Narnia

It was like entering Narnia. A hatch back car of uncertain vintage stood on a concrete drive but the bungalow wasn't visible until you stepped behind a screen of over grown shrubs and dangling willow, the ground slick with leaf mould. The house had been white but it's pebbled walls were now dirty and streaked with green and the curtains were all drawn, a long abandoned rake lay on the ground and the letter box grinned a lop sided welcome, dangling from one hinge.

"Not coping" the referral said "carer under stress". Rupert had been looking after his wife, Constance, through the many years of her mental illness but now his own health was failing and things were deteriorating. I rapped on the frosted glass and at once there was an explosion of barking and the sounds of someone fighting their way to the door through a whirling dervish of canine bodies. The door opened and I was almost bowled over by two Springer Spaniels, desperate to get out or to get at me, I couldn't tell which. Behind them came Rupert, tall and gaunt, wearing a mustard waistcoat, mushroom coloured trousers covered in stains and a tie in a bizarre parody of a Windsor knot around a fraying shirt collar that may have been white at some distant point in history. He looked like an army officer who had been left in a corner to gather cobwebs since the last days of the Raj. His hair was wild and his glasses hung from one arm at a crazy angle across his patrician nose. The barking continued and behind it I could hear a plummy voice crying "Who IS it Rupe? Do shut those blasted dogs up!" "Huntley! Palmer! down!" he said and the dogs turned back to him, leaping on him in delight and causing me to reach out a hasty hand to steady him as he staggered against the onslaught. I finally managed to make myself heard above the din and explained that I had come to make an assessment for the home care services that they had been allocated. He extended a hand and said "How very nice of you to come" and together we battled past the dogs and into a parallel Universe

The interior looked like the house had been shaken vigorously - the big pieces were there - a sofa (Chesterfield of course) a large oak table with high backed chairs, a corner cupboard and a handsome grandmother clock whose hands never shifted, but every surface was covered in chaos. There was a tower of papers on the table with one shoe on top of them, a milk bottle on it's side on the floor, an ironing board with a table lamp and a loaf of bread on it and a trail of detritus across the floor which totally obscured the carpet. Through the patio windows the surreal scene was completed by a green plastic picnic table suspended in the air by washing line from an overhanging tree and as I gazed at it in confusion a voice behind me straight out of finishing school drawled "It's the bloody rats darling, they eat the bird food if we leave the table on the ground" I turned around and got my first look at Constance. She was small and round with hectic make up and glasses on a gold chain. "Hello darling!" she said in a gay social tone, as if we were meeting at some county set garden party "Are we having a little drink?" It seemed that we were, but it wasn't sherry, it was coffee, strong enough to wake the dead, brewed at great length and with huge ceremony and served in a mug, a half pint glass and a small pewter tankard, crockery was apparently in short supply. Con and Rupe didn't need two half hour home care calls a day, they needed a miracle.

It transpired that Connie had been diagnosed with manic depression long before it was re branded bi polar disorder. Her tablets came in a blister pack once a week from the local chemist. Unfortunately Rupe didn't always remember to collect them and, when he did, Connie liked to peel back the plastic sheet over the front of the pack and swap the tablets around into more pleasing colour combinations. Then there were the other tablets, the ones she squirreled away in boxes and behind cushions and took when the mood took her, washed down with brandy, well brandy after four in the afternoon, it was sherry before that. And Rupe? Rupe was worn out. Thirty years of covering up, keeping it normal and soldiering on had left him tired and worn and gamely clinging on to his failing memory as the weight dropped off him and the hospital appointment cards dropped through the gaping letterbox to join the sea of paper on the floor.

I came to know them well. Rupe rang the ambulance when Con became stranded in her chair or stuck on the three steps up to the bedroom, he just wasn't strong enough to lift her any more. The ambulance officer complained. He rang me and explained at some length and with some volume that they were not there to pick people up three times a night and anyway, what were we doing in there? the place was a health hazard, they were at risk, nobody should have to work in that environment, let alone live in it. He was right, we tried, we really did, but the chaos refused to be tamed and as fast as we cleaned up Rupe and Con consigned our efforts to oblivion. The Social Service budget doesn't extend to cleaning service, it isn't a priority and our calls were to encourage Con to eat, to distract her while Rupe walked Huntley and Palmer because if he was out of her sight she became frantically worried and reduced him to tears with a torrent of abuse as soon as he returned. The community psychiatric nurse suggested we encourage Con to peel some vegetables and start meal preparations while Rupe was out, but they lived on frozen food and as Con said with a sniff "It doesn't take long to put something in the micro and go ping does it darling? Let's have a little drink instead"

They became a puzzle I had to crack. They rang me now, too frightened to call the ambulance after they had been told they couldn't continue like this without ending up "needing to go somewhere where they would be safe" I hand delivered the medication, hid it on top of the cupboard where Rupe could reach it and Con couldn't, persuaded him to have the house sprayed for fleas. Sometimes I sent carers to the house, sometimes, late at night, or when there were no staff in the area, I went myself. I helped Con to get out of the chair or back into bed, calming her down when she railed that Rupe was unfaithful and she was going to leave him to his other women and his dogs...and Rupe, pacing in the background, protesting his innocence and unfailingly charming "Thank you so much for coming" and "My word, how kind you are to us" and only once cracking and shouting "Oh you BLOODY woman will you ever SHUT UP!"

All the time, Rupe was deteriorating, he got thinner and thinner, went for tests and never disclosed the outcome. We all knew time was running out and one night when Rupe rang, Con was hurt, she lay on the floor among the tissues and the newspapers and I could see from the angle of her body that something was broken and I would need an ambulance. A broken hip, so often killer of the elderly and Con was off to hospital and then to rehab. Two months passed. I called at the house frequently but never found Rupe there, he was either visiting Con or walking his dogs or hiding, at any rate the door went unanswered and the shuttered eyes of the Narnia house remained closed.

Con was in a short stay unit. She couldn't remain there more than three months. She couldn't go home, that was obvious. Her mobility was atrocious and everyone knew it but Con. She gamely set off by herself and got stuck in the loo or had to be rescued from the floor. Rupe visited her every day and they talked about her coming home and how it would all be okay then. There are few things more professionally nauseating than the case conference where everyone knows the outcome in advance except the people who we are there to talk about. Rupe had made an effort. His brogues were polished, his tie was straight and and his hair was smoothed down into a semblance of normality. The people gathered there had known the couple for years, the CPN, the day unit staff, the social worker. We all looked away as Con was wheeled in, gay in her flowered scarf and with a smear of crimson lipstick that almost followed the lines of her mouth, and Rupe stood up gallantly and came over to kiss her cheek and remained standing until she was positioned at the table. Then it started, the long winded explanations, the reasoning and slowly it dawned on Rupe that Con wasn't coming home. He tried to argue, suggested one of those hoist things but accepted that he would not be able to use it alone. He tried to be assertive, saying what happened if he just took Con home and then a terrible moment when his eyes looked suspiciously moist as he accepted he couldn't manage any more. Still he kept trying to find a way out. Maybe she could come home in the days - but how would he get her out of the car? We became jolly, he could visit every day, why didn't they just give it a try? Eventually he gave in and it was explained to Con that she would be going to a residential unit - just for a trial period, just until she got her legs working a bit better. We all knew we were lying. We didn't meet each other's eyes.

The meeting ended, arrangements made to take them to the home for "a look around" and we left, shuffling our papers and desperate to escape and as I stood to leave Rupe stretched out his hand across the table, I took it feeling like Judas. "Thank you for coming" he said "You really have been most kind"