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Four
It was a time of public triumph in England: the country
was getting ready to celebrate twenty-five years of the Queen's
reign her Jubilee. Flags flew everywhere. The monarch's smiling
face looked out from photographs in shop windows and book-
stalls; posters hung across buildings carrying the triumphant mes-
sage: "Twenty-five Years." The contrast between all the rejoicing
and the realities of the twenty-fifth year of Jane's life was a
terrible one. The decorations appeared tawdry to us, the sounds
of festivity and triumph a mockery. The thousands of souvenirs
that filled the shops seemed, for the most part, unforgivably ugly.
Jane saw little of all this. Two days after Richard and Joan
went back to America, she was discharged from the hospital and
came to the flat that we had rented nearby, to be close to her after
the operation. Not only was her body damaged by the disease but
her confidence and sense of independence were gone. "I just
can't imagine myself driving again," she said. "All these cars, all
these people . . - For that matter, I can't even see myself sitting
in a bus!"
She had been continuously ill for nine weeks. Time
dragged.
TV bored her. Even music began to pall. "What can one do to
make the time pass quickly?" she asked gloomily.
"Why not try that emrboidery I bought for you," said
Rosemary,
who was knitting furiously.
"Its too complicated. I looked at it, but it's too
difficult."
Rosemary went shopping and chose a pattern of sunflowers
for
needlepoint. The design was pleasing; the colours all went to-
gether. Jane began to work at once. She would sit for hours
pushing the needle through the canvas, in and out. Building up the
design of flowers and leaves was relaxing and finishing a flower or
a corner of the pattern rewarding. At last she had something to
show that she'd done herself.
Slowly Jane began to eat properly; slowly her strength
re-
turned. She started to cook, to talk of going out one day. Soon
she was able to negotiate the flights of stairs down from the flat
and cross the road to the little park—but not for long, and not
alone. She still needed support, both physical and psychological.
A visit to the cafe near the hospital after treatment was a big
event. A trip out to dinner with Michael, who took her to an
Indian restaurant that had many associations for them, was a real
milestone.
But getting Jane interested in the future was still
hard going.
She felt the best she had to look forward to was a short life full
of chemotherapy—a year of treatment, perhaps several years if no
more tumours appeared. She wanted to earn a living by teaching;
she didn't want to exist on her parents' charity. But who would
employ her as a teacher, with one week off every month for
chemotherapy, and goodness knows how much more time for the
various other disabilities that might lurk in the unknown? "Who
would want someone with cancer?" she asked.
"The way to look at it," Victor told her, "is not
to decide
whether they want you, but what you want to work at, then go
ahead and get on with it."
"You know very well I'm in no position to act like
that," she
replied angrily.
"But ignore that for a moment, Jane," Victor persisted.
"Let's
look at it as if it were an intellectual exercise. There must be
other work than teaching that would interest you."
She was still angry, but said nothing. This was like
one of
their exchanges when she was a teenager.
"All right, granted it's difficult for you to imagine
now that
you could be holding down a real job. Lets talk about some
of the things you'd like to have done in the past, not jobs so much
as things you'd enjoy—travelling, perhaps, or writing?"
"You always said I shouldn't go into journalism.
You're not
going to change your mind now, just to humour me?" Her tone
was sarcastic.
"No, but you could write. There's your poetry. There's
women's rights. Your dissertation on that was pretty good."
"No, Dad, I want something I could live on."
"But before you discover that, you've got to find
something
you can do—that you want to do and can do. Something worth
doing, fulfilling. Didn't you once want to bring art to the people?"
"What on earth are you talking about?" She was less
angry now
than impatient, and a little curious.
"I remember a conversation you and Mum once had in
the
pottery. You were putting her pots on the shelves, preparing for
a sale. You told her you knew how she liked it when local people
bought her pots, not just her rich friends."
"Well, so what?"
"And you agreed with her that what Granny used to
call the
lower classes were quite as capable of appreciating the finer crafts
as anyone, when they got a chance to see good work. Do you
remember that?"
