Walking Shadow, page 8
‘But that keeps you hanging about.’
‘Yeah, in a mortuary,’ he laughs, ‘who knows what could happen!’
Wednesday 10 November
Slept a glorious thirteen and a half hours.
But once ensconced in my big window chair, the drowsiness overcame me – a panickiness.
Afternoon, G went for his Covid jab.
What if he has a car accident? What if it were serious or worse?
Devastating in these circumstances.
But a great short story plot. The wrong one goes first.
Thursday 11 November
Thursday . . . again!
Just given Tony 1.5 ml of morphine and put him down on his bed in the studio. Taken his socks off, given him his ‘best friend’ blanket, and left the little Shakespeare brass bell on his bedside table. Come back to my chair to cry. He is slipping away.
When I got up this morning, I was so worried about going out to do the morning shop that I had to check he was still breathing before I left. We had to get him up early (i.e. 9.30) now, because the doctor was visiting.
Gift from Ian McKellen. He had asked if we wanted anything, ‘Anything . . .Caviar? Or Eccles cakes?’ I plumped for the caviar. But this is Beluga Caviar, amazingly generous of him. We had some on little horn spoons with vodka. Perfect. And Thelma sent a couple of Japanese scarves.
Saturday 13 November
Schloffed on our bed upstairs. Coming down afterwards, Cuban music was playing on the radio. G led me into a salsa, or rhumba of whatever it’s called. For a few beautiful minutes we danced.
But then we sat down for a routine task and we’re suddenly struck dumb. It was ordering a new wine supply as the last one gets depleted. How long do we order for? We were both stumped for a reply, but tried to talk normally while avoiding one another’s eyes. It felt like one of the most uncomfortable shocks we’ve had in this situation, perhaps because it was over such an ordinary thing. It came from nowhere.
I am letting him sleep in this morning for as long as he wants. I won’t disturb him, and will take up a glass of juice when I hear him stir. His appetite has dwindled rapidly. He ate half an Eccles cake in the afternoon (yes, a dozen Eccles cakes arrived from Sir Ian this morning), and had half a bowl of chicken consommé for lunch.
Today I am making a requested meal: Oxtail stew, slow-cooked for six hours, in Jamie Oliver’s ‘insanely delicious’ recipe. I’ll make it today so it can be warmed up for Sunday lunch, and then he can have as much or as little as he wants.
Climbing the stairs to bed every night is getting harder and harder for Tony. So I remind him of a story, part of our own mythology.
We spent our honeymoon in Uganda in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest searching for mountain gorillas. We immediately learned two things: 1) why they are called mountain gorillas, and 2) why Bwindi is called the Impenetrable Forest. We were advised to hire a couple of porters at base camp ‘to carry our water bottles’, which we did – and hired two very strong-looking young women. Tony found the climb really tough. And even though we were told that a troop of gorillas was just over the next rise, a few hundred metres further up the slope, Tony said he didn’t think he could make it, and to leave him there and go on ahead alone without him. I wouldn’t have it, and we hauled him up the remaining mountainside, with the porters taking a buttock each. And we had one of the best experiences of our lives, watching these gentle giants.
So I stand behind him at the bottom of the steps, grab his hips in both my hands, and support his weight. It’s much easier for him to heave himself up now, and we climb the wooden hills to Bedfordshire together.
Sunday 14 November
Got Tony down to sleep, with his 1.5 ml of oramorph. He’s not quite rested yet. I am sitting here watching and typing. Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise on CD. It premiered in 1916 in Moscow. There is a dies irae disguised in the opening melody, and an underlying melancholy, which must reflect the composer’s mood as Russia endured the First World War. Rachmaninoff once wrote: ‘Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is Sorrow.’
Oxtail for lunch today. He ate a tiny bit really, but I am delighted to watch him sucking the bones.
Monday 15 November
G had fruitful hour-long conversation with Bloomsbury about his book.15 They’ll decide at their next board meeting, about 18 Dec.
A small sharp blade went through me.
