Keeper: One House, Three Generations, and a Journey Into Alzheimer's by Andrea Gillies Page A

Nancy.”
    “I know. I know that. You don’t need to tell me that, thank you very much.” She stalks off, disappearing into her sitting room and banging the door. There’s dark muttering from within, Morris saying, “What? You’re not making any sense at all!”
    Nancy helps me get the lunch ready. She butters the table, puts the bread together at odd angles, picks ham off the pile with grimy fingers and eats it, hungrily and a slice at a time.
    “I thought you were making Morris a roll.”
    “No, no. Not for him. He doesn’t deserve it.”
    “Here. Let me.” I take charge of the buttering knife. “Let’s take him a chair picnic and go into the garden. We can hang the washing and have a walk.”
    “Ooh lovely. I like a walk.”
    A FTER LUNCH WE make soup for tomorrow. Nancy wants to help and spends ten minutes scraping a carrot. What’s left of it when it’s scraped collapses into three weedy bits. I have sympathy for the carrot. The carrot and I have a special spiritual connection. I need to get away from Nancy and her wittering for a bit. I can’t stand any more. I am missing my laptop and silence and words that come biddably out of finger ends. I am beginning to feel, quite suddenly, rather desperate. I jump up.
    “Well,” I say, “that was great, but I have to do some work now, on my computer.”
    “Oh dear,” she says without feeling. “You’d better not be late.” Her face has a customary betrayed look. Betrayed and stoical. I know which way this mood will lead and have a silly tactic at hand. It’s called Can You Walk Like This?
    “Can you walk like this?” I cry, putting my hands over my ears, sticking my elbows out and my knees, losing a foot or more in height and walking like a robot, making nerp-nerp robot noises.
    “Oh no! No! I can’t do it!” she screams with laughter. I glance round and find her wiggling her fingers and moving her head from side to side, and laugh, too. Then I take her firmly by the shoulders from the back and maneuver her into her sitting room and put her in her armchair, still in robot character, Nancy giggling, Morris looking puzzled.
    I go to the drawing room and swoop on the laptop, sinking into my customary chair, my customary spot by the window, with a happy sigh. This is where I should be. This is home. But then I find I can’t work. I’m listening for Nancy. And sure enough, there she is. I hear her wandering the house, trying each door in turn.
    “Oh look, look at this one. This is a nice one. A bit dark. Very big. They don’t know how big it’s got lately. Somebody should tell them, to be quite truthful. I think they might come and see it and be surprised. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm.” The singing starts up. “When all the place is ready, and the place is fine and free, and the man isn’t there and the man isn’t there, and that is all for me.”
    She can still rhyme. She butters the table but she can still rhyme, can still come up with lyrics that scan, can, in effect, still write poetry. This is a very peculiar disease.
    I hear her rattling the conservatory door. “Nancy?” I call out, expectantly.
    She doesn’t answer. More rattling. The rattling grows louder, as does the muttering. I jump up to go see. “Nancy?”
    “What?” Now she’s rattled, too.
    “Don’t let the dogs out, remember.”
    Paddy is a reddish gold golden retriever, dim and soppy and mildly bowlegged. Left to himself, he’d be happy to carry paired socks round the house all day and wag things off tables. Unfortunately he’s easily led astray by his little white friend, Sparky, a Parson Jack Russell, who’s long legged and well muscled, has adorable cupped ears, is formidably cunning and a merciless killer. Sparky is quick to learn and Paddy quick to follow. Paddy is his friend’s dopey apprentice. They hang around the outer doors waiting for Nancy to let them out.
    “Oh doggies. Hello, doggies. Nice doggies. You want to go out? Here, off you go.” Whoooosh: a flash of