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Fourteen
Victor was very angry at the thought that Richard
would be
returning to Boston in two days. Here was Richard's sister on
her death bed, and he couldn't wait to get away. Victor didn't
put it that way to his son, for he was conscious of the need to
avoid family friction at such a time, but he tried to convey his
concern.
Richard remained unmoved. He had accomplished what
he had
come to do: Jane would be well looked after in the hospice. The
danger that Rosemary might attempt to cope on her own, and
perhaps break down in the process, had been averted. The old
conflict between Victor and Jane had been brought to the sur-
face, and they were now talking about their past differences.
Above all, Jane knew where she stood. The conspiracy of silence
was ended. She had accepted the prospect of dying in a way that
he would never have believed possible.
Richard's logic seemed unassailable; Victor tried
appealing to
pus emotions. It was true that Jane had now accepted death, but
she might change her mind. Suppose she refused to talk to them
gain and they needed Richard's help? It was a subtle threat, with
hint of moral blackmail. But Richard felt certain there was no
going back now. Lies and deception would not survive in the
truthful atmosphere of the hospice—and the truth would help
Jane maintain her peace of mind.
Next, Victor appealed to his son's sense of propriety.
"What would people say?" Friends of the family were bound to ask
questions; Jane's own friends would be shocked. Why had he
left at this crucial time, when the family—any family—ought to be
together? They would regard it as desertion, betrayal.
"If that's what they think," Richard retorted angrily, "then
they're no friends." He owed them no explanation. His con-
science was clear. He knew that what he was doing was right.
He wasn't just thinking of himself. Arloc had been missing
school, and no one knew how long Jane might live. It could be
weeks, even months. If he waited, then the same objections to
his departure might be raised at any time in the future. He had
obligations on the other side of the Atlantic. Joan had told him
he should feel free to stay on, but he had a great deal of work
to do which couldn't be put off indefinitely.
"Anyway," he said, "I've told Jane I have to go.
I've explained
why, and she quite agrees."
Victor didn't utter the words on the tip of his tongue,
"What
do you expect her to say?" If Richard had already told Jane, he
thought, the damage was beyond repair. He didn't mention to
anyone the real reason why he objected to Richard's departure.
Deep down, he was terrified that by making it necessary for Jane
to say goodbye to him, Richard was compelling her to face the
prospect of dying in the starkest, most direct way possible. In
these circumstances, the acknowledgement that she would never
see him again would mean that, as far as Richard was concerned,
she was dying here and now. Should they make her die twice
just because Richard wanted to leave?
And there was another even deeper objection which
Victor
himself was reluctant to acknowledge. The difference between
them went back to the original issue that had caused so much
heartbreak in the earlier days. Once again the question was
whether Jane should be told; but now it arose in a different guise.
In opposing Richard's departure, Victor was acting on his old
belief that Jane should not be forced to face the prospect of dying.
In deciding to leave, Richard was acting out the assumptions
underlying his own attitude on this issue, that Jane should be
helped to face what was coming. Victor was not bothered the contradiction
inherent in his own attitute. At one moment he was aware that Jane
had accepted death; the next moment
he refused to act on the assumption that she had done so. For, at the
deepest level of all. it was his own fear dying that caused him to object
to Jane being faced with the prospect of death.
In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, in spite of his own
apparent understanding of Jane's attitude of acceptance, he still
couldn't believe that she had come to terms with it. Fearing death
himself, he could not easily conceive of anyone who did not
fear it.
Meanwhile Jane had asked David Murray how long she
would
live, as she had asked so many others in recent days, in a way
which seemed calculated to let them all know that she was "ready
to go," as one of the nurses put it. To Victor it seemed she had
asked virtually everybody except him. He wondered why he had
been excluded, but the reason did not occur to him until later,
when he finally realised she could not speak to him plainly until
she was sure too that he too had come to terms with death. How, he
wondered, could they reassure her that the dying would not take
too long? David had now explained to her the medical circum-
tances which made him think it would be "weeks rather than
months," but even that, Victor thought, was much longer than
she wanted.
Perhaps he ought to find out whether the hospice
had a policy on euthanasia But first he needed to discuss it with Rosemary
and
Richard. If Richard's travel plans were not changed, he would
have to move fast.
"Should I try to talk Richard out of going?" Victor
asked
Dr. Murray, hoping for an ally.
