Love for Now

by Anthony Wilson

  A freezing raw day to be out and about in. But good. Bumped into Will across the road carrying a large plank of wood for a job round the corner. First time we’ve really stopped to chat recently, so I told him. Not at my most fluent, to be honest. When he asked how I was I said ‘Well, not great actually, well, worse than that. I’ve been diagnosed with cancer.’ So I told him the story (I’ve got pretty good at condensing it into four sentences) and he frowned and was terribly sweet. I’m still telling people for the first time: Kathryn Heyman, on email (‘Oh God. I can’t – can I call you?’); then Claire the Advisory Teacher on the walk back from school: ‘Oh God, what, really?’

  Saturday 25 March

  At the school gate yesterday I saw Fiona.

  ‘God, you look awful.’

  ‘No, the correct response is “You look really well, Anthony.”’

  ‘Sorry. But you do.’

  ‘Well, that’s OK, because I feel dreadful.’

  ‘Oh no, what is it?’

  ‘Streaming cold. Constant coughing fits at night. No sleep. Apart from that I’m fine.’

  ‘Look, if there’s anything I can do.’

  ‘Absolutely, we’ll let you know.’

  ‘You look like you’ve put on weight actually.’

  ‘Well spotted. I have. They said not to worry about calorie intake.’

  ‘Because I saw you the other day and thought you looked heavier, you know, in the face. Do you know when it started? Perhaps it was last year with your job hanging in the air, because you were really low then weren’t you?’

  ‘They said they don’t know. But it’s aggressive, so it’s probably very recent.’

  ‘At least that means they can hit it aggressively though, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Look, when are you going to come round, would you like to come round?’

  ‘Love to.’

  ‘OK, I’ll call you.’

  ‘OK, call us, that’d be great.’

  I bet she won’t.

  Later we went to book group and everyone was lovely. Possibly too lovely. Tom Nicolas called across the room ‘You look very sexy.’ When I said thank you I’ll take that as a compliment he went ‘I didn’t mean it as a compliment,’ and sniffed.

  Tom Lloyd whispered to me what Lucinda said when I walked in: ‘It’s not fair, he’s even better looking than he is when he has hair.’ ‘But I don’t suppose she actually told you that, did she?’

  We did have a good comparing notes session, though. She said how people always were reminding her to ‘be positive’ and how if she did that she’d have a better chance. ‘But I never worked out what they meant. Because I would only be able to think of every negative thing. It was the people who came up to me and dealt with it head-on and asked how I felt that I might die who I liked the best.’

  I explained I’d been reading the John Diamond. He took it to mean: ‘Be positive when you’re around me.’ She laughed at this. ‘But it’s funny,’ she went on, ‘you find yourself overcompensating for and protecting people, even as you tell them, making sure they can handle it. It’s what we do.’

  The day began with a classic, multi-orifice explosion at 5 am. I sat on the loo and felt desolate. Outside, forlorn birdsong. I thought of Patrick Kavanagh’s ‘Wet Evening in April’:

  The birds sang in the wet trees

  And as I listened to them it was a hundred years from now

  And I was dead and someone else was listening to them.

  But I was glad I had recorded for him the melancholy.

  I don’t know if I have said this, but I absolutely loathe and detest having cancer. Something about the wretchedness of unstoppable coughing and simultaneous diarrhoea, combined with a ten-tissue-per-half-hour cold just got to me yesterday. I just couldn’t see the funny side – my beard rubbing off in my hand! – any more. I feel bloated, lethargic, overweight, slumped. And everyone, Fiona aside, says how marvellous I look. Which is lovely, even if they are lying. The downside is that I don’t have permission to say how guilty I feel. I heard myself on the phone talking to Mummy and Daddy and for the first time in ages the perkiness had gone. I was all monosyllables, in between splutters. I could hear Mummy getting more upset at ‘being so far away’ but there was nothing I could do to disguise it. I felt terrible. Then guilty for letting them know it. Then slightly annoyed that they sounded surprised. Then guilty again. So it goes on.

