Adrian Mole: The Prostate Years (2009), page 23
“I can’t stay here for long,” he said, “they haven’t even got Bloomberg.”
Monday 7th January
Appointment with Dr Rubik.
She was wearing a bright red cardigan. When I complimented her on it, she told me her husband had bought it for her for Christmas, although, she said, “I don’t know why – he knows I only ever wear black, grey or white.” She told me that she had received my latest blood results from the lab, and that my PSA was over ten, “Which is a little worrying,” she added.
I felt the blood from the rest of my body collect in my feet. “So I’m back where I started,” I said.
“It’s certainly a setback,” she replied, “but remember, we have a little while to wait yet for the optimum results. And it’s not uncommon – quite a high percentage of men with prostate cancer need several treatments before we can give the all-clear.”
I told her about my latest symptoms, and she nodded and said, “Yes, that’s quite normal,” and began to go through the various ‘roads we can go down’.
I thought, “No, it’s not a road we can go down, Dr Rubik, it’s a lonely road that I will be going down alone. You are merely waving to me from the safety of the pavement.”
When I left, I realised that I had not taken in what she had said about treatment options. I went down the corridor to see Sally in Radiotherapy, but the light was on outside her door, signifying that she was delivering deadly rays to another poor sod. Eventually I went into the waiting room to meet up with my mother. She asked me how I’d got on. I made a non-committal noise in my throat and forced a smile. I didn’t want to tell her my bad news, not until she’d driven us safely home.
When she pulled up outside the Piggeries, I broke the news to her that the radiotherapy had not cured my cancer. She headbutted the steering wheel, sounding the horn. My father opened their front door and wheeled himself down the ramp. I got out of the car and he said, “What’s up with your mother?”
I told him about my appointment with Dr Rubik.
He said, “Your poor mother. Help her out of the car, Aidy.” Then he started to beat his thighs with his fists and shouted, “You should sue the bloody National Health Service. They’ve obviously done a crap job.”
To prevent further self-flagellation from my parents I went into my house and hoped that they would not follow me. I had wanted to have a few quiet moments to think and to ring Daisy, but my parents insisted on staying to keep me company.
My father asked, “Do they do prostrate transplants? Cos if they do, you can have mine, kid.”
My mother sniffed, “You should have tried that crystal next to your groin. It wouldn’t have done any harm, and it might have helped.”
Eventually I persuaded them to go home and I rang Daisy.
She answered immediately and said, “Adrian! What did she say?”
I told her that my cancer ‘was not quite cured’.
She said, “What do you mean ‘not quite cured’? That’s like saying I’m not quite pregnant. You’re either cured or you’re not.”
I said, “Not.”
I heard her say to Fairfax-Lycett, “Hugo, I have to go home.”
I heard him say, “Can’t we just finish…”
She shouted, “No, I have to go home.”
He gave her a lift in his Land Rover. I noticed him crawling up the drive, avoiding the potholes with exaggerated care. I thought, perhaps unreasonably, that he was comparing our drive to his, which has its gravel raked every morning. When he had stopped his four-by-four, he got out and opened Daisy’s door. They exchanged a few words and he put his hand on her shoulder before Daisy ran in and threw herself into my arms.
I have spent happier afternoons. We tried to cheer ourselves up by lighting a fire in the living room using Zip firelighters and kindling. Daisy went outside and brought in some logs, but they were damp and the fire soon went out. We walked together to pick Gracie up from school. I noticed that we both averted our eyes from the graveyard opposite.
Gracie talked non-stop on the way home about snowflakes. She told us there are millions and millions and millions of flakes and not one of them is exactly the same. Watched television after dinner but didn’t see or hear anything. Went to bed early. Daisy joined me and we lay in each other’s arms until we went to sleep.
