The Man Who Didn't Go to Newcastle Read online

  *

  On my way back to the station the East Putney streets are scented with wafts of purple and white lilac. I walk past the millionaires’ semis with their metal grilled windows on the suburban back streets leading towards the traffic lights, past Whitelands College in West Hill. London suddenly seems like a city for young people. I realise I don’t belong here any more. I’m no longer a part of the lifestyle in the way I was twenty-odd years ago – before I took the route of country wife ensconced in rural Somerset.

  I change trains at Earls Court and sit down opposite two young men who are talking loudly in a theatrical way. I soon gather they are theatrical. They’re talking about opening nights and scripts.

  ‘I’d love to meet Carol,’ one of them gushes. ‘I’m so sure we’d really get on!’

  ‘I’d so love to meet Carol too!’ his companion enthuses.

  What’s this all about? How do they both know about Carol if neither of them has met her? Possible I suppose, and this non-meeting of Carol evidently isn’t a problem. They are both smiling, chatting so happily.

  My mind backtracks to Adrian and his women. When he had the heart op I realised he had two girlfriends, both called Carol. Carol (without an ‘e’) his girlfriend from at least thirty years ago when he lived in Cheltenham, and Carole (with an ‘e’) who, until recently, was his cleaner. Carol (with no ‘e’) has supported him through this week in hospital – and she will no doubt support him in the next weeks, months, years…? I consider her to be my closest ally in all of this.

  I’m heading for Waterloo mainline, but the tube train I’m on stops at Westminster and shows no sign of starting again. The doors remain open. Most people carry on reading papers or staring into space. A few look concerned. Eventually an announcement informs us there’s been a passenger incident. I feel deeply anxious, an anxiety instilled in me during the IRA bombings in Central London. Two girls wearing identical stripy tops are talking about getting off and walking to Waterloo mainline so I follow them off the train.

  At the exit these girls stop to take photos of each other by the river. I don’t like to stop as well in case I seem like a stalker. Anyway, I recognise where I am now and carry on across Westminster Bridge finding myself on the other side of the river outside St Thomas’ Hospital. This is where Adrian was born. Where his life began. I notice a couple of BUPA adverts on advertising hoardings. BUPA was where Adrian worked as a statistician for ten years before travelling to Saudi Arabia. There seem to be reminders of my brother jumping out at me everywhere in this bustling city.

  At Waterloo station I bump into a smattering of Ascot types tipsily striding across the concourse. They look out of place amongst the commuters and other young people with knapsacks who litter most of London. With the chaps smarter than smart in grey morning suits and top hats, the gals sporting haute couture dresses, they look like a group of Brideshead Revisited party revellers who’ve accidentally stumbled into a dreary Lowryesque landscape. Ah, but how Adrian adores the races. The gee-gees, as he affectionately calls them. I think of him in his bed wearing his hospital gown and wonder if he’ll ever sip a glass of champers or place a bet at Ascot again.

  I pray he will.

  *

  After two hours on the mainline train I climb into my car that’s been waiting patiently for me at Westbury station for what seems like half a lifetime. It’s so good to be almost home, almost able to relax. The CD compilation I have in the car was made up by my daughter, Emily, and includes the Coldplay track, “Fix You”. As I drive, tired and drained through the dark tunnel of trees out of Westbury on my way back to Frome on the last lap of my day’s journey, no song has ever seemed more relevant and poignant.

  Tears stream down your face, when you lose something you can’t replace, Chris Martin sings.

  They do…and I’m afraid I may be about to.

  When I get home I look up the word ‘lesions’ in the dictionary.

  I feel as if Adrian’s fate is sealed.

  Monday 25th June 2007

  The rain has been relentless all weekend and I wait for my sons, Jack and Ed, to return from this year’s Glastonbury mud bath. In the morning on my way home from dropping the girls at school, I see mucky people everywhere in dirty vans travelling back from Worthy Farm. Part of me asks ‘What makes them do it?’ Another part wonders why I’ve never been myself.

