Right to Die

by Hazel McHaffie

  Could I give her a message from Stella? I could. And furthermore I would consider doing so, I supplied in my head.

  ‘Just say that Stella isn’t able to keep her appointment next Tuesday, could Mrs O’Neill please ring to make an alternative date.’

  I was mean enough to repeat the message slowly as if I were dictating to myself writing it down. I console myself with the reasonable hope that the unfortunate Lottie has never heard of Adam O’Neill, the writer, and carries pity for the poor imbecile she contacted next to her heart.

  ‘Who’s Stella?’ I asked Naomi casually, after faithfully delivering the message verbatim from Lottie.

  ‘Adam! You didn’t give Lottie the lunatic treatment, did you? Please tell me you didn’t!’

  ‘Okay. I didn’t.’

  ‘What did you say?’ She was glaring at me suspiciously.

  ‘I was as smooth as Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited and as courteous as David Suchet’s Poirot.’

  She groaned.

  ‘Everyone will think I keep a deranged idiot at home!’

  ‘Everyone?’

  ‘You’re impossible!’ And she stalked out.

  Who is Stella?

  We’re off to Jersey on Saturday. Sea, sand, sun. Peace, rest, escape. Short flight, no language issues to complicate my personal impediment, lots to do without much effort. Fits the bill admirably. I’m hoping it’ll bring the sparkle back into Naomi’s eyes. She still seems under par.

  Naomi sat back, closing her eyes, remembering. She’d left Edinburgh burdened by her heartache. The prospect of two weeks alone with Adam filled her with foreboding. She knew he was watching her, concerned about her uncharacteristic listlessness. How long could she parry his questions? How strong would her resolve be once she relaxed, when there was no work to hide behind, no bolt-hole, no Stella?

  At first it had been a conscious effort, but gradually, in the concentration on his needs, she’d felt her own fear recede. She’d returned from Jersey fuelled by ultra-violet light and renewed confidence that not only was she was now unlikely to crack under pressure, but that indeed Adam’s puzzlement had passed.

  26 AUGUST—Jersey was terrific. Were I to be in the running for a retirement home I’d have the Channel Islands somewhere on my list. People, pace of life, climate, scenery, historical interest, all perfect for a life of leisure.

  I’ve returned with an even prettier wife, the beginnings of a beard (Naomi’s idea), and a notebook full of ideas for my writing. And if Naomi isn’t pregnant it’s not for want of trying. Of course, the wall-to-wall sunshine had to be a contributory factor, in her case, to this improved state of affairs; my seasonal chameleon.

  A little of my personal burden lifts. Even on Jersey she didn’t escape from me, so I’m daring to hope I’m not personally the reason for the recent melancholy.

  Seeking more than assumed reassurance, I tried once asking her what had been going on.

  ‘Oh, just all the pressures, all these families falling apart – the usual stuff.’ She was touching my designer stubble at the time, watching shadow shapes forming and dissolving as her hand moved between the sun and me. I couldn’t read her expression.

  ‘On top of the worries at home,’ I ventured.

  ‘Well, yeah. Cassandra and your accident and… everything. It didn’t help.’

  ‘And worrying about the future?’ I kept it brief.

  ‘Don’t let’s go there. Not now. Not here. Let’s just enjoy being away from all the pressures. Come on, I need to feel the sand between my toes.’

  Scampering off, silhouetted against the sun, she took my spirits soaring with her and my anxiety floated out to sea. Temporarily anyway. I didn’t follow her; my ungainly gait only reminds us both. Sitting in all the safety of immobility, watching her – slim, brown, lithe – I can almost believe nothing has changed.

  I feel the stares wherever she and I go. Inside my head I compose a blistering reaction to the condescending receptionist who equates slurred speech to low scores on the Mensa scale; I write against my retina the thoughts of the admiring men who watch Naomi and wonder why she stays saddled to a cripple.

  I lie wide-awake struggling to blot out the pictures of her future holidays, capering in the sun with someone else. In the morning I consciously adjust my blinkers, tunnelling my vision on her, my world contained in her pleasure.

