Once it became clear that I would not be dying any time soon, Albie lost interest. Connie and I encouraged him to leave us on our own and his relief was palpable. His college friends were meeting up in Ibiza before heading off in all kinds of directions, and he flew out to join them, with a store of dramatic stories to tell. Perhaps he embellished the truth; perhaps he’d administered CPR. Perhaps a part of him wondered how it might have felt if I hadn’t pulled through, who knows. The crisis had been mine, but I was happy for him to receive his share of attention and acclaim. I was proud of him.
What happened to Albie in Ibiza that summer I will never know, which is exactly how it should be. He contacted us daily to assure us of his safety and his happiness, which was all we asked, and for the moment my dear wife and I were alone once more.
Perhaps it sounds perverse, but I count my convalescence in Barcelona as among the happiest times of our marriage.
I would sleep late, with no thought of an alarm clock, while Connie sat on the balcony, with oranges and tea reading a book. When we were ready we would take a walk, perhaps down to La Boqueria, the food market that we both loved, where I would drink fruit juice but no coffee, no booze. There was much talk of my having to adopt a Mediterranean diet from now on, a gruesome notion in Berkshire but no chore whatsoever while we were here. We bought bread, olives and fruit from our favourite stalls and walked on.
The Ramblas was a little too touristic for us residents, so usually we would strike left or right into the back streets of Raval or the Gothic Quarter, taking frequent breaks in cafés. In a little English-language bookshop in Gràcia, Connie had found a copy of Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia and a history of the Spanish Civil War, and we would sit in the shade to read and drink fresh orange juice. In the late afternoon we’d doze, then in courtyard restaurants we’d eat early in the evening like the other tourists, resisting with some regret the chorizo, the fried squid, the cold beer, then walk slowly, very slowly, home to bed and rest.
One morning we took a taxi to the Joan Miró Foundation high above the city, which sent Connie into paroxysms but left me unsure and feeling that I still had some way to go as far as abstract art was concerned. Then a wonderful cable car from the Parc de Montjuïc to the sea, high over the harbour, over cranes and swimming pools, warehouses and motorways, over the decks of ocean liners and container ships. You see over there? There’s the Sagrada Família, and there’s the hotel where I held hands with my son and thought that I would die. The cable car lowered us gently from the mountain to the sea, and this was how my time in Barcelona felt; as if I’d been lifted up and carried with great care and affection. It was almost like early childhood, and therefore could not last forever. At some point my head would strike the door jamb, and I’d be jerked back into the real world and the consequences of my condition; the anxieties, the tests and procedures, the implications for my lifestyle and career.
But for the time being Connie and I were as harmonious and content and interested in each other, as in love, for want of a better phrase, as we had ever been. Clearly the key to having a long and successful marriage would be to have a non-lethal heart attack every three months or so for the next forty years. If I could only pull off that trick, then we might just be all right.
One night, lying in the large, cool bed I asked:
‘Do you think we can have sex again at some point? I mean without me clutching at my chest and dropping dead on top of you?’
‘Actually, I looked that up.’
‘You did?’
‘I did. They recommend four weeks, but I think it’s okay as long as I do all the work and you don’t get excited.’
‘No change there then.’
She laughed, which pleased me hugely.
‘I think we’ll be all right, don’t you?’ I said.
‘That’s what I thought too,’ said Connie, and we were. We were all right.
After a week or so, we were quite the Barcelonese, if that is the word; no maps, no guidebooks, no more itineraries. We even picked up a few words of Catalan. ¡Bona tarda! ¡Si us plau!Every few days we’d make our way to the hospital and sit comfortably in Spanish waiting rooms until finally I was given the all-clear and passed back into the care of the National Health Service. It was safe for me to travel. We could go home.
‘Well. That’s good news,’ I said.
‘Isn’t it?’ said Connie.
Nevertheless, it was with some reluctance that we packed our bags and I watched uselessly as Connie carried the suitcases to the taxi. We held hands in the cab and looked out of either window. We held hands on the plane, too, Connie’s index finger along my wrist as if surreptitiously checking my pulse. The effort of achieving an entirely stress-free journey produced its own anxieties, and we neither of us spoke much. I took the window seat, my forehead resting on the glass.
The sun was shining down on all of Europe that day, and I looked out over Spain and the Mediterranean and then France’s great green centre. England rolled around to meet us; the white cliffs, the motorways, the orderly fields of corn and wheat and oilseed rape, the dull English towns with their ring roads and superstores, their high streets and roundabouts. At Heathrow we were greeted by Fran, who was full of jokes and uncharacteristic concern, and we were driven home to our door. ‘You okay getting out of the car?’ ‘You okay getting up the stairs?’ ‘You allowed a cup of coffee?’ This attentiveness soon became quite maddening, the guiding hand on the elbow, the tilt of the head and caring tone of voice, like a terrible glimpse of a geriatric life that I’d assumed was thirty or more years away, and I resolved to do everything within my power to get well. No, more than well, to become healthier and stronger than I’d been before, something that I have gone some way to achieving in the year that has passed since then. The doctors are very pleased with me now. I ride my bicycle down country lanes. I play a kind of badminton with friends, always doubles, though with less of the ferocity of old. I jog sporadically and self-consciously, unsure of what to do with my hands. The prognosis is good.
But I’m leaping ahead. I made a fuss of Mr Jones and submitted to having my face licked. I watched uselessly as Connie carried the cases upstairs. I helped unpack, restoring everything to its usual place — the toothbrush to its holder, the passport to its drawer. Fran left at last and we were alone in the house once more, experiencing that mixture of sadness and pleasure that accompanies return after a long time away; the pile of unopened mail, toast and tea, the sound of a radio, motes of dust in the air. On the hall table, a great pile of unread newspapers described events that we never knew had taken place.
‘You forgot to cancel the papers,’ I said, filling the recycling bin in one go.
‘I had other things on my mind!’ said Connie, with some irritation. ‘I thought you were dying. Remember?’
We took Mr Jones out for a walk, the usual route, up the hill and back. It was cooler than August had any right to be. There was a suggestion of autumn in the air, that hint of a change in season acting as a tap upon my shoulder. ‘I wish I’d brought a coat,’ I said as we walked slowly, arm in arm along the lane.
‘Do you want me to go back for it?’
‘Connie, I don’t want you to—’
‘I’ll run back. Won’t take me a minute …’