No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year (30 page)

“I didn’t say ‘bugger,’” I said.

“Well, you did.”

“I didn’t, darling. It’s not the sort of thing I say.”

“Well, you did say it. I don’t mind if you said ‘bugger’ or not, but you definitely said it.”

Did
I say it? Did he mishear? Am I going mad, old?

June 7

I have Gene while Jack and Chrissie go away for a night on their own. I am so lucky! I keep looking at his little cup and plate; I’ve got all the toys out and his cot’s all ready. I feel quite skippy inside, as if I had a new boyfriend coming over. How Jack and Chrissie will be able to cope without him for two days I don’t know.

When they dropped him round he was wearing a little blue tank top I had knitted him, and looking like such a tiny little man, even though he can’t walk yet.

We got to Holland Park OK. Jack and Chrissie had fixed his car seat in the backseat of my car. But getting Gene and the pushchair in is as difficult as doing Rubik’s Cube with a blindfold on. Eventually I managed to click all the straps into place without him screaming too much and about an hour later, we arrived at the park and fed the birds, an activity he’d like to do all the time, as far as I can see.

It’s odd how happy I can be just standing about feeding birds, while Gene watches from his pushchair. When Jack was young and we mooched about in Holland Park, I’d scream internally with boredom. I had the washing to do, I had friends to ring. Oh, I’d be thinking all the time,
I want to get a life!

These days I don’t want to get a life. Or, rather, I’ve got a life. Looking after Gene.

We walked round a mysterious wooded bit at the back of the park. I got very nervous when we saw three extremely sinister hoodies on a bench in the distance, clearly involved in some kind of drug deal. One of them had an iPod (I think) plugged into his ears; one held a pit bull terrier on a chain. Unfortunately Gene spotted the dog and, yelling: “Do! Do!” insisted we walk past. When we came up to them, he grinned and shouted, pointing to the dog, while I maintained my usual petrified Don’t-you-darelay-a-finger-on-me!-I-am-a-feisty-old-bat-with-a-killer-handbag! expression. As we paused for Gene to look, the hoodies instantly burst into wreaths of affectionate, friendly smiles, each of them gave Gene a high-five, and the one with the iPod let him listen to the music on his earphones. I felt horrible being so suspicious. I suppose it is possible to be a creepy drug dealer and charming with small children at the same time.

Finally got back to the car after Gene had examined what seemed to me every single blade of grass in the entire park, and it was a case of so far, so good. But then I had to fold down the pushchair, and after about twenty minutes trying to pull and push at all the catches, I finally gave up and just rammed it, open, into the back. Then, once I’d put Gene into the car seat, I couldn’t get his straps to snap shut. Maneuvering everything is like trying to put up a deck chair while wearing boxing gloves.

As I couldn’t possibly drive him home with no safety belt on at all, I improvised by tying a plastic bag to one side of the seat, and then tying that to the finger of a glove, and knotting the whole thing up with a rubbery thing with hooks on the end that you use for keeping luggage on the top of your car. In the end, poor Gene looked like one of those strange and sinister parcels you sometimes see on the luggage carousel at Stansted, a parcel that has, apparently, been there for years and looks as if it will be there for another few years to come. I drove back very slowly indeed, worrying in case he should suddenly propel himself through the windscreen.

When we got back, he tucked into some pasta, peas and ham, all mushed up. I gave him some fizzy water, and as he felt the sparkles, he let it all run down his front, roaring with laughter, as if it was a huge joke played on him by the water.

He went to bed peacefully, and I felt so happy sitting downstairs, watching telly, knowing he was upstairs in his cot. I could hear his sweet soft breathing on the monitor, and I thought: Well, Marie, if your cup doesn’t runneth over now, I don’t know what.

Having said that: What would it be like if someone else were in the same room as me, also contentedly listening to the monitor? Someone friendly. Like Archie. Have to admit that it would be rather nice. Then realized that he probably was, at this very moment, entertaining the Swedish bimbo team at the Ivy, and stuffing their faces with gravlax.

Later

I was right. I couldn’t have said “bugger.” I must have said “buggy.”

June 8th

I took Gene back to Brixton in the evening and put him to bed, because Jack and Chrissie were coming back after supper. I stayed over, so they could be late. I went to bed at eleven, but there was no sign of them at twelve, and by one o’clock I was panicking. By two o’clock I was desperate.

What would I do if anything had happened to them? Had they been killed in a car crash? It so, should I move to Brixton to live with Gene and care for him, or should he move in with me? What school should I send him to? Jack and Chrissie are committed to state education. What should I do if they were both in a coma? If I’d sent him to a private school and then they both suddenly woke up, would they be furious and never speak to me again?

Suddenly heard the sound of a flushing loo and, convinced burglars had invaded, I nervously pottered out of my room and said: “Hello?”

It was Jack. Turned out they’d been back since 11:30 but I’d been asleep and hadn’t heard them come in.

June 9

Having bitten my nails ever since I was born, I’ve now managed to grow them at last. They’re turning into uncomfortable clawlike talons, and my fingers feel all stuffy and hot underneath them. What are long nails actually for? Retrieving dropped coins from the floor, picking my teeth, repairing damaged earrings? Scratching out the eyes of mine enemies? Must be more to them than that.

