When the Feast is Finished

Yet we remained happy and carefree, as far as that was possible. We were of that fortunate few for whom being happy had become a habit. On my birthday in 1996, the 18th of August, Margaret’s present to me was the newly published two-volume set of Claire Clairmont’s Correspondence. She read the letters with me.

We had received an offer for the purchase of Woodlands, and we threw a party – a farewell party it was to be. A band of musicians calling themselves ‘The Skeleton Crew’ played baroque music until late. Our local caterers, the Huxters, served gorgeous food, and sixty of our friends attended. Margaret was a wonderful hostess, looking slender and lovely. No one could suspect there was anything troubling her.

During the evening, I persuaded her to stroll with me downhill to the bottom of the rear lawn. We looked back. There in the dark, like a ship, sailed our house, its windows alight, full of family, friends, food, drink and happiness: something we had conjured up together.

And when the guests had departed, Tim and I sat peacefully together and finished up what remained of an excellent Brie.

At the end of that memorable August, Margaret and I were in Glasgow, celebrating with the Fifty-Third World SF Convention, which took over the entire vast SECC building. Something like twelve thousand people had subscribed to the event. This was the great family of SF fandom’s annual festivity. Among those present from overseas were Sam and Ingrid Lundwall from Sweden and Marcial Souto from Argentina. Margaret and Ingrid, good friends, went shopping together in Glasgow.

Marcial had once worked with Jorges Luis Borges. We’ve known each other since 1970. Conversations with him, as with Sam, rank among the pleasures of this life.

In this crowded time, Margaret remained sunny and optimistic, as my diary reports.

Monday 9th October 1995. The week when we MUST leave Woodlands. The removal vans come tomorrow. M and I have ordered our lives well and sensibly of recent years, thanks to her organising skills; we often feel this move to Headington is our big mistake. Jock MacGregor [our decorator] reassured her yesterday: ‘In a week or two you’ll have a lovely house.’

The whole matter is occasioned by our growing old and my books failing to find an audience. Best thing is to accept the situation and get on with it: as Margaret valiantly does.

So we left Woodlands and moved into the Old Headington house, in which our plumber was busy laying over four hundred metres of new copper piping.

Standing in the front of No. 39, lo and behold!, I suddenly espied both of my beautiful daughters strolling along, coming to see how we were getting on!

Both Wendy and Charlotte were as ever very close to us, and to each other. How fortunate we have been that our four children, Clive and Wendy (Margaret’s step-children) Tim and Charlotte, are peaceable people, and that we all enjoy each other’s company. One expression of our closeness was the family’s fondness of nicknames. Margaret called Tim Booj, while she herself was called Chris by Clive, Wendy and Wendy’s husband, Mark. Charlotte’s name had somehow become shortened to Chagie. And at one time, my sister Betty was known as Big Aunt Rose …

It’s a wonder that we survived the housing upheaval. We were both exhausted. Margaret was hardly able to take the rest periods recommended. The cardiologist’s analysis of Margaret’s condition was that the enlarged left ventricle of her heart was causing her shortness of breath. There was also some bacterial damage to the top part of the aorta. Her blood pressure was high.

It’s very upsetting. But Moggins remains so calm I hardly know how much to be alarmed. We got some prescribed pills from Hornby’s, the Headington pharmacy, during the day.

If one has to become ill, Oxford is an excellent city to do it in. It is well equipped with medical experts and efficient hospitals. We were to find that our new home was conveniently situated for visiting clinics, cardiologists, and those elements of a more ominous regime, oncologists and hospices. But for a while we seemed able to lead a stable life. With the aid of our GP, the heart trouble could be controlled, even improved. Margaret needed more rest; then she would be better.

Of course, rest with builders on the premises is hard to come by. Nor were we particularly expert in the subject of rest.

In 1996, I made six brief trips abroad as usual, and turned down offers of several more. On a few of these expeditions Margaret accompanied me, for instance to Madeira, Spain and Portugal. Unfortunately, she could not come with me on the most memorable visit, to Israel, on the grounds that it would be too hot for her there.