David wanted to know Richard's reasons, which Victor
listed
e fully as he could remember them, consciously trying to be fair.
He also explained his own attitude. But he didn't reveal his
fear that the farewell would shock Jane, that it might seem to
like a rehearsal for her death. He was still unable to acknowl-
edge the contradictions in his own motives. There was his own
fear of even the thought of death coupled with his willingness
to consider euthanasia.
"Richard's reasons seem valid to me," David said.
Life had to
go on, and Richard's obligations to his new family and to his
work were no less real because Jane was dying.
"Richard has done his bit," he added. "He won't help
Jane by
staying on."
"
Rosemary seems to think he could even help her by
going,"
Victor admitted. "Is it possible that Jane is holding on for Richard,
perhaps subconsciously, and that once he's left, she might let go?"
"That's quite possible. It might well help her to let go a little
bit more if they say goodbye to each other."
Victor felt he had been defeated. He couldn't question
David's
professional judgement. Indeed, he welcomed it, because it ab-
solved him of any responsibility. This was certainly not a good
time to have a family argument.
Richard arrived with a huge bunch of flowers. "Who
are these
from?" Jane asked, delightedly, as he held it up near the bed so
she could smell them and see the colours.
"I don't know," he said. "I found them on the path
outside
Dairy Cottage. There's no note, nothing to say who left them
there." Perhaps it was a neighbour who didn't know what to say.
"They've been picked from somebody's garden," Rosemary
said. "That's not a flower shop bunch. I hope we find out who
sent them."
"Put them close where I can smell them . . ."
Richard settled down in the bed next to Jane's. They
both fell
asleep. Jane woke up for an injection and then she wanted his
company. There were things to be said before he left.
"Rich?"
"Yes, what is it? "
"What's the time?"
"Two o'clock."
"Are you asleep?"
"I'm trying to be. Do you want something?"
"I was having a dream."
Instantly, he was alert. "Would you like to tell
me about it?"
"You know that Mum and I have talked about scattering
my
ashes over the garden?"
"Yes."
She gave a nervous laugh. "That's what I was dreaming
about.
A party in the garden. Where the stream runs into the pond.
I All the people stumbling in the mud, tripping over themselves,
scattering my ashes."
"Is it upsetting you, Jane? There's no need to scatter
the ashes
unless you want it."
"Oh, no, I'm not frightened," she said, guessing
his thoughts.
"I rather like the idea of my ashes coming to rest
by the stream
I at Dairy Cottage. Do you remember the day we dug it up and
built a dam across it?"
"Not a very good dam. It kept leaking."
"But it was fun. And it'll be a fun place for my
ashes. Not
just the stream. The pond. The flower beds. Under the yew
trees..."
Richard began to fall asleep again. "Rich?"
"What is it now?" he asked a little testily, trying
to suppress
his irritation but not succeeding very well.
"Could you get me a cigarette?"
"Are you sure you really want one. Jane?" He
felt physically
exhausted, emotionally drained.
"Yes, I usually have one at this time, after the
injection. It
helps me get back to sleep."
He put the cigarette between her lips and she reached
up to it,
trying to hold it while he lit a match. But she didn't have a sure
rasp and the cigarette slipped out of her mouth.
"Here, let me do it for you," he said, and puffed
on it once or
vice to get it going, hating the taste. She looked up at him grate-
fully and he felt a bit ashamed of himself. She drew on it greedily.
Soon a little spur of ash appeared at the end, and hung down
precariously.
"Here, Jane, let me knock the ash off," he said quickly,
but
her movements were more certain now. She took the cigarette
out of her mouth, gave it to him to get rid of the ash, then held
her hand out so that he could put it back between her fingers.
Richard was finding it difficult to keep his eyes open. Nora
came in to ask if Jane was all right but quickly decided it was
Richard who needed help.
"What you need is a cup of strong black coffee."
She was
back swiftly with one.
"Room service in the middle of the night," Richard
said to
Jane.
"You wouldn't get that in the best hotels—or hospitals.
You
know, Rich, we might not have come here if it hadn't been for
you. When you go back, they'll look after me here. Better,
much better, than in the hospital. Better than I could have been
looked after at home. Mum would have been exhausted in no
time. David says it may not be very long now, but they can never
be quite sure. I don't want it to be long. It's Dad and Mum I'm
worried about, not you. It could be a great shock for them."
