THE OLD LADY ON THE HILL

                 

I didn't set out to be a carer. 

Having got a first class honours degree in Psychology under my belt at the age of 51, I was setting off merrily on course to become a Psychotherapist. I was just completing the first year of training when it became necessary for me to get some money coming in. Anyway, long story short, I applied for a job as a community carer. Just for a year or so, until I find something else, I thought...

But you know what?

I found I enjoyed having a job where I could make a difference to people. I loved working with older folk and listening to their life stories. I find them fascinating. I have met so many characters over the last ten years. 

Let me tell you about one of them ... 

The house stands grey and forbidding in the untended garden, alone and aloof like the old lady I am about to visit. I make my way down the garden path and see a face, also grey and forbidding, staring stonily at me from the downstairs window. 

I approach the dilapidated back door –  front doors belonging to some old country folk are never used except perhaps for funerals – and knock with more confidence than I'm feeling. There eventually follows some scuffling sounds, then muttering as the old lady struggles with the key in the lock. After a few minutes the door creaks open.

“Who are you?” She demands threateningly. She looks exactly like a witch, minus the broomstick and pointy hat. I expect to have the hounds of hell set on me if I don't give a satisfactory answer. 

“I've come to help you get some breakfast and light the fire”

“You'd better come in. Where's Gordon? I usually have Gordon. I don't know if you can light a fire. Don't expect you can do it properly. Not like Gordon. One match he uses. That girl who came yesterday took three matches to light my fire. I can't afford to be wasting matches like that”.

I try not to bridle at her remarks. Sybil doesn't know it but I have had years of experience lighting open fires. But for her it doesn't matter how good a carer you are, in her eyes there is nobody like Gordon. You just have to do your best and hope Sybil is in a good mood.

 There’s a cat, her pride and joy, which must not be inconvenienced in any way. If the cat has chosen to take a nap on the bed, then you must not make the bed. 

I get Sybil some breakfast and a cup of tea while she sits on a rickety chair complaining about her back and watching me like a hawk while I haul a load of coal in from the outhouse. And I manage to light the fire with one match.

Then I turn to make the bed which is in the same downstairs room. Dammit, the cat is sleeping on it. If I don't make the bed Sybil will grumble even though she doesn't want the cat disturbed.  Anyway, I can't win unless I can get the cat off the bed and make it look like that's what it was going to do anyway.

Hooray, Sybil shambles off into the kitchen, probably to find a poisoned apple to give me, and I ‘encourage’ the cat to move while the coast is clear. I make the bed while the cat gets its own back by using its litter tray, just so I have to empty it.

After her breakfast, mollified by having been sent someone who can light a fire efficiently with one match [despite not being Gordon], Sybil becomes almost chatty and pleasant. She tells me she was born in this house and talks about her father who used to ring the local church bells. There is an undercurrent of resentment in her conversation, and I listen to her with great interest.

Later, I learn that Sybil was kept at home as a young woman in order to look after her ageing parents. She was never allowed to go out, especially with men in case she got married and moved out. She was needed to do the work at home. It's hard to imagine what her life was like, trapped in that dark depressing house all her days. She is a thorn in the side of social services, always pleading poverty, saying she doesn't get enough help, complaining about those who they send.

After Sybil’s death, when they came to sort out her house, they discovered a bin bag stuffed with thousands of pounds. 

She had drawn her pension and benefits every week and lived on a shoestring, complaining that she didn't have enough of anything and counting her matches one by one…