Eighty Not Out (36 page)

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.

19

Rock Bottom to Release

T
hat summer I went to stay with my mother, and found her resigned to a much restricted life, seeming to enjoy more than ever the superb view over Belfast Lough to Greenisland and Knockagh war memorial, with her parents' old house clearly visible on the opposite shore below. The Liverpool boat passed close inshore on its daily voyage, as did naval vessels, tankers, cargo ships and an occasional oil rig. The shoreline was hidden by a wilderness of gorse, through which a narrow track led to the beach, but it was years since she had been able to walk that distance. Once an avid reader, her eyesight had continued to worsen, and I suspected she no longer saw clearly the television to which, after initial rejection, she had become addicted. Her doctor thought she had suffered a series of minor strokes, and there were signs too that dementia was setting in. She enjoyed the improvement in diet that came with my presence, and loved to see pictures of the children and to have me read their letters to her – they were good about writing. There were quiet times when I cut and filed the nails of her once beautiful, now knotted and blue-veined hands, while we shared memories of Donegal. But each day brought a series of humiliations. Her carer came at eight in the morning to get her up and washed. I had learned to change her colostomy bag when necessary. I prepared her breakfast, though had I not been there, the home help would have done that as well.

I worried about what would happen to her when I returned to France. My loyalties were divided; in effect, I felt trapped. But the decision about what to do next was taken out of my hands. After giving my mother lunch one day, I left for a walk along the coastal path towards Helen's Bay, saying I would be back in time to prepare our evening meal. When I got back, her chair was empty. I was aghast, and my first thought was abduction of a defenceless old woman. Her handbag was gone, but there was no sign of disturbance. I went to her bedroom, where a suitcase had gone from the top of the wardrobe, and some clothes were missing; her hairbrush and hand-mirror were not on the dressing table. In the bathroom the toothbrush mug was empty, and a sponge was missing from the bath-rack. A lump settled in my stomach, which I treated with a glass of almost neat vodka. I rang Dodi, who was equally shocked. The doctor's surgery was closed, so I rang her carer, who was evasive. When, by process of elimination, I tracked down the name of the nursing home my mother was in, the proprietor said: ‘Your mother doesn't want to see you.' I was unable to discover who arranged my mother's admission to the nursing home, and why it happened the way it did. Only recently has it become obvious it was probably Rosemary's decision to take such drastic action. She was later transferred to a local authority care home at Crawfordsburn.

I cleaned the house, booked my flight to Geneva, and arranged to stay for a couple of days with a Quaker friend, Harold Sidwell, on the other side of Belfast. I was on the carriageway approaching Holywood when a police car brought me to a halt. At the barracks, breath and urine tests were required, and my car was impounded for three days, but I was allowed to take a taxi to Harold's house. He was sympathetic in the trustful way of nice people who have no conception of what the alcoholic suffers and is firmly convinced that all that is needed is a bit of willpower. He also found it hard to believe I was as desperate as I claimed, because a few weeks earlier, when he had cycled to Craigavad to visit us, he had noticed nothing amiss. I was ashamed of having bought a bottle of vodka from the offlicence nearby, while Harold went further afield to buy food for our supper.

I decided to find out where I could be admitted for yet another detoxification, so that at least I would arrive back in Divonne in a sober state. The choice was between a mental hospital in Downpatrick, or the psychiatric unit of Purdysburn Mental Hospital, on the outskirts of Belfast. I decided on the latter. The doctor examining me thought I exaggerated the severity of my condition, and was merely suffering from depression; I was too coherent to be in the late stages of alcoholism. He agreed, however, to keep me under observation for three days and treat me for the withdrawal symptoms I knew were inevitable, considering my intake over the last emotionally charged week.

So that the three days should not be boring, the medical officer took me to a large room devoted to occupational therapy. Groups of dull-eyed women sat at tables making objects ranging from barbola work to felt flowers and coiled clay pots. A Bechstein grand piano stood alone at the cenre of the room. I was introduced as Elizabeth ‘who will be with us for a few days only'.

