From Christmas to Eternity

by Caroline Anderson

  They drank the wine, though, and ordered coffee, and she thought he’d choke on it at one point he was laughing so hard.

  ‘That was—fantastic,’ he said, when it was over and they were walking back to the hotel, the applause still ringing in their ears. ‘Really, really fantastic. Thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. It was you who chose it, you who made me call them. I wouldn’t have bothered, and I’m so glad I did.’ She lifted her head and looked up at him, tucking her hand in his arm. ‘Do you know that’s the first time I’ve heard you really laugh since your operation? And it’s months and months since you’ve laughed as much as that. It was so nice to hear.’

  ‘It felt—really good.’ He pulled his arm away from her and looped it round her shoulders, tucking her closer to his side, and they ambled back along the streets, passing Harrods on the way.

  Their Christmas window display was up, blazing with light, and they strolled past, fascinated and enthralled.

  ‘It’s amazing. They really do Christmas,’ she said, and found herself wondering what their own Christmas would be like.

  ‘Not long now,’ he said. David had said two months, maybe. That would take them up to the start of the New Year. He wondered now if that was too optimistic. He was certainly feeling much better, but he was a very, very long way off being able to go back to work.

  Financially, it didn’t worry him. He was off sick on full pay for months yet, and when that came to an end he had good critical illness cover—his parents’ fiasco had taught him that lesson. But from a personal point of view, he wondered what on earth he would do to fill the time. There was a limit to how often he could make love to Lucy, although he’d yet to reach it.

  They arrived back at the hotel and went up to their room, the rumpled bed a teasing reminder of their afternoon’s activities. He took her coat and hung it up, then drew her back against his chest, nuzzling the side of her neck.

  ‘Tired?’ he asked, and she shook her head.

  ‘No. Do you want tea?’

  ‘No. Just you.’

  She turned in his arms, slid her hands up into his hair and pulled his head gently down until his face was in reach.

  Her lips feathered softly over his, and with a quiet sigh of contentment he eased her closer and took the gift she was offering.

  * * *

  Their appointment was for ten and he had to have a scan first, so they went down for breakfast at seven, checked out at eight and made their way across London in the rush-hour scrum.

  ‘OK?’ she asked, glancing up at him as they walked in, and he nodded. He’d been relaxed last night, but today the tension was back and she wondered if he was worried.

  He didn’t need to be, but then he couldn’t see his progress as she could.

  First stop was an MRI scan to see how things were, and then David greeted them warmly, armed with the results and a broad smile.

  ‘Well, the scan looks great. How’s it going? Speech coming back?’

  ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘Still hard. Worse if I—need to say something. Exact words—really difficult.’

  ‘That figures. You’ve got a massive vocabulary, so if you’re just winging it, there are lots of words to choose from so you can take the first one off the pile that fits. If you have to be exact, as you say, you have to dig deeper and that’s what you’re going to find. And that will get better, but it’s what I meant by the higher level stuff. This will improve quickly, the everyday stuff, as your brain recovers from the insult of the operation. The harder things, the more specific, the most critical—these will probably take longer and they will have implications for your career in the short term. Have you been back to the hospital?’

  ‘Yes. Watched them. In Resus. Knew it—all, David. But—no words. I couldn’t—tell anyone. Couldn’t dir...um...’

  ‘Direct?’

  ‘Yes. Couldn’t direct. Couldn’t give—instructions. Couldn’t lead. It’s my job—’

  ‘OK. Let’s just take you back three weeks. You could hardly say a word. You’ve just told me perfectly lucidly what’s going on at the moment. This is huge progress, Andy. Huge progress. I think that tumour had been pressing on your brain for months, and you’d just learned to compensate. The pressure’s off now, but it’s a bit like a memory foam mattress. It takes time to recover, time for the imprint to fade. And you have to give yourself that time.’

  He nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘How are you feeling otherwise? Physically recovered?’

  He saw Lucy shift slightly out of the corner of his eye, and shut the images of her in their hotel room firmly out of his mind. ‘Yeah,’ he said in as normal a voice as possible. ‘Physically, fine. Still a bit tired, but OK.’

  ‘Are you having fun? Getting out and enjoying life?’

  He nodded, smiling at the memory. ‘Yes. We stayed—last night in—hotel, and went to—show. Very, very funny. Really good. Laughed a lot.’

  ‘Excellent. I’m glad you’re laughing again. That’s a very good sign. You need to do more of the same. Get out there and enjoy life and do things with your family. Lots of fresh air, lots of physical activity and then puzzles, crosswords, all the things the SLT is suggesting, and don’t worry about it. You’re doing really well. I’m very pleased, considering how tricky the surgery was, but I really wanted to make sure I’d got everything, and I have, so this is it. No more treatment, just recovery. And that’s just a question of time.’

  ‘Always time,’ Andy said as they walked away from the hospital. ‘Story of my life.’

  ‘Well, you’re impatient, and you always expect to be able to do too much too quickly, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that you’re being impatient now, but I’m glad he’s so pleased. The scan certainly looked different.’

