All she would say was, ‘Just come immediately.’
I called to Kirsty and told her to bring something to keep her occupied in the car: Hamish had met with a ‘slight accident’, I told her, and we were going to Croydon Hospital. (This was where the little boy had died, two years before, when Kirsty was there.) I kept my voice as calm and quiet as possible. She asked no questions but came straight away with a few books. Arriving at the hospital, I briefly left Kirsty in the car to find Hamish.
I was taken to a small room adjoining the ward. A matron came in and told me as gently as possible that Hamish had met with a serious accident. Part of his right hand had been blown away. But how has this happened? They needed to know when he had his last meal before they could operate. I tried to think, but… I don’t know: this is so important, but I just can’t help them… He was out at lunchtime with his friends, I told them – and then I was suddenly aware of him through the open door. Maybe they can’t give him morphine until they know? Yes, I could see him, but I was not allowed to stay… I looked at my handsome son, and once again experienced that same terrible feeling of helplessness and utter desolation. First Kirsty and now Hamish… Why?
The matron eased me back to the small room. Someone brought a cup of tea. I could use the phone to ring my husband, she said. I remembered from somewhere that Ewan had a singing engagement in the East Midlands; I left a message for him. I also remembered that I was expecting guests for dinner, and that the oven was still on. Mechanically I made the calls. I rang Denise – she said she’d go and turn it off – and asked Judy to pick Kirsty up and take her home – poor Kirsty! I had almost forgotten her waiting outside in the car. I went out to her and tried to tell her, in a calm, matter-of-fact voice, that it was a little bit worse than we had thought but that Hamish would still be okay and that I had to stay on and wait for the doctor, so Judy would be coming to collect her.
Kirsty was very sensible and calm, asking a few questions – but I think she knew there was more to it than I had let on. I kissed her and returned to the small room. Denise had by now arrived with, among other things, a small half-bottle and so we sat together through the night, drinking occasional cups of tea laced with brandy. It had no effect: I was still very cold and shaking inside. I looked at my hands. Funny, they didn’t shake at all. In the morning I was told that there was nothing to be done but wait and in the meantime I should try and get some rest.
At last, the surgeon told me they were transferring Hamish to a training hospital in East London. He needed treatment in a compression chamber, which I understood would force his blood to circulate and so prevent gangrene. The journey was a nightmare. Attached to various tubes, Hamish lay propped up on a special bed in the ambulance for the long trip, but we travelled at a snail’s pace, lights flashing. Every bump in the road, every stop for the lights, brought a moan. On arrival, I found the compression chamber quite frightening – a vast cylindrical tank in which the patient was incarcerated for long periods on end. Hamish never complained.
After a period of treatment, he was moved to East Grinstead where he underwent further surgery. The specialist had every hope of saving the thumb, even though the fingers had gone, explaining to me that the thumb’s role was more important than that of the fingers. I drove down to see him in intensive care, and it was only then that I at last found out how the accident had happened.
Hamish and a group of his friends had been conducting an experiment, mixing weedkiller and sugar and pushing it into an iron pipe. It had failed to go off and so he went to have another look at it as it blew up. There was some good news: the thumb had been saved. I later heard that Joan had, with characteristic selflessness (and impracticality), offered to donate her own hand as a replacement.
Three weeks later, Joan and her partner Gerry Raffles helped us celebrate Hamish’s 18th birthday with him. As part of his convalescence, Hamish and his friend Rob went with their two girlfriends on a camping trip to Italy. On their return, Joan suggested that Hamish should have a vocational guidance test: it might help to clarify his ideas on a future career. Among other things, I learnt from these tests that Hamish was also a very gifted individual.
Meanwhile Dr Spurring made an appointment for Kirsty to attend the Wellcome Clinic, hoping that we might discover what was causing her allergic reactions. It turned out that my suspicions were correct, and that the worst culprit was the dander from cats, followed by dogs and other furry animals, including horses. Before she could begin a year’s course of weekly injections, we had reluctantly to say goodbye to Solomon II and our labrador Anya and find them good homes.
Kirsty’s interest in pets then stretched to rather more exotic beasts. A chameleon, a gecko and an American grass snake all joined our family. We also provided a home to some stick insects (who persisted in leaving their habitat and climbing the curtains). ‘Fred’ the gecko lived with us for many years, eventually dying of old age, I think, despite my best ministrations. The main problem with the chameleon and snake was their food: the former was choosy about his maggots, and the latter lived on a weekly diet of one suitably-sized goldfish. It was Ewan’s job to procure these from a pet shop near where he lived. After several visits, over a period of weeks, the lady assistant cheerfully asked after the ‘lovely collection of fish’ we must by now be enjoying. When Ewan explained why we were buying so many fish, she refused to sell him any more.
One day I looked out of my kitchen window and saw the local children gathered round an old tea chest in the garden, peering over its top with nervous excitement. Curious, I went out to join them to see a snake hissing and threshing about at the bottom of the tea chest. There was that age-old fear and fascination of snakes. They asked me to get Kirsty, which I did. She looked at the snake’s markings carefully and then explained that it was an adder and would only attack if threatened. You could tell it was an adder, she said, by the patterns on its back, and with that she tipped the chest over and the snake escaped into our garden. Although we lived surrounded by woodland and often went into the woods, this was the first time that the children had seen an adder; it was also the first time that Kirsty had seen one. She must have read up on snakes because she explained things in great detail.
When Kirsty was about ten years old, she read an article in the local paper about a nearby resident who bred butterflies. This interested her so much that she wrote to him, and this resulted in a invitation to visit him. He had turned one room into a butterfly house – full of light, warm and sunny – where we saw the most exotic and beautiful butterflies, of all colours and all shapes and sizes. This kind man was so impressed by Kirsty’s interest that he invited her back, on one occasion giving her a chrysalis to take home and look after. It sat on a cloth, with a small flowerpot over it, and we set it down on the carpet near the radiator for warmth. And waited…
Late one night, I saw the flowerpot move very slightly. Mesmerised, I watched and saw it move again. Rather squeamishly, I took the flowerpot partly off and saw that the chrysalis had started to change its form and I called Kirsty, who was thrilled, especially when it eventually turned into a beautiful butterfly. By this time, Beech Way was becoming something of a menagerie. I had to deal with a break-out by American grass snakes from their vivarium (I found them later in Hamish’s bedroom in a ringbound folder on his desk), relocate stick insects from the top of my curtains to the jam jars where they belonged, supervise the chameleon’s exclusive diet of live maggots and tend to the eggs in the laundry room sink, which rather successfully turned into baby trout needing running water. (Apparently we did better than the science lab at school who had supplied the eggs in the first place.) I was more at home with the tropical fish that Hamish introduced us to.
Meanwhile we had all decided that Kirsty might be well enough to attend a normal primary school for three days a week, remaining at her special school for the other two days. She therefore arrived in the summer term, just in time to take the end-of-term exams – and still managed to come near the top. Her first-term report was glowing and I congratulated her on the science comment, which simply said ‘Good’.
She replied in a rather dismissive tone, ‘You know, and I know, it doesn’t mean a thing.’ On one of her days back at the special school the nurse rang me to express concern that Kirsty had lost weight.