2

For Whom the Back Tolls

Becoming middle-aged is the process of realising you’re going to die one day.

No man under the age of thirty-six really believes he’ll ever die. I don’t know if this is so with women, but on the whole women’s approach to life is based more on observation than wishful thinking, so I doubt mortality comes as quite the same surprise to them.

Young men are aware of the odds against making it out alive, but they don’t feel them. Everyone dies, you say? I think you mean everyone dies so far.

I’m not saying we all imagine we’re giant redwoods or Riaan Cruywagen: most of us know we can die. We understand what will happen if a piano falls on us or we fly once too often on Air Malaysia, but those are bad luck and mishaps. When we’re young, we think it will take an event to kill us.

But no matter how lucky or special we feel or how positive we think or how much quinoa we eat, the software has an end-code.

For some while, like a Victorian gentlewoman in the colonies, I had been genteelly ignoring or politely explaining away the unpleasant facts of life: the glint of silver in my beard (“My grandfather was blond”); a certain thickening around the middle (“Pizza”); the hint of a jowl in an unposed photograph (“I was looking at something on the floor”); the fact that my evening walk seems to grow longer each day, even though it’s still the same route (“I need new shoes”; “These shoes are too new”). Come to think of it, the fact that I even take an evening walk at all.

Like a child, I needed an event to make me realise something’s happening. It was when I threw my back out.

I’ve thrown my back out before, but not like this. I’ll spare you the technical details and biomechanical breakdowns – you can find them in Appendix A at the back of this book, if you’re interested – but let’s just say that I begin this anecdote in a seated position, and then I stand up, and in the process of transitioning from position A (seated) to position B (standing), I give a sudden startled whimper.

It wasn’t a noise I’d made before and I didn’t like the sound of it, but then this was a pain I hadn’t felt before. It wasn’t even low down, where decent pains reside – it was high and to the right. If my back was Africa, it would be Eritrea. Sub-Saharan pains I can understand – I’ve grown up with them, I know how to talk to them, there are diplomatic channels you can use – but who the hell knows what goes on up there above the Horn?

I gave another whimper.

“What’s it now?” said my partner from the other room, as though I’m in the habit of making high-pitched noises for my own entertainment.

“Aaarggh!” I said in a strangled voice. And then, because sometimes people crave more detail: “My back!”

There was a pause.

“Is it sore?” she asked, with the deep concern of someone trying to finish a paragraph in her book.

“Only when I breathe.”

That’s the worst of it: I injured myself by breathing. I’m turning into gingerbread.

I mentally hobbled back through the events of the morning. What had I been doing? Something strenuous and heroic? Rescuing a cow from a tree? Did a car slip from its jack and was it about to crush a tow-haired child when I leapt forward to hold it up in a feat of strength I hardly knew I had? No. It happened when I stood and twisted to pick up that cup of tea. No, wait, that sounds pathetic, don’t forget the important part: I twisted to pick up a cup of tea while breathing.

At least it was a full cup, but surely the day must come when I’ll be injuring myself picking up empty pieces of crockery. This will go on, the machine will run down, I’ll become ever more vulnerable to items of light tableware. Doilies will defeat me, antimacassars will rick my neck. (God, do antimacassars even exist any more? How old am I?) The only way to make this stop will be to stop breathing.

“Do you want to see a doctor?” asked my partner.

That’s precisely what I didn’t want to do. Once you start going to the doctor, you never stop.

The middle-aged go for check-ups all the time because when you’re middle-aged your health is a matter of suspicion. If all seems well, you’re even more worried, as though your body is a house that’s fallen silent even though there are small children in it somewhere. Even if there’s no bad news, the good news is qualified: “You’re in good shape for your age”; “You’re doing well, all things considered”; “Well, I’ve examined you, and you aren’t going to die.” Yet.

I don’t need a doctor. A doctor will just say here’s some painkillers and don’t feel bad because everyone gets old and dies. I’ll go to the chemist and get my own painkillers and try pretend a while longer that not everyone gets old and dies. Not everyone.

