The Man Who Didn't Go to Newcastle Page 16

  So, the weather is playing a significant role in his progress, although there isn’t a lot he can do here when it’s raining, except stay in bed, read or watch television.

  Sunday 22nd July 2007 ‘Matron said someone has been rude to you.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter,’ he says shrugging it off. Instead he wants to discuss money again. He’s back on the subject of his Life Insurance Policies and explains they are endowment policies. He wants me to decide what do to – cash them in or not. I still don’t understand what he means.

  ‘It’s up to you,’ I tell him.

  ‘No, it’s up to you. I’m not interested in money. I don’t want any Armani suits.’

  I don’t know how to respond. Talking about designer suits is so much at odds with his circumstances – and anyway when has Adrian ever worn designer clothes?

  Another thing he won’t give up on is his recent request for some ice.

  ‘I asked for some ice and the nurses say they don’t have ice. ‘Computer says no’,’ he says, imitating the recent Little Britain catch phrase. ‘They’re all in the fucking nineteenth century here. They’re not going to install broadband. They haven’t even worked out how to make ice.’

  We settle down to watch TV. He continually watches Sky News. There’s been so much rainfall there are floods all over the UK.

  ‘The whole country’s fucking sinking,’ he says and in a way it seems he’s right. The rain, the cold, floods – everything seems to reflect what we are going through.

  The news continues. People are floating, we are sinking, Madeleine McCann is still missing. Adrian harps back again to his finances.

  ‘I’d like to sell my flat to you for a fiver,’ he says.

  ‘That’s probably illegal,’ I say.

  ‘It’s mine. I can sell it for what I want.’ This seems logical but must surely be prevented by some law or other. He gives me a list of little things he wants me to buy for him and then he says he wants to change his will.

  ‘In what way?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I haven’t got it with me. I’ve lost power over my life.’

  This is so oppressive. Surely he had everything properly organised, will-wise. What about the DIY will the Malaysian nurse witnessed in St George’s? He must have thought things through then – and that was only four years ago.

  He goes on to talk about pain and discomfort. The cancer pain is getting worse. When I was looking for a home for him everyone told me to make sure I found somewhere offering palliative care – now we have ended up in a place that doesn’t. I’ve failed on the basics. But someone from Dorothy House – a hospice near Trowbridge – is coming to see him next Wednesday. They are the local version of Macmillan Cancer Support. He seems to be looking forward to this visit.

  Before I leave, Adrian asks me to do a couple of things for him.

  ‘Do you think you could find out on the internet any information about lung cancer and how it kills you? Oh, and C.diff too. And I’d like to look into having some kind of massage.’

  I’d suggested the idea of a massage after seeing an ad in our parish magazine for a peripatetic masseuse.

  ‘Maybe I could do the massage myself?’ I say.

  ‘But not with the rubber gloves on. It wouldn’t work well with rubber gloves.’

  Do I detect a note of annoyance at my attempts at hygiene? He’s right, though. Perhaps I could wait until the infection has gone and rubber gloves are no longer required.

  At night I search the net for information on lung cancer. There are some very unpleasant photographs of patients in the last throes but no descriptions of what gets you in the end. I’ve already googled C.diff and decide not to go there again. I don’t print any of this off.

  By the end of the day I feel bleak. I’m sinking, Adrian is sinking faster and, as he pointed out, half the country seems to be going down with us.

  Thursday 26th July 2007

  Another wet, cold July day. Fran and I go to the travel agents to deliver our letter confirming cancellation of our holiday. I buy a V-shaped pillow and a plug-in heated pad for Adrian from Argos, which makes me feel I’m doing something useful.

  When we arrive at St Vincent’s, I find Matron to seek her approval of the plug-in pad since my past experience tells me electrical appliances in these places have to be approved before use.

  Matey seems the type who doesn’t like to say ‘yes’ to anything per se. She observes the heated pad with furrowed brow, and is clearly trying to think of a reason to send it packing but sadly its plug is moulded onto the wire so she has to admit it’s okay.

