‘Paul, if your wife arrives home …’
‘She won’t.’
‘But if she does …’
‘She won’t. They’re gone for the afternoon.’
‘Paul,’ I say firmly. ‘If for whatever reason, she returns, we cannot lie. I will not take part in deceit, this isn’t what I’m here to do. I don’t want her to think I’m some nasty other woman. I’m already Bert’s reflexologist, and that is disturbing enough.’
He laughs and it breaks the tension. ‘I won’t ask you to lie for me. I know this is difficult for you, and I, all of us, appreciate what you’re doing for us, the sacrifices that you’re making after everything you’ve been through.’
Which then makes me feel awful. My sacrifices are nothing compared to his.
‘So what’s the plan for today? What do you want me to do?’
‘We have a lot to do,’ he says, energised. He’s a bundle of energy and ideas, he reminds me of Gerry. They don’t look alike. He’s ten years older. Still so young and yet had ten more years than my husband; the greedy bitter time-comparison monster again.
‘I’m only going to write one letter, the letter to them all that explains what I’m doing; the rest, if you don’t mind, is visual.’
‘Letters are visual,’ I say, rather defensively.
‘I want to give the kids a sense of who I am, my humour, the sound of my voice—’
‘If you write the letters well …’ I begin.
‘Yes, defender of all letters written ever,’ he teases, ‘but my kids can’t read yet. I want to do something a little more modern, more in tune with what the kids are drawn to, and they love TV.’
I’m surprisingly disappointed, but I drop it. Not everybody cherishes letters as I do and I suppose Paul is right, his young children, born in this generation, would probably prefer to see and hear their dad. It’s another lesson that this process needs to be shaped exactly as the person wishes, for the people they love; bespoke messages from the once living to the still living.
‘First things first.’ He leads me through the kitchen to a conservatory. ‘A piano lesson.’
The conservatory overlooks the back garden. A children’s playhouse, swing set, lopsided goalposts, bikes, scattered toys. A doll abandoned in the soil, the head of a Lego man stuck between the cracks of the patio. The barbecue is covered up, unused since the winter, garden furniture needs to be sanded and painted. Colourful birdhouses nailed to the fence. A fairy door by the foot of a tree. The setting paints the picture of their daily life. I can imagine the activity, the mayhem, the laughter and screams. The conservatory feels like it belongs in another home. There aren’t any toys, nothing that would link it to the surroundings of the rest of the house. It’s an oasis. A light grey marble tiled floor. Light grey walls, a sheepskin rug. A chandelier hangs from the centre of the ceiling, low and hovering just above the piano. And that’s it, no other furniture.
Paul is displaying it grandly, proudly.
‘This,’ he grins, ‘was my first baby before the monsters were born. I put it in here for the acoustics. Do you play?’
I shake my head.
‘Started when I was five. Practised every morning from eight to eight thirty before I went to school. It was the bane of my life until I left school, started college and then realised being a piano player at parties is a babe magnet.’
We laugh.
‘Or at least, the centre of all entertainment.’ He starts playing. It’s jazz. Free. Fun.
‘“I’ve Got the World on a String”,’ he tells me, still playing.
He gets lost in his own world, playing along, head down, shoulders up. No despair, just joy. He stops suddenly, and we’re plummeted into silence.
I stand up quickly and go to his side. ‘Are you OK?’
He doesn’t answer.
‘Paul, are you OK?’ I look him in the eye. Headaches, nausea, vomiting, double vision, seizures. I know what Paul experiences. I’ve seen it. But he can’t be experiencing it now; the tumour is gone. He’s in remission, he beat it. This is all precautionary. Of all the people I am spending time with, Paul has the most cause for optimism.
‘It’s back,’ he says, choked up.
‘What?’ I ask. I know exactly what he means, but my brain can’t compute it.
‘I had a five-hour seizure. Doctor said it’s back with a bang.’
‘Oh Paul, I’m so … sorry.’ It’s too weak, the words are not enough. ‘Fuck.’
He smiles sadly. ‘Yeah. Fuck.’ He rubs his face tiredly and I give him a moment, my mind racing. ‘So what do you think?’ he asks, looking me in the eye. ‘About the piano lesson?’
