‘But it is. It is – if he’s asking you to be part of it,’ Georgina protested.
The handle stilled in my hand.
‘I can’t believe you’re even agreeing to it. What about your religion? What about everything you’ve done? What was the point in you even bloody saving him the last time?’
Mrs Traynor’s voice was deliberately calm. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘But you’ve said you’ll take him. What does –’
‘Do you think for a moment that if I said I refuse, he wouldn’t ask someone else?’
‘But Dignitas? It’s just wrong. I know it’s hard for him, but it will destroy you and Daddy. I know it. Think of how you would feel! Think of the publicity! Your job! Both your reputations! He must know it. It’s a selfish thing to even ask. How can he? How can he do this? How can you do this?’ She began to sob again.
‘George … ’
‘Don’t look at me like that. I do care about him, Mummy. I do. He’s my brother and I love him. But I can’t bear it. I can’t bear even the thought of it. He’s wrong to ask, and you’re wrong to consider it. And it’s not just his own life he will destroy if you go ahead with this.’
I took a step back from the window. The blood thumped so loudly in my ears that I almost didn’t hear Mrs Traynor’s response.
‘Six months, George. He promised to give me six months. Now. I don’t want you to mention this again, and certainly not in front of anyone else. And we must … ’ She took a deep breath. ‘We must just pray very hard that something happens in that time to change his mind.’
8
Camilla
I never set out to help kill my son.
Even reading the words seems odd – like something you might see in a tabloid newspaper, or one of those awful magazines that the cleaner always has poking out of her handbag, full of women whose daughters ran off with their cheating partners, tales of amazing weight loss and two-headed babies.
I was not the kind of person this happened to. Or at least, I thought I wasn’t. My life was a fairly structured one – an ordinary one, by modern standards. I had been married for almost thirty-seven years, I raised two children, I kept my career, helped out at the school, the PTA, and joined the bench once the children didn’t need me any more.
I had been a magistrate for almost eleven years now. I watched the whole of human life come through my court: the hopeless waifs who couldn’t get themselves together sufficiently even to make a court appointment on time; the repeat offenders; the angry, hard-faced young men and exhausted, debt-ridden mothers. It’s quite hard to stay calm and understanding when you see the same faces, the same mistakes made again and again. I could sometimes hear the impatience in my tone. It could be oddly dispiriting, the blank refusal of humankind to even attempt to function responsibly.
And our little town, despite the beauty of the castle, our many Grade II listed buildings, our picturesque country lanes, was far from immune to it. Our Regency squares held cider-drinking teenagers, our thatched cottages muffled the sounds of husbands beating their wives and children. Sometimes I felt like King Canute, making vain pronouncements in the face of a tide of chaos and creeping devastation. But I loved my job. I did it because I believe in order, in a moral code. I believe that there is a right and a wrong, unfashionable as that view might be.
I got through the tougher days because of my garden. As the children grew it had become a bit of an obsession of mine. I could give you the Latin name of almost any plant you cared to point at. The funny thing was, I didn’t even do Latin at school – mine was a rather minor public school for girls where the focus was on cooking and embroidery, things that would help us become good wives – but the thing about those plant names is that they do stick in your head. I only ever needed to hear one once to remember it forever: Helleborus niger,Eremurus stenophyllus,Athyrium niponicum. I can repeat those with a fluency I never had at school.
They say you only really appreciate a garden once you reach a certain age, and I suppose there is a truth in that. It’s probably something to do with the great circle of life. There seems to be something miraculous about seeing the relentless optimism of new growth after the bleakness of winter, a kind of joy in the difference every year, the way nature chooses to show off different parts of the garden to its full advantage. There have been times – the times when my marriage proved to be somewhat more populated than I had anticipated – when it has been a refuge, times when it has been a joy.
There have even been times when it was, frankly, a pain. There is nothing more disappointing than creating a new border only to see it fail to flourish, or to watch a row of beautiful alliums destroyed overnight by some slimy culprit. But even when I complained about the time, the effort involved in caring for it, the way my joints protested at an afternoon spent weeding, or my fingernails never looked quite clean, I loved it. I loved the sensual pleasures of being outside, the smell of it, the feel of the earth under my fingers, the satisfaction of seeing things living, glowing, captivated by their own temporary beauty.
After Will’s accident I didn’t garden for a year. It wasn’t just the time, although the endless hours spent at hospital, the time spent toing and froing in the car, the meetings – oh God, the meetings – took up so much of it. I took six months’ compassionate leave from work and there was still not enough of it.
It was that I could suddenly see no point. I paid a gardener to come and keep the garden tidy, and I don’t think I gave it anything but the most cursory of looks for the best part of a year.
