Beyond the High Blue Air (15 page)

Not only are their old friends now irrelevant, but their two younger children are lost to them too. Both are teenagers still at school and I think the loss of their older sister must be complicated by resentment, for they never come to visit her. My young son is more interested in parties and girls, Hamad says. He has even told me that he finds Mia disgusting to look at now. I will continue to provide a home for him and my other daughter, but that is all; they have abandoned Mia in her hour of need.

Hamad is a warm, sympathetic man but on this he is unrelenting. Yasmin remains quiet as he speaks, her beautiful face framed by the rich blue of her headscarf like a living Pietà. How can she bear this triple loss, estranged from her younger children as a result of the tragedy that has taken away her first child? Alone, sustained only by her faith and the shared obsession with Hamad, she waits for the miracle of Mia's awakening.

It's raining, a bleak grey summer's day. Miles is awake and Claudia and I are chatting in his room, including him in the way we have become accustomed. It's easier to talk to him when there are two or more of us and the conversation is no longer one-sided. It's raining today, Miles, I tell him. I remember us once discussing how strange that rain can make us feel restless, gloomy, cut off from something more exciting, but when we're in bed the sound of it is so soothing and pleasurable. Do you remember, says Claudia, how we used to love swimming in the rain in France? You were the first to suggest it, Miles, and we all joined you and had the coolest time ever. The usual fleeting frisson of apprehension that maybe he doesn't want to be reminded, but his expression doesn't change from a look of calm interest. It occurs to me then that he hasn't felt the rain in over a year. Why don't we take him out in it now, I say to Claudia, we can let him have that sensory experience. It's warm enough, it can't do him any harm and he's due for bed in an hour so if his clothes get wet they can be changed straightaway.

We set off out of the ward, wheeling him to the huge lift that takes us down to the ground floor. It feels like an adventure and as we push open the doors that lead from the visitors' room into the garden the questioning looks we get from staff and visitors make it feel even more so, as though we're breaking school rules. The garden is quite empty, a clean sea of green lawn between the gleaming pathways and dripping wooden benches. What heaven, says Claudia, let's run. So we do, propelling Miles what feels like dangerously fast along the slippery tarmac paths. I remember doing this with the children in their pushchairs, their shrieks of delight. The rain is as fine as sea spray on our faces and Miles closes his eyes in what I hope is pleasure as we run, enjoying the movement and this once familiar, elementary thing that now seems to me so poignant. What else have I not thought of, of all the ordinary things he loved that are removed from him now?

The shock of disgust. The day I come home and I'm shouting at Ron: I can't stand it any more, Ron. Do you realise what I've been doing all afternoon? Miles has had a bad day;
I've
had a bad day. All I've done is watch Miles sitting in his chair like a hopeless idiot – I contort my face grotesquely to imitate Miles when he is distressed – and he
would not
relax his legs down from the ridiculous horizontal thing he does with them when his spasticity is bad, he
would not
unclench his arms. He dribbled and coughed and then he choked while I suctioned him – great gobbets of phlegm came up. His brain is scrambled, I can't stand it, his life is
finished
, done for, over, kaput. The whole thing is just
preposterous
, Ron, do you hear me, I can't bear it any more. How on earth can I help him when he's like this? I am in the swing of it now, shouting and gesticulating, and Ron is letting me do this. It is painful for him because he loves me and he loves Miles, but he has lost part of me to Miles – part of me has been damaged with Miles. We can't return to the simple, pure happiness we had together before this thing happened.

Some weeks later Ron wakes at night with a stabbing pain in his stomach and severe nausea. It has receded by the morning but it was so sudden and so violent I ask him please to see the doctor that day. He does, and is immediately referred for tests.

I have come to meet him in the clinic after the test and we wait together for the doctor in the small, curtained-off cubicle where he has been resting as the sedation wears off. I've driven straight from Putney so I tell him how Miles was this morning and then we chat about other things, keeping at bay the fear that hovers unspoken. The doctor finally arrives, straight from the operating theatre and still in his blue cotton scrubs. A kind man, he can't soften the blow. He has found two large tumours. I honestly don't know how you have remained functioning normally, he says. You must have quite remarkable strength. He stays with us for some time and I gather that he knows about Miles. Ron must have told him; I don't ask why but knowing Ron I fear that he knew something was wrong but postponed finding out, not wanting to burden me further.

