She sat Grace down at the kitchen table and explained matters, calmly and gently. She said there was a good chance that with chemotherapy his life would be prolonged by a few months but that that was the best they could hope for. Jefferson would have had all the options explained to him. If, as sometimes happened with this type of cancer, his lungs got congested he would be offered palliative radiotherapy on an outpatient basis. He would have received counselling. He had made his decision. Grace looked up at her with hollow eyes inky-ringed from lack of sleep. Joy leant across the table and put her hand over Grace’s. ‘I know it’s not what you want to hear, but really I don’t disagree with him.’
‘He should want those few extra months. Believe me, we’ve not been spoilt with time. No, I’ll talk to him. I’ll make him change his mind.’
Joy looked at her and the pity in her eyes frightened Grace more than any words.
‘I’m not going into hospital,’ Jefferson said. ‘What would be the point? Another few months of life spent away from you. No, not unless you feel you can’t cope with me here.’ He slipped in the last sentence in that kind of careless way Grace knew meant he was terrified of her answer. So she put her arms round him and told him that she was there for him for as long as it took, that she would cope, that for him she could cope with anything.
He was wearing a polo shirt the exact blue of his eyes and the breeze from the great saltmarshes blew across his face and smoothed his strained features. They were walking slowly, making frequent stops for him to rest and catch his breath. ‘It should be easy, catching it,’ he said, trying to smile as he leant against the upturned hull of an abandoned rowing boat. ‘Seeing the damn thing never seems to get further than halfway down my throat these days.’ Grace had been about to take a picture of him but she changed her mind and put the camera back in the deep pocket of her old tweed jacket. She had got greedy for pictures of him; they would have to see her through a lifetime without him. In the late nights and early mornings when he slept, she worked in the small darkroom poring over the negatives, choosing which shots to print. Once the printing was done she spent hours studying every feature, every expression the way she could not with the real man. He got edgy if she was always close. He didn’t like what he called her ‘anxious looks’. But at night alone in the darkroom she studied his face and smiled when he smiled and hurt when she recognised a twist of discomfort at the corners of his mouth.
‘It’s all right taking pictures,’ he said now.
‘I know. The light wasn’t right, that’s all,’ she lied. They resumed their walk.
He said, ‘Don’t go queasy on me, Grace.’
She looked sideways at him. ‘What do you mean, queasy?’
‘The day you stop taking my picture is the day I know I’m just a care package.’
‘I just want lots of pictures of you to …’
‘To remember me by; I know. But you like to work too and don’t tell me the slow dying of a man does not make an interesting subject.’
Grace started opening her mouth to protest, closed it again, shook her head and smiled, placing her hand gently on his shoulder. ‘No, no, I wouldn’t tell you that.’
He grinned back. ‘And there is the being-remembered factor and the having future generations poring over the pictures and saying, “So that was Jefferson McGraw dying so gracefully, with such style and such panache.”’ Then he started to cry. He cried and she hugged him and this time her eyes were dry.
The nights in the darkroom got harder as she saw the changes in his face that she had been too busy, too shy, too scared, to notice during the day; the pain etched around his eyes and mouth and the growing weariness of his gaze. ‘You see him every moment of the day,’ Joy said. ‘You won’t notice every little change. And that’s no bad thing.’
‘I see it in the pictures,’ Grace told her.
He got up for lunch. They even had some white wine with their shrimps and French-style bread. The sun was streaming through the open door and windows, bathing the kitchen in a warm bright light, the kind that fooled you into thinking life was good.
But by the afternoon he was fretting about his children. He had called Cherry’s parents but they refused to say where their daughter and grandchildren could be found. ‘Haven’t you hurt them enough?’ his mother-in-law said.
‘But the girls, I need to see them.’
‘You should have thought about that before you cheated on their mother.’
‘I did think about them, and Cherry; that’s why I didn’t leave.’
