Letters to a Friend

by Diana Athill

  Which reminds me of your poem – which B likes very much too: the feeling that the incompetent you of the dreams was the real you, to which you might revert. Although I know it was real, I don’t think it was the original you. I think it was what your parents turned the original you into, and the now you is the rediscovered original. There are people with strong original selves and people with weak ones – that’s why some people are undone by abuse in childhood, and some can go through exactly the same degree of abuse and not be undone. You couldn’t have written what you’ve written and loved as you loved if you’d been one of the former. (I’m a bit tired as you can see from the writing).

  Did you see the advertisement of me which Granta put in the Jan. 17th NY Review of Books? It didn’t half cheer me up to see them putting their money where their mouth is like that. Still can’t quite believe it!

  Love. D

  8 FEBRUARY 2002

  Darling Edward –

  The letter in which the cops didn’t arrest you for peeing (thank god!) arrived today. I’ve been writing you so many in my head that I’ve no idea at which stage in our saga my last real letter left you. Was it just when B came home from the first examination? Or did it report our frightful day of emergency – ambulance, agony etc. etc.? If it didn’t, I think I’ll spare you that, and the week in hospital – from which he was supposed to come home capable of living fairly normally, though still on the catheter, with a pee-bag strapped to his leg. Since he’s got to exist like that until Feb. 23, when he goes back into hospital for surgery, it was encouraging to be told that it needn’t stop him from moving about, going to the library and so on . . . but of course it does!

  Partly, I think, this is because his blood sugar remains much too high, although they have twice increased his medication (in the hospital it went so high they had to put him on an insulin drip). But more because quite often his bladder goes into spasm, which means that he suddenly feels an urgent need to pee even though the catheter is draining, which is not only horrid-feeling but also puts him into a panic for fear that it might be the emergency-horror starting up again. The doctor says it won’t be that (unless the catheter stops draining) – but B is in a pit of pessimism about the whole thing, and is embracing invalidism wholeheartedly. He’s been home nearly a week now, and he’s only just started draining his pee-bag by himself – it couldn’t be easier! – and doesn’t even imagine the possibility of learning to work his little blood-sugar testing instrument. He has, for the last three days, got up and made himself tea and bread-and-butter for breakfast, which is a great advance – but then retires to bed, calls to have a glass of water moved a little nearer, or his light turned on or off. Because from the medical point of view he’s supposed not to be helpless, the only help we are given is a visit once a week by the district nurse. I’ve just got to write off the rest of February, and hope most devoutly that the surgery restores him to viability. It ought to. My brother had it and is perfectly OK now, and Barbara’s ex had it (after experiences very like Barry’s) and is ditto. And if they finally put him on insulin, as I think they very likely will, they’ll just have to teach him to inject himself, as thousands do. It’s true I can’t imagine him doing it – but I think I can count on myself not to accept the thralldom of being tied down by that.

  I continue to get good notices – and letters come in every day, which suggests that a network of grandmothers is passing the news of the book around. They reprinted already. First printing was only 3000, I think, and the reprint is probably 1000, so it doesn’t represent a fortune, but it’s good news. And Granta USA is doing all my books, in minuscule editions but better than nothing. The US boss was here earlier this week, and I gave B an early supper and went to a lovely Granta dinner party – most enjoyable. I can get out in the evening, and have unbroken nights, so I’m not really too badly off. In fact, everyone at that dinner said how well I was looking.

  The great thing about Andrea Ashworth’s book [Once In A House On Fire] is to remember that once she escaped – which she did with her mother’s encouragement in the end – she was able to soar. I had a lovely long letter from her last week, so happy with her beloved Mark. For a long time she was unable to cook – kitchens made her feel too ill because of the ghastly stepfather who used to beat the children up if they left the least smudge on a plate after doing the dishes. One of the blissful things about Mark, to start with, was that he didn’t mind eating off paper plates with plastic knives and forks. But the miracle of moving right away from her background, to their very nice house in Princeton, is that she has started to enjoy her kitchen. Mark still cooks the big things, like joints and salmon, but she is adventuring further every day and has even made an almond cake!! She apologized for reporting such a trivial thing, but I don’t think it’s trivial at all – it’s almost as good news as that she’s now writing (she’s on a new book) for fun, and not with paroxysms of guilt for such self-indulgence, which she’s had to wrestle with a lot. They have time to decide, now, whether to stick with Princeton or move to Berkeley, which is after Mark. Apparently Princeton gives a philosopher more kudos, but Andrea was enchanted by Berkeley as a place. They’ve both been offered fellowships at an Australian university, but she said a visit to it nearly killed both of them with boredom. By the way, my brother thinks Yesterday Morning is quite good, and that I’ve been ‘reasonably discreet’. This morning I had a letter from the little boy in a blue coat with whom my brother and I became friends in the orchard, although we were on the prowl to be enemies, and he says that although he was just five at the time he remembers that day vividly and it was just as I describe it – even remembers the blue coat, which had a black velvet collar.

  Do phone Barry one of these days. He’d love it.

