Kate Mosse

Kate Mosse

‘Keep Smiling Through …’

At a quarter to eight on Thursday 16 April – the day the initial lockdown was extended – we carried an electric piano, plugs and wires, a mighty extension lead and an amplifier (disinfected and provided by our musician neighbour) and set up on the corner where three roads meet. It’s quiet anyway, an avenue of glorious high trees and leylandii: horse chestnuts with their white candles proud, the first stirrings of colour on the copper beech, sycamore with its nesting rooks, mischievous lime and acacia. At dusk, it’s a shimmering green and silver world and now the hum of traffic has gone there is only birdsong.

At seven fifty, I push Granny Rosie out from our garden and along the pavement. My mother-in-law, rising ninety, is dressed up and pitch perfect and ready to play when this evening’s #ClapforOurCarers begins. My son helps position the wheelchair on the grass verge at the keyboard; my daughter sorts out her trailing wires and takes a picture; my husband checks the power. Rosie’s fingers hover, she turns down her hearing aid, puts her right foot on the loud pedal and she’s off. It’s a wartime playlist – staples of the entertainment troupe, The Old Timers, that Rosie and my beloved Ma belonged to back in the day: ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, ‘Wish Me Luck’, ‘Bless ’Em All’, ‘Run Rabbit Run’, ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. Many of the people who live in this patch of north Chichester remember these songs from their childhood. Younger families and those with grown-up children come ‘home’ like mine for the lockdown recognise them from the theatre, the big screen or the small.

The sun begins to set, a wave of clapping begins. Everyone has a reason to be doing this. It’s not abstract, an obligation, but a profound desire to acknowledge a personal debt of care. For me too. For the past twelve years, I’ve been a carer in this house on the corner where three generations lived together – my husband, daughter and son; my mother and father; my mother-in-law. The NHS is part of our daily lives – the waiting room of our local doctors’ surgery, the treatment and rehabilitation centres, A&E, the outpatients departments and the wards of St Richard’s Hospital. My gentle and gentlemanly father, kind and principled, who lived with Parkinson’s for many years until his death in May 2011. My vivacious and elegant mother, who was performing on stage with ‘The Old Timers’ in fishnet stockings and red mini skirt two days before she died suddenly in 2014 on the shortest and darkest day of the year. My magnificent mother-in-law, frustrated by her declining mobility and increasing dependence – she was a keen cyclist and horsewoman in her day – but still full of enthusiasm and curiosity. Known to everyone as Granny Rosie, she’s something of a local legend …

There’s a certain quality of silence in the outpatients corner of a hospital on a Saturday afternoon. No parking wars, the bustle of the week gone – just those with treatments booked and the incredible and patient staff. There’s a certain quality of kindness in the cancer clinic, the COPD clinic, the day surgery, the reassuring competence of the reception staff. There’s a certain quality of patience as the healthcare professionals step out into the waiting area for their next appointment, all eyes rising as people listen for their names to be called. The reassuring smile when nurse and patient connect before vanishing into an endless corridor behind the swing doors. The calm that then settles again, the air that stills again. Waiting, again.

Thanks to the NHS, my father could die in his own bed, as he wanted, surrounded by the people he loved and who loved him. He left his life as himself and with dignity. Thanks to the NHS, my mother left her life as she lived it, beautiful and witty and as herself, on a hospital ward where she felt cared for and loved. Thanks to the NHS, Granny Rosie continues to live her life as the woman she’s always been. In a wheelchair now – and she feels the confinement – but her days are filled with jigsaws and knitting, G&Ts and whiskey macs, crosswords and Scrabble and books and good health for her years. Thanks to the NHS, Rosie was able to be outside in the road on that Thursday evening in April to say thank you in her own way.

When the clapping was over, Rosie began her last song – ‘We’ll Meet Again’. Of course. When I looked around, I realised there were now maybe eighty neighbours lining the avenues like a posed photograph – all observing social distancing, so sticking to their family groups or standing alone. Separate but, for the length of the song, together. People started to sing, hesitantly at first, then louder as the chorus came round again. When I turned around, I saw a mother and daughter cycling past had stopped to listen. A car pulled over and a nurse in her blue uniform got out. A final encore for her and an old couple danced, in an old-fashioned step, beneath the lime tree. Not a dry eye in the house.

Thank you, NHS.

Richard Mosse (30 May 1920–18 May 2011)

Barbara Mosse (15 September 1931–21 December 2014)

Granny Rosie (2 November 1930– going strong …)

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