Love for Now (10 page)

Have spent the day feeling coldy and tired and demotivated. Watched with huge relief the return, post-Cheltenham Festival, of
Will and Grace
and
Frasier
. The
Will and Grace
I watch, as I always do, in awe of the comic timing and delighting in the sugary overdose of it all. The
Frasier
was The One Where Niles Hires A Lawyer.

I moved on to the Commonwealth Games, but found I cried though most of it. This is partly because athletics always makes me cry; but I found it happened with the swimming as well. A boy from Exeter has his just won back-to-back silver and now gold in the backstroke. He went, at one time, to Tats’ school, and the swimming club the kids used to go to. ‘He’ll have been shouted at by that bloke in the tracksuit like you were,’ I enthused, but they didn’t seem impressed.

Didn’t really settle to very much. Made a plan to take CDs back to the library, but felt too tired, plus, it is still freezing.

Got a call from nowhere from Bex. She came round later for tea and we nattered over the kitchen table good-naturedly for an hour or so. I went back over the story with her. In one sense it is very old news, old hat, even; in another I cannot believe it is happening to me.

Less Brian Eno today, more of a Syd Barrett, in truth. The post-Floyd, living-with-his-mother-in-Cambridge Barrett:
not really a shining crazy diamond, but a slightly overweight middle-aged bloke looking haunted.

Of course, you still slip into war metaphor when you’re not thinking. I saw Vince across the road walking back from dropping of Shim. He called out how are you and I called back: ‘Fighting off a cold.’ ‘But you’ve nothing to fight it off with!’ he shouted.

First day of Spring, last day before chemo no. 3.

Spent the morning shuffling round the house and blubbing watching the Commonwealth Games. I found the slightest thing set me off, from the former-pupil of Tatty’s school gaining another backstroke record, to the sight of two Kenyan women dominating the 10,000 metres, crossing themselves in ecstasy as they reached the finishing line. Ray came round looking concerned, having spoken to Lucinda who saw me venturing out for fruit as she swept her hedge clippings yesterday. I told him there was nothing he could do, but thanks. I went back into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher then cried all the way through a CD.

At the post office a very odd parcel from Mandy Coe was waiting for me – half a dozen ‘hard-boiled eggs’ in an egg box in bubblewrap. They aren’t real eggs, but nor are they chocolate. I licked one. They are definitely sugar-coated. She says she found them in Suffolk in breaks from workshopping with teachers – one of the gigs I have given up this year. ‘Do you remember these from childhood?’ she says. I don’t. But they are so odd they cheered me up no end.

As did her letter. She’s got friends and family ‘who’ve met cancer’ and gets it exactly right: ‘with just one test or diagnosis you find yourself slipping through a thin partition and suddenly you are outside your old world.’ She says you live somewhere for years, noticing the Ethel Austin and the chip
shop, but not the cancer support centre. And it’s just as near to your house. How true.

Her other brilliant image is about the treatment. ‘Imagine your body is an island,’ she says, ‘(not Man or Dogs). There is just one leaf on one tree that’s a bit brown round the edges. And they use a hurricane to blow it away.’ That nails it for me better than anything I’ve seen by anyone. She’s busy preparing a poetry Ms, she says. On this form, she should have no trouble.

I handed Bendy and Tats a hard-boiled egg each before supper. They immediately started licking them, then whacking them on the coffee table. Bendy got hers to open first. ‘Yum, chocolate! Incredibly sugary, but great.’ So now I know. Proof that Mandy was more spoiled as a child than I was. I had thought they were
papier-maché
and for painting.

Third chemo day.

A quiet day on the ward today: it must have been, as we started a whole hour later and got home at the same time. Or maybe they think I’m built like an ox and just blast me through it in double-quick time.

Nadine did my injections again. She has huge dark brown eyes and is very smiley. ‘I’ll stop gassing in a minute and you can sleep,’ she said, injecting me with Piriton.

We nattered about the drugs like they were fashion accessories. ‘So I know the “C” and the “O” which is really a “V”, I said, trying to impress her, ‘but which is the “H”?’

‘Technically there isn’t an H at all,’ she said.

