by Alison Clink
I don’t know what to do, so I spray one of the antibacterial sprays I bought in Sainsbury’s around the study and in the general direction of the commode. I know it’s mad, but I’ve got into a habit of doing this when I’m not sure what else to do. I spray around the study door handle and the kitchen table near where Adrian is sitting.
‘What are you doing all that cleaning for? Are you afraid? You keep running away,’ he says.
I can’t tolerate people being rude to me, and yes, to be perfectly honest, I am afraid. Why would I not be? But I still won’t accept rudeness. I hold my anger in, sit down near him at the kitchen table, touch his hand.
‘Can you move me into the living room onto the leather sofa,’ he asks after a few minutes.
As we have a slippery leather sofa (which no one likes sitting on) and a squishy faux suede sofa, which could look as if it might be leather, I ask him which one he means.
‘There’s only one leather sofa,’ he snaps.
‘Don’t be rude to me,’ I say clearly and leave the room to get the sofa ready.
When I come back into the kitchen he says, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude to you.’ I’m holding back on tears, affection, fear and exhaustion.
‘That’s alright,’ I say.
All this against a backdrop of the memorial service for the death of Diana. One of the Dimblebys or some other voice-over drones on. There can’t be many people less interested in the memory of Princess Diana, and the charade accompanying her death, than my brother. This is so not his thing – or mine either. Although I admit to enjoying watching all the royals and celebrities arriving. I help him transfer from the chair he’s in to the wheelchair, wheel him into the living room and, with Darren’s help, lift him onto the leather sofa.
‘Can you close the curtains and I want to face away from the television.’
‘Shall I turn the television on?’
‘Yes, if you want. But I don’t want to watch it.’
‘Would you like me to sit with you?’
‘Yes.’
By now I’m feeling tearful. I put the living room television on, and like Prince Harry and all the gang in the chapel I rein my emotions in. Outside the chapel where the service is taking place a camera scans bystanders (one of whom when interviewed admits to having left home at four in the morning in order to be there) who are sobbing aloud over a woman they didn’t even know, most likely never met, probably never even heard speak more than a few sentences, and who died ten years ago. Another lady in the crowd is interviewed. She says she travelled overnight from Manchester to listen to this service from outside the church – a service which isn’t even being relayed on monitors. She has two young boys with her. She’s dragged her children along to support her, she tells the interviewer. Why would anyone do such a thing?
During all this, I’m here supporting my brother, or trying to.
‘Ali,’ he whispers. ‘I’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done for me now – in case I pop off.’
‘You’re not going to pop off!’
‘You will carry out my wishes, won’t you?’
I know what he means. He wants to be sure I’ll organise and carry out the alterations to his will. I try to reassure him I will do everything he’s asked, at the same time feeling slightly miffed that he feels the need to double check.
‘Everything’s in the green and white folder. All the instructions for the music I want played. And I’d like you to thank all my friends as well…’ His voice is weak. His eyes unfocused. I can feel him drifting away.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll do all the things you’ve asked.’
I get up and go into the kitchen to phone Peter at work because I simply don’t know what else to do.
‘You’re doing everything you can,’ Peter says. ‘And he’s not worse, is he? Maybe you should call the doctor again just for reassurance. All you can really do is to make him as comfortable as possible…’ As ever, Peter makes a critical situation seem less so. I take a chair from the kitchen and carry it into the living room placing it next to the leather sofa.
*
I’m sitting next to Adrian. I’m here now, sitting next to him, watching the duvet I’ve placed over him, moving ever so slightly up, and then ever so slightly down. I’m wondering why exactly he was so insistent about going into the living room. Was it to avoid having to lie again on that horrible iron hospital bed? Is he thinking ahead, making sure he’s not in the way when the new bed (which has been promised by the District Nurse following the disastrous night on the floor) arrives? For a change of scene? To be out of the study?
To die?
