Learning to Die

by Thomas Maloney

  She does a careful visual sweep downstairs and spots a couple of books and leaflets that must be hidden away in the drawer now heavy with what she calls her loony library. What about food? Maybe she can order a Tesco delivery on her computer, since James probably expects more than malt loaf and PG Tips. Venison is cheap at this time of year, but how do you cook it? What’s a good wine?

  As Brenda works through this checklist, she can’t help feeling that James probably doesn’t much care whether she has an untamed bikini line or a bedroom full of forked sticks. He’s on her side.

  But after a seven-hour drive he still deserves a decent meal. And he still mustn’t find the loony library.

  The Mocks spent their evening in a rotation of mutual weeping, calm conversation, laughter, detached silence and eloquent, bone-bending embraces. They argued when Dan refused to eat any dinner. Finally, they had sex. ‘Now you take pity,’ he joked.

  When Dan wakes, his first sensation is of sharp hunger; the reason for it breaks into his consciousness shortly afterwards. Ah yes, that was it: he’s going to die. He eats an enormous breakfast, persuades Natalie to go to work as normal, and does likewise.

  When someone actually dies, the first thing you do is tell people. The conventions reject those expediencies of not knowing or not telling that are permissible — even encouraged — for mere illness. The conventions recognise the urgency of disseminating the absolute, the unalterable fact. Ring around the immediates, perhaps send a short, sombre group email to the rest. Get it out there.

  Dan’s new status is both absolute and ongoing. He examines his dazed conscience and finds that he must tell his parents and sister at once. Friends, colleagues — perhaps not yet. Reasons for the distinction unclear.

  He calls his dad from the synchrotron car park, asks to be put on speaker so his parents hear it together. He doesn’t start by saying he has something to tell them. He tries to get to the point quickly but with some warning context. A sense of role reversal. It is now they who must one day survive in the world without him, and not the other way round.

  ‘You need to get a second opinion,’ says his dad, in the trough following the first wave of shock. Even his voice, high, wavering, has shrunk to that of a child.

  ‘I don’t think so. There isn’t a single box I don’t tick. Some people get it in their upper neurons first — the ones that go down the spine from the brain — and some in the their lower neurons, the ones that go out to the muscles. Some people get it in their arms first, some in their legs. I’ve got the lot, all at once. I’m sorry.’

  An indecipherable sob from his mum. She doesn’t ask the peevish, pleading question he expected — why he didn’t tell them about his tests. He feels a pang of guilt about that, and about the reassurance, the protection that he cannot give them. But when she declares that they’re coming to see him today, right now, he encounters within himself an unexpected bedrock of resolve that this is his trial, his journey, and he wants to set his thoughts in order.

  ‘Mum, I’m at work. And anyway, I’ll need some time on my own. I’ll call again at the weekend.’

  His parents have each other, they have their long lives behind them, and they have another child to carry their hopes of the future. By comparison, they are immortals.

  The call to Laura is unedifying. ‘No,’ she declares, without turning off the background music. ‘I don’t believe it for a moment. Absolutely not.’

  ‘I’m not going to argue,’ he says, lowering his voice as a colleague approaches. ‘I just thought you should know.’

  ‘But it’s ridiculous.’

  Dan sympathises. But when it’s you, ridiculous isn’t the right word.

  In the Highlands, there’s never a petrol station when you need one, and there’s never a road leading in the direction you want to go — instead you follow the giant geological trellis of the glens and hope for the best. The meeting of two glens is not always obvious from the pine-blinkered road, and critical junctions, appearing suddenly without much fuss, send you to destinations on opposite sides of the country. James is a poor navigator, and his hired Micra traces out more of the trellis than he intended. He’s late.

  A genuine Scotch mist glitters in the headlights as he finally noses into Brenda’s little cul-de-sac. She’s at the door before him, wearing the same jeans, a knee-length cardigan, bare feet.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘I told you I’d find it.’ She looks him up and down, and grins.

