by John Young
A few minutes later, the junior doctor ushers us in without a word. Mum, Dad and I follow her like sheep to slaughter. Skeates and Emma wait outside.
As we enter, Dr Bents rises from her desk and indicates with her hand for us to sit. I sit in the middle and look for Wally in the complex picture on the table. I find him immediately – I remember where he was from last time. Dr Bents is looking serious as usual, and makes an unsuccessful attempt to give us a forced smile. The stress of a bad news day is telling on her face. I hope she has good news days too.
“Hi, Connor,” she says and nods to my parents. “Mrs Lambert, Mr Lambert.” She turns to me and gets stuck in without the usual pleasantries and weather talk. That’s a sure sign of bad news. “All your tests have been returned.”
We stare at her. Mum and Dad are sitting on the edges of their seats. Mum snatches a tissue from the box on the desk and wipes away tears, smearing mascara about so that with her bright red lipstick she looks like the Joker in Batman. Dr Bents pushes the box closer. I know she’s going to give us crap news. How crap, I don’t know. I feel surprisingly calm because I’ve accepted my fate already. I’ll leave this room with an appointment for the undertaker. The only question is when that appointment will be.
“Now, as I have advised previously, when we commence a treatment regime we can never be certain of the outcome. Everyone is different. There are many forms of cancer and everyone reacts differently to the treatment. Your prospects for a successful outcome, Connor, have always been slim.”
Come on, get to the point, I think, but I don’t want to interrupt.
It’s just as well I didn’t have time to think of what-ifs, because if I imagined – even briefly – walking out of here hand in hand with Emma, taking her to the beach, or to the cinema, sitting in the back row, reaching over for a kiss, talking about what we’ll do after school is finished – if I imagined for a second that I had a future, when I know for sure that I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to contain myself. So I swallow the what-ifs and listen up for the verdict. Connor, you have X weeks to live your life. Make the most of it!
“I told you at our last meeting that I didn’t hold out much hope, but that the treatment was worth attempting.”
We all nod. I can see that Dr Bents is struggling to give bad news to yet another family. She looks tired and stressed. There’s no need for her to be like that with me, because I already know. I just want to find out how much time I have left.
“Oh, come on. How long have I got?” I blurt out. I feel bad because I must have sounded impatient and bad-tempered when she’s only doing her best in a terrible situation.
She glares in surprise. “Your appointment is next week, Connor.”
“What?” all three of us say at once.
“Monday I think, four p.m.” She looks down at her schedule.
“Where?” I ask.
My parents’ heads turn back and forth to each other.
“Radiology.”
“Radiology?” I repeat with hope that there may actually be hope.
“Your tests have been returned and although they are not totally negative, which means the cancer is still present, you will commence radiotherapy to attempt to clear up the remaining cells.”
We all scuffle about in a minor burst of energy, surprised by slightly better news than we expected.
Dr Bents continues quickly, in case our optimism is misplaced. “Just because you’re having radiotherapy, Connor, it doesn’t mean that you’re cured, the cells could reproduce. However, in the circumstances you have responded well to treatment.” She smiles in a way I’ve never seen her smile before. “That is, presuming that you want to proceed?”
“Bloody right I do!” I say.
I look at Mum, who’s lifting her mouth off the floor. She dives on me with wails and squeezes the life out of me. I don’t resist. I feel her tears wet against my face and even Dad soon joins in. The three of us stand in a little wailing triangle, united by a sliver of possibility, another chance of survival to cling to like a bit of wreckage in a huge ocean of hopelessness. And cling to it I will – I’ve learned to take my chances when they come.
Emma and Skeates sitting outside will be in bits: they’ll have heard the noise without hearing the news. After we pat ourselves down and Mum wipes the smeared make-up off our faces we make to go out. I know that I’ve just been advised that my chances, although improved, are still weak, but I grin as I leave and see Emma and Skeates staring wide-eyed at me. Emma stands with her arms out – an embrace I readily accept. My parents stand behind me as our hug is blocking the door and I don’t care.