  Then she hesitates. ‘The problem with this,’ she says indicating the pad, ‘is that the cloth cover might get dirty…’ She’s not using the word ‘diarrhoea’ but somehow she’s managing to shift that word from her brain to mine in a kind of thought transference. ‘…the cover of the pad might get dirty and then you would have to wash it.’

  So how is this small piece of material any different from anything else my brother has in his room? All the same, I agree with Matron. I will be the one to undertake the onerous task of washing this nine inch square piece of fabric, should dirt make its way thereon. She seems happy with this. I give her a post-dated cheque for three thousand two hundred pounds for the next month’s fees and she’s positively cheery.

  I find Adrian still in bed (it’s a rainy day) but he seems brighter. I’ve brought some ice but apparently the staff have already got some in for him. Progress indeed. But no newspapers. He’s been here for a week now and we asked for a Daily Mirror to be delivered on the first day – a newspaper from Monday to Saturdays being part of the package on offer – and still no paper.

  I go back out to buy him a paper from the local garage, while he watches the end of Columbo. Then we sit together. I read the paper while he’s watching an Agatha Christie film. He seems a lot more relaxed – but then there is a glass of wine by his bed.

  During the ads, he tells me a doctor called this morning because he wanted extra pain relief. This doctor told Adrian the cancer had ‘moved’ (does this mean spread?) about halfway down his chest. I wonder how he can tell this, but anyway he’s prescribed some steroid pills to ‘take the heat out’.

  ‘He also mentioned morphine but I’m not keen. He said it would be just a tiny amount at first and then gradually as things get worse… He didn’t need to go on…’ Adrian says.

  Adrian is also worried about the C.diff because he finished the course of antibiotics today, and he still has diarrhoea.

  This is indeed worrying.

  Friday 27th July 2007

  Adrian rings me in the morning to ask for the latest Alison Weir novel. In town I buy the book, Innocent Traitor, and head to St Vincent’s with the dog and lots of bits of paper. Adrian is sitting in the garden but it’s getting chilly. He has a glass of wine on the table in front of him and is propped up with three cushions, which he’s borrowed from a row of folded wheelchairs stacked at the back door. A male nurse comes out with a blanket and, as if he’s on a cruise and this man is the waiter, Adrian asks him to bring him more wine. Adrian is still good at asking for what he wants, which I find both practical and time saving. There’s nothing worse than trying to work out what someone wants when they are self-effacing and don’t want to bother those around them. With the blanket cosied around his legs he starts talking about money again. He’s trying to explain the insurance policies attached to his mortgage. I still don’t understand what he’s getting at. And he’s stopped smiling.

  ‘I want you to go to Putney and get my will from the flat. What I don’t want is for you to be in a mess after I’ve died. This is all for you. I don’t give a shit about any of it.’

  ‘Why don’t you just make a new will?’ I ask.

  ‘No. I want you to get the old one. It’s up to you now. I don’t give a shit.’

  But he does (give a shit) because he wants to alter his legacies. It’s cold and blowy so we go inside. Adrian is u
nsteady on his feet and is leaning on his stick. He says he can hardly walk now. I help him by carrying his wine glass.

  In his bedroom the sickening smell hits me at once. A foul mixture of paint and too much central heating. He tries to hang up his jacket and it slips to the floor.

  ‘Fuck it, fuck it,’ he says.

  Although it’s not directed at me, I’m uncomfortable with his anger. I hang up the jacket for him and start making the bed. The sheets have small bits of poo on them. Now I’m angry. Isn’t cleaning bed linen an integral part of nursing care? This is a nursing home after all. I help him into bed. He’s so tired. On my way out I tell one of the nurses about his dirty bed linen and ask her to change it. I return to the car feeling confused about his money issues and let down about the sheets. Shouldn’t eight hundred pounds a week entitle him to clean sheets?