‘Which means it’d be R-COP instead?’

‘I guess once they thought of CHOP they couldn’t lose it. It kept them amused I guess.’

‘Do you do other chemo regimes?’

‘Oh yes. There’s one called FLAG I do. And FLAG IDA.’

‘They must have such fun dreaming them up.’

‘Gives them something to do, I suppose.’

She asked how Tatty was and about the kids.

‘They’re amazing, considering,’ I said, repeating what I must have said a hundred times in the last two weeks. I warmed to my theme: ‘They’re very matter of fact about it, really. If they want to talk about it, we do and if they don’t we don’t. We don’t not use the word cancer around them, though. It’s important to be straightforward.’

‘Absolutely, I’m sure you’re right.’

It struck me as the word cancer popped out of my mouth that until then the ward was the only place I’d not heard it used. At the school gate, in the bedroom, round the kitchen table, on street corners, but never on the ward itself.

‘If we do have a moment it’s usually deferred angst,’ Tatty chipped in.

“Where’s-my-jumper-I’m-late-Dad!’ kind of thing,’ I said. ‘Homework is a good one too.’

Nadine laughed.

‘Apparently Shimi’s best friend from school asked him how it was going and all he said was, “We get baked lots of cakes.” Who’s to say that’s not important to him?’

Very little sleep last night, which I spent most of on the sofa. Not from nerves but from this dreadful cough I can’t seem to shake off. They’re taking it seriously, giving me a codeine-based cough mixture and more (and stronger this time) antibiotics.

At around twelve I woke up spluttering as usual and shuffled into the TV room. I couldn’t bring myself to switch it on; it would only have been women’s bowls or the 50m trap shooting.

A lovely morning lying around in the bedroom with Tatty, who has finally been signed off. We nattered and cuddled and I brought her fennel tea and cereal. Then into town for banking errands, buying a mop for the cleaners, and booking in a Specsavers visit for Tats. Then lunch (on the sofas!) at BTP. Yummy avocado salad sandwich (why do I crave this?) and a toasted melty looking panini for T. Cosiness. We flicked through a hi-fi/electronics mag and fantasised over Roberts Digital Radios. ‘Why don’t you get one for your birthday?’ she said. ‘You’ll be getting lots of money.’ Suddenly realised in my bones that I am extremely materialistic, wanting not only a DAB radio but a Howies cycling jacket and Ipod as well. She took me to Fat Face and had success choosing a top and a beanie ‘from the kids’. Found myself lusting over a pair of loafers in the Bally window on the way back. Felt slightly cross with myself.

A freezing raw day to be out and about in. But good. Bumped into Will across the road carrying a large plank of wood for a job round the corner. First time we’ve really stopped to chat recently, so I told him. Not at my most fluent, to be honest. When he asked how I was I said ‘Well, not great actually, well, worse than that. I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.’ So I told him the story (I’ve got pretty good at condensing it into four sentences) and he frowned and was terribly sweet. I’m still telling people for the first time: Kathryn Heyman, on email (‘Oh God. I can’t – can I call you?’); then Claire the Advisory Teacher on the walk back from school: ‘Oh God, what, really?’

At the school gate yesterday I saw Fiona.

‘God, you look awful.’

‘No, the correct response is “You look really well, Anthony.”’

‘Sorry. But you do.’

‘Well, that’s OK, because I feel dreadful.’

‘Oh no, what is it?’

‘Streaming cold. Constant coughing fits at night. No sleep. Apart from that I’m fine.’

‘Look, if there’s
anything
I can do.’

‘Absolutely, we’ll let you know.’

‘You look like you’ve put on weight actually.’

‘Well spotted. I have. They said not to worry about calorie intake.’

‘Because I saw you the other day and thought you looked heavier, you know, in the face. Do you know when it started? Perhaps it was last year with your job hanging in the air, because you were really low then weren’t you?’

‘They said they don’t know. But it’s aggressive, so it’s probably very recent.’

‘At least that means they can hit it aggressively though, doesn’t it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Look, when are you going to come round, would you like to come round?’

‘Love to.’

‘OK, I’ll call you.’

