April Fool's Day

by Bryce Courtenay

  The family touring party had arrived back from Rome in November, three weeks before I arrived, with Celeste leaving to visit Portugal and Spain two days before I got to London. This time she was on her own, though she had planned to meet up with Christopher, who’d arranged in Australia to meet her for part of the time. It was a much needed holiday which we were glad she could take. As Adam put it, “She can go as crazy as she likes and ooh and aah to her heart’s content, she’ll like that!”

  The year was closing down as it does so neatly in the Northern Hemisphere. The weather was turning very cold and, with it, Damon seemed to be fading. It had taken him a week to recover from the trip to France and Italy, after which he’d had several “good days", when Benita would show him London. But it was becoming increasingly evident that he was very tired and weak and only just holding together. Most days he spent in an exhausted, troubled sleep, rising only in the late afternoon without the strength or will to go out. By mid evening he was ready to go to bed again.

  The two-hour break I had for dinner was designed so that I could be with him, though this was getting more and more difficult, as his pain increased and he was increasingly dependent on morphine to contain it. Morphine is not a good companion and some evenings Damon would sit, glazed-eyed and uncommunicative, content to stare at the television, a prop which allowed him to avoid the effort of having to share in the conversation.

  Some evenings he’d be a little better and we’d talk, mostly about his childhood, though sometimes he’d talk about getting better. On these occasions, I’d return to my study confused and saddened with the knowledge that Damon was dying, but that he still believed he would live.

  Were the young simply convinced of their indestructibility? Was this why young blood so willingly shouldered a rifle and went to war, quite sure that the bullets the other side fired were not real or not intended for them? Did this sense of invincibility remain even when circumstances clearly showed otherwise? Was mortality something that entered the psyche at an older age but was no part of the fluid in the pituitary gland?

  It was clear to me that Damon thought he could live, not by some miracle or act of faith, but simply by gradually allowing his mind to get the better of his illness.

  But life wasn’t all morphine and despair. Sometimes, in the late afternoon, he’d waken and put his head into the room which I’d converted into a study and suggest a walk to the shops in the Kings Road. We’d rug him up until he resembled the Michelin man, then we’d venture out into the cold December evening. Damon walked so slowly that we’d practically risk frostbite covering the couple of blocks to the Kings Road.

  I’d generally combine these walks with a bit of shopping, popping into the Safeway supermarket, leaving Damon in the warmth of the shop while I searched the aisles for what we needed. On one of these occasions, having completed my shopping, I found him at the cheese counter with a young female shop assistant who was happily wrapping up half an enormous round of cheese. “Dad, I’ve found it!” Damon cried excitedly, pointing to the huge half-round of cheese. “It tastes just like Coon!” He turned to the young lady behind the counter, “Will you cut off a piece for my dad, please?”

  The shop assistant complied and placed a sliver of cheese on a strip of greaseproof paper, handing it across the counter to me. It tasted vaguely of soap, though it lacked that much true character.

  “Dead cert, just like Coon, isn’t it?” He turned to the assistant, “Coon’s a cheese we get at home, in Australia.”

  The shop assistant arched one eyebrow. “It’s not a very nice name for a cheese then, is it? Dead racist, if you ask me!”

  I noticed for the first time that she was black. Damon, who probably had never heard the derogatory name “coon” for a black person, just looked blank.

  “In Australia, that word doesn’t mean anything,” I said hurriedly, trying to conceal my embarrassment. Then added, pointing to the cheese, “Don’t you think that’s rather a lot of cheese, Damon?”

  “Yes, but it’s on special and they’re not getting any more in. We can’t take a chance, can we?”

  I lugged the eight-kilo (20 lb) half-round of cheese home. It was pretty yucky stuff, but Damon seemed pleased with it. Later, when I made his usual cheese and tomato toast before he went to bed, I noticed that he didn’t eat it. The following day he told me that Coon wasn’t much good as toasted cheese, just as ordinary cheese. But the enormous cheese soon failed in this department as well. Our room maid was astonished when, a month later, as we were about to depart, Benita handed her the better part of eight kilos of cheese among other grocery items we’d accumulated.

