Love for Now

by Anthony Wilson

‘Yes you were.’

  ‘Was I? Here? Yesterday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I think I was here yesterday. At least I think I was. I said to him I’ll never move like this again. And that was ten years ago.’

  ‘You were here yesterday.’

  ‘Thought I was. I told him.’

  Saturday 25 February

  A day of gifts.

  We began with tears as I couldn’t face doing my injections, even into my leg. ‘Nurse Tatty’ took over, as if she’d been doing them all her life. She filled up the little vials, carefully squeezing the air bubble so it wouldn’t start squirting, matter-of-factly saying ‘These are the ones that save your life.’ It’s called GCSF (or Lengorastin), for the build-up of white blood cells. Amazing to think there’s a French cyclist somewhere right at this moment doing the same thing to build up his red ones, then an injection to take away the traces so he won’t be caught cheating.

  A lovely letter, the first in years, from Dale in Harringey, who has taken up fishing again and has a slug-infested allotment. He sounds on energetic and generous form, warm-spirited and open, as I remember him (‘but then I’ve always had a good life.’) He’s got high cholesterol so’s had to give up dairy, which I can’t believe, as I still see him chomping through the cheese counter, methodically trying out different varieties of cheddar as a student, and layering every piece of toast with double-butter.

  His mum has died (of cancer) since we’ve spoken. He says the end was good, in spite of the rubbish prognosis, that he got to nurse her ‘with real nurses’ for the final months. I’m sad to hear she’s gone. She was the one I nervously rang up to ask where he was living so I could ring him five years ago. I think she even bought my book.

  And a friend of his, having recovered from chemo, says he now has more energy than for years. ‘Who knows’ he says, without adding a question mark.

  A lovely card from Dana, too, complete with ‘4 chemotherapy treatments.’ 1 is a landscape, 2 is a poem, 3 is a prayer and 4 is laughter, a collection of George Bush’s bon mots regarding literacy education. The poem is one I don’t know, by Brian Patten, called ‘After Frost’:

  It’s hard to tell what bird it is

  Singing in the misty wood,

  Or the reason for its song

  So late after evening’s come.

  When all else dropped its name

  Down into the scented dark,

  Its song grown cool and clear says

  Nothing much to anyone.

  But catches hold a whisper in my brain

  that only now is understood.

  It says, rest your life against this song,

  It’s rest enough for anyone.

  I sat reading it at the breakfast table in a kind of hopeful silence, the one I always bring to a poem I don’t know, in expectation that it will do something. I didn’t have long to wait to feel the hairs on my arms prickle or my eyes to start stinging. The thing is, I apprehended it at first purely musically by its sense, not really aware of the meaning at all. But I found it so moving, aware that here were some very simple words laid out in a straightforward way in such a combination as to lift you out of everything for a minute, while putting you more at the centre of that thing than anything before. It’s the mystery I constantly chase and crave, as reader and writer.

  The prayer is good too, by Carmina Gadelica (III):

  God to enfold me,

  God to surround me,

  God in my speaking,

  God in my thinking.

  God in my sleeping,

  God in my waking,

  God in my watching,

  God in my hoping.

  Again, completely simple, but devastating.

  Then the George Bush-isms: ‘You teach a child to read, and he or she will be able to pass a literacy test’ (February 21, 2001). Hilarious. Chilling. And then this:

  I want it to be said that the Bush administration was a results-orientated administration, because I believe the results and focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read and having an education system that’s responsive to the child and to the parents, as opposed to mired in a system that refuses to change, will make America what we want it to be – a more literate country and a hopefuller country.

  Sunday 26 February

  6 am

  Bizarre to say it, but find I can be up at six writing, making tea and eating bread and jam creeping round the house like the old days waiting for the heating to come on.

  Not a good night. Woke with night sweats once and had to pee at least twice. Knew it was useless around 4.25, but stayed in bed hoping sleep might come, turning slowly not to wake Tatty. Finally threw in the towel at 5.45.

  The night sweats do scare me as they are – fatigue aside, plus the pain of the tumour on the urethra, which isn’t the same thing as the tumour itself hurting – the only symptoms I clearly have. Somewhere on an envelope there is a scrawl I made at four-something about three weeks ago. I was wide awake but desperate to get back to bed, aching and shivering. I don’t know if there’s mileage there. Probably not. But what made me do it was the fear, plus the certainty, of losing those lines if I didn’t get them down. I may have all tomorrow night to work on them, if I want.

  27 February

  Another great thing about having cancer is that you look in the mirror and there’s Brian Eno staring back at you.

  We performed the hair-ceremony with the honorary slapheads in my life – Claude and Nicky Fagan – bringing the tools of their trade. In Claude’s case a simple set of professional clippers; in Nicky’s razors, creams and oils, which I am not ready for.

