BRIAN ALDISS

With Margaret Aldiss

When the Feast is Finished

A memoir of Love and Bereavement

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk

This ebook first published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager in 2015

Copyright © Brian Aldiss 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com

Brian Aldiss asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 978-0-00-748260-3

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 978-0-00-748261-0

Version: 2015-07-01

Dedication

To Alison

Who made my life habitable

after the feast was finished –

with much gratitude

In loving memory of my wife,

Margaret Christie Manson Aldisss

Epigraph

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,

But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,

There falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;

And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

ERNEST DOWSON

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Postscript

About the Author

Also by Brian Aldiss

About the Publisher

Introduction

We must all be grateful to Brian Aldiss for his courage and determination in writing this fine book about the terminal illness of his wife, Margaret, who claimed she was not ‘important’ enough for such attention. In doing so, he has given us a portrait of a remarkable woman and a remarkable marriage; he has also produced the best day-to-day, personal account of a terminal illness I have ever read.

Anyone who has worked with the dying will instantly recognise the authenticity of this account, which is particularly valuable to medical professionals in its report of the first-rate hospice care provided by the Sir Michael Sobell House, Oxford. For this reason alone, the book should be read by every hospice worker and all medical and nursing students and practitioners.

For the general reader, the extraordinary honesty of the book makes it compelling reading. Brian Aldiss is an excellent writer and he writes as life really is: raw, contradictory, repetitive, bright at one moment, unbearable at the next, glorious, infuriating, ultimately mysterious beyond our power to comprehend.

I believe it is a book that will comfort many people who face similar circumstances, including the dying themselves, as well as the care-givers and the bereaved. Such a fearlessly intimate glimpse into lives in crisis serves to remind us all that whatever happens, we are not in this alone.

Sandol Stoddard

Leading advocate of

The Hospice Movement and author of

The Hospice Movement:

A Better Way of Caring for the Dying

I

It was a faultless day in July, hot, sunny, and still. Margaret and I drove over to the country pied-à-terre of our friends Hilary and Helge Rubinstein for lunch. The Rubinsteins welcomed us with their usual warmth. Already other guests were gathering in the garden.

Hilary had set up three tables in the shade of an apple tree while Helge was preparing a lavish cold buffet. Lots of wine, white and red, stood waiting, together with mineral water and Pimms in jugs, brimming with fruit. Margaret sat at one table, I at another, and we enjoyed conversations with friends. Anthony and Catherine Storr were there. This cottage was where I had first met the Storrs, many a year ago, and we are on affectionate terms. One of Anthony’s books is being translated into Korean, another into Mongolian.

Also present was Catriona Bass, a brave and elegant lady who visited Tibet shortly before Margaret went there. The Rhubras, cheerful as usual – Ben, the portrait painter, and his clever potter wife. We enjoyed the company of Philip Sievert and his new wife, Veronica. Philip is youthful and his carefully poised sentences give him an air of stateliness, as if he had emerged from a Henry James novel. On the morrow he was to start editorial work at Harvill Press. Amazingly characteristic of him.

Several other people were there, including the charming Cissy Gill. I loved them all. Perhaps the reflection occurred to me then that to grow old held its own pleasures, when the need to compete had faded and ambition had put away its armour; that to be middle class and English was not the worst of fates the world had in store; that stability was a fortunate quality which had come Margaret’s and my way; and that to be sitting under that particular apple tree at that particular time with those particular acquaintances was to be rated among the good things of this world.

But the afternoon wore on, the apples slowly ripened on their tree, and I was a little anxious about Margaret. As we were leaving, I expressed a wish to Hilary that that 1997 afternoon could have gone on for ever, forever warm and golden, forever in good company.

When we got home, the sun was still blazing away as if intending to fulfil my wish. Margaret and I sat together outside in our little amphitheatre, almost purring. Despite our earlier trepidations, Margaret seemed perfectly well.

That morning, as we were preparing for the occasion, I had seen Margaret, walking slowly in the garden, sink on to a bench. Going to her, I asked her if she was well enough to face the occasion.

‘I’m not sure. You know if I have to stand …’ She smiled at me, letting the sentence trail. We both knew she had a slight heart problem, an enlarged left ventricle, which made her weak on her legs.

‘I can ring Helge now and put it off. She’ll understand. I’ll tell her you’re not well.’

‘No, we’ll go. I’ll be all right.’

‘If you feel the slightest bit rotten when we’re there, just say the word and we can drive home at once.’

In truth, Margaret was far from well. I have searched my old diaries for hints of when her illness began. We spent many years living happily on Boars Hill, to the south of Oxford, where we tended a large woodland garden. The house itself was an unspoilt Edwardian building, with an unusual feature, a large living-room with clerestory windows that surveyed the rear lawns and pond. There, Margaret frequently became tired and would go to bed early, leaving me to read or watch old films on TV. It was her habit; we accepted it as part of life.

Despite her beautiful clear English voice, Margaret was a Scot, although she had been born in England, in Maidstone, Kent. The Clan Gunn, to which she belonged, hailed from the Shetland Islands. Perhaps it was this northern heritage that made her somewhat vulnerable to hot weather. In May 1995, she and I had met up with the rest of the family in the Cyclades. We stayed in the pleasant town of Naussa, on Paros, to celebrate our son Clive’s fortieth birthday. It was certainly warm there; Margaret had to spend one day in our hotel, resting.

Slowly, it became apparent that she had a heart problem. This was diagnosed in September of 1995. At that time, our four children having grown up and left home, we were planning to sell our large house on Boars Hill and move to a smaller one in Old Headington. Margaret noted in a laconic diary entry:

I am diagnosed with heart trouble, enlarged left ventricle, owing to high blood pressure.

Although she remained under doctor’s orders, she was unable to take life as easily as we might have wished. The house we had bought, Hambleden, needed much attention, such as a complete rewiring and the ripping out of all the old pipes, which were a mixture of copper and lead. For a while, most of the floorboards in the house were up. We moved in that October, living uncomfortably while additional rooms and a new hall and staircase were added to the house, and the garden was landscaped.

It was all a serious challenge for a lady with a heart problem. I’m amazed to think back and recall how casually we were house-hunting on that summer’s day when we agreed to buy the little place. But in those days we were high-spirited and relaxed together about most things.

My diary note for the 3rd of July 1996 mentions that we went out for a meal on the evening before Margaret had an angiogram.

As we were driving home, she said, ‘I know this is silly, but there’s something I want to say.’

What followed was, ‘If anything goes wrong tomorrow, I would like to be buried here, in Headington Cemetery.’ (She did not want to go alone to East Dereham.)

East Dereham was the small Norfolk town in which I had been born. In Margaret’s and my palmy days, I had bought a plot adjacent to my grandfather’s grave in the town cemetery. Why had I done it? As a joke? Or was I prompted by an absurd longing to return to the town I had left at the age of twelve?

Of course I heeded what Margaret said. If she wished to be buried in our local cemetery, so it should be – and I would follow her there. I tried to sell my Dereham plot to Betty, my sister living in Norfolk, but she turned down the offer. She did not think it a good idea, any more than Margaret had done.