  ‘You’ve got crumbs on your jumper. What is that? Cake? Hedging your bets, eh?’

  Everything is as it should be: the reassuring smallness and simplicity of Brenda’s house, the cosy gas fire, and between them the palpable, happy charge that works such miracles on James’ shrivelled heart. If I have not love. She has a few books whose titles and quaint covers are soothing balm — simple memoirs of shepherds, naturalists, a lighthouse keeper. These people have no anger in them, no violence, no ambition.

  Brenda doesn’t ask him about his own book — she really is a marvel. Instead she asks about the Moors, and about living by the sea. She grew up near Southend with its ridiculous folly of a pier, and James grew up as far from the sea as you can get. So they’ve swapped. The casserole is burned on top and a little salty, and they laugh about it. James enjoys the proximity of that moment when he’ll walk kisses across her astonishing stomach, peel down her jeans, but he feels no need to hasten it. Enough just to watch her bare feet padding the threadbare carpet and to sense, leaning innocuously against the other side of the PVC windows, an enormous, untamed night.

  Later he stands behind her at the sink, hands reaching round into the scalding water, pretending to help. He can’t see her face but her words are said through a smile. Greasy fingers interlacing; love in the washing-up bowl. She’s still holding his hand as she leads him up the stairs. He feels a euphoric blend of discovery and rediscovery. A mirror: the rediscovery of his own buried soul.

  ‘Have you seen tomorrow’s weather forecast?’ she asks.

  James wants to laugh at the nonchalant timing of this question and all it signifies. He silently acknowledges the element pouring into his heart with luxurious abundance.

  It’s material. Love doesn’t lie.

  ‘Cheers, old man. Belated Happy New Year.’

  A clink of glasses. How many more times will Dan’s oldest friend wish him that? Once more? Twice, perhaps? It’s a home fixture for Dan this time, in Reading, the date agreed last week. Before. Just as well he doesn’t have to go far: the limp is worse, right foot clearly dropping, drooping, not every step, but now and then. Old man, yes.

  ‘I’m having a bit of weird one, so far,’ says Mike, oblivious of the pall of death that hangs over them.

  ‘Go on,’ invites Dan, setting aside his own intended opener. Mike glances around, checking that no one’s listening in, and begins in a low voice.

  ‘This isn’t something I’d normally talk about.’

  ‘It can’t be your sex life then. It must be money.’ Mike nods and grimaces.

  ‘It is money.’

  ‘Trouble at work?’

  ‘Not exactly — not at all. That’s just it.’ He looks genuinely nervous. His voice sinks to a whisper. ‘The thing is, I’ve made a lot of it. Money.’

  Dan gives a short laugh. The distance between them has never felt so great as in this instant. He feels culpable, but he’s missed his moment.

  ‘That’s your problem?’

  ‘I know. I’m not complaining about it. I struck lucky. It all happened quickly at the end of the year. The thing is, I haven’t told anyone else.’

  ‘Am I allowed to ask how much?’

  ‘Enough to retire on, if I don’t buy a yacht.’ He makes a calculating frown. ‘Actually, I could probably buy a modest yacht, too.’

  ‘Vickers, you jammy dodger. Well. That’s the business you’re in, isn
’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know what to do with it. And I don’t know what do with myself. I never wanted to be — you know — one of those people.’

  ‘Well, you are one. Relax. Give a little away, if it’ll make you feel better. Give some to your college — establish the Vickers bursary for ginger students.’

  ‘People talk about good causes, but I don’t know which causes are good. And if I just give it away, I’m back where I started — scrabbling for more.’

  ‘Then quit. Start your own business.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Jesus, Mike. Show a bit of initiative. What are you passionate about?’

  Mike frowns, as though he’s never considered that question — or rather as though he has, but doesn’t know the answer. He’s always been like this. The world rewards grace, polish and a harmony of elements — attributes Mike has in spades — while Dan’s substantive passion leaves it indifferent, has to fight for recognition. Not that it matters now.

