I had heard the news that Stanley was ill, though not from Susie, who didn’t like to make what she called a fuss. The truth had emerged during a visit by my sister Jane, who had arrived to find our mother struggling to look after a sick patient all by herself. Least said soonest mended is not an adage for the age we live in, but one that Susie swore by. It was particularly ineffective in the case of a 90-year-old man with a urinary tract infection.
Susie had called the doctor. When the result of what are now known as bloods, which always made me think of gang members, came through, it was clear the situation was critical. An ambulance was called and Stanley was ordered immediately to go to hospital. He refused to leave the house. He was urged by the doctor to go. He clearly stated that he would not.
Tough call. I was struck by the bravery of it.
He must have known what refusing hospital meant. But he wasn’t on for an extended tussle with the infection in an alien institution. His English wasn’t up to much, forget his French. He was going to take his chances at home. When I heard he had sent the ambulance away empty, I thought: I want to go and say goodbye to Stanley, and to thank him for being him.
I was at that time on the other side of the world, so I booked a flight back to Europe. Waiting to board, I spoke to Susie.
‘He started crying this afternoon,’ she said. ‘And he said “I’ve just realised I’m not going to get better.” He’s realised he’s going to die.’
As I bent an arc around the globe, I felt like talking to someone about my destination, but the person beside me, who had eaten his dinner starting with the cake and ending with the salad, the chocolate and a lick of the vinaigrette pot, didn’t seem the right guy. When he went to sleep I thought of you. You, who have become my friend and confidant. You, who have heard all my conversations and thoughts about the time to go. I wrote those sentences in a pool of light in the dark cabin at 30,000 feet. How lonely death made me feel. May I take this opportunity to thank you for being such a good listener? You strengthen, encourage and help me. Out of the oval window was the void, the blackness that I feared so much. Stay close please, in my time of need. Don’t desert me, by flicking forward to see where this ends; I have no idea and I have to stay here.
When we touched down at Gatwick, my phone, which I had accidentally left on, started pinging. Passengers shrugged, past caring that I had, according to air safety regulations, imperilled 375 people’s lives including their own. I had a message from France: from now on it was palliative care only. Susie added: could you please pick up a large pot of Sudocrem at the chemist for Stanley’s skin? Don’t ever let this happen to me.
In the hall of the house in Castelnau there was a folded hospital bed with coiled power lead. I glanced at it from the staircase and thought how little its curved handrails and grey padded plastic gladdened the heart. Stanley’s jovial son Rupert was upstairs. He had come, I guessed, on a similar mission to my own.
‘Hello Guy,’ he smiled. ‘Great to see you. Welcome to Emergency Ward 10.’
Rupert’s arrival, I was informed, had given Stanley a lift.
‘That’s good. Maybe he’ll pull through,’ I said.
‘We will see,’ Susie said to me, adding ‘Death choses its own agenda,’ an opinion entirely at variance with her stated philosophy.
Rupert and my sister Jane were in control of treatment, and decided which visitors were admitted. I was asked to stay downstairs, and spent an hour or two in the kitchen watching the tag team of professional nurses come and go while my sister made some tiny meals and took them up on a tray.
Jane and Rupert wanted Stanley to look his best when he saw me. We three didn’t often meet, but with Stanley and Mum in the house it felt more like a family than it had in years. There were no longer weddings to meet up at, so now only death brought us together.
‘People are ringing up,’ Jane said to me. ‘Old friends. Even people who didn’t particularly know him. They’re all trying to see him. When I tell them he’s not up to seeing anyone they say Oh I just want to pop my head round the door or I just want to give him a quick hug. He doesn’t want to be seen like that. You’re at your absolute lowest ebb and people want to come and stare at you. Honestly!’
I could see how a good farewell was important. On the threshold of death people possess new powers of judgement. An acquaintance of mine who was dying of cancer seemed to get popular in her final month. I wanted to be one of her visitors. If Stanley’s callers were anything like me, they wanted it to be cool with him before he died. I had perhaps not treated my friend as well as I could have in the past. It was as though she had the ability to take news forward from here into the next place. I didn’t want her ruining my reputation in the afterlife. It was bad enough in this one. I wanted the souls who were dead, wherever they were, to like me, or, failing that, at least never to have heard of me before I could show up and start with the excuses. I suspected that we who wanted to see my friend also thought that we could resolve something with her. We wanted to sit by her bed, be nice, and feel shit about her bad luck and our good.
Later Jane said ‘Go easy, Guy, this isn’t the time for jokes.’
I duly fell into hospital mode: lowering my voice, careful not to make any unnecessary noises, speaking in a hushed, earnest manner, and cutting the gags out. But I felt fake. I was sensitivity signalling. But I did it for my sister and mother.