  Damon seemed to become increasingly ill as the weather grew colder and, soon, it was difficult to get him up on some days. He would often sleep for twenty hours, then rise; Benita or myself would help him to bathe and dress and place him in a chair when I’d make him toasted cheese (proper cheese) and tomato with the crusts cut off the bread. Sometimes all he wanted was baked beans on toast, which he could easily throw up before going to bed. Trying to feed him with stuff to keep him going was a nightmare for Benita and, more and more, his intake of food consisted of high-energy, protein-enriched milkshakes, high carbohydrate foods and drinks.

  My memory of this time is warped. I would rise in the morning at four a.m. and begin work and, sometimes, I’d hear him getting up. At first I went to him offering to help, but he’d simply want to go to the bathroom and he didn’t want to be helped to do so. This was one of the few independent routines he could still manage and perhaps his self-respect needed it, though it would often take him half an hour to complete and return to bed. My daily vision of Damon became one of his frail little body in oversized pyjamas making his lopsided way every grey London dawn to the bathroom. His bedroom was next to my study and the bathroom was a little further down the hall, so he was obliged to pass my door on his way. I continued writing so as not to show him that I was aware of his presence. But it hurt like hell and the urge to rush to him was very difficult to resist. I could never quite bring myself to close the door, which I’m sure he would have preferred, just in case something went wrong and he needed help.

  Damon, my beautiful little boy, had become a ghost who passed through my life at dawn and again just before midnight. I wrote and Damon died slowly in the room next door. It became a routine, the writing and the dying; each day my book moved closer to its inevitable end.

  Two days before Christmas, Celeste returned. She’d had a lovely holiday but had cut it short a day because she was worried about Damon getting too tired. Mindful that Christmas was coming in, she feared that he might try to make too great an effort to co-operate and exhaust himself needlessly. Though she said nothing to us, Celeste came out of Damon’s room after a couple of hours and it was clear from her eyes that she’d been weeping; it was also obvious that she was distressed at the way he had regressed in the time she’d been away.

  Benita and I had never tried to compete for Damon’s love with Celeste, but her return once again made it apparent to us just how much she meant to him. While he’d never once complained when she was away and he’d been adamant that she must not phone him, so that she could forget everything and have a proper holiday without worrying, her return gave him a joy we’d despaired of ever witnessing in him again.

  It was the first time I had seen love as a healing process. Actual physical healing took place with Damon, which allowed him to make his last Christmas with us a happy, laughing, joyous day I shall remember as long as I have a mind and breath in my body. It was Celeste’s real Christmas present to us all and we loved her very much for the gift of that one precious day.

  Benita has spoken of that last Christmas with Damon. Soon after Christmas, Damon declared that he wanted to go home. He was very sick and he craved the sunlight and, besides, it was time to return. The mighty Damon had made it, he’d completed his Grand Tour of Europe! Now the sunlight and the hibiscus and bougainvillea and his favourite, battered old bush of y
ellow roses beckoned him from a small, antipodean garden. The little Bondi semi, with the shock of pale blue plumbago that grew beyond the front fence, was waiting to welcome him home.

  I chose to stay in London and complete my book, another two weeks’ writing and working with my editor. Almost without thinking, I allowed Celeste to travel home to Australia alone with a very, very sick Damon. She took the full responsibility of getting him safely home and looking after him in Australia without our help, until we returned in mid January. I can’t explain why. I have often been accused of having tunnel vision, an ability to see only the project in hand until it is completed and, for a moment, I could not see Damon. Nothing I could possibly have done could have been more important than taking my son home. But I let a lousy, stupid book come first! I am bitterly ashamed of my actions and don’t expect ever to be forgiven.

