Just as Tara realized that although she and Sandro were very fond of each other, they never really rang each other directly, Sandro said, ‘I have bad news.’
In an instant Tara’s head became crystal clear. Seated though she was, the ground tipped beneath her. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s Fintan.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s ill.’
‘Ill? How? Flu or something?’ But she knew it wasn’t.
‘We don’t know for sure what’s wrong with him.’ Yet, hovered unspoken.
‘But what way does he seem? What are his symptoms? Vomiting? Temperature? A pain in his stomach?’ Vinnie, Teddy, Evelyn and Sleepy Steve’s heads shot up from their screens. Ravi’s didn’t. He was already hanging on Tara’s every word.
‘Weakness, fever and night sweats,’ Sandro admitted.
‘Weakness, fever and night sweats,’ she mouthed, and it took only a second for the words to impact.
Immediately it was as if she’d always known. Ever since the first of Fintan’s friends had become HIV positive, this had been one of her worst nightmares. Now that it had happened there was a horrible inevitability to it – how could she ever have doubted it would happen?
She remembered the fun she’d made of the lump on his neck and her breath became short and panicky.
‘Also, he’s lost a lot of weight,’ Sandro said.
‘It’s only a week since I’ve seen him.’ Tara felt inexplicably angry. ‘He can’t have lost that much.’
‘I’m sorry, Tara,’ Sandro said.
‘Why didn’t you call me? I’ve been leaving messages all weekend. I’ve been ringing and ringing.’ She had the crazy feeling that if she’d known sooner she’d have been able to stop it.
‘I didn’t know how ill he was,’ Sandro protested. ‘I haven’t been here – I was working on a house in Norwich until yesterday.’
‘So why didn’t he call me?’
‘Tara, he was in the hospital much of the week.’
‘The HOSPITAL!’
Vinnie knocked over a cup of coffee and Slim Cheryl, Sandra and Dave poked their heads around the partition to see what all the commotion was. Tara noticed none of it. She was too stunned by Fintan being at the hospital stage already. She began to cry, but didn’t know if they were tears of rage, grief, fear or compassion. ‘I thought he was in Brighton.’
‘He lied to me, also. Told me he had flu.’
‘But how could you let him go to hospital on his own?’ Tears trickled over her cheeks and she barely noticed Ravi pressing a Marks and Spencer napkin into her hand.
‘Tara, I didn’t know, I didn’t know!’ Sandro was distraught. ‘He called me in Norwich and said he had flu and not to worry if he didn’t answer the phone, that he would be sleeping.’
‘So you didn’t worry?’ Tara asked, tartly. Almost sarcastically.
‘Of course I worried,’ Sandro replied. ‘I have been worried for a long time.’
That was a shock. Tara’s anger with Sandro vanished. He hadn’t neglected Fintan. He had been worried. This was far worse than she’d realized.
‘Maybe he has flu,’ she said, in a flash flood of irrational hope. ‘People get high temperatures with the flu and they feel weak and lose weight. Except if they’re me, of course. I must be the only person in existence who puts on weight when she’s sick.’
‘He’s been in the hospital,’ Sandro reminded her. ‘It’s not flu.’
The urge to see Fintan was desperate. To know exactly how bad he was and to will him better with her presence.
‘We’re in the hospital and he’s with a doctor,’ Sandro said. ‘He’ll go home later. You can see him then.’
‘I don’t suppose…’ Tara’s sweaty hand gripped the phone ‘… that you’ve told Katherine?’
He hadn’t.
Tara dialled Katherine’s number. Often, bad news is conveyed with an odd glee. Even when there’s huge sympathy, there’s still an undercurrent of horrified delight at the drama. As well as the macabre kudos that attaches to being the bearer of shocking news.
Tara felt none of that.
Telling Katherine was one of the most appalling things she’d ever had to do. At least she, Tara, had had a warning, an intimation that all wasn’t well when Fintan had his kiwi-neck. But, for Katherine, this was a cold call.
‘Katherine?’
‘Hi!’
‘I’ve bad news,’ Tara blurted, quick to sidestep a normal Monday morning conversation – what they did on Saturday night and how Tara wished it was already Friday.
Katherine waited with her customary sangfroid. There was no flurry of panicky inquiries.
