A Life in the Day

by Hunter Davies

  The main ambulance man then rang some number, got a few details and advice, and announced he would give Margaret a painkiller. This would make it more comfortable for her while riding in the ambulance.

  He spent ages trying to inject the painkiller, totally failing to get it into any of her veins. She had had this trouble over the last few years, despite having endless bloody blood tests. Her veins, so we discovered, were too small.

  They gave up in the end, having put her through all the extra pain and discomfort to supposedly relieve the pain.

  They went back to the ambulance, got some equipment and carried her down the stairs. They laid her on a stretcher in the ambulance and I sat beside. The ambulance shook and shuddered going over every bump. Looking round I could see it was a pretty old ambulance, clearly knackered. As it bumped and jerked through the traffic, I could tell Margaret was in total agony. I thought she was going to pass out with the pain.

  She then declared she was sure her arm was broken. The paramedics got alarmed when they heard this, exchanging glances. One asked if she had fallen recently. She said yes, two days ago. They looked at each other and started muttering about the Royal Free, which way was it.

  Oh God. I knew that the plan was that she had to be taken to the Marie Curie Hospice, where a bed was ready for her. The last thing we wanted was for her to be taken instead to A&E at the Royal Free – on a Saturday evening. Oh God, that is the stuff of nightmares. But it is what the paramedics would have to do, if they thought she had had an accident and broken something.

  I gave M a push and hissed in her ear. Dr Lodge had tested her only yesterday. He would have seen any broken arm. You are just imagining it. Otherwise you will have to go to A&E. She told the ambulance that it was just painful, not broken. Phew.

  I explained to the ambulance men that Margaret was due at the hospice. Which one, they asked. I said Marie Curie in Hampstead. They had no idea where that was. I think their normal beat was out in Essex. So I directed them.

  I know it well, and so does Margaret. She had treatment there nine years ago and my sister Marion was in there, towards the end of her life, so was Geraldine, mother of Jake’s wife Rosa. I knew how comfortable and calming and caring it is and was relieved that we were on the way. I could not have coped any more at home, now she was immobile, her legs gone.

  She is now in room 12, Heath Ward, on the first floor, all on her own, wonder of wonders, and even more amazing, it has brilliant views of the gardens and the street outside. Her room is in fact bigger than our bedroom at home. Well done Dr Lodge.

  While Margaret was being settled in the bed, I was asked to have a meeting with the ward sister Louise, who wanted to talk to me. So we sat next door in the little lounge where visitors sit. She said officially that Margaret was in for respite care, till they get on top of the present pains. Then we will see.

  She asked me family details, such as the names of our children. This is for privacy and security, she explained, so when they ring or visit, their names and relationships will be known. Over the years, quite a few well-known people have been in the Hampstead Hospice and they have had journalists trying to get in, find out details.

  ‘Are the three children all your children?’

  I was confused by the question. She explained that she just wondered if perhaps some were from a previous marriage. I said we have been married for fifty-five years – to each other.

  I suddenly found myself starting to cry. I hadn’t cried in the ambulance, even when Margaret was in agony. Yet this harmless question had started me off.

  12 JANUARY 2016

  When I was with M today in her hospice room a woman breezed in and said, ‘Gin and tonic?’ M said no thanks. ‘Vodka, then?’

  M has not had a drink for nine years. Once the chemo started, she lost the taste for drink. Apparently the woman is a volunteer who comes in once a week. All drinks are free for patients, but any guests have to pay. So unfair.

  Later a well-spoken man arrived with a dog and stood by her bedside. He asked if Margaret would like some canine love. This turned out to be a chance to pat his dog. Amazing. I wonder if hospices all over the country have volunteers offering equally weird if wonderful services.