  Saturday 28th July 2007

  I’ve got the girls passes for Center Parcs today and after dropping them off I turn round and make my way to St Vincent’s. The day is warm and sunny and as I arrive I can see Adrian outside at his usual table under the veranda. I’m surprised and pleased to see Phil Gullifer sitting next to him. I don’t know Phil very well, in fact I’ve only met him once before at Mum’s funeral. But I feel fond of him, probably because Adrian is. If I’d known him earlier we might have been friends. Over the years when Adrian talked about him I wondered what he was like. I soon realised he is a rather charismatic man and I saw within minutes of meeting him exactly why they are such good friends.

  I decide to back out, though. I think Adrian needs to have time alone with his friend. I’ve brought a packed lunch so I sit at the bench on the other side of their table and tuck into my cheese and pickle on brown. As I do so, I notice Phil’s reaction to Adrian. He’s trying to lighten things by making jokes. For example, when Adrian takes off his shirt because of the heat Phil says ‘I hope you’re not about to streak across the lawn.’

  But at the same time, Phil is being careful, bending to his friend’s every whim, passing him a pen, filling up his wine glass, agreeing with everything he says. They are talking about Adrian’s computer, which is to go to Phil because it holds all the data from the business. In the conversation, Adrian refers to this business as ‘my life’s work’, meaning all the stats he has on the computer. But is this really his life’s work? I’m sure he’s achieved a lot more than this in other ways. But then, come to think about it, I’ve heard myself say the same thing about my two unpublished novels…

  Maybe we’re not so different after all.

  As I’m about to leave, Phil is standing on the lawn looking up at the house.

  ‘Imagine all the people who lived here in the past,’ he says. ‘What an amazing family house this must have been.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I always think when I’m here,’ I say. ‘This house would have belonged to a reasonably wealthy family at one time. Just one family in such a huge house. It must have been a fabulous place to live. Plus all the staff people used to have.’

  I take my leave of Adrian and Phil and drive to Trowbridge to buy some nail clippers and a T-shirt for Adrian. Trowbridge is grim. Even for a determined shopper like myself there is little to tempt me. New Look is full of tunics which are in fashion this summer. Who decides what we should be wearing? Tunics make me look pregnant.

  I donate some of our old clothes and junk to the Help The Aged shop which was Mum’s chosen charity, then regret not keeping them for the Dorothy House shop in Frome. After putting some rubbish in the recycling bins I sit in the car and write out cheques for Adrian’s gas and electricity bills. When I can’t think of anything else to do I return to St Vincent’s. By the time I get there Phil has left.

  I give Adrian the nail clippers and the T-shirt and help him into bed. Phil’s visit has tired him but lifted his spirits. Exactly the function of a good visitor. I say goodbye, waiting for eye contact but he hasn’t been doing much of that recently. His eyes roll and his body leans away from me. But he does look at me (albeit briefly) and says ‘thanks’ with a half-smile, a dead smile, that takes in his lips but not the whole face. A smile nonetheless.

  My next job is to collect the girls from Center Parcs. There’s no phone signal there and I can’t find them so have a swim in the outside tropical pool on the off chance of spotting them on the rapids. As I splash about I think of the enjoyable things I have in my life. Adrian has nothing to look forward to, except maybe getting out of St Vincent’s. But whatever our circumstances I suppose we still look forward to something. Perhaps Adrian looks forward to seeing me and his friends. Perhaps he looks forward to his glass of wine, to the heat of the sun on his skin – when it finally appears. And of course no one knows how long any of us have got on this earth. I could be squashed by a falling tree, or eaten by an escaped lion from the Longleat estate this afternoon.

  However, neither of these happens. At the Center Parcs shop I buy a massage glove, oil and two massage brushes. I can give Adrian a massage even with the rubber gloves on if I use these. I find the girls outside the ice cream parlour and we go home. In the evening Fran and I experiment with the massage oils. I decide I’ll definitely do this for Adrian. I have to keep planning and doing things to try to make his situation more tolerable. Trying to fix things for him.