So I’ll never know.
Tuesday 16 November
By chance my new literary agent got in touch today. To update me but there’s no news, good or bad.
Day of worsening symptoms.
Loss of memory. Can’t think of certain names or words. Drives me mad. The other night at bedtime, couldn’t think of the word for the stewed fruit we have in the morning. Only came up with compost. G told me it was compote. Didn’t matter but I need to unload my niggling worry onto my bedtime pad.
I’ve simultaneously lost my voice and my hearing. When I speak it sounds like a blurred echo. At times, so bad I can’t carry on.
For the first time in a while I took a nasty trip on my way to the loo, and almost fell. Then a calamity waiting to happen. My penis has shrunk, and is difficult to find among the surrounding skin and scrotum when I need to pee in an emergency, like now. Ended up wetting pants and knickers. Much snarling anger. G, very calming, fetched dry clothes and washed the wet ones.
Wednesday 17 November
Marietta. Used sketch of Cecil Bloch16 about to be hit by the train in his suicide, death just a fraction away. Which is how it feels to me too. It’s such an alarming situation that I have to show this crude raw drawing of it.
Could only last half the call. Partly because of weak voice. Partly because I have little left to say. After call, G observes that my next Marietta session, next Wednesday, will be his birthday. I’ve been wondering if I’ll make it. Still not sure.
Eve: another of our big Shakespeare discussions: him reading the latest chapter of his book, me offering editing advice. These have been a wonderful conclusion to the Shakespeare part of our life.
Thursday 18 November
Watch the tavern scene from Henry IV Part One. We laughed and wept our way through it and he ended by saying, ‘I am so proud of that’. The scene itself is one of Shakespeare’s masterpieces, so alive, spontaneous and rich. And I think G really did come up to the mark. We all did – to be fair. There’s not a fraction of A. Sher visible in this J. Falstaff.
Thursday (again). His voice is getting very dry and hoarse, sometimes a sort of squeak at the end of the day. But we still sit for our long afternoon chat. Yesterday I had drafted a chapter on Lear, and he gave brilliant editing notes, no, more than just editing notes, structural shifts and emphases which really bring out what I actually want to say, and have the emotional content which I keep shying away from.
Then he talked about how much these chats about so many different Shakespeare plays meant to him, how he looked forward to them.
Oh, and I cast Richard III yesterday. Arthur Hughes has radial dysplasia, his ‘little arm’ as he calls it. He is twenty-nine years old. It might be a leap of faith, but I think it’s a positive step into a bleak future. I haven’t told Tony. Not quite sure why. It’s the first work Zoom call I have made in ages. It seems like an attempt to move towards the closed door.
Friday 19 November
Beth gave birth last night. A week over, but in good health, a little girl. No name yet. Much happiness and relief. Special relief for me personally. This was another milestone, which I wondered if I’d make. Thank God I did. Wouldn’t’ve wanted to win this particular race.
Message from Beth’s mum, Eileen, with photos. Mother and baby look well.
‘Thou met’st with things dying I with things new born’.
I hear Tony suddenly crying in the kitchen and go to hug him.
To cheer him up I put on Miriam Makeba and we danced (sort of). He sat, lifted his arms, and rocked from side to side, grinning from ear to ear. Dancing has always embarrassed him, but he loves it when I dance about the kitchen for him.
Told Dr Alia I’d been experiencing a fast heartbeat and tight chest. Asked if my kind of condition could lead to death by heart attack? She was a bit shocked by the frankness of the discussion (and, God, could I ever have imagined having it?) but said yes it could. And if it did G was to call the ambulance, and have my respect form standing by for them. No hospital. No bringing back to life. Just making patient peaceful.
I tell G my hope to make it to his birthday.
He’s shocked. So soon?
We’ve each got a (secret) prognosis.
For the first time I’ve admitted part of mine.
We cry together.
Friday 19 November
Get up at six to answer RSC’s appeal for help on the messaging. I have had to cross Tony’s name off the statement, as I could not bear to see it in print next to the words ‘we are sad to announce . . .’.
