The process with the people in Switzerland had been slow. I wasn’t sure it would work, or that Tully would be found suitable, but he’d consistently asked about assisted dying since his diagnosis in September, and I’d written to the organisation before the wedding, and filled in the forms. Then, on 10 December, a Dignitas official, Matteo, rang me to get the whole thing moving. ‘Is his wife supporting it?’ he asked, during that first conversation. ‘Why isn’t she the person applying?’
‘She’s against it. They’re newly married. She believes he may get better.’
‘That is impossible.’
Even in English – or perhaps more so – he had a tendency towards economy of speech and Swiss accuracy. ‘Yes, the prognosis is terminal,’ I said. ‘And my friend is preparing to die his own way.’
Matteo sent me a number of articles he’d written, papers for conferences. He rang me up several times and with each of the calls he would offer a little more detail, which I carefully wrote on scraps of paper before pinning them to the bookshelves. ‘Well,’ he said one day, ‘strictly speaking, we do not need his wife’s consent or anybody’s consent but his. The reports are clear, he will die in the short term. But timing is important in the management of people’s feelings.’
‘Yes.’
‘Please take him through what we have discussed. I will be in touch with him soon, and several times before any appointment, to ensure consent, and check his mental state. That is our job and we will liaise with him and the doctors over that.’
‘Of course.’
‘But you are the one he has chosen as his sponsor. So you must do what you can to monitor the issue of timing and steer his loved ones.’
When I spoke to Tully that same evening I told him he had to talk to Anna again. It wasn’t a matter of consent, it was a matter of decency.
‘I will,’ he said. ‘I totally will.’
The thing I was never able to discuss with him – at this stage, or later – was my own ambivalence. He had made it a condition of our friendship, an aspect of our history, that I should support him now as he had once supported me. I’d needed his kindness once, and I’d always helped him through the years, but this was really it, so far as he was concerned. My own ambivalence was for me to suffer alone. Live all you can, the character is advised in Madame Mohl’s garden, and I looked up at her sketch.
*
Before Christmas, he sent me an email:
Dear Noodles,
Do you mind if I have a night at the caravan on my own? Everything annoys me, Anna tidying up, washing, cooking, asking if everything is okay, looking anxious. She’s doing everything she can but most stuff annoys me now. People making a noise, parcels arriving at the door. I can’t switch off. The daily round of pills and these smiling arseholes on TV spouting shite, stuffing their faces with food. The Christmas Capitalism Ball starting up. Second course of chemo done. This one was worse. Much worse. I think we should go for a week’s holiday in Sicily. Can you and Iona book it?
Love you,
Tully
Iona was at the Lowry in Salford. Her play was in its last weekend. When I called her that night, I found myself depressed. ‘I’m sorry I’ve been away so much,’ she said, tearful herself. ‘You just can’t prepare for something like this.’
‘It’s probably been for the best,’ I said. ‘I’ve had time with him on my own.’ I told her the theatre she was in rang a lovely bell. ‘It used to be just canals and docks where you are now. Tully and I sat there once, down by the water. I’m sure your theatre was just abandoned warehouses then.’
‘It’s such a hub nowadays,’ she said. ‘All shops and restaurants, and we’re getting full houses every night.’
‘It’s all changed,’ I said. ‘And we saw the change when it began.’
‘For Salford?’
‘For all of us.’
I told her about Tully’s request for Sicily. She started checking rental properties on her laptop while we were on the phone. ‘There’s a really beautiful villa in Taormina,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk to Anna. It has two huge bedrooms and a balcony looking over the bay.’
‘They’ll totally love that.’
I could almost smell her bath oil through the phone, feel the towelling of her dressing gown, and see the candle flicker on the nightstand.
‘She won’t budge on this Dignitas question,’ I said. ‘Mainly, she just won’t discuss it. Well, I don’t think Tully is discussing it with her – and she certainly won’t with me. She makes jibes about it, like at the wedding – Tully’s secret collaborator – as if it’s a private joke between Tully and her and me, but it frightens the hell out of her.’