I cannot claim I was particularly well myself; sometimes I travelled because I felt an obligation to do so – although this was not so in the case of Israel. I missed Margaret on that interesting visit – indeed, I missed her as soon as I was on the El Al plane, finding I had no credit cards with me! One of my kind hosts at the Tel Aviv British Council, Mrs Sonia Feldman, trustingly lent me her credit card.

Turning up a journal I kept of the days in Israel, I find my first entry, made on the plane, reads:

I’m alone. M and I were due to make the trip, but she is too frail and unwell. She makes light of her troubles, but it’s worrying; her cardiac weakness remains a problem. She thinks too that dust from the building site (our extension is now well under way) causes her breathing problems. It may well be so.

It’s a sadness to see how much less lively she has become in the six months since we left our lovely Woodlands.

The cancer must have been at its destructive secret work, a sapper undermining her being. It is useless to curse oneself for not looking beyond the heart trouble. But one does.

Our visit to Cascais, on the Portuguese coast, was not really a success, kind though our hosts were. This was Portugal’s first international science fiction convention/conference. The occasion was very important for the organisers and they had persuaded us to go.

Go we did, despite many difficulties. We had planned to travel on from Cascais to visit Lisbon for a holiday. Friendly people met us at the airport on the Wednesday. But, on the morning of Sunday the 29th of September, I woke to find Margaret very weepy, quite unlike her usual self. She said she was feeling ill and her heart was overtaxed by heat, standing about and difficult food.

Margaret had never been a moody person. I was alarmed. At once I said that we’d better get back into the cool and the damp, and forget about Lisbon. I immediately cancelled everything, including our stay in the plush Lisbon hotel, and we returned home that evening.

On the following day, I report with relief that

Margaret is fine again – ‘right as rain’. The rain, the cold, the cloud of England, seem to suit her best. No standing about, no having to talk to people.

But she was in truth far from fine, as she recorded.

I woke feeling bad, fast heartbeats, very dry nose and eyes, cold feet. Told B who said we should go home today. I burst into tears … instead of keeping a stiff upper lip as usual. I had not admitted even to myself what an ordeal these events often are, esp. in heat and having to stand around. B so busy and preoccupied.

This entry made sad reading after her death. I could but curse myself for seeming neglectful. Yet only two pages earlier, in Margaret’s neat little A6 diary, I read of a happier mood.

Bus trip to Sintra. Went along the coast to westernmost point of Europe, Cabo de Roca. So dramatic, with Atlantic waves pouring in, crashing on great cliffs.

Sintra Palace was closed. It’s a pretty rundown hilltop town, being restored, full of souvenirs. Good company on the bus … Into town for a meal on our own … Rice and seafood, quite good, ‘flan’ even better. Then to theatre where B gave his talk to a good audience. Audience laughed immoderately at B’s remarks. He was funny and good, but not that funny! Projected slides of his book covers looked good. Then twenty or so of us took over the centre of a tiny street and sat talking until 12.30. Still warm at midnight.

That was on the Friday. What was plaguing her on the Sunday must have been the undiscovered cancer and not solely the heart problem, to which we ascribed her sorrows. There was no reason to believe that something worse assailed her. Perhaps we might have been more suspicious had we been better versed in medical matters.

And she took care in that little notebook to worry about my trivial problems. She writes on the Thursday (26th of September):

Poor B, with bad legs, took ¾ pain-killer last night, which gave him a good sleep but left him very blotto this morning. (We had been to hospital and doctor about his health on Tuesday – he is nervous about his stomach and how he will cope – doctor assures us there are no life-threatening troubles, though.) I also suffer from my heart condition and lack of resistance to heat and cold.

We both became ill once we were established at home. I generally got up first, went downstairs, fed the cats, and took us up mugs of tea to begin the day. On 21st of October, I felt bad enough to remain in bed.

Lovely still sunny morning. Being in the bedroom, I’m privileged to see Margaret dress and ‘do her face’ – the morning ritual. A modest and charming ritual, sitting at her modest dressing table.

Hers is about the pleasantest face I ever set eyes on, as she is certainly the pleasantest woman. She works hard: the shopping, the cooking, the house-cleaning, much gardening, our financial affairs; and just now the seemingly endless retyping of Twinkling.

This week, she’ll drive down to Bath to see Chagie and will buy herself a large new loom.