Sunday 21 November
Beautifully sunny morning, we sit in the window. The beech tree on the drive of The Hill is aflame in copper and gold behind the walnut tree.
Tuesday 23 November
Tony having enormous trouble dumping. Dr Sam proposes that Tony is severely constipated and she needs to examine him. And then prescribe an enema and a course of laxatives. Tony endures the humiliation of a finger up the bum, but it proves she’s right. There is a hard blockage which Tony won’t be able to shift on his own. T seems relieved when she has gone that he knows the problem.
There is a flurry of activity as the prescription lands at the Stratford Pharmacy, and when I check I can pick it up they say they don’t have it in stock. Won’t be until tomorrow. This doesn’t seem good enough to me, and while T is taking his afternoon schloff, I ring back the nurses, and they sort it so I can collect it at the Rosebird Centre pharmacy next to Waitrose. Which I do, and am back in time for the next district nurse, Jade, to administer the enema, which doesn’t seem half as bad as anticipated. It works fast and in minutes we have Tony on the commode, and hear a blast. Great relief.
This morning I bring up his juice as normal, and also a coffee to make sure things move. But I can see how tired he is. After the shower as I lead him back into the bedroom his wrists seemed crankier than usual, cracking as he grips me tight. Now, he is sleeping soundly in the window. I have washed his daytime jumper, overnight, as it was getting a bit grubby down the front, and have ironed two of his favourite shirts, with the vital breast pockets he likes.
Wednesday 24 November
When I went up to wake T this morning at about ten thirty, he whispered hoarsely ‘I have something to tell you’, as I leaned closer he said, ‘I made it to your birthday’!
He told me later that he had tried writing the card to go with the flowers last night, and decided to write two different versions, one if he survived the night and the other if he didn’t.
Oh Lord, to be able to pray.
Richard Sharples arrived with Tony’s bust. He took the original reference photos in 2016 when Tony was playing King Lear. It’s a powerful object made by his own brilliant process of ‘growing’ copper. In Richard’s own words ‘it produces these exquisite organic forms which for me embody the relationship between growth and decay which is so central to us as human beings’.
Richard wrote later: ‘I can honestly say it’s been one of the most challenging, strangest and above all saddest and upsetting projects I’ve ever done and yet weirdly I think it might turn out to be one of the best pieces I’ve ever made.’ And he went on: ‘The reason for doing this particular sculpture was because it felt important to me to do it . . . seeing two people I dearly love going through something so shockingly painful and not being able to help them or change the situation. The sculpture felt like a way of channeling that frustration into something creative . . . I’m sure you’re aware it comes from a place of love.’
Tony dictated a note to Richard: ‘What a magnificent achievement. I can’t tell you how touched I am by it. Greg told you I’d used the word “noble”. Can I please retract it? “Noble” is too precious; this bust is rough, raw, tender, alive, full of humanity, vulnerability, anger. Can’t find the words.’
And then unexpectedly my sister Jo appeared. She’s come all the way down from North Wales just to say ‘Happy Birthday’. We took some photos of the bust with Tony and with Richard and Jo, and a birthday photo together.
Thursday 25 November
It’s no good, everything is decaying very fast. I list it for G:
At the time of the diagnosis (June) only needed a stick outside.
Then needed one inside. But still very mobile.
Then needed G on other arm.
This is now a real struggle.
When, this evening, G suggested some new improvements, I snapped, ‘Stop having so many good ideas.’
After a moment’s pause, we both burst out laughing – one of our first good laughs for several days.
Meanwhile, Janice is proving a gigantic friend. From the start she’s been ringing constantly, emailing, sending nostalgic photos of our times together, etc. Now after big fights with the visa office, she’s finally got one and is coming over in a couple of weeks.
Friday 26 November
G had a seriously good new idea. Use the wheelchair/commode just as a wheelchair. All journeys easier for me, though backbreaking for him. But it’s like everything else he’s done during this: make it more comfortable for me.