‘She has a way of storing her anger,’ Iona said.
‘I know. But she has to release it. Just for the … for the ethics of the whole thing … for the management of it.’
‘She won’t, babe. She’ll hold on to it. She thinks it’s wrong of him to forge a pact about something so fundamental to their relationship.’
‘It’s not about their relationship, Iona. It’s about his relationship with the fuckan universe and with … I don’t know … free will.’
‘She’s a lawyer, James. She doesn’t believe in the universe. She believes in people and she believes in procedure.’
‘You sound like you’re on her side.’
‘Don’t be defensive.’
‘She thinks that by seeing it as a kind of boys’ game, it can be dismissed and will somehow disappear. But Tully’s in agony about it.’
‘Well, there is a boys’ game aspect to it,’ she said. ‘And that’s the way Tully has chosen to articulate it, or not articulate it. She’s not wrong. But just let her come to terms with it in her own way. You can’t write the script for her.’
‘No, I see that.’
‘Let it unfold in its own way. She’s a brave person. And if they want to erase it with silence and holidays, so be it.’
‘Tell me about that villa,’ I said.
‘It has lemons and rosemary by the pool,’ she said. ‘Marlene Dietrich and Truman Capote. All kinds of people stayed here.’
*
A new sense of smell came with the new year. Everything was too ripe. A strange, psychosomatic music was playing in my head, raising the threat level. Standing at the open doors of the caravan, I could taste sulphur and my throat hurt. The sea roared onto the beach, and as the foam spread up the sand I could smell the rotten seaweed and pulverised shells. Tully said he felt the caravan was a safe house. He said it should only be safe houses from now on, like the one Iona had booked in Sicily for June. He wanted places perched on the lip of a good time, places safe from pity or the evil of the chemo, and he wanted to pretend, he said, that the pain was only a state of mind. The treatment had given him months. His moods went up and down, but he had periods where his strength returned, and his face was fuller, his head clearer. In the months from winter to spring, we were often at the caravan watching The Godfather.
At four in the morning one night, I found him sitting on the edge of the sofa bed. The curtains were drawn back and the red coal of his roll-up was fierce against the black of the coast outside. ‘My mouth is sore,’ he said. ‘And I had a dream I was sleeping with the fishes. A man swam down to meet me. He was wearing a cardigan. He swam down and blew me a kiss and tried to touch my mouth.’
‘Do you think it was your dad?’
He didn’t say anything but his eyes glittered.
I stayed on at the caravan by myself, and spoke to Matteo again later that week. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We have now gathered all the latest medical information and have spoken to the doctors.’
‘Tully said you’d rung him.’
‘Yes, we spoke to Mr Dawson. He is a clear candidate for the clinic. And everything you reported to us is correct.’ Matteo changed a little on that call. His tone moved to being more pastoral, and I felt the test was over. The precision was still there, but he wanted now to talk books and philosophies of dying
as much as practicalities. Probably more, actually. The phone call was long and he said the main issue remaining was not a medical one, but what he called a ‘social problem’. ‘It’s unusual,’ he said, ‘to be this far forward and still have no involvement from the spouse.’
‘I think Tully imagines I can just fix it.’
‘I doubt if you can,’ he said, quite abruptly. ‘There will be … what is the phrase? There will be hell to pay. His family should all be included. It is not a matter for us. This is what my experience tells me and I am passing it on to you.’
‘Didn’t he suggest you call Anna?’
‘Mr Dawson’s wife? We’re not permitted to do that.’
‘Why not?’
‘We have only one task. It is to assist people who are terminally ill who wish to die. It is not our task to assist the loved ones. But this is also a huge job, and your friend ignores it not so much at his own peril, but at theirs.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘He will be leaving them behind, in more ways than one.’
‘I understand. Thank you.’
‘Don’t thank me,’ he said. ‘This is our work. We will speak again.’