Maybe he doesn’t want to be in the study after last night. If only I’d come down when I heard him mumbling. I continue to keep an eye on the duvet as it rises and falls. Up a few millimetres, then down.
Eventually there’s a knock at the front door. The new bed has arrived, delivered by the man from Medequip who has a pony-tail, shaky hands and cigarette breath. The same man who has so helpfully delivered all the accessories relating to the terminally ill. He sets the bed up in the study then demonstrates to me the way the mattress pumps up.
‘You must make sure you let all the air out when you’ve finished with it,’ he says. ‘It must have all the air let out of it if you don’t need it any more.’
‘Why would I do that?’ I ask.
‘If you don’t need it any more, you have to deflate it.’
I still don’t get what he means.
The Medequip man stares at me patiently. Clearly he is loath to state the bleeding obvious, which is that when Adrian dies I won’t need the bed any more, and then I must unplug it to let the air out.
Eventually the penny drops.
‘Oh, I see.’
The Medequip man shows me how to let the air out.
*
In the evening a nurse arrives to settle Adrian into the new bed. I go out to collect the girls from Rosie’s house to deliver them to a party in Mells. I give a couple of boys a lift as well. They are young (naturally), just a bit older than Emily and Fran, but the type of boys who are full of themselves, too confident – probably the best looking in their year at school. The types all the girls go for. They unsettle me in two ways. They make me feel old and grumpy. And I notice Fran is being particularly quiet. Not her usual self. I can imagine why. I would have been the same at her age.
As I drop them off at the party I feel the pull of the kids’ excitement. Friday night at a friend’s party – and a sleepover. I, in contrast, am down, trapped. Imprisoned. Detached from the outside world. I decide to drive around for a bit, go for petrol, get Adrian a paper and feel much better by the time I get home.
Adrian’s sitting up in bed and looking a lot brighter. The diarrhoea seems to have stopped since he took the Imodium. Why the hell didn’t I give it to him before? Could I have saved all this suffering?
After we’ve eaten I begin to clear up so the kitchen is clean and tidy for the nurse who, following yesterday’s events, is booked to sit with Adrian throughout tonight. I’m so relieved about this. He will be safe with her keeping an eye on him from the kitchen. Meanwhile, I stay in the study with Adrian chatting while we wait for her, but by a quarter to eleven no one has turned up, or even phoned for directions. I ring Lifeline – which is where Lizzie comes from – Dorothy House and Out of Hours. I’m eventually told that no one is booked to come here for the night.
Great.
A very nice doctor then rings me, but I say we will be okay. If I hear any noises tonight I will certainly rush downstairs.
I sit on the lid of the commode next to Adrian’s new bed for a bit, making a conscious decision to stay with him for a chat instead of rushing off all the time to do things. Adrian looks ugly. One eye is closed and stuck together, even though I’ve just bathed it and put the antibiotic eye drops in. He asks for the walking stick and the commode to be moved so he can reach them both in the night.
‘But I’m not
going to bed yet,’ I say. ‘I’ll come in to see you and make sure you’re okay before I go to bed.’
‘Well, I’m not to know that,’ he says bad-temperedly. Are Adrian and I going to manage to stay friends, after all these years? As adults, we have never fallen out. We’ve always been friends. We’ve always got on. For fifty-five years we’ve been friends.
I sit down on the commode lid again, not to do anything, or spray anything, or ask anything, but just to be there – and to be quiet. With the use of his one good eye, he’s doing the crossword and asks for a book to lean on. As I reach for a book from the bookcase I notice the notes Lizzie has left in a folder. I pick up the folder and open it. There’s not much in there but one entry says ‘family v. supportive’.
‘Do you know, when I was lying on the floor last night I kept trying to remember Sharpe’s first name,’ Adrian says, looking up from his newspaper. ‘I kept trying to remember what it was to try to make the time go. I went through lists and lists of men’s names in my head. Names beginning with A then B and so on…’
I smile, but somehow I don’t get round to asking him whether he did remember it in the end.