All her activity, her travelling, her weaving, hardly indicated an invalid. Nor did she regard herself as an invalid.

I may have taken the many things Margaret so cheerfully did for granted, but I never took her for granted. I had had a taste of worse things, and rejoiced in my good fortune and her delightful presence. On the 22nd of October:

Ill or not, our days here pass pleasantly with the two of us together. They could continue thus for many a year and I’d be happy. We had the additional pleasure this afternoon of Wendy’s company for a couple of hours. She sat on the chaise longue in our (new) study, and chatted amiably of her plans, which include buying a seaside cottage at Morthoe.

While Wendy was here, Harry [Harrison] rang. He attended the memorial service for Kingsley [Amis], to which I was too under the weather to go. There he had the pleasure of seeing Hilly and Jane exchange a kiss.

With Margaret’s aid, I despatched the final version of The Twinkling of an Eye to HarperCollins, then my publisher. Life went on light-heartedly. Margaret enjoyed the literary life, with its struggles and excitements. She had perhaps had early preparation for it, since a book had been dedicated to her when she was a small girl. This sweet little book, of which ours must be one of the few surviving copies, is Bubble and the Circus, written and illustrated by Josephine Hatcher. It was published by the now defunct firm of Hollis & Carter, in 1946.

Margaret and I had known each other for forty years, and had been married for most of them. We had not always been as absorbed in one another as was later the case. We had both taken other lovers, brief joys that are followed by the storms of jealousy and fury which such events generally bring. Although I am not without regret that we behaved then as we did, I can see it as an episode in our maturing process. When we were reconciled, we became more dear to one another.

We drove down to Brighton, where Tim worked, met up with him, and dined with Marina Warner and a jolly crowd after the opening of Marina’s exhibition, ‘The Inner Eye’, in which I took part. Meanwhile, I began to make plans for White Mars with Sir Roger Penrose. Roger and his wife Vanessa had bought Woodlands, whereupon we became friends.

On the 11th of December in that year, 1996, Moggins and I celebrated our thirty-first wedding anniversary. We had no inkling that it was to be our last anniversary. Nevertheless, there were discomforts.

My dear faithful and true wife and I hug and kiss each other, and rejoice. We warmly remember that happy day of our marriage, and the celebrations in the Randolph Hotel with all our charming friends present. Plus the flight to Paris after, and the plush double bed in the Scandic Hotel.

But – Margaret’s celebrating with an hour in Stephen Henderson’s [our dentist’s] chair. She has to have a crown removed. Because of her heart condition, she had to take penicillin first thing. I shall go and collect her in half an hour.

By the 17th of December I report Margaret as being ‘almost over her little dental op’. Christmas was on the way. She was cooking mince-pies, and preparing to serve Christmas dinner for the whole family, as she had been doing for many a year.

Malcolm Edwards, my editor at HarperCollins, had by now had the typescript of Twinkling for two weeks, and uttered no word on the subject. My American literary agent, Robin Straus, phoned though, full of praise and excitement regarding Twinkling – ‘A unique book – I know of no autobiography like it’, etc., etc. Good.

Margaret and I gave each other a Macintosh Performa 6400/200 for Christmas. We had not yet emerged from our Mad About Computers stage.

On the last day of 1996, my spirits seem to have been low, to judge by the diary entry.

A low grade year. Margaret’s sad heart problem, the long drag of having this building enlarged, the drab political situation, the sorrow of BSE and slaughter of so many cattle, and so on … The hell with the boring Eurosceptics.

Let’s hope next year will be better! For one thing, Twinkling will be published, although already I dread the insensitive reviews with their crass headlines, ‘Life of Brian’. But a little welcome income might trickle in.

Clive and I drove down to BBC Thames Valley, where I went on air with Colin Dexter in a New Year Resolution Show. Uri Geller said he wished everyone to get down on their knees and pray for peace in the Middle East. I suggested, ‘Why not try bending a few Kalashnikovs? It might be more effective.’

I failed to note down, but still vividly remember, Margaret saying, ‘I don’t like the sound of l997. I don’t think it is going to be the best of years …’ Intuition again?