‘It’s Fintan,’ Tara said. ‘He’s sick.’
‘What kind of sick?’ Katherine’s voice sounded cool, measured, thoughtful.
‘They don’t know for sure yet. But he’s been having night sweats, losing weight, is terribly weak…’
Pure silence ensued, then a strange noise came over the phone to Tara. Part whimper, part wail. Katherine was crying.
Katherine never cried.
In the afternoon, a request came from Fintan, conveyed by Sandro. Would Tara and Katherine call to see him after work that day?
‘Of course,’ stammered Tara. ‘I’ll come now, this minute.’
‘Later is better,’ Sandro soothed. ‘We’ll know more then.’
‘You mean…?’ Tara choked. ‘There’s something to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good or bad?’ she pleaded.
‘Oh, Tara.’ He sighed, and said nothing more.
‘But…’ she started.
‘We’ll see you later,’ he said firmly.
Even though Tara had to go miles out of her way, she insisted on collecting Katherine from work so that they could arrive at Fintan’s flat in Notting Hill together.
At six thirty, when Katherine came out of the front door of Breen Helmsford, Tara waved to attract her attention, then stopped abruptly. Waving wasn’t right. Not today.
Katherine climbed into the filthy little Beetle, sat on the window-wiping knickers and didn’t even notice. They drove in silence. It was a cold October night and Tara’s heater wasn’t working, yet both of them were perspiring.
‘He had a lump on his neck last week,’ Tara said quietly. She was reverberating with shame from the way she hadn’t taken that seriously. ‘I think this has been going on for some time, Katherine. I’m sorry to shock you.’
‘Who’s shocked?’ Katherine snapped.
‘Why?’ Tara was amazed. ‘Did you know?’
‘Of course I knew,’ Katherine said angrily. ‘He’s lost his appetite, been losing weight and had pains in his neck and stomach and various other places. All that talk of rabies and beriberi and anthrax…’
‘Was I the only one who didn’t know?’ Tara wondered, appalled. ‘Was I the only one?’
When they reached Fintan’s road, Tara parked even more haphazardly than usual, and leapt out. She was desperate to see him. ‘Come on,’ she said, making for the steps. But just before she rang the bell a reluctance came over her. She didn’t want to see him at all now. She wanted to run away.
‘Oh, Tara,’ Katherine said, grabbing her hand and, for a few seconds, squeezing it tight. They could feel the pumping of their blood, pressing against each other’s palms.
How could someone get so thin so quickly?
In a week, Fintan’s face seemed to have shrunk. Something was weird, Katherine thought, then realized what it was. It was his teeth. They looked too big for his face now. Like an old man whose mouth had become too small for his dentures.
Below his ear, protruding like a bumpy egg, was a large, grotesque lump. Covering part of it was a thick white bandage, cotton wool sticking out raggedly on two sides.
Tara stared at it, horror-struck. ‘You told me the lump was gone,’ she couldn’t stop herself from exclaiming.
‘I lied,’ Fintan sang, with unexpected levity.
&nb
sp; Sandro brooded silently, as though he was sucking the oxygen out of the room. He acted as though he was angry. But Fintan seemed curiously elated. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he pressed, his eyes glittering in his skull head. ‘And Sandro will get the drinks. Now, I’ve good news and bad news. Which do you want first?’
‘The good news,’ Tara clamoured. They already knew the bad.
‘Right you are. The good news,’ Fintan declared, jauntily, ‘is that I’ve had several tests and I’m definitely, without a doubt, one hundred per cent HIV negative.’
His words dropped into a pool of utter silence.
‘Negative?’ Tara eventually managed to say. ‘Negative? You mean… you haven’t got Aids.’
‘I haven’t got Aids.’
‘And you’re not going to get Aids?’
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘Oh, my God!’ A bubble of joy whooshed up through Tara’s body. ‘I can’t believe it. I was so sure you were a goner. This is great, great news.’ She jumped up and flung her arms around Fintan. ‘You’re not going to die!’
‘You’ve given us the good news.’ Katherine’s voice was strangled. ‘What’s the bad?’
Everyone turned to look at Fintan.
‘The bad news,’ he said, ‘is that I have an interesting little condition known as Hodgkin’s disease.’