  I walk each day to the hospice, which takes me about forty minutes. Sometimes I go too fast, trying to beat my record, and start wheezing, in which case I get the bus back. The walk is nice, as you end up in one of the best parts of Hampstead. The hospice is in Lyndhurst Gardens, surrounded by superior mansion blocks. It appears to be originally a pre-war mansion of some sort, with modern, concrete and glass additions and entrance hall. There is parking, unusual for anywhere in Hampstead, but I have got it into my head always to walk or bus. It will be my exercise for the day.

  I am always surprised when entering her room. It is so light and airy and filled with flowers. Every visitor brings them. I am coordinating all her visitors, making a timetable each day, a copy of which I leave with her.

  The staff are so kind and caring and calm, more like a hotel or a very high-class private clinic. It is so quiet, peaceful, feels almost empty, yet a patient can ring for help and someone will be there in minutes.

  It has about thirty patients, as far as I can see, all presumably terminal, but you don’t meet them. Almost all are confined to their beds. I just glimpse them through doors when walking down the corridor from the lift. There is one little ward of six, but everyone else has their own room. How on earth can they afford such high-quality staff and attention when we are not paying a penny?

  M is even enjoying the food, which is a surprise. She has not been out to a restaurant for nine years, since the tumour in her back. ‘But now a restaurant is coming to me – twice a day.’

  She has a catheter and a plastic bag hangs over the side of the bed to receive the contents of her bowels. It gives a vague hum which I always think is a radio that has been left on. Regular painkillers are injected into her, which work much better than they did at home.

  She can’t sit up properly, as her arms have gone, so she lies flat on her back. She can’t move her legs. They have to move her legs for her when she is washed and changed. She can’t write anything, which she is desperate to do, wanting to write down the names and details of all the staff, doctors, nurses, cleaners and all the various volunteers. Her mind is so alert. In fact she seems to have been mentally stimulated by her new situation, talks to everyone.

  There is a stream of volunteers and experts coming in offering various treatments, such as yoga and painting, as well as the regular physios. She gets very tired, but she seems stable. All the physio work, however exhausting, does seem to be helping. Is she really in for respite care – or is this it?

  I would not say she was happy, as that word would be cruel, but all visitors remark afterwards on how bright and cheery she is.

  I asked her today what it is like, being here. She thought for a while and said, ‘pleasant’.

  I did not expect her to say that. I expected her either to grunt or sigh, or dismiss it as a dopey question. The thought of her going into any institution, even a hospice, had been hanging over us for months. Who would have thought she would pronounce it pleasant.

  All the children have been, and the four grandchildren, even the two little ones. They loved the room, inspecting all her hoists and contraptions. They didn’t seem alarmed by the sight of Granny in bed.

  They can’t see how thin she has become, as she has the blankets over. She has lost a huge amount of weight – as well as height. At New Year, when we did our Predictions, we also always record each of our weights. She was down to 7 stone 6 lbs. She has lost a stone in a year. Her normal fighting weight, ten years ago, before the return of the cancer, was around 10 and a half stone. I am not revealing my weight. Too embarrassing. Okay then, when we got married I was 10 stone 11. I am now 12 stone.

  15 JANUARY 2016

  M today asked me to bring in a copy of Significant Sisters. I was surprised. She wants to give it to one
of the cleaning staff who comes from the Philippines and wants to go to university and study feminism.

  Margaret has gone through life never offering people her books, never mentioning she is a writer, changing the subject should she be asked. So what has come over her now, behaving like an ordinary normal author? The drugs? Being settled and comfortable?

  I always tell everyone, whether they ask me or not, that I write books. I thrust copies on them all the time, usually remaindered copies, of which I have loads.

  18 JANUARY 2016

  She seemed in fine fettle today – or perhaps it was me. I had a lunch beforehand with our neighbour Derek John. We went nearby in Belsize Park, the restaurant next to the cinema, where M and I used to go for many years.

  She was full of chat – about the staff and her visitors. I had to leave the room for half an hour, and go to the day lounge. She was being given an injection before the physios arrived for her dreaded daily exercises. Margaret does not like being observed during her physio.

