Book group revelation: what Ian Rankin’s story Trip Trap tells us about life for female carers in this country
By Sue Jackson
We recently had Ian Rankin’s The Beat Goes On as our book group read. It’s a collection of stories featuring Inspector John Rebus. One of the stories Trip Trap, got me thinking about how society sees, supports, and deals with women who find themselves taking on the role of carer.
In the story we meet Grace Gallagher and her husband George for whom she’s a carer. As the story progresses, we discover that they had a son, but he was killed in an accident ten years before. Rebus gets involved when Doctor Atkin, who’s been attending George for years, is concerned that his recent fall down the stairs wasn’t an accident. Spoiler alert — the evidence shows that Grace has indeed pushed her husband down the stairs.
Grace is the focus of the story. A frail-looking woman, we discover that her life is dominated by her role as a carer; she spends nearly all her time with her husband providing for his every need. Rankin describes how she has half an hour to herself in a morning before her husband wakes up when she gets to enjoy a cup of tea and a cigarette at the kitchen table. She also gets an hour for herself later in the day when she goes to the bookies to place her husband’s daily bet on the horses. George doesn’t understand why it takes her so long, but Rankin tells us that Grace doesn’t want to admit that she takes the newspaper to the park to do the crossword, so she invents a series of meetings with neighbours or reasons for going to other shops. Beyond her husband, her only meaningful social contact is with a man she met in the park on a rainy day (in my book, Grace’s chat with the butcher about the quality of the meat she’s buying doesn’t count as meaningful social contact). For a few months they continue their accidental meetings in the park and then while she’s out shopping one day she overhears that he’s died and that’s the end of that.
In the aftermath of his death, we discover that George wasn’t a very nice man. Doctor Atkin describes him as cantankerous and says she’s “never heard him utter a civil word, never mind a please or a thank you”. Grace says he was bitter and that he took that bitterness out on her. His daughter-in-law is of the opinion that George “deserved everything he got.” So, Grace has been single-handedly waiting hand, foot, and finger on a man who’s verbally unkind and quite controlling.
Doctor Atkin says of Grace that she has “always [been] patient with him, always looking after him. The woman’s been an angel.” She also says that while she’s suspicious of George’s death, she doesn’t “want to accuse Grace of anything”. Rebus tells her in reply “You’re only doing your job.” Let’s stop here and consider this. Why is a doctor expecting a human being to behave like an angel? Has it never occurred to the good doctor that she has a duty of care for Grace’s mental health and wellbeing as well as for George’s? The way Rankin has written this implies that carers are just background people unworthy of any support, care, or attention and from whom we expect miraculously patient behaviour for years and end, and then when they can’t deliver that we throw the book at them. I know for myself, you can find yourself believing that you should be able to provide the care your partner needs, even in the face of evidence that says that it’s too much and you need help.
We have a societal discourse that says we’re responsible for our own health and wellbeing, and some of you reading this will be thinking, ‘why didn’t Grace ask for help?’ My own experience of how healthcare professionals treat family members of patients tends to suggest that we’re routinely ignored; and people can become habituated to being ignored. You can also get so used to being focussed on the other person’s needs that you lose sight of what you need to do to look after yourself. Humans aren’t designed to cope with this kind of chronic stress for days on end, let alone, weeks, months, or years, and yet that’s what can happen when you become a carer. I’m not saying that what Grace has done is right, but I’m wondering if Doctor Atkin also bears some culpability for George’s death. I’d like to know whether she ever once asked Grace how she was getting on, and if she needed any help. Rankin doesn’t say, but I’m guessing that the answer is never.
As for Rebus, he asks Grace if her action is a cry for help gone wrong — did she push her husband down the stairs in the hope that he’d end up in hospital and then she’d get a break from him? What a thing to suggest! And if art is taken as representing life, then that implies that Rebus/Rankin knows at some level that what’s been asked of Grace is too much. Human beings need a rest from working or they can find themselves making poor choices and acting out of desperation. Rankin also describes Rebus’s disquiet at prosecuting Grace and how he feels as though he’s doing something wrong. And he’d be right to feel uncomfortable and ashamed. Grace has been badly let down by a system that should have been looking out for her as much as it was looking out for George.
Social care is a mess in this country and is increasingly only available to those who can afford it. There are questions to be asked and answered about why as a society we’re prepared to put up with this situation. Why do the powers that be expect (mostly female) untrained members of the public to take on a burden of care that no professional would be allowed to undertake? Patients being discharged from hospital should be able to expect that they will be kept safe, but we still don’t seem to have reached a point where there’s proper consideration given to helping, supporting, and protecting family members who have to provide care. Someone with a brain injury can be more than cantankerous, they can be violently unpredictable and yet hospital staff will still want to discharge them back to their home for their family to deal with. Families that may include young children who will end up seeing and experiencing things from which they should have been protected.