by David Loftus
And draw at a large table in the window, beautiful, lasting images?
Watched over
In the windmills of your mind
Your face moves along in the breeze
Over houses and places
And memories
Lasting forever.
So when the clouds pass over
And darken my eyes
When the past seems so sad
When I sit in the park on an autumn day
Surrounded by the mighty chestnut trees
The sun will still set
The moon will still rise
The birds will still sing and the grass still grow
When the memories of losing you still seem so close
The wind blows through the trees
I see, feel, hear
And remember
Love always,
JM
Jean-Marian 9 October, at home in Cheam.
Wednesday 10 October
Day three at the Mews
I’ve read and reread my sister’s poem. I’ve cried and instigated the foetal position for an hour or two. My overriding feeling is that I’ve been the crappiest of brothers to both Ian and Jean-Marian. I was so very lost after John died that all of my focus was on Mother, so that I didn’t have to think about myself and the guilt I felt over my part in poor John’s death. Guilt at not preventing the injection, guilt at being the surviving twin plus an overwhelming feeling that the wrong twin had died. Ian was a student and Jean-Marian an overworked nurse, Ian in Leicester and Jean-Marian in East London, he with a girlfriend and she with her husband. I guess I felt that, emotionally at least, they were being well looked after. I feel awful now, that John and I formed a team within a team, and that upon his death I remained solo rather than rejoining the team. Our family.
Thursday 11 October
Tick-tock runs the clock. Dinner at Colbert
This is my ‘difficult time of year’ when anniversaries are coming along, thick and fast. But this year is different, with the sorting of drawers, unopened documents, portfolio cases and photo albums. John was obsessed with Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London and he created an identity for the museum as a project when he was at art college, using his gouache-style of hand-painted typography, script and outline paintings of sculptures and interior details, cornices and borders. Yesterday, in among the drawings, I came across a small contact sheet of 35mm black and white photos. Images of busts and clocks, interior and exterior details, and there, hidden among them, frame 18A, there is a blurry but smiling Johnny. Frame 36 is a portrait of Samantha so she must have taken the pic of John, big chunky jumper as usual, scarf around his neck, passing a huge Grecian bust of an unknown god, Zeus-like (the bust, not John). Finding a picture of John that I have never seen before feels very special indeed, however soft and ghostly.
I often leave music playing on shuffle at the Mews. I like to come in to lights and the sound of music, it stems from living alone at the boat. Tonight, when Ange and I wandered in, Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxygène was playing. Synths and blips and the sounds of a Francophile ‘outer space’, so ahead of its time when it was released. I bought the album, my second only to Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, at a tiny record shop in Hove near Brighton with John. We thought we were oh so cool, paying with record tokens on one of the picnics in Rottingdean.
It’s hard to put into words the enormity of the sudden awareness of being a ‘crap brother’. I guess in my subconscious I felt they were covered, as long as I could persuade Ian to stay at college, to find good in the medical ethics of our mother rather than the confused and blurry ethics we had just experienced. That he could use the appalling time we were going through to remember that most people go into medicine to do good, to care, to heal, to cure, not to act like God, for money, for power, for ego.
Friday 12 October
Day five with Mini at the Mews
On 12 October John was readmitted for radiotherapy, but that evening he again developed a severe headache and was in obvious discomfort. At Samantha’s request, Dr S saw John but he decided that no further action was needed other than observation and painkillers. Dr S’s first response to Samantha’s request for help with John’s headache was to ‘try slapping his face’. Samantha was desperately upset. Unable to get any help from Dr S, she telephoned Mother at her surgery. When Dr S was cross-examined at the Coroner’s Court, he flatly denied ever saying this, despite it being a criminal offence to lie when giving evidence under oath.
I spent the evening of the twelfth with John. He was in pain but sleepy, and I remember that Samantha was incredibly upset at what Dr S had said, as was Mother. I believe complaints were made. The general feeling among our family was that Dr S was not fit to be a doctor in any hospital, let alone a cancer hospital where so many are so desperately ill. Nurse Douglas, Johnny’s favourite nurse, was also visibly upset by Dr S’s comments. Sadly, none of them were called to witness by the coroner at the inquest. A lie is a lie, and a lie under oath is a crime, but ultimately a crime no one cares about but one or two people. And it wasn’t the only lie that Dr S would tell that day.
