Love for Now

by Anthony Wilson

  Tatty, flushed with pride at her success, plonked the Sunday papers onto the table and we settled into a companionable, chuckle-filled silence, with coffee. It could have been a scene from Brixton, 1991.

  Tatty found not one article but a whole series devoted to the subject of cancer in the Independent on Sunday. On pages 6–7 they had made a list of ‘vital drugs: what they cost, how they work and who gets them.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you’re in here. Rituximab, I mean. But I don’t understand it. You’ve had no problem being treated with it at all. Especially as they describe R-CHOP as the gold standard treatment of NHL. I wonder if they have their facts straight.’

  The paper says the following:

  Rituximab costs £15,000 over a five-year period.

  That it is a monoclonal antibody used on lymphatic cancers and in combination with chemotherapy for advanced cases (this made me wince: no one has used the word ‘advanced’, even if they have the euphemism ‘high-grade’).

  That it slows the progression of NHL by linking to cancer cells and making them self-destruct.

  That it is approved in Scotland. No NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) decision for England and Wales until next year (again, very odd: no one has described my being treated with Rituximab as ‘special’, ‘unusual’ or ‘exceptional’, nor have they referred to a lack of nationwide approval for its use. I can feel a letter coming on. I’ll have to show the paper to Karl to find out how far they got it wrong).

  My birthday was perfect, real dark shadows cast by the sun and a beautiful blue for most of the day. By the afternoon it was even warm enough to stride around outside without a hat.

  We took Jack and Jena to Michael Caines, having been treated in the post to a cheque and a card instructing us to do so from Mummy and Daddy. The front of house table in the window, sunlight on our backs. I had carrot and coriander soup, fillet of gurnard and mash, and sticky toffee pudding. An unfussy French Sauvingon, which I had more than a taste of. ‘Go on, sir,’ the waiter said. ‘Finish the bottle. It is your birthday after all.’ Jack made me his first ever compilation CD, proudly beaming ‘I had to ring PC World to find out how to do it.’

  The kids gave me a raclette machine, which we christened for supper, Tatty having brought slices of cheese all weekend from Sainsbury’s. There are so many things I never twigged about: the fifth chicken breast defrosting on Sunday morning; the cheese; the pre-washed new potatoes and army of beetroot, gherkins and pickled onion jars lined up in the fridge.

  The final surprise she had organised was Paul and Steven coming round after supper for cake and chat. A mellow end to a perfect day. I felt loved from start to finish.

  In the midst of all this, still feeling pretty rough. Endless pouring snot and wild coughing fits from nowhere around 3.30 each night. ‘You might have mastered going back to sleep, but I haven’t,’ says Tatty. I now sleep sitting upright from the word go, something I would never have thought possible. Diarrhoea still there, but down to a manageable two episodes a day rather than three. It doesn’t sound like a difference, but it is.

  Walked into town today to do the car tax. Felt old as I shuffled along in small steps in the bitter wind. Helped Tatty get the lawnmower out and some old tools, then felt guilty for having no energy to help her use them. Came back in and made some v quick decisions about the poems I’ll be reading tomorrow at Arvon. Am hugely excited to be going, and it’ll be good to catch up on the gos with Andy in the car. However, am still hugely nervous of the wider social event, the meal, the writerly chat, the Q and A. Plus, I’ll be full of chemo. Let’s hope I don’t throw up all over them mid-poem.

  This is one of the poems Brie sent:

  How To Behave With The Ill

  Approach us assertively, try not to

  cringe or sidle, it makes us fearful.

  Rather walk straight up and smile.

  Do not touch us unless invited,

  particularly don’t squeeze upper arms,

  or try to hold our hands, or lower your voice.

  Speak evenly. Don’t say

  How are you? in an underlined voice.

  don’t say, I heard that you were very ill.

  This makes the poorly paranoid.

  Be direct, say, ‘How’s your cancer?’

  Try not to say how well they look

  compared to when you met in Safeway’s.

