Precious Lives

by Margaret Forster

  I wondered even before we set off if we’d ever make it to the clock tower and the main shopping area, never mind making it back. All the time we shuffled down the busy, noisy street I was on the look-out for taxis, noting minicab firms just in case. We went the whole length of Crouch End Broadway to Boots. It took ages, but Marion was bright with excitement. She wanted to buy ordinary things first, toothpaste and a face-cloth, and then some food, salmon at the fishmonger’s next door and bread at the bakery opposite. People looked at us, or rather they looked, as we queued at tills, at Marion’s neck. She wouldn’t wear a scarf any more – scarves irritated her neck – and so the wound was visible, ugly and bleeding slightly, and the whole area round it massively swollen with new tumours clustering there. She realised she was attracting attention but she was impervious to the stares. She didn’t see why she should hide what had happened to her. But I was glad when we were out of the shops and at last on our way home, though still without the most important purchase, that future present for Frances. Almost home, we went into a small shop that sold lamps. Success. She saw a beautiful Tiffany lamp and put a deposit on it. I said, ‘Why only a deposit? Why not buy it now?’ but she wanted to think about it. Annabel could come next day and buy it, if she decided it was what she wanted for Frances, and then I could pick it up (which is what happened).

  On the whole, although she had always been the most generous of people in all the ways that matter, overwhelmingly generous with her time and concern, Marion had never been a great present-buyer. It was always a big deal for her, buying a present, hence the prevarication even now. The obligation to give presents on birthdays annoyed her. In fact, birthdays in general annoyed her, or rather the fuss some people (me, Frances) made about them did. It was almost the same with Christmas. ‘I’m not giving presents this year,’ she would say firmly. We would tease her, ask her if she would still be receiving them, and she would graciously indicate she would be prepared to. The children thought this hilarious. But on those rare occasions when she decided to give presents, they were always witty and fun, worth waiting for. Now, suddenly she wanted to lavish presents on all her ‘loved ones’. Her delight in the choosing and giving was immense, almost childish in its intensity. One Thursday, Annabel was sent off by taxi to buy Frances a new tartan dressing-gown and Marion could hardly contain her impatience to see it unwrapped and worn and exclaimed over. Her nieces and nephews were astonished to benefit from this new largess – one got a suitcase, another a mobile phone, another kitchen equipment. She didn’t have much money, but because she’d always saved she had more squirrelled away than anyone had thought – just small amounts here and there, now released to indulge her new pleasure.

  She’d made her will back in July, the moment she was told her illness was terminal. She was particularly anxious to leave her financial affairs in perfect order. And she set about arranging her own funeral. It was beyond me how anyone could want to think about their own funeral, but Marion did. She was not religious but liked to describe herself, only half-mockingly, as ‘spiritual’. Certainly, she’d spent her life searching for something but, apart from that adolescent flirtation with Christian Science, had never found it in any church. All the same, she wanted a church funeral and settled on the United Reform Church at the end of her road, a church she had never entered in her life. She contacted the vicar, who to her delight was a woman, and asked if she would come to see her, ‘to discuss my funeral’. When the vicar came, Marion told her there were two things she ought to know in case either presented an insuperable problem to holding the funeral in the church. The first was that she had no belief in an afterlife; and the second that she was a lesbian, which meant that both her partner and her husband (whom she’d married before identifying her own lesbianism but never divorced, and with whom she was still friendly) would both be there. The slightly startled vicar said she thought neither factor presented any difficulty.

  There were a couple more meetings with the vicar for Marion to outline her wishes in some detail. This detail occupied her for several weeks, as she read endless hymns and passages in the Bible which she thought might be appropriate. I was told not to ‘give me that look’. I tried not to, but it was hard to hide the look of disbelief on my face. Funerals appal me. I think dead bodies should be despatched rapidly and without show. But Marion was firmly of the opinion that a funeral would help people through the immediate aftermath of her death, especially Frances and Annabel. She thought they’d find some comfort in the singing of hymns, the reading of verses and the general ritual of a funeral. And she admitted, on top of that, to feelings of pleasure at the thought of a church full of people gathered together to honour her passing. So she went on planning her funeral and I learned if not to banish ‘that look’, at least to keep quiet. Except about flowers. Marion’s plans did not include flowers – ‘Scandalous waste of money,’ she said. On the contrary, I said, if she was going to have such a splendid funeral, not to have flowers would spoil it. And I wanted flowers: it was the only part of the ceremony I was in favour of. So she conceded I might put flowers of my choosing in the church, ‘But only one lot, and not too expensive.’