"Yes," she acknowledged grudgingly. "But what's all
that got
to do with us now?"
"Just this—you said that maybe you and Mum should
go into
partnership, that she could make pots and you should sell them—
pottery, woodwork, things like that, at the right prices, to the
right people, and bring something into their lives that they'd
appreciate, instead of the plastic rubbish people often buy because
shops don't stock anything better."
"But it would cost a lot of money, a shop like that."
Jane eyed
him dubiously. "And I'd still have to shut it for a week every
month, during chemotherapy, and at any other time I didn't feel
well. No, Dad, thanks, but it isn't very practical." Now she was
no longer angry, only a little sad.
But Victor was relentless. "You could borrow the
money, and
repay it out of your earnings. You'd be able to hire an assistant
or take a partner to be in charge in your absence. If we found
you a place in Brighton, all your friends there would rally round.
You could have a flat over the shop, so that you'd know what
was going on even if you couldn't always be there. And Mum
has been talking about staying on in England with you for a
while—she could have a pottery in the back."
It was then that Jane called out to Rosemary, "Mum!
Mum!"
Her voice rang with a vitality we had not heard for many weeks.
Rosemary came quickly in from the kitchen: "Yes, Jane, what
is it?"
"Dad's had one of his ideas."
"Well, what is it this time?" Rosemary asked warily.
Victor's
"ideas" were usually big and rarely practical.
But Jane's excitement as she described the Brighton
idea was
infectious. Brighton was the place where she had been happy,
during her university days, and she had often gone back there
to see the friends who had stayed on. Could she recapture those
times again? Soon the three of us were sitting at the table with
pencils and paper making lists: Victor of people to phone; Rose-
mary of potters and other craftsmen to see; Jane of things to do,
from the renting of premises to the buying of stock, from finding
out about taxation to making visits to other shops to see how they
were run. We planned it almost like a military campaign. Jane
supplied the sense of order, the realism; she asked the difficult
questions, and insisted on a proper sequence of actions. Victor
added the enthusiasm, excitement, ideas. In no time at all he was
talking, only half-jokingly, of a chain of shops scattered through
the slum areas of Britain, bringing arts and crafts to the people
there. Jane smiled indulgently. "First, catch your hare, Dad"—
Mrs. Beaton's cookbook injunction had become a family saying
long ago. Rosemary gave practical advice, happy because Jane
seemed happy, which was all that mattered.
Was it only a charade? Jane's chances that day were
no better
than they had been twenty-four hours before. She had again
wakened with a pain in her back, and we knew that persistent pain
could signify the return of the cancer. We knew it, but it was
not something we could bring ourselves to talk about.
In her diary, Jane had written: "I'm getting better, but it is a
frustrating, slow business. I feel I have so much to cope with—
now, in the next year, and for the rest of my life. First of all, I
have to accept that the cancer may return, and that my chances
of dying are considerably higher than is normal for someone of
my age—and that it appears that no one can or will tell me )ust
what the chances of it recurring are. Then, I have to accept the
fact of my physical weakness: it has never been as bad before, but
at least I have started to eat, and I'm able to move around more,
though it's still very little. Then, there is the chemotherapy—it
shouldn't be as bad again as it was the first time, but it's not going
to be pleasant. It will take up a week every month for about a
year, and it'll make me pretty ill. And there are the problems that
will have to be faced when I have recovered more from my op-
erations and the treatments: how can I possibly find a )ob, with
the continuing need for treatment? Is it viable for me to live in-
definitely at Dairy Cottage with my parents?
"And there is the knowledge that for a long time
I'm going to
be on the receiving end, and getting emotional and practical
support from family and friends."
The day after the "Brighton project" was born, her
diary
entry was much more cheerful: "Despite my cold, I am really
beginning to feel well again. I can finally walk across a room with-
out feeling faint. As I get physically better, it becomes easier to
feel optimistic. Last night was the first time I slept without wak-
ing up with a severe stomach ache. My diarrhoea seems to be
over, too. . . . A major factor in my improvement, which is both
physical and mental, is a new Zorza plan. Dad says he is happy
and willing to provide money for me to set up a craft shop which
will probably be in the Brighton area. Of course, it would not be
an easy project, and there is an awful lot to find out about, and
a lot of work involved—but it really seems as if it might work
out."