  Pease don’t cry, or get emotional,

  and say how dreadful it all is.

  Also (and this is hard I know)

  try not to ignore the ill, or to scurry

  past, muttering about a bus, the bank.

  Remember that this day might be your last

  and that it is a miracle that any of us

  stands up, breathes, behaves at all.

  Julia Darling

  Thursday 6 April

  A beautiful blue day as Ted Hughes would say. Air warm at last, with no need for a coat (but I wore one, to be sure). We went to Jack and Jena’s for a sandwich and a bowl of soup. Admired Jack’s new DAB radio/CD player. Discovered something called Radio Chill. Heard at least two tracks I own on CD. Felt a mixture of cutting edge and middle-aged.

  Earlier we sat at the computer and ordered a heap of wooden garden furniture to replace our rather tired green plastic and fading Ikea with pine and brown paint. While in retail mode spent my birthday money on my own DAB portable, a Roberts retro model, in green to match my desk. It will be good for the garden and the cricket once it gets really warm. And this thing called Radio 6, which I’ve listened to on the telly, now we are digital, and which seems to be directed specifically at people like me, who grew up with Motown then disco then punk then new wave then Echo and the Bunnymen then reggae. Lots to look forward to.

  After picking up Shim, Tats had a garden frenzy and we pulled down the ragged and overgrown rose/passion fruit screen on the patio. Discovered a dead Azalea underneath it all. Don’t think we’ve seen it for two years. Decided, while I have energy, to drive to the dump the long way round, having parcelled it all up in a tarpaulin. Traffic appalling, but took Shim and nattered amiably in the sunshine. Job done.

  Chemo good yesterday. Was injected by Carol the research nurse, who usually just comes round and ticks lots of side effects boxes (diarrhoea, back pain, vomiting etc.). Was able to clear the Rituximab conundrum with her, from Sunday’s paper. What the IOS did not make clear is that it isn’t offered to low-grade/‘indolent’ NHL sufferers because, while it is brilliant at reducing tumours by up to 40%, it’s not considered cost-effective enough for those tumours which people can have for up to ten years or so. Which makes me feel kind of special really: High-grade, therefore in need of zapping pronto with superdrug, no questions asked. To be fair to the IOS, they didn’t make the distinction between high-and low-grade very explicit. But then that isn’t much of a story.

  Before chemo started I shuffled onto the ward and gave one word answers to Gillian the prep-nurse.

  ‘How you feeling, my love?’

  ‘Rough.’

  ‘No better than last time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’

  ‘Yes.’

  While we waited for the script to come through I learnt that Karl was away. ‘Watching Arsenal in Turin?’ I said.

  ‘No, on some rock-trip in Cleveland.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Takes all sorts I suppose.’

  ‘It’s quieter without him.’

  ‘Nothing we wouldn’t say to his face.’

  I was introduced to Dr Raj, who asked me lots of questions relating to my cough and cold, and who listened to my chest.

  ‘It’s not an infection. Probably most likely a virus which is just taking its time to leave your system. There is no need for further antibiotics. I’m confident that it will clear up soon.’

  This raised my spirits enormously.

  As I walked into the ward and sat down I very nearly lost it in public for the first time, ser
iously contemplating leaving the trial and going home. For some reason – I think Tatty reached out and squeezed my hand – I managed to pull back from the brink.

  They pronounced my white count ‘normal’ (14) once more, and the day progressed most pleasantly. Not least because we asked for, and got, a bed, which meant when I conked out, post-Piriton, I really did go to sleep. We got off the bus and met up with Shim just as he crossed the road from school. The world seemed a good place to be.

  Came in, plonked down and watched the Frasiers Tats had recorded for me on the new digibox. Took the Granisteron (wonder anti-sickness) pill, and, though I looked the colour of wax, felt fine. Shuffled through my poems and waited for Andy to come and collect me. He’d remembered my birthday with a card and a lovely pot of rose petal and greengage jam: ‘The best kind of present,’ I said. ‘You certainly look different’, he said.