  Today is the day the doctor at St George’s said they’d have the results of the biopsy on Adrian’s lung tissue. I’ve already overslept, having gone to bed late last night after staying up to catch The Who headlining Glasto. They played all the oldies, anthems from the years I shared with Adrian when we were growing up in Bromley. “I Won’t Get Fooled Again”, “My Generation”. I wonder whether Adrian managed to get the hospital television hanging over his bed to work and whether he’d watched Roger Daltrey and Pete Townsend doing their old-men stuff. Roger says something about hoping to die before he gets old. Childish words, so glibly sung. They still manage to belt out their classics without a hint of irony.

  Last night, snuggled in the living room next to Peter with my hot chocolate and biscuits, I felt tearful. Tears fuelled by music from innocent days gone by. I remembered seeing Roger Daltrey performing in the old Woodstock film. Also the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 when I was eighteen and tagged along with Adrian and his mates. That was the year Jimi Hendrix played. He came on late at night. Music of various standards and styles had been playing non-stop since we’d arrived on the island, but when Hendrix hit the stage it was as if someone had turned the lights on after a power cut. He was magical. A few weeks later, over the breakfast table, Dad read out the headline from the Daily Telegraph telling us he was dead.

  When Jack and Ed eventually arrive home I ask them if they caught The Who on Saturday night.

  ‘Who?’ they ask in unison. They don’t do the Pyramid Stage.

  *

  It’s approaching noon, but I can’t face ringing either the hospital or Adrian. After walking the dog I get a message on my land line asking me to ring him. I still can’t bring myself to – I’m afraid of what I might hear. My day’s all behind and I don’t have lunch until two, after which I have to go out to put money into Adrian’s bank account. His finances are a mess, but at least I still have enough from Mum’s legacy to top him up. When I get home he phones again.

  ‘Bad news, I’m afraid, Ali,’ he croaks.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘They’ve told me I’ve got cancer of the lung, kidney and liver. I’ve only got twelve months to live.’

  I pick up a pen from my desk and scribble on my phone book then stare at the photo on the windowsill of myself and Adrian in our berets.

  ‘Oh, no, Adrian. I’m so sorry.’ I hear my voice saying these words although they don’t seem to be coming from me. ‘Are you sure? I mean…maybe you could get a second opinion… Is there anything you want me to do?’ I’m clenching my fist again, nails digging into the palm of my hand.

  ‘They seem sure. Sorry to lay this on you, Ali. I’m alright about it. I’m quite philosophical. Quite stoical.’ I’ve noticed he likes the word ‘stoical’ and has been using it a lot recently.

  ‘Yes?’ I say in disbelief. ‘What are they going to do? What treatment are they offering?’

  ‘I’ll have chemo. Actually, I think they want me out of here.’

  ‘Typical,’ I say, recalling the way the hospital in Bath tried to discharge my mother two days before she died.

  There’s a pause. ‘I’d like to take you up on your offer,’ Adrian continues. ‘I’d like to move into the flat in Frome.’

  Suddenly I feel scared, though I’m not sure why since I was the one who suggested Adrian leave London and move to Frome.

  ‘Yes, I’ll sort everything out,’ I say, annoyed with myself for using the phrase I seem to fall back on when I don’t know what else to say. I’ll sort it out. Don’t worry. Leave everything to me. I’ll fix you. I’ll try to fix you, just like Chris Martin said. Just wait
and see. Tomorrow is another day. I’m turning into a modern day Scarlett O’Hara.

  In the evening when I tell Peter this awful ‘twelve months’ news I have the same pain across the bottom of my breast bone I had during the stressful months when my mother was dying. Over dinner, Peter recalls an acquaintance in Frome who also was given a year to live.

  ‘You remember that guy who worked in the dairy? Towards the end he walked around the streets smiling at people and looking lost. He couldn’t work and I suppose he didn’t have anything else to do. Eventually I realised I hadn’t seen him for a while. Then I heard he’d died. He was only in his thirties. Strange because he was called Adrian too.’