A good-looking woman about my own age approached saying she felt we might have a lot in common and that I looked interesting. She then told me that she was interested in traditional Gaelic lyrics and songs and was a professional pianist. I said how much pleasure it would give me to hear her play. So she sat down at the keyboard and began to sing, in a smooth contralto voice, a selection of songs and lyrics from all over Ireland. Some were long, but she was word perfect. At the end the group responded with a round of applause.

Then she joined me and the
MO
and without any preliminaries lay down on the floor, exposing her unclothed nether regions as she did a few floor exercises. This was the Korsakoff's syndrome about which Dick had told me. ‘Very sad, she used to run a legal practice and was much in demand to give recitals.' At home, however, her behaviour had become intolerable so her family arranged to have her ‘sectioned'.

Witnessing this spectacle should have provoked an accelerated ‘rock bottom' in me but it did not. Some wit in
AA
said ‘some of us reach the bottom of the bucket, then dig a hole in it.'

I made a court appearance in Bangor, at which the magistrate, who had a reputation for imposing savage sentences on persons convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol, imposed a fine of £500 and loss of licence for six years. When this news reached Divonne, the family decided unanimously that it was time for yet another confrontation. I was told that, unless I agreed to go for further treatment, I would find myself alone in the house. Katharine had graduated and was planning to teach at a high school for girls in Tokyo; Mary was in Bath; and Michael, after a gap year, would go to Edinburgh to read geology. Fergus was exhausted, often kept awake at night listening to my introspective ramblings. He could no longer stand the strain of living under the same roof, and threatened to move to a flat near the
WHO
building. He did spend a few days with Katharine in Canterbury without telling me where he had gone. I was furious and went berserk. This approach is known in
AA
terms as ‘tough love'. I was not surprised, feeling guilty, particularly when he was away on duty travel, for the anxiety that accompanied him wherever he went. Apart from this, I had come to an independent decision to go to another treatment centre, this time in Surrey, in a further attempt to kick my dependency. I had been thrown out of a clinic five years earlier for not being ready, now surely I must have ‘reached bottom'. My family certainly had.

This time, just after Christmas 1986, I was able to pack my suitcase in an orderly way, but the parting from Fergus at Geneva airport was the most poignant yet: my choices, it was clear, had finally run out. Sober on the flight, I could not resist the opportunity to buy a flask of vodka at Heathrow. It was after dark when my taxi drove up the drive to Farm Place. I had become garrulous on the journey, chatting to the driver, whose mirror will have reflected my furtive swigs, and who probably knew what type of ailment was treated at this clinic.

My arrival coincided with the evening meal of the director, and she left me in no doubt how inconvenient the interruption was. The nurse who checked me in asked if I had any alcohol, so I confessed, and was directed to the cloakroom, where I poured the remainder down the handbasin. The large room I was to share with five other women had a capacious Victorian wardrobe, with shelves, hanging space and drawers, and an en suite bathroom. The only injunction given that night was to forget I had previously been in treatment, lest I should feel in any way superior; soon two of my room-mates revealed they too had been in rehab.

The director, to whom I had taken an instant dislike, interviewed me next morning, all the background information lying on her desk. I was in no position to be other than totally co-operative. I kept reminding myself of the importance of keeping an open mind, and that principles should always outweigh personalities. Notwithstanding, I could discern few redeeming features in this cold, charmless woman. I wondered if perhaps a generous spirit lay within, but so far could not detect any sign of humanity. It was an inauspicious start. I hoped the other counsellors would be more sympathetic – most of them were.

At the first group meeting the director turned to me: ‘In over twenty years working with alcoholics I have met only two women as sick and steeped in denial as you, and both are dead,' she said. I believe it was a calculated attempt to break my pride, but it merely provoked antagonism. Anyone unwise enough to protest against such tactics, however, was accused of self-justification. Like practices at other clinics, we were told to voice direct criticism about our immediate neighbours: this was regarded as a healthy exercise in honesty. We also had to list their good points, an exercise so excruciating for some – particularly newcomers – they broke down in tears.

