Darke

by Rick Gekoski

  There was no crisis yet, just small but perceptible gradations of loss and the drift towards death. I have all too little experience of dying or bereavement, my parents having shuffled off to, and then from, the dreary vastness of Australia, in some place with a crappy name, with lots of Oombas and Boombas and Boolas or Woolas. They didn’t summon me, knowing that I wouldn’t have come. Sir Henry had the grace to pop off quickly, and left no empty space in my heart, while Lady Sophia’s slow retreat into death was a fine mirror of her long retreat from life, and she hardly left an aftertaste. I am largely morto intacto, which is odd for one of my advanced years.

  During the first month of her chemotherapy, Suzy begged Lucy not to come, but as she began to recover from the trials of her treatment, she wanted more of her company. And less of mine, which was a disappointment – and a relief.

  ‘And can we talk about food?’

  Distracted, I got up quickly. Lawrence was in constant need of feeding. At his own home he made regular visits to the fridge, gazing longingly in search of a pickled cucumber.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I should have offered something. It’s almost suppertime, isn’t it? Can I at least offer you some tea and toast? We make an excellent Seville orange marmalade.’

  ‘No, I’d be quite happy if I could have a refill of this excellent red.’

  He knew a little about wine, but not enough to risk it with me.

  ‘Ah yes. It’s a New Zealand Pinot. Central Otago, you know, they’re making – ’

  He handed me his glass.

  ‘Yes, of course. But what I meant was that Suzy’s diet has to be managed carefully now. Simple food, but nothing raw. Is she eating properly?’

  ‘Less and less. She likes porridge in the morning, and I’ve introduced her to Manuka honey. It’s said to have many beneficial qualities, you know.’

  He wasn’t interested.

  ‘Sometimes she’ll eat a small piece of grilled fish, and a few vegetables.’

  ‘That’s OK. But I’m worried about you too. You look rather peaky yourself. I think you should see your own doctor.’

  ‘No, I’m feeling fine.’

  ‘Perhaps you are now. But you need to keep your strength up, it’s going to get harder and harder. Suzy is going to need nursing care.’

  ‘You know what she thinks about hospitals. And she would never consider a hospice. She says it would be the end of her!’

  He had the grace to smile. ‘I presume you can afford private nursing. I can recommend a good firm.’

  ‘So far I’m managing.’

  He put his hand up. ‘She talks to me, you know. And the diarrhoea and vomiting are going to get worse once I put her on something to help the anaemia. Pemetrexed might help that, but the side effects can be a little unsettling . . .’

  ‘That is already happening.’

  ‘Different scale. You won’t be able to cope on your own. The nurses can come in and manage her medication, feed and wash and change her, give you some relief. Just for a few hours, maybe twice a day to start?’

  Suzy’s recurrent bouts of fluid expulsion from top and bottom were often accompanied by an incapacity to get to the bathroom on time. The vomiting was contagious: once I was exposed to it, I had it too. Suzy had lost the will, or, to be fair, the capacity to clean up after herself. I had to do it, and I sensed in her a grim satisfaction that, having shirked such duties as a young father, I now had the penance of performing them for her as an old mother.

  Most of the time her room smelled beyond any chemical’s capacity to freshen it. A lot of the time, she did too. And so did I. I’d wash the sheets, clean the carpets, clean her, clean myself – but we were still a cauldron of filth. Lawrence was right, we needed more troops.

  ‘I’ll see you next week, and thanks for the drink.’ He got up, adjusted his jacket and straightened his tie in front of the looking-glass, as if displaying it to me. It was a sedate red and blue striped silk, perfectly adequately matched with his grey wool jacket, a bit sedate to be sure, ostentatiously un-vulgar.

  He’d seen me examining his tie in his office! I wasn’t dressing for him, but he was for me! How terrific is that?

  ‘I’ll show myself out. You get some rest.’ He closed the door gently.

  I hurried upstairs to see Suzy, who was slumped in half-slumber, exhausted by Lawrence’s inquisitions and examination.

  ‘Honestly, love, did you see his tie?’

  Her eyes opened.

  ‘He’s trying to live up to your standards. He wants your approval ever so, poor lamb.’

