The Lonely Sea and the Sky (44 page)

  Sheila thought that I was so ill that I had weakly agreed to anything; that I was too ill to make a decision. 'Dammit,' I said, 'first of all the radiologist says he is examining pictures all the time, and can't possibly be mistaken. Then the surgeon says he has not only seen the cancer, but removed a piece of it. The chief surgeon said it was cancer. What else can I possibly do but agree to the operation?'

  Sheila said, 'It's wrong to operate; your lung is in such a state that you are bound to die if they operate.'

  First she wanted me to have a totally separate examination by a lung specialist of great reputation. He said that it was the worst case of neglect he had ever seen, and that his diagnosis was the same as the hospital surgeon's. By now five different doctors, surgeons or radiologists had given the same opinion. A week later I set off for the hospital, as arranged. On leaving my house, I called in at the Royal Ocean Racing Club to have a farewell drink. Talking to some of my friends at the bar there, I felt intensely lonely. The thought of being cut off from my friends, added, I suppose, to fear and dread, turned my bones to water and already I seemed isolated in unbridgeable space. I did not say where I was going; no one wants a spectre at a feast.

When I was a boy at home, I used to hear my father pray every Sunday, 'From sudden death, good Lord deliver us.' This had always puzzled me; sudden death seemed a fine way to go out. Now the meaning seemed clear; the prayer should read, 'From death before we are ready to die, good Lord deliver us.'

  On the way out of the club, I paused and glanced at the notice board in the lobby. I saw a notice proposing a single-handed race across the Atlantic, signed H. G. Hasler. I thought briefly, 'That would be a terrific race,' and passed on, thinking that the only other race I was likely to take part in was to race old Charon across the Styx.

  I was resigned to my fate. Not so my wife; she was now really in a fighting mood, and went into action. She asked for an interview with the head surgeon. 'I don't interview the relatives of patients.'

  'I want an interview. I will pay you for it as a patient.'

  'Very well, then.'

  I imagine that the surgeon was intrigued to know what sort of a woman this was. As she was waiting on a bench in the gloomy corridor, he came out of his room, walked past, looked at her, and then came back.

  'I don't believe an operation is the right thing in this case,' she said.

  'You are wasting valuable time.'

  'I'm sorry. I realise you are busy.'

  'I mean the patient's time.'

  'I want the opinion of another physician.'

  'You are destroying his only chance of living by delaying the operation.'

  'He is so ill, the shock of the operation would kill him.'

  'Many people live with only one lung.'

  'His lungs are in such a septic state that he is bound to die if you cut into them. I refuse to consent to the operation.'

  The surgeon then spoke of certain neck symptoms, and said he would examine me again. I suppose that he, like me, had never met a woman like Sheila – someone who would carry the responsibility of refusing to allow an operation against the overwhelming weight of medical opinion.

  As far as I was concerned, things moved slowly, and in somewhat of a dreary blur. Hospital routine; dreadful nights, lying for hour after hour, unable to sleep; sometimes choking and gasping for breath; not allowed to switch on a light, because it would wake up other patients in the ward. Patients coming in, having a lung removed, suffering bravely, leaving. Every day the surgeon on his rounds poked my neck with his finger as if to see if I was ripe for the knife. The physician's report was the same as before. The laboratory report on the lung tissue came in. The surgeon told me about it. 'The report is negative.' 'Then it isn't cancer?'

  'It's cancer all right; the negative report means only that it is not active at the moment. That often happens.'

  Sheila persuaded the chief surgeon to carry out another bronchoscopy himself. The results were shrouded in haze for me; it seemed that 'it', whatever it was, had not increased in size. It was agreed not to operate. I was subjected to a series of treatments, the worst was a course of antibiotics. After a few days I could not stand, and found coughing a serious strain. I thought, 'I'm damned if I'm going to be killed this way,' and started hiding the pills. Sheila came every day to visit me. It was a great strain for her; there was a bus strike, and often she walked the whole way. My prolonged illness was not only a big expense itself but now my map publishing business was beginning to run down.

  I was still on the Court of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators, and one day I had a state visit from the Master of the Guild, Sir Frederic Tymms: it did me good, because Freddie, who was extremely kind, obviously thought that I was shortly taking off for another world. This amused me, and put a little ginger into me. Many of my friends visited me too, but often I felt too ill to talk. I would make an effort, but felt I needed to conserve the vital spark, and not to fan it into flame. I wanted only to lie still in peace, and to defer the horrid moment when I would start coughing, and pass through the experience of feeling suffocated. There came a time when I said that suffocation had caused me to die a thousand deaths, but this was an exaggeration; perhaps it was a hundred, or even less. But it is what seems that counts, not what is. I had always heard that drowning was a pleasant death. I cannot understand this. Perhaps it is different to be choked by water from outside. I developed a terrified dread of that slow choking from within. I despised myself as I became an abject coward about dying that way. As each fresh crisis built up, I wanted to cry as if surrendering to that weakness would give me respite.