  We drove off and settled almost immediately into a mixture of gossip, banter and work-related ranting.

  The drive was stunning, the fields emerging from their winter brown overcoat and the hedges tentatively pushing a green haze. After Hatherleigh Andy said how the oaks along that stretch of road really have the most odd colour at this time of year, not green at all, almost whitish yellow as the first signs of growth come through. Was reminded of that Ted Hughes line in Season Songs about an oak tree in December and an oak tree in April looking exactly the same but completely different. At Totleigh – just in the middle of some rather good gossip about two senior British poets – we stopped the car as we went over the top and saw the house for the first time. ‘I can never look at this view often enough,’ he said. ‘Just incredible.’ He described to me how one year the flood water from the river, the corner of which we could just see, came right up to the hedge of the next door field from the house. ‘It was spooky when you came back in the car. Just this shining flooded valley spread before you.’

  The welcome and the vibe at Totleigh were magnificent. Alan Brownjohn, who I had read with at Aldeburgh, in a petrol-green moleskin suit, with shiny mauve tie and matching matt shirt and brown loafers, was all condolence and stooped concern. Ann (Sansom) was warm hugs and stroked hands. Carps one massive bear hug and his customary kiss on the cheek. I recognised a handful of the boys and enquired how many windows they’d broken playing football that week. Ian, sublime in charcoal cardy and linen mandarin shirt, was, for the first time in his life, fagless. He patted his ample tummy. ‘Got a personal trainer to take it all off now, haven’t I?’ he said.

  The meal, all four courses of it, would have graced any gastro pub. Evs, the mastermind in the kitchen, surpassed himself. A salad of pear, four cheeses and chick peas; mushroom and wild garlic soup; roast chicken and spuds, with green beans and a cream of tarragon sauce; bread and butter pudding to finish.

  Brownjohn sat on my left (I was given head of the table) and Carps on my right. Brownjohn and I reminisced about our reading with Anne Carson. I said to Alan that I spoke three words with her afterwards. ‘That’s three more than I got,’ he sniffed.

  He was excellent company for the duration, swapping notes gleefully, though he took some persuading that it was ’02, and not ’03 or ’04. We agreed on the ones we liked best without hesitation, Bill Herbert, Esther Morgan, Katrina Porteous; and on John Hartley Williams’s rather scaly performance (despite reading some terrific poems). My main memory is that he insisted on making a huge meal of how his new publisher was far better than his old one, the editor of which was seated only four rows away.

  Alan liked the debate as well (‘This House Believes Poetry Has Disappeared Up Its Own Arse’) with Bill Herbert and Michael Bywater opposing, and Liz Lochhead and John Walsh for, the motion. I remembered it being a thousand times more enjoyable than I though it would be. It included the immortal line of Liz Lochhead’s that she would rather read early Heaney and early Muldoon than late Heaney or late Muldoon. Sadly the gifted Radio 4 chair didn’t give this insight the airtime it deserved and the argument moved on. ‘It’s the sort of thing your hear poets say in the pub,’ I said. ‘But never in articles or publicly. I wish I’d heard more.’ Alan nodded sagely.

  ‘Precisely,’ he said, eyes glinting with steel.

  Later to the snug for Arvon-related horror stories (a senior male poet reading, completely pissed, a whole book of poems from page 1 through to page 83, without a pause, before collapsing an hour and a half later), whisky and banter about music. Nathan’s Ipod was playing Dylan in the corner, sparking a debate about what we insist our kids listen to (Hendrix, Stones, Van, The Clash), which turned into a debate about what we would least like them to become ‘when they grow up’. ‘Conservative’ came off worst, closely followed by ‘Fundamentalist Christian’ and ‘Satanist’.

  Friday 7 April

  Sitting propped up in bed last night writing up yesterday, Shimi crashed in, as he does, enquiring why I was still writing now that I had finished a whole exercise book.

  ‘How many pages was it?’ he said.

  I looked at the back. ‘96’.