Thursday 14th February
Valentine’s Day
I should have made more of an effort with Daisy’s Valentine’s Day present. I am unable to get to the shops independently lately, so asked my mother to choose something for me from the city centre. She came back with a bag of toiletries that she had bought from a stall in the covered market. When she handed it to me, she said, “It’s Chanel, but I got it for seven pounds ninety-nine.” There was a block of pink soap so pungent that it made your eyes water before the cellophane wrapping was taken off. There was a nailbrush for a dwarf, a moisturising cream that wouldn’t rub into the skin, and an exfoliating pad so harsh it could have scrubbed down an industrial turbine. My mother had obviously been duped by a crooked market trader – on closer examination I saw that ‘Chanell’ was spelt with two thin ‘l’s.
When I handed Daisy the Chanell gift set, she was polite and said thank you. But later, when she was in the bedroom on the phone to Nigel, I overheard her say, “It’s as fake as our marriage at the moment.” She gave me an earthenware mug with a heart on it and a card featuring a black Labrador sitting by the side of an armchair at his master’s feet. Inside she had written ‘Love as Ever, Daisy’. My card to her had been made by Gracie. It showed me and Daisy at our wedding. I only came up to knee height on my bride – is that how Gracie sees our relationship?
Friday 15th February
Went out to the bin after lunch to dispose of non-recyclable food packaging and found a family of foxes gorging on yesterday’s chicken bones. How did they drag the carcass out of the bin?
The largest fox, the father presumably, gave me a contemptuous look and then carried on eating. How dare he? Are these wild creatures no longer afraid of us humans? I shouted, “Boo!” and clapped my hands together, but the ginger beast smiled and carried on eating. The mother and two cubs strolled a few yards away, then sat down and proceeded to groom each other.
I shouted, “Clear off!” and clattered the lid of the wheelie bin down, hoping to startle them into flight, but all four remained where they were. Eventually I got cold and went inside.
Brett had been watching me through our front-room window and said as I went into the living room, “You should have taken a spade to their filthy verminous heads.”
Bernard looked up from his book and said, “You’re a complete bastard, aren’t you, Brett? Why don’t you toddle off next door?”
Brett said, “This is my brother’s house, you stupid old fart. I have more of a right to be here than you, you ligging old bastard.”
I should have said something to Brett but, quite frankly, Diary, I do not have the energy for any more confrontations. I went into the bedroom and lay down on the unmade bed.
Saturday 16th February
My mother and father came round to ask if they could do any shopping for us. While I compiled a list my mother carried on with the argument she’d been having with my father earlier.
She said, “George, promise me you won’t give in and lend Brett that money.”
My father said, “It’s hard to deny the boy a chance and it’s not doing anything, is it? You have to speculate to accumulate, Pauline. Who dares wins, remember.”
I said, “Dad, if you’ve got some money in the house, Brett will sniff it out.”
My mother looked worried and said, “Adrian’s right, George. It’s not safe where it is.”
Later that night she came round carrying a giant tin of Heinz beans. She gave me the tin and tapped the side of her nose, saying, “This is a very, very valuable tin of beans. Do you get what I’m saying? These beans are in a very rich juice. They will be a great asset on your pantry shelf.”
Before she could make any more clumsy financial analogies, I took the tin from her and put it on the tinned food shelf.
Wednesday 27th February
Diary, you have been a cruel mistress. I am enslaved by you. But it is increasingly difficult to find sufficient energy to report to you on a daily basis since I started chemotherapy. I have been subsumed by my illness and its treatment.
Wednesday 5th March
Went to see the NHS wig supplier today at the hospital. Daisy drove us there in the Mazda. (My mother still refuses to put us on her insurance, so we have been forced to buy our own extortionate policy.) She said, “You can’t be trusted to buy underwear for yourself, let alone a wig.”
The wig bloke was called Malcolm Daltrey. I asked him if he was related to Roger Daltrey, the singer in The Who. He looked at me in a puzzled way and said, “No.”
Diary, why do I feel the need to make conversation with health professionals? Is it because I hate being a patient and need to reassert my status?
He examined my scalp and said disapprovingly, “You should have come to see me weeks ago before your hair started to fall out.”