  All this had been done long ago, by the middle of October. The will, the funeral, both taken care of. There was nothing to do now but settle into waiting without knowing the date we were waiting for. Over and over again this consciousness of waiting, waiting, emphasised how precious every moment must be. But when this platitude is held up to the light, what shines through it? Nothing precious at all; just a void, an empty space which has to be filled. Thinking how to fill it panics people. How often the jolly question is put in an idle moment: if you had only six months to live, how would you spend them? And the answers are invariably banal, full of travel and excesses of high living. Marion would have liked to spend her last months travelling, but she was in no fit state to travel anywhere. She wasn’t capable of flying to the Caribbean to laze on a beach and swim in turquoise seas – and, besides, she was dependent on so many drugs she would have had to take half a chemist’s shop with her. So there was no room for flights of fancy like this. Home was where she had to be and facing up to the ‘precious’ nature of each hour was a curious problem. She didn’t want to waste time, but what constituted waste? Was sitting looking out of the kitchen window for ages wasting time? Was lying on her bed listening to Anna Raeburn’s radio programme wasting time? Was it scandalous, in her situation, with so little time left, actually to feel bored?

  The time left might be short, but the days felt increasingly long to her. She began wanting new diversion. She was seized with an urgent desire to see her younger brother Johnny, and she issued a royal-sounding summons for him to come from Carlisle. He came with alacrity and spent the day with her; and she looked at him and listened and loved his being with her, and yet not a single emotionally charged word passed between them. It was the ordinariness of the encounter she wanted: she just wanted him to chat, about his family, about his work, about the new house he was in the process of buying. To chat, and to be near. When he came a second time, not even their parting, almost certain to be the last, was emotional. Johnny responded according to the family rules: ‘Don’t make a carry-on, keep everything light’ – the way he had been brought up. Those hours he spent with his dying sister were infinitely precious to him too, but they had to pass gently. That was their value.

  It was what we all had to learn. The time left would only be marred by any lunge into the kind of melodrama Marion had never condoned. However absurd it felt always to be talking about nothing in particular, it was this very nothingness that seemed to keep her on an even keel. Dying, she had no wish to launch into debates on great ethical issues. It was too tiring even to contemplate fathoming the meaning of life when she was so near the end of it. Nor, while it was still going on, did she wish to be asked what she had made of it. She just wanted to tick over, quietly, soothingly, with the strange new rhythm of her days interrupted only by the visits of those dear to her.
Small comforts became huge ones – the newly changed bed, the fresh flowers. Constantly, people asked if there was anything they could do for her, anything, but there rarely was. Only if they were lucky (because people feel privileged to do something for the dying – it relieves them) was there a small service they could do, which was invariably something trivial, like finding a particular tape of music she wanted.

  But the boredom which was not quite boredom, which was more of a restlessness, grew in spite of the permitted visitors. Marion wanted to go further afield, to different surroundings entirely, out of Crouch End, for more ambitious walks. Her walking was now so unsteady, and she had to get back up the stairs on her hands and knees, but she was emphatic: she wanted a much more ambitious walk than any we had been doing.

  So we drove, Marion, Frances and I, to Alexandra Palace, a mile away in north London. It was a beautiful late October afternoon with a faint coolness in the air in spite of the sun. Marion was well wrapped up in her padded green jacket and warm trousers and very sensible flat black shoes. She was excited, her eyes bright with the adventure of it all. We parked by the palace itself and began walking along the broad tarmac area in front, Frances on one side of her, me on the other. She was walking more quickly than she had been recently, though with short, choppy steps; and we found she was pulling us along as we tried to slow her down to a more measured and less exhausting (for her) pace. Backwards and forwards we went, on the flat: quite enough, we thought. But Marion didn’t agree. This was boring. She wanted to go further, away from the building. She nodded towards the paths on the other side of the car park, where the ground sloped downwards. We pointed out that if we went down, we would have to come back up, and that there were steps to negotiate, but she didn’t care, she insisted we explore further.