My poor darling! This was one of her few indications of worry. In the night, I dreamed that she was driving on the wrong side of a fast road. We witnessed an accident, where it seemed that a man, possibly a cyclist, was killed; but he got up and walked away.

I drove her round to the John Radcliffe Hospital this morning. We were there before eight. She was installed on Level 5c, private ward 16. She gives me her dear sweet smile – as ever, she is calm and collected, maybe too collected. I feel that her delicacy of character permeates and informs the family. We would all be lesser people without her presence.

Although I hated to leave her, she sat on the bed, radiating confidence. Angiograms are minor exploratory ops, but hardly comfortable.

During an angiogram, a dye is inserted into the coronary arteries, so that they are clearly outlined in X-rays. It causes some discomfort and may possibly bring complications, but it does provide clear evidence of disease.

I left Margaret because I had to go to see Andy, a carpenter working on the extension of the house. The builders were with us for a year.

Later, I walked back to the hospital at 1 p.m. There was my darling, in bed, alert, looking quite rosy. The angiogram all over, with positive results. No arterial deterioration, merely an enlarged left ventricle, which could be cured by exercise and dieting. I tell her, next week we can swim in Spain.

She must lie flat, then semi-flat, and I may be able to collect her by six, and bring her back home.

Rang my sister Betty with the news.

5th July 1996

Margaret seems fine. A bruise on her groin, otherwise lovely. We’re relieved, of course.

Wendy brought her some freesias.

6th July 1996

She really seems happy with the weight off her mind. We strolled round Headington and bought some art materials. Then a wardrobe for the guest room, for Clive and Youla [Clive’s wife] when they arrive from Athens next month. It’s Youla’s birthday. We phoned her in Prigipou.

Moggins [my pet name for Margaret] now takes pleasure in organising Twinkling of an Eye [my autobiography]. Has provided excellent index. Now she separates chapters, in preparation for submitting disks to publisher. As ever, we work amiably together.

Walking about in the sun, we admit to each other that we don’t relish the day, sure to come, when we can no longer stroll about the world freely, as now.

At this time we were light-hearted, happy in each other’s company. Nevertheless, we were under some strain. The builders, good though they were, were constantly about us. Until the new study was built on to the north of the house, Margaret and I operated in a small room, each with our computers on our desks, crunched together in a space eight by fourteen feet. The enlarged ventricle seemed a small matter, curable by cutting down on cream teas in Norfolk, by walking daily to the shops and bank.

I wonder now why we were so carefree, why we purchased with hardly a thought a house which initially caused us so much trouble and expense. Well, houses in Oxford were hard to come by but, above that, we enjoyed each other’s company, found life fun, and did not think much beyond the day. And we took it for granted that I, six years Margaret’s senior, would die first.

So our mainly sunny life continued, with trips to Spain, Portugal and Greece. This last Greek visit was in May 1997. Before we left England, we had had some anxieties regarding the heat factor and Margaret’s energies. Our problems were eased by Clive and Youla who, ensconced in Athens, made many preparations which smoothed our way.

After relaxing on the island of Aegina with Clive and Youla, we headed northwards, to the Meteora, which we had been hoping to visit ever since the mid-sixties, and then into the wilder northern Greece. Northern Greece is very different from the Classical Greece which existed to the south; here one traffics with the ghost of Byzantium, where several transitory tinpot empires ruled. When we arrived in Thessaloniki, Margaret was tired, although still game. I booked us a room in the Elektra Palace Hotel in Aristotelious Square, looking out to sea. ‘Delighted to see how happy the touch of luxury made dear Moggins’, says the journal I kept. ‘Perhaps the journey – this gorgeous idle journey! – has been a bit tough on her.’

Now I see how she felt unwell much of the time, saying nothing. She became impatient with my nostalgie de la boue at one point. We were strolling in a quieter part of Thessaloniki, as far as there is a quieter part, when we saw a pretty side street in which pseudo-acacias grew on the pavement. A little rickety hotel stood in the street. If you took a room up on the sixth floor, high above the pedestrians, you could stand on a balcony with green railings and look out on sun and the tops of the trees. It was so romantic, I longed to be there.

Saying as much started an argument. Margaret said we were too old for that kind of thing. It would be a sordid little room, up too many steps. We needed comfort at our age.

She was right. It might have been squalid up there, perched in a cheap Greek hotel. Her diary reports the incident thus:

B goes on about small romantic hotels in crummy side streets. I finally shut him up, saying I’m not up to travelling that way any more. We argue. It’s unusual.

Later, as a gesture, he buys me a pretty candle.

Although I found nothing to complain about, and much to interest us, I was not ill. Now I’m sorry I did not see how little she enjoyed the northern part of the trip.

‘You must think I’m an awful person to take out,’ she says. She smiles and takes her supper pill. She has left her food again, as invariably she does. She has the appetite of a sparrow.

Privately, she had more serious complaints. Her diary entry for the 14th of May reads:

Dreadful night, noisy music from lobby, noisy lorries setting off up hill, wild dogs barking in garden. And an empty stomach. This is something of an endurance feat and I will never agree to another trip with such hardships – Greece is such a difficult place.

It comes hard to acknowledge that my responses were so different. My journal speaks quite fondly of the hotel we were in at this time. It was called the Hotel King Alexander, and stood on a hill on well-kept grounds just outside the city of Florina. As well as the customary Greek flag, the hotel flew EU and Australian flags. We were installed in Room 104. I report it as being clean and comfortable, with a balcony, overlooking the red-roofed outer town and the mountains. I note that Margaret was pleased with it.

I was writing my notes out on the balcony at dusk. Dogs were barking in the hills and a bird occasionally gave out one beautiful liquid note. The scent of lilac lingered in the air. I wrote, in my naïve way:

I adore – am excited by – Florina. The plump little lady in the pizza restaurant speaks a few words of English, and I’m pleased.

Now I’m sad to see that Margaret suffered so much in May 1997. Our holidays abroad had always been pleasurable for her. Clearly the cancer was already surreptitiously working to make her miserable.

Margaret spoke longingly of the isle of Bornholm, in the Baltic, ‘where people are civilised and food is good.’ ‘And,’ I said, ‘it’s windy and cold.’ Here in our room, she, smiling, says, ‘You’re content wherever you are.’

And content nowhere without her.

On Greece’s northern frontier with Macedonia, she bought herself a pack of little bottles of Unterberg, ‘natural herb bitters taken for digestion’. It was uncharacteristic of her. She made a joke of it, and I swigged a bottle with her.

This account stands as an example of male insensitivity. It is also an example of Margaret’s self-effacement. She was ‘a good sport’; she tried not to spoil other people’s enjoyment. At this period, neither of us knew that a more sinister and lethal ill than her enlarged ventricle was creeping up on her. And she looked so well …

Back in England, summer was upon us. Our house was finished, our garden was landscaped, our waterfall was tinkling away. We sat in our pleasing paved helix outside the house, doing very little. Margaret read gardening books and nursed Sotkin. We had two cats, the second being Macramé, but kindly, furry Sotkin, was her treasure. Perhaps she needed his comfort as he obviously needed hers.

