Precious Lives by Margaret Forster

Author:Margaret Forster
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446443750
Publisher: Random House

VI

THE CHANGE IN Marion was remarkable. She was no longer sitting rigid and controlled, in a world of her own, but was back, not to her old self, how could she be, but to being with us all again, present, not suspended in some shadow world nobody else inhabited. She was alert and talkative, willing to relate the horror of the failed chemotherapy treatment and the relief of leaving the ward where she’d felt no connection with anyone even though she knew she, too, was dying. Arriving home, she’d felt better immediately, but what had actually produced such an improvement in her condition was the steroids. The hospice had prescribed them, to boost her energy, and they had had a dramatic effect. Nothing could change the terminal nature of her illness, but these steroids changed the way she felt. She was able to get up and go for walks and have some kind of normal existence.

She seemed so cheerful it was almost eerie. This, she said, was because there was no hope left. She felt calm, now that the turmoil of hoping was over. Hope had evaporated, once the chemotherapy failed, and she hadn’t been sorry in the end to see it go, because as long as it had been around, hovering teasingly in the air, she had been disturbed. She thought there was no sillier phrase than ‘Never give up hope’, as though hope in itself was something solid and trustworthy. Equally annoying to her was the insistence on fighting cancer – she wondered why cancer seemed to be the only disease referred to as one that was fought, one that was invariably described in terms of a battle. She was sure she had indeed fought, that there had been nothing fatalistic and defeatist about her attitude, but she objected to the idea of being conquered. Still, the suspense was over. She’d hated this suspense, always wondering if it would be at this check-up or the next, or the one after when the bad news would be broken to her. She’d thought she would have a couple of years left, and was sure she’d been promised them when she agreed to the surgery and radiotherapy, or at least a good chance of having them, but all that was over now. She had felt shocked on being told nothing more could be done, but once the shock passed she felt less exhausted. It was the hope, the suspense, which had been hard to endure.

She had, then, no hope, and yet one afternoon she laughed and said, ‘I don’t believe it, of course. I don’t believe I am going to die soon.’ I must have looked worried because she instantly went on, ‘I mean, I do believe it, I know it’s the truth, but it’s just that it seems impossible. I believe it, and I don’t believe it. But that’s got nothing to do with having hope. I really have no hope.’ There was nothing desperate about her tone of voice, nothing distressing.

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