Rupert didn’t do my bullshit sensitivity. He dealt with the pain head on with laughter. He trotted down the stairs roaring his head off. ‘I’ve done some things in my life, Guy,’ he shouted, ‘but I never thought I’d clean the old man’s todger!’ He laughed again. ‘That’s a first, I can tell you. Ruddy hell.’
I was ushered upstairs; outside the bedroom door were some sinister hospital appliances. One was a machine to stand a patient up. The other … I never discovered its use.
Then suddenly I was in the large light-filled room with the endless countryside in four big windows, looking at Stanley, in a high hospital bed, a handle dangling over him like a noose. Since I last saw him, only a few months ago, he had lost all remaining weight. He turned his head and fixed me with huge eyes. His mouth opened, closed and opened again.
Then he croaked ‘Siiindoooo her um.’ Deep Stanley, this was. Patois Stanley.
I looked at my mum, a native speaker. ‘He says it is so kind of you to come,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t miss it for anything,’ I said. I looked at the drip at the end of the bed with its tube that disappeared under the blanket. There was another tube snaking out of the bed into a bag in a blue bucket. In and out. He lay back and closed his eyes. His hands moved under the blanket.
‘He’s not tossing himself off is he?’ Rupert said. ‘He asked one of the nurses if she wanted a shag. Utterly hilarious. I told her that he was a little confused but looking at her I thought he was spot on.’
I was expecting Stanley and the room to smell of decay, of death I suppose, but only picked up a hint of soap. I sat watching him, wondering what to do and say.
His eyes opened. ‘How are yoooo?’ he fluted.
‘I’m fine.’ I very nearly did what I usually did with ill people, which was to start complaining about my own health. But I stopped myself. I had a little speech prepared saying that I loved him, and wanted to thank him for being such a great stepfather, but since the news of his improving condition, thought it might strike the wrong tone.
‘I really just came to say hello,’ I said.
‘Whaa? All the waaayfra Jamaica?’ he said.
‘It does sound odd, I agree,’ I smiled. I took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I am glad I am here,’ I said. ‘Good to see you.’ I sat with him for half an hour before I leant forward and said ‘I love you.’
He nodded slowly and his eyes filled with tears.
Later I helped him find the Financial Times on his tablet. The screen asked me for his password. I looked at him with his head tilted back, his knees like coat hangers and his eyes rolling around and thought, this is a long shot.
‘Can you remember your password?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said, and smiled serenely. ‘I – R – E – N – E – V’ he said. His mother’s name and the first letter of her surname. I typed it and it worked. I passed him back the tablet. ‘Than you,’ he said.
After looking at the newspaper for a few minutes he said something so extraordinary about the economy I wrote it down on a scrap of cardboard torn from a packet of pills and stuffed it in my pocket so I wouldn’t forget it.
He told me he wanted a sleep, so I stood up and said ‘goodbye.’ I wasn’t quite sure what tone to use as I didn’t know if it was for a few hours or forever.
It turned out that it was forever. The next day there was a change. He was ill again. But it wasn’t to be a smooth glide into a velvet cloak.
I was downstairs in the engine room and caught snatches of conversation:
He’s having trouble talking.
The bedsores are bad today.
He’s slipping down the bed.
He got tangled in sheets in the night and pulled out one of his tubes and made a mess.
People pushed past me with urgency. I knew he was having trouble swallowing. A spoonful of water made him cough and cough and cough. I heard the retching and heaving as the bedroom door opened and closed on the floor above.
When I was admitted later he seemed unconscious. He lay back with his mouth open and dry. It had about its rim a touch of Francis Bacon. His breathing was sterterous, steady and deep. I was expecting it to be shallow and uneven.
I sat watching him. Occasionally his body would twitch, a finger flex. It was like there was someone going round the house of Stanley turning out the lights. The circuits had been a bit dicky for some time. Do you remember the May/Snow short circuit? In the grassy ruins of Stanley’s mind, the janitor was closing the car park and switching off the floodlights. The man was dying.
I watched the people around him go about the grinding work of what is called caring. He was a huge baby, but losing, not gaining, weight, perception and reactions every hour. I left the room for the nappy change but came back in a touch early and glimpsed the shiny skeletal limbs that Jane and a nurse were gently rubbing with cream before a blanket was drawn over them.
Jane, Rupert and Susie’s lives were entirely on hold. Jane particularly had been working punishingly long hours, and was up and down all night. Feeding took hours because the slightest thing made him retch and cough. They had already been at it for a week before I turned up, and I was whacked after just watching it for 48 hours. Nothing else went on in that house. There was no other subject of conversation, no other event, apart from Stanley and his health, and this crawl to death. It seemed that the lives of the carers were entirely ignored. They were expected to continue to service Stanley without complaint. Their quality of life, or let’s face it poor old Stanley’s, was not permitted to be questioned.
Everyone was losing the will to live, except Stanley.
I thought I was to witness a gentle drift into the open arms of a sweet death, but somehow it had turned into a desperate last ditch operation to keep him alive for another few hours, traumatising us all.