  ‘So you wrote nearly a hundred pages?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘And you still want to do more?’

  ‘Well, I’ve still got cancer.’

  ‘Is that what you write about?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘What happens. What people say. Stuff.’

  ‘Why you doing it?’

  ‘So I can remember what it was like. I’m also getting Ellie to type it all up for me. Then I’m going to send it round to try and get it published.’

  ‘That means people will read about me.’

  ‘Yes, it will. But not on every page, don’t worry. You’re in my poetry anyway already.’

  ‘Yes, but not every poem.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why would people want to read about you having cancer?’

  ‘Because that’s what people like to read. True stories.’

  ‘You sure?’

  A bad-cough night.

  Watched a lovely Argentinian movie, Son of the Bride, with Tats, about a man whose mother has Alzheimer’s. His father, having refused a church wedding because he was a non-believer, decides he wants to take their vows in church, even though they have been together for 44 years, and even though she is ill. This prompts a wholesale rethink of his life, commitment to his girlfriend, his daughter, ex-wife, the whole thing. But it wasn’t corny. The set piece scene at the end, where he declares his love through the video screen of his girlfriend’s entry-phone at her flat was fantastically acted and had us both in floods. ‘I don’t want freedom. I want to live by your side forever. Your problems are now my problems.’

  Saturday 8 April

  Ian, handing me my cheque in the Arvon office, said two things.

  One: ‘I know you’re gonna be all right. I know it.’ – to which there is either: ‘Thanks, that’s kind’; or: ‘How do you know? How do you know I’m less mortal than the next man with cancer?’ – followed by an argument.

  Of course I chose the first.

  Two: ‘It sounds shit to say this but you’re gonna get great material from all of this, you know.’

  I’ve just broken off to watch the Grand National. Watching them pace around with a minute to go I looked at the prices and saw Numbersixvalverde at 11–1 and knew he was my horse. He came in. Stupidly I didn’t make it to the internet in time to put a fiver on. A cracking race, three of them jumping together at the last before the elbow.

  It made me realise that this really is my favourite time of year, other than early September with its chilly mornings, blazing days. Something about the quick succession of birthday, Boat Race, National, Augusta, Easter, Easter hols, with light suddenly in the garden and buds growing daily on all the trees, even on my shredded fuchsias, fills me with a burgeoning sense of possibility and hope, even as I sit here with cancer, now as much as ever.

  Monday 10 April

  Two horrendous nights of coughing. Last
night the only slight relief the fact that I had videoed Match of the Day 2, so was able to sneak off at the 2.32 visitation of the phlegm-division to watch Chelsea’s magisterial 10-man demolition of West Ham. It cheered me enormously. Until Man U/Arsenal came up next, the former a team who look like there is everything to play for still. But seven points is seven points. I am still pinching myself to see that we are top, let alone ‘champions-elect’.

  To Andy and Amy’s yesterday for a superb Sunday lunch with Stella from work: Gammon, roast spuds, leeks, cabbage, purple sprouting, swede and white sauce; followed by chocolate and pear meringue, a recipe from Amy’s great Aunt. Everything (except the gammon and the pears) home-grown from the allotment and all delicious. Lovely conversation and a general feeling of being loved: their kids and ours on very good behaviour. A riotous sunny day, warm, like today, sharp shadows.

  Had the midway scan this morning. Was in and out pretty quickly. Had to drink a disgusting aniseed-tasting concoction which you mix with water last thing at night and first thing in the morning without eating anything. Was nearly sick as we went past the bakery in the hospital. Actively looked for a corner to throw up in the corridor – the smell of sweet pastries just too much.

  On the ironing board as I went through the polo was nearly sick again as they injected me. That warm feeling going down your whole body: I’d forgotten that simultaneous wobble in bowel and gullet. They said that they’d know the result today – tomorrow at least – but that it wouldn’t get reported on till later because of a recent backlog. But that if I wanted to ring up by Thursday, that would be fine. ‘It being Easter week is another potential hold-up.’