Why I said ‘I love you’ to my wife — for the first time in 55 years
HUNTER DAVIES and his wife never talked about their emotions. But, as his moving memoir reveals, their feelings were no less deep for that
ON SATURDAY, in our first extract from his new memoir, The Beatles’ official biographer HUNTER DAVIES recalled a string of encounters he had with the biggest stars of the Sixties, from Paul McCartney to Charlotte Rampling. Today, in our final extract, he describes the shattering news that his wife, the novelist Margaret Forster, had cancer, and how they lived with the disease for the remaining decades of her life . . .
THE CHILDREN loathed it, but it was the only thing I knew how to make. I called it the Hunter Special, and it consisted of ham and cheese on toast with a poached egg on top.
Night after night, for the three weeks Margaret was in hospital the first time, we dined on this bizarre concoction. God, they hated it.
We hadn’t told the children the real reason Margaret was in hospital. She didn’t want them to know about her cancer diagnosis, or her mastectomy. This was typical of her. She didn’t even tell her parents. We simply said she was having her appendix out.
Afterwards Margaret was offered a breast reconstruction. Everyone had it, she was told. She refused. The most she would agree to was some slight extra padding of her left bra cup.
Not that she ever discussed these options with me. Although we had been married for 15 years and had known each other since we were at school, we had never talked about personal things — especially of an intimate, sexual nature.
I would have done, but it was part of Margaret’s pride: her strength — not wanting to reveal weaknesses or worries. She had never believed the old cliche that a problem shared was a problem halved. To her, it was a problem doubled.
Our lovemaking had always been in the dark so truly, honestly, her lack of one breast did not put me off. But it did her.
She was convinced I would find her repellent, even when I told her I loved her in the same way as I always had. Her reaction was to snort, dismissing my words. I was lying, she said. She was a horror show. She could not bear her own body any more, so how could anybody else?
But gradually, slowly, delicately, tenderly, we returned to a normal married life. WE NEvER thought for one moment Margaret had it beaten. She always knew there was no cure. All you can hope for is a remission.
People go on about ‘fighting’ cancer, which is nonsense. Margaret hated that. Of course it isn’t a fight — it is a one-sided attack. You just have to live with it, and hope for the best.
In 1977, when Margaret was 39, the cancer returned, this time in her right breast. It had spread to her lymph glands, so there was no alternative but to have another mastectomy.
I took Caitlin, aged 13, Jake, 11, and Flora, five, into the Royal Marsden hospital in Chelsea to see Margaret. When we arrived, she slipped me a handwritten note, telling me on no account to make any comments about how she looked — of course, she looked awful. This was typical of Margaret, the devoted mum — her first thought was always for her children.
HER chemo lasted for nine months. But as before, we did not tell the children what had really happened, or Margaret’s parents, or most people.
It was only many years later that Caitlin, our oldest, revealed to us that someone at school had told her one day: ‘Your mum’s got cancer, that’s why she’s in hospital.’
Caitlin hadn’t believed it, and as the months and then years went by, I grew to believe it wasn’t true, either.
Margaret seemed so fit and healthy, just as she used to be — much fitter than me, climbing the fells near the holiday cottage we’d bought in Cumbria, waiting at the top for me to arrive, panting.
She would stride away, her back straight, slim and athletic with her marvellous skin and healthy glow, compared with me, all hunched, shambling, moaning: ‘Are we nearly there yet, Marg?’
According to Margaret, I was in denial. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ I’d say. ‘I have erased cancer from my mind.’ Which I had. And that’s how it went on. Year after year. There was no sudden recurrence this time.
So we settled down again, both of us busy with our writing careers and bringing up our three lovely children. Ever the optimist, I looked forward to many more years of married bliss and happiness. FOR around 20 years after that, the subject of cancer never really came up. When Margaret’s health was mentioned in an interview, she always moved swiftly on to something else. She didn’t want to be defined by an illness.
But in 2002 she started having inexplicable pains in her ribs and hip, and five years later it was revealed she had a tumour on her spine which couldn’t be operated on. But even then our normal life returned.