‘So now they should be grateful?’ Grace could hear her laugh, sharp and theatrical, although she was a couple of feet away from the phone. Like mother, like daughter, she thought.
Jefferson contacted his colleagues at his old law firm, asking them to find out what could be done. ‘Grace, I might never see my daughters again.’
He called his parents-in-law once more. ‘I’m real sorry, Jefferson, but I’ve told you: Cherry and the girls don’t want to hear from you right now. I know you’re sick, and I’m sorry.’
‘What about the girls? Haven’t they got a right to see their father before he dies?’
‘Now, don’t you go exaggerating like that, Jefferson. The girls are fine and we just don’t see the need to drag them through all this … unpleasantness.’
‘That’s what she called it,’ Jefferson said to Grace, ‘an “unpleasantness”. All I can say is that it’s becoming one of my greatest regrets that I won’t be there to see my mother-in-law come to meet her “unpleasantness”.’
‘You should call the police or social services or something. You have a right to see your daughters, you know that; you’re a lawyer. And they have a right to see you. How will they feel if they are made to stay down there and never …’
Jefferson finished the sentence for her. ‘Never see me again. Quite.’
‘They wouldn’t let me see my mother after she died. It was the worst thing they could have done because it made it so much more difficult to let go. No, I’d call the bloody FBI if I were you. In fact, I’d have Cherry stuck in chains and thrown into prison without access to vodka or that bloody pink lipstick.’
* * *
‘What the hell are you doing, barging in like that?’
‘I just thought you might need a hand.’
‘Get out! For Christ’s sake, do you have to follow me even into here?’
When he came out of the bathroom she saw he had been crying. ‘I’m sorry; I thought you were having a bath,’ she said.
‘No, I’m sorry for yelling at you.’ He wouldn’t look her in the eyes as he passed her. ‘I’m meant to be your lover.’
‘You are.’
His jaw was working and his cheeks were fever-pink. ‘Then your idea of a lover is pretty different from mine.’
‘I want to know about this exhibition you’re meant to be working on. Have you got anywhere?’ He had come down to the kitchen. She was cleaning the windows. She had cleaned them the day before too, and the day before that.
She put the cloth down. ‘You know I haven’t. I just haven’t seen anything. Nothing really fires me; hardly surprising.’
‘You’ll just have to try harder.’
‘Somehow that damn exhibition just doesn’t seem very important right now.’
He slapped his hand down on the kitchen table. ‘That’s just dumb. It’s real important. Look at me. Have you thought how it makes me feel, thinking I’m messing up your career as well as having you run around like some damn nurse picking up after me, wiping my arse …’
‘You’re not messing up my career and I haven’t wiped your arse.’
‘The time will come …’
‘And then it’ll be a privilege.’
‘Not for me, it won’t. Look, Gracie, I’m the one dying here. That’s enough of a burden. Don’t make it heavier by adding guilt.’
‘I’ve been out, you know that. I’ve taken some shots: the usual, laughing kids, newborn bunnies.’
‘You should travel.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘OK, so you don’t want to leave just at the moment. That’s fair enough, I accept that. But I’m right about one thing; you can’t press a pause button on your life while you wait for me to die.’
Grace couldn’t take any more of that kind of talk so she got to her feet and tramped out of the door, slamming the bug-screen behind her. She did not go far, staying in the garden, breathing deep, looking up into the sky that seemed weighed down by the mass of working birds, holding her hands over her ears to shut out the noise of all that life, hating God.
Then she thought, what am I doing wasting time that I could spend with him? And she went back inside. He sat where she had left him, staring at the wall, his food untouched. When he heard her come in he turned and smiled at her. How could he still smile like that, like a child smiling at the future because they had not seen enough to fear it? She went up and wrapped her arms round him, but not too tight; his whole body was tender these days.
‘What’s the title of the exhibition again?’ he asked.
She kissed the short soft hair on the top of his head. ‘You don’t give up.’
‘No.’
She sighed and went to sit down opposite him. ‘Would you believe, A Celebration of Life?’