Saturday 13 October
The Mews
Balmy October days
On 13 October, against Samantha and Mother’s wishes and despite their concerns, John was sent home. He was still suffering from severe headaches, and he was put straight to bed. Samantha made it very clear to the nurses, to Nurse Douglas and to Dr S that she was upset about John’s treatment and that she was not happy about his condition. She was particularly worried that the course of intravenous antibiotics had been stopped and that they had not given sufficient time to see whether the headaches would subside and ensure that the meningitis would not reoccur.
That night John had the cow bell beside him and he rang it several times, complaining of terrible headaches. I barely slept, one ear always alert to the bell’s ring. Mother and I looked after him as best we could. We were exhausted and worried, and overwhelmed with a sense of fear. Running along that corridor to the toll of the cow bell is one of my many recurring, lying-awake nightmares.
Sunday 14 October
The Mews
Rainy Sunday bloody Sunday
Visited Mother this morning and we talked about restless, madness-filled nights, lack of sleep and whether, ultimately, after extreme trauma, one ever sleeps a full night again. A night can be filled with so much love – Ange, the Ps, John, Mother, Father – but is often coupled, particularly with those who are recently grieving, the left-behinds, with feelings of guilt, self-loathing, rage, self-pity. The difference with me, as a lone identical twin, is that those feelings have not lessened. Mother said today, out of the blue while trying to spot jays in the trees, ‘You know that to say one can “come to terms” with one’s grief is frankly ridiculous, one never “comes to terms” with it, not at all, one just learns how to live with that grief, that’s all one can hope for.’
Mother asked me about Jean-Marian’s poem and I told her how touched I was by it. ‘Darling boy, do you think all this delving into your memories is proving a cathartic experience?’ I don’t know the answer yet and I told her so. ‘But I think it’ll make me a better brother to Jean-Marian and Ian. I feel that as the surviving twin, I have neglected to be a good brother.’
‘Dear, dear David, you couldn’t have been anything other than as you were and you must have no reproach. I, however, feel that I have been less than the perfect mother. I should have known, I should have noticed signs. John once asked me if there had been any family history of cancer in the family, and I said no. I had a feeling that he knew.’ I told Mother that it wasn’t anything but a fear of brain tumours, the horror of them, Billy from Ontario’s tumour.
On Wednesday 14 October, after another restless night of sleepless nursing, painkillers and cold compresses on poor John’s aching head, Mother and I helped him into the car and drove him slowly to his radiotherapy appointment as an outpatient. He
was still suffering from severe headaches, and Mother asked Nurse Douglas if John could be seen by the on-duty doctor. Dr S was on. He said he was too busy to see John, but he asked the nurse to carry out some tests and John was taken away into a side room. He should have been seen by a doctor, and Mother was unhappy. John was quite clearly suffering from meningitis and in any other hospital and circumstance would have been seen by a doctor immediately. But Dr S was still too busy. Mother noted in her legal statement later that if ‘the diagnosis of meningitis had been made, the subsequent tragic events may have been avoided’.
We were told to give John analgesics (painkillers) and to wait to see how he felt the following day. Mother and I were sick with worry. Somehow, as I sat with John until Samantha arrived, Mother went back to her surgery to check on her own patients. She was under enormous strain, was limping badly from a previous broken hip, rushing backwards and forwards, frustrated beyond belief about the way S had been.
That night John barely slept, a terrible night of awful headaches, nausea and a temperature, an unnecessary night of horror for all and extreme pain for John, the drugs barely scratching the surface of his discomforts. It was the first time, other than the ‘slap his face’ comment, that I felt fury towards the hospital. I couldn’t comprehend the sheer incompetence, the lack of respect and the lack of care they were giving John. At that point it felt almost personal, deliberately cruel and I couldn’t bear it.