Katherine was chalk-white.
‘What the hell’s that?’ Tara demanded.
‘I know what it is,’ Katherine said.
‘It’s a problem with my lymphatic system,’ Fintan interrupted.
‘It’s cancer,’ Katherine said, faintly.
31
After Katherine spoke, there was a horrible silence.
‘Is it?’ Tara asked, rubbernecking from Katherine to Fintan to Sandro. ‘Is it?’
‘Katherine’s right,’ Fintan confirmed.
For a moment Tara hated Katherine. Why couldn’t she have been wrong, just this once? ‘How can they know without doing a biopsy?’ Tara asked, with forced scorn. She wasn’t quite sure what a biopsy was, but she clutched at anything that might overturn the news.
Fintan chortled. ‘Tara, I’ve had a biopsy. What do you think I was up to last week? What do you think this bandage is doing on my neck?’
‘I thought you’d tried to cut your throat again.’ She smiled weakly. ‘You mean last week you were in hospital having that done and you went through it on your own? That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.’
‘It happened so fast.’ Fintan shrugged. ‘One minute I was talking to the specialist about the kiwi fruit on my neck, the next I’m on my way to theatre to have a biopsy. Before I know it I’m lying on an operating table, fully conscious, while they whip out a lymph gland. Then they sew me back up and send the gland to the lab. A veritable whirlwind, my dears!
‘I think I must have been in shock,’ he added, dazedly. ‘Then I had ten thousand blood tests, was poked and prodded by all sorts. And today they called me back in and told me I’ve cancer!’
Katherine spoke for the first time since her diagnosis. ‘So how bad is it?’ Her voice was deliberately matter-of-fact. ‘How far gone?’
‘I don’t know.’ Fintan lifted and let fall his arms. ‘There’s different kinds of HD…’
‘HD?’ Tara questioned.
‘Hodgkin’s disease.’
Oh, God. Already he was speaking a different, sick-person’s language.
‘… and they know I’ve got it in the glands in my neck, but they’ve to do more tests to see if it’s in other places.’
‘Like where?’ Tara asked.
‘Chest. Bone-marrow. Internal organs. If I’ve only got it in the lymph glands I’m grand, really. Bit of chemo and I’ll be right as rain.’
‘And if you have it in the other places?’ Tara asked, not wanting the answer.
‘It’s treatable,’ Sandro cut in. ‘Wherever it is, it’s definitely treatable.’
‘So you’re not going to die?’ Tara cut to the chase.
‘We’re all going to die.’ Fintan grinned suddenly and Katherine and Tara recoiled from his wild eyes.
‘The doctor was very hopeful,’ Sandro said, in a low voice.
Tara’s heart went out to him. No one had forgotten that Sandro’s last boyfriend had died – this must be torture for him.
As the first shockwave receded, and a strange, toxic normality set in, questions occurred.
‘What exactly is a lymphatic system?’ Tara broached tentatively. ‘The only thing I know is that lymphatic drainage helps with cellulite.’
‘It’s a circulatory system, isn’t it?’ Katherine looked at Fintan for confirmation. ‘Part of the immune system.’
Tara turned to Fintan. ‘So, have I got this right? If you only have the… it in your lymph glands it’s not so bad?’
Fintan nodded.
‘And what if it shows up in your chest or bone-marrow? Or where was the other place?’
‘Internal organs,’ Katherine supplied, stiffly.
‘Not so good if it’s in the chest, even worse if it’s in the bone marrow,’ Fintan said. ‘And if it’s in something like a kidney or the liver, you might as well start saying your prayers.’
‘Does the lump hurt?’
Fintan shook his head.
‘So what happens next?’ asked Katherine.
‘Tomorrow morning I go into hospital again for two days. And they do stuff to me.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘Oh, you know.’ Fintan was flip. ‘A bone-marrow biopsy. A CT scan. X-rays à go-go. Us fashion types, it’s just non-stop glamour!’
‘Are you scared?’ Katherine asked gently.
‘No,’ Fintan said. ‘I’m absolutely terrified,’ he added, and convulsed with laughter. He abruptly stopped his yelping. ‘I’m going to the loo.’