  ‘Didn’t it? Much better. Feels better. Didn’t know it felt wrong, but it did. Odd.’

  ‘I’m just glad Raj spotted it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have been—long. Getting worse, quickly.’

  ‘You were. I’m still cross with myself for not realising.’ Cross and gutted that she’d thrown him out when he’d been so ill, when she should have realised, if she’d looked at it dispassionately instead of in anger, that there was something wrong. Something serious. ‘I should have seen it—should have recognised it. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t. My head, but I didn’t, not really.’

  ‘No, I think you did, I think you were just in denial. And you were never there, so I wasn’t talking to you very much, there wasn’t much opportunity for me to notice the changes. I still should have realised it was more than just tiredness and distraction instead of sending you away.’

  ‘Well, here now,’ he said, pausing in front of a café and smiling wryly. ‘Fancy coffee?’

  She smiled up at him and tucked her hand in his arm, happy to stretch out this time alone with him a little longer. ‘Why not?’

  * * *

  Lottie was pleased to see them, and Lucy was very pleased to see her, too. Nature, it turned out, wasn’t as clever as she’d thought when Andy had his operation, and her bra was feeling really tight.

  ‘Has she been OK?’ she asked, settling down on the comfy chair in the kitchen to feed her while her mother made them sandwiches for lunch.

  ‘Fine. She’s such an easy baby, she loves everybody.’

  ‘Yeah. She loves them in the night, too, usually. She often wants to play.’

  Her mother gave a wry smile. ‘Yes, she seemed quite happy to see me at two something when she woke and wanted a drink. She was pretty disgusted when I settled her back down again and left her, but she went to sleep in moments.’

  ‘She does, the little tinker.’

  ‘So, how was your evening?’ her mother asked, and Lucy tried not to blush.

  ‘Lovely. We had great fun
. Thank you so much for having her so we could do that. Andy was going to come on his own and I think it was really worrying him. He’s still not confident having to talk to strangers. He thinks they won’t understand. He’s got a card that explains that he can’t speak fluently but do you think he’ll use it?’

  ‘He’s proud, Lucy. He’s proud, and he’s not used to being inarticulate. He’s probably the most articulate and eloquent person I’ve ever met, and it must come hard to him when he can’t even answer the phone or send a text or ask someone the way.’

  She nodded. He’d had that problem when he’d gone to the hospital and the Neurology out-patients receptionist hadn’t known who he was or what he wanted. And it had taken him ages to tell her about it.

  ‘Never mind, he’s much better, so I’m sure it won’t be long. And I’m glad you had a lovely time. You deserve it.’

  It had been lovely. Wonderful. Romantic and funny and full of secret, intimate moments, but he still hadn’t said those three little words.

  Oversight?

  Or something more significant. Maybe he didn’t love her. Maybe he was happy taking all the sex she could offer him, but didn’t really care about her one way or the other.

  No. That was wrong, she was sure of it. She was just being silly, wanting it all on a plate, and she needed to worry about the important things and forget it.

  They’d had a great time, he’d been told he was recovering well, and maybe that was it, maybe the consultation had been hanging over him?

  Time, she told herself, but the mantra was wearing thin for both of them, and she just wanted everything back to normal.

  She thought of the sparkling festive Harrods window they’d strolled past on the way back to the hotel. Less than five weeks to go to Lottie’s first Christmas, but at least she knew she’d have Andy at home this time. Last year he’d been at work on Christmas Eve and again on Boxing Day, and the children had missed him. They’d all missed him.

  This time—this time, she promised herself, it would be special.

  * * *

  So, it was down to him.

  OK. He could do that. He knew the tumour had been removed completely and wouldn’t regrow, so he could concentrate on his recovery, but in the meantime, until he could go back to work, he had to find some meaningful way to fill his days.

  His SLT exercises had been a chore until now. Suddenly, they became a challenge. He tackled them as he tackled everything, head on and with gritted teeth.

  Crosswords, puzzles, reading and writing exercises, and listening to people speaking.

  The radio was the easiest way to do that, because he could be busy doing other things at the same time.

  Like painting.

  Lucy had talked about how glad she was they hadn’t bought a Victorian house that needed work, because they hadn’t even got round to painting the rooms in their own, but she’d had two young children when they’d moved, and a part-time job, and he’d just started in his first consultant’s post, so they’d had bigger fish to fry.

  Not now.

  Now, he had nothing but time, and so on Monday morning, he started to decorate. They even had the paint for the kitchen in a cupboard in the utility room, so the first thing he did was strip everything he could off the walls, scrub them down with sugar soap to get rid of the film of grease from cooking, and then Lucy came home from work with Lottie to find him cutting in the paint round the edges of the doors and windows.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, looking a little stunned.

  ‘Painting?’

  She let out a tiny, slightly puzzled breath and said, ‘OK,’ and then tried to put Lottie down. ‘Um—Andy, where’s the high chair?’

  ‘Dining room.’

  ‘OK. Um—did we discuss this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  He shrugged. ‘You got the paint.’

  ‘Two years ago. Why now?’