  At seven I go to my tennis lesson, a sport I’ve only recently taken up. Adrian has always been the tennis player in the family. He had tennis coaching at St Christopher School in Letchworth, where he boarded from the age of eleven.

  I arrive late and the other students are already practising their serves. For June the weather is strange. The trees flanking the tennis courts are dark and menacing and an autumnal wind catches the leaves, blowing them around the nets. I smile, talk, hit the ball as hard as I can, my secret hidden inside me like a poison. Who can I tell that I’ve just found out my brother will be dead this time next year? I hardly know these people. But my world has changed within the last twenty-four hours. Adrian has been given twelve months to live. What can this be like for him? I still have no idea what it’s like for me.

  Tuesday 26th June 2007

  Although I suggested Adrian move into our Frome flat, I’m worried that there are four steps up to the front door, and, more importantly, we have tenants living there. I’d have to give them six weeks’ notice. I decide to spend the afternoon visiting the many estate agents in Frome. I start by looking for rentals for Adrian and end up looking for a flat for him to buy. A spectacular refurbishment in North Parade, perhaps? I can imagine the old Adrian living in this sort of place, but what about the new, sick version? He’d have to climb a steep hill to get home from anywhere. For ‘anywhere’ read the pub.

  In the evening Mac rings. Mac is one of our old friends from the Bromley days who now lives in Bristol. He and Adrian go back a long way. They shared flats together in the seventies in Muswell Hill and then in Brighton. Mac has been to St George’s to visit Adrian earlier today.

  ‘I think Adrian should go away,’ Mac says. ‘Do something with the little time he has left. I told him as much. He seemed worried about travel insurance but he shouldn’t be thinking about stuff like that. Just go off and have a good time.’

  ‘I’ve considered this too,’ I tell him. ‘And I must admit travel insurance was the first problem that came to mind.’

  ‘Nah,’ Mac says. ‘Don’t bother with insurance – just go!’

  I remember the insurance forms I had to fill out for my mother whenever I took her away on a cruise. Tick boxes for heart disease, cancer. Have you been given a terminal diagnosis? Those sorts of questions seemed ridiculous then. Questions for other people. But maybe Adrian would like to go away on a cruise now. Maybe Carol or I could take him. I’m free for most of August. And this is the wettest, most miserable June in my memory. How cool it would be to sail round the Med one last time together. Our lawn is lush, thick grass and candles, still outside from my birthday party at the beginning of the month, have puddles of rainwater around the wicks. A rose tree, given to me by my friend Jill Miller, remains unplanted.

  ‘Plant it straight away,’ she told me. Jill, who runs a cancer charity in Frome, had breast cancer seventeen years ago. I might need the help of her counselling service soon. She’s one of the cards up my long and baggy sleeve. But her rose tree remains unplanted and I’m beginning to wonder whether it will survive.

  *

  At night I can’t sleep. This is the third night I’ve been up until two in the morning. Would Adrian want to go on a holiday? Can I realistically find him somewhere to live in Frome? Should I convert our study into a bedroom for him? Would he want to live here as part of a large family when he’s been alone for so long? Mac said Adrian could be out of the hospital by Thursday, which only gives me one clear day.

  Panic sets in as I toss and turn the night away.

  Wednesday 27th June 2007

  Jack and Ed paid fifty pounds for an antiquated caravan to sleep in for the duration of the Glastonbury Festival. They’ve just been back to Worthy Farm to collect this monstrosity which is currently parked in the road outside our house. What will the neighbours think? The boys carry bin bags of mud-caked clothes indoors, dumping them in the back hallway in the general area of the washing machine.

  Later, as I sit in my study, I overhear Peter telling them the news about Adrian. Or at least, I overhear him telling Jack and his girlfriend, Willow. But has he told Ed? I don’t want to have to tell him (or anyone else, really) that my brother, his uncle, has been given a death sentence.

