When the Feast is Finished

William Blake.

Now I entered a period of rapid mood swings, in contrast with Margaret’s amazing equilibrium, while we struggled to come to terms with this fatal news.

Being sensible and stalwart, my lady goes to Jo at Salon Scandinavia to have her hair done before tomorrow’s biopsy.

This evening, she phones Tim in Brighton to issue a vague storm warning. ‘It doesn’t look too good,’ she says brightly. Tim is concerned and says he will ring tomorrow. Today, she appears in good spirits but is clearly frail. She snoozes on my chaise-longue here in the study all morning long, and on the sofa in the afternoon. In part it must be the shock of the news.

Already it’s started. ‘This tree she planted with her own dear hands …’

Her gentle manners, her sweet and cheerful voice. I don’t know what to do, where to turn. If only I could take on her cancer and she could live …

My vegetables have been a fair success this year, as I have fought weeds, pigeons, slugs, snails and blackfly on my little patch. It’s hot and dry weather: I’ve just hosed everything down. The peas aren’t brilliant, but the broad beans are delicious. Margaret ate some for her supper, in a white sauce.

Wednesday 30th July

We went to see Mr Kettlewell, a large, rugged, muttering sort of man in a loose grey suit. He sat in his room in Polsted House, next to the Acland, asking Moggins questions and examining her. There’s to be no biopsy. We feel we’ve been given another week of life! After that week, a CT scan and then a laparoscopy. It appears there may be a tumour in the stomach or pancreas. I pray not the pancreas.

Margaret describes this anxious time.

I had a fairly immediate appointment with Mr Kettlewell, who has done my two colonoscopies; he took all the details, and sounded out my diaphragm; he found one uncomfortable patch between my ribs. He suggests a laparoscopy would be better than a biopsy, which is rather hit and miss: this would be a micro-camera put into the liver area so they can have a good look around it and other organs, pancreas, etc. Seems a good idea. In his mumbly quiet way, he was not nearly so fatalistic as Neil had been, and says there could be other reasons, and there is always chemotherapy (me!) and so on.

We came away feeling we had been granted a reprieve, and went into town to buy new photo albums etc. (I want to make Tim and Charlotte an album each of their family backgrounds – I have the photos chosen already).

Much of Margaret’s character can be read in that extract. Her courage, her concern for others, her sense of family, her determination to act and get on with life.

On the day after the meeting with Mr Kettlewell, we both had health appointments. Mine I felt was completely irrelevant; it had been fixed some while earlier. Margaret describes it, not particularly flatteringly.

Yesterday morning early I had an appointment also with George Hart, my cardiologist, who also listened patiently to all the symptoms which have occurred since the angiogram last year. He took my blood pressure which he says is fine. No comment on my irregular, or rather increased, pulse rate. He says the laparoscopy is a good idea, and he will decide if I need to change medicines after the results of it come in. A cheery little fellow.

B had an appointment with an ENT consultant in the afternoon! We are making the most of our BUPA subs at present!! It was because of his permanently achy nose, dry and painful up the top. A very pleasant and clearly spoken youngish man (the sort Charlotte ought to get together with!) looked at everything and pronounced it normal, but said the septum dividing the nostrils was a little crooked, blocking one nostril slightly.

We talked of B’s snoring, which I described as someone cutting corrugated cardboard with a serrated knife, which amused him; he suggests B might attend the sleep clinic locally, but that any operation to shave bits off the floppy palate is extremely painful and not recommended. There are other things that can be done.

B said to me he felt like a fraud, getting attention for his nose at present when it is a minor thing. Certainly while he is on Beconase and the two inhalers, his breathing is easier and he snores less.

But he is very tired, has bad legs, etc. and always has indigestion much like what I am experiencing at present, a cross between a hiccup and a burp. Mr Bates suggested losing a stone in weight would help B greatly, even with the snoring. We must try to aim for this – I’m sure it would help his legs too.

Last week at Tarr Steps, and driving up and down to Devon, I was pretty fit – but feel I couldn’t manage it this week, that’s pretty bad. Most mornings this week, I feel very shaky, pulse rate high, and not keen to stand still at all. I have just had to ask B to do the shopping. Poor man, he is looking after me extremely nicely and kindly and patiently, getting morning teas in bed, doing the washing up, clearing rubbish and putting out papers and bottles etc. Luckily he is not under too much pressure with work; White Mars continues well, but does not have to be finished for quite a while; the autobiog. will need a lot of work, when Little, Brown agrees to release a marked copy of the mss. with suggestions.

By this date, I had taken back my autobiography from HarperCollins and had changed publisher. I was now with Little, Brown.

For reasons that I now find hard to understand, I was somewhat astonished when Margaret asked me to do the shopping. I had become so used to her expeditions. Of course I trawled round Tesco’s with her shopping list. Margaret never visited a supermarket again.

Margaret is to peck at a little food every hour. Chocolate was mentioned. This will suit her birdlike eating habits well. After Mr Kettlewell, we shopped in Summertown at the delicatessen, then called on Wendy and Thomas. I can see Moggins is a little scared of Thomas. He has become so boisterous, and rushes unpredictably at people in a boyish way. She is so delicate she fears he might charge into her.

