Eighty Not Out (32 page)

The living room faced south with a view over Lac Léman to the Alps and Mont Blanc, the bedrooms faced the Jura, and the kitchen and bathroom overlooked the car park. Naked wires and a hook hung from each ceiling, the entrance hall and sitting/dining area had wood-block flooring, the kitchen was red tiled – Cardinal polish again – the bedrooms acrylic carpeted in crude colours that were not what I had specified. The bathroom was small, and tastefully tiled in pale turquoise, while the
WC
was so small its door opened outwards, forcing one to enter sideways.

We also owned the adjacent studio flat, which had a large bed/sitting room, kitchen – which we planned to use as a utility room – and a bathroom. Fergus and I would use this as our bedroom/study, leaving a room for each child in the main flat. The tiles above the sinks in both kitchens were large and dingy cream, so one of the first
DIY
jobs I undertook was chipping them all off, and sending them down the chute to the
sous-sol
. This provoked a wrathful visit from M. Rossi: culpable, I should have realised that rubble would have to be disposed of elsewhere. I was being sucked into the world of
bricolage
, where a whole new vocabulary had to be learned, and would learn the hard way that in France they do most things differently. Even hanging pictures and mirrors safely on our nail-resistant walls was not straightforward.

Two days later, as promised, the lorry from Belfast arrived. The driver and his two mates complained bitterly about the bloodymindedness they had met at many points on the journey. To an extent our sympathy lay with the French: the paperwork involved was in triplicate, and our team was scarcely literate, so they cannot have been easy to deal with. French patience will have been sorely tried. On the other hand, once we embarked on the process of getting
cartes de séjours
and
d'identités
and a
permis de conduire
for me, our sympathy reverted to the Irish when we found that several trips to Bourg-en-Bresse were involved, and one, connected to the importation of the car, took us as far as Lyon.

Fergus was on a three-month assignment based at headquarters, and would not be around much of the time; in any case,
DIY
was not his strong point. So it lay with me to find a
TV
and electrical shop, curtain-makers, and a hardware store, which did not exist in Divonne, so I had to cross the border in my search for many items. Compared with Holywood, the town was ill-served by local merchants, despite boasting two
notaires
, three
agences d'immobilière
, and two
bijouteries
catering for the super-rich visitors to the casino – after Monte Carlo, it was the largest in France, and one morning I met Omar Sharif face to face coming out of the
maison de la presse
. There was much to be done in the six weeks before the girls would join us for the month-long Christmas break: their rooms should at least have ceiling lights, and Michael would have to be enrolled at one of the international schools if he was to start in mid-January. In the meantime he was happy walking Oscar down to the little port on the artificial Lac de Divonne, where the dog loved to swim and retrieve sticks. Having known no more than a few basic words of French, Michael quickly became at ease with boys of roughly the same age who played football around the
bâtiments
– the concierge's son, Roberto, among them. There being no official play area, this was a contentious subject, provoking constant complaints about noise and danger to windows. Mme Bernier, who had the misfortune to live directly below us, despite having grandchildren was particularly intolerant and given to knocking on her ceiling if we made too much noise, as we did on Michael's ninth birthday. Her husband, a pleasant, even timid, retired doctor, had specialised in nervous afflictions at the
thermes
, to which patients were referred from all over France.

At Christmas the weather was sunny, with a light dusting of snow, and ski slopes above 1,000 metres were already open. Fergus had booked a table for our festive luncheon at the Cheval de Bois in a tiny village halfway to Gex, which, while not Michelin-starred, had a good reputation. A roaring log fire blazed in the comfortable lounge, and the two gay owners made us welcome, but the children felt the constraint of having to be on best behaviour, and were unimpressed by chestnut stuffing, lack of bread sauce and the inferiority of French bacon and sausages; a tower of choux pastry balls, however, got full marks, as did the
îles flottantes
. Afterwards they went tobogganing on the red plastic sledge last used on the sandhills at Malin. Oscar loved sliding on his front in the snow, and the children had a riotous time. Fergus, however, complained that despite fur-lined gloves his hands were cold, and I felt strangely distant from the classic Christmas card scene, wishing we had drunk more wine with our meal and counting the time till we would be back in the flat where I could top up. Never noticeably drunk, I needed a certain level to give me a kick-start, and keep functioning throughout the day. I had by this time become what is properly known as a ‘high functioning alcoholic'.

Winters were cold in the 1970s and 1980s, and the football field at Saint-Cergue was always flooded and turned into an ice rink. The girls had their own skates, Michael to my disgust insisted on buying hockey ones, and my own pair, last used in Boston, still fitted. When Fergus could be persuaded to take to the ice, we had to hire skates for him. On one of our visits, a middle-aged man, in knickerbockers and fur hat, did an impressive hockey stop beside us, excused himself to Fergus, who was holding Oscar on a lead, and begged me to join him for a waltz. ‘The Skater's Waltz' floated over the air, and although it was twenty years since I had last danced, I managed not to bring him down. A small group of admirers had gathered, and the children were mortified.

