Gluck by Diana Souhami (most interesting books to read .TXT) 📗

The family doctor, Dr Solomons, was there and he and Louis tried to persuade her to agree to an injection of a sedating drug. She refused. Louis’ wife, Doreen, wanted the doctor to slip something in her mother-in-law’s tea, so that they could get her upstairs calmly and nurse her. He refused on the grounds of professional ethics. After a ghastly afternoon of tears and failed persuasion, dominated by the Meteor’s paranoia and confusion, she was driven back to the Cumberland by her chauffeur, Peter Smith. As Louis left the house with her he banged the front gate on to the road. The Meteor said ‘Don’t you bang the door on me,’ and tried to open it and bang it herself, but was too feeble to do so. Back at the Cumberland, an electric heater was taken from her room for fear that she would set the place on fire. This mortified her and increased her paranoia as it meant she could not make herself a hot drink in the night. She was crying, rambling and ill.

Two days later Gluck and Edith stayed at the Cumberland for the weekend. Gluck found her mother tired, irritable and distraught. Her clothes were a mess and she was not eating. Gluck saw her brother who made no mention of plans already made – for their mother to be committed to a mental hospital. On the morning Gluck was due to return to Steyning, the nurse told her that three doctors would see the Meteor that afternoon. They did so, and made out an Urgency Order. The next day Louis lunched with his mother in the Grill Room of the Trocadero, then persuaded her to go for a drive with him, ostensibly to look at houses. They went to Moorcroft Hospital in Hillingdon, where she was committed. She was terrified and uncooperative, and the nursing staff had great difficulty in getting her to have a bath. That evening Louis phoned Gluck and told her what had happened. She was shocked and felt that her mother had been tricked and abandoned to strangers. She had not known such drastic action was even being considered. He had not made Gluck privy to it, nor told the hospital of her. ‘I was quite dazed’, she wrote in her diary, ‘by the terrible nature of what had been done and the way it had been done.’ When she telephoned Moorcroft she thought the doctors uninformative and unpleasant. They advised her against visiting for at least three weeks. ‘I endured the following weeks without any information except in one conversation with L. on the telephone who said she was very weak and had been diagnosed as suffering from disseminated sclerosis.’2

Her brother excluded her from participating in this family tragedy. He was by now chary of her modus operandi and disliked dealing with her on any issue. No doubt he feared she would make a fraught situation worse. He was also at that time a prospective parliamentary candidate with hectic political commitments. Neither of them easily accepted the nature of their mother’s illness. Gluck’s perception of it was that the Meteor was under strain and in need of rest. Louis, while realizing more clearly how drastic the situation was, felt that she was being uncooperative in refusing injections and to be cared for in his family home. Gluck noted: ‘On my asking whether she would have to be at Moorcroft a long time he said, “Not while she behaves herself. If she continues to be stubborn and insist on having her own way I don’t know what will happen.”’3

Dr Solomons explained the clinical realities: her condition could not improve, there had been a definite alteration in her brain cells and she was quite likely to survive in her confused state

for some considerable time. This will mean she must be kept under proper supervision and control in some suitable place …

Any visits by lay persons or relatives cannot be other than painful; mental illness is always painful, and especially in one’s near and dear relatives, and especially if the patient’s protestations and statements are viewed on any rational basis.4

Gluck was wretched, angry and sleepless over it all. She felt that once again power was in the hands of her brother and denied to her. She perceived her mother as an innocent, rational victim, shanghaied by her brother, psychiatrists and the family doctor, and confined in bad quarters against her will. She reacted in her campaigning way:

May 3rd

Go to Moorcroft. Arrive unannounced at 11.45 am. Go straight to M’s room. Get a terrible shock. M. alone sitting up in bed right over in one corner holding her shawl tightly around her, her back pressed hard against the wooden back of the bed. She looked like someone in a trap waiting for the next assault. She said quite sweetly and quietly ‘Hallo, what made you come?’ but did not move her position and looked desperate. I said, trying to be cheerful ‘Hallo darling I’ve come to take you out for a drive, get your clothes on, I’ve got Knight here and the car, it will be fun.’ ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I’m not going, they won’t let me you see.’ Sister Jane came in and was positively rude, saying ‘No, she can’t possibly go out.’ I told her Dr Myers had said a drive would do her good. I then saw a Dr Gilmour who said ‘I’m afraid you cannot take her out she’s not well enough.’ He said she had had a very restless night. I said did he not think she would be less restless if she went out a bit. He still refused and I had to accept the situation.

… I was alone with M. from noon until 2.35. Her room was bare of flowers, none of the magazines I sent her were there, not a single personal possession except father’s photograph and a wireless she never uses. I sat beside her and she said ‘What have I done that