Life Worth Living (36 page)

In Jamaica, Mickey had formulated the plan that Sharman and Margaret would come over in June and the four of us would tour Scotland by car, staying in bed-and-breakfasts. A sort of ‘us four’ tour to celebrate his recovery – or to celebrate what was left of our relationship if he did not make it. It was now mid-April. When I had dropped Mickey off, I telephoned both my sisters.

‘You have to come right now – you can’t wait till June,’ I said, and told them what the oncologist had said.

They both came over as soon as they could, at the beginning of May. Margaret was only able to stay for two weeks because of work commitments. During that fortnight, the three of us laughed or comforted or understood in Mickey’s presence and cried when he was out of sight. Like our father, he had never been one for displays of emotion, so we respected his wishes and covered up madly.

Mickey, as I have said, was a born-again Christian, and he was firmly convinced that God was going to cure him. We all hoped against hope that he was right. Nevertheless he had an estate of some significance, and he knew he would have to make arrangements for its disposal if God deemed otherwise. He had
always said that he would leave his collection of Jamaican art to the National Gallery, whose curator was his best friend and schoolmate, David Boxer. I was therefore pleased when he asked me one day on the way back from the Hammersmith if I wanted his pictures.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But you plan to include Sharman and Margaret as well, don’t you?’

‘Of course I do,’ he replied. ‘If the radiotherapy doesn’t work, the three of you can choose what you want among yourselves.’

The next hurdle to overcome was what Mickey planned to do with the bulk of his worth. He owned real estate and other holdings of some value, and the family’s fear was that he would do in death what he had done in life. For years, he had been giving away 90 per cent of his income to a few worthy Christians and a string of no good leeches who had the lingo off pat and pressed his buttons with glib talk about callings from God. ‘If the needy ask, they must be given,’ was Mickey’s motto, and while we in the family felt that it was one thing to be a Christian, and quite another to allow yourself to be exploited the way Mickey did, we had never been able to reason with him.

Fortunately, family feeling asserted itself. Mickey spoke about his wishes to each of us separately, and made a will leaving everything, bar a few outside bequests to true friends, to his three sisters, his maternal aunt and his mother.

So far, the radiotherapy seemed to be keeping the cancer at bay. Although by no means well, he was holding his own. While there was no hope of a recovery, we all began to wonder if he might not last longer than anticipated. This was a reassuring thought, especially as Daddy could not come over to see him. He was suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease, and could not travel. Mummy was afraid to leave him alone with only his nurses for company, for he was so distressed at the prospect of losing Mickey that he was now saying, ‘I don’t want to live without my son.’

Our world seemed to have turned upside down. Who would have thought, only a few short years before, that our robust father would now be a bedridden shambles, or that Mickey would be dying in his prime? ‘Health really is the most important thing in life,’ Mickey observed to me one afternoon as he was shuffling down the corridor on the way from the car park to the radiotherapy department at Hammersmith Hospital. ‘God is teaching me compassion. You know, I never used to have any sympathy for people when they were ill. Because I was always so healthy and energetic, I despised sickness as a weakness of character. I’m certainly learning my lesson,’ he said, without bitterness.

By now, life had assumed a recognisable pattern. Four afternoons a week, I took Mickey for his radiotherapy, after which I took him home and sat with Sharman and Margaret. Often, he was so drained by the palaver of waiting for his treatment that he would rest while we talked. Friday was Nanny’s day off, so I would stay at home with the children while
Richard Adeney took Mickey to the hospital. Later on, I might take the boys to visit him, but only if he were in a good mood, for he had very Victorian attitudes about children and believed that they should be seen and not heard.

When the day came for Margaret to leave, she was in a terrible state, knowing that she might never see Mickey again. He was his normal, stoical self. One could only guess at what was going on beneath the surface. Aunt Marjorie and her husband, Stanley Panton, now arrived from Grand Cayman. Auntie was a second mother to the four of us, but she had always adored Mickey most of all.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to survive his death,’ she said, voicing the worry of everyone in the family.