  I have tried to tell Damon’s story as honestly as I am able without offending people who are still alive or the families of those who are dead. I have changed names when it seemed considerate to do so. There are times in this book when I do unapologetically indict a person, persons or a system. There may also have been times when my emotion has over-ridden my detachment. If this is so, then this was not done deliberately, I have simply failed to see the other point of view. But the excuses I may have allowed others, because to do otherwise would have been hurtful, do not apply to myself.

  Celeste, I am truly sorry, I beg your forgiveness.

  The next part of Damon’s story belongs to Celeste.

  “It was such a lovely Christmas. I’d bought Damon a wonderful and most weirdly beautiful, nineteenth-century, brass writer’s lamp which I’d found in an antique market in northern Portugal. I was sure I’d found something truly unique. Let me describe it to you. First of all it was meant to come apart, so I guess it was a traveller’s lamp. It stands about twelve inches high on brass tripod legs, nicely curved, and from which a central pillar, a brass rod, rises to the full height and then a cross rod runs over the top about eight inches long. In the centre of this rod is this beautiful flying fish, which is the oil container, and on the tip of each wing are the wicks. Slotted into the upright rod at the top and directly behind the little fish is a cupped reflector, like the collar of a frill necked lizard, so that the light from the lamp reflects downwards, presumably on to the writer’s or reader’s page. At each end of the cross rod hang two chains. One carries a wick holder for dead wicks and the other a little container of fresh wicks. On the other side, the two chains carry a lamp-snuffer and a tiny pair of tweezers for removing a dead wick or inserting a new one.

  “The whole contraption was just delicious and Damon said he liked it a lot, in between my jumping around and giggling, as I assembled it in front of him on a Christmas table groaning with food and this great turkey Bryce had cooked.

  “It really is a very beautiful thing and I keep it in the living room and people go right up to it and exclaim ooh and aah and say, ‘What is it?’

  “’It’s Damon’s lamp, he’s writing his book in heaven and he uses one just like that.’ Sometimes they look at me weirdly, but mostly they seem to like my reply.

  “We left London on 29 December. Adam took us to the airport. Damon wasn’t well and was glad to be going home but it was one of his really bad days. I was enormously upset that Bryce and Benita weren’t coming home with us because I knew that Damon was really sick and I felt really scared that I was by myself. I cried a lot on the flight and was angry, too. I felt that Bryce and Benita didn’t have the guts to come home! When Damon said he wanted to come home I’d just naturally assumed they’d come back with us. Benita came over with us and now it was just me, there were no other people around. There was Brett, that was my whole family. My family had deserted me just when Damon was really sick and I knew it was going to be very hard.

  “We were fortunate as we were travelling first class which was almost empty, and so I could make sort of a bed for Damon to sleep and I then found a corner seat in the cabin, where I could have a good cry. I remember I cried an awful lot on the trip home. Once you start it’s hard to stop and I felt really alone. We came home via Singapore and flew over the major part of Australia during the day. We looked down at Australia’s vastness for several hours and Damon, who’d just awakened, couldn’t believe the size of our country, the sheer vastness of travelling for three or four hours while the scenery looks much the same; the great, brown desert underneath us seemed to stretch forever. I remember him saying, ‘It’s true, it is a sunburnt country,’ referring to Dorothea Mackellar’s famous poem. He used to recite it, I guess he learned it in school, then he’d say, ‘I’ve only seen the green bits. One day we’ll see it all, babe.’ Now he was seeing it all in a rush from the air. It seemed almost as though life was tidying things up for him, giving him a sort of condensed, cinemascope, brown-bits view so he could say he’d seen them. Anyway we came down and suddenly got hit by the heat and, because I saw one in the airport, the cockroaches. We were back in the cockroach capital of the world.

