Love for Now (11 page)

I stepped outside briefly to move the car later and on the way back up the road saw Lawrence. He was in his car. He pulled over, got out and hugged me like the prodigal son. He didn’t flinch when I didn’t try to pretend that things had not been going well recently. ‘Any time of the day or night, if you want to come over and talk, or not talk, you’re always welcome, you know that,’ he said. I have only just realised the strength that comes from admitting that this is a hard time. Not ‘strength’ exactly, but some kind of peace, perhaps. Or rather, just an absence of guilt, a lack of worry about protecting people’s feelings. It still feels risky, though.

A day of racing clouds, squally winds and wince-inducing sunlight. Temperature climbing at last and buds starting to show on the lilac tree.

Have felt completely energy-less all day. Grounded; beached. The aerial man came at nine and I spent half an hour not understanding a word he said except that it will cost
£
170 to go digital. Watched some perfect-timing
Frasier
with Tats, then went to bed and slept till lunch.

Had woken only once during the night, around half-one, not coughing that seriously. Found myself jumping out of bed with unseemly energy at half-six for the (usual) diarrhoea, which lasted longer than ever before. I wept, silently.

Have felt on the verge of throwing up all day, without ever really feeling sick – if that makes sense. A tenderness in the waters, in the absolute base of who you are, that it’s all about to go up (or down) and that it will hurt.

A lovely package in the post today from Wes: a spanking Howies woollen hat ‘to fend off the interminable cold.’

Went to hospital yesterday and spent the morning dozing on the ward. Was in just to get a top-up of antibiotics, but they give you the full service and MOT, whatever. Bloods, blood pressure, temperature, check-up, chat. Karl strode around croaking sounding worse than me, though I couldn’t tell if this was from watching Arsenal beat Juventus the night before. In the end I didn’t dare ask.

They seemed certain that the constant diarrhoea is due to the strength of the antibiotics ‘stripping my stomach of good bacteria’, as Charlotte, my doctor, put it. They gave me two pots to fill with sample fluids. Felt pretty demoralised on my return – despite the blood levels being ‘normal’ – and sat waiting for a colleague to come and take me out for pizza with the students.

I was glad I went, though exhausted by it nevertheless. On entering the restaurant and seeing them all sitting there I realised how nervous I was, not of them, but of sitting in a crowd of people and having to perform and be jolly. Suddenly felt very afraid. Partly because I’m croaky, snotty and coughing and partly because I wondered if I’d have anything to say which wasn’t related to being ill. They were very sweet, taking me through the gossip from the course rather like adult children, arms interlocked, guiding an elderly parent round a stately home garden.

I noticed I ate for England, wolfing my pizza and mixed salad.

I bought Liv a bunch of lilies to say thank you for taking over the running of the course and she looked genuinely surprised and grateful, still managing to say that she wished it had been a pleasure. I let it go, as I did her quip about being well enough to do some second marking. As I had predicted to myself, she congratulated me on my ‘lovely shaped head’.
Went out for lunch today as well. At 12 Tatty looked up and said ‘Let’s go to Dart’s Farm.’ We picked up Ellie on the way and had a very bright time. They both had the steak with pepper sauce (‘and yesterday’s vegetables’: T) and I went for the proverbial sausage, mash and onion gravy. A nice Dijon mustard as well. Great comfort food. At one point Ellie and I got out our pills together. It turns out she took the same antibiotic whilst in hospital recently.

‘Did it give you diarrhoea?’

‘Yes. Dreadfully.’

‘How long did it take to go?’

‘Well, I finished the course on Sunday and I still have it now.’

‘Poor old you.’

‘And it was black for some reason.’

‘One thing I will say is how good I’ve got at swallowing pills.’

‘You’re an amateur. I’ve had loads more practice.’

‘Ellie, I am so sorry, that was unbelievably tactless of me.’

She didn’t flinch. ‘It’s no problem. I can do up to 30.’

‘In one go?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘My record’s about six.’

‘Pathetic,’ she grinned.

