Thomas Maloney - Learning to Die

Art has explored all this too, with mixed success. But I’m not going to tell you how to spend your dirty money. We’ve each made our beds, and must lie in them. Do whatever you have to do to avoid falling into the boiling resentful rage of a failed life.

‘Dan. I was wondering.’

‘Go on.’

‘A lot of people who get diagnosed with something like this seem to keep a record. You know — a blog.’ Dan looks at Natalie thoughtfully but says nothing. ‘They can share their thoughts, not feel so alone. Help other people to understand what they’re going through. Maybe help other sufferers, too. It’s something they can do even if they get really sick. It’s not like writing a book or something — there’s no pressure. They can write a lot or just a few lines. And it means—’ she hesitates.

‘—they leave something behind,’ supplies Dan. ‘On the record. After they’ve gone.’

She nods. ‘What do you think? You’d be so good at explaining things.’

‘I think it’s a fine idea. For some people. But not for me. I introspect as much as the next person. But I feel no desire to gift those thoughts to the world. When I write, I write methods, results, conclusions.’ He gestures towards a physics journal lying on the coffee table. ‘Not personal ruminations. I leave that for the artists.’

Natalie swallows her frustration. ‘But hasn’t this — this diagnosis—’ that fucking word again ‘—hasn’t this changed things? Don’t you think it might change your priorities?’

‘It has changed some things, but not others. I’m not really sure yet — I’m still thinking it through. We’re all going to die. The difference for me, I suppose, is that I know roughly how it’s going to happen. But I don’t see why I would turn into someone I wasn’t before. Blogger. Thrill-seeker. Fundraiser. I don’t need to give myself a new purpose.’

‘You’re not going to be able to achieve everything you wanted with your electrons — you won’t have time.’

He stares at the assortment of unlit candles standing in the fireplace, a twist of sadness in his face. ‘I know. But who does? We all run out of time. I was thinking yesterday about how much I’ve been looking forward to seeing the Higgs confirmation. Pentaquarks. Neutrino mass. Gravitational waves. Dark matter. Viable fusion power. I’ll probably miss most of those.’ He looks at her and adds, with a laugh that cracks, ‘Promise me you’ll look out for them on the news.’ Natalie feels tears darting into her eyes again. ‘Whenever you live and whenever you die,’ says Dan, composure recovered, ‘you’re sure to miss something unmissable.’

‘You’re not going anywhere just yet,’ she says. In the silence that follows, her mind is made up. ‘I’ll tell you one thing that has changed.’

‘What?’

‘I want us to have a baby.’

Dan’s start dissolves into a thin smile. ‘I thought I’d find a way to talk you round, but this terminal illness ruse seems a little drastic.’ Then the smile is gone and he shakes his head. ‘But it’s not a good idea anymore. I’m sorry. If you want reasons, I have three.’

Don’t do this. Please.

‘Dan, I want us to have a baby. I want—’

‘No.’

Mike Vickers is fresh from his barber one crisp Saturday morning, the smell of talc following him like the material effusion of his privilege, when he encounters George, the Gas Man, on Jermyn Street.

‘Just the laddie!’ booms George. ‘Remember what I said about life’s rich tapestry? Well, how would you like to witness the purchase of—’ his voice falls to a whisper ‘— an actual tapestry ! Flemish. Exquisite little eight-by-six. Follow me.’

Mike is in two minds — decline jauntily to make clear that he won’t be patronised, or accept and show this bumbling big-spender that the ‘laddie’ knows a thing or two about art. He checks his watch, a pre-bonus purchase, angling his wrist so George won’t see the middling brand.

‘Sure. Why not?’

George leads him down a side street and past half a dozen small galleries, glancing at windows and occasionally making derisive snorts at their wares. A narrow opening leads to a courtyard, and they stop at a black door with no shop window. A discreet plaque announces Ira McFooley: Antiquities . George glances left and right, apparently mistaking his tubby self for a person of interest to the world, and nods towards the doorbell with small, hungry eyes.

On the same day, James F. Saunders is in Scarborough, picking his way through a battleground of abandoned road works, hunching and flinching in a crossfire of rain and traffic spray. Little sodden sandbags lie slumped here and there like child corpses. He wipes a streaming nose, looks around and smiles. This town guards a scoop in the hostile coastline just as half-hearted as his native Bay, but an accident of geology provided a harbour here, and a sandy beach. These gave it a divergent identity that serves him well as a creative palate cleanser.

There is York, of course, but it’s too far, and tainted by the risk of seeing one of the few uni peers still loitering there. Whether they recognise him or not, the pain is intolerable; on his last visit to the city he encountered an ex-classmate in the street — a fellow poet, now a successful journalist, whose career James once followed with interest — and she looked straight through him, would no more recognise him than a fly. Well, fuck them all. They’ll soon have reason to remember him.

In the meantime, Scarborough it is. Seeking shelter, shoes wet through, James finds himself inside a bookshop for the first time in many months: a small Waterstones. Celebrity memoirs a speciality. It is an incontrovertible truth that while second-hand bookshops present comforting refuges to a writer the world has hitherto rejected, new bookshops are cursed. The shimmer, the scorn, the horror of failure. He drifts from table to stacked table, fingering the satiny covers with their sharp corners, bathing in a lake of bitterness. Invigorating, certainly: an antidote to creative exhaustion. His eye catches extravagant praise on the cover of a book that he once abandoned in disgust. Is it them or me? It’s them, of course. He’s learned to translate the absurd puff jargon: thrilling means shallow; engrossing is verbose; mesmerising , slow; unflinching , unsubtle; stunning means they couldn’t think of anything to say at all. Quite possibly the finest coming-of-age novel since Bambi. If you liked Girl in a Bodybag , you’ll love Girl in a Ditch . Murder me too and let’s get it over with.

There are too many books in the world, of course. But there is too much of everything. James maintains a desperate belief in singularity: literature is not a bulk commodity. These thousands of worthless books do not pile up against its adamantine feet; rather, they are a stream babbling past harmlessly, endlessly, washing them clean.

He fixes his gaze on the place where his novel will stand, flanked by Sartre and Schlink; the infinitesimal crack between those unsuspecting literary comrades forms the sole egress from his life’s impasse. He smiles. He’s going to make it. He has sixty thousand words that glitter like the scales of a dangerous reptile: not one out of place. He’s almost there.

And he knows exactly how it’s going to end.

By March, Dan’s right leg has given up the ghost and he walks with crutches. The change comes swiftly, over a few weeks. Because of the weakness in his hands, the occupational therapist has advised him to skip the hand-pushed chair and go straight for the electric model. It’s already been ordered. ‘You don’t need it yet, of course, but let’s be prepared.’ Positive words that signify despair. ‘I seem to be on the fast track,’ he replies.