  “Bryce had arranged for Owen Denmeade to meet us at the airport and he was waiting with Amy and they took us straight home to Bondi, Owen chatting all the way nonstop. This probably sounds irrelevant but it was a strange time, almost surreal for me. The last few days in London Damon started having delusions. Not like his mania, you know – he’d think something had happened when it hadn’t. Well, as we passed Bondi beach, you know the huge chimney that stands on the headland for the underground sewerage works, the Stinkpot? Well, for Christmas they’d fitted it out with thousands of fairy lights. I laughed for the first time on the trip home. It seemed to me, after the Christmas lights in Regent Street and Madrid, such a wonderful, funny, funny, Australian thing to do – fairy lights on the Stinkpot! It was the Australian sense of humour and it was good to be home. Lucy was overjoyed to see us;

  she was no longer a puppy but still very gangly-legs-going-everywhere-at-once. At first she didn’t quite know who we were but was still overjoyed to see us. I suppose three months in a puppy’s life is a lot of time.

  “I phoned in to the hospital to say we were back and that Damon was sick and I got him in to hospital the next day. They didn’t seem to know what was wrong and he wasn’t admitted to hospital for a few days.

  “It was a really sad New Year. There was a feeling of something happening, although I was still not prepared to admit that Damon was coming to the end, even though he was really bad. I remember, Damon was asleep and I was sitting in the kitchen alone and I heard the fireworks going off and the car horns at midnight and not knowing what that year was going to bring. I was feeling really low inside, I think the lowest I’d been except for perhaps when we’d left London, because as I said there was a feeling of something happening which I didn’t understand.

  “Five days later Damon went into hospital and was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, that means a heart muscle disease. In Damon’s case, the heart had been growing bigger and was pumping more slowly and this was why he’d gone downhill so fast and had so little energy. When they told me at the hospital I really felt totally abandoned by Bryce and Benita. I was quite desperate, I didn’t know what to do. You hear about hearts and you think of them suddenly failing. The day he was diagnosed with the enlarged heart they let him come home; this wasn’t anything they could treat. I remember Paula, the head district nurse, was there and Lindsay, who’d come in every morning to help after we returned. Paula is a no-nonsense type of person, very kind, but straight. She told me very definitely that Damon was going to die. That he didn’t have very long to go and I had to watch out for the signs. I forget now what she told me to look for, I think I’ve erased it from my memory because I just couldn’t, wouldn’t, I refused to believe her. She asked me if there was anyone I had to call on? Who was keeping me together? And, of course, Bryce and Benita were still away, so I said, ‘Lucy!’

  “’Lucy?’ She looked at me for further explanation.

  “’Our dog.’ At
the time it didn’t seem like a strange answer, though Paula looked shocked. But Lindsay jumped in and said she had a dog and she understood completely. Lindsay was wonderful and we became friends and she invited us to her wedding. Damon said it was definitely a wedding he’d go to. ‘Of course I’ll go to the wedding, I’d never miss that wedding!’ He wasn’t going to miss it no matter what. He said always to keep in touch with Lindsay because she was a very special person. But he did miss it. Lindsay was married two weeks after Damon died.

  “Lindsay was fantastic, absolutely fantastic. For the remaining two and a half months of Damon’s life she’d come in each morning and bathe Damon while I changed the sheets, which needed to be washed every day.

  “I’d fluff up the pillows and we’d treat his bed sores and powder him and change his pyjamas and I’d comb his hair. It was a concentrated time. We’d bathe his eyes and clean as much of the thrush as I could detach from the inside of his mouth and we’d treat his shingles. Working hard between us it all took about an hour.

  “I remember, things started coming into the house. We had a large cylinder of oxygen for Damon’s breathing. We had special attachments put into the shower and a special shower chair he could sit on. All the things for a complete invalid suddenly appeared that reminded me of when Daddy, my grandfather, was dying. All the paraphernalia, the wee bottles and wheelchair and the commode chair and the zillions of drugs; there were always lots of drugs in the house but now they seemed to multiply. They all looked like things for a dying person, things you’d have if that was going to happen to you.