  Yesterday, so she said, when the two physios were working on her, the usual young strapping gels, one of them collapsed, shouting in agony. She’d got cramp in her calf.

  According to Margaret, she saved her. She maintains she caught the physio as she fell. Our hero, I mean heroine.

  Don’t totally believe her, sounds a bit like her Red Pike story, but it is a story she could easily have worked up, if she was fit and well, if she could write, if she were sending letters to her chums. I accepted it of course. Just as I believed she climbed Red Pike before breakfast.

  19 JANUARY 2016

  I went on the C11 bus today, as it was raining. It stops at the Royal Free, where lots of outpatients always get on. A tall, decrepit-looking man hobbling on two sticks got on, cheerful-looking, about my age, i.e. quite young really. A dyed-blonde, tattooed, overweight woman got up and offered him her seat.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said, in an Irish accent. ‘I like to show off my disabilities.’

  ‘Oh make the most it when you can, love,’ she replied.

  ‘Being an exhibitionist has nothing to do with your situation,’ he said.

  I made a mental note to repeat this conversation to M.

  I rarely bring her physical things, apart from that day’s Independent paper and any letters. I like to think I bring in chat. I make a list of things that happened in the last twenty-four hours, or things I have thought. We have always relayed every bus stop story to each other, however banal. Who am I going to tell all my trivia chat to, when she goes?

  20 JANUARY 2016

  When I went into her room today, I noticed a walking stick on her bed, a proper walking stick, with a rubber ferrule at the end, the sort she has at home, the one she inherited from her father, which now hangs forlorn at the end of the hall shelf.

  She has had a miracle recovery! That was my first thought. She wouldn’t have a walking stick unless she was now trying to walk. Those strapping physios, perhaps the one who collapsed on her bed, and was saved by Margaret, have worked some magic.

  She explained that in the night her brain started telling her to move her legs. Over and over again came the same message, yet she couldn’t move either leg one inch. She felt herself becoming hysterical, unable to understand what was happening. She shouted for help and two night carers came, calmed her down.

  One then pummelled her legs, till at last there was feeling. No movement, just feeling, the feel of blood flowing and a sense of touch. She said it felt wonderful, the circulation going again, as if she had got her legs back.

  As they left, one of them got an old walking stick and gave it to M, telling her that when it happens again in the night to pummel her own leg. So that was why the walking stick was there. She now has some marginal use of her left hand, so she is able to give her legs a good pummel in the night, if and when she becomes hysterical.

  We chatted for an hour and a half, me telling her what I was cooking for myself, gossip from the street, conversations I had overheard, when she suddenly said, ‘There seems to be space between us.’

  This caught me on the hop. I didn’t quite know what she meant. Just as she was going to explain further, a doctor came into the room, a young blonde woman registrar.

  I started to get up, thinking that if Margaret is being physically examined she will not like me to be present. But the doctor asked if I could wait, if I did not have to go? I said no, no, I would like to stay.

  The doctor made it clear that Margaret would not be coming out. This was it. But she could not predict how long it would take. They have weekly meetings to discuss a patient’s progress, but they can never get it exactly right. The paralysis is getting worse, and will creep up her body, but it is now unlikely that her brain will be affected.

  So what will happen?

  The doc muttered the usual stuff about an infection that might happen, or just gradually total weakness. M said she did not want antibiotics, just painkillers, as she did not want her life prolonged. The doc nodded.

  On the way home across the Heath I met a man, Paul, a neighbour who lives in Grove Terrace. He asked where I had been and I told him Margaret was in the hospice.

  ‘Oh I have missed her walking on the Heath. I always looked out for her orange coat. She is always so elegant.’

  Elegant? I thought about that as I walked home. Should I tell her tomorrow? I know she has never enjoyed or fished for compliments, always deflecting them.