There was a pause and he asked me if there was anything else.
‘Matteo,’ I said. ‘Is she right, his wife?’
‘Yes and no,’ he said. ‘He is going to die. But people’s expectations around death are very strange.’
I texted Anna from the train to Kings Cross. ‘A. Can we speak about Tully’s wishes? I’m not comfortable.’
I could see she’d read it, but she took two hours to respond.
‘Hi Jimmy. To me, it’s not a thing. And discussing it just makes it a thing. It won’t happen. Treatment is going well. He’s better. I know he goes on about it and thank you for being a friend to him, but I’m not going there. Can’t wait for Sicily. Love, Anna.’
‘He’s talking to the clinic, Anna.’
‘It’s not a thing. xx’
Past Darlington, the world was blurred. I put my head against the window and dreamed for a hundred miles in black and white.
*
One day at the beginning of April, my mother’s name came up on my phone. It doesn’t happen often and I was surprised to see it. I picked up, and it was like a pinch of salt sprinkled in the open wound of that year – a sting of egotism, carelessness – to find her talking to me in the same old way. She was calling from Arran. She spoke for a minute about troubles she was having with her phone.
‘What can I do for you?’ I said. It wasn’t a phrase I knew how to use. I hadn’t used it since the last time she’d called me, some years before. She immediately gave me an account of her own situation on the island. ‘We need a radical healthcare plan for the ageing population,’ she said, going on about some recent therapy training, ‘and mindfulness is part of this amazing effort. I’ll be setting up a new practice in Lamlash.’
‘Good for you.’
‘Oh, it’s essential. And much in demand. I put up a stand at the summer fête at Montrose House. Wonderful response, I can tell you. People need much more support than they’re getting.’ She went on about the new emergency unit at the hospital and about the strawberry tarts available at the fête. She used the word ‘tombola’. Somebody had made a huge trifle. There were raffle tickets and a very interesting discussion about future housing needs. A new pub in Brodick was dogfriendly. And on it went. There were dog-obedience classes in Whiting Bay and many of her friends had benefited greatly.
‘But that’s not why I’m telephoning you,’ she said at last. ‘I know you don’t like to be disturbed, so I’ll keep it short.’
‘Right.’
‘Maybe you won’t remember her, a teacher of yours. I think English was her subject. Susan O’Connor? She taught at St Cuthbert’s. She died this week. One of her old colleagues lives on the island and she said the family wanted you to know. Apparently the teacher kept up with your writing. So that’s why I’m ringing.’
I took a moment or two, turning it over and picturing Mrs O’Connor.
‘Are you still there?’
‘She saved my life, that teacher,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m sure she did what she was paid to do.’
‘No, Norma. She did much more than that.’
I saw it as fresh as the tulips on my desk: the image of Mrs O’Connor standing by a darkened window reading from W. B. Yeats. ‘Thank you for telling me,’ I said, ‘and let me know if there’s anything you need.’
‘What would I be needing anything for?’ she said. ‘I’m too busy.’ She rang off with a curt ‘goodbye’ and the advice that I should come one day and see all the wonderful improvements she was bringing to Arran.
I got hold of an address for Mrs O’Connor and wrote to her husband saying what my old teacher had meant to me, and that in my head she was eternally young. While writing the letter, I heard a few lines from Yeats in her Glasgow voice, and I typed them carefully from memory at the foot of the page, the scent of pine floor cleaner drifting in the air of the London afternoon.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
21
If spring is always a reprieve, a return, then summer’s a blessing. He was eating again and the bloom was back in his cheeks and the cheek was back in his remarks. He had gone quiet on the endgame topic. He came to London for my fiftieth birthday in May and sat on the sofa watching the Mao clock. ‘Maybe it won’t last,’ he said, ‘but the sores in my mouth have gone and I feel good.’ He had morphine on standby. Anna was plotting a future on the promise of these successes, and she even considered, for a week or so, that they might move house. She’d looked at Rightmove and thought Largs was nice. Tully loved her enthusiasm and her life-improvement goals but saw it for what it was.