Together, she and Rosemary set out to visit a number
of craft
shops. Jane carried a notebook from one display case to another,
writing down the names of craftsmen who caught her fancy,
comments on their work, comparisons of prices. She was deciding
what proportion of her stock would consist of pottery, wood-
work, glassware. But she knew she'd have to be practical, and
that meant she'd also have to offer such things as costume jewel-
lery and postcards.
Jane put together a list of good craftsmen in the
Brighton area,
and some further afield, whose work she might want to stock,
but not before she had carefully studied slides, pictures, and some
actual examples of their products. They didn't all pass muster.
"That may be good enough for one of the big London shops, but
not for mine." Her energy was amazing.
She got into long discussions about standards, quality
and price.
"I want to stock things that are both functional and beautiful,"
she wrote to Teresa, "and a few that are simply beautiful. But
there is a problem, in that I want things ordinary people can
afford—and a lot of craft-work, especially in textiles, is very ex-
pensive." This was where Carol, from the Crafts Advisory Coun-
cil's London headquarters, could be very helpful. Carol was a
new friend she made while trying to get the shop organised. Many
of the young, struggling potters whom Carol was trying to sup-
port were quite as good as some of the better known ones and
their prices were often much lower. Jane saw herself befriending
some of these young people, providing an outlet for them, perhaps
guiding them in reconciling their artistic drive with the dictates
of the market. This would be a market she would create, and it
would be governed not by the philistine views of the undiscerning,
but by the down-to-earth, practical appreciation of the func-
tional and the beautiful which, she insisted, would be the mark
of her own customers.
She knew all this would take time, a long time, and
she talked
of how the various stages of the project would have to mature
gradually, of the transitions from one stage to the next, of the
slow growth of her relationship with the craftsmen who would
be her suppliers first, and then perhaps her friends. But how long?
That she didn't go into—and neither did we. Did she really be-
lieve it was possible? We never knew.
She wrote to Teresa: "The sun is shining, the birds
are singing,
and the world is very, very beautiful. . . . I'm in my usual state
of exhaustion, but we've had a good afternoon looking at the
British Craft Centre shop, and a place called the Glasshouse, where
people make and sell glass." The visit to the Glasshouse, with its
great glowing furnace and its glassmakers blowing into their
long pipes, had excited her. It was one of her most enjoyable
experiences in a long time.
"We saw some beautiful glassware—but quite expensive.
And
we watched a goblet being made—fascinating, despite the fact
that I was suffering, as I have been for days, with painful shoul-
ders." Not even those few golden days were free of painful
reminders. She tried not to let them interfere with her Brighton
dream, but occasionally she began to doubt that there was enough
time left. And then she would ask bitterly how she could run
the shop if she were going to be in pain all the time.
She wrote to Teresa: "Of course, the shop project
hasn't man-
aged to make me forget all about the cancer. I think that would be
unhealthy. I just have to live with the possibility of a recurrence
and make the best of things. It gets easier, with time, and is easier
now that I have something I really want to do. I do feel so much
more optimistic about things."
On her bad days, she didn't give up the idea but
raised all kinds
of doubts. What if she got a loan from a bank and borrowed
money from Victor, and then had to go back into the hospital?
What if she simply couldn't go through with it, after spending a
lot of money setting up the shop? She didn't say, "What if I die
soon?" but that was clearly on her mind.
Victor felt he had to meet this objection to keep
up her interest
in the shop—and maintain the feeling that she had a future.
"You can't measure in money the satisfaction this project will
bring you," he insisted. "It's already brought you happiness while
we've been working on it just these past couple of weeks, and
that's what matters. It's worth all the money it's going to cost to
have made you as happy as you have been since we began this.