Although I was writing my utopia, White Mars, in collaboration with Sir Roger Penrose, I now worked fewer hours. When I bumped into my neighbour Harry Brack, we went and drank coffee and conversed in the Café Noir. When I returned to Margaret, she said, ‘That’s just the sort of thing you should be doing, now that you’re retired.’

But. I find it is one thing to sit and talk over coffee with a friend when you can go home to your wife, and quite another when you can’t, when there’s no wife. Who wants to talk in those circumstances? I would rather be alone, skulking.

Our last summer drifted by. It was on the 20th of July we enjoyed that happy lunch with the Rubinsteins in their garden.

But on the following day, Margaret wrote to our GP, Dr Neil MacLennan, asking for another appointment with Dr Hart, her cardiologist, whom she had been consulting since September 1995. On that occasion my diary says:

My peachy creature had to go to the cardiologist, Mr Hart (sic), for examination. She gets short of breath. The diagnosis: the walls of her heart are too thick, while slight blood pressure affects the situation. More tests to come.

She displayed no anxiety before the examination. I concealed my anxiety. Afterwards she appeared smiling and calm as usual.

Following Mr Hart’s advice, we’ll now be careful about diet, to protect the tender walls of that tender heart. No more cream teas, jam roly-polys, pork pies, etc. … A part of me regards myself as indestructible; another part admits the truth – about both of us …

One cannot resist searching through old notebooks for indications one ignored, warnings to which a blind eye had been turned. For instance, during that last summer in Woodlands, on Boars Hill, Margaret was under the weather. Hardly surprising. It was the third hottest August since records began.

‘My dear wife wilts’, says the diary on the 3rd.

On the 10th, she went into the Acland, Oxford’s private hospital, for a colonoscopy, under Mr Kettlewell. When I went in to see her, she was enjoying a light meal and was in bonny spirits. She always made so little fuss. On the following day, when she was back home, I took her her breakfast in bed, and she had a gentle day. On the 16th, we drove up to Stratford-on-Avon to see Vanbrugh’s The Relapse or ‘Virtue in Danger’, and laughed heartily.

During this hectic time, we were endeavouring to sell our Boars Hill house and to prepare the place in Old Headington for human habitation.

And why did we sell up, after eleven happy years on Boars Hill? To leave was originally Margaret’s idea. She explained that we were growing older and feebler. Her diaries of the time indicate that I was rather unwell and working under stress, at least in her opinion. There were many old Boars Hill couples living deteriorating lives in deteriorating housing; she did not wish us to follow the same downward path. She was finding the tending of her long flowerbed beyond her. Soon the pruning and lopping of borders would be beyond me.

Slowly I warmed to her plan. One of the few shortcomings of Boars Hill was that one could walk nowhere. Not down into Wootton or, in the other direction, down to the Abingdon Road and Oxford. We had to use the car to get anywhere. After much searching, we bought the house in Old Headington and began slowly to clear out the possessions we had accumulated on the hill.

The move proved to be an excellent decision. Did Margaret have an intuition of the illness that was to kill her in two years’ time? I am convinced this was the case, at least in part. If not, then it was Margaret’s good sense. We needed to live in a simpler place.

Margaret disputed the role of intuition in our move into town. However, understandings arise from our bodies and seep into consciousness by devious paths which science may one day come to understand. During our last months in Woodlands and our first few months in Hambleden, I developed a phobia of finding a snake about the house, more particularly the all-devouring anaconda. I tried to turn this fear into a joke; Margaret was not happy with it. The all-devouring one was lurking in the dark. Probably she was already in its coils.

Yet we remained happy and carefree, as far as that was possible. We were of that fortunate few for whom being happy had become a habit. On my birthday in 1996, the 18th of August, Margaret’s present to me was the newly published two-volume set of Claire Clairmont’s Correspondence. She read the letters with me.

We had received an offer for the purchase of Woodlands, and we threw a party – a farewell party it was to be. A band of musicians calling themselves ‘The Skeleton Crew’ played baroque music until late. Our local caterers, the Huxters, served gorgeous food, and sixty of our friends attended. Margaret was a wonderful hostess, looking slender and lovely. No one could suspect there was anything troubling her.

During the evening, I persuaded her to stroll with me downhill to the bottom of the rear lawn. We looked back. There in the dark, like a ship, sailed our house, its windows alight, full of family, friends, food, drink and happiness: something we had conjured up together.

And when the guests had departed, Tim and I sat peacefully together and finished up what remained of an excellent Brie.

At the end of that memorable August, Margaret and I were in Glasgow, celebrating with the Fifty-Third World SF Convention, which took over the entire vast SECC building. Something like twelve thousand people had subscribed to the event. This was the great family of SF fandom’s annual festivity. Among those present from overseas were Sam and Ingrid Lundwall from Sweden and Marcial Souto from Argentina. Margaret and Ingrid, good friends, went shopping together in Glasgow.

Marcial had once worked with Jorges Luis Borges. We’ve known each other since 1970. Conversations with him, as with Sam, rank among the pleasures of this life.

In this crowded time, Margaret remained sunny and optimistic, as my diary reports.

Monday 9th October 1995. The week when we MUST leave Woodlands. The removal vans come tomorrow. M and I have ordered our lives well and sensibly of recent years, thanks to her organising skills; we often feel this move to Headington is our big mistake. Jock MacGregor [our decorator] reassured her yesterday: ‘In a week or two you’ll have a lovely house.’

The whole matter is occasioned by our growing old and my books failing to find an audience. Best thing is to accept the situation and get on with it: as Margaret valiantly does.

So we left Woodlands and moved into the Old Headington house, in which our plumber was busy laying over four hundred metres of new copper piping.

Standing in the front of No. 39, lo and behold!, I suddenly espied both of my beautiful daughters strolling along, coming to see how we were getting on!

Both Wendy and Charlotte were as ever very close to us, and to each other. How fortunate we have been that our four children, Clive and Wendy (Margaret’s step-children) Tim and Charlotte, are peaceable people, and that we all enjoy each other’s company. One expression of our closeness was the family’s fondness of nicknames. Margaret called Tim Booj, while she herself was called Chris by Clive, Wendy and Wendy’s husband, Mark. Charlotte’s name had somehow become shortened to Chagie. And at one time, my sister Betty was known as Big Aunt Rose …

It’s a wonder that we survived the housing upheaval. We were both exhausted. Margaret was hardly able to take the rest periods recommended. The cardiologist’s analysis of Margaret’s condition was that the enlarged left ventricle of her heart was causing her shortness of breath. There was also some bacterial damage to the top part of the aorta. Her blood pressure was high.

It’s very upsetting. But Moggins remains so calm I hardly know how much to be alarmed. We got some prescribed pills from Hornby’s, the Headington pharmacy, during the day.

If one has to become ill, Oxford is an excellent city to do it in. It is well equipped with medical experts and efficient hospitals. We were to find that our new home was conveniently situated for visiting clinics, cardiologists, and those elements of a more ominous regime, oncologists and hospices. But for a while we seemed able to lead a stable life. With the aid of our GP, the heart trouble could be controlled, even improved. Margaret needed more rest; then she would be better.

Of course, rest with builders on the premises is hard to come by. Nor were we particularly expert in the subject of rest.

