‘I think you are wrong, dangerously wrong. What does Callum say about it? I hope he’ll talk you out of it.’
‘He hasn’t said anything yet. They’re coming to see me on Saturday. Ever since they changed the law I told him it’s something I might do one day so he shouldn’t be too shocked by it.’
‘Well, if he’s a decent son he should forbid you to do it.’
‘If he tries he won’t succeed.’
‘This is nothing to do with Callum and Helen, is it? Are they threatening to go back to Australia – or do you think they want to go back, is that it?’
‘No, not at all, it’s nothing like that.’
‘I need another drink,’ said Dorrie, ‘and I think you should have one too. Then you can try to convince me. Who else have you talked to?’
‘Callum and Helen briefly on the telephone – otherwise you’re the first. I am writing to my sister Claire. I won’t discuss it with anyone else.’
Dorrie reached for the bottle of whisky and poured a generous measure into her glass. ‘You too?’ she said.
‘I’ll get myself something in a minute, but I need to keep my head clear so I can try to explain my decision to you.’
Dorrie sipped her whisky. ‘Alright, explain away and I’ll shut up for a while.’
Marianne took a deep breath: ‘We all need to be braver; face death with realism. When the AD laws came in I welcomed them. When it’s your time to go – get on with it.’
‘But this isn’t your time.’
‘Please listen – I’m trying to explain. Our culture has such a terrible inhibition about death. I remember when my father was dying and the doctors were debating what further treatment to give him. I just remember the atmosphere. It was all so stilted – no one actually talked about death. “How are you feeling today, Papa?” Claire would say. “I’m not a good patient, I’m afraid,” he would reply. Good patient, bad patient, what does any of that matter, I was screaming inside my head. Get on your knees, Claire, put your arms around him. Embrace him…’
‘Honestly, Marianne…’
‘…and I was no better. We were all inhibited. Pretending he wasn’t dying because we didn’t know how to deal with it.’
‘I’m not getting this at all,’ said Dorrie, putting her glass down with exaggerated force. ‘You’ve booked into an AD clinic in order to end your life because twenty-five years ago you and your sister couldn’t talk to your father about the fact that he was dying. Do you find that surprising? Surely it would have been remarkable if it had happened in any other way. Did you expect to have a profound conversation about the imminence of oblivion, or the possibilities of an afterlife; or perhaps a grand mutual weep-in? Is that what you wanted? Come on, Marianne, this is all nonsense.’
‘No, no, that’s not all, of course, but it’s part of it. The fact that we can’t ever confront death honestly. I don’t want to end my life with everyone still pretending that I’m fine and it will only take one more dose of some noxious poison to transform me back into robust health. Anyway, you’re right, there’s a more fundamental point. It was the actual process of Papa’s death which really persuaded me that I must never, ever, risk going through that myself.’
‘Tell me,’ said Dorrie.
Marianne sat in silence. ‘Yes, I will tell you. But first I need a drink after all,’ and she mixed herself a dry martini with a little more gin than usual.
‘Hmm, I’m not sure about the gin; it seems to be making you depressed.’
‘On the contrary, I’m not depressed. In fact, I have a strange sense of excitement.’
‘Half in love with easeful death, are you?’ For the first time Marianne detected a note of scorn in Dorrie’s voice.
‘Certainly not. This is not a romantic fantasy. I’m utterly calm and rational about what I intend to do.’
‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I promised to listen. You were going to tell me about your dad. Go on.’
And so Marianne talked about her father while Dorrie listened. She tried to tell her about the pain; the sheer bloody agony which racked his body and gnawed at him from the inside.
‘The strange thing is that people pitied me. How terrible, they said, to have to be with your father when he is in such distress. Terrible it certainly was, but my vicarious pain cannot be measured against the reality of his suffering. It went on and on and although I valued every moment we had left, in the end I longed for him to die.’
‘But surely there was pain relief?’ said Dorrie. ‘This wasn’t so long ago.’
‘You would think so, wouldn’t you? And obviously there was pain relief, morphine and so on. But it never seemed to be enough. I begged the doctors for more but there seemed to be some kind of rationing system applied which I never really understood.’
Dorrie stared at Marianne with a puzzled expression and Marianne could see that somehow she wasn’t getting through to her, so she tried another tack. ‘Honestly, it was like one of those terrible deaths you’ve read about in fiction. Remember that Tolstoy one – what was it? – oh God, I’ve forgotten the name.’
‘You mean Ivan Illych.’
‘Yes – that’s the one. His weeks of suffering, how he screamed non-stop for the last three days of his life?’ Marianne realised too late that she should have known better than to try a literary allusion with Dorrie, who pounced immediately.
‘If I remember rightly, Illych’s physical pain is only part of the problem. It’s his spiritual suffering which makes his death unendurable. He feels he has led a worthless life. He has also failed to love his wife at the time when he could have done and ends up hating her. I can’t believe any of that was true for your father or for you.’
‘Yes of course you are right. Perhaps that wasn’t the best example, but you know there was something in Papa’s illness which changed him and which was one of the hardest things to bear.’
‘How so?’
‘My father had always been a very gentle man. I think he only ever shouted at me once in my life. But in the last two months – and this is what hurt me most – a hardness came over him. A bitterness, I suppose. I think he found it hard to accept that his life was coming to an end. And, of course, the pain as well. He had always been a strong man but when it came to his own suffering it overwhelmed him, and that, I think, made him feel inadequate, humiliated even. The man whose hand I held at the end wasn’t the father I had loved for more than fifty years. That was what hurt most – the alienation. His agony came between us like a physical barrier, an electric fence which stung me when I tried to cross it. I couldn’t reach him. That was my agony. It shouldn’t have been like that. At the moment when he needed my love most…’
Marianne had to stop; tears were pricking the back of her eyes and she took a sip of her drink to try to hide her unexpected distress. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t mean to get all weepy. I was just trying to explain how horrible the end of a life can be.’
‘Of course I know that,’ said Dorrie, pouring herself some more whisky, ‘but what you are saying still doesn’t make any sense. You are not in agony or distress and, unless you are keeping something from me, you don’t even have a terminal illness. You know I don’t approve of the way things are now, but if you do get anywhere near that state – the state that your father reached – then you can go to one of your fancy AD clinics then.’
Marianne sat in silence looking at Dorrie. The whisky had flushed her cheeks and she looked like she was getting a little drunk. She continued to argue her case for an assisted death but it was clear that Dorrie was not convinced.
‘Last month you told me the doctor was really pleased with your check-up.’