Despite being on a regime of constant heavy drugs, packets of them in straw baskets all over the house, Margaret’s morning routine was the same as it had been for 40 years: bringing me tea in bed, plus the newspaper, nicely ironed, and then running a bath (which I would use afterwards — so ecologically aware) before she started writing at nine.
Over the years, many friends were horrified to find that such a strong, independent, feminist woman should be so craven, waiting hand and foot on a man. But as she always said, we had divvied up the jobs when we got married.
She willingly took the domestic, cleaning, catering role, while I did whatever I could get away with. OK, that’s the gardening, the financial affairs, the driving and the odd repair jobs. And answering the phone, which she hated doing.
The main difference now was that she was in constant pain. She could no longer bear to be touched. Holding hands was about the most she could manage without experiencing the most searing agony.
From time to time, she had tests and scans. Sometimes they would be quite reassuring — the most cheerful news was ‘stable’ — ie, the cancer was not doing very much, just hanging about, not bothering anyone.
But by 2015, more and more of the dreaded shadows were appearing on the scans. It was obvious the cancer was active again, expanding into areas where it had not been invited.
Margaret went back on chemotherapy. The side-effects started almost immediately, making her tired and sick all the time.
It got harder each day for her to get out of bed, get dressed, go downstairs, bring in the milk, fill our two bowls with her homemade muesli, make her one and only cup of coffee of the day. She insisted on struggling to do all this, though. Otherwise, what is the point?
Then she would drag herself back to bed. She would just lie there, with her clothes on, for the rest of the day.
I started asking her how to cook certain favourite things: sauces, quiches. I had never cooked in my life, except Hunter’s Special back in 1975. Nor did I know how to use the washing machine, or how to put on the dishwasher, which orifices needed filling with which potions. Appalling that in 55 years of married life I had learned so little. Not even how to make a salad dressing.
She eventually gave up going out for walks, restricting her ambitions to the garden, dragging herself round it, taking for ever each time with lots of stops and sits, leaning and staring, pretending she was examining the flowers and bushes.
On November 11, 2015, I went with Margaret for her regular appointment with the oncologist. The doctor went through the scan — all the usual stuff about black spots and shadows.
Margaret asked her what stage of cancer she was at. ‘We don’t talk in stages or figures,’ the doctor replied, ‘but if you’re asking how long you might have to live, I would say between three months and six months.’ We sat, silent. Margaret told the doctor she had decided not to have any more chemo. The doctor replied that she was going to say that herself.
So after 43 years of various treatments for cancer, that was it. In many ways she had been so lucky. Having that double mastectomy in the Seventies had worked, when I had been convinced that she was a goner. Again, in 2007 I had been sure it was the end. And yet once again she had survived, and we’d had those extra few years.
The next evening, over supper, I started crying. I have gone
through life not crying or showing emotion.
‘Oh help!’ said Margaret — a joke phrase in our family, mocking my mother, who always said it when someone got emotional or sentimental.
‘I was just thinking,’ I said, ‘when I die, I will meet you again. While I live on, it will be a comfort to think we will meet again, even though it is a stupid thing to say, and of course we probably won’t.’ ‘Oh help!’ she said again. In bed that night I leaned over and gave her a kiss, being careful not to touch her. ‘I love you so much,’ I said. ‘And I love you,’ she replied. ‘Now go to sleep.’
In 55 years of marriage, I don’t think either of us had said we loved each other — not since our pre-marriage courting days. We always mocked people who say ‘love you soooo much’, even in a ten-second mundane phone call.
January 9, 2016: Margaret is in the Marie Curie hospice in Hampstead. This morning at home she had a sudden increase in pain, and the total loss of any strength or movement in her legs and both arms.
I rang our palliative care nurse, Shebo. She rang back to say they’d managed to get Margaret a room at the hospice, and to expect the ambulance.
It was a pretty knackered old ambulance, and as it bumped through the traffic, I could tell Margaret was in total agony. Afterwards, while she was being settled in her bed, I met the ward sister, who asked for some family details, such as the names of our children. This was for privacy and security.
