by Joe Hammond
I couldn’t have known it at the time, but a lot more became visible to me in the days following my bad news, and I don’t think I’m alone in being someone who walks around with all kinds of weaknesses that go back many years – almost as far back as it’s possible to go in a life. In the hours after Doctor Tiago diagnosed me I would not have been aware of this, of the soreness and the calcification that had existed for all this time. And that’s why the very worst kind of bad news – whilst seeming, of course, really bad – can also perform the same function as a brace applied to wonky teeth, or metal pins through the spine. It can take some time for its brutal benefits to become clear.
When I now look back at that early devastating comprehension of my condition, I see that it was necessary, in a way, to dig and scoop away at an area that should have long ago been knocked through – like a section of blown plaster after a leak; as if this wasn’t simply bad news, or advanced notice of a premature end, but also a long-overdue resolution.
*
I spent five days crying. There were intermissions when I could build fantastical, ornate wooden tower blocks with Tom. These periods enabled fresh fluids to be taken in, so that I could begin again at night-time or during the school day. During those nights I awoke several times to cry. Often I had just been dreaming of the diagnosis. And then, sitting up in bed, the expectation was that the day would flow in to dissipate and dissolve. When it didn’t, it was as if dreams had lost their function. It was an unschooling of the ways in which bad dreams are meant to be dispersed. Sleep was diminished. And waking was never quite achieved.
I had no previous facility for crying. No track record. I think I could take the image of Doctor Tiago in his white coat and replace it with one in which he wears a white hard-hat. Tiago the Engineer, overseeing a vast hydroelectric power plant. He had pressed a button or pulled a lever, because it began in that moment. It swelled up somewhere from a series of large, loosely fitted metal parts. So that I was just a vessel. A pipe. A tap. A drain. I was not the beginning and not the end. Something is running through me. I’m in the car or lying in bed and all the metal parts of Tiago the Engineer’s vast hydroelectric power plant burst and split, and then the water comes.
I now realize what Doctor Tiago and the other neurologists were doing. It was quite an artifice. I admire it now because it helped me a great deal. They dispersed my fears with their wonderful array of smiles. They needed me slouched against walls, bored, complacent. Because if I had been led incrementally towards diagnosis, I would never have gained entry to this vast hydroelectric power plant about which I had never previously been aware. They have to lead you towards it while simultaneously keeping it outside your field of vision. And suddenly, there you are, with other people who’ve made the same journey. Other recipients of this sudden violence. Perhaps they feel it in other ways: as a conscious fall from a high place or perhaps a sense of having misplaced something important, like the whole universe. In this place of vast latent power and unfathomable depth. And without this place, or outside this place, loss is never really felt. Outside, loss is dispersed, and becomes a kind of unseen haze. But here, down here, it’s felt. I found this out. Down here there is nothing but feeling it. The power of it.
I can walk for miles in this underground cavern and remain as I am. And I do. But up above my children are growing older. They’re living a life with Gill in a place I don’t know. And all the time I can see them from here. A life that works. The boys older. Life happening. I’m not getting closer to any of this. It just gets smaller and darker and fainter as it disappears into the distance. And then the water comes. And then it comes. And it does.
*
I was eating scrambled eggs, watching the milk pump out from Tom’s mouth as he spooned up his cereal. It was a natural and effective overflow that meant he didn’t have to regulate the amount of milk or cereal he was shovelling in. Gill had her back to us, making packed lunches, and over Tom’s shoulder I could see Jimmy trying to mount a sofa that was several hands too high for him. I got up and went through to the bedroom to lie down on my side. I pulled the pillow into my bottom lip and squeezed my face together, wringing it out, so that the pillow became damp around my eye socket. I could hear Gill telling Tom to get his shoes on. Then my diaphragm started chugging. It felt like hiccups but was more rapid and rhythmical. More like a pulsing. I rolled over on to my back and pulled the pillow into my teeth. There’s an ambient, wheezing noise that accompanies this kind of sobbing – a layer of treble that makes it sound as though I’m pleading for some kind of mercy. I had a toy once that made this noise when you turned it upside down. It was supposed to sound like a cow, but it was more like a smoker’s wheeze. I was tucking my knees into my chest and breathing more steadily now. I heard a door open in the next room, and Gill was stating something assertively. I knew that she was gathering up Tom’s schoolbag and I wanted to say goodbye. I could tell the episode was almost over and I sat up on the edge of the bed. This was the functionality of tears that I became used to in those five days. I knew I needed a moment after the exertion, like knowing when I need a cup of tea. I had my hands on my knees and looked around. Nothing had changed. Then I went back into the kitchen.