There was a café overlooking the rink in the pavilion from which the music had come: it served soup, chips, hot chocolate and, of course, wine. They did not object to the presence of dogs, so I was able to slope off to the pavilion on the pretence of taking Oscar for a walk and having a hot drink, while Fergus stayed with the children who were reluctant to leave the ice before the temperature plummeted in mid-afternoon. The drive back down to Divonne was a dramatic one with twenty-seven hairpin bends, dangerous at the best of times, but in winter, despite constant salting and gritting, perilous. Quite often we would pass a vehicle that had slid off the road and come to a standstill, its bonnet crushed against a tree trunk.

I can remember precisely what I wore the day that I danced: the costly ski pants we had bought for our two ski holidays at Verbier had survived storage. Worn with my black Cossack hat and a natural wool Aran sweater, they looked chic, but had become uncomfortably tight around the waist. I was almost forty-eight and was in danger of turning into what my mother scathingly termed ‘thick in the middle'; she disparaged females who ‘let themselves go' once respectably married. The menopause had begun, and that combined with the sugar content in alcohol, was a recipe for weight gain. There was not the widespread obsession with healthy lifestyles that exists today, so I rarely weighed myself, although I was careful to watch Fergus's
ligne
since his heart attack. I no longer had time for dressmaking, and while acceptable clothing could be bought for Fergus and the children, garments for myself were difficult to find. Entering a boutique in France was a sure step to humiliation; the most popular sizes were
UK
8 to 12, 14 was in the danger zone, and 16, 18 or 20 almost unheard of. Eventually I learned to look for Swedish, Dutch or German makes with greater success, but styles were safe rather than fashionable. French feet being to scale, my search for 7+ (or French size 42) raised some exquisitely shaped eyebrows.

The girls returned to school in Yorkshire and Michael went to the International School in Versoix, near Geneva, where he was unhappy. Why, we never really discovered, but after we moved him to the International School La Châtaigneraie at Founex, just across the frontier in Switzerland, he never looked back, remaining until he had done his O-levels, then transferring to The King's School in Canterbury.

Fergus had access to bilingual secretarial help while he worked at headquarters, so demands on my secretarial skills were now confined to editing and personal correspondence.
WHO
continually updated its typewriters, so I always bought the last model to be discarded. Radical changes were under way, and by the early 1980s all professional staff were encouraged to familiarise themselves with digital technology. Most were too advanced in their careers to learn keyboard skills, and a few were technophobes, so the full benefit came to the next generation, who wrote their theses on computers. Photocopiers were less temperamental, and laser printers saw the end of the carboncopy era and the need for stencil cutting. But Fergus remained under the aegis of the African regional office, and worked from Brazzaville during much of 1976. The wheels of change ground slowly into motion only after Dr Ansari's retirement at the end of March 1976. The summer of that year was exceptionally warm and sunny all over Europe, and I remember looking out from the kitchen sink to yet another cloudless day, nostalgic for the unpredictable Irish weather.

Some of the
UN
wives advised me to join the American Women's Club, assuring me it had been the salvation of many newcomers to the Canton de Genève; of course, it would be difficult for me, having chosen to live in the outback. I was ungracious, and will have been dismissed as cold and unfriendly – but their consciences were salved, having made the gesture. I remember saying I knew few better ways to waste a morning than at a coffee party: a view I still hold. Cocktail parties with messy little canapés and small objects on sticks which inevitably fell to the floor were equally abhorrent. The noise, the mindless chatter, loathed by the saner of both sexes – I knew as a supportive wife that I must make a token appearance from time to time, particularly as Fergus would soon be working at headquarters. I was never drunk, nor did I behave in an unseemly manner, but I did not circulate well, sometimes finding an equally miserable loner – always male – to talk to. I had a tendency to get into ‘lively debates', something of a loose cannon. The fact that I had always eaten something, and tanked up before going, will have contributed to the animated exchanges. I kept a miniature bottle of something in my handbag at all times. Over the years, fashionable handbags evolved into capacious sacks, capable of containing a whole bottle.

The year, despite our separation, seemed to pass quickly because my days were busy from the time of making Michael's packed lunch, and delivering him to school no later than 8.45 a.m., until it was time to collect him at 3.30 p.m. The apartment now had a modicum of character, but we both knew that it was a transient base – neither of us was suited to apartment life. I acquired a
femme de ménage
, Janine, who came twice a week to polish the wood-block floors, apply Cardinal to the kitchen tiles, and help me with ironing. Drying the washing was a nightmare because, despite having balconies on both sides of the building, the hanging of anything on the railings to dry was forbidden: with good reason – otherwise the apartments would have taken on the look of a slum development. A discreet clotheshorse would not arouse comment, but beating rugs, or watering plants was
défendu
lest dust or water fall on the
balcon
below.

Janine came from Perpignan, but had come to Divonne to be near her elder daughter, married to the son of a local farmer. Her French was easy to understand, although, again, the accent was strongly regional. I soon gathered that her daughter had married a violent drunk who took after his florid-faced father, one of the regulars in M. Buffon's bar. There were too many children, all were undisciplined and several wet their beds. No regular income came in as Claude, her son-in-law, relied on casual work. On learning that Fergus might be persuaded to sell the Renault, Claude insisted on making our acquaintance; he was persistent and in due course did buy it.

Poor, disillusioned Janine, dark-skinned, with lovely bone structure, but prematurely aged, returned to sunny Perpignan only to be killed by a drunken motorist while out walking with her youngest grandchild.

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.