Daltrey’s hair looked suspiciously like a wig to me. It resembled a piece of roadkill – a stoat, perhaps.
I asked, “Did you make the wig you are wearing yourself?”
He said huffily, “I’m not wearing a wig. This is my own hair.” He measured my head and asked, “Do you have any preferences? Colour? Shape? Style? Length? Curly? Straight?”
I said, “Since I started chemotherapy, I’ve been unable to make a decision about anything.”
Daisy said, trying to be helpful no doubt, “Now is your chance to have the hair you’ve always wanted, Aidy.”
Daltrey said, “Do you want to try a few on?”
The first wig I tried on was black and parted to one side and made me look like Gok Wan. The second was blond and curly.
Daisy said, “Take it off, you look like Harpo Marx.”
The third was a mousy short-back-and-sides apology for a wig.
Daltrey said, “Well, that’s your basic Anglo-Saxons. Do you want to look at the wigs for ‘persons of colour’?”
I said, “I might as well, while I’m here.”
After inspecting a black wig with tight curls and something he called an ‘oriental standard’, Daltrey said, “We can mix and match colour and length but we are restricted by NHS guidelines.”
I said, “Do you do a Boris Johnson? I think I might suit that.”
Malcolm Daltrey said, “You’re asking the impossible, Mr Mole. If it’s a celebrity intellectual style you’re after, you may have to go private.”
I resented him suggesting that Daisy and I were so impoverished that we could not afford a private wig so we left without choosing one.
When we got outside, Daisy said, “Aidy, why don’t we go and see Lawrence at Pamper Yourself? He’ll know where we can go for advice.”
We drove back to Mangold Parva and parked outside the salon. Lawrence was lounging in a chair in front of a mirror reading Vogue. Mrs Lewis-Masters was underneath a drying hood, her head was covered in huge rollers the size of sewage pipes. She was reading Country Life. She raised an eyebrow in greeting.
Daisy and Lawrence fell on to each other’s necks and Lawrence said, “Where have you been, Daisy?”
Daisy said, “I’ve been washing and trimming it myself, at home.”
Lawrence threw his sinewy arms back in exaggerated alarm. “You’re a bad girl! I know you’re a bit short of the spondulicks at the moment but hair always, always comes first!”
Daisy explained why we were there.
Lawrence said, “I’d heard that you were doing chemo.” He sat me in the chair he’d just vacated, stood behind me and looked at my reflection in the mirror. He picked up odd clumps of my remaining hair and said, “You could go the whole hog and let me shave these bits off. They’re not doing much, are they? They’re just hanging around on your head.”
Daisy said, “I like a shaved head.”
I was reluctant to lose the little hair I had left but Daisy said, “You’re losing handfuls of it every day in the shower, Aidy. If the pipes clog up, we’ll be having to pay a plumber to unblock them.”
While I equivocated Lawrence brought Mrs Lewis-Masters to the next chair and began to take out her rollers.
She said, “The men of the desert regarded baldness as being a sign of wisdom and sexual potency.”
I said, “All right, Lawrence, shave it off.”
While Lawrence blow-dried Mrs Lewis-Masters’ hair, I glanced through her discarded Country Life and was startled to see Daisy’s happy smiling face staring out at me on a half-page devoted to a photographic account of the Belvoir Hunt Ball. She was arm in arm with ‘The Honourable Hugo Fairfax-Lycett’. Other large-toothed members of the hunt were holding champagne glasses aloft. One would have thought that they were congratulating Daisy and Hugo on their engagement. I showed the page to Daisy. She blurted out, “I did tell you about that, Aidy – remember?”
I said, “I remember it well. I was in hospital overnight after having a very unpleasant, painful biopsy.”
She lowered her voice and said, “Hugo had nobody to go with. He’d been let down at the last minute.”
I said, “I didn’t mind you going, Daisy. But did you have to look quite so happy? You told me that you had a miserable time having to listen to a ‘load of tossers’ bragging about how they had tortured several helpless foxes.”