Ordinarily I’d walk to the pharmacy but I was locked in a position that looked like a sniper was continually shooting me in the back from a tall building, so I took the car.

I live one block from Main Road, but my road is linked by a one-way that goes the wrong way. To get to Main I have to turn right – completely the wrong direction! – and then drive around the block. The entire block! It’s the reason I never drive. That one-block diversion stands for all the petty, pointless obstacles and uphills the universe drops daily in my way. Normally I’d have to just swallow the indignity, but my back was sore and I was experiencing the entitlement of suffering. Besides, I’m a man who swims with man-eating sharks in the open ocean. The rules of the road are for schoolboys and old men.

I nosed to the end of my street and peered out cautiously. All clear. I edged out and accelerated the wrong way down the oneway to Main Road. Yes! Freedom! You can’t fence this wild colt! And my back’s not even sore any more! It’s not medicine I need, it’s the open road and the rolling range and sweet, sweet liberty!

On the other side of Main a traffic policeman stood beside his motorcycle, watching me with hands on hips.

He looked at me as though I’d once invited his wife to a cheap motel and he’s been waiting patiently all these long years for this moment.

What should I do? Has he seen me? Of course he’s seen me. Should I just drive away and hope he’s standing beside his bike because it’s run out of petrol?

He crooked a finger at me.

Should I slip into reverse and back away and hope he’ll think I was a trick of the light? Is the coast clear behind me? What should I do?

What I should have done was step on the brake to stop my car rolling into the oncoming traffic, but as I looked wildly from side to side and back over my shoulder I forgot not to breathe while I twisted and the pain returned and shot from Eritrea all the way across to Mali and Mauritania and the other terrible places above the Bight of Benin and I gave another strangled yodel and stamped blindly for the brake. It wasn’t the brake, and the car went forward into the traffic and there was hooting and swerving and someone avoided driving into me by driving into a lamppost instead.

As with avoiding shark bites, there’s also a small industry of literature dedicated to not antagonising traffic cops. As the policeman walked towards me I tried to remember whether you should get out of the car to meet him, thus showing respect, or stay seated, thus showing subservience. It probably didn’t matter at this point. Anyway, I couldn’t move.

He asked for my driver’s licence and I realised I’d left it at home. He looked at my car’s licence and pointed out that it had expired the month before.

“This is not a good day for you,” he said.

“I know,” I said pitiably. “My back.”

He looked at me the way young, strong people look at old people who complain about their backs.

“You know what?” he said.

“What?” I said, through clenched teeth.

“At your age you need to be more responsible.”

The tips you would find in those books about not antagonising traffic policemen probably include not getting angry. Restrict your interaction to light humour and verbal byplay, they would probably counsel.

“What do you mean, my age?” I said, my voice lifting. “I’m not that old! I’m just – aarggh! My back!”

“Calm down, sir,” he said, in a tone that implied next up is a pistol-whipping.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! Just give me the ticket! Aaargggh!”

“You should go see a doctor,” he said.

“No, I’m fine,” I sobbed.

“You’re being very stupid. You’re trying to deny something that cannot be denied. Age happens, and the more we know about it, the better prepared we are to endure it with dignity. This is just a different life stage. Yes, perhaps it signifies the end of some things, but it can also be the start of something different, something better or at least not necessarily worse. Trying to pretend you’re not older won’t keep you younger, it will make you ridiculous, and it will cause you to make some terrible mistakes.”

He didn’t say any of that. He just wrote me several tickets and told me I was lucky because he could have taken me down to the station, and pointed out I’d be responsible for the other guy’s bodywork.

“I can’t even make my own body work,” I tried gamely, but the time for light humour and verbal byplay had passed.

I went home and when my partner heard a strange scratching sound at the front door she opened it to find me folded like a newspaper on the mat.

I looked up at her and said, “I’m getting old.”

And she looked down at me kindly.

“Honey,” she said. “It’ll be all right.”

“No, it won’t,” I said. “I’m going to die.”

“So am I,” she said.

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

But she took me by the foot and dragged me inside, which was a bit painful coming over the doorframe, and she closed the door and lay down on the carpet beside me and held me until I did feel better again.