It is the end of November and when we leave the clinic the afternoon has darkened already, shrouded in grey drizzle. As we drive home the windscreen wipers scrape relentlessly through the mist of our incomprehension. Hope comes to the rescue, that primordial survival mechanism – how else could we face this? If the tumours are removed and the cancer hasn't spread, then that will be the end of it. Ron hasn't lost weight, that's definitely a good sign. There is no history of cancer in his family. We know lots of people who have survived cancer and are still going strong.

We've exhausted the subject by the time we get home. Belinda and Amelia, Ron's daughters, are waiting for us. Now in their late thirties, they are of a different generation from my children, but the merging of our families has been a happy one and Miles's accident has cast a shadow over their lives too. Now Ron must tell them that he has cancer. They lost their mother to cancer ten years ago and I know what dread this news will hold for them. By the time we have supper together the subject has been exhausted, the shock absorbed. The girls' relationship with Ron is a close one and both live nearby; there will be a lot of us on hand to support him through whatever lies ahead. We don't talk about cancer over the meal and instead enjoy a bottle of the wine we normally save for special occasions, though our conversation is tinged with strange urgency.

I wake in the night and realise that light is coming from under the closed office door, the room next to our bedroom which is usually left open. I get up and Ron is sitting at the desk in his dressing gown, writing. It's all right, he says, please go back to sleep. I just need this time to work things out. I go back to bed. I understand; Ron has a habit of facing any problem, work or personal or of someone else who has asked for help, by writing it out to reach the decision that he will stand by.

Before he leaves for work the next morning he brings me my morning cup of tea and sits down on the bed. I have made up my mind, he says. We are going to put this on the back burner. I want life to continue as normal – you've got enough to deal with and it must not intrude on our total commitment to Miles. Oh Ron, how can you say that? I take his hand as we share the crushing weight of this new, pernicious thing that has entered our lives with such callous timing. I can't possibly put it on the back burner, I tell him. Of course I can face both things together. And we will emphatically face this together.

What I can't acknowledge is the truth, that loving Ron with the intensity I do, it's not the same as a mother's love. I don't want to be put to this test. I must not let Ron feel he is taking second place, on the back burner.

Two days later Ron undergoes surgery to remove the tumours. I am with him when the surgeon tells us the pathologist's results. He has Grade IV cancer that has metastasised to his liver.

The surgeon inspires confidence, he is serious and concerned and he is not unoptimistic. Ron will have chemotherapy to shrink the small tumours in the liver and then surgery to remove them. He could remain clear of cancer after that for some long time.

This cannot happen to Ron. We cannot let this thing happen to Ron. How does the mind respond to calamity? But this time we understand – I think we do – what the calamity is. It is cancer and it can be targeted. Ron can survive this. He must survive this. He is talking calmly to the surgeon who sits across from us at the end of the hospital bed and they are discussing logistics, when the chemotherapy should begin, how long it will take. The surgeon says that time should be allowed for Ron to recover his strength from the operation, which was major surgery; chemo will begin after that.

When he has left the room Ron takes my hand. I'm so sorry, he says. Such an extraordinary man, even now not thinking of himself. He could never, ever be a burden to me. He has only ever, will only ever, nourish and uphold me. He
must
survive this thing.

Ron's diagnosis means we must put on hold our plans to have Miles living at home. We cannot have the disruption of builders doing major work in the house while he is recovering from his operation nor while he is undergoing chemotherapy. It is an added bitter blow, but I remind myself it is only a deferral. Once Ron is better we will reimplement the plans.