  Jay called earlier with his familiar ‘Allo, cancer-boy’ greeting. He toned it down a bit when I answered by way of coughing for half a minute into the mouthpiece. Sometimes I would like to punch him.

  The most touching thing of all? Phil from the greengrocer’s (aka The World’s Most Grumpy Man) gave me his number this morning and said ‘Young man, I’ve two friends who’ve had treatment like yours. If you’re not up to coming out just call us and we’ll bring it round. You’re only round the corner, aren’t you?’ I had only told Jen out of the team. Now I am under each of their wings. I just stood there saying ‘How amazingly kind, thank you’ like a proverbial stuck record. Then the punchline: ‘£12.20, young man. To you, £12.’

  Monday 27 March

  A better night, with only one-minor-coughing fit, at around half-one. Then diarrhoea at four, then again at six. Lay awake in between, listening to my plumbing. Read large chunks of the Guardian Saturday Review while sitting there, including a piece about Michael Holroyd having bowel cancer. He’s looking forward to the time when he can look back on it and say it’s all over. It’s funny how cancer suddenly attaches itself to the minutiae of the day. Alex from Neighbours has just died from a ‘rare form of lymphoma’, leaving Susan and his kids to fend for themselves. And this morning the radio was full of the woman from Swindon who has taken her NHS Healthcare Trust to the Appeal Court so she can get treated with Herceptin, the ‘miracle’ breast cancer drug. In the lead-up to her story they played interviews with other cancer sufferers, notably a very articulate 26-year-old woman with liver cancer, recently refused another wonder-drug which would have reduced the tumour by 4 cm and therefore made it operable. ‘What did you feel when the treatment was denied to you?’ she was asked. ‘Despair,’ she said simply.

  While Tatty walked Shim to school and went for a walk I watched back-to-back doubles of Will and Grace and Frasier. The One Where Grace Doesn’t Get Engaged, followed by The One Where Frasier Sees Off a Rival Shrink On Air. Tats joined me for the last bit of the latter and we giggled on the sofa together. OK, except it tends to start off my crying.

  I stepped outside briefly to move the car later and on the way back up the road saw Lawrence. He was in his car. He pulled over, got out and hugged me like the prodigal son. He didn’t flinch when I didn’t try to pretend that things had not been going well recently. ‘Any time of the day or night, if you want to come over and talk, or not talk, you’re always welcome, you know that,’ he said. I have only just realised the strength that comes from admitting that this is a hard time. Not ‘strength’ exactly, but some kind of peace, perhaps. Or rather, just an absence of guilt, a lack of worry about protecting people’s feelings. It still feels risky, though.

  Tuesday 28 March

  A day of racing clouds, squally winds and wince-inducing sunlight. Temperature climbing at last and buds starting to show on the lilac tree.

  Have felt completely energy-less all day. Grounded; beached. The aerial man came at nine and I spent half an hour not understanding a word he said except that it will cost £170 to go digital. Watched some perfect-timing Frasier with Tats, then went to bed and slept till lunch.

  Had woken only once during the night, around half-one, not coughing that seriously. Found myself jumping out of bed with unseemly energy at half-six for the (usual) diarrhoea, which lasted longer than ever before. I wept, silently.

  Have felt on the verge of throwing up all day, without ever really feeling sick – if that makes sense. A tenderness in the waters, in the absolute base of who you are, that it’s all abo
ut to go up (or down) and that it will hurt.

  A lovely package in the post today from Wes: a spanking Howies woollen hat ‘to fend off the interminable cold.’

  Thursday 30 March

  Went to hospital yesterday and spent the morning dozing on the ward. Was in just to get a top-up of antibiotics, but they give you the full service and MOT, whatever. Bloods, blood pressure, temperature, check-up, chat. Karl strode around croaking sounding worse than me, though I couldn’t tell if this was from watching Arsenal beat Juventus the night before. In the end I didn’t dare ask.