We went to Sicily on 10 June. Iona managed the whole thing so beautifully and we arrived like double honeymooners in Taormina. From the swimming pool you could look through a grove of lemon trees and see Mount Etna. Iona changed into linen trousers and a blue shirt and I laid my books by the bed as she walked over.
I kissed her.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘I’m glad we’re all here.’ I walked onto the balcony, taking in the view and the tonic warmth of the sun. The smell of jasmine hit me and Iona came up and put her head on my shoulder and squeezed my arms. ‘Listen to that,’ she said. ‘What a sound.’ There were goats on the hillside with their bells tinkling.
‘Do you get that scent?’ I said.
‘Lemons and chlorine.’
‘Something else. Jasmine. There’s something sickly about it.’ She squeezed me again more tightly and said nothing.
Sitting on the patio at the front of the house, surrounded by cypress trees, Tully was reading with his sunglasses over his specs. When I came down he placed his book on the table between us, and I lifted it up to examine the cover. It was the familiar old Penguin Classics edition of David Copperfield, the one I used to own, thirty years ago. ‘I’m reading it for the umpteenth time,’ he said.
‘Mr Peggotty working on his old boat at Yarmouth.’
‘And all that David Copperfield kind of crap,’ he said.
Around 4 p.m., the four of us walked down to the Piazza IX Aprile. We were shadows on the black-and-white tiles, and drank Aperol Spritzes, huge tumblers of amber that seemed like distillations of the sun. Anna held Tully’s hand. We sat looking at the volcano while the ice melted in the drinks. Turning our heads, we saw the broken pillars of the Teatro Antico. Tully wanted to go up the steps of the Church of San Giuseppe and asked Anna to take a picture of him and me on the balcony. When we got up
there, standing and facing out to sea, he put his arm over my shoulder and pointed to where Anna and Iona stood in the piazza below. ‘We are all in heaven,’ he said. ‘I will now face my people like Eva Perón and tell them how I suffered for them.’
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘There’s wine to be drunk.’
‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘This country’s full of grapes and papes.’
We explored the town. In a shop stacked with soaps and dried herbs, I bought him a bottle of Acqua di Parma. And when I told him it had been Frank Sinatra’s favourite scent he bought me one, too. ‘That’s a bit of the local magic right there,’ he said. ‘It smells of lemons but it also smells of public enemies.’
‘Vegas crooners,’ I said.
‘Handsome bastards.’
After the shops, Tully announced that we would go on a mission to find the best glass of red wine in the whole of Taormina. Anna and Iona were up for it, and we went to place after place, eating up the bread and olives, drinking. ‘What’s this one called?’ Tully asked, holding up a glass by the stem.
‘Le Casematte. Nero d’Avola,’ the waiter said.
‘Strawberries and coffee,’ Iona said. She made a fuss of sniffing it. Tully took a large swig and settled back in his chair.
‘Lorne sausage, with a hint of HP Sauce.’
It made me emotional to see him eating better, and for a moment I was caught in Anna’s programme of hope. It must have been 6.30 or so when the waiter got us a car. He’d noticed our interest in the wine, and maybe he perceived something of the special occasion, or was just good at marketing. In any case, he suggested to us that we visit his friend’s vineyard high on the slopes of Mount Etna, and then he made phone calls to arrange it. We drove down the hill and then up another one, bumping along a dirt track and disappearing behind a row of eucalyptus trees. Our table overlooked the sea. We had boiled eggs and slices of fennel with dark red wine. Tully stopped the conversation after a while and held up the bottle of the Petto Dragone. ‘This is it,’ he said, ‘from the house of Gambino. I want it recorded by you, Noodles, that this is the world’s best wine.’ We were all drunk. We ordered another bottle. ‘Rhubarb,’ he said, sniffing it.
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