  Much love, dear hearts, Diana

  28 FEBRUARY 2002

  Darling Edward –

  Writing in bed, hence convenient if inelegant pad. [Note: lined paper torn out of writing pad.] Barry is having his op now – indeed it may be just over. He went into hospital five days ago, they took the catheter out to see if he could manage without it and of course he couldn’t, and thank god, decided to keep him in, not send him home, for the waiting-for-theatre time. I say thank god, because no sooner was he in than my immune system gave a sigh of relief and said ‘At last I can relax!’ – and the bugs pounced, so down I went with a savage feverish cold. It wasn’t quite flu – though I was deeply grateful to our dear neighbour-across-the-road for doing some necessary shopping for me, I remained able to stagger up and make cups of tea and so on – but it would have been ghastly if I’d had to minister to him. And he, during the wait, was feeling a good deal better because it had turned out that all the extreme discomfort which had made him so helpless during his month at home on the catheter had been due to the fact that they sent him home on a catheter of the wrong size. He’d complained about painful sensations whenever he moved before he left the hospital, and to the district nurse when he was at home, and I described them to his doctor over the phone – and no one had thought that perhaps he’d had too big a tube forced into him (I didn’t know that they came in different sizes). They just thought he was being fussy. It was a new little duty doctor on the ward, who had the job of putting him back on a catheter last Saturday, who thought of it when he moaned to her at the prospect of the resulting pain. She said: ‘They had you on a size 18 tube – I wonder if you’d feel better on a size 17 inch’ – and it was like a miracle, the difference was so great. I’m in such a rage about the callous carelessness shown by everyone else, when the solution was so simple and all any of them needed to do was to take what the patient was saying seriously. God knows it doesn’t inspire confidence in the surgeon’s team. But it didn’t seem like a good idea to throw a wobbly just before they performed an op that obviously has to be done as soon as possible, and there are people in the ward who have just been ‘done’ by the team, obviously successfully. But I’m going to write to his doctor, and to the district nurse’s offic
e, pointing out the results of the error and how easily they could have been avoided.

  I got up yesterday, my temperature having returned to normal, and this afternoon I shall go up to the hospital to see how he is getting on. Our great friend Sally Bagenal will be here over the weekend, so tomorrow I think I may take the chance to dash off to Norfolk for couple of days – I’ve been missing it a lot. Do you know about Sally? I can’t remember if I ever told you that story. It must be about twenty years ago that Barry was auditioning actresses for one of his plays which he was taking to Jamaica, and Sally, this very charming farmer’s daughter from Somerset, got the part. By the time they got back to England they were sleeping together. It was, I suppose, about three years after he and I had stopped having sex, so it didn’t worry me, and the more I saw of Sal the more I realized what an exceptionally nice person she is. She was living in dreary bedsitters, but spending most of her time here, so after a while I thought it would make more sense if she moved in, so she did, and for four or five years [six, in fact] we lived together in a most harmonious trio, becoming fonder and fonder of each other. But Sal was beginning to go off the life of a struggling actress – all those grim auditions, and having to take boring parts – so when her dad’s health began to fail she decided to take a course in farm management and then go home to help him. It was quite a blow to both B and me, but we thought it sensible – by that time she was more or less like our daughter. So off she went and on the course she met Henry, and they got married, and their two children, Jessamy and Beachy (short for Beauchamp, which was Henry’s father’s name) are adorable, and Barry’s best beloveds. And by now they own the farm. Henry is as remarkable as Sal – both of them people of really remarkable independence of mind, and generosity, and integrity. So they are like family, and as soon as B feels well enough for the journey, will have him to stay at the farm for recuperation. So that’s where we are at the moment. XXX Di

  9 MARCH 2002

  Darling Edward –

  Barry says lugubriously that he has expected nothing but the worst from the beginning of his ordeal. I, alas, allowed myself a glimmer of cheerfulness when at last he was taken down to the cardiology department. Barry was right. It was confirmed that his heart is too groggy to allow an operation under general anaesthetic. So now he is back home and will presumably have to be on a catheter for the rest of his days.

  What exactly is wrong with his heart wasn’t told – nor whether there is anything that can be done for it. He is returning to the hospital to see his surgeon on Tuesday (two days from now) and we hope to learn more then. Someone did say to him ‘You may have been having silent heart attacks’ – whatever that may mean. It does seem likely, now, that the degree of fatigue he’s been experiencing for some time, which we had attributed to the diabetes, may really have been the result of heart trouble.

  He is less depressed than one would expect, for the simple reason that after suffering first a lot of discomfort, and finally great pain, from his catheter, now it’s not hurting anymore. They found that it was clogged, and now it isn’t. Given that he was in a large ward (though divided up into quite pleasant small rooms, each with four beds) which is entirely devoted to people on catheters, it seems extraordinary that it took them so long to think of this – as it had also taken them ages to start with, to think they had given him one of the wrong size. We have got to find out, in the next few days, who we turn to if it starts hurting again. B takes the line that so long as he’s not in pain he doesn’t really mind what’s wrong with him, and it seems that’s true.