  Every now and again a crowd of witless Catholics are visited by a special kind of miracle. A statue of the Virgin Mary begins to cry, tears pour down its face – sometimes of saltwater, sometimes (in Italy) of olive oil. People wring their hands and hankies. But the only weeping statue actually sanctioned by the Pope – It’s a fuckin’ miracle, that is! – was in Japan, and everyone believed in it because it was broadcast on telly! Tears regularly flowed down its cheeks and dripped onto the floor below, dutifully recorded by the cameras. The Japanese swooped and gawped and celebrated.

  One morning Suzy began to cry, lying absolutely still on her back, her eyes closed. Without a shudder or a sob, the tears poured from her eyes, down her cheeks and chin, her face gleaming like a stone in a lake. I held her unresponsive hand, and the tears welled and dripped and made their slow descent from their mysterious underground source. For the rest of the day she neither talked nor drank, did not move in any manner, nor do I think she slept. She simply flowed, overflowed, dispensed her waters liberally onto the sodden sheets, which I mopped and laid towels on. And then, sometime in the early evening, the flow stopped, she turned gently and painfully onto her side, and slept for fifteen hours. They were to be her last tears.

  When she woke, her waters broken, it was with an odd sentiment, sufficiently powerful to make her sit up, with my help.

  ‘I feel bad about Sheila.’

  ‘What do you mean? Who’s Sheila?’

  ‘Shitslinger. I wish I could write to her.’

  ‘Why poor? Write what?’

  ‘She was only trying to do good. So were they all, all the shitslingers – Kahlil Gibran, Mr Tolstoy, the dreaded Eliot – all of them. Just wandering in the dark with flashlights.’

  ‘But I thought we – ’

  ‘So did I. I thought I was allowed to patronise them – required to. Me!’

  I was alarmed by this volte-face: Suzy, my dear cynical, unrelenting embodiment of the spirit of doubt, was about to have some deathbed revelation?

  ‘I thought we hated wisdom? The universal tonic, the revivifier! One spoonful cures all maladies for all people! What we need is an antidote to wisdom.’

  I did not tell her about my own, similar realisation. I’m not sure why, I think I felt shy about it. We teachers are shitslingers too, of a very minor and inferior kind. We ought to look up to Mr Eliot – he’s a high priest of our degraded order.

  She made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan. ‘Boring! Enough now. And anyway, I have had a terrible epiphany.’

  ‘Pay it no mind, love, it may be because you’re heavily medicated. I find epiphanies always upset me dreadfully. I took laxatives for a week after my last one, before I could get it out of my system.’

  ‘It was about my father . . .’

  ‘I rest my case.’

  ‘What I realise now is how much like my father I am.’

  ‘Your father!’

  ‘Sad, insecure, effortfully superior, full of himself because not full of much else. I got it all from him. He was my role model.’

  ‘Darling, I think you need to drink some water, maybe have a nap. You’re babbling.’

  ‘I wish I were. I don’t know. I don’t know anything any more. I used to know, I think. But I can’t remember where it all went.’

  ‘My poor darling, I don’t know how you can bear it. How we can – ?’

  ‘I’m not me any more.’

  ‘Bec
ause of how people are treating you?’

  ‘I don’t care about that, not any longer. Because I’m gone, inside, hollowed out . . . like the rind of a melon.’

  She held my hand weakly. I had an irresistible desire to flee.

  ‘Let me get you some ice chips, I’ll be right back.’

  She was doing her best to make it easier for me: to eat, to sleep a little, to make my recurrent necessary escapes. She’d ask me to do errands, or make her cups of tea from which she took a single sip. Then she would ask me to take the cup downstairs as she couldn’t stand clutter.

  ‘What is the sense of it? It’s all gone. I can hardly talk. Can’t eat or drink or go to the lav. No quality. I want to be dead now.’

  ‘Soon, love, soon.’ I put a few of the ice chips into her mouth. Her tongue was dry and cracked, and there were weeping sores in the corners of her mouth. I wiped them gently with a wet tissue. She winced.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘If God – ’

  ‘What, if God what?’

