If I thought things were bizarre on my verandah, they’re even more so inside the house. Hugh goes through to the lounge room and strips off his jacket and scarf and sits in an armchair opposite Cam.
Two-year-old Charlie rushes over to him and puts his arms up to be swept into his lap. ‘Unckie Hugh!’ he says, patting Hugh on his chin, trying to work out what’s different.
‘Hey, mate. Nice Brumbies jumper!’ He’d bought it for Charlie to wear to a game the three of them went to a couple of months ago. Giving us merch from the rugby club seems to be a theme.
Charlie snuggles into Hugh’s chest, and it’s like a dagger to my heart when Hugh envelops him. Lately, when Charlie’s tried that with Cam, he’s been pushed away, and I’ve had to rush in and distract him to keep him from noticing the rejection.
Cam’s been asleep most of the afternoon and he’s confused when he opens his eyes and finds Hugh here. But then recognition passes across his face, and he looks at Hugh like he’s expecting an answer to a question he didn’t ask. Not just now, anyway. It’s odd.
Hugh’s eyes are glistening. His upper lip is twitching. What is this? I notice a tiny, almost imperceptible shake of his head and a deeply apologetic look. Cam shuts his eyes, like it’s too painful to be alive any more.
I know these two men. What are they keeping from me?
‘Can I take you for a drive, Cam?’ Hugh asks, leaning forward. They don’t go for beers any more. Advanced dementia and alcohol are a bad combination. Often, on Sundays, Hugh has turned up, helped Cam into the wheelchair and into his car and they just drive, Springsteen and The Who blaring.
Cam eyes him thoughtfully. Though ‘thoughtfully’ is becoming a problematic word. His thoughts aren’t what they used to be. He fixates on things. He misunderstands. His conversation is closing in, like the four walls he spends most of his time staring at. Every sentence exhausts him – so many words on the tip of his tongue, hardly any to hand when he wants them. He can read aloud, disjointedly. It’s as if the English professor within him is clinging to words for dear life, but he can’t comprehend what he reads, because so much of what he’s read is immediately forgotten. Even reading to Charlie the other day I noticed he repeated whole pages so many times that Charlie became incensed and threw the book across the room. It undid me. My luminous husband and teacher, losing his language.
‘Go for a drive, Cam,’ I suggest. ‘It will do you good to get out.’
He looks at me and glowers. ‘It will do you good for me to get out,’ he says coldly. The words sting. This whole time, the one thing I’ve been really proud of is my patience with him, right from that first incident at the work barbecue when he let Charlie wander to the water’s edge and I held my anger back. It’s getting harder by the day not to be abrupt with him when he asks the same thing for the hundredth time in a row, or now that he’s having uncharacteristically angry outbursts like this. I remind myself that this is the disease talking. Not the person.
‘Cam,’ I start to say, hiding how much it hurts.
‘Don’t you want a husband who works?’
‘We’re fine, Cam. We have income protection insurance.’
He narrows his eyes. ‘I don’t mean working in a job. I mean someone like him!’ He points at Hugh. ‘He can drive and talk and make you laugh.’
‘Oh, that’s a bit of a stretch,’ Hugh says.
His attempt at humour falls flat, as do most ideas in this house in recent weeks. It’s wearing me down, but I’m committed to giving Cam every shred of patience that I can dredge. I kneel down beside his chair and take his hand and put it to my face. ‘I don’t want anyone else, Cam. There will never be anyone else.’
Try to remember. Please.
That’s the problem, though. He won’t remember it. We’ll repeat this conversation, without a single word of it sticking and, even if he believes me when I say it in real time, he’ll forget it the moment it’s passed. It’s hopeless.
‘Tell him, Hugh,’ I hear myself pleading, as if the information will somehow sink in with two of us on one.
Hugh looks like I’ve thrown him in the deep end with no warning. Cam and I watch him, waiting for his magic words. ‘She loves you, mate,’ he says earnestly, after a pause. ‘She’ll always love you. End of story.’
End of story. He directs that bit to me. It’s tragic that my love life finishes here. In my more optimistic moments, I imagine I’ll go on and be a mum and have a career and have friends. I’ll travel and read and hopefully write again if I can ever find the will or the courage. I’ll find things to enjoy, I hope. Life might even be nice one day.
But I’ll always love Cam. His absence will be the eternal backdrop to everything else I do until the day I die. The second half of my life stretches so far into the distance it’s out of sight across the horizon. Me here. Cam gone.
No part two.
No sequel.
It’s agony already.
28
Last thing I remember, I had my head in my hands, sitting beside Hugh on the steps of the beach house, each gathering momentous thoughts as waves crashed hypnotically over the rise. I’d been wrangling with more conflicting emotions than I’d have thought were humanly possible to cram into one body.
After thirty-six hours without sleep and four years without peace, safe in the company of the man who’s been beside me through so much, I must have succumbed to . . . everything. I’m disconcerted to wake, still sitting on the steps, with a cricked neck, my head resting where it definitely shouldn’t be: in Hugh Lancaster’s lap. It’s disorienting, except for one thing. Unconscious Kate is a liability.
I can feel the weight of his hand on my shoulder, which he removes as I stir and struggle upright, wondering why he didn’t wake me or move me. I must look a picture . . . definitely not like a person who is out to impress a potential love interest.
Why am I thinking about love interests?
And why plural?
‘Tried to wake you,’ he explains. ‘You were a dead weight.’
Flattering.
‘You don’t look good . . .’ he adds.
Okay, let’s agree and move on. ‘What time is it?’ I ask.
‘About midnight.’
Oh! I’m hungry and cold and uncomfortable and anxious and unsettled and – very confused.
‘Why don’t you change into something warmer, while I stir the fire and make some hot chocolate?’
Solid plan, as usual.
There’s a lamp on downstairs, but the rest of the house is in darkness. As I stand up, I’m wobbly on my feet, woozy with exhaustion.
Hugh instinctively grabs my legs and looks up at me from the step. ‘Sorry,’ he says, taking his hands off just as quickly, as if he’s accidentally touched a flame. Is it because we work together, or—