When Mrs Lewis-Masters’ hair had been teased into her usual helmet style, Lawrence left her with his junior (who I remember Daisy told me had to be taught how to use a sweeping brush) and turned to me. “So,” he said, “I’ll shave your head and I’ve got some fabuloso Andre Agassi products that will keep that scalp gleaming.”
It took only a few minutes to shave and moisturise my head. I stared at my reflection. My skull shone under the spotlights and my glasses looked very prominent.
Daisy said, “It’ll look better when it’s had a bit of sun.”
Lawrence only charged me £5 for the head shave, but by the time I’d bought Agassi moisturizer, toner and serum it cost me the best part of £40. I didn’t give him a tip.
When we got home, my mother said that she had always liked bald men ever since she had seen Yul Brynner dancing around a ballroom with Deborah Kerr in The King and I.
My father laughed and said, “By Christ! You look like a billiard ball on legs. If I were you, I’d keep clear of The Crucible in Sheffield. If Ronnie O’Sullivan claps eyes on you he’ll take your head off your shoulders before you can say ‘pot black’.” He laughed himself stupid and had to be given a drink of water in order to calm him down. Did my father’s over-elaborate analogy hide his true feelings? Was his first instinct to weep? If so, he hid it very well.
When Gracie came home from school, she said, “I like your new hairstyle, Dad.”
I was very tired and my mouth was sore. I said irritably, “How can it be a hairstyle, Gracie? I haven’t got any hair.”
Her lip trembled but I managed to divert her by telling her that she could polish my head with a duster if she wanted.
She said, “Can I use Mr Sheen?”
When I said no, she carefully laid herself down on the rug in front of the fireplace and had a tantrum. I didn’t have the energy to do anything so I watched her thrash about until, after five minutes, she calmly got up and walked away.
Sunday 9th March
My mother gave me a lift to the hospital this afternoon. On the way she drove down the High Street and parked outside the bookshop. We got out and looked through the window. The builders were in and had already knocked down the walls between the shop area, the back room and the store rooms beyond, making one large space.
My mother said, “It’s going to be a Tesco Metro. I thought about applying for a job. I’ve got a few hours spare while you have your chemo.”
Diary, how insensitive can you get?
When I was hooked up to the machine, I called Daisy at work. Hugo Fairfax-Lycett answered the phone and told me that she was on the other line to the States. He said, “Sorry, Adrian, but I don’t want to interrupt her, she’s closing a deal with a Yank travel agent.”
I said, “Yes, she told me that you’re going all out to get American coach parties in.”
He said, “The Yanks are very nervous travellers lately. We have to convince them that Al Qaeda are not likely to bomb them while they’re taking tea in the orangery.” He went on, “I’m sorry if I’ve taken up a lot of your wife’s time lately, but we’re trying to prepare the hall for our opening in April. We’re spring-cleaning thirty-four rooms, mowing eight hundred and forty acres of deer park and dredging a moat. I’m sure you know what it’s like.”
I was longing to discontinue the call but didn’t know how to.
He said, “I hear you’ve been under the weather lately.”
I agreed that I had.
He said, “Daisy must be a great comfort to you. She’s a marvellous girl.”
I said that I had not seen a lot of Daisy recently, but that my mother was being extremely helpful.
“Good, good,” he said. “One’s family is terribly important.”
There was a very awkward silence. I expect he was waiting for me to say something, but I could not find anything to say apart from, “Would you ask her to ring me when she’s free? Thank you.”
Tried to eat the orange segments my mother had prepared for me but couldn’t, my mouth was too painful. I’d been warned that this would happen.
Sally came in to see me and thought that my bald head looked ‘edgy’. I am an ardent follower of the ongoing saga of her relationship with Anthony. It is obvious to me that Anthony is fooling around with other women but Sally seems to be oblivious to his licentious behaviour.
Today she said, “We were meant to go away for the weekend to Wolf Edge in the Peak District, but by the time he’d stashed all the camping gear in his car there wasn’t room for me in the passenger seat.”