In 1996, I made six brief trips abroad as usual, and turned down offers of several more. On a few of these expeditions Margaret accompanied me, for instance to Madeira, Spain and Portugal. Unfortunately, she could not come with me on the most memorable visit, to Israel, on the grounds that it would be too hot for her there.

I cannot claim I was particularly well myself; sometimes I travelled because I felt an obligation to do so – although this was not so in the case of Israel. I missed Margaret on that interesting visit – indeed, I missed her as soon as I was on the El Al plane, finding I had no credit cards with me! One of my kind hosts at the Tel Aviv British Council, Mrs Sonia Feldman, trustingly lent me her credit card.

Turning up a journal I kept of the days in Israel, I find my first entry, made on the plane, reads:

I’m alone. M and I were due to make the trip, but she is too frail and unwell. She makes light of her troubles, but it’s worrying; her cardiac weakness remains a problem. She thinks too that dust from the building site (our extension is now well under way) causes her breathing problems. It may well be so.

It’s a sadness to see how much less lively she has become in the six months since we left our lovely Woodlands.

The cancer must have been at its destructive secret work, a sapper undermining her being. It is useless to curse oneself for not looking beyond the heart trouble. But one does.

Our visit to Cascais, on the Portuguese coast, was not really a success, kind though our hosts were. This was Portugal’s first international science fiction convention/conference. The occasion was very important for the organisers and they had persuaded us to go.

Go we did, despite many difficulties. We had planned to travel on from Cascais to visit Lisbon for a holiday. Friendly people met us at the airport on the Wednesday. But, on the morning of Sunday the 29th of September, I woke to find Margaret very weepy, quite unlike her usual self. She said she was feeling ill and her heart was overtaxed by heat, standing about and difficult food.

Margaret had never been a moody person. I was alarmed. At once I said that we’d better get back into the cool and the damp, and forget about Lisbon. I immediately cancelled everything, including our stay in the plush Lisbon hotel, and we returned home that evening.

On the following day, I report with relief that

Margaret is fine again – ‘right as rain’. The rain, the cold, the cloud of England, seem to suit her best. No standing about, no having to talk to people.

But she was in truth far from fine, as she recorded.

I woke feeling bad, fast heartbeats, very dry nose and eyes, cold feet. Told B who said we should go home today. I burst into tears … instead of keeping a stiff upper lip as usual. I had not admitted even to myself what an ordeal these events often are, esp. in heat and having to stand around. B so busy and preoccupied.

This entry made sad reading after her death. I could but curse myself for seeming neglectful. Yet only two pages earlier, in Margaret’s neat little A6 diary, I read of a happier mood.

Bus trip to Sintra. Went along the coast to westernmost point of Europe, Cabo de Roca. So dramatic, with Atlantic waves pouring in, crashing on great cliffs.

Sintra Palace was closed. It’s a pretty rundown hilltop town, being restored, full of souvenirs. Good company on the bus … Into town for a meal on our own … Rice and seafood, quite good, ‘flan’ even better. Then to theatre where B gave his talk to a good audience. Audience laughed immoderately at B’s remarks. He was funny and good, but not that funny! Projected slides of his book covers looked good. Then twenty or so of us took over the centre of a tiny street and sat talking until 12.30. Still warm at midnight.

That was on the Friday. What was plaguing her on the Sunday must have been the undiscovered cancer and not solely the heart problem, to which we ascribed her sorrows. There was no reason to believe that something worse assailed her. Perhaps we might have been more suspicious had we been better versed in medical matters.

And she took care in that little notebook to worry about my trivial problems. She writes on the Thursday (26th of September):

Poor B, with bad legs, took ¾ pain-killer last night, which gave him a good sleep but left him very blotto this morning. (We had been to hospital and doctor about his health on Tuesday – he is nervous about his stomach and how he will cope – doctor assures us there are no life-threatening troubles, though.) I also suffer from my heart condition and lack of resistance to heat and cold.

We both became ill once we were established at home. I generally got up first, went downstairs, fed the cats, and took us up mugs of tea to begin the day. On 21st of October, I felt bad enough to remain in bed.

Lovely still sunny morning. Being in the bedroom, I’m privileged to see Margaret dress and ‘do her face’ – the morning ritual. A modest and charming ritual, sitting at her modest dressing table.

Hers is about the pleasantest face I ever set eyes on, as she is certainly the pleasantest woman. She works hard: the shopping, the cooking, the house-cleaning, much gardening, our financial affairs; and just now the seemingly endless retyping of Twinkling.

This week, she’ll drive down to Bath to see Chagie and will buy herself a large new loom.

All her activity, her travelling, her weaving, hardly indicated an invalid. Nor did she regard herself as an invalid.

I may have taken the many things Margaret so cheerfully did for granted, but I never took her for granted. I had had a taste of worse things, and rejoiced in my good fortune and her delightful presence. On the 22nd of October:

Ill or not, our days here pass pleasantly with the two of us together. They could continue thus for many a year and I’d be happy. We had the additional pleasure this afternoon of Wendy’s company for a couple of hours. She sat on the chaise longue in our (new) study, and chatted amiably of her plans, which include buying a seaside cottage at Morthoe.

While Wendy was here, Harry [Harrison] rang. He attended the memorial service for Kingsley [Amis], to which I was too under the weather to go. There he had the pleasure of seeing Hilly and Jane exchange a kiss.

With Margaret’s aid, I despatched the final version of The Twinkling of an Eye to HarperCollins, then my publisher. Life went on light-heartedly. Margaret enjoyed the literary life, with its struggles and excitements. She had perhaps had early preparation for it, since a book had been dedicated to her when she was a small girl. This sweet little book, of which ours must be one of the few surviving copies, is Bubble and the Circus, written and illustrated by Josephine Hatcher. It was published by the now defunct firm of Hollis & Carter, in 1946.

Margaret and I had known each other for forty years, and had been married for most of them. We had not always been as absorbed in one another as was later the case. We had both taken other lovers, brief joys that are followed by the storms of jealousy and fury which such events generally bring. Although I am not without regret that we behaved then as we did, I can see it as an episode in our maturing process. When we were reconciled, we became more dear to one another.

We drove down to Brighton, where Tim worked, met up with him, and dined with Marina Warner and a jolly crowd after the opening of Marina’s exhibition, ‘The Inner Eye’, in which I took part. Meanwhile, I began to make plans for White Mars with Sir Roger Penrose. Roger and his wife Vanessa had bought Woodlands, whereupon we became friends.

On the 11th of December in that year, 1996, Moggins and I celebrated our thirty-first wedding anniversary. We had no inkling that it was to be our last anniversary. Nevertheless, there were discomforts.

My dear faithful and true wife and I hug and kiss each other, and rejoice. We warmly remember that happy day of our marriage, and the celebrations in the Randolph Hotel with all our charming friends present. Plus the flight to Paris after, and the plush double bed in the Scandic Hotel.

But – Margaret’s celebrating with an hour in Stephen Henderson’s [our dentist’s] chair. She has to have a crown removed. Because of her heart condition, she had to take penicillin first thing. I shall go and collect her in half an hour.