  It was certainly a prettier part of the park. Lots of shrubs, some trees, some late flowers still in bloom. ‘Lovely,’ Marion said, ‘lovely. Look at the blossom coming out.’ It was the end of October, there was of course no blossom, but this wasn’t a sign of poor vision or dementia. Marion had never had the slightest interest in nature and could hardly tell one flower from another. She’d often told me how she wished she could be transported, the way others were, by the sight of a beautiful landscape but though she could admire a view, could see it was indeed beautiful, it did nothing for her, as she put it. It was the same with art and architecture. Her husband Jeff regularly went into ecstasies over a painting or a building, but Marion just stared, said, ‘Very nice,’ and then felt wistfully that she was missing something. But now she was looking at everything in a different way and at last feeling something profound – amazement, it seemed to be, at how things grew. And in this realisation was some sort of comfort that it was so, this endless cycle of dying and being born again.

  We reached the limit of the park itself. ‘Further,’ Marion urged. I said if we went further we would come to a very noisy, busy road. Reluctantly, she allowed us to turn back and begin the long haul up to the car. It was a struggle. When we reached the car, Frances and I were worn out, not with any physical exertion, but with worrying about whether we would ever get there. How cheerful and hearty we suddenly were, opening the car door with a flourish for Marion to get in. But she wouldn’t. She was not pleased. ‘I can’t go home yet,’ she said, a touch of panic in her voice. ‘It isn’t enough. I haven’t had enough. I can’t go back yet.’ It must have been the steroids which gave her this illusion of ferocious energy – she was suddenly terrified of inactivity. In her mind she was running and jumping and her body was being pushed by her to do the same.

  In the end, we persuaded her to go home and the crawl up the stairs used up some of the energy she felt so full of. But the next day there was the same frantic need to get out and about, to do something. I arrived next morning to have the newspaper grabbed out of my hand. ‘Quick,’ she said, ‘what’s on? I want to go and see a film, I want to take Frances to a film.’ I began reciting what was on at the local cinemas – ‘No, no,’ she said, crossly, ‘the West End. What’s on in the West End? Look and see, help me!’ Slowly, I sorted out the page with West End cinema programmes listed. How could she possibly brave the West End? But she was determined. She wanted to treat Frances, to take her to a plush West End cinema. It would be like old times. It was not at all like old times. I was not allowed to come, because this was to be a special outing for Frances; they would manage on their own without an additional minder. A minicab was ordered for the evening and Marion had a longer rest than usual in the afternoon in preparation, though she was in such a state of euphoria at the prospect of this daring expedition she couldn’t sleep. Frances bravely faced up to the challenge this outing to the cinema would present – steps, semi-darkness, finding the minicab afterwards – and off they went, with me on stand-by to come at once if all these arrangements failed. Frances would ring me on her mobile phone, and I would swoop.

  There was no need to, but the whole thing was a flop. Marion was bored after ten minutes. The film was The Madness of King George, widely praised, obviously hugely enjoyed by the rest of the audience she sat with, but dull and dreary to her. ‘I’ll want to see something better next time,’ she said in disgust (‘And next time,’ Frances murmured, ‘I’ll need help’). But there was no repeat visit to the cinema. Instead Marion wanted to go shopping. She’d never been a lover of shopping (except for food) and was not a woman for whom the height of bliss was a trip to London’s Oxford Street, but now she wanted new clothes and she wanted to go with Frances and select them herself. So the crowds in the nearby Wood Green Shopping Centre had to be risked. They were. She came home triumphant with a pair of tartan trousers and a new sweater. She suddenly looked so thin, in her new clothes. But she was so pleased with herself, holding her arms up to show them off and turning round slowly for me to get the full effect. So thin. How had I not realised that the weight was dropping off her body alarmingly? It should not have been a shock, but it was. After all, she was hardly eating anything, though making a great ritual of every meal, always sitting at the kitchen table as though about to have three courses.