‘Are the three children all your children?’
I was confused. She explained that she just wondered if perhaps some were from a previous marriage. I said we had been married for 55 years — to each other.
I suddenly found myself starting to cry again. I hadn’t cried in the ambulance, even when Margaret had been in such terrible pain. And yet this harmless question had started me off.
January 19: I went to the hospice on the bus today. A tall decrepit man hobbling on two sticks got on. A blonde tattooed woman got up and offered him her seat. ‘No thanks,’ he said in an Irish accent. ‘I like to show off my disabilities.’
‘Oh, make the most of it, love,’ she replied.
I made a mental note to repeat this conversation to M. I rarely bring her in physical things. I like to think I bring in chat. We have always relayed every bus stop story to each other, however banal. Who am I going to tell all my trivia chat to, when she goes?
January 20: We chatted for an hour and a half, me telling her what I was cooking for myself, gossip from the street, when she suddenly said: ‘There seems to be space between us.’ This caught me on the hop. I didn’t quite know what she meant. Just as she was going to explain further, a doctor came in.
On the way home I met a neighbour of ours, Paul. I told him Margaret was in the hospice.
‘Oh, I’ve missed her walking on the Heath. I always looked out for her orange coat. She is always so elegant,’ he said.
Elegant? I thought about that as I walked home. Should I tell her tomorrow? I know she has never enjoyed or fished for compliments.
During our life together, the biggest compliment I ever give her is to say that she looks neat. Or sometimes I say clean. Neat and clean — you can’t do better than that.
January 21: I told M that story today, about being elegant. I think she was quite pleased.
I then asked her what she meant by there being space between us. She looked surprised, saying she had no memory of saying it. I promised her she did.
She decided what she must have meant is that there is a space around her. She is on her own most of the time, without my non-stop chattering. She does still feel in contact with me.
February 2: Margaret was a bit ratty today. ‘I feel trapped,’ she told me. ‘That is the worst part. Being trapped. That is worse than knowing I am going to die.
‘For three weeks I have lain, 24 hours a day, on my back. All my life I have never slept on my back.’
February 5: She looked exhausted today, totally blank. I chuntered on for a while, but I got no reaction.
I cut her toenails. It felt so highly personal and intimate, weird and strange and intrusive, yet she is my wife of more than 50 years. Looking at her naked legs, I thought about how I had not seen her without her clothes on for years. As I was leaving, she suddenly opened her eyes.
‘The Hoover bag,’ she blurted out. ‘It will need to be replaced. It must be full by now.’
‘F*** the Hoover bag,’ I said. But she was asleep again.
February 6: Today I told Margaret how much I loved her, how much I will miss her.
‘In my mind you will not be gone,’ I said. ‘You will be with me all the time. It will not feel sad or creepy. I will always be talking to you.’
‘You’ll be fine,’ she said, dismissing me and my soppy thoughts.
I said I will be back tomorrow. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she repeated. Then she closed her eyes.
February 8: I went to bed with both the mobile phone and the landline near me in the bedroom, which is something I never do.
At 7.30 in the morning one of the phones rang. But it took me a while to work out what the noise was, which phone it might be, where it was. By the time I found it, the call had ended.
I listened to the voicemail. A female voice said that Margaret had died ten minutes ago. ON THE day of her funeral, after everyone had gone, I went upstairs to Margaret’s office at the back of the house. I looked through the glass door to her desk, where the sheets of her latest novel lay unfinished.
I knocked at the glass panel, as I always had, without thinking. It was a little ritual we had, always knocking before entering the other person’s work place.
Realising that she would not answer, never again, I could not face opening the door, and certainly not going inside. Not yet.
So, is that it? What am I going to do now? At the age of 80, I don’t have much time left over to kill.
Shall I stay in the house? Should I get a lodger? Can I live alone? I have never lived alone since we got married in 1960, nor felt alone since 1956, when I first went out with Margaret.
Decisions, decisions. As I walked slowly down the stairs, I could hear Margaret’s voice from her hospital bed, almost the last words she said to me.
‘You’ll be fine . . .’