Anything more will be just a bonus. . . ."
That was as close as he could bring himself to discuss
the
possibility of her dying. She seemed to accept what he said and
to be ready to go on. Negotiations for a building and a bank loan
began. But her doubts revived as the pain returned.
"Are you sure you want to go through with it, Dad?" she
asked. "Is it really worth it? You don't have to, you know." Did
she think Victor was reluctant to spend the money; that the new
pain made him feel it would be wasted, that she was going to die?
There had been times in her childhood when we needed to be
very careful about money. He did his best to convince her, feeling
guilty about the past.
But Jane's bouts of depression didn't last long,
and they were
greatly outweighed by bursts of sustained enthusiasm. "My own
feelings," she wrote in her diary, "vary between great enthusiasm,
a belief that it really will work, and doubts as to whether I am
able to undertake the considerable work and responsibility." But,
she added, "It's almost worrying, how well things have gone."
When Richard had left at the beginning of April she was con-
cerned that she might never see him again. By the end of the
month, she could write to him: "I wish you could see me now.
It's unbelievable, how much better I am. . . . We
think we might
be able to open in July or August, but a lot depends on how
much the treatment knocks me out, on how soon we get premises,
on how long it will take to get stock, etc. But the whole process
is so enjoyable—1 now lie awake at night thinking of the shop and
all that, rather than about the cancer."
For a short time she seemed to be full of hope. Even
Richard
ceased insisting that she should be told how remote were her
chances of survival. We were affected by her enthusiasm, and
wondered if some real recovery could be possible. Our guilt was
eased. If she had been told she was under sentence of death, her
present happiness would have been impossible. But we were also
worried that perhaps it was a false happiness, based on lies and
concealment, and that she might have used her time to better
purpose.
We could never be sure what to do. All we knew was
that Jane
did seem happy. She didn't actually tell us so, because in the midst
of resolving the practical problems raised by the Brighton project
there was no talk about feelings, hers or ours. It might have been
a dangerous topic. We didn't want to risk spoiling things.
But she confessed in her diary explicitly what we only
guessed at.
"It has given me something to live for." She was
"a real person
again—hopefully, even more real" than before her illness. More
real, because her heightened sensitivity made it possible to per-
ceive her own feelings and those of others in a way she had never
done before. She had a unique vantage point that allowed her to
explore the depth and richness of human values and relationships,
of the world's beauty. "I feel I have learned quite a lot that maybe
I knew intellectually before, but not emotionally. In a way it's
made me more selfish, more determined to live the way I want
to live now and not think too much of doing things in the future.
And I appreciate things (the beautiful ones, anyway) and people
(the nice ones) much more."
This enhanced appreciation of beauty, which was evident
in
her search for objects for the shop, and in her delight—a mixture
of the sophisticated and the childlike—when she found them, was
something she could share with others, not just her parents. When
she handled a piece of wood that had been lovingly fashioned by
a craftsman, when she looked at a picture of a pot from a prospec-
tive supplier, there was an almost sensual pleasure in her response
which communicated itself to those around her. Sometimes a shop
manager who had seemed busy and harried would be drawn into
her little circle of light, take time to admire with her an object
on his shelf, discuss its finer points—and, on discovering she was
a
prospective shopkeeper, offer sage advice and practical warnings.
In Brighton the first bank manager she had ever dealt with
extensively was willing to give as much time as she wanted to
discuss comparatively minor points with her. He was aware she
had cancer, which to him meant she was not long for this world,
and he felt she knew it. He was shaken by her calm and marvelled
at her practical approach, but was careful to hide his feelings. Yet
she knew what he was doing. "I'm learning new things all the
time," she said. "Bank managers are human. No, not just human,
that's a cliche, they're like you and me. They feel.""
There was the man who had recently closed down his
own
crafts shop in Brighton and was prepared to sell Jane very cheaply
the remainder of his stock, the goodwill of his business, and the
detailed information about his suppliers and customers it might
have taken her years to acquire. It wasn't a business deal to him—
or to her. His heart went out to Jane, to a fellow human being
facing the pain of cancer and the mystery of existence, and he
offered help and friendship at a time when she needed it. What
he was giving her was hope that her project was realistic, that it
would work.