  Only in the illusion of normality can I forget. Naomi being her usual sunny self is part of that illusion.

  31 AUGUST—It’s been a hellish week. We’re always under pressure during the holiday season but things are worse this year with numbers right down to the bone. I’ve had to touch base more. In the office Harry is spitting hydrochloric acid. Rumour has it Arkwright slated him over some editorial decision in my absence and he’s looking for somewhere to dump his anger. I skidaddled home as soon as I decently could.

  Noelani to the rescue! Since her brief summer ‘holiday’ slumming it on the commoner’s turf of the local cattery, she’s come to the conclusion that 14 Montgomery Crescent is possibly the nearest she’ll get to a degree of civilisation that befits her genetic inheritance, and furthermore that somehow her recent banishment to a hell echoing to the cries of randy mongrel toms and feral females, was a consequence she brought entirely on herself by her spiteful behaviour.

  In spite of my holiday bonhomie I’m afraid I let the owner of the said feline purgatory know exactly what I thought of her ‘superior care’. Given the recognised extra needs of Persians, we had agreed over-the-odds payment in return for daily grooming, as well as gentle handling and special food. A cursory glance was enough to convince me that the imperious Noelani had received less than the attention due to a stray mongrel due for euthanasia in the morning.

  But the fortnight of neglect has confirmed her allegiance. She has accepted the necessity for extra brushing of her silky fur with resignation if not exactly alacrity, and in the process sealed her territory on my lap.

  The feel of her satisfaction in my hands today as I wrote my feature article soothed my agitation and gradually the staccato words coalesced and began to slide creamily from my mind.

  Naomi has been instantly swallowed up in a case of fostering gone badly wrong so she’s away all weekend, leaving me free to steam ahead with Aidan’s story. The ideas thrown up by my subconscious in Jersey gave me a skeleton of prompts which has generated several chapters without pause. Feels good.

  7 SEPTEMBER—Today I was late for the team meeting, thanks to a bar of soap. It just slithered out of my hand in the shower. Suddenly every blessed thing within reach was slippery. I flailed around for that second that stretches into infinity before crashing to the ground. Bombarded by the water still cascading over me, trapped in that column of greased whiteness, I was like a blindfolded spider in an oiled jam jar. In the end I had to inch the door open, regardless of the immediate deluge onto the floor, slide myself over the ledge and grab the radiator to haul myself out of my predicament.

  Cursing my ineptitude I eventually restored the bathroom to a semblance of normality but the clock refused to show any sense of obligation and I staggered in to the meeting a good twenty minutes late. I knew my apology came out all garbled as I fell into the last available seat. Harry made some sneering aside under his breath to those nearest him. I shot a grateful glance at Celia Armstrong who silently pointed to the current item on the agenda.

  Henceforth the soap is to be securely anchored by a magnetic holder, or an intrinsic rope, or a dispenser full of the liquid lather. I purchased all three on the way home. I even suppressed my pathological hatred of non-slip mats for long enough to purchase two. I have never, ever, used them in hotels – my imagination conjures up veritable armies of bugs marching towards my naked soles. But better a live journalist with verrucas than a dead one wearing plastic galoshes.

  Surveying these next steps towards disability, my mind fights grim pictures of boards across the bath, a powered bath seat, a ceiling-mounted hoist, no bath at all, only a w
alk-in shower, big enough for three to manoeuvre inside, a discoloured seat fixed to one side, grab-rails punctuating the walls. I see a forlorn Naomi taking prospective buyers around this crippled house.

  For the thousandth time, I curse my over-active imagination.

  14 SEPTEMBER—I’ve been unaccountably low this week. Post-holiday blues? Reaction to returning to a Harry-infested world? Naomi slipping back into her old preoccupations? Familial depression?

  I don’t know.

  I don’t care.

  I can’t be bothered.

  I can’t sleep.

  I don’t want to eat.

  I know people are making allowances for me but I hate the mental games, the conspiracy. Making allowances is for children and other people.