When the crying came at night, I’d be squeezing the duvet in my fists and thinking very acutely of the physicality of Tom and Jimmy. It must have been something close to focused meditation because I would imagine their current form, then focus in on the changes that I imagined would take place in their bodies in the years to come. I would imagine the lengthening of Tom’s lean legs and the broadening of his V-shaped jawline. I imagined the fine, fair hair that would appear on his face. I imagined his length and strength and the cheekbones that would one day underline his gaze. With Jimmy, I love and marvel at the width of his feet and hands. I imagine him continuing to be broad and solid. His shoulders would thicken and his jawline would be rounder than Tom’s. I imagined him shorter than Tom but more burly. In Jimmy’s case I also felt guilt that I knew his physical shape and form, but that he would never remember mine. He would often nap on the bed with his chin cupped in his hands and I would talk to his sleeping body and tell him how sorry I was.
Over the Portuguese winter it rained continuously in the mountains, and the eucalyptus that burnt all summer now smelt green. Descending the mountain, we’d wind down through these forests and the warm microclimate inside the car created ideal conditions for precipitation. Any thought or awareness or reflection simply switched it on. The road snaked and seemed to further dislodge all the salty snotty liquid within. I could have leant forward and found the button on the dashboard. And it would come, rising up through the pipes pooling inside my head. Then I’d hit the button again and it would stop.
During those days it felt like some figure was cutting around me with a pair of scissors; moving me with the blades to cut close and accurately. And as the paper turned, more of me would drop down and I knew that it wouldn’t take long for the scissors to have made their whole way round. I would be imagining the boys and Gill. Living in a place I might not know – a life that worked but which was alien to me. The boys older. Life happening. And I was looking at all of this from the outside. I clung to Gill, but I saw her and Tom and Jimmy connected by something that I wasn’t. They seemed somehow in place and as they should be. And though I was holding on, I wasn’t connected in the same way. Until this time I’d just assumed that we were formed from a single piece. That something like this could never happen. A little family of four pinched into human form and then hardened. Set. Finished. So that one figure could never be the person outside observing all these parts. That it would necessarily become a complete form made up of three figures is one of the things I discovered in this cavernous place. This is a concept that I looked at and looked at and looked at and looked at again and again, and I could not understand it. And all the moments that had upset me in the past were in one place. And this moment of upset was in another place. It was an entire physical feeling.
And when it came my body curled inwards like a fortune-telling fish on a hot palm.
*
When the five days of tears came they filled the spaces I had never known. Unused rooms. Forgotten rooms. The places where I might have been. It crashed through barriers and washed away impediments like they were blades of grass. It carried me away – it carried everything away. I bobbed on the surface of this rising, moving water, my arms outstretched – a little man being carried away. There was no need to call out; there was no other way to travel; only water. Nothing was left behind. No selves in tiny corners, no scary thoughts left buried. A bowl of chocolate ice cream, which I ate when I was five, went by upon the surface of the flood. A teacher half remembered, a scrap of brown carpet, the car I crashed when I was seventeen, a painted wooden block – all bobbing in the water along with me.
At the end of those five days the water seeped back into the ground and the emotions left behind were those that I had never allowed myself to fully know or really feel: vulnerability for what I was and am and will become. Very simple feelings. I’ve had conversations about the value of laughter, but I no longer believe it is the best medicine. At the end of my five days of crying, I felt calmer and more at ease than at any time in my life. I could have held out my hand and weighed myself in my palm and guessed exactly to a gram the scale of this little life of mine. I knew myself in those dark days. I felt quieter. I listened to the loss and knew exactly where and who I was. It felt like a gift. Extremely small, yet conspicuous against a dark background. Like something reclaimed.
Cuckmere Haven
When we arrived, the land around this white-clad Welsh farmhouse seemed flat and overrun. Long grass sprouted in the vegetable patches next to a rusting red tractor, tilting into the ground. And strewn across this wide, unkempt area were the remains of various long-disused bicycles.
This was the late 1970s and I was eight or nine years old. The house was something to do with my mum’s boyfriend at the time and he was taking her there for the weekend. I was travelling down with them in the rear of his VW camper, staring out at the M4 between the backs of their heads.
The interior of this communal household was shabby, with fabric throws and decrepit painted wooden furniture. The house smelt fetid with incense and things left unwashed – like something coming to an end. Several families lived there and a few, like us, were just passing through, but I didn’t form a connection with the other children. For the days of our stay I largely played in the garden with a bicycle rim or sat in the camper reading comics. But on both mornings I was up early and came down to the warm kitchen where a huge side of communal bacon hung from a piece of cord. It looked very different from the bacon we kept in a packet in our fridge and I’d watch people taking to it with a knife. It was shredded and ragged and I remember I found it so grotesque I couldn’t stop looking at it. Various wonky-looking people would come down for breakfast and slice what they wanted. I didn’t know what we were doing in this house, and no one said very much, so I stationed myself on a stool in one corner of the kitchen watching the hanging piece of meat sway to a stand-still.
The other clear memory I have is of going to sleep with five or six other children in a large double bed. I don’t think this was in any way a playful experience or something fun, because I remember the moments before bedtime and the panicked visual search for better options – like the search for a tree root when sliding off a cliff. I was feeling uncomfortably wedged in and wishing that I was one of the children on the edge of the bed. I was surprised by the situation, but I can’t recall if I saw the night through or if I found an alternative for the second night. Though at least eight years old, I was still wetting my bed, so I imagine this was a large part of my reluctance.
