Is There Anything You Want?

by Margaret Forster

  The thing to do was be sensible. Await events, see what happened next, keep track, note down what was taking place. Drawing a pad of paper towards her, she carefully wrote down the date in the left-hand corner and then the times. ‘1.47 p.m.’, she wrote, ‘small stab of pain, while eating a prawn sandwich in office.’ Was the prawn information necessary? Or the place where she’d eaten it? How absurd it looked, written down. ‘2.05 p.m.’, she wrote underneath, ‘three or four stabs of pain while opening drawer.’ She’d been stretching. Could the pain be muscular? But she hadn’t been stretching the time before. No, rule out muscular. Miriam charged in, carrying mail. ‘Hi again, Rachel,’ she said, dumping the mail on the desk, and then ‘Ooh, you’ve gone all white, are you all right, Rachel, are you all right, shall I . . .’ ‘I’m fine,’ Rachel said, ‘just the sandwich I had was a bit odd-tasting,’ and she gestured towards the bin, desperate to provide evidence. ‘Maybe you’ll sick it up?’ Miriam suggested, hopefully. ‘Maybe, but I don’t think so. I’m fine, really, just a bit queasy, it will pass. Thank you, Miriam.’

  It had passed. No more pains all afternoon. At home, she took the sheet of paper she’d made her solemn little notes on and put it in the folder which held all her hospital details and her clinic card. She was remembering now what Mr Wallis had said when she’d pressed him to tell her what to look out for, what signs there might be that the cancer was active. One of the things he’d told her was that the pain with cancer was constant once it started. Her stabs of pain had not been constant. They’d come, they’d gone. Surely that was a good sign? But then perhaps she hadn’t understood properly what Mr Wallis had said. She would have to ask him again, and then he would think her neurotic. Well, she was. Cancer had made her neurotic about her own body. How could she possibly have gone travelling with George, as he’d wanted her to, three years ago, so far away from medical help if she’d needed it? Illness, George had said, was a luxury a traveller such as himself could not afford. Pompous, she’d called him. Maybe, by not going with George, she’d saved her own life. Maybe, by being alert, she was saving it now.

  But the business of monitoring the workings of her body was exhausting. Every day, there was some trivial ache or pain or some difference somewhere which might mean something sinister. Her throat would be sore in a way it had never been sore before, or she’d develop an ulcer on her gums she had never had before, or she’d suddenly find swallowing difficult, or she’d start coughing and hear a strange wheeze – the list was varied and endless. Always, she controlled her terror and awaited events. These things cleared up, settled down, but only for other things to take their place. Her body had become a tyrant, demanding and receiving full-time attention. Years of hardly knowing how it worked had been replaced by a horrible awareness of its most minute tickings – she could easily have presented herself at her GP’s or the hospital clinic every single day. But she hadn’t.

  She wasn’t going to go to either of them now. The piece of paper was put away, another victory gained. She saw, as she slipped it into the folder, the letter which had come from the counselling service at St Mary’s. They’d asked if she would like to attend a group meeting of women who had breast cancer, to share experiences with each other which they all might find mutually helpful. She hadn’t been able to imagine anything worse, and nor did she want a one-to-one session, also on offer. She was on her own with this thing, and had to deal with it alone. Talking about it wouldn’t help her, not even, if it had been possible, talking to George, though she had often, in the past three years, wished he was with her. Every time she looked at the first date on her clinic card, stuck at the front of the folder, she was struck by the neatness: 2 p.m., Thursday, 9 April 2000, the day George left. She’d said goodbye in the morning, not even telling him about the lump or the appointment, and then she’d gone to St Mary’s. Those who liked to think stress caused cancer would be triumphant, but she rejected this thinking. She had to, or otherwise it would happen again. She was a survivor, and intended to go on being a survivor, and to that end she had to keep her mind clear of all conspiracy theories. Control, of herself, was essential.