"Don't underestimate them, Jane. You know how strong
Mum
is when she's decided what's the right thing to do. And
Dad's
gone through quite a lot himself. He can take it."
"I don't know. We've talked about his war experiences.
Maybe
it's helped to bring him round a little."
The cigarette had gone out; her speech was getting
more and
more sluggish. She seemed ready to go to sleep, yet she was
fighting it. Every now and again, just as Richard's eyes were clos-
ing in spite of his determination to keep her company, she would
make some inconsequential remark as if she were determined to
keep him awake. She knows it's the last time we'll really be to-
gether. Perhaps she was deliberately trying to prolong it. Yet
Richard could not prevent his irritation, though he felt guilty about
it.
"I can't see properly, Richard-are you drinking something?"
"The nurse brought me a cup of coffee," he answered
wearily.
"I wonder if perhaps I can have something, too."
"I'll ask them to make you a drink."
"No, I don't mean that. You know, I haven't had any
food for
ages. I think I'm hungry," she said, pleased at the sensation.
"Well", he said doubtfully, "I suppose I could ask."
"No, that would be giving them too much trouble."
"They did say, Jane, to tell them any time you wanted
any-
thing."
"All the same, I don't want to overdo it. Maybe I
can just have
a snack? I'm sure there must be some food here. Mum always has
a little something hidden away, just in case."
Richard began looking around the room, checking the
contents
of the shelves and inside the locker by her bed. "Here's something,
I think. It looks like granola."
Richard, no longer sleepy, fed her tenderly, spoonful
by spoon-
ful. The food gradually made her drowsy. At last she fell asleep.
Richard lay on the other bed, restless, turning over, thinking of
his parting with Jane the next day, preparing a little speech-
something matter-of-fact, almost casual. Something that
would
let her know, in just a few words, what she had meant to him.
No drama.
"How was the night?" Rosemary met Richard in
the hallway on the way to make a morning cup of coffee. He looked
short of sleep.
"Did you get any rest?"
"Not too much, but I'm OK. She talked a lot. She
seems more
awake at two a.m. than she is all day."
"It's that way every night. I bet she smoked, too?"
He grimaced. "Like a chimney. I had to stop her in
the end.
But we had a good talk."
Rosemary looked at him sympathetically. "It must
be harder
for you, in a way. Jane's always been part of your life, except
for the first couple of years before she was born when you were
a baby. You won't be able to remember a time when she wasn't
part of the world, part of your experience. It isn't quite the same
feeling when you gain someone and then lose them again.
"We should have come here sooner," she added. "It
was almost
too late. If she'd had the hospice to help before the pain became
so bad, she'd have been saved all the anguish and disorientation
caused by the move."
"Nobody expected she'd go down so quickly. I don't
think we
can blame ourselves."
A long, luxurious bath helped Richard to recover.
By the time
he was making his way back to Jane's room, the day nurses had
heard all about his interrupted sleep from the night shift.
"You ought to go and have a lie-down in the visitors'
room,"
Patricia said as Richard was passing the nurses' desk. But what
he needed more than a rest was a friendly talk, and he had always
found Patricia sympathetic. He knew Jane had made it up with
her, but he wasn't so sure about his father. "It's Dad who finds
it hardest," he said. "You know, after what he went through in
the war—there was death all around him then. This must bring
it all back." As he talked, he became more emotionally involved
in his father's past, which had now merged into his own present
so that he could have been talking about his own feelings.
Elizabeth, who had come to the desk to pick up some notes,
stayed on to listen. She saw he was in a bad way. Something in
Richard's story moved her deeply—not what he had been saying
about his parents, but what emerged from it of his own feelings,
a brother's lament for his sister. She had caught the quaver in
his voice, and her own voice broke as she spoke. "A good cry
would do us all good."
It was what Richard needed. He had been trying to
control
himself but now, with a great sense of relief, he felt the tears
streaming down his cheeks. He realised that he had wanted to
cry for a long time. In America he would have done so easily, In
similar circumstances; he found it possible to shed his inhibitions
there. But in England the old restraint on public display of
emotions had reasserted itself. It took Elizabeth's discernment and
sympathy to trigger the tears.
Patricia wiped her face and said, "You must tell
us what we
can do to help your parents when you've gone."
"Don't indulge them too much, it wouldn't be good
for them.
