‘I most certainly do get your drift, Lydia. I’m only amazed that I didn’t get it earlier. I guess I didn’t expect an indecent proposal from my physio!’
‘There aint nothing indecent about lying down and hugging the Missus when you are struggling to get about on the old pins. No, sirree! Decent enough for the Methodist minister, as my granny would say.’
I had to laugh. I felt the vibration of her own enjoyment through the ample flesh pressed against my arm, although she managed somehow to preserve a solemn expression.
‘And a little bit of loving is just the thing when you are feeling a mite down.’
‘You’ll be writing me a prescription in a minute!’
‘Maybe it’s the little lady who needs the prescription, too.’ She kept her eyes on her hands kneading and working rhythmically.
Silence fell. Like I say, this amazing mountain of a woman has a way of wriggling through small spaces and seeing what you think you’ve hidden – in this case, what I hadn’t even noticed. In all my anxiety for Naomi I hadn’t really thought beyond being cheerful and positive so she’d remember me kindly.
I need to think this through. At this precise moment I have a nasty suspicion that when we make love I’ll see Lydia’s approving smile lurking somewhere above us!
Naomi sat back slowly in Adam’s chair. So it had been Lydia’s suggestion. Would she have complied with such alacrity if she’d known?
She smiled now, remembering. Special memories. The new closeness had certainly eased her own heartache. They couldn’t know what lay ahead – indeed it was merciful not knowing for sure – but while they could share this depth of happiness and intimacy, life was still good. Very good.
‘I could die happy this very minute,’ Adam had said sleepily on one particularly memorable occasion.
It was just a figure of speech, said without thinking, but she had involuntarily tightened her hold, shivering in spite of the warmth around them.
‘Sorry.’ He’d instantly understood. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking of… I didn’t mean to spoil the moment.’
‘I know.’
They hadn’t talked then but the thoughts had squeezed into their bed nevertheless and would not be evicted.
It was she who broached the subject – tentatively – a few days later, lying in his arms, the semi-darkness protecting her emotions.
‘Adam.’
‘Uhhhm?’
‘This last few weeks – being close again – it’s made me wonder.’
‘Mmmhhmm?’
‘Are you awake?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Mmhhmm.’
‘No, are you? Really awake?’ She propped herself up on one elbow and peered closer.
‘Yeah. I’m awake. And listening. Go for it, girl, before I think of something else to occupy my mind.’
‘Be serious.’
‘Oh, I’m serious. Deadly serious. Shall I show you just how serious I am?’
‘Pleeeeeeeease. I mean it. I want to say something important.’
‘Okay. I’m listening.’
‘I’m not stupid, I know this can’t last for ever. But because it’s so good right now, d’you think… could we re-consider… having a baby?’
‘What?!’
She could see – and feel – he was wide awake now.
‘You heard.’
‘But we agreed… now… it wouldn’t be sensible.’
‘That was right at the beginning. When we could only think about things getting worse. But here we are nearly a year on and…’
‘But it’s all still to come. I’m already getting weaker.’
‘Yes, but you can still do almost everything like before.’
‘At the moment. But nine months on, who knows? A year. Two years. We have to be realistic, sweetheart. How would you feel if I’m not able to look after myself, and you’re struggling with a baby and a home and me? And no job to keep you sane.’
‘But I’d have something of you…’ She couldn’t say it.
‘On one level I see that might be a comfort. But when I’m gone, when you start to make new relationships, having someone else’s baby might not be such an attractive proposition as just you on your ownio.’
‘Don’t. Please, don’t.’ The tears threatened to choke her.
‘I must. Don’t you see? We have to think of afterwards. I have to think for you then too. Of course, if I’m being totally selfish, I want you to have my baby. We planned it. That’s what we both wanted. But now – no, it wouldn’t be fair on you. It wouldn’t.’
‘Not even if I’m prepared to take the risk? My mum and dad would help. My sister too. We could get help in. And you’d be able to enjoy it – the baby, I mean. Even if you can’t get about like now. And it’d give you something to keep going for.’
‘Have you been talking to my mother?’ His voice was tight.
‘Your mother? Why would I talk to your mother about this? I wouldn’t talk to anybody else about something so… personal. This is between you and me. Nobody else.’
At the time she hadn’t made the connection. She hadn’t read his diary.
‘That’s exactly right,’ he’d said with a hardness of tone that hurt every bit as much as his words. ‘You and me. Together. And if I’m not going to be here to help with that responsibility then I don’t think it’s right to go down that road.’
Desolation robbed her of the power to speak.
After what felt like an eternity of silence he’d whispered more softly, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’
‘Won’t you at least think about it?’
‘Okay, I’ll think about it.’
They’d said no more then. But the idea had taken root in her mind.
Remembering now, the pain was as raw as if it had just been said.
‘Oh, Adam! Why didn’t you just say yes? Why? Why?’ The words were wrenched from the depths of her guilt. ‘If only you’d said yes. None of this would have happened.’
If only…
29 MARCH—Naomi’s returned to the baby thing. If she only knew how tempting her suggestion is! But I have to be strong. I have to! For her sake.