  Only once had she lost it. She could hardly bear to remember the consequences, what she had put herself through. It had been a pain then. In her hip, her right hip. It had never crossed her mind that this might be suspicious. A pain in her hip seemed almost a pleasure to go to see her GP about. She’d been quite relaxed, and eloquent describing it. ‘It’s when I walk,’ she’d said, ‘I get this sharp pain, it shoots from my right hip down the front of my thigh, and it’s so searing, I have to stop and rest. Do you think I’ve pulled a muscle or torn a nerve or something?’ No, her GP didn’t. He thought it might be sciatica, though he explained that in that case the pain would run down the back, not the front of the leg. But then he said, ‘In view of your history,’ he thought she should have an X-ray. She hadn’t understood at first. ‘My history?’ she’d echoed. He’d emphasised that it was unlikely that this hip pain had anything to do with her recent medical history, but it was best to be sure. She went for the X-ray in a state of such agitation she could hardly keep still for it to be done. How she had continued to work she could not imagine. And then, even worse, the bone scan following the X-ray result. Going into that tomb-like room, surely all black, black everywhere, and yet she knew it could not be, of course it couldn’t, wasn’t, the walls were white, the low ceiling white, only the machine was black, a huge, round iron-black thing which travelled slowly along her body as she lay there, weak and already dying. It came very low over her head, throbbing as it went, and she’d begun to sweat, the claustrophobia intense, the desire to jump up and scream almost unbearable. But she did bear it. She kept still, as instructed. There seemed to be no one there but herself, no sound louder than the sinister hum of the machine. When it finished its eerie progress down her body, a technician appeared. ‘You can get down now,’ she said. But she hadn’t been able to for a minute. ‘It’s over,’ the technician said, impatiently, and still she hadn’t moved, the effort of levering herself off the bed so enormous she had to force herself to swing her legs down first and test their strength before the rest of her body could follow.

  It had been a farce. First, a shadow had been seen that looked like ‘something’; then the bone scan showed ‘hot spots’ in her hip bone that could be ‘something’; then the somethings were declared nothings, or, to be accurate, arthritis. So they said. Arthritis. She was young, but arthritis, she was told, was no respecter of age. Did arthritis run in her family? Yes, it did. Well then. She had an arthritic hip. It responded to a course of antiinflammatories. The pain faded, only to reappear if she walked up very steep hills which she hardly ever did. But the agony she had gone through did not. She felt that if she had awaited events, the pain would have settled down anyway. She’d tried, ever since, to control her fears that every pain was cancer. But it was wearing, this constantly watching herself, being on guard, permanently worrying that she would be caught out and that on the one occasion she didn’t report a pain, that would be the fatal one.

  Control. That was what was important. Lean on no one, be sensible, await events. Oh, but it was a harsh instruction to have to give oneself. No wonder, she thought, that she’d wanted to learn to fly.

  14

  The Clinic

  MRS HIBBERT, DRIVING to St Mary’s, almost stalled her car on the steep hill going out of town. There, flying down on the other side, was that girl Emma – she was sure it was her – and behind her, on another bike, that boy ‘Sluke, both of them shrieking and laughing, not a care in the world. What annoyed her, and momentarily distracted her from concentrating on her driving, was the unworthiness of her thoughts. She knew she ought to be glad to see Emma back safe and sound, and obviously in excellent spirits and health, but instead she felt resentful, as though she had been made a fool of. Had the girl come to say she was sorry for her abrupt departure? No, she had not, and very probably was never going to. Emma didn’t care about h
er. Better to put Emma out of her mind.

  She arrived at St Mary’s, feeling that she had a great deal to do. There was, first of all, her appointment with the Rev. Maddox. It had been agreed, at the last committee meeting of the Friends, that it would be an act of kindness to take him on a tour of the hospital to give him some idea of what their work was about. She felt quite comfortable with the idea of being in charge of the Rev. Maddox but rather suspected, from the encounter they had already had, that he might not be so comfortable with her. She’d asked him which college he’d been a member of at Oxford and when he’d told her St John’s, she had said her late husband had gone there too. This had not seemed to create between them the bond she had anticipated. He was a shy, nervous man, the Rev. Maddox, she could see that, without any small talk. This was rather admirable – she had no time for small talk herself and heaven knows she had suffered enough from it in the company of Dot and others – but on the other hand it made all conversation, or at least the starting of it, a strain. She was going to have to choose her topics carefully and let him know that she was not an idle chatterer.

