LITMIR.BIZ

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made me laugh with joy. As he finished, the crowd stayed quiet and one solitary English voice could be heard to shout out, ‘Nice one, Wood!’ Why the crowd chose that moment not to cheer, and why I chose those very words, so very loudly, is a mystery. Why I couldn’t have said ‘Woody’ or ‘Woody Allen’ or even ‘Mr Allen’ – anything would have been better than the over familiar ‘Wood’. A flush of horror came over me. Louise, ever the supportive wife, turned her head away from me and pretended for the next half hour that she wasn’t with me but was with the big fat Mafia boss to our left who was fondling a very young Russian girl. Yes, she’d rather have pretended to be a mobster’s hooker than be with the geeky English guy who shouted out ‘Nice one, Wood!’ at the top of his voice.

      Outside she laughed about it, then got in a cab with the old guy and the Russian princess and headed off up 42nd Street. She got back to the hotel at about five in the morning, stinking of pasta and cheap caviar, and had a large roll of notes tucked into her bra. OK, the last bit isn’t true but I was just seeing if you were paying attention. It wasn’t really that large.

      When I look back on New York I look at it as being the big trip, the big gesture. It was luxurious, extravagant and joyful. I can still see Weeze’s face as she first opened the door to the suite we had in the hotel and walked from room to room. ‘Tim, look, there’s another room, and look at the view, wow, we’re right on top of Central Park.’ We drank champagne in bed and made love late into the night – it was three of the best days of my life. But, as with all good things, it had to come to an end and as we flew home both of us felt the slight sick feeling of knowing we were flying back to our real life, flying back to the cancer. The image she talked about while looking out of the plane window became a very strong one for her and she often found herself dreaming of being dead and floating on clouds in a strange golden sunset light. She found it very peaceful, she felt released – no longer held to the ground by the pain of a mortal body, she was soaring, pure spirit, pure joy.

       3 April

      The world is a strange place; one day it is so sunny and I can think of a million things to miss and to prove what a wonderful place this is and the very next day the sky is a blank wall of grey and everyone seems to be talking about war. Now even more than ever before I just cannot understand war. And at the moment I don’t want to think about it. The news just upsets me without making me feel more in touch with the world.

      Next week off to France. Keep on running!

       4 April

      I’m watching The Big Chill and feeling nostalgic. Although for what, I’m not sure. The last time I watched it I was much younger and I assumed that I had years and years of … I don’t know. Everything. Of doing things, of being idealistic and then growing cynical and disillusioned and doing more stuff and discovering inner wisdom and … you know, all the stuff they do in movies.

      Films give us such extraordinary expectations. There is the expectation of extraordinary lives or that we can draw wisdom from our ordinary lives or that they will have a plot. There is a part of me that feels that if my life is really rounding to a close, all those loose ends should be tied up neatly; I want to know what happens in the end to everyone I’ve ever known.

      Emails to the afterlife please.

      It’s funny reading this one because, of all the people I know, Weeze’s life was the one most like a movie. She truly lived an extraordinary life. OK, so it was a tragedy in the end, an ending that leaves the audience in tears and feeling drained, but happier for having had the experience. It’s also interesting because I think for a lot of the year it felt like it was a film for us, we felt like the whole thing was unreal – it was so intense that it couldn’t possibly be real. I can remember how much of a fraud I felt when I told people about Weeze’s illness.

      ‘Yeah, have you heard about Louise?’ Pause, meaningful look, slight sadness behind the eyes. ‘The cancer’s back. There’s nothing they can do this time.’ Another pause for effect to let the audience fully appreciate the dramatic moment. ‘They say she’s got a year, possibly two at the most.’ More sad looks, possibly think about squeezing out a tear.

      It all just sounded so over-dramatic. I couldn’t take it in. Well, that’s not true, sometimes it crashed in on me and I just couldn’t stop crying and then breaking the news to someone was soul-destroying. However, a lot of the time I’d be having a good day, bumbling around the way you do, and then I’d bump into someone and they’d ask how I was and I’d have to make the decision in my head – do I just say fine and keep on moving or do I tell them that I’m facing losing everything and that things couldn’t really be any worse? Both Weeze and I found this a real dilemma, because people’s reactions were often overwhelming and we didn’t want to put people through it. And we could never tell how any particular person was going to react. Some of the strongest people we know just burst into tears, while others who we thought would have been unable to handle it were fabulous and very matter of fact in their sympathy. For some reason, I always found telling people over the phone the hardest thing to do. Still do. I don’t know why, but I have trouble saying Weeze has gone on the phone without blubbing my eyes out. Often I can tell people face to face without it really affecting me. Answers from any psychologists on a postcard please.

       12 April

      Well, the Cathar castles are spectacular, the food is by and large delicious, and we spent last night in the loveliest hotel I’ve ever seen, but it feels artificial being here. Caitlin is having a great time and is really enthusiastic about everything, and I should be able to think of this as an ordinary family holiday to France in the Easter holidays, but somehow I can’t. I feel as though I ought to be absorbing every experience more, as though these holiday memories for Caitlin and Tim are super-loaded with significance. As a result, I don’t feel terribly relaxed. I am exhausted and dizzy. But the food is fabulous. And so cheap! And Caitlin is a joy to travel with. She is so adaptable and enthusiastic about everything.

      Wow, what an amazingly succinct entry. The French trip was a cock-up, but for a few beautiful high points. We got the train over to Paris and picked up a large people carrier. We drove down south in a couple of big chunks and late on the second night we turned up at this house in the middle of nowhere, deep in the Pyrénées. My dad, who came with us on the trip, had arranged to borrow this place that he’d been to before one summer. But when we got there it was somewhat more remote than we had imagined and it was cold and wet and full of spiders. Weeze walked round the house like a haunted woman trying to find one room she could feel comfortable in to settle down, but found no solace. Bless her, she was great at a lot of things, but slumming it wasn’t one of them. My dad kept us smiling and said he’d sort it all out, get a fire going, and we’d all be toasty before we knew it. But neither Weeze nor I could see ourselves staying there for two weeks. In fact, we couldn’t see ourselves staying there for two nights. We climbed into our tiny double bed, with wet damp sheets and a musty smell, and Weeze broke down. She cried and cried. It wasn’t just about where we were, it was about everything, but the place certainly didn’t help. Within about two minutes we’d made up our minds that we weren’t going to stay any longer than that night and this seemed to cheer Weeze up a bit, and made me incredibly relieved as well.

      We shut our eyes for what seemed like seconds before Caitlin, lying between us, woke up crying, and not just crying, but screaming, rolling around the bed holding her tummy. Lights on, action stations. I spent an hour cradling her in my arms, carrying her around, giving her Calpol, singing to her, dancing round with her, anything to make her feel better, but nothing worked. I could take Louise being in pain, I knew we were in it together, but I can’t bear it when Caitlin’s in pain, I go berserk. I have to keep really calm and just hold her and hold her. After an hour I’d had enough and decided we had to get her to a hospital. It was only then that I realized quite how stupid this choice of holiday home had been. We started our drive at one o’clock in the morning, at three-thirty we made it out of the mountains, at four o’clock we got to the first town. We followed the signs for the hospital, only to be told when we got there that this was a hospital for the insane. Well, we think that’s what the guy on the door was trying to tell us with his strange goggly eye motions and tapping of his head. He told us

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