Don't let them stay with Jane all the time." Richard was back in
control now. "They ought to get away. You should feel free
to chase them out occasionally."
"They're very anxious to be with her. They want to
look after
her themselves. It's quite natural, but it does mean we're not
getting to know Jane so well. Patients talk more freely when
they're on their own. It's easier for us to help them when we
can know them really well. But, of course, it's lovely for Jane
to have her family here."
"Isn't it harder for you when the patients die if
you're close
to them? " Richard asked.
"It is, but it's also one of the things that helps
us go on. You
can do more for a patient if you get to love them, and for that,
you have to know them. I don't believe in abstract love, I'm
not religious."
"But aren't most of the staff here religious?" He
had wondered
how the nurses found it possible to cope with such a demanding
job.
"Yes," she replied, "most of them are, very religious
indeed."
Patricia knew of Jane's atheism and her family's uneasiness about
it. "David is very religious, too, and some of us were quite con-
cerned when he came. We thought it might make it more difficult
for the patients who weren't believers, and for us, too. But it's
worked out all right."
"I can see, though, how real believers might give
themselveslto this job completely," Richard said. "My father was saying
that to do this work you must be committed to something, you
need tremendous strength to face death day after day. Where can
you get it if not outside yourself?"
Patricia bristled slightly but noticeably. "You don't
have to
be religious to do this job," she said firmly. "But you do have to
get something out of it, yes. And I get a lot. It makes me really
happy to help the patients, to make them comfortable and peace-
ful. You know, when I look at someone who comes here suffering
pain and misery, and then I watch them falling asleep contented
and relaxed . . . that's what I love to see, to know I helped
them get this sleep. It makes it all worthwhile."
Richard was not completely convinced. "It must be
hard here,
though, with so many deaths. You must get discouraged, surely?"
"It can be hard, and there are those who can't take it; they
don't last more than a few months. Some people are drawn to a
hospice because they like to see themselves as angels of mercy.
Others have problems of their own—personal or psychological—
and they seem to think that working in a hospice, where other
people's difficulties are so much greater, will somehow help them
solve their own. It doesn't work that way. It's very hard work—
physically, emotionally—and you have to be very tough."
"But you must still get discouraged, however tough
you are.
How can you put up with it, week after week?"
"When you've helped someone die, peacefully and easily,"
Patricia said gently, "there is nothing better that you can do for
another human being, nothing more important or rewarding.
If there are several deaths in one week, that makes you very sad.
Of course it does. But it also means that several people have gone
out of this life without the anguish, without the torment that
people usually expect, and you know that in some small way
you've helped to bring this about. So one thing balances another.
The fact is, I love every minute of it. I am making no self-sacrifice
here. I'm getting more, far more, than I'm giving." She added
quietly, "You can give more to a patient you love. If they've
talked to you freely about themselves, about their families, about
their pain and happiness in the past, then you've made a friend,
a real friend, and how many real friends does one normally make
in a lifetime? People who know they're dying don't hold back,
usually. They're trusting, open, loving, and then they're so grate-
ful, just like Jane, they keep telling you all the time. It's quite
embarrassing," she finished with a smile.
"I think I understand. But do you always succeed
in helping
a patient to die peacefully and easily?"
"More often than not, far more often. You see, it's
not just
love that does it—that's very important, of course, we certainly
couldn't succeed without it—but love's been around quite a time.
You were talking about religion. Well, there have been all these
religious orders for centuries, and they've certainly helped people,
even though they had little but love to give. We've got more than
that. We can do something to ease the pain, or even stop it, and
we can help their relatives as well, if only by talking to them."
"I don't think I ever talked to a nurse when Jane
was in the hos-
pital for more than a tenth of the time we've just spent," Richard
said vehemently. "It's something we feel quite bitter about."
"Well, you shouldn't. They work those hospital nurses off their
feet. Sometimes they don't even have enough time to look after
their patients properly. But we are taught that it can often be
far more important to talk to a patient or to a member of the
family than to do anything else. And we sometimes stay on for
an hour or more after a shift is finished to do so. Which is what
I'm doing now." Patricia grinned at him cheerfully.
Victor wanted to be there when Richard said goodbye
to Jane.