Afterwards I went out like a recalcitrant child to the car and slept while they pootled and did some shopping. It’s amazing, this urge to sleep nearly all the time; and to eat, too. On the one hand I’m surprised I haven’t lost more weight, with the diarrhoea; on the other hand I can’t understand why I’m not a complete porker. I walk with a wheezy old-man shuffle, and am breathless going up stairs, while feeling compelled to put sweet things in my mouth at regular intervals in between meals, not all of them apples and bananas. Another level of weirdness regarding this is that I still step onto the scales each day (as I used to before being ill) in the same kind of anticipatory hope, as though by finding out that I am less than 13 stone I can suddenly predict or look forward to a run of
good health. Yet I don’t really want to lose weight at all. My before-cancer brain very much wants me to, not least so I can start wearing my slimmer-fitting trousers again. But my rational mind knows that weight loss is a symptom of NHL. By going for the ‘trio of sausages’ (with apple tart for afters) I am, Canute-like, ordering the waves to recede a little. That I feel bloated with it only confuses the hard-drive when I’m told by everyone (students, the school gate) that I look so well.

With the sample-pots, yesterday, a little chit in a plastic bag with my details on. They use stickers for the repeated stuff (name, DOB, hospital no., etc.), but there, in black and white, and very legible, a summary of my cancer in the top right hand corner: ‘High-grade B cell diffuse NHL.’ It was seeing the words ‘high-grade’ which got me. Somehow seeing it written down seemed to make it more or less official. After all, I’ve received no letter telling me I have this disease. Seeing ‘high-grade’, code for ‘aggressive’, next to the abbreviated NHL, made my particular form of the cancer all the more serious, suddenly.

A day of comings and goings. The telly man came and did our aerial this morning, so now we have digital TV, much to the children’s delight. If I’m careful I could watch ‘old’ telly all day now. The box we have has all sorts of things I’ve never paid attention to before: something called ITV2, Sky 3, even Channel 5. It’s wall to wall
Due South
and
Murder She Wrote
from here on in.

Channel hopping last night with a camomile tea I came across the last ten minutes of an Esther Rantzen programme about having a good death. She had been following a man from Powys called Stan as he approached his final days, knowing he was dying of cancer. She asked him in that direct way of hers what he thought a good death was:

‘Nice view of the garden. Summer. A gin and tonic. A double. A good book. And cricket on the radio. Then I’d like to just fall asleep.’

It reminded me of what I once described to a friend as my vision of perfect happiness (with whisky instead of gin). I’d bet that most men dream of that kind of uncluttered time. And yet, why shouldn’t dying be a moment of peace and tranquillity?

In her last piece to camera with him Rantzen asked what message he’d like to pass on about living to those watching. ‘Make the most of what you have. Tell those you love that you love them. That’s a good thing to do. Every day. Yes,’ he said, without blinking. He died five days later.

A lot’s been happening.

To the Loydells on Friday night for a farewell curry. The sitting room was piled high with boxes. ‘Just the CDs, LPs and novels,’ said Rupert. ‘Haven’t even started on the poetry yet.’ They were on fine bickering form, like a time-capsule from when we first knew them:

Luke Kennard, and his fiancé, Zoë, were there. Luke, shy, nervous, eager to please, did a lot of nodding and saying ‘Yuh, Yuh,’ like he does when he performs his poems. Such
a nice, modest man, nothing giving away his hottest-new-talent-on-the-poetry-block status. You know you are getting old when the poets start getting younger … and are head, shoulders and torso better than you.

On Saturday to James and Becca Alexander’s (40th) Bond party, complete with hired out Casino Royale roulette tables, croupiers etc. Black tie, the works. You pay your
£
10 each (‘to send a cow to Africa’), then play with the ‘cashed in’ chips. I went as a poor man’s Blofeld, in a black polo-neck. Tatty held court on the blackjack table (and did very well), and I found a quiet corner in the roulette scene next to Jasper Hampson, who seemed content to natter about West Brom’s fortunes, which look even more disappearing than my own.

