26
Jake was still trying to work out how he should respond to the news about Marianne as he made his way towards Holland Park for supper with his grandmother. As he rang the bell he remembered how intimidating he had found her house as a child. The elegance of the first-floor drawing room, with its polished wood floors and soft Persian rugs, could not have been further removed from the utilitarian living room in his parents’ converted cowshed on the edge of a muddy field in Dorset. A separate dining room, with its long mahogany table and eighteenth-century Hepplewhite chairs with padded leather seats seemed impossibly grand, compared with the small pine table at the end of the kitchen where Jake and his family ate their meals.
Following his grandmother up the wide staircase into the drawing room, where long, floor-length curtains were drawn across the pair of tall sash widows, he was waved to a sofa while Claire mixed him a gin and tonic, without asking what he wanted.
‘So you heard about it from Callum’s girl?’
‘From Leah – yes. She’s an intern in our office. She took the news badly.’
‘I can imagine. Of course, I’ve known Marianne has been thinking about this for a while, but I confess it took me by surprise when I received her letter a couple of days ago,’ and Claire reached for an envelope beside her chair. ‘Here, you might as well read it – it concerns you in part.’
Jake took the letter from Claire and began to read.
My dearest Claire,
We are perhaps the last generation who will ever send letters to each other and this is a hard one to write. Several times in the past we have discussed the possible advantages of AD and I think you know that it has been on my mind a lot in the last few months.
So far only Callum and Helen and one other close friend know this, but I have booked into an AD clinic and will end my life very shortly. It feels strange writing that last sentence. In the past, the very recent past, it would have been, ‘I don’t think I have much longer to live,’ but now I already know the date of my death. There are many reasons why I have decided to do this but suffice it to say I am nearly ninety now and I feel it’s the right time for me to go.
I know that I should say goodbye to you in person but I know you will understand when I say what a difficult process this is, and it is probably easier for both of us if I say goodbye to you this way. The same goes for Julie and Tom as well as for Jake. I just can’t do too many face-to-face goodbyes so I will rely on you to tell them.
It may be that we will speak before the end, but I wanted to take this opportunity to mention our mother’s wartime diaries which I have been slaving over these last two years. As you know, Callum can’t read French and is not interested anyway, so I have made it clear to him that the notebooks, as well as the translations and notes I have made, are to go to you. What you do with it all is up to you. I think it may be of some historical as well as family interest. A year or two ago your grandson Jake expressed some slight appreciation of what I was doing and he might have an interest in helping to finish what I have started.
Darling Claire – my little sister – we were not close as children but it has been a wonderful journey getting to know you over the years. We have had some marvellous times together, particularly at Les Trois Cheminées, where you and Peter were always such generous hosts. As for the tragedy of Fran’s death: I don’t believe I was to blame, but if you and Julie feel that I was, then I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me. I could say so much more but I don’t have the strength now. You know it anyway. My utmost love to you all.
Jake contemplated the letter he had just read. His great-aunt, who had been a permanent fixture in his life, who was still alive and apparently well, would shortly be dead. Despite his sympathy for the concept of AD, the reality of Marianne’s imminent but voluntary death shocked him.
‘Do you know any more about why she is doing this?’
Claire sighed. ‘The way I see it, Marianne has always wanted to be in control. Of herself and others. As she said, we were not close as children. I was nearly ten years younger and she was like an extra mother – extremely bossy – and I wasn’t always very fond of her.’
‘And then you lived apart?’
‘Yes, when I was about nine and Marianne was away at college, my mother declared she was homesick for France and she and my father moved to Normandy, where they stayed for nearly ten years – which is why I grew up essentially a French girl. I saw very little of Marianne till I moved to England at the end of the seventies.’
‘But there must have been something to trigger this – are you sure she hasn’t got some condition she’s not telling you about?’
‘I really don’t think so. I called Callum as soon as I got the letter, and he is pretty sure there is no mysterious illness.’
‘How does he feel?’
‘Torn, I think – between respecting her decision and the responsibility of a son for his elderly mother.’
‘I got the impression from Leah that Helen might be something of an agent provocateur in this.’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me.’
They continued to talk as Claire led him to the kitchen where a variety of cold meats had been laid on the table. Claire went to the stove and heated some onion soup which she ladled into two bowls. Jake wondered how often Claire used that imposing dining room which used to intimidate him so much as a child.
‘These diaries – do you know how far she has got?’ he asked, as he swallowed a mouthful of soup.
‘No – and it’s one of the things I want you to find out. I want you to go and visit her as soon as possible. She doesn’t want to see me – and she’s probably right; it would be too painful for both of us. But she always had a soft spot for you, and with her mention of the diaries it gives you the perfect excuse.’
‘Will she agree to my coming?’
‘I think she will. I want you to find out if she is really serious – although I fear that she probably is.’
It seemed to Jake that his Granny Claire was taking the imminent death of her sister very calmly, but he also detected an undertone of disapproval. ‘Are you against AD?’ he asked.
‘You know, Jake,’ she said, as she ladled more soup into his bowl, ‘I have had several friends who have gone down that route – not because of great suffering but because they thought it was expected of them. And I will tell you one thing – in many ways it’s made the process of old age harder.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Twenty years ago, apart from a few extreme cases where people travelled to Switzerland, or persuaded a friendly doctor to give them an overdose, you carried on with your life, however hard it was, until you died. You had no choice on the timing of your death.’
‘But would you want to go back to the way it was before? I mean, I understood from Mum that – well, that Grandpapa…’
‘Yes, right at the end he was helped; but these clinics that Marianne is talking about – most of their patients are not in extremis.’
‘They have to have a serious illness…’
Claire sniffed. ‘In theory – but once you are in your eighties and beyond, most people have enough ailments to satisfy the test.’