Then they had moved to a house of their own, had resolutely preserved the hope that it was going to be all right in the end, ha, that nothing should interfere with their original plan, which was a university job, a family, a home, in whatever order, now they had all three, now they were all set. Except that the sciatica of the arm he had complained of when visiting us in London had grown far worse, I think the tumour had grown again, and others were growing, in different places, his back for one. And again they had not been able to come up for the publication party, of the second one, he had been in hospital, in fact, when June wrote to me to say she had taken the advance copy to him there, and it had cheered him up, they had just changed the whole of his blood and he was looking and feeling much better now, then. So it was in his blood now, then.
The house was a new one, the roads still unmade as we drove on to this new estate, the house still known by its plot number, in fact, that new. And well-designed, within its limits, a through lounge, underfloor heating, picture window with wholly-covering curtain, open-tread staircase up to three bedrooms, was it, or more, yes, we must have stayed in one, other than theirs, or his, or the child's. There was a study, a room to himself, for the first time. He never used it. The child was walking now, keenly intelligent, probing, asking, in his own language, Tony and June were both interested that he should be talking his own simulacrum of language, saying things that meant something to him, if not to anyone else, and we talked about Canetti, the man in Auto-da-Fé who does this, who is accounted mad because words or sounds mean whatever he wants them to mean at any particular time, differing meanings from moment to moment. And the child's toys, a posting box I remember being one of them, of plastic, different colours, and a big push toy, train was it? I do not remember. Nor much of his relationship with the boy, only the sad thing that he had to be careful at this stage, once when the boy climbed up on him, familiarly, childlike, Tony had to deny him, putting him on the floor again, for the child was scrambling on his chest and stomach, and was liable to, or did, kick him on one of the tumours, he let out in explanation that there were more than one, now, and that they were in his chest, or ribs. So they were spreading, and they were painful, so painful. And he talked, perhaps it was this that set him off, when it was out now how serious it was, now, about how the thing had arisen, about twenty months previously, how it had all started, in Lincoln that excessively hard winter, how he had felt the lump on his collarbone, had been curious, though it was not painful, then, had gone to a doctor, and because he was unregistered, never having been ill in Lincoln, and was leaving soon anyway, the doctor had created a fuss, Tony overheard him swearing about people like him, the door was open, to his nurse, or receptionist, no doubt he was overworked, and so when he came to see him he was angry towards this nuisance of a patient already, and Tony said the examination was perfunctory, and the dia- gnosis was that the lump was merely a little bit of fatty tissue which would go as quickly as it came. But it did not, had gone on growing, when he eventually went to another doctor it was a month later, in Chester, he had been so busy and tired out with looking for somewhere for them all to live, he was in digs himself: and it had grown larger, rapidly, and this doctor, the new one, knew bloody well what it was, at once, was astonished that it had grown so quickly, sent him to hospital at once, they too had never, he said, known a tumour grow so fast, and I clinically noted that yet again everything to do with him he believed to be the biggest, the most important, unique. And he ended tritely, with a warning, saying if ever I myself had a lump, which grew, or any lump, to go to a doctor straight away, not worry about overworking him, and not to hope, not to imagine it would go away of its own accord, for speed is of the essence, he said, the cliché, even a few hours, apparently, and it might be too late.
For the first time he really looked ill, there were outward, physical signs of it, he looked different, not himself, worse. His face appeared dry, the skin as if carelessly powdered, in places, his hair had suddenly grown thinner, there was dandruff in great yellow-grey flakes and his teeth were slightly more noticeable, for he had lost weight, a stone or more. His breathing, too, was affected, there were now great pauses in his conversation as he sighed to the limit of his lungs, unnatural pauses, unsyntactical, which gave his words curious emphases and drama-tizations, bathos, together with those other pauses when he had to take a drink to moisten his mouth, manually to perform the saliva glands' function.
It is difficult to think of these things without terror, the pity is easy to feel, easy to contain, but so useless.
The shake in the voice which was not there before. This was when there was nothing but hope of a miracle, that's bloody funny, a breakthrough, then, left. They had I think done all they could for him, such as it was, and it had not been enough.
June had first known of it when he had rung her from Cheshire, Chester, or wherever, to say that he had to go into hospital up there for an examination, a biopsy.
At one point June and Ginnie went out, for shopping, down to the village near which this new estate was being built, and left Tony and me alone, perhaps they took the child as well, perhaps he was asleep. But Tony and I talked seriously, sadly, about these things, about as well the opposition of the families of the girls we had married, to our marrying them, perhaps this was common, universal even. There was I remember great comfort for me in what he said, as meaning I was not alone in finding this opposition. This is banal. What did he actually say?