  Then Sheila said that if only I could get together enough strength to stand moving, she would take me to a nature-cure place in the country. I made a great effort. 'It' had not grown in size, according to the X-ray photographs, and after a month Sheila decided to risk a move. It was a bad journey in a motor-car, but I arrived. Enton Hall was heavenly after the hospital. After the standard hospital diet, I was grateful for vegetarian food, with fresh fruit, and raw grated vegetables. I found that when it became difficult to breathe, a complete fast for two or three days made breathing a little easier. As soon as I discovered this I played it time after time, whenever breathing was too difficult to bear. A strange situation now arose, for instead of being encouraged to fast, as is usual in a nature-cure hydro, I was being advised either not to do it, or to cut it short because I had not the strength to stand it. My being there became a strain on the establishment, which was not intended for seriously ill people. My coughing disturbed others at night. They did not think that I could stay there much longer. Fortunately for me another patient was Ann Todd, the actress, famous for her part in the film
The Seventh Veil
. She had been coshed by a thug. The doctor suggested that she should go and talk to me. Hearing of her troubles did me good. She gave me a lift. She said afterwards that I showed her plans of
Gipsy Moth III
, and talked of sailing out to New Zealand, but I do not remember it. There came a night when everyone gave up hope for me. My own doctor had driven down from London. He told Sheila that my heart was giving out under the strain. The house doctor said that I must be taken away to a hospital. Sheila was there, and I was left on her hands; dumped on her, as it were. The building seemed strangely quiet that night, as she applied hot and cold compresses on my back. I knew that they had given me up that night, and somehow it did me good. It infused the will to live into me. I think it was a crisis.

  After surviving that night, I got a little better, and was able to shuffle into the grounds. It was a gorgeous summer. I loved the warm touch of the sun on my skin, the rising scent of the pine needles, the soothing green of juicy, young, curled-up bracken fronds. I liked to watch a big ant-heap of large fierce black-red ants at work. It was fascinating to watch them bury a piece of branch or a stone, completely sinking an object the size of half a brick into their nest in a day and night.

  I was able to go home, to the only place where I wanted to be, to my room at the very top of the house, my cave, my kennel, where I could wrap a blanket round the remains of my shattered personality, and turn my face to the window. I could sleep only on one side, could breathe only propped on one elbow, but at least it was facing the window. My arm and shoulder joint began to change shape, and a muscle in my throat grew taut like a cord with the strain of staying in one position. Perhaps I suffered most at this period, and became most frightened with the suffocation attacks. I felt that I could not stand it, and was at just about as low an ebb as I could be. My personality had shrunk to almost nothing. This upsets people; they are used to someone's having a certain personality, and if that personality changes, the person feels among strangers. My nerves were in a shrinking, cringing state. Physically I was no better off; one day I found that I was sitting on something in my bath which was hurting me. Gingerly I moved to discover what it was. There was nothing; it was my skin being pinched between my bones and the bath. My skin hung in folds; my weight had dropped 40 lbs. When I struggled for breath sometimes oxygen, always at hand, seemed to help, and at other times it seemed useless.

  My map business had been running steadily downhill. Finally Sheila could not stand it any longer, entered the office and took charge. She had never had anything to do with business before, and on top of that she's artistic, with a slow casual approach to an issue which can be maddening to the business mentality. On the other hand, her perception is brilliantly acute, her judgement excellent for half the occasions, and her imagination amazingly fertile for new ideas. Her chief asset however, is that if she makes up her mind to do something, she will do it. She overcame the inevitable frictions, introduced some new ideas, which, if not successful as money-spinners infused some new life into the firm. The hive had a new queen, and came alive again.

  Early in the spring of 1959 I screwed myself up to visit my mother in Devonshire. I felt that I must go to see her before it was too late. My mother and sister never seemed to feel the cold, or to have any idea of comfort, according to my standards, and unfortunately the weather was cold and damp. My sister did her best, and dug out some more blankets for my bed; I think they were the same that I had used as a boy, but now matted hard with fifty years of use. She also put an oil stove in my bedroom, given her, by, of all people, my girlfriend of fifty years before, Nancy Platt. But the bad attack of bronchitis and asthma which I now had, really needed a dry, constant heat. I was in bed on the Sunday morning, feeling ill and miserable, while my family were away at church. My mother could not approve of staying away from church, whatever the cause. After church there was a commotion, a mix up of voices and steps, which permeated my semi-consciousness. Stumblings on the stairs brought me out of bed, to find that my mother was being carried up. I put on my clothes as fast as I could. My mother had failed to get up after praying in church. They carried her out, thinking that she was dead, but she came to in the churchyard. I did what I could to help, but it was a feeble effort. To make matters worse for my sister, who insisted on doing all the housework, I was a wreck. The doctor was called in, but he could not help me, and said to my sister, 'Does his wife know how seriously ill he is?'

  'What with?'

  'Cancer.' When I heard this it cheered me up; in fact I laughed. I don't suppose many have laughed on hearing that dreadful verdict, but I reasoned that I must surely have been dead eighteen months ago if it had been a living cancer. When I got back to London I felt more optimistic and got better. An X-ray was taken and it was OK. Suddenly I had a tremendous urge to go to the South of France. I asked Sheila to get two tickets on the Blue Train for the next day. It seemed an irresistible urge.

  We left for St. Paul de Vence as soon as it could be organised. I was all right when I arrived, but began to feel ill again. I did not like the place where we were, and moved up to the Hotel Falcoz in Vence. Here I got worse, and sent to the chemist for a cylinder of oxygen. It could not be supplied without a doctor's order. In England oxygen can be obtained at any time from a chemist, and I was annoyed, thinking it was a game to bring in a doctor unnecessarily. However, I grew worse, until I agreed that the doctor should be asked for the oxygen. He not only sent round his assistant to fit the mask, to the cylinder, but would not accept any payment.

  When I grew worse, I finally said, 'Ask the doctor to come.' That was how I met Dr. Jean Mattei, a remarkable man. He examined me, and said,
'Ce n'est rien
, and if you follow my treatment you will be climbing up those mountains in three days' time.' The fantastic thing is that I did, in fact, climb up the Baou Blanc in five days' time. At 2,200 feet it may not be much of a mountain, but it was the most wonderful climb I ever made.