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

meet you, otherwise I must hold you responsible for everything that has happened, is happening, and is likely to happen to Mother

My love to you,

Hig

The ‘evidence’ she wished to show him was the bit of sheet with the Meteor’s sad writing on it, which now seemed as significant to Gluck as did Desdemona’s handkerchief to Othello. No meeting took place either with or without the doctor, as neither brother nor sister gave way. Edith had been in hospital for a fortnight for a minor operation. Between visits to her, Gluck worked at her Rose picture and prepared a list of complaints, for the Board of Control, about her mother’s treatment at Moorcroft. ‘Work at Roses, very tired and worried … Paint a little but worried and unhappy.’ Arrangements were made to move the Meteor to another nursing home, ‘The Priory’ in Roehampton. Gluck heard of this ‘from official sources’, so went to check the place out, with her mother’s car and chauffeur, and wrote again to her brother:

May 22nd 1950

My dear Luigi

I understand from official sources that Mother is to be transferred to ‘Priory’, Roehampton

I am most anxious that this should be done with as little distress to her as possible – avoiding at all costs any associations with her unhappy arrival at Moorcroft.

We should both be with her on the journey and see her in.

Will you therefore let me know what day and time Mother will be leaving Moorcroft for Roehampton so that I can arrange to be with her.

Yours ever,

Hig

24th May 1950

My dear Hig

Mother’s transfer to the Priory is under consideration by the Board of Control. As soon as I receive the official permission for her removal I shall let you know the day on which it is to be carried out.

We shall have to be guided by our medical advisers as to the manner in which the journey from Uxbridge to Roehampton is to be made and as to who should be with Mother during that journey. You, as much as I, will have to conform to that advice and guidance.

Yours ever

Luigi

He had already asked for a nurse to accompany their mother, and had arranged about a car. He would not deal with ‘this very difficult problem’ on Gluck’s terms, nor would either compromise one jot to spare the other’s feelings. Gluck appealed to her cousin Julia to intercede, but there was little she could do:

I have tried to convey to you both that I consider you both have your mother’s wellbeing at heart and that it would be much better if you could work together, but my dear I cannot make this happen if you and Louis do not. Being of my father’s cast of mind I am unable ever to believe that anybody is always right or always wrong, but as I said on the telephone, I cannot do more in this problem of relationship which rests with you both. Any practical help I can give in helping to make Aunt Frances comfortable I am more than anxious to give …9

On Friday 26 May, Gluck was told that the transfer to the ‘Priory’ would take place the next day. She got there before her mother, who arrived at eleven in the morning. ‘L. arrives 12 – I leave 12.45 L. having rushed out before. Lunch Grosvenor Hotel. Catch 2.18 home. Terrible day.’ she wrote in her diary.

Gluck pursued her complaints of ill treatment and negligence of her mother at Moorcroft with the Board of Control, but they found no justification for them. Rather the reverse, they thought she had been carefully looked after and that her physical health had improved while she was there. Louis was appointed Receiver of his mother’s Estate. Gluck sent her mother’s chauffeur, Peter Smith, £15. ‘I only done my best to someone I liked to serve’, he said in his letter of thanks (19 August 1950), ‘it is all very sad to think such a wonderfull woman will end her days as she will.’

The choice of the ‘Priory’ proved pacific, and the Meteor stayed there, in her twilight world, until her death, eight years later, on 17 May 1958. Gluck arranged for a nurse to phone twice a week with news of her mother whom she visited each month for an hour or so. But all true communication between them was now gone. Gone too was the chance of rapprochement with Louis. The ‘problem of relationship’ by now was deep. At pains to strike a wedge between herself and her family when young, time added savagely to the rift. She made a Will, the first of many, excluding mention of him from it. As the years passed they managed a sort of truce and cautious displays of affection. The day came, a decade later, when he offered her a cigar with her coffee and brandy after dining with her at the Trocadero – a gesture that she noted in her diary. Nor did the sense of quarrel extend to his children, with whom she was on fond terms.

But at the time it was all too much – another rift, another trauma. She could not have tried harder, in the name of love, for Nesta and that had gone. She had caused, however inadvertently, an irreconcilable split between the Heald sisters. Her mother had sunk into madness and her brother had turned away. It all affected her confidence and her ability to work. She was in a deep sense lonely. The élan, the sparkle, the sense of a charmed life were all swept away. Life was suddenly hard and unkind. She turned again and again to the painting of roses which she could not finish. The Maufes, Osbert Lancaster, Molly Mount Temple, Alfred Munnings, Ernest Thesiger – many of her friends from the old days went to see her portrait of Sir Raymond Evershed, The Master of the Rolls, at a private showing at the Bourlet Rooms. It was a bit of a splash, but not an exhibition. ‘It would have