  They seemed certain that the constant diarrhoea is due to the strength of the antibiotics ‘stripping my stomach of good bacteria’, as Charlotte, my doctor, put it. They gave me two pots to fill with sample fluids. Felt pretty demoralised on my return – despite the blood levels being ‘normal’ – and sat waiting for a colleague to come and take me out for pizza with the students.

  I was glad I went, though exhausted by it nevertheless. On entering the restaurant and seeing them all sitting there I realised how nervous I was, not of them, but of sitting in a crowd of people and having to perform and be jolly. Suddenly felt very afraid. Partly because I’m croaky, snotty and coughing and partly because I wondered if I’d have anything to say which wasn’t related to being ill. They were very sweet, taking me through the gossip from the course rather like adult children, arms interlocked, guiding an elderly parent round a stately home garden.

  I noticed I ate for England, wolfing my pizza and mixed salad.

  I bought Liv a bunch of lilies to say thank you for taking over the running of the course and she looked genuinely surprised and grateful, still managing to say that she wished it had been a pleasure. I let it go, as I did her quip about being well enough to do some second marking. As I had predicted to myself, she congratulated me on my ‘lovely shaped head’. Went out for lunch today as well. At 12 Tatty looked up and said ‘Let’s go to Dart’s Farm.’ We picked up Ellie on the way and had a very bright time. They both had the steak with pepper sauce (‘and yesterday’s vegetables’: T) and I went for the proverbial sausage, mash and onion gravy. A nice Dijon mustard as well. Great comfort food. At one point Ellie and I got out our pills together. It turns out she took the same antibiotic whilst in hospital recently.

  ‘Did it give you diarrhoea?’

  ‘Yes. Dreadfully.’

  ‘How long did it take to go?’

  ‘Well, I finished the course on Sunday and I still have it now.’

  ‘Poor old you.’

  ‘And it was black for some reason.’

  ‘One thing I will say is how good I’ve got at swallowing pills.’

  ‘You’re an amateur. I’ve had loads more practice.’

  ‘Ellie, I am so sorry, that was unbelievably tactless of me.’

  She didn’t flinch. ‘It’s no problem. I can do up to 30.’

  ‘In one go?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘My record’s about six.’

  ‘Pathetic,’ she grinned.

  Afterwards I went out like a recalcitrant child to the car and slept while they pootled and did some shopping. It’s amazing, this urge to sleep nearly all the time; and to eat, too. On the one hand I’m surprised I haven’t lost more weight, with the diarrhoea; on the other hand I can’t understand why I’m not a complete porker. I walk with a wheezy old-man shuffle, and am breathless going up stairs, while feeling compelled to put sweet things in my mouth at regular intervals in between meals, not all of them apples and bananas. Another level of weirdness regarding this is that I still step onto the scales each day (as I used to before being ill) in the same kind of anticipatory hope, as though by finding out that I am less than 13 stone I can suddenly predict or look forward to a run of good health. Yet I don’t really want to lose weight at all. My before-cancer brain very much wants me to, not least so I can start wearing my slimmer-fitting trousers again. But my rational mind knows that weight loss is a symptom of NHL. By going for the ‘trio of sausages’ (with apple tart for afters) I am, Canute-like, ordering the waves to recede a little. That I feel bloated with it only confuses the hard-drive when I’m told by everyone (students, the school gate) that I look so well.

  With the sample-pots, yesterday, a little chit in a plastic bag with my details on. They use stickers for the repeated stuff (name, DOB, hospital no., etc.), but there, in black and white, and very legible, a summary of my cancer in the top right hand corner: ‘High-grade B cell diffuse NHL.’ It was seeing the words ‘high-grade’ which got me. Somehow seeing it written down seemed to make it more or less official. After all, I’ve received no letter telling me I have this disease. Seeing ‘high-grade’, code for ‘aggressive’, next to the abbreviated NHL, made my particular form of the cancer all the more serious, suddenly.