  This was the point, on her suggestion, at which her brother Hunter (my husband) interviewed her on tape. She said she had been surprised that no one seemed interested in the process she was going through, the process of dying. She wished she could meet other people, also dying, to talk about it, because it didn’t seem right, or even possible, to talk about it with those who weren’t dying. She didn’t know if she had any thoughts on it worth preserving, but she liked the idea of trying to find out. And it would, she thought, amuse her; it would pass the time. She wanted to record something soon because she feared something might happen to her brain. Her greatest fear had always been that her throat would close up and she would choke, but one day that week she suddenly said to me, ‘It could be the brain.’ I’d had to ask her what she meant, since this comment was made in no sort of context. ‘The brain,’ she repeated. ‘The cancer might get to the brain.’ Curiously, this didn’t seem to terrify her as much as the previous conviction that she would choke.

  She was self-conscious, being interviewed on tape. I was not present, neither was Frances – it was just her, and Hunter asking the questions and pretending she was a stranger, which was how she wanted to do it. Everything he asked her seemed to startle her and the tape is full of long pauses. She is constantly exclaiming, ‘Oh! Oh, I’ll have to get my head round that, wait.’ The waiting goes on and on, and often she’s obviously forgotten the question. The answers, when they do come, are mostly flat and strained. She announces that a great deal of what she is being asked to go over is ‘irrelevant’. This includes the whole history of her illness and of the treatment she was subjected to, and also the matter of whether she suffered a fatal original misdiagnosis – irrelevant, all of it. Nor does she wish to spend even a minute considering a question on the lines of ‘Why did this happen to me?’ Her attitude is ‘Why not me? I’m not a teenager … Only a little bit of a normal life
span has been lost … I’ve had fifty-six years – that’s a life.’

  It isn’t until she is prompted to describe her current state of mind that the tape becomes interesting and her tone less constrained. She describes first how happy she felt once she was out of the chemotherapy ward and back home, free from pain and with a new energy once she was on the steroids – ‘Such happy days,’ she says, ‘lovely, lovely days in my own house, being well looked after and showered with treats.’ This she reckons went on about six weeks and then she began to think not only that she was perhaps too happy but that there was something odd about this happiness – ‘How could I be happy when I was dying?’ She says it didn’t make sense and what was puzzling her also was another feeling, the sense that she was ‘bored with good days’. This shocked her, and one morning, when she’d woken very early, at five o’clock, she got a pencil and started jotting down why there were in fact many reasons for not being happy. The tears had come quickly then, virtually for the first time in a couple of months. She reads the list, of what she calls ‘losses’, on the tape and her voice breaks – ‘This is the sad bit,’ she whispers. It took her two hours to write and by the end she felt different. She realises she’d concentrated so hard on being happy that she’d ignored her grief. She is aware of a change in her state of mind ever since she made this list, but she can’t precisely describe it though she struggles to do so.

  This leads her on, surprisingly, to claiming to be lucky she is going to die soon, at this particular time – ‘If I die now, everyone is in a nice phase.’ Carefully, she goes round most of the family, stating what she sees as each individual’s alleged happiness. As a piece of self-persuasion it is remarkable, especially since she very noticeably skips over those ‘loved ones’ whose unhappy state is obvious to the rest of us. But no, she emphasises how good a time this is – ‘It strikes me profoundly’ – and even then says it makes her feel guilty – ‘I feel guilty because I’m lucky leaving at such a good time.’ Whatever disasters or tragedies are to follow she is relieved that she will not have to witness them. She gives the impression that waiting for her own death is becoming a worry, in case her rose-tinted view of the family’s contentment fails her; and this leads her on, in turn, to the general tedium of waiting. ‘What am I waiting for?’ She has nothing she wants to finish or do, and envies Dennis Potter – ‘He had so much to do in his last months, he was a man of zest, with a goal.’ She has no goal and she’d like one. Suddenly, near the end of the tape, she says ‘Dying isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’ Hunter protests that nobody said it was fun, and she explains, ‘But it’s made such a big thing of … it’s always made to sound dramatic – all the talk of last words and epitaphs … There are very few deaths not read as dramatic, and mine is so un-dramatic.’ ‘Not to us it isn’t,’ Hunter says.