He laughed. It was a big, genuinely amused laugh. ‘A Celebration of Life. OK. Let me think about it. Actually, I’ll do the thinking in bed.’
They went upstairs together and she stayed with him. She had brought the rocker up from the porch and placed it by the bedroom window. She sat there often, reading, or trying to, or just watching him.
‘Honey, I’ve thought.’ He used a silly voice and was looking at her with the old perky look in his eyes. ‘Use me.’
‘Use you?’
‘Use me. Make me your model for the exhibition, for your celebration of life. C’mon, you know you want to. I can see it in your eyes sometimes, that hungry glint like a lioness who’s just spotted a plump and lonesome antelope. Work is your other love. I stopped being the jealous type when I was told I had three months to live. So enjoy. Use me. Combine us, if you like. I’m dying. You can’t change that. You’re a photographer; it’s your job to document. So do your job. I’m a fading lens-louse; it’s my job to be photographed. Catch me while you can. Let me do my job.’ He was smiling, talking brave, being flip, but he could not disguise the pleading in his eyes. Next he was looking at her, serious, thoughtful. ‘I like the idea of being part of this exhibition. You said it was important; big London gallery, that type of thing?’ He grinned again. ‘I mean, I have my standards. I wouldn’t go wasting my dying on any old hick-town exhibit, but this will be good. Even the title is great.’ He made a sweeping gesture as if describing his name in lights. ‘A Celebration of Life: One Man’s Final Journey.’
Grace looked at him. ‘That’s not funny,’ she said, but she was smiling too; it was a while since she had seen him so … well, so alive.
‘It’s bloody funny. But I’m serious. Come over here.’ He patted the side of the bed. ‘Comfortable? So, I’m sick but I’m not blind. I’m changing. It’s like one of those speeded-up nature films when they show a bud grow and open, blossom, wilt and die all in a matter of seconds. So I might not make a very convincing flower but look at me.’ She did and to her shame she was already weighing up the possibilities in her mind, framing her pictures, thinking light and backgrounds. She had to look away. What’s wrong with me? she thought. What kind of freak am I?
He grabbed her hand and put it to his eyes. ‘It’s kinda interesting. Don’t tell me that for you, as a photographer, it isn’t, the way the journey marks my face with each passing day, because I won’t believe you. I know you, Grace. And I like the irony; a celebration of life. Or maybe there’s no irony. Maybe dying is the ultimate celebration of life.’
‘And that’s the kind of pseud’s statement that I love you for,’ she said, trying not to cry. Every day she saw the distance grow between them, the distance between the one who was going, and the one who would be left behind. It was his journey and all she could do was watch him go. ‘Jefferson, I’m sorry to be making this about me …’
‘That’s all right, sweetheart; familiarity is comforting for the sick.’
‘I don’t know if I can do it, that’s all.’
‘I know it’s tough watching me dying,’ Jefferson said. ‘Not as hard as actually doing the dying, but tough nevertheless. That’s why I want you to use the camera. It’ll help you and actually – far more importantly – it’ll help me. It will be something we are doing together. Anyway, I’ve told you before, I like to watch you work.’
Grace got up and fetched the Hasselblad. ‘I shall take a shot of you now because you are looking particularly gorgeous.’
‘Ah well.’ He struck a pose, hand to the back of his head. ‘Death becomes me.’
He was asleep on the porch, his head tilted backwards, the skin tight over his collarbone, half his face in full light. Careful not to disturb him, she set up a white cardboard reflector on his shadow side, but a flock of terns, flying by so low she could distinguish the faint rose hue of their under-plumage, woke him. Still woozy, not quite focusing, he smiled at her as she pressed the shutter.
Saturday morning and just getting out of bed made him so out of breath he had to lie straight back down again. Every gulp of air sounded like it had to fight its way down into his lungs, and when Grace laid her head on his poor chest every breath rattled; but he pointed at the camera on the bedside table. She shook her head violently. ‘I’m calling Joy,’ she said. It was his turn to shake his head. He pointed again at the Leica.