Her own cancer had only recently gone into remission, and we all knew what stress could do. (Fortunately, it has remained in remission.) Mickey still couldn’t eat. Although the growth was shrinking with the radiotherapy, the inside of his mouth was now burned from the rays, as if someone had applied a hot iron to it. His hair had fallen out from the chemotherapy, and now he was losing the beard on the right side of his face and the few wisps of hair that remained at the back of his head, the follicles destroyed by the radiation.

‘I look like Daddy,’ he had joked with Sharman, Margaret and me, but to Auntie his condition was no laughing matter. She took one look at him and began praying for him to die quickly. ‘I can’t stand to see my son suffer,’ she said. ‘If he’s going to die, he may as well go sooner and be spared more suffering.’

Sharman now returned to her family, arranging to return before Auntie’s departure, and her leaving, too, was extremely distressing. From Mickey’s point of view, it was the indignity of illness that was bothersome. We had all been brought up from the cradle to be dignified, and he loathed shuffling around like an old man, and cared intensely about the loss of his looks, his health and his vigour.

Suddenly, he took a turn for the worse. First he developed searing pains in his neck and shoulder, which indicated that the cancer was spreading to his spine, and possibly his brain. He was put on liquid morphine, which created such an aura of wellbeing that he put on some Mozart for the first time in months. Then he developed blood poisoning from something to do with the radiotherapy and death became an imminent possibility.

I shall never forget the way he looked around him as he was walking downstairs to the ambulance. Auntie noticed it, too. ‘He’s looking around in case he never comes back,’ she said. ‘Oh, how I hope God takes him quickly.’

For a few days things were touch and go, but the doctors and nurses at St Mary’s stabilised him. This gave us an opportunity to see the National Health Service at its finest. They were fantastic, everything doctors and nurses should be: dedicated, humane, compassionate. They were also extraordinarily jolly, full of life’s best qualities in the midst of so much pain and
suffering. I remembered the Duchess of Norfolk once saying to me of her work for Help the Hospices, ‘I was surprised to see how much joy there can be when people are dying.’ Now I could see exactly what she had meant.

Having Mickey in hospital made life easier for family and friends alike. Auntie and I did not have to worry that something might happen with which we could not cope medically. His friends continued to drop in at all hours of the day and night, but when he grew too tired it was easier to propel them homewards from the hospital than it was from his flat.

One afternoon Auntie and I were sitting with Mickey, chatting, when his oncologist arrived with a team of other doctors. ‘I’ve been feeling lumps in my side,’ Mickey told him.

‘I’m afraid the cancer is spreading,’ the professor said.

‘I thought as much,’ said Mickey, without a shade of a tremor.

‘As you know, we’ve more or less contained the growth in your mouth and sinuses. We can send you for radiotherapy to the Hammersmith for the metastases in your gut.’

‘What’s the point? I have no quality of life. I’ll have the inconvenience of being taken there by ambulance, of having to wait in some godforsaken corridor till my turn comes, of returning here hours later, for it all to be repeated the following day. You can’t cure it, can you?’

‘I’m afraid not.’

‘I’m not afraid of where I’m going. If it’s inevitable, let’s stop treatment,’ Mickey declared.

Auntie and I shot one another a look. The crunch time had come.

When the professor and the other doctors left, Mickey said, ‘There are details we must speak about.’

Auntie and I promptly burst into tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. It was the first time I had broken down in front of him.

‘It’s OK,’ he replied, as Auntie struggled to contain herself.

‘I need to tell you what to do when I’m gone,’ he said.

Then he broke down himself for the first and only time.

Auntie and I sprang across to the bed, where we stood over him and held him while he cried.

As suddenly as he had started, he stopped. We sat down and he said, ‘I want you to cremate the body. The burial should be at home. Mummy can choose the spot.’

Fighting back the tears, I asked, ‘Do you have any favourite hymns you’d like?’

‘I leave that up to you.’ He turned to Auntie. ‘When you’ve gone I’ll speak to Georgie about business matters. As my executor, she’ll have the thankless task of winding up the estate, and I suppose selling the flat and disposing of its contents.’