Domestic chores were legion, and each morning a rota list, which it was our duty to read, appeared in the hall. Personality conflicts were rife, and character defects revealed in consequence of petty disputes were subjected to open discussion: thus providing malicious members of the group a heaven-sent chance to vent their ‘honest' feelings. Triumphs, however, were mostly short-lived when the spotlight settled on the accuser rather than the intended victim. From many of the stories I heard, I felt that addiction to hard drugs resulted in a more rapid and profound decline in moral standards than did alcohol dependence alone. When it came to manipulation, theft, deviousness and cruelty, both mental and physical, the ‘pure' alcoholics were, in comparison, paragons of virtue. It hurt me that any effort I had made to help others was interpreted as ‘people pleasing' – an attempt to curry favour.

I went through Steps 1 and 2 again; this time there was no question that life was unmanageable, or of my need to be restored to sanity. I rewrote my life story and read it aloud to the group, afterwards analysing their written comments. They were painfully similar to those made five years earlier, one letter accusing me of being an attention-seeking drama queen.

Now that many reservations I held about the existence of a higher power had been resolved, Step 3 was proving less difficult. My research on theological matters was superficial, and my studies no more than basic, but I was starting to overcome some prejudices, was less judgemental, and more open to compromise. Step 4 demanded the taking of a ‘searching and fearless moral inventory', and I enjoyed this task; but brutal comments from my peer group indicated the need for further fearless searching.

Step 5 was seen as vital, without which there was little or no hope of recovery: ‘Admit to God, to ourselves, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.' In the outside world it was considered wise, if one was religious, to do this step with a minister of religion; otherwise a trusted friend or, rarely, a total stranger. At this clinic it was the director's husband Heinz, a lapsed priest, to whom what amounted to a confession was made. He would never have been my choice, and he sensed that. Some patients emerged tearful from the ordeal; others beaming with relief, and glowing with satisfaction at having ‘passed'. When my turn came, I failed, accused of being full of unresolved anger and resentment. This had not been the case, but after such misjudgement, it became so. I was angry at not being offered a choice of person with whom to share such an intimate and critical step. It was suggested that I remain a further month, at the end of which I would repeat Step 5, and thereafter – assuming I had ‘passed' – would go to a halfway house for three months before returning home. I knew this would not work and that if I were to agree under duress, I would merely accrue further resentments. So, having informed a very disappointed Fergus what had happened, I discharged myself.

Many of the patients were sympathetic, sharing my dislike of Heinz's role as father confessor. Some gathered in the porch to say goodbye; a few hugged me with genuine affection, saying they were sure I would make it in the end. The director, arriving on the scene, said sharply that this was not an approved discharge, and ordered them to go about their respective tasks forthwith.

When I returned to Divonne, the atmosphere was subdued, and our relationship cautious. It was like the first days in Ghana – we were in love, but an element of the unknown inhibited total commitment. I felt drained by what had happened at the clinic, withdrawn and incapable of spontaneous gaiety. I was not drinking and did not feel the urge to do so, despite the usual stock of alcohol being in the house. There was an indefinable change in my attitude at every level, but I still had a sense of not belonging, being a soul apart – maybe it was always going to be that way. I recalled what Donald Gilchrist, a devout Catholic who experienced long periods agonising about the future of mankind, had said: ‘When it comes to the crunch, you're on your own.'

Spring brought the usual riot of conflicting colours – shortlived mauve magnolias, proximate to garish yellow forsythia, deep blue grape-hyacinths, daffodils and tulips – and in early June the glory of the mountain meadow outside. From the kitchen window I could see young nuthatches, on the point of fledging, peeping out of their nest box; then each sat for several minutes on the windowsill, before flying off to various bushes, from which their chirruping would attract the parent birds bringing food. Soon it was high summer, hot and humid, with the threat of violent storms in the air. Early one morning, while I was making tea to take up to our bedroom, an overwhelming urge for a drink to boost my energy struck. When a bottle of strong ale lurking in the fridge did not give the required boost, I drank some neat brandy. Retching violently into the sink, I exclaimed, ‘That's it!' And it was.