But he was exhausted by bedtime and low-spirited. I must remember to say thanks to him all the time.
A step change.
Just before 10.30 Tony called from upstairs. He had got himself into the bathroom OK but was really struggling to walk. I thought he was going to collapse. I helped him back into the bedroom, got him dressed eventually, and down the Everest of the stairs. He had no appetite at all at breakfast, and didn’t even consume the tiny helping of compote he had served himself.
I cancelled my appointment with the osteopath. I suggested that we use the wheelchair downstairs from now on. We tried it and it does work.
He is sleeping now and I am feeling shaken, and inadequate, and exhausted.
Saturday 27 November
Slept and dozed for fifteen and a half hours.
G had a new brainwave for morning, washing and dressing. All done on a high stool at bathroom sink. This process linked to the wheelchair downstairs made life 100 per cent easier.
Bad news from Janice. New Covid virus in SA. Very bad. All travel banned for months.
This was Tony’s last entry.
THE LAST FIVE DAYS
‘Break heart, I prithee break’ Sunday 28 November
It started to snow first thing yesterday morning. The tail of Storm Arwen, which has been battering the north-east coast. The snow melted but the low temperature stayed.
Since Friday the situation has deteriorated in terms of Tony’s mobility. The move to the wheelchair downstairs has vastly improved his mood, and relieved him in terms of struggle. I am coping OK with the chair. It’s tougher over carpet and there is a bump in the tiles in the bathroom. I tell him he has to look out for his extremities, elbows, knees. And then I manage to trap his foot in a door. Estates are coming on Monday to put a lip in on the studio doorway.
Yesterday he didn’t get up until noon. We decided still to have our boiled egg, Saturday morning routine, but it threw the day out from our schedule of new constipation medicines. So I made proper chicken soup (‘Jewish penicillin’) and built the first fire of the season.
The district nurse phoned to say they have a Zimmer frame she could bring round. And might be able to get another wheelchair for upstairs. Tony would be so happy about that. The effort to get him up and down stairs is still worth it so he can sleep in his own bed, but who knows how much longer.
I am committing the last things we say to each other at night to memory, just in case. Last night after the usual ‘I love you’, ‘I love you too’, ‘sleep well’, ‘and you . . .’. I could see his mouth was dry and he kept trying to moisten his lips. He didn’t want to get up again. Getting in had been such an effort. So I suggested I could syringe some water into his mouth. It worked very well. ‘Another good idea,’ he smiled.
As he finally turned out the lights and could stretch in his own bed, he sighed, ‘Ahhhh, glorious.’
Monday 29 November
9 a.m. Not sure why I am writing all this down. To remember, I suppose, in case I forget details, or timings that the nurses need to know. Perhaps it just helps me cope.
Last night, I heard Tony stir about 4.45, getting himself ready to get up and use the pee bottle. Then I heard a cry. He had slipped off the bed and onto the floor. I switched on my bedside light and stumbled round the bed. He was very awkwardly placed, and though I tried to get his legs straight, there was simply no way of getting him up. I also realised that if I did try and manhandle his 14-stone weight, that I was likely to injure my back, and then I would be of no help to him at all.
I phoned the night-time assist number, but they told me they couldn’t help and I needed an ambulance, so I phoned 999 at 5.10. They said they would send an ambulance but it might be a while. I got Tony into a T-shirt and pants, put the phone within reach and lay with him on the floor wrapped in my arms. Another operator rang an hour later, and asked the same questions. Clearly they were determining a priority list. Two hours later, one did turn up. The attendant told me that if I had said that Tony was having trouble with his breathing (which is true in fact as he has a problem with breathlessness now) then I would have got a faster response, but she said she hadn’t said that!
They brought in a sort of lilo cushion which they slipped under his bum, and then pumped up. Amazingly it raised him to a sitting position in moments. They got him onto his feet and onto the bed, and both left the room discreetly as I helped him to the pee bottle. They then did some observations, blood pressure, heart rate, etc.