“So?” asks Skeates.
I hold on to Emma for a few seconds more before answering. “Do you want the bad news?”
They nod.
“Well.” I sniff. My face must look a sight. “You aren’t getting rid of me quite yet!”
“What?” they both say at once.
“Don’t get too jolly, I’m not home in a boat, by any means.”
“Yeah, but at least you’re now in a boat,” says Dad. “When we came up here earlier you didn’t even have a pair of Speedos!”
We all laugh at Dad, in part because of the release of tension.
I tell them about the radiology and Skeates is bouncing round the ward, yelling and singing. Emma is in tears and hugs me and my mum and dad. She even hugs Skeates!
***
The journey back to Stornoway on the ferry is almost as surreal as the one to the hospital. Skeates and I leave Emma inside with my parents while we brave the freezing weather on the top deck. We breathe in lungfuls of cold sea air.
“It probably won’t work,” I say, feeling the need to keep our optimism in check.
“Yeah, but it might – and that’s all you have to think about,” says Skeates in his abrupt, matter-of-fact way. “And that’s the truth, Connor, that’s all you need in everything you do. A tiny bit of possibility. Everything else is irrelevant.”
I smile to myself at how right Skeates is and always has been. It reminds me of his warped logic when he persuaded me not to phone home: ‘You go back now, you get in the shit. You go back next week, you’re in the same shit but you’ve said hi to your dad.’
For a brief, glittering moment, I see everything as clearly as he does.
“Hey, Connor,” he says. He smiles, holding my shoulders and staring into my eyes. “What did I tell you? Never quit, never bloody quit, ya wee scamp.”
John Young is originally from Belfast and now lives near Edinburgh. A former Scottish Book Trust New Writer Award winner, Farewell Tour of A Terminal Optimist is John’s debut novel.
Why did you want to become an author?
I started writing when my daughter, Verity, became seriously ill. I found the act of escaping into another world to be cathartic as it took me away from her suffering and the tedium of the hospital ward. That is the magic of stories and books: they take us to other places, let us experience new emotions, live new lives and forget our troubles.
If you weren’t an author, what would you want to be?
That’s easy – a racing cyclist. But I’m far too soft for that malarky. I left school aged 16 into a career of varied jobs and learned not to be afraid of making life changes. So I’ve already done a lot of different things. I was a lawyer for many years, and I helped found the charity the Teapot Trust.
What is the Teapot Trust?
The Teapot Trust is a Scottish charity of particular importance to me as I helped set it up with my wife Laura, after identifying the gaps in care for our daughter. The Teapot Trust fills a space in hospital life that we felt was missing during her long illness, by providing art therapy for children in hospitals throughout the UK. Like reading and writing stories, art provides a window through which children can escape.
How much have your own experiences influenced the book?
Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist is of course fiction – yet I could equally say that nearly everything within i
t is true. There are children who battle on doggedly regardless of what life throws at them; there are bullies, some who see the error of their ways; there are children who are swept in and out of care through no fault of their own; and there are doctors and nurses who make heartbreaking decisions every day. I have watched and waited with a weeping heart as a child slowly succumbs to illness, yet seeing her never giving up and never wanting to miss out on anything.
Although Connor is battling a serious illness he still has a lot of fun. Are any of his adventures are based on your own exploits?
Yeah, you could say that, but I had to tone them down a bit for the book! I did escape a beating in an alley whilst trapped by dogs (thanks John Peacock for getting us out of that one!), I have climbed out of buildings, slept in buses, know that ‘Old MacDonald’ works as a riot-prevention technique, and tried to learn to ski in a gale in Scotland wearing jeans and t-shirt!
Keith Gray, author of Ostrich Boys, was your mentor while writing this book. What influence did he have on the story?