After the difficulties of the previous year, I made a resolution to accept no more invitations to other countries, although my customary visit to the US remained on the agenda. It was as well I did so. The temptation most difficult to resist was an invitation from Yang Xiao, one of our powerful friends in China, to a conference taking place in Beijing and Changdu. China – and indeed that remarkable lady – always had a special place in my heart.

Unlike our usual bouncy state, we were depressed in January 1997. Margaret developed a persistent sore throat. But we smiled and said, ‘So this is what growing old is like!’ At least we were content together; the old assumption still prevailed, that I would die first, while Margaret had at least twenty more years of life to run.

By the end of the month, I heard from Robin Straus that my American publisher, Gordon Van Gelder of St Martin’s Press, ‘adored’ Twinkling. He accepted it without talk of cuts or fussing. Still there came no word from HarperCollins.

So the year began dismally. Daughter Wendy’s little son, Thomas, had sickness problems, Antony, my sister Betty’s husband, was asthmatic and had difficulties with food, Betty was on pills, and Moggins was definitely under par. She stayed at home while I had to attend various events in England on my own. I also went to the John Radcliffe for a spell under the Magnetic Resonance Scanner. Taking a look afterwards at the shots of my spine, I saw that most vertebrae were well padded and separated, but some of the lower ones were a bit shaky. They could be causing the leg pain I was experiencing.

Until I referred back to my diary, I had forgotten that things weren’t so good at that time. Unwell or not, we enjoyed each other’s companionship. In the evenings, after supper, we sat and read or watched television, too lacking in energy to go out.

I had a little excitement to spur me on. Sir Crispin Tickell, then the Warden of Green College, had invited me to lecture as final speaker in a series of four lectures on the future. I spoke as the president of a largely fictitious body, APIUM, the Association for the Protection and Integrity of an Unspoilt Mars. It pleased me that apium was the Latin word for a white vegetable, celery. I had become sensitive to the vulnerability of things, from the quiet decency of most English people, the cultivation of truth and learning in our children, to the sacredness of environments, as well as Margaret’s health. Beauty lay everywhere, even on our desolate neighbouring planet, Mars.

My argument was that while I was eager for mankind to visit Mars and explore it, plans to terraform it were a different matter. Terraforming seeks to change a planet into a semblance of Earth, with breathable atmosphere, better climate, etc. Such engineering dreams are an extreme example, however well meaning, of mankind’s disastrous ambition to dominate the world, to exert power, to ‘conquer’ every environment.

Margaret’s environment was itself under threat. And I was planning to build a utopia … I spoke feelingly at Green College concerning this hypothetical just society, and was well received by the learned audience. Happily, Margaret was in the hall with friends, looking marvellous in a long red costume. One of the friends was the literary agent Felicity Bryan. Someone asked her after the talk, ‘Was Brian an actor?’

Felicity’s response: ‘You mean you haven’t seen SF Blues?’ SF Blues was my evening revue, which I had been touring round England and abroad for a number of years, taking the leading role. We staged it once in Felicity’s and her husband Alex’s grand house.

Following my lecture we then dined in the college, in the Tower of the Four Winds.

Gill Lustgarten reported next day that at lunch everyone talked of me and my theories. ‘There was nothing else to talk about.’

All this was beneficial for serotonin levels. Margaret and I drove over to Woodstock and bought a table and six chairs for the dining-room. Having blown over £2,000, we celebrated with lunch at the Feathers. Margaret ate soup and fishcake, I tsatsiki and chorizo, followed by parfait of duck.

We seemed to be on an even keel again.

Margaret is much better in health now, although her throat still troubles her. She looks very neat. Her legs and ankles are as slender as they were when we first met.

We drove to our flat in Blakeney on the north Norfolk coast in February, with Margaret at the wheel, and enjoyed a little sunshine. In Holt, we visited Betty and Antony’s new home in Mill Street, decorated in the Victorian manner.

For a brief while, we were able to enjoy life, without realising how precious those last months were. On the day Deng Xiaoping died, we went to London to see the Braque exhibition at the Royal Academy, of which we were members. We viewed some of the canvases with almost religious reverence, as did many of the people in the galleries. After lunch, we went to see Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, filmed at Blenheim Palace. Branagh, far from being a melancholy Dane, acted more like an escapee from a military band.