  Before I go to bed I google my name. The last time I did this, about a year ago, I was horrified to discover I was listed as a tattooist on a website for local businesses. The site even gave detailed directions to my house with a map to help potential customers find me. I want to make sure there are no new sites giving me an alter ego. Thankfully the reference to me as a tattooist has been deleted, but I notice a new entry by someone calling themselves ‘Womag’. This seems to be a magazine writer who’s written some comments on her website about my two latest stories in Woman’s Weekly. Of one, Chapter Thirteen, she says ‘this is wacky,’ and also describes it as being ‘laugh out loud’. She dissects another of my stories, which appeared in the same magazine called Things That Make Me Cry, and was about a shopping trip with Emily. She goes on to comment on the unusual structure I’ve used in both stories. I’m so chuffed. I must get back into writing and set up my own website.

  In bed I read yesterday’s paper where I see an advert for a competition to win a week’s holiday in the apartments we were due to stay in in Praia de Oura.

  I show Peter. ‘The catch is you have to go tomorrow,’ he says. ‘It’s probably our holiday they’re trying to get rid of.’

  Sunday 29th July 2007

  I’ve persuaded Fran to come with me to the flat. On Westbury station we meet a woman called Deb who used to be one of my students and is on her way to a writing course in Wales.

  I tell Deb I’m going to London for the day to ‘get something,’ which probably sounds rather enigmatic. She might be wondering what I’m getting in London. The will, in the back of the white filing cabinet in my brother’s flat in Putney. That’s what.

  We board the Paddington train and settle into our seats. As the train hurtles along towards London the sun burns my arm pleasantly through the window. The thought of Kyria and her girls in Portugal flits through my mind, and then flits out again.

  At East Putney Fran’s ticket won’t work in the machine at the exit but she manages to get out of the gate and we scuttle off towards Viewfield Road.

  We arrive at Adrian’s flat, which is becoming increasingly familiar and doesn’t have the effect of making me tearful and sentimental today – probably because I’m not alone. I find the things Adrian wants – his will and some other bits of paper, and whilst I potter about, Fran, who is suffering with a headache, has a rest on the sofa.

  We don’t stay long. Long enough to grab the will and the half-full bottle of Armagnac Adrian asked me to get. Back at East Putney both our tickets work fine, so we are on our way homeward.

  On Paddington mainline concourse we stop off at a Sushi bar for a late lunch. I’ve noticed this bar before, and have always wanted to try it.
Customers sit in a circle whilst little pots of exotic food travel around on a carousel in front of them. It’s a bit like collecting your luggage at an airport. If you don’t grab it fast enough and miss your preferred dish, you’re left red-faced wishing you hadn’t tried.

  We sit down ready to brave the possible humiliation of grasping unsuccessfully for our lunch. We manage to get what we want and anyway, a menu is involved, so it’s not as random as I’d imagined.

  While we’re eating, a girl on the other side of the Sushi track starts crying. Tears stream down her face. When Fran goes up to the till to pay she comes back and says, ‘Apparently the girl crying had a text that upset her. I overheard one of those women talking about her.’

  ‘Maybe she’s been stood up,’ I suggest.

  ‘Or maybe someone’s died,’ Fran says.

  ‘But surely no one would send a text to say someone had died.’ After I’ve said this I remember the emails I sent out to make sure everyone knew my mum had died, and to avoid embarrassing conversations in the street. But an email is different. I mean, a text!

  We arrive home at ten bearing one last will and testament, several other bits of paper and having braved the Sushi bar on Paddington station. Mission most definitely accomplished.

  Monday 30th July 2007

  Wandsworth Borough Council will foot the bill for Adrian’s stay in St Vincent’s Nursing Home. A lady called Louise rings me from Wandsworth with this amazing news. We will be refunded every penny we’ve paid. Wow.

  When I arrive at St Vincent’s Adrian is sitting outside with two women from the kitchen (cooks?) who are trying to persuade him to tell them what he’d like to eat. As he’s hardly eaten anything since he’s been here they’ve decided it’s time he did, suggesting omelettes, cheese salad, ham salad, shepherd’s pie, beef risotto, rice pudding, apple crumble, plum crumble. Fruit.