He had accepted that his son was right about leaving, and told
him so. The important thing, as David had said, was that the
shock of parting might help Jane to let go. He was sorry if he'd
made it seem that Richard's decision was selfish. To stay on would
have been easy. It needed far more courage and strength of mind
to make the decision to go. It needed love.
"You're making too much of it, Dad," Richard replied
uneasily.
"No, Richard. We don't always understand even our
own
motives, or admit them to ourselves. This is something only you
can give her. We couldn't. We have to stay."
They left it at that. When they went in with Arloc
to join
Rosemary in Jane's room, the whole family was together again
for the first time in several days. Jane communicated her sense of
peace to us, and this made the prospect of Richard's departure
easier.
Victor had told Adela we would be needing her help.
How, he
asked her, does one cope with the kind of parting we now had
to prepare for? His old fears were surfacing, but she was able
to reassure him. She had witnessed many such scenes. How it went
would depend to a large extent on them, she said, not on Jane,
who had seemed to her quite reconciled. If they made a big thing
of it, that could be quite upsetting for Jane. For some patients
and families, farewells could be very important. It was a time to
bring out thoughts that had been left unsaid, or they might remain
locked up forever. People often regretted, for years afterwards,
that they had not spoken of the one thing that was on their minds.
As far as she could gather, there was nothing like that between
Richard and Jane; but one could never be sure. Did he know of
anything, she asked Victor, that they needed to say to each other?
No, he said, that wasn't the problem. But Jane was going to be
deeply distressed at the parting.
"Would you like me to stand by when Richard leaves?
Maybe
I can help just by being there?"
"Oh, would you, Adela? I am sure that would help."
It was what he had been asking for all along, he realised. Here
was someone who was ready to take the burden off them. Jane's
friendship with Adela made her almost a member of the family.
So far as Jane's dying was concerned, Adela probably understood
her better than he did. They had certainly talked about it more
directly, more intimately, than he and Jane.
It was almost time to say goodbye. We had discussed
taking
a family photograph, and Jane, who had never liked to have
her picture taken, this time agreed quite readily. To Victor, it
seemed yet another painful symbol of the leavetaking and the
finality of the occasion, but Jane's acquiescence made it un-
necessary for him to object.
Arloc first took a picture of Jane while they waited
for a nurse
to photograph the whole family. Jane was smiling, a small smile,
but a real one. It was in her eyes as well as on her lips. The poi-
gnancy of the moment differed from the sharp pain Victor had
expected. We stood back from the bed and Jane was on her own,
as she would be, he thought, when she was dying. She was alone,
but she was still smiling as Arloc clicked the shutter.
The family photograph proved more difficult. Rosemary raised
Jane up in bed to get her into the group. Jane winced, and the
smile disappeared. Now there was an expression of pain on her
face which she tried to control with an obvious effort. Elizabeth
clicked the shutter quickly before they had all moved into posi-
tion, and Rosemary lowered Jane back into the pillow. Her
eyes shut.
The moment had come.
They all went out of the room, leaving Richard alone
with his
sister. The speech he had prepared had dwindled to a few simple
words.
It was Jane who took the initiative. Perhaps she
wanted to get
it over with.
"You're going now, aren't you, Rich?" she said evenly.
"Yes, Jane, it's time."
"You've been a good brother to me, Rich," she went
on.
It was Richard who found himself on the verge of tears.
"And you've been a good sister to me," he said quickly,
desperately, as he kissed her lips and almost ran out of the room.
Adela, on the outside, held the door open for him and hurried
to the head of Jane's bed. Jane's seeming calm, her even tone,
had collapsed in an instant.
"Oh, Adela," Jane implored her, "stay with me!" She
murmured
through her tears: "I want to sit on your lap, Adela." At last
she could let go, losing the iron control she had imposed for
Richard's sake.
Adela hesitated. She couldn't lift Jane off the bed
by herself,
and this wasn't a good time to ask someone else to help.
Suddenly Jane gave a great sob, and with a huge effort,
with-
out waiting for Adela's help, she heaved herself up, turned her
body, and pulled herself over towards Adela until she half-sat,
half-lay, in her lap. In the past few days Jane had only been able
to move her arms and head slightly and very slowly.
We had been watching anxiously through the little
window,
and thought that now was the time to go in.
Jane looked up as we entered and quickly buried her
face in
Adela's lap, as if she didn't want to see us. Adela motioned us out
of the room urgently, with a single wave of her hand, and yet
she managed to do it without appearing too imperious.
