TOUCH AND GO.

Effy sat in her bed-sitting-room looking out at the rain. “Another wet day”, she said to herself. Another day when it would be pointless to go out. Dimly aware of the movements in the flat next door, she wondered how it was possible to live so close to someone and yet remain so isolated. She once had an old dog with a soppy face, sad eyes which were in direct contrast to its forever wagging happy tail but she had to part with it when she came to her sheltered flat. In many ways the dog had filled the void left by her husband’s death but it couldn’t put arms around her, make her tea when she was ill or soothe her with comforting words when sad. It couldn’t verbally defend her when others seemed not to be on her side in a dispute. She avoided disputes where possible but sometimes they’re unavoidable. That was the thing about being alone, about living alone, you have to bat for yourself and cope with the far reaching consequences of disputes whatever they may be. There’s nobody taking your part, propping you up and who of us doesn’t need a little propping up now and again? It hasn’t always been like this though. Oh no, not always.

Effy was a young woman in her twenties when she met Stan. She was working at the time and though she’d never consciously planned to marry she just let things take their time saying that whatever’s meant to be will be. Well it was meant to be and then not meant if you see what I mean. They were happy. However, after about five years he dropped dead while out playing golf. When the numbness wore off and Effy was able to think she thought wryly: “Five years! My washing machine was guaranteed for five years. I thought marriages were meant to last longer than that”! It would have done – No reason why it shouldn’t have done. They were childless but happy and had enough money to live on. She thought about the Bates family next door, always arguing, living on a shoestring. God had cheated her all right! He’d allowed her to glimpse a wonderful garden, told her she could rent it and tend it, have it and hold it and then contradicted himself, telling her it was really meant for some townie who couldn’t appreciate the beauty of it and that she’d misunderstood the terms of the agreement. Yes marriage was for life but not for all of her life, that was not the deal at all. There had been others since Stan, others who’d loved but not made love to her. One had died, the other was married and the other? Ah yes! He was so special – So very special and so maimed.

So Effy walked and walked the dog. She tried to walk the pain away. She sat alone in cafes, loitered in libraries, strolled through shops and saved rubbish that wasn’t likely to harbour germs – Like egg boxes and old magazines – So it would give her an excuse to run out for a chat with the neighbours on the pretext of discarding them at last. Sometimes a: “Lovely day isn’t it”? Would have to suffice for a day just as a plate of rice has to suffice for a whole collection of refugees. She joined things of course she did. Effy was no hermit at least not by nature. Then it would happen. She’d have a seizure, perhaps just a small one which only meant she switched off for a bit – But more often than not the whole works – Foaming at the mouth, writhing on the floor, soiling her underwear. Then that would be it. The people to whom she’d offered and given her help suddenly found that, though still short-handed, Effy’s hands were hands they could do without. Not quite any port in a storm she realised. There were depths to which people would not stoop and heights to which they’d not let her climb. Effy was not needed.

Now she had come to these sheltered flats. Making her friends among the old who were nearing their sunsets, walking the fine line between loneliness and getting too involved which would inevitably mean further losses yet needing to be needed just the same. The staff would bring tales of their children’s and grandchildren’s antics and though they served as reminders that Effy would never attain that status they did make her laugh and ask for more. Then these itinerant, kindly but impersonal staff would leave, failing to keep their promises to keep in touch and Effy would lose again.

There’d be gatherings round the radiators in the community room rather like those in the draughty houses of long ago. Songs would be sung – Wartime songs which Effy knew of but be unable to recall for she was out of her time here and this was not her era. The queer feeling of being in a time warp swept over Effy who better remembered the sixties and the screams of Beatles fans.

Effy had her creature comforts – Warm flat, visiting G.P, the opportunity of a hot meal at lunchtime if the thought of cooking for herself didn’t appeal. She knew she was luckier than many and luckier than she had once been and that she should count her blessings. Indeed she wasn’t miserable but there was something missing. She needed more than “touch and go” – More than people breezing in and out of her life like passengers at a railway station. “The Lord provides” says her more religious friends. Ah! But what does he provide? To those who have thorns, more thorns, just so you’ll not forget how sharp they are? To those who have honey more honey just so they won’t forget how sweet it tastes? Then she’s told: “It’s all right for you you’re young”. They forget that when they were young though times were undoubtedly hard, they may have had better health and been living their lives in a normal environment. Then there was that which they couldn’t see – The crippling back pain, anaemia due to heavy monthly periods, the epilepsy and the failing eyes due to Retinitis Pigmentosa. Then that would be it. She would lose her temper with them and it would go round the complex that she was difficult, as easily as the winter colds and ‘flu. By the time she gets to their age she’ll have had what they already have but for longer. The growing sense of unfairness and the injustice that she should have been denied most of the tasty vegetables in life’s rich soup bore in upon her like the walls of her tiny flat. Still she had a ready wit which doesn’t always guarantee you friends as a bitter caustic tongue will guarantee you enemies. She sees the humour of the situation – Privately referring to the complex as God’s waiting room.

Effy has watched the world darken to the point where the horizon is the end of the window sill. Strange how adaptable you become. She has learned not to mind slipping her arm into that of one of the staff in order to obtain shopping and tries not to equate payment for her personal allocation of care with that of a man’s payment of a prostitute for sex. She tries not to remember too often that some of the luckier ones are given their care for free by relatives who are constants in their lives and for whom in some cases it may well be a duty but not just a job. The fact that it’s just a job to someone and that she’s just a client to all of them is the galling bit in the end.

Yesterday she heard the children playing in the school opposite and thought how arbitrarily the world is divided – Out there the young, the able and the game, in here, the aged, the halt and the lame. Blissfully unaware of the other group’s existence, each lives its parallel life sometimes meeting but never touching. Then a voice, plaintive and sad calls: “Will someone come and help me to the shop? I can’t get my breath”. Without much hesitation Effy turns her back upon the fast moving world, slows her pace a little and says: “Come on love. Let’s do the light fantastic”! “Oh Effy! You are kind! Thank you dear”, the grateful voice replies. Hold that thought Effy. That’s all you have to do. Hold that thought and touch the other’s hand and do not go.