The weather was awful that day.

At this stage, we worried slightly, but nothing more. We had grown accustomed to each other’s weaknesses. So much so that – with the usual misgivings – I went as usual to Florida, to the Conference of the Fantastic, where I have a particular title, Special Permanent Guest. I rang Margaret from the conference hotel, to hear that beautiful voice answering me from Blakeney. On that occasion, she had lunched with Betty and Antony in Holt. She sounded spry and cheerful.

With April, I made a determined attempt to garden: more particularly, to grow us some vegetables. Along came a period of fine dry weather to encourage us. London was hotter than Athens for a time. Margaret also gardened and planted four trees on the farther lawn.

While I edited an anthology of mini-sagas, following the Daily Telegraph competition, our energy levels seemed to have improved. This despite the drab news from my agent, Mike Shaw, that HarperCollins, like a laundry that refuses to take in washing, was not making offers for any more books just at present.

The happier turn life has recently taken and the recovery from our transplantation to Old Headington have restored my abilities to a large extent.

So I noted. We were easily reassured that all was pretty well with us.

We drove to Blakeney again, where it was cold. There, one night, we saw the Hale-Bopp comet blazing away into the future over the North Sea. Two weeks later, we took a weekend off at the other end of the country, holidaying with Clive and Youla, over from Greece, in a snug little hotel on Exmoor.

But Margaret’s problems continued.

After her death, I found on her computer her own report on the difficulties she experienced.

How characteristic that she headed it

My health:

Following increased breathlessness this year, especially noticeable in Greece in May in the heat, I went to Neil MacLennan to ask for it to be investigated. My blood pressure was diagnosed as slightly high, following a random twenty-four-hour test several years ago, and I have been on Adalat Retard ever since.

Neil sent me to Dr Hart in the cardiology dept. of the J.R. I went in last week, and first was tested on the exercise machine, the ‘treadmill’. Unsurprisingly to me, I did very badly – as Dr Hart commented – and lasted only three mins at the first speed, and barely another three at the next speed: a quick uphill walking pace. Then I had an echo cardiogram, when my heartbeat was diagnosed on a screen; then a blood test, and then an appointment for a kidney scan later in the month (since one of the family – Tim – has had kidney problems). I had to do a twenty-four-hour urine sample, which I took in the next day.

Then I had a chat with Dr Hart. He told me the results of all the tests so far, and said that I had substantial thickening of the wall of the left ventricle – the part of the heart responsible for pumping the blood round the body. Probably this was due to high blood pressure: although my blood pressure was not too high taken against the average blood pressure, it might be too high for me. So the thing is to tackle it more aggressively. He also recommended taking more exercise, and not lifting anything heavy at the moment.

A week later I saw MacLennan, who had heard from Dr Hart in a long letter. He gave all the results – why is it the patient is the only person not to have anything down in writing about his or her condition? That is why I am recording this! – and suggested going on to Ace Inhibitors, together with a slight diuretic, low dose to start, then increased slightly, and to see how it went.

So I took half a Enalapril last night, and had a really good relaxed sleep! With all the house moving, it is hard to be unexerted at present, but I don’t feel too bad today at all. The Adalat Retard did very well for me, controlling the increased heart rate as I could feel, and also removing most headaches and nosebleeds. Interesting. Let’s see what Enalapril will do.

November: Now on 10mg. Enalapril, as well as Bendofluazine. And Premarin, and doing well, though really not up to walking uphill yet. Due for a check up with Dr Hart some time soon.

March: Summoned to see Neil MacLennan because my cholesterol level was up to 11 again – 7 would be good, 5 is average … He proposed to put me on more pills. I said I’d rather try lowering it by improving my diet, so we agreed on that. Not due to see Dr Hart until October, but don’t really feel my heart condition has improved. So I have written direct to him to ask for an appointment. I want to know why he thinks I have this condition – what it is due to. I mentioned my struggling dreams, which I have had for some years. Prior to that, in the days of Heath House and Dr Tobin (whom I told about this) I had dreams fairly often of being in some transport which was going too fast round a corner, to the extent that I nearly blacked out with the G pressure. May be related …