  ‘Why not? Nothing to do.’

  Oh, no. Not again. ‘Have you had lunch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll make sandwiches,’ she said, looking round at her devastated kitchen in confusion. If she’d known, she would have made supper last night and had it ready to go in the oven, but as it was she hadn’t, and it didn’t look like her kitchen was going to be hers again anytime soon.

  She retrieved the high chair, fed the baby a jar of chicken something, gave her some banana to mash up and spread in her hair and made a stack of ham, cheese and pickle sandwiches.

  ‘Lunch,’ she said, and he got off the ladder, to her relief, and came and ate.

  ‘Good. Thanks,’ he said, still chewing, and got up and carried on.

  ‘Don’t you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘When it’s made.’

  She sighed, wiped the banana out of Lottie’s hair and put her on her play mat with a pile of bricks. ‘Want me to help?’ she asked.

  ‘No, you’re OK. Play with Lottie.’

  So she did that. She played with Lottie, kept the dog out of the way and she watched her kitchen turn from the fairly gaudy yellow it had been up to now into a muted pale putty colour that went much better with the tiled floor. With everything, really.

  ‘That’s great. Well done,’ she said, admiring it when she got back from the school run. ‘What do you think, girls?’

  ‘It’s nice. Daddy, can you paint our bedroom next?’

  ‘OK. What colour?’

  ‘Pink,’ Emily said instantly.

  ‘I want purple,’ Megan said, and they started to fight.

  ‘How about one wall pink, and one wall purple, and the others white? That will go with your curtains,’ she suggested.

  Andy just raised an eyebrow in disbelief and cleared away the tools. He still had the woodwork to do, but at least the kitchen walls were done.

  ‘Utility next,’ he said. ‘Then your room. But no fighting.’

  It was down to Lucy to sort out the squabble, of course. They ended up compromising on pale lilac for the window wall, paler pink for the other walls and the ceiling white. Megan’s bed was against the window wall and Emily’s was opposite, so that way they each had their own colour.

  ‘I want my own room,’ Emily said to her later when she was clearing up after supper. ‘I don’t want to share. I don’t like purple.’

  ‘Well, that’s tough. It’s only a bit of purple, and the spare room’s for when Grannie and Grandpa come to stay, or your cousins.’

  ‘But they can go in the attic.’

  ‘No, they can’t. You can both go up there and have your own room when you’re older. For now, I want you and Megan together on the same floor as us, OK?’

  ‘OK. But I want it pink.’

  ‘No. You have to compromise. We’ve talked about this. It’s only one wall, Em. You’ll cope. Where’s your father? Do you think he’d like to read to you tonight?’

  ‘He can’t, Mummy. You know he can’t read.’

  ‘He can a bit, or you could read the story and he can help you if you get stuck. You can help each other.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, brightening up.

  But he was decorating the utility room.

  She leant on the doorframe and folded her arms and stared up at him as he worked. ‘Andy, the girls want you to read to them.’

  ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘And they’re growing up.’

  He opened his mouth, shut it and looked at the wall. ‘OK. Do it later.’

  He cleaned up his hands, peeled off his painting shirt and went up to the girls’ bedroom. She followed, ready to step in if it all got too much for him, but it seemed fine. She heard the little shrieks of glee, and him shushing them so they didn’t wake Lottie, and then she heard the soft, hesitant rumble of his voice. />
  Em had to help him with some of the words, and at one point she took over and then he had to help her, and then Megan read a bit, and Lucy sat on the stairs and listened to them and felt her eyes filling.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, coming to sit beside her on the stairs a few moments later. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I was just remembering you reading to them, the night before your MRI, when you knew there was something wrong but not what it was exactly. And you read them a million stories, and I was just sitting in the bedroom and fuming at you for coming home and sleeping in our bed while I was away, and you didn’t say a word about what was going on. I should have known there was something dreadfully wrong—’

  ‘Ah, Luce,’ he said softly, and slid his arm round her shoulders. ‘Can’t do this yet. No words for it—too much to say, and want it right. But—it’s good to be here.’

  ‘It’s good to have you here—so good. There was a time when I really thought I might lose you—’

  ‘Shh. Not going anywhere. Just need time.’

  ‘You can have time. You can have as long as it takes.’

  His arm squeezed her, and then he got up and carried on down the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  He looked back up at her. ‘Painting,’ he said, as if it was obvious, and he disappeared into the utility room.

  She followed him. ‘Want some help?’ she offered, and waited for the rebuff, but it didn’t come.

  He stared at her for a second, then smiled. ‘OK. Great.’

  ‘Back in a tick.’

  She ran upstairs and changed into scruffy clothes, then went back and helped him.

  Well, sort of. It wasn’t a big room, and inevitably they got in each other’s way, of course.

  And then he cornered her, reaching over her head to touch up a bit she’d missed, and when he looked down he smiled.

  ‘Got paint on you,’ he said, rubbing a smear off her cheek. She wriggled against him, and he felt his body roar into life.

  ‘Are you—distracting me?’ he asked, stumbling over the words a little but his laughing eyes more than expressive.