By the 17th of December I report Margaret as being ‘almost over her little dental op’. Christmas was on the way. She was cooking mince-pies, and preparing to serve Christmas dinner for the whole family, as she had been doing for many a year.

Malcolm Edwards, my editor at HarperCollins, had by now had the typescript of Twinkling for two weeks, and uttered no word on the subject. My American literary agent, Robin Straus, phoned though, full of praise and excitement regarding Twinkling – ‘A unique book – I know of no autobiography like it’, etc., etc. Good.

Margaret and I gave each other a Macintosh Performa 6400/200 for Christmas. We had not yet emerged from our Mad About Computers stage.

On the last day of 1996, my spirits seem to have been low, to judge by the diary entry.

A low grade year. Margaret’s sad heart problem, the long drag of having this building enlarged, the drab political situation, the sorrow of BSE and slaughter of so many cattle, and so on … The hell with the boring Eurosceptics.

Let’s hope next year will be better! For one thing, Twinkling will be published, although already I dread the insensitive reviews with their crass headlines, ‘Life of Brian’. But a little welcome income might trickle in.

Clive and I drove down to BBC Thames Valley, where I went on air with Colin Dexter in a New Year Resolution Show. Uri Geller said he wished everyone to get down on their knees and pray for peace in the Middle East. I suggested, ‘Why not try bending a few Kalashnikovs? It might be more effective.’

I failed to note down, but still vividly remember, Margaret saying, ‘I don’t like the sound of l997. I don’t think it is going to be the best of years …’ Intuition again?

After the difficulties of the previous year, I made a resolution to accept no more invitations to other countries, although my customary visit to the US remained on the agenda. It was as well I did so. The temptation most difficult to resist was an invitation from Yang Xiao, one of our powerful friends in China, to a conference taking place in Beijing and Changdu. China – and indeed that remarkable lady – always had a special place in my heart.

Unlike our usual bouncy state, we were depressed in January 1997. Margaret developed a persistent sore throat. But we smiled and said, ‘So this is what growing old is like!’ At least we were content together; the old assumption still prevailed, that I would die first, while Margaret had at least twenty more years of life to run.

By the end of the month, I heard from Robin Straus that my American publisher, Gordon Van Gelder of St Martin’s Press, ‘adored’ Twinkling. He accepted it without talk of cuts or fussing. Still there came no word from HarperCollins.

So the year began dismally. Daughter Wendy’s little son, Thomas, had sickness problems, Antony, my sister Betty’s husband, was asthmatic and had difficulties with food, Betty was on pills, and Moggins was definitely under par. She stayed at home while I had to attend various events in England on my own. I also went to the John Radcliffe for a spell under the Magnetic Resonance Scanner. Taking a look afterwards at the shots of my spine, I saw that most vertebrae were well padded and separated, but some of the lower ones were a bit shaky. They could be causing the leg pain I was experiencing.

Until I referred back to my diary, I had forgotten that things weren’t so good at that time. Unwell or not, we enjoyed each other’s companionship. In the evenings, after supper, we sat and read or watched television, too lacking in energy to go out.

I had a little excitement to spur me on. Sir Crispin Tickell, then the Warden of Green College, had invited me to lecture as final speaker in a series of four lectures on the future. I spoke as the president of a largely fictitious body, APIUM, the Association for the Protection and Integrity of an Unspoilt Mars. It pleased me that apium was the Latin word for a white vegetable, celery. I had become sensitive to the vulnerability of things, from the quiet decency of most English people, the cultivation of truth and learning in our children, to the sacredness of environments, as well as Margaret’s health. Beauty lay everywhere, even on our desolate neighbouring planet, Mars.

My argument was that while I was eager for mankind to visit Mars and explore it, plans to terraform it were a different matter. Terraforming seeks to change a planet into a semblance of Earth, with breathable atmosphere, better climate, etc. Such engineering dreams are an extreme example, however well meaning, of mankind’s disastrous ambition to dominate the world, to exert power, to ‘conquer’ every environment.

Margaret’s environment was itself under threat. And I was planning to build a utopia … I spoke feelingly at Green College concerning this hypothetical just society, and was well received by the learned audience. Happily, Margaret was in the hall with friends, looking marvellous in a long red costume. One of the friends was the literary agent Felicity Bryan. Someone asked her after the talk, ‘Was Brian an actor?’

Felicity’s response: ‘You mean you haven’t seen SF Blues?’ SF Blues was my evening revue, which I had been touring round England and abroad for a number of years, taking the leading role. We staged it once in Felicity’s and her husband Alex’s grand house.

Following my lecture we then dined in the college, in the Tower of the Four Winds.

Gill Lustgarten reported next day that at lunch everyone talked of me and my theories. ‘There was nothing else to talk about.’

All this was beneficial for serotonin levels. Margaret and I drove over to Woodstock and bought a table and six chairs for the dining-room. Having blown over £2,000, we celebrated with lunch at the Feathers. Margaret ate soup and fishcake, I tsatsiki and chorizo, followed by parfait of duck.

We seemed to be on an even keel again.

Margaret is much better in health now, although her throat still troubles her. She looks very neat. Her legs and ankles are as slender as they were when we first met.

We drove to our flat in Blakeney on the north Norfolk coast in February, with Margaret at the wheel, and enjoyed a little sunshine. In Holt, we visited Betty and Antony’s new home in Mill Street, decorated in the Victorian manner.

For a brief while, we were able to enjoy life, without realising how precious those last months were. On the day Deng Xiaoping died, we went to London to see the Braque exhibition at the Royal Academy, of which we were members. We viewed some of the canvases with almost religious reverence, as did many of the people in the galleries. After lunch, we went to see Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, filmed at Blenheim Palace. Branagh, far from being a melancholy Dane, acted more like an escapee from a military band.

The weather was awful that day.

At this stage, we worried slightly, but nothing more. We had grown accustomed to each other’s weaknesses. So much so that – with the usual misgivings – I went as usual to Florida, to the Conference of the Fantastic, where I have a particular title, Special Permanent Guest. I rang Margaret from the conference hotel, to hear that beautiful voice answering me from Blakeney. On that occasion, she had lunched with Betty and Antony in Holt. She sounded spry and cheerful.

With April, I made a determined attempt to garden: more particularly, to grow us some vegetables. Along came a period of fine dry weather to encourage us. London was hotter than Athens for a time. Margaret also gardened and planted four trees on the farther lawn.

While I edited an anthology of mini-sagas, following the Daily Telegraph competition, our energy levels seemed to have improved. This despite the drab news from my agent, Mike Shaw, that HarperCollins, like a laundry that refuses to take in washing, was not making offers for any more books just at present.

The happier turn life has recently taken and the recovery from our transplantation to Old Headington have restored my abilities to a large extent.

So I noted. We were easily reassured that all was pretty well with us.

We drove to Blakeney again, where it was cold. There, one night, we saw the Hale-Bopp comet blazing away into the future over the North Sea. Two weeks later, we took a weekend off at the other end of the country, holidaying with Clive and Youla, over from Greece, in a snug little hotel on Exmoor.

But Margaret’s problems continued.

After her death, I found on her computer her own report on the difficulties she experienced.