  Then she had to find out what had happened to Chrissie. She’d heard the alarming news weeks ago that Dr Harrison had left and was rumoured to have given up being a doctor. Rita, to whom she’d again given a lift, had told her. It was the talk of the clinic – everyone was shocked. Mrs Hibbert had at once telephoned Chrissie, and when there was never any reply, after repeated attempts, she’d written her a letter, which in turn had received no answer. But Chrissie was back in St Mary’s, according to Rita (giving her a lift had become a regular event), and Mrs Hibbert was determined to find her and discover what had been going on. She also wanted to express her relief that Chrissie had come back and had not shirked her duty.

  The Rev. Maddox was waiting. He stood near the door of the Friends’ room looking embarrassed, his hands clasped in front of him, rather high on his chest, and a frown on his face. This frown only lifted marginally when she strode up to him and said his name, and he was slow to hold out his hand to be shaken. She suggested that first they have a cup of tea in the Friends’ room, which was fortunately empty, and he agreed that that would be appreciated. Together they went into the room, and after she had put the kettle on, Mrs Hibbert closed the door firmly. ‘Do sit down,’ she urged. The Rev. Maddox perched on the edge of a chair, hands on knees, and cleared his throat. Mrs Hibbert looked inquiringly towards him, thinking the throat-clearing heralded some utterance, but none was forthcoming. ‘So,’ she said, giving him his tea, ‘I believe your last parish was in Manchester?’ ‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘And did you like Manchester?’ ‘I found it difficult,’ the Rev. Maddox said, not looking at her, ‘but it was not because of the place or the people. It was for personal reasons. I liked Manchester very much, but I was unwell while there. Shall we begin our tour?’

  All the time she took him round the hospital, explaining what the Friends did, she was thinking about that word ‘unwell’. He’d been ‘unwell’, not ill. She thought she knew what that meant. Francis had used it when he’d been struggling to tell her what he’d felt for years, ‘unwell in the head’, he’d called it. He’d been to church that day, to evensong, but she’d had a cold and had not accompanied him. It always surprised her how devout Francis was, and how much he enjoyed going to church, whereas her faith wavered and actually going to church never seemed important to her. The church Francis belonged to seemed to her very high-church and she had preferred the simplicity of St James’s, the church she had gone to as a child. He’d come home in a strange mood, talking about the sermon he’d heard. He’d tried to précis it for her but she wasn’t really interested and her attention wandered. And then suddenly she’d heard him say, ‘I must be honest with you, Mary. I haven’t been honest, and I should have been, the vicar made me see I should be.’ For a moment, she had felt a tremor of real alarm at the thought of some awful thing he might be going to tell her, but once he began talking this had been replaced by bewilderment. Whatever was he saying? What did this peculiar ‘unwell in the head’ business mean? Francis, normally so fluent and articulate, had stumbled over words and faltered.

  It appeared to be, so far as she could make out, something to do with feeling he was not in the right body. He’d wondered if this feeling meant that he wished he was a woman, but he’d come to the conclusion that this was not the problem at all. Nor did he think he was a homosexual, afraid to admit it – it wasn’t that, he wouldn’t have been afraid. All his life he’d felt his mind and body were not properly fused. His body didn’t seem to obey the commands of his mind. Nobody suspected how peculiar he was. He had never, he told her, had any fully realised sexual experience, and it was her acceptance of his condition (though she hadn’t known what it was) that had made him love her. She’d made no demands for him to have to satisfy.