The handle stilled in my hand.
‘I can’t believe you’re even agreeing to it. What about your religion? What about everything you’ve done? What was the point in you even bloody saving him the last time?’
Mrs Traynor’s voice was deliberately calm. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘But you’ve said you’ll take him. What does –’
‘Do you think for a moment that if I said I refuse, he wouldn’t ask someone else?’
‘But Dignitas? It’s just wrong. I know it’s hard for him, but it will destroy you and Daddy. I know it. Think of how you would feel! Think of the publicity! Your job! Both your reputations! He must know it. It’s a selfish thing to even ask. How can he? How can he do this? How can you do this?’ She began to sob again.
‘George … ’
‘Don’t look at me like that. I do care about him, Mummy. I do. He’s my brother and I love him. But I can’t bear it. I can’t bear even the thought of it. He’s wrong to ask, and you’re wrong to consider it. And it’s not just his own life he will destroy if you go ahead with this.’
I took a step back from the window. The blood thumped so loudly in my ears that I almost didn’t hear Mrs Traynor’s response.
‘Six months, George. He promised to give me six months. Now. I don’t want you to mention this again, and certainly not in front of anyone else. And we must … ’ She took a deep breath. ‘We must just pray very hard that something happens in that time to change his mind.’
8
Camilla
I never set out to help kill my son.
Even reading the words seems odd – like something you might see in a tabloid newspaper, or one of those awful magazines that the cleaner always has poking out of her handbag, full of women whose daughters ran off with their cheating partners, tales of amazing weight loss and two-headed babies.
I was not the kind of person this happened to. Or at least, I thought I wasn’t. My life was a fairly structured one – an ordinary one, by modern standards. I had been married for almost thirty-seven years, I raised two children, I kept my career, helped out at the school, the PTA, and joined the bench once the children didn’t need me any more.
I had been a magistrate for almost eleven years now. I watched the whole of human life come through my court: the hopeless waifs who couldn’t get themselves together sufficiently even to make a court appointment on time; the repeat offenders; the angry, hard-faced young men and exhausted, debt-ridden mothers. It’s quite hard to stay calm and understanding when you see the same faces, the same mistakes made again and again. I could sometimes hear the impatience in my tone. It could be oddly dispiriting, the blank refusal of humankind to even attempt to function responsibly.
And our little town, despite the beauty of the castle, our many Grade II listed buildings, our picturesque country lanes, was far from immune to it. Our Regency squares held cider-drinking teenagers, our thatched cottages muffled the sounds of husbands beating their wives and children. Sometimes I felt like King Canute, making vain pronouncements in the face of a tide of chaos and creeping devastation. But I loved my job. I did it because I believe in order, in a moral code. I believe that there is a right and a wrong, unfashionable as that view might be.
I got through the tougher days because of my garden. As the children grew it had become a bit of an obsession of mine. I could give you the Latin name of almost any plant you cared to point at. The funny thing was, I didn’t even do Latin at school – mine was a rather minor public school for girls where the focus was on cooking and embroidery, things that would help us become good wives – but the thing about those plant names is that they do stick in your head. I only ever needed to hear one once to remember it forever: Helleborus niger,Eremurus stenophyllus,Athyrium niponicum. I can repeat those with a fluency I never had at school.
They say you only really appreciate a garden once you reach a certain age, and I suppose there is a truth in that. It’s probably something to do with the great circle of life. There seems to be something miraculous about seeing the relentless optimism of new growth after the bleakness of winter, a kind of joy in the difference every year, the way nature chooses to show off different parts of the garden to its full advantage. There have been times – the times when my marriage proved to be somewhat more populated than I had anticipated – when it has been a refuge, times when it has been a joy.
There have even been times when it was, frankly, a pain. There is nothing more disappointing than creating a new border only to see it fail to flourish, or to watch a row of beautiful alliums destroyed overnight by some slimy culprit. But even when I complained about the time, the effort involved in caring for it, the way my joints protested at an afternoon spent weeding, or my fingernails never looked quite clean, I loved it. I loved the sensual pleasures of being outside, the smell of it, the feel of the earth under my fingers, the satisfaction of seeing things living, glowing, captivated by their own temporary beauty.
After Will’s accident I didn’t garden for a year. It wasn’t just the time, although the endless hours spent at hospital, the time spent toing and froing in the car, the meetings – oh God, the meetings – took up so much of it. I took six months’ compassionate leave from work and there was still not enough of it.
It was that I could suddenly see no point. I paid a gardener to come and keep the garden tidy, and I don’t think I gave it anything but the most cursory of looks for the best part of a year.