  In the end it was Shim who did the job. Fearless, he plugged in the clippers and began shaving my head, expertly shielding my eyes from falling hair with his hand across my forehead, and changing angle of attack like a natural. Tatty took photos on her mobile (Charlotte says I look like De Niro in Taxi Driver in one of them) and the boys and Bendy looked on, bantering and eating Claude’s biscuits. Bendy finished the whole thing by placing a sample of hair inside an envelope with the inscription

  R.I.P

  hair of Anthony

  Charles Wilson

  26.2.06

  which sounds a little previous but it is just her way of dealing with it: ‘so mum can keep some of it.’

  A joyous calm day. We began at Maya and Tim’s for pancakes and coffee and chat around the table. Expertly and sensitively they helped us talk about IT as much as we wanted, Maya making sure that she got a good sesh with each of us moving round the chairs. The whole thing loving and warm. Abs drew me a get well card wearing Tim’s Panama hat, which he had had me model earlier as we talked about retail therapy on the net.

  Robyn popped her head round the door later. After a couple of minutes of chat I realised we were talking to each other not as neighbours but as members of Chemotherapy Anonymous, swapping stories and impressions of the process as though it was what we always talked about in the hallway on Sunday night while she waited for Sam to come down.

  ‘You know that itchy bottom feeling when they first inject you? That’ll get worse,’ she said. ‘It ends up like you’re sitting on a hairbrush.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  ‘And the waking up at 4.31, that’s the steroids making you hyper, that’s normal too.’

  ‘And the night sweats?’

  ‘Oh I still get those.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You just have to try not to eat too much, though that’s what you feel like the whole time.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Not that you’ll have any problem getting rid of it of course, not like me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘It took me ages to feel normal again.’

  Tuesday 28 February

  Sitting in the kitchen. A beautiful day, raw again but bright, bright, little fluffy clouds scudding in the blue.

  Walked Shim to school and felt – for the first ti
me – really whacked having done nothing at all. Feel weedy and a bit sorry for myself. ‘Which you are allowed,’ as Tatty keeps reminding me, but still feels like giving in somehow.

  Yesterday another of gifts as Sarah came to visit. We sat in the kitchen while the window cleaner worked his way through the house, drinking coffee and talking. Suddenly it was lunchtime. She took me out to the café at the end of the road. When we got back she said, ‘You lie down for a bit, I’ll just sit and read.’ She timed it perfectly, knowing I think before I did that I suddenly felt knocked out and wouldn’t be up to much that afternoon. She made Bendy some toast and juice, and Shim some tea when he came in.

  She looks well. She’s still moving stiffly on her knee, especially up and down stairs. I noticed as we sat going over the story in the kitchen how alive her face is, open in an alert way, but not at all childish. She is very good company and easy to talk to. No pressure to be profound or make a big statement. A huge gift.

  Going over the story made me realise just how quick the whole thing has been, less than a calendar month from ultrasound to the start of treatment. Looking back, today, in my weariness, I can see how I have taken it all so well, calmly, cheerily, easing people into conversation about it for fear of their reactions. Today I feel very different. Not just knocked out, but in pain a little too, from the tumour-pressure, plus the general weirdness that goes on all the time inside the insides, that feeling of ‘am I about to throw up, or is it just ravenous hunger again?’ Today, with that, for the first time, fear. The nagging question of what if it doesn’t work despite the prognosis? The fear of death, or, more specifically, of being conquered by something. Chris Richards says I have to be determined, to fight it off, but I’ve read things which say this makes no difference. He is onto something, possibly, but for the first time, just in these quiet sunny kitchen minutes, I feel like a lot of fight has gone out of me.

  Walking back from dropping off Shim today I saw Laura stuck in traffic in her Volvo. I pulled off my hat to show her, knowing she hadn’t seen me bald. The gasp and falling forward onto her steering wheel in surprise were worth it.

  A sudden feeling, just before this, of being public property. A young mum who I always pass going in the opposite direction, and who I have spoken to properly once, half-paused to wish me ‘good luck with your treatment’. You don’t have control over who knows, I know that, and I don’t really care. I just wasn’t prepared to feel so unexpectedly touched, mixed in with an ounce of cross-ness at being ‘discussed’, which in turn became guilt.

  Wednesday 1 March

  Incredible rinsed light today, very transparent. A dull breeze after yesterday’s snow showers, with promise of more, but so far none. Intense blue and pressure climbing as it says in that Ted Hughes poem …

  Not pleased with my performance yesterday, too liberal a use of the word ‘feel’. You are going to feel shit. Get used to it. 4/10. See me.

  The most likely thing is that it’s not having those lovely steroids to take. Hence being able to sleep. Hence zero energy? While I was sleeping, did Daffy Duck get his cricket bat and whack me in the face with it? Pace yourself.

  Spent the day avoiding picking up the phone, except to Chris to turn his visit down. Sim and Is have been promising a visit. I had the proverbial ‘on a train’ call from Is at tea time. At least I was up by then.

  Today I kicked off (as usual) with Will and Grace then Frasier, both of which seem faultless, in their way. Complete worlds, little clockwork universes sealed off from reality.