I settle him, with the walking stick on the bed and the commode nearby.
‘Phone me or bang on the ceiling with your stick if you need me in the night,’ I tell him. ‘I hope you have a good night.’
‘I find it hard to get to sleep,’ he says.
I try to reassure him. ‘You might find it easier in this bed. It’s really comfortable, isn’t it?’ I’ve tried it out and it is majorly squishy – it literally swallows you up. This is the bed Adrian should have had from day one.
‘Yeah, thanks, Ali,’ he says.
Once I’m upstairs I hear him mumbling again, talking to himself perhaps, or maybe on the phone to someone. I’m so tired I try phoning him, rather than going downstairs.
‘Hello, Ali,’ he says. My name’s come up on his phone.
‘Are you alright, Adrian? Only I thought I could hear you talking.’
‘No, I’m alright. I was just clearing my throat,’ he says.
‘Okay. Goodnight.’
‘Byeee!’ he says in his high-pitched, happy voice.
Saturday 1st September 2007
I come down at seven-thirty. A new nurse arrives having driven around for a while, unable to find the house. Joanna is quieter than the other nurses, but gets on with the job of washing Adrian. She sits him up and I can hear them talking.
‘I had a good night’s sleep,’ he tells her. ‘Especially after the night before when I spent hours stuck on the floor.’
‘Oh, yes. I heard about what happened,’ Joanna says.
I come into the study after she’s finished. ‘Did you go to the loo in the night?’ I ask him.
‘No!’ He snaps the word and I feel as if I shouldn’t have asked. It’s such a personal question and obviously one I would never have dreamed of asking him before all this happened. Yet at the same time it’s such an important part of what’s been going on, I feel it’s not an entirely unreasonable thing to ask.
‘I feel really good after having a wash,’ he says. I go back into the kitchen to make up his medication, worrying in case we don’t have enough morphine. I’ll need to get some more today. Why do I always leave things until the last minute? It’s Saturday and I’m not sure we’ve got enough to last till Monday. I give him a cup of tea, a straw to drink it with, a pro-biotic drink, and a sachet of Dioralyte diluted in water.
‘Did you sleep alright?’ I ask him.
‘Like a log,’ he says. The thought passes through my writerly mind that this is a cliché and I almost point this out. However, although this is the sort of thing Peter might laugh at if I said it to him, Adrian might interpret it as criticism. So I bite my tongue and go back into the kitchen to get my own breakfast, leaving Joanna to clean the commode. I put my tea and bowl of cereal on the table and start opening today’s post. Most of it is for Adrian.
I’m about to take a mouthful of the cereal when I hesitate. My spoon is in my hand but hasn’t yet reached my mouth. In the study I hear Adrian’s breathing turn into gasps. About three or four gasps, as if he’s short of breath. Joanna is saying his name. There’s an urgency in her voice as she repeats his name over and over.
‘Adrian? Adrian!’ She’s still quiet but her voice sounds insistent, cross even.
A few moments pass and as I’m about to get up Joanna comes out of the study. She’s standing in the kitchen facing me.
‘I think he’s gone,’ she says.
*
I put the spoon down, hold my face in my hands. I’m already crying as I stand, leaving my uneaten breakfast and go into the study. Adrian has his head back on the mound of pillows I got from Sainsbury’s, with his infected eye still stuck together and the other one wide open, looking smaller and greyer than before. I go back into the kitchen. I’m shaking. Joanna embraces me and I think she’s crying too. A stranger who blipped into Adrian’s world in the last scene of the final act. A bit player with one line. The last line.
I don’t know what to do so I go back into the study, and come out again. By now Peter is downstairs and is filling the kettle.
‘He’s died,’ is all I manage.
‘Oh no,’ Peter says turning the tap off. He goes into the study and comes back out again. ‘No,’ he says. ‘He’s alright. He’s just taken a breath.’ Peter laughs. ‘He can’t have died – I just saw him take a breath.’