  For so long my life has been protected from the tragedies that seem to pepper the lives of others. Even my mother didn’t die until she was well into her eighties. Has my bubble of safety finally burst? We have even recently fallen out with our neighbours. Despite living in harmony with them for nineteen years – they gave us rhubarb, we gave them apples; we had them in for drinks at Christmas, they invited us for cups of tea on the lawn in the summer; we kept an eye on their house when they were on holiday, they brought us presents back from exotic places – we are no longer on friendly terms. In the past couple of years they’ve accused us of climbing a ladder with a box of matches trying to set fire to their (stone built) house, injecting poisonous fumes into an air vent in their kitchen, and spraying graffiti on their garage walls. My brain glazed over ages ago where they are concerned. The idea that a member of our family would do any of these things is ludicrous. Occasionally I fantasise about jumping up and down, waving maniacally and making rude gestures into the camera of their closed circuit TV surveillance network. Yes, we live next door to a couple who have a closed circuit TV surveillance network and believe we are trying to kill them.

  I try to put this rather disturbing couple out of my mind, but sometimes when I’m driving home, as I turn the corner at the bottom of the hill, before I get to our cluster of houses, I’ll experience a horrible feeling generated by their hostility which casts a cloud over my homecoming.

  Thursday 28th June 2007

  Martin rings early morning to say he’s just back from France. Martin is another of Adrian’s friends from Bromley.

  ‘Mac rang me to tell me the news about Adrian,’ he says. Martin and Adrian were both part of the group of five-year-olds who pitched up at Wickham Common in their short trousers and bottle green jumpers in 1955. Martin, Adrian, John Commerford and Robin Ings have remained friends since. Last year Adrian joined them in a reunion weekend at Martin’s house in France to celebrate fifty years of friendship.

  After primary school Adrian went to Bromley Grammar School, whereas Martin, John and Robin went to Beckenham Grammar. Although Adrian seemed happy at Bromley Grammar, somewhere along the way things went wrong for him. The first sign all was not well came during the Autumn term. Although not privy to the details of their anxieties, I was aware my parents were worried about him.

  One afternoon he came home from school crying. In my safe world upstairs in my bedroom where I drew in my sketchpads, dressed my dolls in clothes my mother had made, and wrote little books about families with thirteen children, and glass fairies who lived at the bottom of the garden, I could tell something was amiss in the rest of the house. I was excluded from most of what was going on, in respect for Adrian’s feelings I thought, but gathered from my mother’s reaction that something bad had happened to Adrian at school.

  Appointments with a child psychologist followed and although I longed to be included I was left at home, reduced to being babysat by Barbara Barker’s mum. But I listened to everything the other members of my family talked about when they came home. The psychologist had asked Adrian how much
pocket money he got and whether he’d considered asking for more. This question exploded into my quiet little life. Were they implying Adrian wanted more pocket money but was afraid to ask? Was my father mean? Or was he intimidating? Should I be asking for extra pennies? Things seemed a bit frightening. A letter arrived from Bromley Borough Council asking my parents if they’d like to accept a place for Adrian at a boarding school. Dad, who was a fan of private education and social advancement, immediately accepted this offer, though without the agreement of my mother.

  By the beginning of the next school year Adrian was no longer a pupil at Bromley Grammar where he’d proudly worn his new uniform the previous September. At a time when local councils seemed to have a bottomless pot of gold, Dad had signed on the dotted line and, with their financial support, agreed for Adrian to attend a ‘progressive’ boarding school in Hertfordshire.

  In 1964 my life changed. At the age of twelve I became like an only child when Adrian left home to board at St Christopher School in Letchworth. By this time I’d started at Bromley Technical High School for Girls which was a trek and a half from where we lived. With a twenty minute walk to the bus stop from our house, followed by a forty-five minute bus ride to Bromley South, a train to Bickley and a mile long walk up Chislehurst Road to the school, I came home tired, with just enough time to eat and do homework before bed. I soon got used to our altered home life and when Adrian came back in the holidays he seemed like a glamorous creature I hardly knew.