  17 SEPTEMBER—Gaynor is my latest acquisition. She is a forty-ish lady with pale, puffy skin and an air of habitual subservience. She has pudgy hands and a large mole on the back of her neck. Her roots are grey, her ends are streaked blonde and mouse alternately as if she hesitates to leave the security of a lifetime as a nonentity.

  But Gaynor wields a mean scalpel. She’s in the business of turning a bed of gravel into a path of silk. I am awed by her skills. Not since I was a schoolboy have I trodden through life with such abandon.

  Why anyone would ever choose to be a chiropodist is completely beyond my comprehension. I mean, when you line up a row of snotty little beggars in the classroom and ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they don’t even know that feet sprout problems, do they? In their Startrite comprehensively-measured, change-every-four-months footwear, they live in constant cushioned comfort – or at least they did in my day, before fashion ruled in the comprehensives. From whence then, even awareness of chiropody?

  Besides which, who in their right mind wants to handle other people’s feet? I am repulsed by even my own. There is something singularly unlovely about these underpinnings that frankly turns my stomach. I was sorely tempted to keep my socks on for Gaynor. Mercifully my pedal appendages arrived in her lap freshly bathed, patted dry and liberally creamed by something delightfully fragranced to render them anonymous.

  Not knowing my history she tut-tutted about my uneven weight bearing, and the iniquity of creating all sorts of pressure points ripe for corns and calluses. Learning of my diagnosis, she retracted every innuendo and manfully took all blame for every sin of omission and commission upon her own bowed shoulders. She proceeded to scrape and polish until I expected to see a mere bundle of bones rattling in the whiteness of her towel.

  I left her disinfected sanctuary walking on air. Whatever they pay her, she deserves more. She is one of this gathering army of carers who can work and talk simultaneously. Already I know that she doesn’t personally do domiciliary visits, but she knows a man who does.

  Does one need smooth feet when MND has you in its stranglehold? My suspicion is there will be far more pressing problems (no pun intended) elsewhere.

  I have the facts, in case.

  18 SEPTEMBER—Today a bleak moment was transformed by one of those rare but sublime happenstances that pepper life but sparsely. My speech was particularly fractured, due I suspect in no small measure to an exhausting night wracked by cramps and spasms.

  ‘I’m sorry… to… be such a… wreck… today,’ I ground out.

  ‘You are not a wreck,’ Naomi said softly, leaning across the table to lay a hand over mine.

  I nodded, knowing my despondency was writ large, unable to disguise it.

  ‘Adam, look at me.’ She waited till I did.

  ‘Smile.’ She waited patiently.

  ‘Like you mean it.’ The look in her eyes made that possible.

  ‘Have I told you lately what that does for me?’

  I shook my head slowly.

  ‘Something inside me melts when you smile at me – like that. I feel… breathless. Wrecks don’t do that for me.’

  I had to laugh.

  And now that look, that smile, had gone for ever. All the things that had given her that inner glow, the things they had shared, the secrets known only to the two of them. All gone. Naomi rose so quickly from Adam’s chair that Noelani instinctively clenched her claws through the thin fabric of her dress before leaping straight into the wastepaper basket. The indignant expression made a laugh irresistible. Naomi stooped to sweep the cat onto her shoulder and set about smoothing both their ruffled feelings.

  19 SEPTEMBER—I’m putting pressure on Naomi to get a gardener in to help with the heavy, boring stuff. She’s ‘thinking about it’. It makes sense.

  ‘It would take the edge off my guilt,’ I wheedled.

  ‘Ahh. You’re looking for an easy option, are you? Well, maybe I like having you beholden to me.’

  ‘I’m going to be beholden anyway. No point in keeping that as your trump card.’

  I also want her to get a cleaner in, a paid helper who comes at set hours. But she has a whacking great ace in her hand on that one. My mother’s dropped the hypocrisy of secret scouring and now chunters in brazenly ‘to give the place a bit of a lick’. If she minds, Naomi doesn’t tell me. I want her to mind, too. I did give her permission to resent the interference when the pretence was first dropped, but she just shrugged and said, ‘She needs a role.’

  ‘But she should take her cue from you.’

  ‘She could do far worse. I hate cleaning.’