June 10th

As I walk down to the river to see Marion, the seagulls remind me of my own youth, suddenly, walking down with my grannie to feed them by the river. I remembered my tiny hand in her big hand.

When Gene is older, I wondered, will he dismiss his grannie in the same offhand way that I dismissed mine? Will he behave as badly to me as I did to her? I was so troubled in my twenties that I had no time for my grannie, this woman who meant so much to me in my childhood. I don’t even remember going to her funeral.

It is only now that I appreciate her and remember her with such waves of love. I hope she is looking down from wherever she is—not that, actually, I believe she is anywhere but you never know—and knows how much I loved her, and how she shaped so much of my life.

And how will my son behave to me? Will he be impatient when I’m old and ill, like my father was with my grandmother? Like many sons can be with their mothers when they start to crack and crumble?

June 11

Penny rang. She’s been looking at a book on feng shui and has found a compost heap in the “relationship corner” of her garden. Would clearing it and putting in some wind chimes bring Mr. Right along, she asks?

Later

Archie rang saying his thank-you letter had been returned to him because he’d got the postcode wrong. Curiously insulting, that, to think that he didn’t even know my address. However, at least I was able to apologize for frightful evening, which he didn’t seem to think was frightful at all. He is
so
polite.

June 15

Oddly overcome with concerns about Gene. Each morning I am up at four, white with anxiety and fear.

Desperate, I e-mailed Marion. I told her all my worries—that he’d get bullied at school when he went, that he’d take drugs when he was fourteen, that he would become overweight and be teased. I wrote that I worried about Jack and Chrissie suddenly moving to Australia, that they’d just ring up one day and say: “Sorry, we’re off. Tough tittie. Goodbye!” How, I asked her, can you stop the thoughts?

Within minutes she’d written back:

I am so, so lucky to have such friends.

June 16

Jack and Chrissie asked me to Sunday lunch. When I arrived they were convulsing with laughter.

“Gene has got a name for you!” they shrieked.

“Oh, really?” I said, immensely flattered as I took off my coat.

“Who’s that?” they said to Gene, who was staring at me, smiling. They pointed at me. “Who’s that?”

“Gaga,” he replied. “Gaga. Gaga.”

“Thanks a bunch, Gene,” I said, with mock resignation. “I come here, I love you, I look after you, and all you can do is reward me with a name that clearly defines me as a barking old bat. You’ll go far.”

But inside I felt as pleased as if I’d been given a Damehood. Gene recognized me. “Gaga.” Oh, dear. I think I’m going to cry.

Got back to find message from James. Hughie back in hospital. And this time it seems unlikely he’ll get out.

June 17th

Today Hughie lies on his back in what hospital staff call, apparently, the “end-of” ward, a place from which there is no return. All he can do is breathe, in and out, in and out. And stare. Terrible sight. Hardly alive. He looks like some awful kind of Damien Hirst installation.

James was sitting, wearing a blue plastic apron, by the side of the bed. And by other beds, other families also sat or stood, all dressed in their blue plastic premourning clothes, nervously touching bits of their swollen or emaciated relatives, serious-faced, whispering, moving slowly with anticipatory grief.

Hughie kept making gurgling sounds, and there was no way he could communicate with anyone. Now he has a tracheotomy in his neck.

When James went for a break I stood by Hughie, dipping a sponge into water and putting it on to his lips. I asked him if he was in pain, one blink for yes, two for no, but Hughie made no response and by the time he did blink, I’d forgotten which was yes and which was no. What a time to have a senior moment.

I ended up standing there for three-quarters of an hour, sponging his sweaty, oily head, stroking his few days’ growth of beard, and, oddly, whispering sweet nothings to him. I told him that we all loved him, I loved him, he loved us—occasionally breaking off to say what gibberish it all was, and telling him to try to feel peaceful and relaxed.

“We are all doing our best, everyone wants the best for you, come what may…” I said. Everything I said seemed to include the possibility of death. I felt it would make him feel happy to know that we weren’t all just hoping for him to recover when it wasn’t possible.

Occasionally he would open his eyes, with a look of terror and suspicion, but then he seemed relieved to see me there, and went back to his struggle with breathing.

Of course he’s going to die. I feel angry only that they are keeping him alive for the moment. It is so unfair. All they are doing is maintaining him in a state of misery, between life and death. They could keep him like this forever probably.

The nurses came and went, all through the day, monitoring, writing, staring at the machines, fiddling, twisting knobs…it is a macabre scene.

June 18

James rang this morning saying they were going to turn off the machines that are keeping Hughie going. Apparently it is a situation known as “power off.” They anticipate he will die by four o’clock.

As I had an appointment to have my hair cut at ten this morning, I kept it, but knowing I had a date with death in the afternoon was a strange experience. I felt very peculiar, with constant spells of dizziness. I kept putting off going to the hospital. Tidied the house. Had lunch. Even mowed the lawn. I really couldn’t bear it. Finally went, hurrying, and there was James on one side of Hughie’s bed, under a television monitor, which showed Hughie’s heartbeat and blood pressure dwindling away in front of our eyes.