  ‘If he gave a damn, he’d take me. Turn off the light.’

  I reached towards the lamp.

  ‘No! Put it back on. I get frightened in the dark. Stay with me. I didn’t mean the lamp. I meant me. Mine.’

  ‘So God could turn you off?’

  ‘Yes, please. Be merciful, for once in his life.’

  I took her hand. ‘Soon, love, soon,’ I said gently with tears in my voice.

  She gave it a little squeeze. ‘It takes too long. I’m ready. But the cells want to live.’

  ‘I’d like to take her in for another scan. The acute situation in her back can be caused by immobility and referred pain, but it may well be a secondary. I suspect she may have it in her spine now . . .’

  ‘How bad would that be?’

  ‘How bad? She won’t die any more quickly, or of a different cause. But she’ll be in increasing discomfort.’

  ‘Is that a euphemism?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took a more substantial than usual sip from his wine glass and sloshed it around his mouth, which I found surprisingly offensive. He took yet another mouthful, swilling it again. It was his third glass.

  ‘I can help with that, we’re good at dealing with pain these days.’

  ‘So why do another scan? I presume you can’t do anything to help, whatever it is. Why put her through a trip to the hospital, and all that dreadful palaver?’

  ‘It’s my job to offer whatever can be done, and in any case palliative care is best provided in a hospital environment. But she won’t agree to that.’

  Suzy resisted the increase in painkilling medication, because it made her sleepy or unconscious most of the time.

  ‘I want to hold on just a little longer,’ she said, until the pain in her back overwhelmed her, and she begged for relief.

  EXCRUCIATING

  agonising, extremely painful, severe, acute, intense, extreme, savage, violent, racking, searing, piercing, stabbing, raging, harrowing, tormenting, grievous, dreadful, awful, terrible, unbearable.

  ALL OF THE ABOVE. NONE OF THE ABOVE.

  CROSS THEM ALL OUT.

  ‘Will you give her something to end it?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that. Not any more. None of us can.’

  ‘Why not? Doctors do it all the time. We all know that.’

  ‘They used to.’

  ‘And they’ve stopped? Nobody told me. Why would that happen?’

  ‘It’s caused by the internet.’

  ‘What? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, social media too. You know what I mean.’

  ‘I most certainly do not!’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It happens like this. You help someone along with an extra dose of whatever, and the next thing you know someone writes a round robin email or tweets about the very kind doctor, or posts it on Facebook, whatever. And the next thing you know the person in imminent danger is you.’

  ‘Me? Fine, I’ll risk that happily.’

  ‘No. I meant me. I’ve even seen people who posted grateful responses to the assisted death of their loved one on that dreadful Rate Your Doctor website.’

  ‘And you won’t help us?’

  ‘I can’t! Unlike you, I can not only be prosecuted, I can be struck off.’

  ‘Look at me. Do I look like a tweeter? Does Lucy?’

  ‘No, of course not. But secrets are contagious, they get around.’

  ‘Are you saying you don’t trust us?’

  ‘No, not at all. I’m sorry to give that impression. I’m saying I don’t trust anyone, including myself. I’m terribly sorry, but that is the world we live in. There’s no privacy any more, and I simply cannot act with the kind of freedom I used to have.’

  He shifted in his seat uncomfortably. He was by nature compliant, desperate to be liked, and recalcitrance didn’t suit him. I renewed my attack, certain that he would weaken. For God’s sake, why shouldn’t he?

  ‘Have you no heart? I thought you cared for her once. Help her! Help us! I won’t be there. I won’t look!’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Of course I care, caring is what – ’

  ‘I am begging you.’

  ‘And I am telling you no. I can help her, I will give her increasing doses of painkillers and sedatives. She’ll sleep most of the time. Most people are unconscious when they die: it’s the effect of letting go, and the appropriate amount of medication.’

  ‘Which wears off! Between doses she’s in agony, begging to be released! And you tell me you haven’t got the fucking nerve to – ’

  ‘I can help her. But I cannot myself be the cause of her death.’

  I was furious and desperate, qualities that go badly together. Lawrence was the only person who could solve our problem, but it was he who was, as it were, causing it. If I cajoled, he would find me easy to resist, if I attacked, easier yet. For the moment I hated him with a vehemence that was startling.