‘OK, call us, that’d be great.’

I bet she won’t.

Later we went to book group and everyone was lovely. Possibly too lovely. Tom Nicolas called across the room ‘You look very sexy.’ When I said thank you I’ll take that as a compliment he went ‘I didn’t
mean
it as a compliment,’ and sniffed.

Tom Lloyd whispered to me what Lucinda said when I walked in: ‘It’s not fair, he’s even better looking than he is when he has hair.’ ‘But I don’t suppose she actually told you that, did she?’

We did have a good comparing notes session, though. She said how people always were reminding her to ‘be positive’ and how if she did that she’d have a better chance. ‘But I
never worked out what they meant. Because I would only be able to think of every negative thing. It was the people who came up to me and dealt with it head-on and asked how I felt that I might die who I liked the best.’

I explained I’d been reading the John Diamond. He took it to mean: ‘Be positive when you’re around me.’ She laughed at this. ‘But it’s funny,’ she went on, ‘you find yourself overcompensating for and protecting people, even as you tell them, making sure they can handle it. It’s what we do.’

The day began with a classic, multi-orifice explosion at 5 am. I sat on the loo and felt desolate. Outside, forlorn birdsong. I thought of Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘Wet Evening in April’:

I don’t know if I have said this, but I absolutely loathe and detest having cancer. Something about the wretchedness of unstoppable coughing and simultaneous diarrhoea, combined with a ten-tissue-per-half-hour cold just got to me yesterday. I just couldn’t see the funny side – my beard rubbing off in my hand! – any more. I feel bloated, lethargic, overweight, slumped. And everyone, Fiona aside, says how marvellous I look. Which is lovely, even if they
are
lying. The downside is that I don’t have permission to say how guilty I feel. I heard myself on the phone talking to Mummy and Daddy and for the first time in ages the perkiness had gone. I was all monosyllables, in between splutters. I could hear Mummy getting more upset at ‘being so far away’ but there was nothing I could do to disguise it. I felt terrible. Then guilty for letting them know it. Then slightly annoyed that they sounded surprised. Then guilty again. So it goes on.

Jay called earlier with his familiar ‘Allo, cancer-boy’ greeting.
He toned it down a bit when I answered by way of coughing for half a minute into the mouthpiece. Sometimes I would like to punch him.

The most touching thing of all? Phil from the greengrocer’s (aka The World’s Most Grumpy Man) gave me his number this morning and said ‘Young man, I’ve two friends who’ve had treatment like yours. If you’re not up to coming out just call us and we’ll bring it round. You’re only round the corner, aren’t you?’ I had only told Jen out of the team. Now I am under each of their wings. I just stood there saying ‘How amazingly kind, thank you’ like a proverbial stuck record. Then the punchline: ‘£12.20, young man. To you, £12.’

A better night, with only one-minor-coughing fit, at around half-one. Then diarrhoea at four, then again at six. Lay awake in between, listening to my plumbing. Read large chunks of the
Guardian
Saturday Review while sitting there, including a piece about Michael Holroyd having bowel cancer. He’s looking forward to the time when he can look back on it and say it’s all over. It’s funny how cancer suddenly attaches itself to the minutiae of the day. Alex from
Neighbours
has just died from a ‘rare form of lymphoma’, leaving Susan and his kids to fend for themselves. And this morning the radio was full of the woman from Swindon who has taken her NHS Healthcare Trust to the Appeal Court so she can get treated with Herceptin, the ‘miracle’ breast cancer drug. In the lead-up to her story they played interviews with other cancer sufferers, notably a very articulate 26-year-old woman with liver cancer, recently refused another wonder-drug which would have reduced the tumour by 4 cm and therefore made it operable. ‘What did you feel when the treatment was denied to you?’ she was asked. ‘Despair,’ she said simply.

While Tatty walked Shim to school and went for a walk I
watched back-to-back doubles of
Will and Grace
and
Frasier
. The One Where Grace Doesn’t Get Engaged, followed by The One Where Frasier Sees Off a Rival Shrink On Air. Tats joined me for the last bit of the latter and we giggled on the sofa together. OK, except it tends to start off my crying.