The first Christmas. Belinda and Amelia come for our traditional celebratory breakfast; so far everything is as normal as it can be, except Miles is not here. Later the children and I drive to Putney through the empty streets of London, the river placidly aloof alongside us in the wintery sun. We arrive and Will carries in the coolbox filled with champagne and glasses, plates of smoked salmon sandwiches, Christmas cake, the girls and I laden with carrier bags of presents. We take Miles down to the empty ballroom, the girls playing a duet on the grand piano while he faces them, rigid-jawed, in his chair. Nothing we can say lightens his mood. Shiny multicoloured strips of Christmas foil hanging from door frames, tinsel and sprigs of holly over the dull watercolours and we sit on grey plastic chairs around the piano to eat our picnic lunch. At last Miles drops off to sleep so we talk among ourselves and then we're laughing wildly because actually the bizarre dreadfulness of the moment is hilariously funny and laughing is a huge, delicious relief. Taking Miles back upstairs we give out the presents for carers and nurses, key rings and pens for the men, boxed, scented soap and scarves for the women. How fond we feel of each other, how affectionate they are with Miles. But under our show of gaiety lurks the truth. Remember this time last year, Miles's fling with the Icelandic girl, a friend of Tom's he met on Christmas Eve who fell for him and happily accompanied him home for the night, his waking Ron and me as he crept down the stairs with her at
6
am so she could go back to Tom's parents' house without their noticing. His rueful hangover, sleeping on the sitting room sofa while we went out to friends for lunchtime drinks, regaling us in the evening when he recovered. His delight in the evening meal being spent on our own, just the six of us, his ideal Christmas he said. Handing out presents from under the tree beforehand, his own for us all elaborately wrapped and generous. The gusto with which he enjoyed every part of the ceremonial meal, his scepticism when Claudia offered to cook it instead of me and then the shower of compliments that she had done it all to perfection. The decimated goose and Stilton, his favourites. All of us sitting around the fire afterwards enjoying the end of the port. What could be better than this? he asks. Great food, a good fire and family.

We sit in the day room while Miles is put to bed and then we drive home, in time to bath and change and gather around the tree, presents and more champagne, a festive dinner tonight for five. Miles's absence is a tangible thing, his presence at Christmas always so intrinsic to everything about it, but there is something else tonight that flits like a moving shadow between us. It is the spectre of Ron's cancer. His treatment starts in the New Year.

Ron has been having chemotherapy for months now and somehow it has merged quietly into the new pattern of our lives. It helps that so far the side-effects have not been troubling, though he is beginning to lose his hair. Thick and curly and originally fair, it turned to white before I met him and I love it. We go to Lock & Co. and choose him a hat, a dark navy fedora. You look ridiculously handsome, I tell him, it's really a tragedy you haven't always worn a hat. His treatment is making us optimistic and whatever other side-effects there are, he doesn't complain about them. Life continues as normal; he has succeeded in putting his illness on the back burner.

There is a large indoor pool at Putney, one of the many amenities for the patients, and the physiotherapist Sarah tells me she has decided to take Miles swimming. The theory is that the weightlessness of the body in the warm water helps spasticity, aiding the patient to relax their muscles. By regularly experiencing this relaxation they may regain some movement, while the pleasurable new sensory experience might help encourage further wakefulness.

For the hour's drive to Putney I try to keep hope submerged but it doesn't work, I can't suppress it and I have sudden little bursts of sweetness – maybe this will really be pleasurable for him, maybe it will be the catalyst for his recovery. For some people it has had amazing results; maybe it will for him too. Nervousness as I enter the building, a modern wing just beyond the car park, the air getting warmer and thicker as I near the pool, saturated with chlorine, much worse even than the indoor pool in Lewisham where I used to take the children for swimming lessons. Of couse, almost all the people who swim here are incontinent. Taking off my shoes to step through the antiseptic foot bath and onto the pool side is like entering a sauna, the air suffocatingly clammy.

The session is about to begin. Sarah is in the pool and Miles – he is suspended above the water, swaying slightly in his sling as the hoist is manoeuvred by Harriet, Sarah's assistant, who is strong and stout-legged in her swimming costume. Miles could be a wounded animal being airlifted for treatment like one sees in nature programmes; his eyes are black with fear. I realise that I have never, in my life, seen him look fearful. Sarah is soothing him, talking to him as one would to a child: Miles, it's okay, I'm here to receive you, you can't come to any harm, Harriet and I will hold you in the water, you're going to be fine. His legs are rigid, stretched out straight from the sling so that it looks precarious, as though he might slip out. His arms are clenched up to his sides, fists together under his chin, his broad shoulders now contracted and narrow. He is wearing a nappy under his shorts. He looks small in the air above the empty expanse of water, his once powerful body shrunk to this.