What do I think? I think I’m unsure about whether to push him more. I think I’m afraid something will happen to him, in my presence, and I’m afraid of that happening and I don’t know how I’d explain that to his wife. I think that instead of him spending time with me here, he should be with his wife and children, making actual memories, not ones for the future.
‘I think … that you’re right. This works much better on camera than in a letter.’
He smiles, relieved.
I place my hand on his shoulder and squeeze encouragingly. ‘Let’s show your babies exactly who you are.’
I hold my phone up and begin recording. He looks straight into the camera and the energy is back, a playful look in his eyes.
‘Casper, Eva, it’s me, Daddy! And today, I’m going to teach you both how to play the piano.’
I smile and watch, zoom in on his fingers as he teaches the scales, trying not to laugh as he jokes and makes deliberate mistakes. I am not in the room. I am not here. This is a man, speaking to his children, from his grave.
After basic scales and ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’, we move to the kitchen.
He opens the fridge and removes two cakes. One is chocolate for Casper and the other is sponge with pink icing, for Eva. He rummages through a shopping bag and retrieves a pink candle; a number three.
‘For Eva,’ he says, pushing it into the centre of the cake. He looks at it for a moment and I can’t even imagine the depths of his thoughts. Perhaps he’s making his own wish. Then he lights it.
I press record and zoom in on his face, half-hidden beneath the cake held up in his hands. He starts to sing ‘Happy Birthday’. He closes his eyes, makes his wish, then blows the candle out. When he opens them, his eyes are misty. ‘PS. I love you, baby.’
I end the recording.
‘Beautiful,’ I say quietly, not wanting to ruin his moment.
He takes the phone from me and reviews his work and while he’s doing that I look inside the shopping bag.
‘Paul? How many candles do you have in here?’
He doesn’t answer. I turn the bag upside down and everything spills on to the marble countertop.
‘OK,’ he says, after watching the recording back. ‘Maybe zoom in on me and the cake more, I don’t want too much of the background.’ When he looks up, he sees my face, then the contents of the bag on the counter. Pink and blue numbered candles fill the countertop. I see 4, 5, 6 – all the way to ten. I see an 18, 21, 30. All the years he’s prepared himself to miss. He shifts awkwardly from one foot to the other, embarrassed. ‘Too weird?’
‘No.’ I gather myself. ‘Not at all. But we’re going to need a lot more time to get through this. And we’re going to have to mix things up a little. We can’t have them looking at you in the same shirt every year. Can you get some different tops? And fancy dress. I bet you guys have lots of fancy dress, let’s make this fun.’
He smiles, grateful.
Despite the battle Paul faces, a battle he’s had to fight once already, I find that spending time with him feels productive. With Gerry I felt so powerless, we were at the whim of every doctor’s decision, following appointments, schedules and treatments to a T, not knowing enough about it ourselves to be able to make clear decisions or take different options. I felt powerless. Now, while I’m obviously still powerless against Paul’s tumour, at least I feel that I can do something for him. We have a goal and we’re getting somewhere. Perhaps this is how Gerry felt while writing the letters for me. While everything else was uncertain, or out of his control, he had this one thing under control. At the same time I was fighting for him to live, he was making preparations for after his death. I wonder when that began, what moment he submitted to the knowledge, or did it begin as a ‘just in case’ as it did with Paul.
Spending time with Paul is the ideal remedy to the personal web of confusion I find myself in, because I’m able to discuss these thoughts with him. He wants to know, he wants to hear. The club need me, they want me, and when I tell them stories about Gerry and rehash memories of his letters, I don’t need to check myself mid-sentence, I don’t have to apologise or stop myself as I do with family and friends if I feel I’m going on, or trapped in a time warp, or moving backwards. The club want to hear about Gerry and the letters, they want to hear about my life with Gerry, they want to hear about how I miss him and of how I remember him. And as they listen, perhaps in their minds they replace him with their own image, and me with their loved ones, envisioning what it will all be like when they’re gone. It’s my safe place to discuss him, it’s my place to bring him alive again.
I can quite happily immerse myself in this world.