Belfast, and shortly afterwards she was admitted to hospital with a strangulated hernia so severe an emergency colostomy was done. I argued with the surgeon, pointlessly, as it was a fait accompli, that this had been draconian, and the gut should have been disentangled. Another example of how alcohol loosens the tongue. But I was genuinely upset, knowing that my mother would find it hard to bear the indignity of living with that procedure. Rosemary, now well into her seventies, and a martyr to asthma, said my mother was adamant about remaining at home, that a carer visited morning and evening, a home help gave her a midday meal, and the district nurse kept a close eye on how she was coping. Rosemary and her husband visited frequently, and Dodi, now retired from active social work, also keep a professional eye on her progress.

Meanwhile, Katharine would graduate soon, Mary was still studying art, and Michael would remain at King’s until he was nineteen, so the children were at home only during the holidays. The following year Fergus had commitments ranging from the Caribbean to Thailand and the Philippines, and I continued to attend AA meetings, never achieving a significant stretch of sobriety. Throughout the early months of that year, I wrote to my mother, never referring to what led to the truncation of her visit to France. I do not know what she told Rosemary, but suspect it was a watered down version of the awful truth.