With Thomas I played in their Victoria Road garden – dungeons and Exploding Boys. The dear ladies talked indoors, ever good friends. Wendy once paid Chris [Margaret] a great compliment, saying she wished she had been her mother. Certainly Margaret’s mild behaviour, her kindness, her lack of stridency have made us all better people.

II (#u4e1f5e53-d5b6-5e79-9370-bbb15a31eaea)

First week of August

Tomorrow, my darling first-born’s thirtieth birthday; this time thirty years ago I was sitting in Jasmine garden with my feet up, very large, few cares in the world!

Now, who knows? This morning I am extremely shaky, even my writing is not what it was. Have I had this thing coming on for a long time? B looks back at his diaries and says I was unwell in the spring, but it was merely a sore throat I think.

The heart trouble has been with me for some time. But this new thing? I lie awake at night trying to sort out things in my mind, like what will happen to my belongings: my will is made, and is fine, but I’ve left nothing to Mark, or to Sarah [Sheridan, Tim’s fiancée], or to Youla, which I’d like to do. Tim and Charlotte will get Quay House immediately, I suppose, and B will have to fund it for them while decisions are made about whether to keep the flat or not … Well, I can’t look after that for them, but it would at least give them some funds to use for their own properties in due course.

My dearest step-daughter came up on Friday with a wonderful large basket full of goodies and snacks for me! Such thoughtful kindness as always. She and Mark are as dear to me as my own two.

Charlotte called on Saturday, with some lovely flowers for me. We talk, mostly superficially, about things. In the car driving her back to her current boyfriend Owen’s place, I say there is a slight reason for worry about my condition. She does not say much about that, perhaps trying to be optimistic for my sake. We say we will see each other in a fortnight.

Sarah has taken Tim over to France for twenty-four hours for his big birthday, hiring a smart Rover 200 for them – they hope to buy one next year! He sounded extremely cheery on the phone!

It was difficult to see how much Charlotte understood from her mother’s lightly made remarks. Driving her into town for her to meet up with Owen on another occasion, we stopped outside Blackwells’ art shop and had a fairly ghastly conversation, where I had to tell her the omens were not good. My hope was that she would prepare herself mentally for graver shocks to come.

On the 2nd of August, we went to tea with our kind neighbours, the Stantons, John and Helen. Also present were Margaret and Jeremy Potter. Jeremy was slowly succumbing to an inoperable cancer. He had tried chemotherapy, but it made him feel so unwell he refused further treatment. He seemed well enough at the table. But so did Margaret; she was bright and talkative. I could not believe she was under threat of death, so serene was her radiance.

Yet she grows weaker. Is it only my fancy she grows thinner and her eyes grow larger, mistier?

It’s a long while to the 7th and the laparoscopy; the time till then seems like a gift we’ve been given yet cannot use.

Sunday 3rd August

If I had the effrontery to think of life as a spiritual journey, then Margaret is far ahead of me; so calm, so tender.

Clive phones from Athens to ask after her health. Although she tells him that one of her symptoms is rather worrying, she says it so reassuringly, so light-heartedly, with amusement even in her voice, as if to say It’s nothing, that he and Youla are surely deceived into thinking all is well.

She’s too tired to water the garden. I do it for her – and drench myself with the hose!

It was a wonderful sunny summer. In order to keep Margaret’s thoughts directed towards the future, I was creating a new bed in the garden. It proved to be hard work.

Moggins sits and watches me plant honeysuckle to climb the new pyramid, and to set a new deutsia in the bed. Charlotte arrives, bringing flowers, for one of her lightning visits. We have tea and biscuits in the helix, and photograph each other.

Charlotte has presents for Tim’s birthday.

Wendy calls at 8.30, large with child. She brings Chris a basket of ‘snack’ gifts, knowing she can eat only a little and often. A lovely and loving surprise! We’re very cheerful.

It’s been a nice day.

That night, I had a fragment of a dream, in which humanity had been given the gift of better understanding. I saw two people sitting together talking. A voice tells me, ‘They are going over all the conversations they had in their lives, improving them.’

If only …

Somewhere in that long night, Margaret came to the realisation that our proposed holiday in Brittany would be too much for her. This was to have been a family holiday by the sea. She and Wendy had made all the arrangements between them. We had hoped for a repeat of a gorgeous holiday we had all enjoyed in Languedoc, in the heart of France, a couple of years earlier.

Brittany was not to be. Wendy and Mark also had their problems. Wendy was pregnant, with a demanding small boy at her heels, Mark was bowed with over-work, and they were going to move house.

Ordinary life continued in fits and starts. We drove to Yarnton Garden Centre and bought £72-worth of plants for the new bed as if nothing was wrong. Margaret walked happily among the assembled plants. Indeed, she was strong enough to bake us a delicious Bulgar plum pie for lunch – of which she could eat but little. She smiled sadly at me as I cleared away. Oh, my dear loving darling! Now you are gone, I live in the dull widower-world of hasty snacks, indifferent eating. I should have framed your lovely pie instead of eating it …