How characteristic that she headed it

My health:

Following increased breathlessness this year, especially noticeable in Greece in May in the heat, I went to Neil MacLennan to ask for it to be investigated. My blood pressure was diagnosed as slightly high, following a random twenty-four-hour test several years ago, and I have been on Adalat Retard ever since.

Neil sent me to Dr Hart in the cardiology dept. of the J.R. I went in last week, and first was tested on the exercise machine, the ‘treadmill’. Unsurprisingly to me, I did very badly – as Dr Hart commented – and lasted only three mins at the first speed, and barely another three at the next speed: a quick uphill walking pace. Then I had an echo cardiogram, when my heartbeat was diagnosed on a screen; then a blood test, and then an appointment for a kidney scan later in the month (since one of the family – Tim – has had kidney problems). I had to do a twenty-four-hour urine sample, which I took in the next day.

Then I had a chat with Dr Hart. He told me the results of all the tests so far, and said that I had substantial thickening of the wall of the left ventricle – the part of the heart responsible for pumping the blood round the body. Probably this was due to high blood pressure: although my blood pressure was not too high taken against the average blood pressure, it might be too high for me. So the thing is to tackle it more aggressively. He also recommended taking more exercise, and not lifting anything heavy at the moment.

A week later I saw MacLennan, who had heard from Dr Hart in a long letter. He gave all the results – why is it the patient is the only person not to have anything down in writing about his or her condition? That is why I am recording this! – and suggested going on to Ace Inhibitors, together with a slight diuretic, low dose to start, then increased slightly, and to see how it went.

So I took half a Enalapril last night, and had a really good relaxed sleep! With all the house moving, it is hard to be unexerted at present, but I don’t feel too bad today at all. The Adalat Retard did very well for me, controlling the increased heart rate as I could feel, and also removing most headaches and nosebleeds. Interesting. Let’s see what Enalapril will do.

November: Now on 10mg. Enalapril, as well as Bendofluazine. And Premarin, and doing well, though really not up to walking uphill yet. Due for a check up with Dr Hart some time soon.

March: Summoned to see Neil MacLennan because my cholesterol level was up to 11 again – 7 would be good, 5 is average … He proposed to put me on more pills. I said I’d rather try lowering it by improving my diet, so we agreed on that. Not due to see Dr Hart until October, but don’t really feel my heart condition has improved. So I have written direct to him to ask for an appointment. I want to know why he thinks I have this condition – what it is due to. I mentioned my struggling dreams, which I have had for some years. Prior to that, in the days of Heath House and Dr Tobin (whom I told about this) I had dreams fairly often of being in some transport which was going too fast round a corner, to the extent that I nearly blacked out with the G pressure. May be related …

To see Dr Hart, for the six-month check-up I requested. He suggests I have an angiograph done, a tube inserted into the veins, to see if he can find out what is wrong with the blood supply. Sounds horrid, but must be done, a day in the hospital with local anaesthetic. Ugh. I have to go on to anti-cholesterol pills, to lower it. OK, maybe that will help. I await a date.

Angiogram duly done, early July: great result – no coronary artery problems at all. So, only the blood pressure and enlarged ventricle to look after, with pills, as before. Thank goodness for that!

Margaret was a great counter of blessings.

Often in the night she would wake, and then I would wake, and we would walk about the house holding hands. We put no lights on. A street lamp outside the front door filtered light into the rooms. We were always kind and fond. I enjoyed those waking times; sometimes I would fetch her a little glass of milk from the fridge.

I would hold her and kiss her. We told each other that, now we were getting old, we needed less sleep. Indeed, it was difficult to distinguish the natural pains of growing old from more serious pains, or a sense of feeling old from a sense of feeling ill. It seemed then that we were both ‘getting on a bit’, and so we were inclined to regard Margaret’s heart problem as part of a process in which we were both involved.

Nevertheless, there was a new development. For several years, I had been taking a post-lunch siesta in the study, whereas Margaret said she could not sleep during the day. Now she began to rest on the sofa in the living-room, her beloved cat Sotkin beside her, and often would sleep for a whole hour or possibly more.

She could not think herself well again.

It was on the 14th of April that Margaret wrote the letter to her cardiologist.

Dear Dr Hart,

I came to see you in October last year, and we discovered that I have an enlarged left ventricle. I gather from my GP, Neil MacLennan, that I am not due to see you again for a year, but I really would be glad to have another appointment with you now. I don’t know whether I should make it direct with you, but in any case I am sending Neil a copy of this letter.

It seems to me that things are really not much better, and I am disappointed I suppose – you said it could be ‘cured’, and I hoped for good things. But I still get short of breath very easily, and tired, and find I am not up to doing a great deal of gardening, for instance – by which I mean digging up shrubs and transplanting them, carting round bags of manure, restoring our newly acquired garden, etc.!

I have had regular appointments with my GP, and my blood pressure is reasonably normal; but my cholesterol level is very high at present. I have chosen to improve my diet rather than go on more pills, since I am aware the diet has slipped over the winter. I have the odd ‘pale day’, after a night when my heart seems to have been extra cramped up, and then I feel unable to be particularly active – this is something I have experienced over a few years. I would also like to discuss with you why I have this condition, something I really didn’t ask your opinion about. It seems to me I have trouble at night, and again over the years I have had ‘struggling’ dreams which wake me, it seems, on purpose to get my breath back. Anyway, I am worrying about it at present and would be glad of a check-up with you.

I have found a note written in Margaret’s elegant hand, dated the 2nd of May 1997. It reads mysteriously: ‘7.2 chol. Liver slightly abnormal. Neil lipid doc’.

During this period, of the early summer, we tried to live as normal and enjoy our usual pleasures. These included our contacts with countries overseas. A party of musicians came to Britain from Turkmenistan to play. They performed in the Holywell Music Room in Oxford. In the programme interval, I was presented with a hand-woven rug into which was woven the name of the Central Asian poet Makhtumkuli, together with my name. This was by way of honouring my versification in English of Makhtumkuli’s poems, first started when I was in Turkmenistan in 1995.

On the following day, Youssef Azemoun, the great unsung ambassador of all things Turkmen in this country, came to tea with Margaret and me. He brought with him two Turkmen ladies, Mai Canarova, a descendant of the eighteenth-century poet, and Orazgul Annamyrat, a pianist trained in the Moscow Conservatory.

Margaret served tea in the garden, in the helix. Afterwards, Orazgul came inside and played to us (Margaret was delighted she had just had the piano tuned). She had a clear attacking style, beautiful both to hear and to watch and was a remarkable person who briefly entered our lives, very friendly and quick. She quite won our hearts.

That May, as reported, Margaret and I flew to Greece for a holiday. To begin with, we took life easy, staying on Aegina in the House of Peace with Clive and Youla. We had had some concern about the heat, which was why we went early in the month.

We were back home in time for Moggins’s birthday on the 23rd of May. It was to prove her last birthday.

In the middle of June, Margaret and I opened the garden to the Friends of Old Headington, and many amiable people wandered round our garden and others nearby. Among them were Jeremy and Margaret Potter. Jeremy, brave and jovial, announced that he was dying of cancer, hale and hearty though he looked. Moggins too looked so bonny that day, and radiated happiness. Yet we both knew that she was under par, and feeling weak.