‘Don’t chicken out on me now,’ he whispered. ‘This isn’t pretty, but we’re doing good work, remember, not Hollywood schlock.’
She sighed and got the camera. Blue eyes faded like an old shirt that had gone through the wash too many times, white close-cropped hair, a complexion tinged with a grey that no sun could disguise, grooves and lines; a man who was still young. So this was to be her job now: documenting the disintegration of the man she adored. She looked away, blinking, fixing a breezy smile.
She took ten shots and with each one she got more absorbed in her work until he was simply a part of the scene: a bed with the bedclothes tossed to one side, bright light from the sea, a rose in a vase, closed eyes, open mouth, a nose set in deep furrows, hands clasping a sheet. She knew these shots were good. When she went downstairs to phone Joy she felt sick; as if she had pigged out on her favourite food or spent more money than she could afford.
Joy was over within the hour. She said the patches weren’t enough and put him on a subcutaneous drip, showing Grace how to check that it was clean and not blocked, telling her how to manage it.
‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘I’m going into hospital. I’m not having you care for me, not like this.’
‘Would he be more comfortable in hospital?’ Grace turned to Joy.
The nurse shook her head. ‘Not really. This is a bad day. I’ll get Doctor Howard to call in later.’ She turned to Jefferson. ‘You might well be off the drip again tomorrow.’
‘I’m not staying here,’ he insisted.
Grace sat down next to him on the bed. ‘Go into hospital then, but I won’t be able to work there. It just won’t be right; the hospital light, the institutional aspect of it all. It just won’t work.’
Out of the corner of her eye she could see the look on the nurse’s face; surprised, suddenly disapproving.
Downstairs Grace said, ‘It’s as if he’s ashamed of being sick, and I can’t bear it.’
‘It’s hard being the one receiving all the care. It’s easier dealing with us professionals. The patient knows we get paid. You, he can’t pay.’
‘He’s trying to.’ And Grace explained about the photographs. ‘I know he doesn’t want to go into hospital. He says he does because he can’t bear thinking he’s a burden, so I talk about the photographs; nothing el
se convinces him that he is not.’
Joy listened and then she said, ‘I suppose I can see his point.’
‘But?’
‘Well, to be honest with you, Grace, I find it harder to understand how you can do it, take all those pictures. I’m a nurse. I see people dying all the time and I have to stand back from the person and do my job. But he’s your husband.’ She looked away. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. We’re all different.’
‘That’s true.’ Grace sighed. ‘In fact, there are times when I wonder whether I’m part of the same species.’
‘If you feel that way, don’t do it. You must have plenty of snaps of him by now and you can find another way of making him feel less beholden.’
Grace looked at her. ‘Do you know, the worst of it is I don’t want to.’ She got to her feet and walked over to the window, looking out at the maple tree. She wondered if they, any of them, would be there to see its leaves turn.
Grace made another call to Jefferson’s old law firm, asking if they had managed to get in touch with Cherry, if there had been any progress on the court order forcing her to give him access to his children. ‘He needs his daughters. Please do this for him.’
Jefferson slept and while he slept Grace went for a walk. Autumn was approaching; the growing surf told her so although the air was warm and the terns remained, leaving only for their fishing trips to that point on the horizon where the sky melts into the sea.
‘Stop posing.’ Grace laughed. He was sitting up in bed with the rose she had picked for his breakfast tray stuck behind his ear. A little earlier she had been in to change his morphine patch. He hated her doing anything of that nature, saying, ‘I’m not your patient, I’m your lover.’ But there he was now, fluttering his eyelashes, tossing his head, trying to make her laugh. ‘OK, Carmen,’ she said, grinning at him. ‘Do your worst.’
‘See,’ he said, looking inordinately pleased with himself. ‘You’re OK,’ he said.
‘No!’ She lowered the camera.
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