I hope it doesn’t spoil things. Lydia’s solution to my tiredness is great but there’s a huge difference between sex for our relaxation, for pleasure, for our relationship, and sex to make babies.
It shook me, I must admit. I hadn’t realised how much she still hankers for a child. If she even suspected how much I want to give her one, I think she might get herself pregnant – ‘by mistake’ – just to take the decision on herself. But on top of worrying about her I’d be anxious about the genetic thing. They say this isn’t the inherited kind but what if they got it wrong? Imagine deliberately having a child and passing that pretty little gene on. It’d be a million times worse knowing you’d inflicted something like this on your child. Even inadvertently.
This has given me a twist to the plot of my novel. Aidan knows he was responsible for getting an ex-girlfriend, Moira, pregnant. She left and he didn’t know what happened to her or even if she kept the baby. When he gets MND and he’s told it’s the inherited kind he starts thinking about his kid – should he seek Moira out, tell her, warn her? Or are they better all living in ignorance? That’ll keep a bit of dramatic tension going during the critical middle section. The old will-he-won’t-he question.
At least I’ve no skeletons like that to come clanking out of the closet when someone opens the door by mistake, but I certainly have to watch this predisposition to father a child.
Life sucks sometimes. Just when I was thinking it was pretty good too. I can’t believe how much Naomi means to me. And all this quality time together, all the closeness, it’s put a whole new gloss on life. I’ve been feeling positive and energised. The ceiling has lifted – noticeably. Everything seems possible again. But now I’m going to be suspicious she’s all the time thinking ‘baby’.
Naomi closed her eyes. Maybe she should just stop reading right now. Knowing more a
bout Adam’s hopes could put her therapy back months.
Should she phone Stella? What would she advise?
No. She couldn’t go through the rest of her life relying on counselling.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow in the clarity of another day she’d make the decision herself: to read or not to read on.
She scraped Adam’s chair back, flicked the screen off and dragged herself to bed. She clutched the pillow he’d slept on close to her chest. She rocked it, low moans muffled in its softness. Not until dawn was breaking did she finally drift into exhausted sleep.
31 MARCH—Joel’s been up. That lad should carry a government health warning: Seriously good for your health! He’s better than any tonic. With him I can truly be myself. And when he’s here I have neither time nor inclination for the diary.
1 APRIL—How I wish this was just an April fool! Just when I was feeling relatively sanguine about where I am with this disease, and congratulating myself on having things pretty much in perspective, along comes a blunderbuss in the shape of my mother.
She was forever telling us when we were kids that children must obey and respect their parents. The Good Book says so. But the said fount of all wisdom (the Bible not my mother, I hasten to clarify!) also says that fathers should not provoke their children to wrath – and it’s a fair assumption that ‘fathers’ would include ‘mothers’ in today’s parlance, given that we’ve moved a street away from the totally patriarchal system of biblical times. Wrath? It’s worse than a good clean burst of anger. The rigid rules of my childhood years still prevent me from saying what I really want to say, so the irritation gets to explosion point but is denied any natural spontaneous outlet.
And because I don’t fight back, she assumes she hasn’t got through to me. I feel rather like the Pharaoh in Egypt during the time of Moses. Just get rid of one pesky plague and another one comes bombing through the doorposts. You wouldn’t believe how many guises fear for my eternal welfare can come in!
She is desperate for me to make my peace with God, return to the church. Before it’s too late. But a second-hand faith is no faith at all. It has to be mine and I’m not there yet.
My more charitable self tells me there’s more to her persistence than religious fear. I suspect there’s also an element of superstition in there somewhere: obey and you’ll be rewarded. Experience tells me it doesn’t work like that yet I shouldn’t deny her a crutch if she needs one – after all she’s enduring exactly what I don’t want for my own child.
Why do I find it so hard to be tolerant with her? Why is it that those closest to us get the worst as well as the best from us? Naomi excepted, in my case. If we were together for forty years, maybe things would change. But we won’t be. And it ought to be easier to keep things like they are now, given that we know it’s not for long.
On the other hand, my increasing frustration and dependence might impose stresses that tip us over into that state of getting on each other’s nerves that you see in so many long-term relationships. And suppressed annoyance with my mother might spill out towards Naomi – simply because she’s here. I must watch for this.
It was bitter-sweet reading. She reached out to touch the words.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you for loving me… like that. Thank you for being you.’
He had taken such a personal responsibility for keeping their relationship strong. As if her contribution was constant and certain.
The betrayal when… if… it hit him must have been the more devastating. But if Stella was right, better to know the truth in this instance than to create her own nightmares.
Nightmares. The very word made her shudder.
The pictures had been especially vivid of late. And Mavis’s face grew more distorted as time went on, her condemnation streaked through with implacable hatred.
3 APRIL—I came across a very apposite quote today. ‘You can never remember to forget all the time.’ That sums up my position now, while the symptoms are not too intrusive. A lot of the time I’m not even thinking of my predicament, but when I’m least expecting it, up it pops waving its Jolly Roger flag. A nasty way of spoiling an otherwise tranquil moment.