When the door closed behind him, Sandro asked, ‘Do you know how they do bone-marrow biopsies?’ Tara and Katherine mutely shook their heads.
‘It’s from one of your hipbones. You get a local anaesthetic to numb the skin and muscle, but it’s impossible to numb the bone,’ he said, in a monotone. ‘When the needle goes in, it’s like having your bone broken. Apparently it’s agony.’
Katherine’s mouth went dry and Tara felt light-headed. They hadn’t expected anything like this. Tests, yes. But they’d no idea that they hurt.
‘I thought he’d be knocked out for it,’ Tara whispered.
Sandro shook his head. ‘They’re very mean with giving general anaesthetics.’
‘That’s horrific.’ Katherine’s face was clenched. The thought of Fintan having to suffer unbearable pain was almost worse than him having a life-threatening disease. ‘Can’t we cause a big fuss? Insist on an anaesthetic?’
‘We did our best.’ Fintan had come back into the room. ‘Shouted. Even cried. Hoped to embarrass the doc into giving in. But he just thought I was a big girl’s blouse. Which I am, of course.’
‘A Chanel one, though,’ Katherine said.
‘Schiaparelli, do you mind?’ he countered, haughtily.
‘When will you get the results?’ Tara asked.
‘The end of the week, hopefully.’
Something occurred to Katherine.
‘Have you told your mother about any of this?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘When are you going to?’
‘I have no immediate plans.’
‘Fintan,’ Katherine rushed to his side, ‘you’ve got to tell her. It’s only fair.’
‘Yes, Fintan,’ Tara insisted. ‘You must.’
‘That’s what I keep telling him.’ Sandro glowered.
‘I can’t,’ Fintan said. ‘I just can’t. It’d kill her.’
‘It’ll kill her more if she found out and it was too…’ Tara realized how tactless she was being.
‘Your mother’s tougher than you think.’ Katherine rescued Tara. ‘You’ve got to tell her.’
‘I can’t.’ Fintan put his face in h
is hands.
‘How about if we – I mean Tara and I – told her?’ Katherine asked carefully. She thought he’d scorn that suggestion. She certainly wasn’t expecting him to take his face out of his hands, look at her hopefully and ask, ‘Would you?’
‘Sure. We’ll do it right now, this minute,’ Katherine said. Tara’s face was a rictus of horror.
‘Would you mind if I didn’t listen?’ Fintan asked.
‘We’ll ring from your bedroom, you won’t hear anything. Come on, Tara.’
They went into the bedroom, and when they’d closed the door behind them, Katherine said, ‘It’s OK, you cowardy custard, I’ll do it.’
‘I’ll do it if you want.’
‘No, just hold my hand. And remind me of the number. What’s wrong with me? I can’t even remember the code for Ireland.’
As JaneAnn’s suspicious ‘Hello’ crackled down the line, Katherine was trembling.
‘Hello, Mrs O’Grady. It’s Katherine Casey here.’ Tara gripped Katherine’s spare hand so tightly the bones squeaked.
‘Katherine Casey,’ said JaneAnn’s slow, country voice. ‘Is it you? How the dickens are you?’
‘Grand, thanks. I’ve something –’
‘And your mother? And all belonging to you?’
‘They’re grand too. JaneAnn, I must –’
‘I saw your granny the other evening at the Rwanda Benefit gig. Faith, she’s thriving.’
‘Mrs O’Grady, I’m sorry, but I’ve bad news for you. Fintan’s sick,’ Katherine blurted. She liked her bad news to be delivered quickly. She couldn’t bear being kept waiting while the blow was softened.
‘Fintan is sick? Sick? Is it serious?’
‘Yes, I’m very sorry, he’s got –’
‘Aids,’ JaneAnn interrupted. ‘I’ve been waiting for this. There was a thing in the paper about it.’
‘No, Mrs O’Grady,’ Katherine forced herself to be gentle, ‘he hasn’t got Aids.’
‘I know all about it.’ Her voice was dignified. ‘Just because I live in the backs of beyond, don’t think I don’t know.’
‘Mrs O’Grady, Fintan has a form of cancer.’
‘I’m his mother. The truth is bitter but tell it out to me anyway. Don’t fob me off with talk of cancer.’