On one of the days, all the adults took magic mushrooms together and everyone got into various vehicles and set off to the beach. It was a pebble beach at high tide, in autumn or winter. It’s possible I might have noticed changes in people’s behaviour but I’m not sure. We were just a collection of people going to the beach for the afternoon. I have no recollection of my feelings at the time – quite the opposite, in fact – only what happened in the moments after we arrived. I didn’t join the others; I didn’t walk down on to the beach – I just stood there looking down at the group on the beach. I only remember the adults, but there may have been children – there must have been because it was a large group of people; I just know I wasn’t with them. I was standing apart from the others on a bank about twenty feet above, on a shallow cliff of sand and stone.
I had gathered stones in my hand and I was looking down at them. They were a mixture of blues and creamy shades of speckled eggshell. A few moments later I started throwing my carefully selected stones at the group and I noticed that the blue flat ones seemed to arc and zip through the air, so that they landed with some speed and unpredictability. I could loop them upwards or sideways but, whichever way I threw them, the men and women below would sway or jump, flicking their heels behind them like nervy colts. I wasn’t conscious of wanting to hit anyone and I didn’t go chasing anyone with the stones. It was more mesmeric than this.
In the first few moments there was a lot of confusion and, from what I now know, I think what they had collectively taken would have made it hard for these people to establish what was real or imagined. But as they became more aware of my presence, and kept their eyes fixed on the trajectory of the stones, they were able to part like schools of fish. And they would alternate between evasive measures and the heightening ferocity of the way they addressed me; the snarling of their features and the shouts they made – the tearing shapes they made with their mouths. And then it stopped or I imagine it stopped. I don’t know how this ended. I have no recollection; just of the throwing and the people below. And that was it.
*
Even though the world appears to be still, when looking up at birds circling overhead it can feel even more still in comparison to what’s above. So that if you crane your neck upwards for any length of time, at some pigeons or a pair of kites or, as in this case, seagulls – your tongue feels heavy in your throat and something giddying happens, as if the rotating planet has inadvertently revealed itself. You might even tip back at the base of the neck, or feel that you are about to, until you stretch your arms out sideways and take a balancing step backwards, your tongue loosening and your throat softening, as you steady yourself on the even more stationary world.
When the piece of carpet and the bowl of chocolate ice cream floated by, so did this boy, but largely forgotten and still up on that cliff with stones in hand, after all this time. And now it feels like such a simple thing to go up there and take his much smaller hand in mine or just to stand up there with him for a time, looking out at what he can see. We might even forget about those people below, as if they never existed. I don’t know what we’d do – just something that felt comfortable for this little boy. It seems so simple to me; such a simple action. To come down from this place after such a long time.
We’d come home; I’d tell my sons to budge up on the sofa. We’d wrap him up in blankets and then carry on as normal – just doing things and reading books and cooking and playing and arguing over whether it’s one or two biscuits. The same things that we always do but with this other person present, as if he always had been.
*
Three years before the stones upon the cliff, my parents had been in the process of separating. From what I remember, people in that house lived quite separately and there was often a lot of shouting at night, so that by the time we did come to leave I don’t think I was disappointed.
I suppose this home had shared a particular feature with the homes of all unhappy families. If you enter any of these places and climb the stairs, you’ll find on the top step at least one breakfast-bowl-size indentation in the carpet: one central indentation for homes with an only child, one more for each child between the ages of four and twelve. It’s where the children perch in their nightwear, elbows pr
opped on knees, hands holding up saggy faces, silently absorbing the shrieky, spitty ping-pong of Mummy and Daddy’s complaints below.
I can record most of what I heard from the top step because the same script played out again and again for both of them, at intervals of between one and three years, with so many different partners. So they just went on from this situation, spinning and spinning into other relationships that ended with the same unhappiness.
My mum was in her mid thirties, tall and pretty, with long straight dark hair. Her face and neck gave the impression of being somewhat elongated, or stretched, and angled ever so slightly upwards, as if this aspect of her body was trying unsuccessfully to get away from something objectionable lying on the ground. She was a little skittish and nervous but, in her relationships with men, there always seemed to be a random moment when one too many outrages would send her spiralling and shrieking, like one of those circular fireworks that spray out sparks from a standing position, in all kinds of directions.
I think at this point in their lives they were both having affairs and upsetting each other with some abandon, and there seemed to be some mutually enforceable night-time dance in which the full details of each other’s betrayals gave vent to what was most combustible. One of the strange features in my father’s character was that these were the only occasions in which he would properly grin and let other people see his teeth. He was swarthy with deep-set blue eyes, and long dark hair that he’d often stroke backwards from his brow, and with his pursed mouth he had developed a brooding, noirish demeanour. It was fairly subtle at this stage in his life – and he was just a few years older than my mum – but as he aged, and had more dental work done, or when his gums naturally receded, he had to make a conscious effort, when smiling, to pull his top lip down as far as possible over his dentures.