Jane's weeping changed to a whimper, like a child's. "Oh,
Adela, he's gone, he's gone."
Adela's arms went round her, soothing her, stroking
her hair,
as she continued to cry bitterly for a long time. The weak body,
shaking with sobs, was held upright by Adela's strong arms.
At last her sobbing eased, then stopped altogether.
Adela beckoned us back into the room. She had wiped Jane's
tears away and combed her hair. The hospice routine took over.
Jane was as calm and collected as if nothing had happened. She
didn't speak of Richard's departure. But she was in pain, and asked
for an injection.
She wasn't due for one, yet Elizabeth gave it to
her without
hesitation. She had been standing by in case Richard's departure
produced a crisis. The staff knew what was happening. They
had talked about it during the daily report meeting at noon and
were on the alert. As soon as Jane had composed herself, word
was passed to David Murray and he went in to see if she needed
help. When he came out of her room, he told us, "She's concerned
that the process of dying might prove to be a prolonged business."
It was something that had worried her before, but never as
forcefully as now. Richard's departure appeared to mark the end
of one stage and the beginning of another. She wasn't quite ready
to go yet. She had wanted to live long enough, she told Adela, to
say goodbye to Richard and to her friends. Now Richard had
gone, and her friends were coming to see her tomorrow. "When
I've seen them all, when I know that my parents are all right, that
Dad really can take it, then I'll be ready to go." She didn't want
just to lie there helpless, to get thinner and thinner, looking like
a skeleton.
"There is that African tribe I read about," she said.
"Or is
it Indian? Once they decide that the time has come, they just go
off into the jungle and settle down to die."
It was clear that Jane wanted to go, and Victor was
ready to
acquiesce. He decided it was his duty to help her. Once again he
was thinking of euthanasia. If the hospice staff were as open and
understanding about dying as they claimed, now was the time for
them to show it. He went in search of someone to speak to, and
the first person he found was Julia, at the nurses' desk.
The kind of aid he sought would amount, as the law
stood, to
murder. He tried to sound her out in a roundabout way. Did any
of the patients ever ask to be helped out of a life that had become
a burden to them? Or did any relatives raise the subject? She
listened to him patiently, sympathetically, well aware what was
in his mind.
"There was a teenager last month," she said. "He
told me he
couldn't bear to watch his father, and the rest of his family, suffer
so much. He thought his father should be helped to die. I asked
him: If I gave you a syringe, would you do it?' "
Victor did not answer, but although she had brought
home to
him the reality of what he was asking, she had not diverted him
from his purpose. She had only shown him that he could not do
it himself. But if it was what Jane wanted it should be done. He
went to look for David Murray.
"You said that Richard's departure might help her
to let go,"
Victor said accusingly. "Well, look what it did to
her. I've never
seen her so upset. I was afraid this would happen."
David's attempts to pacify him had little effect.
He refused to
accept the assurance that Jane's breakdown over Richard was
unlikely to recur. He felt she had finally been faced with death
as a practical, impending event rather than as a distant, theoretical
possibility, and the mental distress was too much for her to bear.
"Why should she go on suffering?" Victor asked. "You've said
yourself it can't be much longer. I know that doctors who really
care for their patients, who respect their wishes, will allow them
to die when they're ready, even help them if necessary. Hasn't
the time come to help Jane?"
"I think I understand how you feel," David said slowly,
"and I
sympathise. I assure you we'll do all we can to minimise Jane's
suffering, we'll do nothing to prolong the distress of dying. Cer-
tainly, I regard it as part of the doctor's duty to relieve mental
distress." David hesitated, and Victor wondered whether he was
looking for a way to agree without admitting it openly so he
wouldn't be legally liable.
"To deal with mental distress," David continued,
"as well as
physical distress, it is sometimes necessary to render the patient
unconscious. This is part and parcel of traditional medical prac-
tice. This we can do, and if it becomes necessary in Jane's case,
we will."
David had conveyed that they would go so far, and
no further.
He was rejecting Victor's request, gently, expressing his under-
standing but defining the limits of what was possible and proper
in the hospice context. Victor didn't feel that David had refused
to help Jane. He was reassured that she wouldn't suffer unneces-
sarily, that everything would be done to prevent this, and he
began to realise that euthanasia was quite inappropriate.