  Amazing what cancer makes you crave. US sitcoms. Broccoli. Marmite. And, from nowhere, three slices of peanut buttered bread. But broccoli especially. Tatty said, watching Merenna hiding hers, ‘She’s not your daughter is she?’ I buy them Danish pastries for after school, like I always have, determined to Keep Things Normal.

  Bumped into Maya walking back from School this morning and she nearly attacked me when I whipped my hat off. ‘Anthony, it’s gorgeous. Really gorgeous. You look great! You should keep it like that!’ Buying bread after my sleep I showed it off to Dawn. ‘Really suits you, you know. What a lovely shaped head!’

  Another great spin-off of cancer: non-threatening conversations with women in which they tell you how attractive you are.

  Before I conk out again … we watched the Poliakoff play on Sunday night (Gideon’s Daughter). I’ve always had a soft spot for him. Perfect Strangers I thought was perfect, the slow unfolding more like a symphony than a play. And when I read at Ways With Words with Peter two years ago, it was the queue to see him snaking round the lawn which we competed with. No contest.

  Bill Nighy ‘played himself’ according to the Guardian review, which is right, I think. Not as self–consciously as in Love Actually or Hitchiker’s Guide, but the ticks were all present: unnecessary pauses between words, as if to draw attention to significance which wasn’t there; the lurching forward a whole inch towards someone and then stopping dead, hesitating, pausing, going ‘Er …’

  I loved it, though. I think P is more of a poet than a dramatist, in that not actually very much happens but that it looks gorgeous and continually sends shivers down your spine while finding its way towards saying something. He makes great images. The choir in the church. The party in the Indian restaurant.

  The key scene led to explain why Nighy’s daughter had drifted away from him. His wife (to whom he has been unfaithful) is dying of cancer in hospital. A complete stranger walks into their room, sits down next to them and starts talking. After seeing him out he goes to make a phone call. By the time he comes back, half an hour later, she has died and the talking man is back: ‘the nurses thought he was touchy.’ The daughter cannot forgive that he wasn’t there at the end. I love the mixture in this of the everyday, the tragic and the odd; randomness ramming itself up against our own small griefs. It works because it works because it works.

  On the way back from school with Shim, he told me his day in detail for the first time ever. ‘We took a vote on games, double English or double Maths. Double English won ‘cos Mr Willey said it was too icy.’

  ‘Which did you vote?’

  ‘Double English.’

  ‘Was that good?’

  ‘Yeh it was ‘cos we’re doing adverts – we have to look at an advert then say what it makes us feel.’

  ‘And what did you do?’

  ‘There was that one for Cancer Research, you know, where she says my mother shouldn’t be here, so at the end I said it made me reassured. To fill up the page.’

  He looked at me, smiling, wanting me to smile my approval.

  ‘I feel reassured anyway,’ he stated. ‘But it was a good thing to say because it made the writing a bit longer.’

  2 March

  Three days of zonked-outness, today a weird shivering ache, on a pulse, every twenty seconds, down my right side. I’ve just had a cheese sandwich and tried watching ER but it was too much. The ER I mean. It began, cheerily, with a pregnant woman waking in a freezing flat, her waters broken, to find that both her children and her husband were all unconscious with carbon monoxide poisoning. It sent me over the edge. I stumbled back in here, under my rug.

  I finished a book today. Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz, a book of short essays, apercus, really, on the theme of finding God. It has a lot going for it over other Christian books (not that I’m an expert) in that it is a) well written and b) relentlessly honest. I like his narrative voice a lot, with references to Andrew the Protestor and Tony the Beat Poet (who isn’t one at all). He reminds me of my favourite voices, Billy Collins, Anne Lamott, Carol Shields or Frank O’Hara at Fire Island. They’re scatty, a little frayed at the edges, a little bit basically screwy, like me. I like that. Miller has it in spades.

  There’s a really good passage near the end of the book about cancer. In a preamble which goes on to explain how most Christian language about love (valuing people, investing in them) is in the metaphor of economics, he exposes the truth behind most discourse about cancer.
It is written, or spoken, in the metaphor of war. He calls for a different way of looking at the disease, which does not put the responsibility for recovery onto the patient, who in most cases is already frightened and exhausted enough without this extra burden.

  As Billy Collins puts it in ‘Marginalia’ this had me standing and cheering in the bleachers.

  Later

  I finally feel like I have cancer.

  I have just called the hospital re my aching back and waves of stiffening pain. ‘What are you being treated for?’ they said. ‘Large B-cell diffuse non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.’

  I felt a bit smug, it came off so pat.

  ‘Are you on Lengorastin for your white blood count?’

  ‘Yes, since Saturday.’

  ‘It’s probably that, then. It is a common side effect, I’m afraid.’

  I asked if I could take Paracetamol for it and she said yes I could. ‘Let us know how you get on,’ she said.

  I think what you want is a list which takes you through what you’ll feel. Something along the lines of:

  The first day of treatment you are going to throw up in the evening because let’s face it you are full of poison and you will lie down too quickly, not having been told that to do so brings on the nausea very forcefully and that staying upright is your best bet.