Monday 15 October
Shooting in London, which is as grey as London can be, easy to forget after an endless summer.
Awoke after another restless night to the song of a wren outside the bedroom window. Tiny mercies.
After John’s atrocious night, Dr S refused to see him and then went home. But we insisted that he was seen by a doctor. Mother had to force the issue as John’s headache was desperately bad. Another doctor had seen John in the afternoon, far too long after we had reported his extreme headaches, but she, too, was too busy. She told us what was by now blatantly obvious, that John probably had meningitis. They didn’t have a bed for the dreaded lumbar puncture so he was again transferred to the neurology unit. I stayed at home, trying to finish a commission. I must have made a terrible job of it, I was so distressed. Meanwhile it was confirmed that poor Johnny had another serious bout of meningitis. He was immediately placed on intravenous antibiotics and he remained there for another fraught night. I saw Debbie and Peter that night but I must have been awful company, I was so upset that John had endured so much additional pain, and later that evening I suffered one of my worst-ever migraines. I took three Solpadeines and went to bed tearful and frightened. That night I prayed more than I’d ever prayed in my life, since the days when John and I prayed together, in our red cotton dressing gowns with tassels that we would chew on, with Strawbod and Ted.
Tuesday 16 October
Sitting on the boat in Chelsea
On 16 October poor John was transferred by ambulance, back to his familiar nurses, under Nurse Douglas, and back into the care of the doctors on the oncology ward. Sitting now on the deck of the boat in the October sunshine, with the clearest blue sky, the water silky and millpond flat, watching the herons and the cormorants drying their wings, I no longer feel the intense anger of the time, just an immense, unhealing bruise of sadness. Anger just eats away, infects other feelings and memories. With time, somehow, one learns to deep-breathe through those moments and they lessen and lessen. Visiting John on his return to the oncology ward, half-asleep but suffering, it really had begun to feel like a ‘them and us’ situation.
Poor Samantha was now on an almost constant, exhausting vigil to make sure John was treated correctly and with gentle care and respect. Mother was backwards and forwards between hospital, The Beeches and surgery and I was filling in as many gaps as I could. We knew, collectively, that John’s current suffering was the result of a lack of care, and Dr S came in for most of our ire. We desperately wanted him to be treated by someone else and his bosses vaguely agreed to this. The neurology unit, meanwhile, had become the place, in our mind, to patch up the errors of the oncology department, always on the end of a phone, monitoring, asking and caring.
A few friends popped in to see John. He was too ill for any more radiotherapy and the focus was on trying to cure his meningitis. They often brought books and magazines, but reading was too difficult, so he looked through a Tintin, Asterix or two, and a biography autographed to him from cricketing legend Sir Len Hutton. I would read the odd feature from The Independent, fill him in with the cricket season, but he spent a lot of this time heavily sedated and sleeping.
At one point his lovely boss Peter popped in, as he often did, and sat with him. John told me later that he was going to carry on with driving lessons and give up riding the Monkey bike (too dangerous!). He pointed out of the window. In the car park was a VW Golf, very trendy at that time. Peter had apparently lifted him out of bed, carried him to the window, and pointed at the car, saying, ‘See that car, it’s yours. Your company car waiting for you when you are well again.’ I had brought him some of his favourite Molly’s apple pie, which she was now baking on an almost weekly basis. John was so funny, he ate most of it, but then hid the plate because he didn’t want to offend the hospital kitchens by appearing to prefer Molly’s fare.
* * *
I bumped into a friend, Jeremy King, at The Wolseley over breakfast this morning and he kindly asked if I ‘was really all right?’ I answered ‘No, not really, but I shall be fine.’ We talked of perfect storms where all the conditions come together at the wrong time, in perfect harmony, to create a perfect storm. Just now a red admiral butterfly fluttered past the boat, risking its delicate all by flying low and fast over the water. That moment, watching its chaotic flight across the rippling Thames brought back memories of the night of 15 October 1987, the Great Storm, when the beech trees all around The Beeches swayed alarmingly, groaning down to their roots, the night the old plum tree came crashing down and the night that, somehow, the ambulance men battled their way through falling trees and crushed cars between Banstead and Wimbledon, all because a doctor was ‘too busy’ to see a young man with meningitis.