  I think most people on catheters for life have them inserted through the abdominal wall, and that it’s less likely to go wrong that way. But he was told by his surgeon that it’s quite a painful operation (done under a local anaesthetic – but they have to cut through a lot of muscle so it’s not possible quite to abolish all the pain). And because he’s so very sensitive to pain I think he’ll refuse to contemplate that method.

  I think he’s going to need someone younger than I am to look after him! One of his nieces is coming over from Washington in the next few weeks, to give me a few days rest in Norfolk. Then his brother is coming, who will be a big help. And for the last two weeks of April, when I go off on my Irish caper, Sally will have him. I’m going to feel out the nieces – he has two in Washington, both quite well off and one who also has a house complete with housekeeper in Jamaica. They are both fond of him, and he of them. It is possible, I think, that one or both of them would accept the task. I can manage now, but am not likely to for much longer – I woke up at three a.m. last night to quite a bad attack of anxiety, and although I felt better come daylight, I don’t think it was really unjustified; once one is nearly halfway though one’s 80s one can fold up quite suddenly. It is really depressing to think in such terms – but probably better to do so than just go bumbling on – provided, of course, that an alternative does exist. It would have to be Jamaica, I suppose, not Washington – he couldn’t possibly afford to be ill in the US.

  Barbara goes off tomorrow with her merry band of Norfolk friends, to a cruise in the Far East! Two weeks – and a ‘bargain’ flight to Hong Kong to start with. She had thought the pain in her leg was much better – said today ‘I thought it really was the result of the damage done by the treatment.’ But today it has suddenly gone back to being as bad as ever. ‘Such a bore!’ she said. God knows how she’ll get through the journey. It’s impossible to imagine two people more unlike each other when it comes to bearing pain than our two Bs. Sorry to have only gloomy news – it’s a relief to be able to unload it. Much love. D

  18 APRIL 2002

  Darling Edward,

  I’ve been trying to call you in Paris, and get nothing but that maddening voice saying ‘the number you have dialled has not been recognized’! Am not sure that I ought to communicate sudden good news in case the gods punish such hubris by slamming everything into reverse.

  Last night Barry (in hospital), his brother Lloyd (staying with me) and Sally (up here for the night) were in pits of gloom not to say hysteria, because everything was going wrong and the doctor seemed pretty well certain that when he had an angioplasty today it would reveal that he’d have to have a triple by-pass, which would mean waiting months for his prostate op – if he ever had it . . . so at midnight Lloyd, Sal and I were still up, desperately discussing what to do if this, and what to do if that, and what to do if the other. Well Barry, getting more and more frantic, kept phoning from his bed and ordering us to do wild things like call hospitals in the USA and find out what operations cost. In fact, after the last dreadful catheter crisis (a week ago), his doctor had said quite calmly ‘we will now keep you in here until you’ve had an angioplasty, and if you pass that test we will operate at once’, so we ought just to have been waiting quietly and touching wood, but what with one thing and another, pessimism had got out of control (largely, I’m sorry to say, because of my two dear supporters, Sally and Lloyd, who both have an appetite for melodrama which combined with Barry’s appetite for the Worst, and produced franticness).

  Anyway, today, at four p.m., he had his angioplasty. And he passed the test! Oh my dears, the relief. The double relief, because not only does it mean that he’ll have the op within days (that is what it’s so dangerous to say!), but also that his heart, although wobbly, is not nearly so bad as they thought.

  Weeks ago, when we saw his surgeon who told us nothing could be decided until after Easter, I said to myself ‘Life being what it is, whatever the decision is it is bound to coincide with my long and eagerly awaited excursion to Ireland’ and sure enough, it does! I leave on Sunday (today is Friday) – but for only a week, not the two weeks I’d originally hoped for. And Lloyd is here, fully prepared to cope. So I don’t feel too bad about going. And when I got home from the hospital this evening, as I got out of the car Primrose Hill put on a sudden display of brilliant green and gold against a purple thundercloud, and an enormous and magnificent rainbow suddenly arched over it �
�� which can only be, I think, a Good Omen. It’s the first rainbow I’ve ever seen in London.

  Can it really be that when I get back a week from this coming Monday he’ll have had his op and this seemingly endless ordeal will be on its way out?

  To be continued in our next.

  Love

  28 MAY 2002

  Darling Edward –

  How strange to learn that we were both being demoralized at the same time. There were you, thrown by the disappearance of your publisher – and indeed what a dreadful shock that lovely Black Sparrow, which has made such splendid books of your work, should be gone! – and there was I, suddenly in a pit of gloom about Barry’s lack of recovery plus – in one particularly gruesome week – Hannah being savaged by a vile dog in the park so that on top of everything else I had to rush her to the vet. You were beyond writing; I wrote such a wail of a letter that no sooner was it written then I knew I couldn’t send it (getting it written was quite a help, though). And now you are perking up, just from sheer braveness as far as I can see, and I am doing the same because B has actually got out of bed and cooked himself one of his famous Jamaican chicken dishes! Admittedly he hasn’t stayed out of bed – but surely it must be a good sign?