  She’d wept, how she’d wept. How could a wife not cry her heart out, hearing this? But what she’d wept for was her own failure to realise there had been something wrong all the time with Francis. How could they have been such friends, so very close to each other, so happy in each other’s company, and yet she had not known that most important thing about him? It had been stupid of her, and insensitive, not to have deduced that her husband must be in some way abnormal to have no desire whatsoever for sexual relations. She supposed that somewhere in her mind she had had suspicions that he might secretly prefer men to women, but that she had accepted this and simply did not mind – it was part of the unspoken bargain between them. To find that she had been quite wrong, and that Francis had been tormented by his ‘unwellness’, this lack of desire, seemed a reflection on her own lack of understanding. He hadn’t been able to speak to her, that was the very worst aspect of his suffering.

  After his confession, things were never quite the same – an awkwardness lay between Francis and herself which worried them both. Silently, she cursed the vicar’s sermon, with its exhortation to be completely honest. Honesty, in this case, had decidedly not been the best policy. She wondered whether she ought to encourage Francis to seek treatment of some sort, but when she tentatively made a reference to this possibility he shuddered and said he had tried psychotherapy years ago and it had not helped. She went on feeling she should do something about Francis and his ‘unwellness’, but embarrassment prevented her from consulting anyone. Meanwhile, he grew quieter and quieter. He said he simply felt tired, but since tiredness was such an easy thing to talk about she managed to persuade him to go to his GP (who was not her own doctor). He went, and came back a little more like his usual cheerful self, which made her wonder if his doctor had got more out of him. At any rate, some medication had been prescribed. She didn’t find out till later that the tablets he took were anti-depressants.

  When she found Francis still heavily asleep at lunchtime that Sunday she hadn’t felt any particular sense of alarm. He sometimes did sleep late if he’d been working on papers into the early hours, as he had been doing. It had annoyed her, that this was necessary on a Saturday evening, especially since she’d cooked an especially delicious dinner and they’d shared a bottle of Chianti – it seemed an insult to the meal for Francis to go off into his room claiming important work that had to be done for Monday. She’d shouted, in the morning, that coffee was ready, but he hadn’t appeared. But by noon she was seriously irritated at his behaviour and uncertain whether to prepare lunch or not. So she’d gone into his room, saying, ‘Francis, it is nearly lunchtime,’ and it was not his lack of reply which had alerted her to there being something very wrong but his breathing.

  She’d noticed at once the empty container beside his bed. When the paramedics arrived, she handed the Nardil packet to them. They said there should be a warning card somewhere, because Nardil had a high overdose rating, but she had never seen one. From the beginning, travelling in the ambulance, she had been adamant: Francis would never have taken an overdose. He had been tired, he’d been working very late, he must simply have misjudged the dosage.
She remembered, when questioned at the hospital, that he had complained the evening before that his vision was blurred, which was why it was taking him the weekend to read through the documents he had. They asked what he had eaten and drunk the day before, and she listed (with some pride) the fillet steak, the potatoes, the broad beans, the salad, the Stilton and the wine. It was not until the inquest that she heard how Nardil reacted with all these things, and the inference was that Francis must have known they would. But nevertheless, the verdict had been one of accidental death, to her enormous relief. It was a verdict she believed to be absolutely correct – she would not allow that Francis had been either intending to kill himself or making a cry for help. Nonsense. She had been there to help, he had not been without it. Only a small, inner voice asked if it had been the kind of help he had wanted, and she silenced it.

  *

  The Rev. Maddox made little comment during their perambulation of the hospital, and she gave up trying to interest him in anything. By the time they parted, she had decided his ‘unwellness’ had not been the same as her husband’s. She didn’t know what had been wrong with him (maybe was still wrong), though she suspected that, in his case, the problem was his homosexuality, his inability to ‘come out’, but she was quite certain he would not be a good chaplain. He would never know what patients wanted, never know how to talk to them, let alone comfort them. He was quite clearly one of those unfortunate individuals unable properly to communicate with anyone. She was sure he would have few, if any, friends, and his illness was probably due to this inability to establish human contact. ‘No man is an island’ Mrs Hibbert said to herself, but the Rev. Maddox was trying to be one. She could have told him it wouldn’t work. If he was really so repelled by his fellow human beings then he should go into a monastery or else have treatment. There. She would wipe him from her mind.