6 APRIL—I’m so engrossed in the novel I haven’t got space for much scribbling in this diary but one thing I have added to my equation is the thought that now, when I have the ability to kill myself, I haven’t the desire to do so; when I have the desire, maybe I won’t have the ability.
This could present problems. I don’t want to involve other people if I can help it; I’m determined they shouldn’t be penalised for my decisions. How will I know when I’ve reached that midpoint on the seesaw before it tips down against me and I’m no longer able to do the job effectively myself? Maybe I’ll have a casual chat with Curtis. On behalf of Aidan.
11 APRIL—As they say, some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue! Splat on for weeks by the office bully, Harry, but today it was my turn to let the filth fly.
I couldn’t believe anyone could be so blatant in deceit! Jerry Bloody Lloyd, the very Jerry I buddied when he first arrived, has only taken my rough draft for the Saturday supplement and written a column for the local rag. Oh, the language is different, of course. In the secrecy of this confessional I can honestly say I wouldn’t touch his pedestrian prose with a barge pole. But the sentiments, the logic of my argument – they’re there. Three days ahead of my piece coming out, too. Three days! Too late to do anything about it. Too early for it not to look like plagiarism. Mine, damn it!
I saw red. I was so mad I suspect I even sounded like Harry – a level I do not want to sink to. I’m particularly aggrieved because the piece is about families and what kind of a world we might be bringing children into – well, those fortunate fertile folk who are in a position to reproduce their genes. It stemmed from thinking about Naomi and having kids, and I planned to leave it for her to read. So it’s personal. I only showed it to Jerry because we were talking about the latest atrocities in the Middle East and I was commenting on how we hacks can turn all these events into ideas for articles or features. He swears he thought I was telling him to use this, giving him a leg up. Leg up! Think your own thoughts, you creep, make your own connections. I’m not your wet nurse.
Well, he’ll not repeat that mistake again. That’s for sure!
15 APRIL—Thinking about Harry and Jerry and my mother and Joel and Naomi and Curtis and Devlin and Lydia, and all the other assorted shapes and sizes that cross my path, makes me wonder just what mark I’ll really have made on life. The very reflection makes me feel totally infinitesimal and irrelevant. ‘What is man that Thou art mindful of him?’ They will all carry on their lives perfectly satisfactorily without me. Harry will find some other poor sod to victimise. Devlin will focus his roving eyes on some other disintegrating collection of neurones. Lydia will flirt outrageously with some other supine man. Mother and Naomi will fill their lives.
My memory will fade.
So why am I still suppressing my own instincts and caring about other people’s feelings? I remember my great-grandmother saying when she was ninety, she no longer had to worry about anyone else’s opinions, she could say just what she wanted to say. The when-I-am-old-I-shall-wear-purple syndrome. So why can’t I leave my own inhibitions behind?
Is it just that the habits of a lifetime die hard? I’m not entirely sure. I think I personally need to be at peace with myself before I take that last step into the unknown.
Not because I fear my mother’s hell fire.
Not because I think Reverend Castlemaine will point out all my deficiencies during his eulogy.
Not because I think God will call me to account for every idle word I utter (a threat my mother flung at us if we ever let slip a naughty word in her hearing).
No, I think it’s as simple as that I just want them all (well, all except Harry) to think well of me now, and to remember me fondly or at least kindly later.
I don’t like the idea of unresolved conflict or
unpaid debt.
Is there more to it? I don’t know.
I’ve been standing back and looking at my chief tormentors in life and wondering a) why they rile me so and b) how I can let their barbs glance off me so I don’t waste effort getting fired up. Lydia is forever telling me to conserve my energy for the good things in life.
My mother is probably the hardest one to box in, because of the complexity of emotion and history. I have to remind myself that she loves me – in her own way; and she only wants me to live for ever. And maybe I shouldn’t deny her the satisfaction of at least trying to save me. I suspect it must be immensely satisfying, attacking people from the safety of a religious position. All the vicious thrill of striking a blow for truth, with none of the guilt of being the proponent of these ideas. So I’m trying to look beyond her and see the vanity of what she’s reproducing. Dismissing something detached from her is less upsetting.
It’ll probably take some practice, but I’ll give it a go.
Harry is my other bête noire. I’ve given up trying to look for ways of improving our relationship. But when he’s being particularly obnoxious I’m thinking of holding up a fork and imagining him in jail. Can anyone complain officially about a dying man having a fork about his person and occasionally putting it up to one eye? I could always plead insanity. And the speed of court procedure being what it is nowadays, I’ll be long dead before the case ever gets near a real lawyer or psychiatrist.
Hmmm. I can’t actually think of anyone else who’s consistently annoying. A thought has just struck me: maybe Mother’s cross with God, not me!
17 APRIL—I mentioned the real possibility of suicide to Naomi last night.
Wished I hadn’t.
It was such a brief entry. She read it again slowly.
No mention of her anger: it wasn’t just his illness! Not even a reproach about her selfishness, thinking of the life she would have after he’d gone.
But back then… how desperately she’d clung to every precious second. The mere thought of deliberately curtailing that time appalled her. Besides, there was a new reason now to want him alive.
Right to Die Page 12
