Jack died of bowel cancer when he was thirty-eight, two years younger than Alice had been at the time. He was thirty-five when he was diagnosed, not long after they had started trying for a baby. ‘It’s now or never,’ she remembered saying, her uncertainty at the thought of motherhood finally overcome by his enthusiasm and her age. ‘Now or never.’
For almost three years, they lived with the disease between them, first with hope – the statistics and his youth were on their side – and then without. By the time he was diagnosed, the cancer had already spread to his lymph nodes and was on its way to his liver. Once there, the conclusion had been decided. The chemotherapy slowed but did not prevent it. He would end up on the wrong side of the statistics. He was ‘one of the unlucky ones’, the consultant said, when their fears were finally confirmed.
When someone you love is going to die, when you know they are going to die and there is nothing you can do to stop it, life splits. Half of you continues as if everything were normal. You get up in the morning, eat breakfast, brush your teeth. You do your work, see friends, watch television, go to sleep. You function. The other half, though, is always looking forward. It sees beyond the dying to the dead. It anticipates the absence that is to come. And yet somewhere there, between those two halves, the automaton and the seer, you must continue to love and to care for the one who is not gone yet, who is still there, temporary but real.
Alice lived like that for more than two years, and she did so as well as could be expected by anyone looking in from the outside. She continued to write – with increasing reluctance – and she continued to care for her husband, who remained at home until the last few weeks of his life.
‘I’m dying,’ he would say sometimes, looking over at her, as though surprised anew by the realisation. He used to tell her he loved her in precisely the same way. The thought came to him, urgently, and needed to be spoken aloud. Her own love for Jack swelled with the imminence of his loss, and continued to swell even afterwards, as if that love might somehow grow and fill the space that he had left. But of course it could not.
On the day he died, in late July 2011, she was called in to the hospital not long after lunch. She’d spent most of the morning with him, then come home to get a little rest. They’d told her a few days earlier that it could be any time, and she’d struggled to sleep since then. When the phone rang, she hardly needed to answer it. She was already reaching for the car keys, she was already on her way.
Alice sat with him for several hours, until he was gone, then longer, until the nurse came and touched her on the shoulder, asking if she needed more time, and she wanted to say Yes, I need more time, I need another few minutes, another day, another decade with my husband, is that okay, can you do that, can you make that happen? But she said nothing. She stood and let go of his hand and went through to the waiting room, where a television was switched on in the corner, silent, showing fire engines and ambulances and smoke and wounded people, crying people.
She looked at the screen for a long time, struggling to understand what was happening there, to separate it from what was happening here, in this pale-blue room on the fourth floor of the hospital. She read the ticker-tape of updates as it scrolled, describing the attacks in Norway, in Oslo and Utøya, explaining where the bomb had exploded and the shooting had happened, how many were feared dead, how many were injured. She saw people on stretchers and children wrapped in white blankets, shivering. She had a feeling, then, that she was entirely still, and that the world was galloping around her, fixed in its trajectory and yet spinning with a kind of madness, like a rollercoaster out of control, running faster and faster on its rails, threatening to come loose at any moment and plunge into the empty air. She, Alice, was at its centre, utterly powerless and yet somehow the purpose of it all, as if the spinning, wild, crazy turning of the world were a performance put on for her alone. She was paralysed. To move from where she was would be to step into the madness that surrounded her. The only way to avoid being caught and dragged into that storm was to be at its heart and to let it rage all around her. She stood, then, until she couldn’t stand any longer.
For the next two days, Alice stayed at home, watching the aftermath of the attacks on television, the scenes of destruction and death repeated hour after hour. And as she watched, gripped by it all, she saw her own horror and outrage mirrored there on the screen, her own loss broadcast back to her in the loss of others. She felt crippled, disfigured by what had happened, as though she herself were one of the injured. She felt, too, a kind of resentment towards those people, for the sheer publicness of their suffering, and the sympathy that it brought. What about her and this private suffering? Where were the tributes to Jack? Where was the coverage of his death? Fixed to that screen, hypnotised by it, her grieving fed upon a universal grief. It was everywhere.
For those first couple of days, nobody bothered her much. They put food in front of her, some of which she ate. They didn’t ask too many questions. But later it became clear there were responsibilities that were hers. There were choices to be made. She wanted to leave everything for her in-laws to decide. She couldn’t find the will to care what coffin Jack would need, what kind of flowers they should buy, or what songs should be played as his worn-out body lay among them for the last time. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Every question seemed obscene. How could anyone think of such things? Whenever she was able, Alice would slip away to the company of the television, until, eventually, even the news reporters lost interest in the dead children of Norway. Alone in front of the screen, she felt dizzied by the passing of time, straightjacketed by the endless motion of the world.
SATURDAY,
13TH FEBRUARY
‘Come on, Jamie. Let’s get oot o the hoose for a bit.’
‘It’s raining!’
‘No really. And onyway, du’s got dy coat. Let’s just get some fresh air. Just for ten minutes or so. Come on!’
Jamie looked up from the sofa and scowled at Terry, then looked back at his phone. ‘The wifi here is shit.’
‘Aye, du’s right, it is. And dat’s a good reason no to sit aroond aa day looking at a screen. It’s no going to get ony faster.’
Jamie huffed, then raised himself to his feet, as though the effort required were a chore for which he could scarcely muster the energy.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Just to the beach, okay? Just for a look. We winna be lang, I promise.’
Terry didn’t really want to go to the beach any more than Jamie, but he needed to do something. His head was fogged and throbbing, and a few minutes outside might just relieve the pressure. The walls felt too close in the house, too solid. The waves would clear things up, wash away the hangover.
Louise, his wife, had dropped their son off first thing this morning, an hour earlier than he’d expected – though that was his fault rather than hers. He had been awake, but only just. Jamie had hardly said a word so far. He had lain out on the sofa with his phone. Facebook, texting, playing games. Terry wasn’t sure exactly what. Going out might do both of them some good. It might improve the day.