I feel silly now. My tears seem absurd. This is a very embarrassing mistake.
‘Oh,’ I say and go back into the study.
He is dead, though. The gasping after death is normal, Joanna says.
*
My friend, my companion, my brother is dead. Admittedly, not beautiful any more, but a man who loved the beautiful things of this world. Things like churches, cathedrals, the pyramids, the sight of horses galloping on a racecourse, a Wimbledon tennis court. The isles of Greece. Women. Music. Films.
A man who was fascinated by history and spent his lunchtimes familiarising himself with each of the Ancient Egyptian rooms in the British Museum. A man of contradictions who embraced smoking at the age of ten, carried an umbrella in the spring and wore a checked woollen scarf in the winter. A man who found a bunch of stones in a hospital forecourt and delighted in what they represented. A man who’d travelled halfway round the world and back. On his own. A single man.
He’d never been to Newcastle he said the other night apropos of nothing in particular. Even a few weeks ago he still wanted to see more things, do more things, visit more places, read more books. Place more bets. Drink more wine.
I go into the study again. He’s wearing his Wimbledon T-shirt. Yesterday’s Daily Mirror is by his bed, open on the crossword page. Some of the squares are filled in with scruffy lettering. The Innocent Traitor, bookmarked a quarter of the way in, and his 2007 racing diary are on the table along with three of the tablets he should have taken last night, his mobile, and a dose of Dioralyte. A lottery ticket for tonight is tucked underneath his glasses. His walking stick leans against the commode and his Panama hat is perched on top of the bookcase. I lean over him, hold his still warm body, put my arms around him and lay my head on his chest.
‘I loved you so much,’ I tell him at last.
NEWS OF ADRIAN’S DEATH
Written by Martin Philips – June 2014
I was in France when I got Ali’s message to say Adrian had died. So he had lived up to his own prediction. It had been a few years earlier, just after his heart bypass, that he first told me he was sure he wouldn’t see 60.
I suppose I didn’t believe him. Sitting in his local pub, he had been on good form, looking fit and joking about his mortality. ‘I’ve been on these’ (he waved his cigarette) ‘since I was 10. I’ve had a bloody good run.’ Said with that exaggerated, sing-song intonation which was his hallmark. ‘I said to the medics when they gave me [heavy emphasis] the plan for recovery – I don’t se
e my two pints of Young’s bitter on the daily dose.’ Now I wouldn’t hear my oldest friend’s distinctive voice again: just its echo in my mind when I thought of him. I did that now, in a series of disparate cameos.
The two of us posing for that photo on the scrubby campsite at San Eufemia in Italy’s deep south, with Mac and Richard: frozen in time, like the cover shot for an album that never existed. The all-night party in Golders Green where, on an upstairs landing, a technically inadequate would-be musician murdered Interstellar Overdrive on a Spanish acoustic guitar: Adrian’s wry one-line put down, ‘which planet do you come from?’ While still at primary school, any number of games of football in the rec, coats for goalposts, where we imagined we were players from the Spurs double-winning team. Painting the walls – and ceiling – of his bedsit in Leamington purple, using gloss paint by mistake, on the day he bought The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. Adrian and Lindsay comparing their vitamin supplement regime while each puffing on a cigarette: a collaborative damage limitation seminar. And the night he told me he expected to die young.
The final notice of his death was the full stop at the end of the last paragraph of the narrative he’d predicted. I sat quietly and listened to the echo accompanying memories of our collective back pages. I was to realise later that it was only a partial ending. In the years since, I often glance back at that book. The one where Adrian is forever young.
Written by Robin Ings – July 2014
Adrian was at our 50th reunion at Martin’s house in Brittany in the summer of 2006. I knew he’d had a serious heart by-pass operation. ‘Make mine a triple’ is all he had said about it. He was a very active person, always on the move, but now moved slightly more cautiously. He had not lost any of his sharp observation and wit. We said good-bye at Stansted Airport and went our separate ways.