  Friday 31 March

  A day of comings and goings. The telly man came and did our aerial this morning, so now we have digital TV, much to the children’s delight. If I’m careful I could watch ‘old’ telly all day now. The box we have has all sorts of things I’ve never paid attention to before: something called ITV2, Sky 3, even Channel 5. It’s wall to wall Due South and Murder She Wrote from here on in.

  Channel hopping last night with a camomile tea I came across the last ten minutes of an Esther Rantzen programme about having a good death. She had been following a man from Powys called Stan as he approached his final days, knowing he was dying of cancer. She asked him in that direct way of hers what he thought a good death was:

  ‘Nice view of the garden. Summer. A gin and tonic. A double. A good book. And cricket on the radio. Then I’d like to just fall asleep.’

  It reminded me of what I once described to a friend as my vision of perfect happiness (with whisky instead of gin). I’d bet that most men dream of that kind of uncluttered time. And yet, why shouldn’t dying be a moment of peace and tranquillity?

  In her last piece to camera with him Rantzen asked what message he’d like to pass on about living to those watching. ‘Make the most of what you have. Tell those you love that you love them. That’s a good thing to do. Every day. Yes,’ he said, without blinking. He died five days later.

  Tuesday 4 April

  A lot’s been happening.

  To the Loydells on Friday night for a farewell curry. The sitting room was piled high with boxes. ‘Just the CDs, LPs and novels,’ said Rupert. ‘Haven’t even started on the poetry yet.’ They were on fine bickering form, like a time-capsule from when we first knew them:

  Sue: No, that’s Rupert’s tikka bhuna, he doesn’t do sharing.

  Rupert: If I’d have wanted to taste the other ones I would have ordered them!

  And:

  Sue: No, don’t put Rupert’s plate in the oven. He likes it cold. He’s not normal.

  Rupert: So the food can cool down quicker.

  Sue: So you can start washing up quicker, you mean.

  Luke Kennard, and his fiancé, Zoë, were there. Luke, shy, nervous, eager to please, did a lot of nodding and saying ‘Yuh, Yuh,’ like he does when he performs his poems. Such a nice, modest man, nothing giving away his hottest-new-talent-on-the-poetry-block status. You know you are getting old when the poets start getting younger … and are head, shoulders and torso better than you.

  On Saturday to James and Becca Alexander’s (40th) Bond party, complete with hired out Casino Royale roulette tables, croupiers etc. Black tie, the works. You pay your £10 each (‘to send a cow to Africa’), then play with the ‘cashed in’ chips. I went as a poor man’s Blofeld, in a black polo-neck. Tatty held court on the blackjack table (and did very well), and I found a quiet corner in the roulette scene next to Jasper Hampson, who seemed content to natter about West Brom’s fortunes, which look even more disappearing than my own.

  Lots of mini-conversations about my villainous appearance, including one with Max Gudgeon, who ended up describing me as ‘incredibly brave’. I have never felt this, but thanked him anyway. ‘It’s not like I have a choice
,’ I said, by way of an implied reprimand. You can never tell if people hear it or not.

  Got a very nice email from Brie Samuels today referring to the time when she ‘came out’ with MS. She attached a charming but hard-hitting Julia Darling poem about living with cancer. She also said I was brave. I suppose it was ‘coming out’ in a sense, given that, the school gate aside, it’s only the third social occasion we’ve been to. So I got through a lot of ‘How are you?’ and ‘Your head is a lovely shape, you know’, without ever really feeling that I could say that I felt pretty shitty to be honest.

  On Sunday the most wonderful surprise. Tatty mumbled something about going out ‘to get the last bits and pieces for your birthday’ while I prepared lunch. She came back half an hour later, and there was Jay hugging me in the kitchen. As if to prove my recent ropey form I immediately began coughing all over him. ‘It was either that or crying,’ I said, blinking in disbelief. Apparently they fixed it up a whole week ago.