During the night, when she was again wide-awake and eager
for conversation, Victor reminded Jane of her attempts to help
him by talking about the past. He assured her he was no longer
afraid. "I think if I had to go now, I would be ready. As you are.
I'm not saying I want to go. You don't, and I don't, but I think
we can both take it."
"I've been waiting to hear you say that for a long
time, Dad,
and I think I believe you." There was the slightest trace of hesita-
tion in her voice—not doubt, Victor thought, but perhaps an
invitation to produce evidence. He remembered how he had once
told Jane he'd accepted her dying, and how she had made him
admit that he had not. This time there was no need to lie to her.
"It wasn't just that you helped me to bring it out into the
open, Jane. That was only the Jewish part of it; but it isn't only
Jews who are afraid to die. There's something more important
than that."
It was being with her, watching her, suffering with
her—he had
been sharing her dying, as Rosemary and Richard had. They
hadn't suffered the actual physical pain she had been experiencing,
but they had imagined it often enough. She had told them in
Dairy Cottage, before the pain came back, that she was happy in
spite of the prognosis Dr. Sullivan had given her. The easy calm
that emanated from her at the time, the serenity she radiated
when her friends came to see her, the tranquillity she communi-
cated to them, had begun to rub off on him. But, he told her now,
he had barely started to come to terms with her dying when the
last great rush of pain seemed to be crushing all life out of her,
and if it hadn't been for their decision to bring her to the hospice,
that unbearable pain would have gone on increasing . . .
He stopped and looked at her quickly, afraid of what
he had
done. He thought he was telling her how she had helped him to
come to terms with death, but in the process he was reminding
her of the most painful, most hopeless part of her illness. She lay
back now with her eyes half-shut, but she had been listening
intently. She understood at once why he had stopped. "Go on,
Dad. I want to hear it. That was one of the times I thought I was
dying. I knew that pain could never get better. It was bound to
get worse and worse and worse. And that's how it could have
ended . . ."
"It could have," he completed the sentence for her,
"if we
hadn't brought you here."
"Then we would never have had our talk about what
the war
did to you."
"And I suppose you would never have known that you
helped
me to get rid of my fear? "
"Dad," she spoke firmly now, "you're up to your tricks
again.
You're trying to make me think it's all my doing, to make me
feel good. But it's the hospice that did it, not me. I tried to get
through to you at Dairy Cottage, and failed. But here it worked.
I told the nurses I was worried about you. And they kept saying,
" 'Talk to him about it.' "
"Is there anything else you want, Jane? Anything
at all?"
"Yes," she said. "Kiss me."
Victor was not a demonstrative person. He had not
often
caressed the children, even when they were small. Sometimes he
would let them sit on his lap, smooth their hair in a gesture of
affection. He wished now he had been less inhibited.
He bent over her and kissed her lips. "Go to sleep
now," he
said quietly as she shut her eyes. He crossed over to the window.
It was not as dark as it had been. The silence was broken by a
twitter, a muted uncertain noise, as if a bird were slowly coming
out of sleep. This call was answered, first by one bird, then by
others, all sounding equally sleepy. The exchange soon ended, and
silence fell once more—but Jane was not asleep.
A bird began to sing, properly this time. Again others
answered,
joining in gradually until the singing came from all directions.
As more and more joined the chorus the sound grew louder in
volume, until the burst of exuberant joy and beauty filled the
room. There were many different birds and many varieties of
song, yet they all merged into a harmonious whole like a well-
trained orchestra. Victor turned his back to the window and
looked at Jane.
She was listening intently, her eyes wide open, following
him
around the room as he walked back to the head of the bed. They
waited together as the music rose to an exultant crescendo and
then suddenly fell away except for isolated notes. It was hard to
believe that these musicians worked without a conductor. It was
as if they sang with great joy to be alive as a new day began.
Jane still waited, alert to the occasional calls which came less
and less frequently. Victor was deeply moved. What was she
thinking? She looked at him.
"How lovely that was," he said gently.
"You must have heard the dawn chorus before, Dad?"
"I never listened properly, never heard it until
today," he an-
swered. "How quiet it is now."
The sky was a soft, misty grey.
"They'll be singing again soon," she said, "when
the sun comes
up—but not like that. You ought to listen more, Dad, and to look
around you, not spend all the time among your books and papers.
The world is very beautiful . . ."
A moment later she was asleep.
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