  During our life together, the biggest compliment I ever give her is to say that she looks neat. Or sometimes I say clean. Neat and clean, you can’t do better than that.

  21 JANUARY 2016

  I told M that story today, about being elegant. I think she was quite pleased.

  I then asked what she meant by there being space between us. I had been thinking about it and wondered if she was becoming institutionalised. Or have we grown somehow apart since she came into the hospice?

  She looked surprised, saying she had no memory of saying it. I promised her she did, because it caught me on the hop.

  Then she decided what she must have meant was that there is a space around her. She is on her own most of each day, and all night, without my nonstop chattering. She meant there is space around her, not between us. She does still feel in contact with me.

  She also said she has changed her views on hospices. She had always thought they were an indulgence, a luxury, all that money being spent to keep the dying alive when a lethal injection, which is what she had always wanted, would be so much better, saving time and pain and agonising for everyone. Now she feels the benefit. She is glad she is here. It is a comfort, not an indulgence.

  22 JANUARY 2016

  M had a bit of a scare last evening. Suddenly a Miss Havisham figure appeared in her bedroom doorway. It was a woman with wild grey hair piled up on top of her head, wearing some sort of flowing black robe or frock. M was half asleep at the time.

  ‘What are you doing?’ yelled the woman. ‘Get out of that bed. That bed is mine! This room is mine!’

  M was confused, thinking at first the woman was a ghost, or she had imagined her. Then she realised the woman was clearly a bit mad, so pressed the alarm bell. Two carers came to escort the woman away.

  The woman, apparently, has had a brain tumour and has no idea who she is or what has happened to her. M laughed while telling the story, but at the time she had clearly been rather alarmed and a bit frightened.

  Yesterday, when the posh drinks trolley woman had come round, asking ‘Gin and tonic, darling?’, Margaret, to my surprise, had asked if she could possibly have a small glass of white wine, with ice. It was duly produced – and Margaret loved it.

  So today I took in a bottle of Pinot Grigio, some ice and a glass, and put them in her fridge. Oh yes, she has a fridge, all mod cons in the Hampstead Hospice, darling.

  I learned today that some of the ever so affluent occupants of the large houses and mansion blocks in Lyndhurst Gardens, where the hospice is situated, have been
complaining about having to look out from their windows at elderly half naked people in the hospice opposite being given bed baths. Bloody cheek. Why can’t they avert their gaze, or close their curtains?

  M told me that she had had two out-of-the-blue visits this morning from very eager, over-excited new people – an art therapist and a reflexologist. She agreed they could come back later, as she was waiting for the consultant. It’s all go, in the Hampstead Hospice.

  When Dr Lodge, the consultant, did come, he had students and two registrars in tow. They all stood around M’s bed as Philip explained her situation. At the end, she asked him how long he thought she had. Not like M to be so direct. He said he didn’t know.

  When I arrived, Margaret told me all this. I asked if she felt the end was nigh.

  ‘I don’t think about it. I just take one day at a time.’

  ‘You should really have been a football manager.’

  ‘The days are still pleasant. I am not in pain. If asked during the day if I would like a lethal injection, I would probably say no. The evenings are different. It suddenly strikes you that you are stuck between these four walls, you haven’t moved all day, you won’t move again, you are going nowhere. The nights are awful. So if asked in the night, I would say yes, finish me off.

  ‘Last night I imagined I was choking. I thought the tumour has got to my lungs, it was pressing on me, and I was losing my breathing. I knew I was imagining it. It took a huge effort to beat it, mind over matter, and get it out of my head.’

  24 JANUARY 2016

  Theo, Margaret’s friend in Washington DC, has sent her a book to cheer her up – a book by the American humorist Art Buchwald, who wrote a column in the Herald Tribune for many decades. It is about being in a hospice in the USA.

  While there, he turns his room into an office and studio, giving interviews, making radio broadcasts. He then has a miracle recovery and after six months in the hospice he goes home.