And I can’t help but feel that Si and I have been far too unfair on her – have misjudged her enormously, because every time we think she has betrayed us, we end up being wrong. And although Si was right when he kept saying she had come back for a reason and it wouldn’t be a good one, I think she has now redeemed herself.
Si phoned me on the Wednesday afternoon, the day of Portia’s dinner, and said that he couldn’t be bothered and was about to ring to cancel, but somehow – God knows how – I managed to talk him into going, and then sat on tenterhooks, waiting to hear what happened.
When Si got home, he was buzzing. He phoned me immediately, told me that already, after spending an evening with this woman Eva, this woman who was HIV positive, he felt entirely different.
She was tiny, he said. Tiny, dark, very pretty, and the picture of health. She sat there drinking sparkling mineral water, listening to Si, before quietly telling her story.
In 1980, when she was fifteen, she fell in with the dope-smoking crowd at school. No big deal. She did it because everyone else was doing it, and because it made her feel, for the first time, like she belonged. Most people grow out of it, but Eva didn’t, she did the reverse, and within a couple of years she had progressed to speed, and soon, because other people did, and because she fancied one of the boys in her crowd who did, she was using heroin. The remainder of her school days were blurred by the heroin, as were her emotions, and at twenty she took herself off to New York, hoping for a drug-free stay and a fresh start.
Within two days of arriving at JFK she was living with a coke dealer, and using again. This time she started hanging out in ‘shooting galleries’. Grotty rooms in old brownstones in the wrong part of town, havens for the junkies who would score from the dealer on the corner, then go to these rooms as safe places to shoot up. And Eva, the youngest of them all, would be given their leftovers, together with the dirty needles that had been passed around the entire room. And of course she didn’t know. No one did.
Back home, two years later, Eva went to university. Middle class, bright, she was studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and trying, unsuccessfully, to give up heroin, turning to alcohol on the rare occasions she managed to go without.
And then the ‘tombstone’ adverts appeared. Adverts warning about AIDS and HIV, warning of the dangers of unprotected sex, of not knowing your partners’ sexual history. Of shared needles and drug use.
It couldn’t be me, she thought. Things like that don’t happen to middle-class girls like me. To rule it out, she went to her doctor and requested a test. Two weeks later she went back in for her results. The doctor said, distractedly, you’re positive. Go to the STD clinic at the local hospital.
Twenty-one years old, HIV positive, perhaps she should have felt that her life was over, but Eva didn’t feel that. She didn’t feel anything, her emotions still cushioned by the drugs, the drinking, and it was only a year later, when she lay in bed, thinking about her lifestyle, about how she was treating herself – smoking, drinking, not eating – that she realized she had to make a choice.
She realized that by giving in to HIV, by expecting it to take her life, she was removing all choice, and that, for her, was untenable. She didn’t choose to die, she suddenly realized. She chose to live, and she refused to give in to the fear, because fear, she still says, is the most toxic thing of all.
A year after being diagnosed, Eva set up an illness and recovery group. She threw herself into working with AIDS awareness groups, for various charities, teaching, helping, advising. Then one day she woke up, and, in spite of everything she’d done, everyone she’d taught, she still felt that one day this thing, AIDS, was going to get her.
And that was when she decided it wasn’t. She turned to Buddhism, to believing in one day at a time. She stopped believing there was no point in training in anything worth while because her life was about to end, and started to train in Cranio-Sacral Therapy, finding a spirituality there that had been missing in her life.
And she found a therapist who refused to allow her to become a victim. If she had a cough, her therapist would turn to her and say: ‘So you’ve got a cough? So what?’ He didn’t say it would be the onset of PCP pneumonia. He didn’t say it was a symptom of full-blown AIDS. He said it was just a cough, and you know what? He was right, and she learned that even when you have been diagnosed, not everything is HIV related.
Now, thirteen years on, she is the picture of health. It may not work for everyone, she told Si, as she was coming to the end of her story, but what works for her is to believe she’s fine.
‘And she really is,’ Si told me, in wonder, in awe, and then he said goodbye and put down the phone, because he had the rest of the night to think about what she’d said.
Chapter twenty-nine
‘Cath, my love?’ Si and I are walking Mouse on Primrose Hill, and Si is almost, almost, back to his usual self. Of course he’s not the same, he says that something inside him has shifted, but the clouds have passed and his outlook is sunny again.
He and Eva swapped phone numbers. She said if he ever needed to talk, all he had to do was to pick up the phone, and I know they’ve got together a few times since then.
She took him to Body Positive in Greek Street, where she seemed to know everyone. She introduced him, made him feel welcome, and persuaded him to sign up on the Recently Diagnosed Course.
His first session was last Saturday. He phoned me from Soho Square, just around the corner and said, ‘Cath, wish me luck. I’m going in.’ I laughed and told him I’d keep my fingers crossed, and told him to call as soon as the course was finished.
He called the next morning, because a couple of people also on the course had invited him out for a drink afterwards, and instead of hitting a busy, buzzy bar in Soho, they went to a quiet little pub on the other side of Regent Street, and spent the evening sharing their experiences.
‘Cath,’ he said, sounding brighter than he had for ages, ‘I feel like I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Christ, I can’t even begin to tell you how much better I feel. How normal I feel, now that I know I have this support.’
And he told me about the course: about having to wear a name tag, which everyone groaned about, but which seemed to break the ice; about sitting in a circle and introducing your neighbour to the rest of the group, having to find out when they were diagnosed, plus a couple of other, silly things that made everyone laugh.
They were told about Body Positive as an organization; about HIV, the immune system, the tests that they would come to expect. And towards the end of the day they gradually shared their stories, their feelings, and for the first time Si saw that he was absolutely not alone.
They were told what would happen on the rest of the course: about meeting dentists, dieticians, complementary therapists; about dealing with transmission, reinfection and the practicalities of living with HIV.
He decided today that he will start treating himself to a weekly massage, and has already booked his first one at the Brick Lane Natural Health Centre, which only surprises me because, in the past, he’s always taken the piss out of people who actually believe in that stuff. Yet another thing that has changed.
For a Saturday, Primrose Hill isn’t too crowded, the darkness of the sky with the impending threat of rain evidently putting people off, and Mouse is happy to run around looking for fellow four-legged playmates.
We huff and puff our way up the hill (well, me, because Si’s a damn sight fitter), and when we reach the top I collapse, as usual, on one of the benches and beg for mercy as Si agrees to give me five minutes’ rest.