My original story was about a boy called Jes who was offered a cure for his disease but in return he would have to do something utterly terrible. Keith rightly felt that the original book contained two stories: one sci-fi and one a heartfelt story of a likeable scamp who was fighting cancer. So, Connor was born – but, I should add that Jes hasn’t been forgotten…
Your book deals with some very serious issues in a humorous way. What would you say to anyone going through something similar to Connor?
That’s a complicated question as the book touches on bullying, freedom, care, control, friendship as well the specific and terrible prospects facing Connor: illness and possible death. Connor’s method of dealing with his illness is to say “Nadie deja este mundo vivo” (“No one leaves this world alive”), but that bravado may not work for everyone. I think that it is vital to try to find some way of accepting a situation even though it’s a tremendously brave and difficult thing to do – to say “this is where I am and I will make the best of it”. Activity and creativity are great methods of increasing positive feelings and one of the reasons we began the Teapot Trust was to use creativity to try to help children come to terms with illness. There are many other support services for children and families who face illnesses. I’ve listed some of these below.
Teapot Trust – teapot-trust.org
It’s Good 2 Give – itsgood2give.co.uk
Calum’s Cabin – calumscabin.com
Clic Sargent – clicsargent.org.uk
Macmillan – macmillan.org.uk
CHAS – chas.org.uk
Scotblood – scotblood.co.uk
Scottish Network for Arthritis in Children – snac.uk.com
“And another fact: you can never escape yourself, no matter how far you travel.”
“Aye well, maybe we need to find that out for ourselves.”
Listen on Spotify
Listen to the songs that inspired Connor, Skeates, and John Young.
Search “Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist” or “KelpiesEdge” on
And a Bang on the Ear The Waterboys
Bubbles Biffy Clyro
Don’t You (Forget About Me) Simple Minds
This Is The Life Amy Macdonald
Fire Kasabian
The Warrior’s Code Dropkick Murphys
Highway to Hell AC/DC
Pencil Full Of Lead Paolo Nutini
Country Girl Primal Scream
The Dark of the Matinée Franz Ferdinand
King of the Road The Proclaimers
What Makes A Good Man? The Heavy
Crash James
Need You Around Smoking Popes
Don’t Go Hothouse Flowers
Acknowledgements
Big or small there is always a difference only you can do.
Verity Young, age 8
I began writing when my daughter Verity became ill. Farewell Tour of a Terminal Optimist is one of several stories I wrote during that period. I could not have written this book without the support and encouragement of my family. Thank you to Laura, Nina and Isla, and my parents Heather and Ken who read and commented avidly. Without them this book would never have got further than Connor getting a kicking in the first chapter. And that’s no way to leave the lad I have grown to love very much over time.
It is a leap of faith for a publisher to choose a writer, and a privilege to be chosen to be published. Thank you to everyone at Floris Books, especially my editor Lois. Thanks also to the following: Stevo for his comments and legal advice, Dr Alan for medical tips, Marco for confirming my pidgin Mexican, Murdo’s Keeper Book Club for their valuable feedback, Craig for his knowledge about the Children’s Panel, Jacko for his logic, Richard Hobson’s Triliving Time to Write bike groups, Jess for suggesting I enter the Scottish Book Trust New Writers Awards, The Scottish Book Trust for being awesome and Keith Gray, for mentoring me. A special thanks also to The Waterboys, for allowing Skeates to tease Connor with their lyrics to ‘And a Bang on the Ear.’
Finally, any errors or inaccuracies in factual content are my fault, either through mistake or for the purposes of narrative.
Copyright
Kelpies is an imprint of Floris Books
First published in 2017 by Floris Books
© 2017 John Young
This eBook edition published in 2017
John Young has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act of 1988 to be identified as the Author of this Work
Lyrics from ‘And a Bang on the Ear’ reproduced with kind permission from The Waterboys
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the prior permission of Floris Books, Edinburgh www.florisbooks.co.uk
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from Creative Scotland towards the publication of this volume
British Library CIP data available
ISBN 978-178250-449-8