Jane's new friends were all nice to her, even the
young man
who argued heatedly with her, maintaining—as she might have
done a few years before—that it was a petit bourgeois illusion to
believe that working people needed access to art and the crafts.
He ridiculed her idea of "going to the people" with the precious
gift of beauty, when what they really needed was power—power
to remake society, power to take away from the rich their
monopoly on power itself. Only then could the people gain a
true appreciation of beauty.
She explained to him, using his own vocabulary, why
she
thought that working people already had an appreciation of
beauty, and why she could see it as a worthwhile life's work to
help them develop and deepen that appreciation. She would make
it possible for them to have beautiful things. Their lives would
be the richer for it, and so would her own.
"Yes," he retorted. "Of course it will. You'll grow
rich on it all
right. Money-grabbing, that's what it is. You'll be a shopkeeper—
you, with your fine ideals!"
She was not in the least put out by the encounter.
She went
from one Brighton estate agent to another, looking at the premises
she had arranged to view when she telephoned them from London
to explain exactly what she wanted. She was searching for some-
thing in one of the poorer shopping areas, where the kind of
customer she was after was likely to be passing by. Finally, after
nearly two days of dragging herself through the streets of Brigh-
ton, the pain in her shoulders getting worse and worse, having
to sit down more and more often, but without a single complaint,
she found it. The space was in a street that also contained a
market, so she would have the clientele she wanted; but she would
have more than that.
"Do you see that shop at the other end of the street,
on the
corner?" she asked us. That, she explained, was Infinity, a health
food co-op that was now the best shop of its kind in town, attract-
ing a lot of the middle-class customers of exactly the kind, she
said shrewdly, that her place might benefit from while she was
building up her own special clientele.
"That could take a long time," she said, looking
Victor straight
in the eye. "I may not be able to make it, but it's worth trying.
If I can get that shop, Dad, it will have been worth having had
cancer."
She waited for him to reply, but he couldn't bring
himself to
say anything. It was the first time she had acknowledged how
fragile the project might turn out to be.
"Infinity—that's a good name," she went on. "I wish
the co-op
hadn't grabbed it. It would have suited us fine, don't you think?"
Still he could say nothing.
"But perhaps we can improve on it," she continued.
"Something
even more suitable . . . I think I've got it. We'll call it Close to
Infinity. What do you think?" she asked with a smile.
"Yes, Jane, that sounds fine," he said flatly.
"Oh, come on, Dad. It sounds better than fine. It sums it all up,
doesn't it? That's where I am, and that's where I'll remain, from
now on. Close to Infinity"
Jane grew steadily stronger, more confident. One
day she ar-
ranged to travel across London to visit Michael. She was deter-
mined to make the journey on her own, but asked Rosemary to
accompany her to the doors of the Underground while she got
her courage up to continue alone. Then she said: "If you could
just buy me a paper, then I can read it all the way and not get
claustrophobic in the train." Armed with the paper, she waved
goodbye like a child determined to act the adult, and disappeared
into the subway.
When Michael opened the door of his house some time
later,
he was delighted to find her on the doorstep. The old Jane had
come back to him—alone, tired, but on her feet and radiantly
happy to have reached him unaided. It was a moment of natural
celebration. He welcomed her with a delight that equalled her
own. He put his arms round her, drawing her into an embrace
that she returned happily. He led her into the house, and it was
as if nothing had ever come between them. They picked up the
threads of their student days in Brighton, reliving the old pleas-
ures, renewing the intimacy of a past life.
Michael shared the house with friends, some of whom
had also
been part of their lives in Brighton. But Jane's illness wasn't men-
tioned; it was treated as part of the past and ignored. Michael had
always fought for Jane's individuality, anxious she shouldn't be-
come an object, a cancer sufferer with no identity other than
"sick." Now the battle seemed won. She was "Jane" again, full of
life, both living in the present and looking forward to the future.