Sharman flew back a few days later. She, Auntie and I sat around Mickey’s bed, reminiscing about old times. Whatever each of us had to say to Mickey, and vice versa, we said then. Poignant as those conversations were, they also contained a great deal of joy, and some comical moments, too.

I was not seeing nearly enough of the children. Although I took them and the dogs to the park every morning, I left home for the hospital as soon as they had had their lunch and seldom returned before their supper time. My social life no longer existed, though from my social column in
Boardroom
magazine it would have appeared otherwise.

By June, I felt the need for a change of scenery, so when I received an invitation from Ivana Trump to attend her party at the Mayfair Hotel to celebrate the television movie of her autobiographical novel, I jumped at the chance to attend a joyous instead of a sad occasion. And I must admit that I had a wonderful time.

For the same reason, I accepted an invitation from Sally Jesse Raphael to appear on her television programme. During the two days I spent in New York O.J. Simpson’s wife was murdered, and I watched events unfold on television, as transfixed as any American. It did me a world of good: a change can truly be as good as a rest.

Auntie and Uncle Stanley had to return to the United States for her check-ups, and that was another heartrending goodbye. Although no one knew exactly how much longer Mickey had, it was apparent that the end was near. The hospital was happy to keep him, but he wanted to go home to die. So, in the middle of July, an ambulance took him back to Elgin Mansions.

What was especially upsetting was the fact that although Mickey was dying with confidence, it was without cheer. Despite being a committed Christian, he was angry with God. ‘I feel he’s cheating me out of the last thirty years of my life. He promised me he’d cure me,’ he said, referring to ‘visions’ from other born-again Christians who had doubtless only been trying to keep up his spirits.

By Friday 22 July, it was apparent that death was imminent. The cancer had spread into Mickey’s throat and consumed his voice box, and he could no longer swallow or speak. Trying to console him, I said, ‘I know you don’t want to die, but look at it this way. If each of us has a purpose on this earth, and you’ve fulfilled yours, God is giving you a compliment by saying you’ve finished your work early. I know it’s a backhanded compliment, because you don’t want it, but it is a compliment nevertheless.’

He looked at me and blinked, his huge pale green eyes trying to say something.

‘Everyone you love is going to be with you thirty or so years from now. If life is truly eternal, thirty years isn’t very long to wait. It will most likely seem like the blink of an eye to you. And in the meantime, you’ll have Grandma and Grandpa and a host of other friends and relations for company.’

He smiled. He was now on a morphine drip and free of pain. Was he humouring me, or did he agree with what I was saying? I hoped it was the latter.

By the next morning he was semi-comatose. ‘Mickey, I have a few messages for you to take for me. When you see Grandma, tell her I’m fine. Say hi to Grandpa and to Dickie Ziadie. Give Granny Ziadie my love as well, and tell Grandpa Ziadie I’m looking forward to meeting him one day. Gosh, just think: soon you’ll be meeting Beethoven and Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Schumann and Schubert. You sure are going to have one heck of time.’ I kissed him on the forehead and smiled. He gave me a flicker. Did he understand? Was he going anywhere, except into his coffin? Suppose this existence was all there was? You lived, you died, finito. Suppose faith in the afterlife was nothing but a panacea against the terror of nothingness?

For the first time since my teenage years I found myself grappling to hang on to my faith. What rattled me was the reluctance with which Mickey and his Bible bashing cronies were facing his death. Sharman had observed the week before, while two of Mickey’s ministers were praying for God to come and rescue His servant from death, ‘How is it that these born-again Christians profess to love the Lord so much, and preach endlessly about wanting to go to His bosom, yet when one of them is actually in danger of doing so, the one thing they want is to keep him on this earth? Doesn’t that strike you as inconsistent?’ It certainly did. There was little I could actually do to force myself to have faith. Time, and mulling over what needed to be examined, would either restore it or destroy it.

By Sunday, Mickey was completely comatose. He spent the whole day thrashing, thrashing, thrashing. The nurse, who was fantastic, said, ‘People are often restless before they die.’ At 8.55 p.m. that evening, 24 July 1994, he gave up the fight.