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WIN
By Janice Craddock Owen

I met Win when I was a day patient in the hospital where I was 'recovering' from my third breakdown and after my mother's death. She was tall and angular, with a close cropped head of white hair. She was also, unbelievably, sixty three.

Win suffered, her psychiatrist told Win's sister Viv, from a 'personality disorder', and she was depressed on top of that. She lived with her 'friend' as she termed him, Eddie, who was her lodger and who looked after Win.

When I was first a day patient I would be driven over there every Saturday, to iced buns and tea, as well as dinner. Win was voluble to say the least, gesticulating wildly as she told story after story about her past, in which she firmly lived. I heard these stories again and again. Of how she'd been a 'nymphomaniac' in the WAAF; of how her husband before Eddie had been an Irish alcoholic and how she'd made his beer for him, and, out of Eddie's hearing, of how she'd had an affair every Saturday for ten years before her husband was killed in a car crash, of how the married lover had wanted to marry her after that and of how she'd refused.

Her depression focused itself on the bungalow's untended garden. She wanted to move and she did, with Eddie, to a tiny flat near me and the hospital, where her depression focused itself on the fact that there was no garden to tend. Win spoke with a posh accent though in fact she'd been brought up in the East End of London. The posh accent came of being evacuated to a millionaire's family during the war. She'd never forgotten her mum though who used to shoplift to feed properly her seven children. Win's father had been a drunk, musically talented, who'd terrorised his family during his drunken bouts.

Because of her background Win used to call me 'duck' in her posh voice. It sounded incongruous but it was genuine. Eddie was a cockney so he called Win and me 'duck', too. But Eddie had a stroke and so the 'looking after' now devolved upon Win. She coped in her voluble, gesticulating, depressed and despairing way, lying on the sofa in between the cooking while Eddie sat in his wheelchair gazing out of the window or at the box.

I spent Christmas round the flat, with Win crouched on the sofa, crying. Eddie later complained to me that I'd smoked all Christmas day and that it had given him a terrible sore throat. They left me all alone on Boxing Day, didn't invite me, because of the smoking, I suppose. "Why didn't you tell me?" I demanded of Eddie, who looked nonplussed and gave no answer.

I called in a bit less because now I couldn't smoke round there. And then Win and I had a row over-a fiver I wanted to borrow. "I always give it back," I said, which was true, but she lost her rag, which she was always doing, to nearly everyone. So we didn't speak for a long time. Then, about three years later, a knock at the door woke me. Win. It was the afternoon, I do admit. Eddie had died. Had gone into hospital for something minor and had caught an infection. Win had sold the flat and, with the money had gone into a Home, a Home that was quite nearby. "I couldn't go on living there without Eddie," she said simply. She was still obsessed with her hair. "What does it look like," she asked me, peering at herself in the mirror. "I've just had it cut again. I'm thinking of having a perm." It looked the same as ever; short, cropped close to the head, and a lovely natural shade of white. I'm seventy five, now," she said. "Do you like the mascara? I'm thinking of having my eyelashes dyed." And so the visits continued. She lent me books. She encouraged me to read again. And I lent her the books she encouraged me to read. Then: disaster. She had a row with the owner of the Home. She vanished into a flat with which she couldn't cope, so she ended up in hospital and from there into another Home. Which she detests, but daren't leave. She visits twice a week and I lend her books, books that I read voraciously, books which I repeat, she encouraged me to read. She can't read at the moment. Lack of concentration. A personality disorder means lack of maturity, never really 'growing up'. In her case anyway. I'm encouraging her to wear powder and paint again. I bought her a pair of trousers the other day.

"I've put on six pounds," she exclaimed. "I'm now ten stone! Nothing fits me."

They're very young looking trousers. Made for youngsters. I call her my 'substitute mum'. My 'teenage substitute mum'. She says she'll leave me her money in her will, but we both know there won't be any left. That business about the fiver is all for-gotten now.

By Janice Craddock Owen.