She turned to face him and said, “No, Teddy. You don’t know. You don’t know anything.”
At first, the tumour had appeared to Nancy to be a predator, an invader, worming its way through the fibres in her brain, consuming her, but now it was settled, now there were no more possibilities, it was no longer the enemy. It may not be a friend (far from it), but it was part of her. Hers and hers alone and they would be companions to the awful end.
She left work immediately. What, after all, would be the point of staying on, giving herself away to others? Viola, who was used to travelling to and from school with Nancy, was put out that suddenly she had to make her own way. Nancy taught her how to catch the bus (“But why?”), explaining that she wasn’t very well and needed to take some time away from teaching to get better. It was harsh for Viola that she was being thrust into an independence that she should have grown into slowly, but it had to be about practicalities now, not sentiment. The iron had entered into Nancy’s soul.
She bought clothes for Viola, two and three sizes ahead, made lists and notes—where her piano teacher lived, her friends’ parents’ addresses and phone numbers, her likes and dislikes. Teddy, of course, knew many of Viola’s preferences but even he could not have imagined the full range.
She felt, ironically, remarkably well during the first few weeks that followed the confirmation of her death sentence. That was how she thought of it, although for everyone else’s sake there were euphemisms. She tidied drawers and cupboards, threw away unnecessary clutter, pared down her own wardrobe. Would she last through next winter? Would she need these drawers stuffed with woollens and vests and thick stockings? She imagined her sisters would come and sort through her clothes when she was gone, the way they had all done for their mother after the funeral. It would be a help to them if she broke the backbone of it now. She didn’t discuss these rather macabre tasks with anyone. It would upset them more than it upset her, for Nancy drew considerable satisfaction from thinking that she was leaving things in good order. She imagined Gertie looking around her bedroom after she was gone, saying, “Good old Nancy, typical of her to leave everything ship-shape and Bristol fashion.” When it came to it, of course, Gertie said no such thing, too consumed by grief for such buoyant remarks.
Teddy was confounded by all this energy and hazarded that somehow the diagnosis had been a mistake (“records get mixed up all the time”). Or perhaps she was actually getting better. “That would be a miracle, Teddy,” she said, as gently as she could. “There is no cure.” Hope would be the worst thing for him. Her, too. She wanted to enjoy this respite for what it was, not for what it could never be.
“But you thought I was dead during the war,” he persisted. “Did you give up hope?”
“Yes. Yes, I did. You know I did. And you said it yourself—I thought you were dead.”
“So then when I came back it was a miracle,” he said, as if he’d won the argument. But he had come back from a POW camp, not from the dead. There was no logic in him these days, but then what did it really matter? He would stop believing in miracles soon enough.
And then all the drawers were tidied, all the lists were made. When she stopped being busy she discovered that she craved simply being on her own in the house, filling the silence with the piano, occasionally Beethoven, mostly Chopin. Her playing was rusty, but day by day she saw small improvements and said to Teddy, “At least some things are capable of remedy,” but he shied away from gallows humour.