Remember him on the newly-sown front lawn, earth it appeared as, just then, with lines of some sort, what were they? Not turves. Perhaps earth, just to cover the builders' rubble, I don't know, I cannot think, it is so difficult.
His stooping movement, so circumscribed, as he bent to remove something, a stone, perhaps, from that embryo lawn.
The back garden was much as the builders had left it, coarse grass, rubble, bits. Tony and June had not yet had time to do anything with it, what would they have done with it? The boy liked to play there, enjoyed running out when it was not raining, it rained a lot on that visit, it was, yes, September, but very dull, overcast, towards the end, already it was autumn. The boy would play out in the back garden in a souwester and yellow oilskins, little ones, curious games, tasks, appar-ently of his own devising, on his own, with a climbing frame, tents of carpets, old carpets, bricks, things, things. Chattering to himself in that tongue.
Someone said, it must have been June, that there were times when Tony broke down, knew and said he would never live to see the boy grow up.
I fail to remember, the mind has fuses.
At some point he asked me, they asked me to be a kind of secular godfather to the boy, asking not quite apologetically but certainly making it clear I was not expected to be a godfather in any sense I disapproved of by undertaking to bring the boy up as Xtian or whatever the myth is. To which I hurriedly agreed, sadly, not wanting to discuss it, but seeing in the future the boy coming to me for a job, ha, a reference, advice perhaps, yes, in the long future. Just in case anything does happen to Tony, they said, he said, she said, no doubt offhandedly.
At some point he told me more of the first period in hospital, at the radioactivity or radiotherapy unit, on that airfield, particularly that there was a predatory priest, RC I think, who preyed on Tony, on others. Not so much on Tony, for he could withstand it, but certainly the man had put pressure on him to declare a faith, which Tony could not in all honesty do, of course, not having that sort of faith, I do not remember the details, but it was odious, as I remember, this cleric's approach, carrion-eater.
In bed, he spent a lot of time in bed, now, he had a transistor radio, a recent acquisition, someone had given it to him, or they had bought it, for this especial purpose, to take him out of himself, to take his mind off it, ha, it went everywhere with him, carried, it was not pocket size, he had it on the bed, toyed with it, when he was sitting downstairs, too.
Just at this time, the day we went up, as I remember, the paperback edition of the first one had come out, with its dedication to them. This would have been a cause of celebration, we brought them a copy, it went hardly noticed by any of us, I could not mind.
It could not have escaped his attention that we took photographs, that were the last, for us, of him, that we were taking photographs that would be the last. In the front garden, the newly-sown lawn, against the house that was theirs for such a short time, our hired car parked in front of their garage, during a break in the rain, he and I together squinting against the light, taken by Ginnie, or June, I forget who, and the boy playing in the garden at the back, running into the kitchen all muddy, and so on, and so forth. That phrase he was also saying right to the end, to my end, at least, for I took, introduced it to him as a new mechanical toy, a miniature tape-recorder that I had bought for recording interviews, for journalism, and affected to want his opinions, his knowledge, about an article I was then trying to write, seeking to prove the effect of bad planning and arch-itecture on people, that housewives on suburban estates were being driven mad by tedium, loneliness during the day, that there would be an explosion sooner or later, which he agreed with, described his childhood, aspects of it, in Ewell, I suppose, as being like this, sensory memories of walking seemingly immense distances on hot days, on hard pavements, with never the chance of escaping into a café, or even into the shade of a tree, no relief, the deserts of certain suburbs. But I could never prove it, housewives I interviewed on new town estates said they were too busy to be bored, I had to abandon the article. His hands on the sheets, the cliché, thinner, white, but they do seem different, hands, forearms, of a patient, perhaps it is the way the pillows behind take the weight of the shoulders, the muscles of the arms are relaxed in some way, perhaps. His fingers tampering with the mike, and he kept switching it off, perhaps it was too much for him, the thought I won't be here, perhaps he had this thought inside him, insistently, by now, all hope gone, saying, I won't be here to see this, or that, or whatever, even to see this article we were talking about, perhaps I was too ghoulish, in wanting to have his voice, the reason I had brought the recorder, though I did genuinely want his help with the article, too. Ghoulish, but not now, no, I have the man's voice still, the shake in it that was not there before, the sippings, the pauses, long sighs, I remember so clearly, have played it enough times, his voice, or the last vestiges of it, it's not that clear, a new slur, too, but his voice, his voice I still have, yes, and what he said, what he was.