Wednesday 17 October
At Fortnum & Mason for the launch of their Christmas book, written by Tom Parker Bowles and photographed by me. Shoot on the thirty-sixth floor of The Shard for Shangri-La Hotels and in Bermondsey with the beekeepers, the fudge makers, the sausage makers, and the vegetable suppliers – a full day in which the rain did not stop falling. A classic perfect example of a day where, however ropey I feel, I can hide behind my profession and I realize how lucky I am to have that luxury.
17 and 18 October were quiet days for John, uncomfortable and painful with endless headaches. I remember at one point he said, ‘I thought the operation had been to get rid of these headaches,’ and I couldn’t have agreed more. He had a few visitors but wasn’t well enough for any more radiotherapy. He was fed up and restless but, as ever, uncomplaining.
Thursday 18 October
Shooting with my dear friend Andy Harris for his company Vinegar Shed in his Pitshanger Lane garden
I loved today’s shoot. It was good to be with Andy, chewing the fat, teasing, reminiscing, taking pictures, filming his bees, harvesting his honey, his vinegar, his quinces and medlars. He’s like Richard Briers in The Good Life; he even made me urinate outside as apparently it stops the foxes crapping on his vegetable patch.
Friday 19 October
By the nineteenth John’s condition had deteriorated. He was at times semi-conscious and in constant pain. After another lumbar puncture, it was decided to again transfer him by ambulance back to Neurology where he could receive more attentive and specialized treatment. He was now, once again, seriously ill, but at least the focus was now on his meningitis and getting him over it. He had been looking forward to our birthday, still twelve days away, and we’d planned some gatherings of chums around his bedside. Though he was so ill, we tried to feel positive as we we
aved our way through the fallen trees in the roads, some still impassable, back to the neurology unit, but it was hard. Every time John seemed to be on the mend another setback slapped him down.
As soon as John was admitted he curled up and went to sleep, only to be awakened continually for his vitals to be taken. He was weak, thin and in pain, although he still had a faint tan and his hair had stopped falling out with the break in his treatment. It was painfully hard to watch him like this.
* * *
In the last few days it feels like autumn has at last begun to arrive, leaves are turning, cold mornings when the cover of the duvet makes getting up that little bit harder. As the trees turn through reds and browns I will forever be reminded of the walk up from the station, up the hill to the hospital, legs like battling against a sea of treacle, heavy-hearted and stressed, shoulders and head drooped against the wind, the carcasses of fallen trees everywhere, the year autumn came with an almighty crash.
Saturday 20 October
The Mews, a clear blue sky
Each day that week I’d take that lonely walk up to the hospital that had done so much to try to save poor Johnny, to find him no better, and often slightly worse. For four days he had daily lumbar punctures, now not to test the infected cerebral fluid but to relieve the pressure the fluid was causing on his brain, intensifying his nausea and his headaches to such an extreme that often he was barely conscious, just curled in a ball and looking more and more like a frail and poorly child. Each day was gut-wrenchingly, heartbreakingly awful. I was worn out with tiredness and worry, but this was always unsaid and unshown. Compared to the suffering poor John was going through, which was beyond my comprehension, it was nothing. Samantha was also exhausted, almost permanently by his side, stroking his hand, his hair, cooling his feverish brow.
The last day he’d spent in Oncology, John had asked me to shave him. I’d made a couple of fairly timid attempts before, mainly with an electric, but his whiskers were quite long and it’s not easy to do to someone else. He was worried that if the hair on his head was falling out it might start getting patchy and we talked about shaving it from his head too, but he hated the thought that he might look like a cancer patient, which he still didn’t. As he lay there in the neurology unit I was glad that I’d managed it, he looked so young, and I thought the younger he looked the more care they’d take of him.