  I absolutely don’t understand the female mind.

  I’ve made a rather lowering discovery. Aidan’s deterioration is more depressing than my own. In real life I can to a large extent ignore other people’s reactions and actively work at keeping my own emotions in perspective. No such luxury in my fictional life. Walking alongside as well as inside Aidan, I am shackled to his frustration and too aware of everyone else’s irritation.

  Today I watched busy commuters dodging around him, hemmed in behind him, cursing him, as he staggered across the main concourse at Kings Cross on crutches at 5.15PM. I was one of them. Hang it, I was exasperated with him! What the hell is this cripple doing blocking pathways in normal working hours?

  But I also gritted Aidan’s teeth with the sheer effort of putting one foot in front of another, of staying vertical in the face of the surging masses all around me, of finding a spare inch to anchor the rubber toe of my sticks. I had a legitimate appointment too. I was a fully paid-up commuter, entitled to my space on the peak-time station.

  In Hester-Ramonides-speak, my exasperation is scarlet with lightning flashes of yellow zipping across the ‘sp’ bit and heavy lines of metallic grey underlining the ongoing motion of the ‘ion’.

  My emotions at the moment, I know, are distorted by the baby issue. Still no success. Another month of fatherhood lost. Speaking of which, Naomi has started going to see Anabelle and Courtney at their house, rather than asking them here. She says the children like to have more toys and girly things around them; it makes her job of entertaining them easier. And it frees her up to talk to her sister too; she’s not trying to prepare meals at the same time.

  ‘I need the practice too,’ I protest.

  ‘Come with me,’ she replies flatly.

  ‘But you go when I’m busy.’

  ‘That’s why I go then, so you’re free to get on. Undisturbed. By them and me.’

  I ought to be grateful for her consideration. I’m not; I’m resentful. I don’t need a proxy decision-maker. Not yet.

  23 SEPTEMBER—One of the old-school Sundays. A full night’s sleep without cramp. Staying in bed till 11 o’clock. With Naomi. Pancakes with maple syrup for brunch. My piece on perspectives in today’s Arts and Reviews section looking better in reality than I remembered. The colours of the maple in our back garden stunning. A fire in the sitting room in the evening against the beginnings of autumnal chill. My own mulled wine slipping over the tongue.

  Naomi’s in bed already. Waiting.

  Tomorrow I’ll probably rebel against my diminishing standards of excellence. Today my world is the colour of autumn.
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  24 SEPTEMBER—One day back in the office, and I resolve to be there as little as possible. Harry may be roasting his flesh in Tanzania but his confounded memos are still flashing up with monotonous regularity. He must have primed his PA to fire them off every so many minutes.

  Those still holding the fort in person seem to think I’m their personal slave. Could you just…? Will you…? When you’ve got a minute… Time was when I was first in the volunteer queue – little creep! Everybody’s shoulder. Procrastination was anathema to me. Not nowadays. No, sir. In fact I’ve adopted a new slogan: Never do today what will become somebody else’s responsibility tomorrow.

  In my own gathering tomorrows, I’ll soon be no more. Why flog myself now? There are no accolades for martyrdom in the publishing world.

  Well, that’s the theory. In reality, face to face with the needy, my new resolves falter. Which is why I need to work from home and selfishly husband my energy for my own deadlines.

  25 SEPTEMBER—Curtis has referred me to an occupational therapist – ‘in preparation’, he says. Not his finest hour.

  Her name is Ursula Major. Yes, honestly. Her badge confirms her parents’ stupidity – or was it ignorance? For one so saddled, she’s remarkably cheery. She’s not an inch above five feet, ash blonde with lashes and brows so fair she looks almost albino, incongruously bulging calves and biceps, but otherwise about a size six!

  Just minutes into my appointment she produced a catalogue of what she calls ‘aids’. Yeah, yeah, like I really want to choose a trolley to push in front of me. Mahogany please, with inlaid marquetry, and brass wheels. Pages of the stuff – grabbers, raised seats, straps, tripods, zimmers, Closomat lavatories…

  Ye gods, sock it to me straight, why don’t you?