  ‘This is hardly the time for such niceties of feeling. I’m surprised to find – ’

  He put his hand up abruptly. ‘I am not saying that it would be unethical. It’s not, in my view, not at the very end. But it is now worse than that. It’s foolish, and indiscreet. Be patient. You know Freud has a wise remark in his book about jokes . . .’

  I was horrified. ‘You’ve picked the wrong audience. Suzy detests Freud almost as much as I loathe Jew—’

  ‘Stop right now, James! I won’t tolerate this!’

  ‘—ish jokes.’

  He gawped at me. ‘It’s time for me to leave, I think.’

  ‘Spare me! I don’t want fucking jokes. All I want is a fatal dose of morphine!’

  ‘That is not my job,’ he said.

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘What, love?’ Her voice was very faint now, and she could only talk one sentence at a time, short sentences. Pause, breathe, struggle against the empty spaces to inhale, locate some stray air. Try a little more, for a little more.

  ‘You won’t make me go to hospital?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘I hate hospitals, I’d rather die.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  She squeezed my hand. ‘One more thing . . . please . . .’

  I leant over to listen, stroking her shoulder. ‘I can hear you. What is it?’

  She paused to gather strength and breath. ‘Lucy . . .’

  ‘Yes, what about her?’

  ‘Try to, to keep her away now.’

  ‘Why, love? She wants to be with you, she loves you.’

  Suzy closed her eyes, as if the effort to be understood was too much. ‘I wanted to teach her – ’ She paused. ‘You know? How to do it?’

  ‘Do what, my love?’

  ‘How to die. That would be a gift.’

  ‘And you’ve been giving it. When she comes, you are always so brave, and I listen to you two giggling as if you are having fun.’

  She coughed, tried to sit up, fixed me with a terrible stare. ‘Not an
y more. I’m too frightened, and it hurts terribly. Keep her away!’

  ‘I’m not sure I can, love, not sure at all. You know Lucy . . .’

  ‘Just tell her I’m too weak, sleeping all the time, and you will call her if there is any . . . you know . . . any reason.’

  ‘I know. I’ll try.’

  She closed her eyes, and her head seemed to disappear into the pillow, which closed around her like a shroud.

  Those fucking paedophiles, the Irish clergy, would frighten teenage boys, away on retreat from the world, to yank them back to the ways of righteousness. By way of prayer: sacred ejaculations to erase profane ones. I used to think the passage hyperbolic . . .

  The horror of this strait and dark prison is increased by its awful stench. All the filth of the world, all the offal and scum of the world, we are told, shall run there as to a vast reeking sewer when the terrible conflagration of the last day has purged the world . . .

  I would open the windows, and discreetly spray the room when Suzy was asleep, but the smells lingered, penetrating the fabric of our being. The nurses washed her, put ointment on the bedsores, wiped and soothed, but the room was pestilential.

  ‘Christ,’ she said weakly, sniffing. ‘That’s me.’

  ‘No, it’s just stuffy in here.’

  ‘Me. Oh my God.’

  ‘Don’t you worry.’

  ‘I’m so sorry . . . sorry.’

  One afternoon there was a noisy scuffling in her bedroom, and the sound of the nurse’s footsteps stomping around. Suzy was haemorrhaging violently – blood spewing over her, the sheets, onto the carpets. She was gasping for breath, clutching her throat, her eyes rolling back as the blood continued to flow. The nurse turned her onto her side, reaching for her mobile phone as she finished.

  ‘I am going to call an ambulance,’ she said.

  Suzy shook her head violently.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re not!’

  As she lay in the pool of her own gushing blood, her pyjamas sodden, like a starving bird with oil-coated feathers, I was rendered mute by a horror at once physical and linguistic, stunned into silence by fear and pity, words frozen within me, a reaction so purely visceral as to rescind my humanity, render me a weasel or a ferret, shrinking in repulsion and fear. None of the available terms applied: Horror? Fear? Shock? Distress? If they had to be used at all, it was only in the knowledge that they were inadequate, that nothing better was available. Like Love.