  Mike asks him about work, about his family, about Nat, but not about his health — not a simple, ‘How are you?’ that would demand an honest answer. Dan finds himself preferring not to volunteer his news. It will pollute everything it touches, including friendships.

  ‘Regards to Nat,’ says Mike as they part. ‘Funnily enough, I had a dream about her the other night.’ Dan turns, and he and Mike stand looking at each other, five yards apart. ‘It was absolutely filthy.’ The years, the light years, fall away and then pile back up swiftly. ‘That was a joke,’ adds Mike, with a frown and a parting wave.

  Dan must have forgotten to smile.

  ‘EAT DA RICH.’ Mike, homeward bound, notices the enormous lamp-lit graffito on the approach to Paddington. His eyebrow twitches. Boarding the train earlier this evening, on his way out to Reading with the commuter hordes, he observed the righteous anger of the passengers unable to board — raving, knocking on the glass — and the sulking, incremental accommodation of those standing in the aisle. Shuffle a few steps to gift a stranger the chance to say goodnight to his kids — but the gift isn’t given. A microcosm of haves and have-nots. Factions at war forever, like the young and the old, the sick and well, perhaps the lover and the beloved.

  Mike, with his sculptures and his Audi, was already a have. What does that make him now? With freedom comes responsibility. So said Spiderman, maybe. Now that the central excuse, the central apology of Mike’s life — the necessity to earn his crust — has effectively expired, he feels moral obligations pressing down on him unsupported, inescapable: obligations to the fellow man who didn’t strike it so lucky, obligations to his family and friends, and, above all, obligations to himself.

  He owes something to his past self, that accomplished, popular schoolboy — Ginger Knickers, they called him, but they admired him nonetheless — patiently expectant and expected-of; and he owes something to his future self, the bent old man looking back on his life, a cup of dread in his hands, searching for traces of worth. He even feels like he owes something to his as-yet unimaginable children — some achievement, some narrative to earn their respect. His life so far would set an incoherent example.

  He can’t ignore a sneaking feeling of being hard done by. His very privilege and good fortune have given him no material with which to build his character. Is that his fault? He might, after all, have battled adversity or injustice as lustily as the next man. (The last time he suffered severe physical discomfort? He fell out of an overloaded hammock five years ago and fractured his kneecap. The girl, a curvy Spanish siren, fell on top of him.) He never asked for all this. Does he deserve to be judged?

  You might think luck would even out — for every serendipitous swing an eventual roundabout — but even Mike is hazily aware that randomness doesn’t work like that. That’s the gambler’s fallacy. The truth is that unevenness persists. Those honest plodders at Oxford, whose tutorial work he copied religiously before outscoring them in the final exams — they’ll never see a payback.

  So there it is: no misfortune, no adversity, no character (being thirty-three, in the absolute prime of life, is the crowning insult). What is he passionate about? Women, obviously — sculpted contours of a woman’s crossed legs, exquisite interplay of muscle and bone — but what else? Air travel. Chablis. Civilisation. Beautiful things. In days gone by, one could simply be a collector. Today, that doesn’t wash.

  His train slides into the snug, curved holster of the station. Dan was in a peculiar mood. He looked overworked and underpaid. Should meet him again to get to the bottom of it. Can’t have miserable friends. Mike swings the door open and contemplates Brunel’s iron cathedral as he treads the long, gum-pocked aisle of Platform Four.

  Dear James, he taps swiftly from the back of his cab.

  Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply to your heartfelt, ego-felt defence of literature. I get all that. The problem, as I thought we had established, is that you haven’t produced any. What makes you think your ideas are better than everyone else’s? You’re like a crackpot evangelist, stubbornly traipsing from door to slammed door. Nobody cares.