On the 4th of July, we drove out to Kidlington – well, Margaret drove us to Kidlington; she usually did all the driving – to a dinner party under the hospitable roof of our friends Felicity and Alex Duncan and children. We always looked forward to visiting them. I suppose about sixteen or more people sat down to dine in their hall. During the first course, Margaret, who was sitting down the table from me, rose, and excused herself; she said she was feeling unwell. Anxiously, I went outside with her, into the cool dark. She said her heart was bothering her, and her pulse was fluttering; I was to stay and enjoy myself, because she would be fine once she got home and could lie down.

Her casual manner in part reassured me. I went to the car with her, protesting that I would go with her. No, no, she would be fine. I must go back to the party; she was sorry to leave, etc.

So I went back, but was too anxious to remain at table. I told Alex I would have to leave. Alex came with me into the night, and saw me into a taxi. I believe that that was the first moment when my anxiety broke through into full consciousness and I realised that my wife might be seriously ill.

So, while Margaret underwent various tests, still centring on her heart problem and cholesterol levels, we still tried to live as we normally did, enjoying the summer, the garden, and our orderly little house. And, of course, continuing White Mars.

We had both been reading Anna Karenina in different editions. I enjoyed the fateful love affair; Margaret, impatient with Anna, was more sympathetic to Levin’s dealings with his serfs, and his love of the countryside.

I wrote my wife a letter at this period:

Tolstoy says that Levin and Kitty, during the early years of their marriage, wrote each other two or three notes every day. They did this even though they were constantly together, as we are.

It seems a good idea! So I send you a little note for a change.

I go on to thank her for her assistance in getting together the sprawling manuscript of Twinkling, saying that there must be passages in it which were not agreeable to her; nevertheless, she did not complain or attempt to act as censor. I admired her restraint and thanked her.

To this I received a bouncy answer. It must stand against the criticisms of my behaviour I happened across later, which we will come to. Meanwhile, her letter is worth quoting in full, as proof of her affectionate and optimistic outlook on life. And on her husband, for that matter …

Hello my darling,

You sent me a lovely note at the end of last year, and it’s about time I answered it!

We don’t write to each other much these days, do we? But we do express our love in so many happy ways, and in our support for each other. I am so grateful for your care and concern when my heart seems to play up and make me rather feeble. And I am very worried about the state of your legs – let’s hope the tests and X-rays will show up what is causing the pain. Soon, the weather will make life easier for us, when we can get out and move around, and get more exercise in the garden.

I wish Malcolm would come through with some decent enthusiasm for your autobiography. It is such a wonderfully wide-ranging book, so much experience in it, and so many areas of life included. We will weather the curiosity of our family and friends, who will no doubt appreciate that we have survived many awful times and yet stuck together, knowing that we are the foundation of a great family structure! Lucky old us! And thank goodness for Gordon Van Gelder!

I suppose it’s true and inevitable that we seem to have aged a bit over the last year, with the traumas of moving and building. I hope we will manage to enjoy the garden this year, and that you won’t be too exhausted with too much travel. We’ll try to have some good adventures of the easy kind!

Love you hugely as always, huge hugs – Your Moggins

Well, we did stay and try to enjoy the garden, and I did not travel abroad. Unfortunately, our Tolstoyan correspondence progressed no further, as her sorrows overtook us.

During the summer, I gave my Moggins Lisa St Aubin de Teran’s autobiographical book The Hacienda. She was absorbed by it, and by Lisa’s terrible life, and wanted to read more of her writing. She lent The Hacienda to Betty, who also devoured it.

Friends I had met originally at the Conference of the Fantastic, Gary Wolfe and Dede Weil – now married – were in Europe. They had said they wished to see England beyond London, so Margaret and I planned a short trip for them. It was to prove our last carefree little excursion, and the most valued because of it, for all four of us.

Margaret drove me from Oxford to Tiverton Parkway, a smart little railway halt in the West Country. She seemed in good health again, although it was no surprise when she stayed sitting in the car while I went to the platform to meet our guests. They had come down from London by train, to save them a long car journey.

The weather was beautiful. The four of us drove down to Tarr Steps, where the river flows shallowly through a deep valley. A low stone bridge, little grander than a giant’s stepping stones, crosses the river. Adults paint there, children pretend to fall in. There we stayed for a night, enjoying each other’s company. Gary is witty and humane; Dede is intense, empathetic and affectionate. Time for Dede is rendered particularly special because she has suffered from cancer, has had one lung removed, and has lived to tell the tale.

On the following day, we moved to a more comfortable hotel, the Royal Oak in Winsford. Margaret and Dede drove to Winsford; Gary and I walked up a leafy valley, past a herd of the semi-wild Exmoor ponies, through countryside that has scarcely changed since before Wordsworth’s time. Gaining an upper by-road, we saw Margaret and Dede in the distance, strolling towards us, both looking serene. Dede told me later that they had discussed mortality.

The pleasant scene remains in mind, assisted by the photographs we took.

When the time came to part, we drove our friends to Bath, and lunched with Charlotte in the Pump Room. Charlotte worked as deputy manager of the HMV branch in Bath. Rain poured down that day. Gary and I took shelter in a tour of the Roman Baths while the ladies shopped. Our friends caught the London train from Bath station. Margaret and I drove back to Oxford, with Margaret again at the wheel.

We returned home late on Thursday. Wendy had been feeding our cats while we were away. For our part, we were happy to resume our prized and peaceful home life. But on the Saturday Margaret and I went to the Acland, where she was X-rayed.

Tuesday 29th July

Well, a dreadful day: I am apparently very unwell. I had a liver ultrasound scan at the Acland on Saturday, and the radiologist immediately told me I needed a biopsy, as there were ‘irregularities’, which ought to be investigated further. Neil phoned yesterday, Monday, to say it was rather worrying, as these growths could be evidence of a secondary CANCER. I can’t remember whether he actually used that word, but that’s certainly what he was talking about. But we have no evidence of a primary growth. He seems to think the heart condition might have disguised it. Although I had a colonoscopy which was totally clear two years ago, I may have a tumour there somewhere – though I never pass any blood. Christ! It’s a death sentence. The encyclopedia says that once a secondary growth develops in the liver there’s nothing that can be done.

B and I collapsed into each other’s arms, wept and comforted each other, without really being able to believe it. Immediately, thoughts of all I want to put in order, of how desperate it would be to leave my darling husband to cope on his own, the children without seeing them married and without seeing any of my very own grandchildren … I have to stop myself brooding.

Having to stop herself brooding … Maybe. And having to commune within herself and summon up all her inner resources of fortitude.

Although we were to face much misery to come, it was always tempered by Margaret’s wonderful example of courage and concern for others than herself.

On the following day, Sunday, she slept badly and spent much of the day simply lying about. Hardly surprisingly.

Tuesday 29th July

At 3.25 yesterday, Neil phoned to say there was a growth of secondaries on Margaret’s liver, as revealed by her sonic scan on Saturday. Unwrapping this we found it meant cancer.

She will go to Mr Kettlewell for a liver biopsy on Wednesday.

We went into the living-room and held each other and wept.