Lots of mini-conversations about my villainous appearance, including one with Max Gudgeon, who ended up describing me as ‘incredibly brave’. I have never felt this, but thanked him anyway. ‘It’s not like I have a choice,’ I said, by way of an implied reprimand. You can never tell if people hear it or not.

Got a very nice email from Brie Samuels today referring to the time when she ‘came out’ with MS. She attached a charming but hard-hitting Julia Darling poem about living with cancer. She also said I was brave. I suppose it was ‘coming out’ in a sense, given that, the school gate aside, it’s only the third social occasion we’ve been to. So I got through a lot of ‘How
are
you?’ and ‘Your head is a lovely shape, you know’, without ever really feeling that I could say that I felt pretty shitty to be honest.

On Sunday the most wonderful surprise. Tatty mumbled something about going out ‘to get the last bits and pieces for your birthday’ while I prepared lunch. She came back half an hour later, and there was Jay hugging me in the kitchen. As if to prove my recent ropey form I immediately began coughing all over him. ‘It was either that or crying,’ I said, blinking in disbelief. Apparently they fixed it up a whole week ago.

Tatty, flushed with pride at her success, plonked the Sunday papers onto the table and we settled into a companionable, chuckle-filled silence, with coffee. It could have been a scene from Brixton, 1991.

Tatty found not one article but a whole series devoted to the subject of cancer in the
Independent on Sunday
. On pages 6–7 they had made a list of ‘vital drugs: what they cost, how they work and who gets them.’

‘Look,’ she said, ‘
you’re
in here. Rituximab, I mean. But I don’t understand it. You’ve had no problem being treated with it at all. Especially as they describe R-CHOP as the gold standard treatment of NHL. I wonder if they have their facts straight.’

The paper says the following:

• Rituximab costs
  £
  15,000 over a five-year period.
  
• That it is a monoclonal antibody used on lymphatic cancers and in combination with chemotherapy for advanced cases (this made me wince: no one has used the word ‘advanced’, even if they have the euphemism ‘high-grade’).
  
• That it slows the progression of NHL by linking to cancer cells and making them self-destruct.
  
• That it is approved in Scotland. No NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) decision for England and Wales until next year (again, very odd: no one has described my being treated with Rituximab as ‘special’, ‘unusual’ or ‘exceptional’, nor have they referred to a lack of nationwide approval for its use. I can feel a letter coming on. I’ll have to show the paper to Karl to find out how far they got it wrong).
  

My birthday was perfect, real dark shadows cast by the sun and a beautiful blue for most of the day. By the afternoon it was even warm enough to stride around outside without a hat.

We took Jack and Jena to Michael Caines, having been
treated in the post to a cheque and a card instructing us to do so from Mummy and Daddy. The front of house table in the window, sunlight on our backs. I had carrot and coriander soup, fillet of gurnard and mash, and sticky toffee pudding. An unfussy French Sauvingon, which I had more than a taste of. ‘Go on, sir,’ the waiter said. ‘Finish the bottle. It is your birthday after all.’ Jack made me his first ever compilation CD, proudly beaming ‘I had to ring PC World to find out how to do it.’

The kids gave me a raclette machine, which we christened for supper, Tatty having brought slices of cheese all weekend from Sainsbury’s. There are so many things I never twigged about: the fifth chicken breast defrosting on Sunday morning; the cheese; the pre-washed new potatoes and army of beetroot, gherkins and pickled onion jars lined up in the fridge.

The final surprise she had organised was Paul and Steven coming round after supper for cake and chat. A mellow end to a perfect day. I felt loved from start to finish.

In the midst of all this, still feeling pretty rough. Endless pouring snot and wild coughing fits from nowhere around 3.30 each night. ‘You might have mastered going back to sleep, but I haven’t,’ says Tatty. I now sleep sitting upright from the word go, something I would never have thought possible. Diarrhoea still there, but down to a manageable two episodes a day rather than three. It doesn’t sound like a difference, but it is.