They cooked and ate with their friends, reliving the old rituals
of a shared life, listening to much-loved records of the Grateful
Dead on the same old stereo, smoking. Alone together in the
happiness of that night they made love.
The threat she was living under, although suppressed
in their
conscious thoughts, was never very far from the surface of their
minds. But that night, "we made it go away," Michael recalled
later. There was a sense of rejoicing about the occasion as they
rolled back the months of illness and of separation to seize the
time to be lovers again. It did not come easily, at first, and they
were both a little shy. They talked a good deal, slowly feeling
their way back to the simple physical intimacy they had once
known. Jane gradually regained confidence about her disease-
ravaged body. Michael had thought about her operations, about
the scars she would still be bearing, about the pain she might feel,
but he had also determined to show his love for her however her
body might be altered. "I didn't in my head want to make love
because of my wound," Jane wrote in her diary later, "but my
body wanted to." Michael sensed her uncertainty and her need to
be shown that she was a full person, for he knew how grievously
someone in her condition might suffer in the absence of such
reassurance. It proved easier than he had expected. "Look what
they've done to me," she said, as she showed him her scars. It
wasn't important. He wanted to express his feelings towards her,
he was determined that she should understand what they were—
and he knew that this could be achieved best by making love. "If
you love somebody enough," he was to say later, "you can forget
other things. The very words you use, the way you can be
together—all this takes you out of yourself, it transcends the
present. That's how it was with me and Jane."
It was the best night's sleep Jane had enjoyed in
a long while,
and without sleeping pills—a great achievement. She woke with
a smile and stayed in bed late, happy and relaxed. They talked of
her plans, of the Brighton project, but as if by agreement their
conversation touched only on the present and the immediate
future. Michael, for all his refusal to face the facts, felt subcon-
ciously that this might be their last time together, even though
this was at odds with the conscious and deliberate effort he was
making to help her act and behave as a normal, healthy human
being. There was, for him, the joy of something new opening up
—and, at the same time, the sense that a door might be closing
forever.
For Jane, there was the triumph of her body's victory
over its
ills. With a new confidence, she refused Michael's
offer to call
a cab for her, and insisted that she would walk unaccompanied
to the Underground.
When she got home from seeing Michael and the pain
re-
minded her of her uncertain future, Jane too could see the door
opening—and shutting. "I now feel that I do want some sort of a
relationship with him," she wrote in her diary, "but will be unable
to have it." She felt very close to him. "If any one person can
supply a lot of my needs—for a good friend to talk to, for a lover,
or companion—for some of the time, not all of it—then it is him.
But I feel I don't have much to give him in return, and that's no
basis for a relationship." She was depressed again, experiencing
one of those periods of dejection when the future seemed bleak,
if indeed there was to be a future.
The pain in her shoulders began to grow. At first
it was re-
ferred to as Jane's "backache" or "rheumatism." When it was
worse, perhaps weather was to blame. If it rained in the morning,
Victor would remark that Jane's rheumatism would be bad. When
she complained, we wondered aloud if she shouldn't see a special-
ist, but we didn't press the matter. None of us really wanted her
to see a doctor. Once it was discovered she didn't have rheu-
matism, the straw Jane was clutching would be gone and we
could no longer help her deceive herself.
It was a relief when night came. Sleeping pills often
helped,
if only for a few hours. She usually awoke early, but one morning
she still hadn't made a sound by ten o'clock. The sleep would do
her good—she obviously needed it. Whenever we went past her
room, we tiptoed. Victor rushed out to meet the postman in case
he rang the doorbell. Rosemary shut the kitchen door when
she did the dishes. So long as Jane was asleep, she wasn't in pain.