My darling! – Why wasn’t this me, with my checkered old life, instead of my dear young innocent wife?

O Rose, thou art sick!

The invisible worm

That flies in the night,

In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy,

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

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

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 …

Food became an increasing problem for her. One of the concoctions in Wendy’s magic basket of snacks was called ‘Nurishment’. It was packaged in the average-size can and was manufactured by Dunn’s River Nutritionals. ‘Nurishment’ became Margaret’s stand-by. The drink was advertised as a meal replacement and an energy and nutrition boost. It came in several flavours, and contained vitamins, proteins, calcium and other necessaries. ‘Nurishment’ must have given Margaret at least an extra day of life – and much enjoyment.

Otherwise, she scarcely ate. I took her her breakfast in bed. She managed to eat half a piece of toast, spread with honey. As her appetite failed, so, empathetically, did mine.

Standing became a problem for her. We drove up to a big builders’ showroom, Johnson’s, and investigated stools or seats to use in the shower cubicle. I begin to ask myself guilty questions in the diary.

What can books, ornaments – work, indeed – mean if she is not here with me?

It was to be but a brief while before I found the answer to that question.

We extracted a note from Neil saying Moggins was unfit to travel abroad. I took it to Summertown Travel to cancel our Brittany holiday. There, a sympathetic lady named Karen set about retrieving some of our deposit through the insurers. As the transaction concluded, she said, ‘Give my love to your wife.’ It was so touching. I burst into tears on the way home, and had to draw the car into the side of the road. I still found it hard to accept what was coming to seem more and more inevitable. How Margaret managed, I cannot imagine. Perhaps her long sleeps helped.

But she slept badly that night. I took her some muesli to bed in the morning. It was all she asked for. She had no taste for tea any more, and drank mineral water, mainly Volvic, in the small bottles easily stored in the fridge. Soon after washing and dressing she looked as sparkling as ever and, as ever, made light of her ills.

How was our life then, poised on the brink?

I went shopping at the old Sainsbury’s near Boars Hill. It was as quiet as a cathedral, with a few spectral oldsters wheeling their trolleys about in a funereal way.

Before lunch, I made the beds and vacuumed the bedroom. Moggins got some lunch together – Wendy’s snacks, in part – after which we both had a nap. I worked on Twinkling. It’s just a revision, easy to do, needing little real concentration. I’m earning nothing these days.

We drove into Oxford in the afternoon to buy some new toner for the photocopier. A brief outing. Clive and Youla rang during the evening, to see how Chris was.

Now 9.50 – dark and raining a little. Moggins is already in bed. I’m more or less watching the film version of Osborne’s The Entertainer.

And tomorrow – O God! – it’s the Acland!

She remains ever calm and sweet, reassuring others. A courageous lady!

If only we could have that day again, she and I! Even at the cost of having to watch The Entertainer once more …

So to the ghastly 7th August. I rose at 6.40, and prepared my poor sweetheart a modest breakfast of cereal. She did not clear her plate. We talked of our hopes and fears of what was to come that day, and clung to each other like shipwrecked sailors to rocks. We wept briney tears.

The Acland received us and a nurse conducted us to a small room labelled Room 3. It was hot and airless in there. I got a fan going. Margaret undressed and got into bed. There we waited, holding hands, silent now.

Eventually, an anaesthetist, the Chinese Mr Low, entered, talked informally, and took notes, detailing the heart condition. After him, nurses came, to prepare Margaret for the laparoscopy.

I suppose I left the hospital about three in the afternoon. As I went, the flowers I had ordered were delivered. I arranged them in a vase. Margaret was so calm; her dear smiles almost broke my heart. We hugged and kissed each other and I said I’d return at six, when she would be back in bed and recovering.

Our house was silent. The cats slept.

A laparoscopy is a serious matter. A slit is made near the navel and an endoscope inserted, by means of which the abdomen can be investigated. An endoscope takes the form of a fibreglass tube containing a lighting and lens system. A clawlike attachment can be inserted to cut a sample of tissue.

The worst news.

I was at the Acland before six, in plenty of time to see Moggins being delivered back into Room 3.

She was awake and on a drip, looking rather the worse for wear. An analgesic suppository had been inserted into her anus. Beside the endoscope in her stomach, she had had a laryngoscope down her throat.

I sat by the bed and held her hand. We spoke a little. She asked after the cats. She was hot and I gave her some water.

It grew dark outside. Mr Kettlewell finally appeared. He muttered that the source of the secondary tumour on the liver had been traced to the pancreas.

It cannot be cured. Its progress might be slowed by chemotherapy, which treatment could be started almost at once. No wonder Kettlewell muttered. He had to deliver Margaret’s death sentence.

She scarcely wept. This was everything we had feared. The all-devouring anaconda within …

A lady of massive kindness, by name Nikki Driscoll, an oncology clinical nurse specialist, then came in. She talked to us, explained, tried to reassure us.

She couldn’t say how long my darling has.

Margaret had to remain in the Acland overnight. At last I had to drag myself away.

I returned to Hambleden. I have managed to speak by phone to all members of the family except Tim, who was working. Clive phoned almost as soon as I got home.

What Margaret’s state of mind might be I cannot tell.

Farewell, our carefree happy days!

Friday 8th August

So, I brought her back from the Acland some time after noon. She was brave and bright. The Acland staff could hardly have been more considerate.

When we were home, she sat on the sofa. I made us scrambled egg for lunch. Moggins followed it by yoghurt with Greek honey. Then she slept for quite a while. Both Tim and Charlotte phoned during the afternoon.

Margaret spoke a little about her bitter disappointment. She had expected to enjoy another twenty years – time to see Tim and Charlotte happily married, and producing grandchildren. To grow old.

She was more unwell than she had been before entering the Acland, and she suffered from the heatwave. I drove to Currys superstore on the ring road and bought her a good 12-inch three-speed fan.

Moggins is upstairs now, having a cooling wash. Wendy is coming to see her at six.

My dear Wendy! What an encouragement she was at this time, despite her own troubles – of which she made light. The babe within her had been diagnosed as having a slight kidney problem, which would have to be rectified once it (or he, rather, for we knew which sex it was by now) was born. A report out at this time stated that ‘the family is still central to most people’s lives’. In our case, it was stating the obvious.

Saturday 9th August

Our practical, dependable Wendy arrived at six with a fine standing fan for Chris! Unfortunately, I had pipped her at the post; so she would use it in her own house. She also brought a little bouquet of roses and a novel type of ‘air cooler’, which we were to find very useful by Chris’s bedside.

She stayed for an hour, while I watered the garden and prepared supper for my poor old battered girlie. She retired to bed after long phone conversations with Tim and Charlotte. They’ll both be here next week, as will Clive, flying in from Athens.

When did this horrible thing begin to spread? As long ago as May of last year she could not face going to Israel with me. In September, in Portugal, she was rather under the weather. Yet in May this year, she seemed fine, although she had begun to leave her food. Clive took photographs of her on his balcony in Prigipou and she looks so well and beautiful, eyes bright, colour good. She’s so brilliant in her own domain, so uncomplaining. Her heart trouble evidently masked this more insidious misery.

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