  He’s about to sign off, but then adds a second paragraph, not so swiftly:

  Here’s a question for you. What would you do if you had absolute freedom? If money was no object? And don’t say you’d write — money can’t buy you your masterpiece, so you’d be in the same predicament there. What would you do if, say, you inherited a fortune? I’m sure literature has explored that plotline pretty thoroughly, so as a beneficiary of those insights, you ought to have a good answer.

  Sincerely,

  Mike

  Natalie Mock grasps the handle of the rumbling kettle, stares out of the window at the neighbour’s fence and surrenders for a moment to selfish thoughts. She can’t believe this is happening again. For twenty years she’s constructed something original and resilient on the rubble of her father’s death. She can still remember asking him what the word diagnosis meant. Horrible long-legged insect of a word, now crawling back into her life. Did she ignore Dan’s symptoms because of scar tissue in her brain blocking out any thoughts of a re-run? Will it be harder this time? Slower? Lonelier?

  She looks down at the two waiting mugs and feels an upwelling of love that inhabits, recolours her anger. Dan is sitting quietly, waiting. Is he ready for what’s going to happen?

  She sets the mugs down and takes her usual place, half facing him on the adjacent side of the old table they bought in Sheffield for twenty pounds. Winter sun charms the twin snakes of steam and makes a dissection puzzle of the tabletop, belying, offending the overwhelming atmosphere of gloom. When Natalie speaks, her voice is barely audible even to herself.

  ‘It’s all those particles you work with.’ Dan says nothing. When he lifts his mug, he uses both hands. ‘Radiation. Magnetic fields. It must be. It’s scrambled your nervous system. That place you work is so — so unnatural.’

  ‘I don’t think it was my work.’

  ‘But that other physicist — whatshisname — Stephen Hawkins. He got the same thing.’

  ‘Hawking. He’s a theorist,’ replies Dan, wearily. ‘He wasn’t exposed to anything more hazardous than a stick of chalk.’

  Natalie is powerless. ‘Then why?’ she whispers. ‘Why you?’

  ‘I don’t know. For years I’ve felt like there’s — something not quite right with me. Getting old before my time.’ This is the first Natalie’s heard of it.

  ‘Why didn’t you say something earlier?’

  ‘I told myself it was just paranoia. It probably was. We all feel a bit feeble inside, a bit achy and creaky, a bit twitchy — don’t we?’

  Natalie shakes her head. Feeble in her mind, yes — ignorant, peevish, yes — but she’s always trusted her body. Firm, reliable, downright miraculous little body. If you look after it, your body isn’t supposed to just give up on you at thirty-three.

  ‘If living
organisms weren’t unstable, imperfect systems,’ says Dan, staring down into his tea, ‘there could be no evolution. Some of us are not born to be ancestors. We’re just sketches for the main project. Defective specimens. Off-cuts. Dead ends.’

  ‘Stop. Don’t talk like that.’

  He looks up. Reaches out a sun-striped hand. Natalie can see what he’s doing, even feels a rush of pride for her serene, nerdy husband with his unshakable foundation of self-knowledge — no snivelling, no wallowing for him, no denial, no anger, no bargaining (whatever the hell that means). At the same time, she feels a desperate frustration that they can’t face this together and in the same way. The normal, bewildered way.

  This — the thing they have to face — being the prospect of Dan, husband, lover, best friend, disintegrating before her eyes and then vanishing altogether. She watched some films on the internet about other sufferers of the disease. Men with young kids, mostly — she’s read that more older people get it, but maybe they don’t have the same urge to record, to preserve. One young dad read bedtime stories into a tape recorder, for when his voice went. Another made video messages for his kids to watch when they were old enough to understand. For these men, the knowledge they would never be the father they should have been for their kids and wouldn’t see them grow up was the deepest of their many sorrows.

  But they had kids. A legacy. The saintly wives had a reason to be strong. What if you have no kids to listen to your video messages after you’re gone? To one day stand your pre-disease, pre-dribble picture on their bedside table in their unimaginable student digs? To remind your wife of the man you once were?

  What if you’re going to simply disappear and leave the world — and your wife — as you found them?