We were also freed a little longer from playing our game of
deception. The pain was making her irritable—that and perhaps
the realisation that Brighton was just a dream. She was getting
on our nerves, and she knew it. Several times she had told us
what a burden she was. She said it almost angrily, not apologet-
ically as she might have done in the past. Her incessant cigarette
smoking left a smell of stale tobacco in the house and we struggled
to accept it. Smoking was a great relief for her, and it was little
enough to put up with compared to her pain, but so long as she
was asleep, we were free of this too.
As noon approached, Jane still hadn't woken up. Victor
no
longer bothered to walk on tiptoe. He put on a Mozart record,
one of her favourites, hoping it would make her awakening more
pleasant. Still there was no sound from upstairs.
Suddenly the telephone rang. Jane was a light sleeper; that
would surely waken her. Victor let the phone ring until it
stopped, but she didn't respond.
Rosemary stood outside her door and listened. "Not
a sound,"
she confirmed; she was no longer whispering. "If Jane is still
asleep, then that means she needs to sleep."
Victor looked thoughtful. "Supposing she took more
sleeping
pills than usual, should we just leave her?"
Rosemary didn't answer at once. She led him away
from Jane's
door into the sitting room. "Let's give her a little more time," she
said gently. Victor let himself be guided to the sofa, feeling
suddenly powerless. "She has slept as late as this?"
"No, never," Rosemary said nervously. "But then,
she's not
been in quite this kind of state before, has she?" She was remem-
bering her conversation about suicide with Jane, but all she said
to Victor was, "Let's leave her alone. Let her sleep."
"Yes," Victor agreed. "She must have taken more pills
than
usual to sleep as deeply as this."
"There's certainly enough in that bottle to knock
her out, if
that's what she wanted."
He took a deep breath. "Knock her right out?"
"If she wanted it, yes."
He wasn't ready to face it. He backtracked a little.
"Then she
wouldn't want us to wake her now. She'd bite our heads off, as
she did when you offered her breakfast yesterday."
"She seemed much happier last night. When I helped
her to
bed, she said: 'Let's go shopping—1 know I've had such a lot of
presents, but it's been so long since I chose something.' "
about to take an overdose. But Rosemary was pursuing her own
train of thought. "Perhaps when the pain became worse, as it al-
ways does at night, when she couldn't sleep for hours, she'd have
got more depressed than before."
"You think that would be enough to make her take
an extra
dose of sleeping pills?"
"Perhaps she woke in the night . .."
He put his arm around her. "Yes," he said. "She'd
think,
another night of pain, and another, and another . . ."
Rosemary took his hand, ready to answer his question
now.
"It would be enough to make her take an extra dose," she said
quietly, "or an overdose."
There—it was out.
Victor stroked her hand.
"Or an overdose," he repeated, then paused. "That's
what I've
been thinking for some time now."
"Yes, I know. So have I."
"It'd be for the best this way," Rosemary said. Victor
drew
her towards him and kissed her. "Yes," he said. "She has a right
to do what she wants."
"It's her life."
"If we tried to stop her, we'd be doing it for our
sakes, not
hers."
We'd made our decision, but we needed to reassure
one
another, to give each other the strength to go through with it.
"She won't feel anything by now," Rosemary said.
"No, but we must give her as long as possible."
"Yes. We must make sure."
We sat . . . waiting.
It was twelve o'clock, then one. Then a new thought
hit Rose-
mary— hard. What if Jane had tried and failed? What if she was
lying upstairs half-conscious, unable to move or call out, desperate
for help?
For the first time that morning communication between
us
broke down. Rosemary threw Victor a wild glance and rushed
upstairs. He started to follow her, but couldn't face what lay
in the bedroom. A memory came into his mind of Jane as a happy
child, playing with other children, her face smudged with dirt,
lit up with a puckish smile.
He heard the bedroom door open and Rosemary go in.
There
was a brief silence; then he heard Jane's "Oh," as she woke up.
She came to slowly and reluctantly, and seemed very cross at
being woken. She was in pain and said little for the rest of the
day, remaining withdrawn, almost hostile. When Rosemary
brought
her some food, she pushed it angrily away.
"If this goes on", she snapped, "I shall have to do myself
in."
Rosemary could say nothing.
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