Читать книгу Andalucia - Richard W Hardwick - Страница 4

It starts just like any other day. Anna’s drying her hair and I’m trying to get Isla’s tights on while she stamps her feet up and down. And Joe hasn’t uttered a single word to anyone because he’s too busy saving the world in his bedroom. Then the taxi comes and Anna’s kissing and hugging and in far too much of a rush to get emotional. Two and a half hours later the kids are on their way to school and child-minder. And by half ten I’ve ticked everything off Anna’s list and I'm kicking my heels against wooden floorboards. It’s unlikely I’ll be able to see her until six p.m. but I can’t stay this far away, have an increasing need to be near her. I drive through falling snow to the metro station, leave my car in an illegal spot and pass a traffic warden on the way in. I’m allowed forty minutes with her. I hold her hand; watch her take clothes off, put robes on, Paris Hilton white stockings. She’s quiet, seems somehow reflective, even before the event. I wonder how she manages to do it; stay so calm, so graceful. And then she’s led away and I follow. The nurse says we can kiss but she’d rather we didn’t do tongues. And then Anna walks away from me, steps into the lift and doesn’t turn around. I stand and watch the doors close, the orange light move down through the numbers. Then turn away.

I’m sipping hot coffee, eating an almond muffin, listening to some David Gray-a-like strum and moan. I’m staring out the window, watching people desperately try and keep their feet in back street slush. Anna will be unconscious, under the knife. I remember the pre-assessment two days ago; best case scenario lump removed, followed by radiotherapy for a few weeks and a return to normal life. I remember looking around the waiting room at anxious faces, nobody talking, just the occasional subdued whisper. One teenager, four girls in their thirties, a couple in their fifties; mothers, daughters, wives, girlfriends, workmates, best friends, neighbours. And then I looked at Anna. And I don’t know the statistics, I’m completely ignorant. But I looked around the room again. And I thought at least one of you is going to deteriorate rapidly and die very soon. And I’m nervous, so nervous, that it’s going to be Anna.

I’m by her side now, holding her hand. The pain’s contained, medicated. It’s her stomach she’s worried about. She hasn’t eaten for twenty-four hours, says she’s starving but they won’t let her eat. Her breast has swollen. They think she has a haematoma, that the wound has started to fill up with blood. They’ll let her come home tomorrow but she might need to go back in, have further surgery. We hold hands but don’t talk. And inside we pray that this is the end of it all.

Her shout comes directly through the ceiling above me.

“Can you come upstairs please?”

She’s been in the shower. Maybe she wants help getting dried, can’t reach her back. But I go upstairs and there she is, crouching on the bathroom floor naked, holding a flannel to her breast. Blood trickling down her stomach, three blood-soaked flannels by her feet. I get the first aid kit out, tell her it’s just nature’s way of sorting things out, taking away swelling, easing the tension. In truth I don’t have a clue. She holds the flannel a few more minutes whilst I wipe blood away from her stomach, her legs, the floor. She takes it away five times but the blood keeps seeping out. I wash the garlic and salt off my hands and open a sterile dressing.

We’re on the bathroom floor again, but this time it’s three in the morning. The dressing’s soaked through dark red and the blood’s seeping out. The door is shut so children can’t see the light, don’t come and investigate. I take the dressing off slowly while Anna gets ready to catch any flowing blood. She dabs as it comes out, while I remark how her breast looks much more natural now the bruising has gone, how it’s almost returned to normal size. Anna is as calm as usual. The pressure has reduced and with it the pain. Things are returning to normal. We smile at each other and tip-toe back to the bedroom hand in hand, confident about results later today.

•

At the noise of approaching engine, we jumped up with enthusiasm, five of us stood in a line. Pushed our arms out and stuck our thumbs down as advised. The car went straight past, left nothing but rising dust in the distance like some seventies western. Half an hour later the next car came and we repeated the same movement like some amateur bedraggled dance troupe; Pete with his shorts and t-shirt sleeves rolled up, his moustache and balding head, Helen with her long legs and long blonde hair, Anna with her flowing skirt and skimpy vest top, me with my painted Doctor Marten boots and football top and Rob with his skinny freckled Scottish legs. And so, perhaps understandably, the second car went past too. We’d decided to hitch-hike after being told it was normal practice, and Shabbat was our only day off each week. Out through the gates we’d gone, into the flat dusty vastness of the Heights, a few green bushes sprouting here and there amid a 360 degree horizon of sun scorched grass and earth. We’d followed the track from Afiq until we reached the one road that came out there, headed for the shade of the bus-stop, an isolated sanctuary from heat riddled with bullet holes. And then someone else came along; a soldier from Afiq. He smiled but carried on straight past, stood about twenty metres further down. A car came along just a few minutes later. Again we performed what was fast becoming a natural manoeuvre. Our spirits lifted as the car slowed down, then sank as it went right past us and picked the soldier up, who got in without looking back. After another failed attempt and the realisation that a bus hadn’t been past in the last hour and a half either, we decided on an astute tactical move. We sat back in the shade, supped from water bottles, then when we heard the next car only Anna and Helen stepped out. This time the car slowed down, right to a stop, and one of the girls held the door open for Rob, Pete and I to climb in. Along the top we went, then down in slow curls, riding camel coloured earth waves frozen in motion, rising and peaking, ebbing away before rising and peaking once more. And then we were right down, almost seven hundred feet below sea level, at the lowest freshwater lake on earth, following palm trees along the shore of the Galilee where Jesus recruited disciples from local fishermen. We were dropped off at En Gev, a rich kibbutz hidden behind trees, then walked down its side to the water’s edge where the son of God told numerous parables and performed many miracles. Over volcanic and limestone rock, to millions upon millions of tiny shells embedded in thick dry mud to form a beach. The water was bottle green, warm as a welcome bath, breathing slowly. We waded out, dipped our bodies in, looked at hills and valleys that surrounded us, white painted Tiberius on the far side. Anna, Helen and I fell asleep near where the tide softly broke, woke up with water lapping around our bodies. Then, feeling blessed, we hitched a lift within minutes with a middle aged bearded man. He took a different route, pulled his car into the side about three quarters of the way up. We followed him to a viewing site, sat on a low wall and looked out at the whole of the Sea of Galilee, hazy in the heat like our sun stroked minds, fed on the right by the Jordan River that ran down between Syria and Lebanon.

Our driver waited patiently for us to take it all in, then held his arm out, swept it along.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked rhetorically. “The Sea of Galilee with the miracles of Jesus. And the city of Tiberius, named after the Roman Emperor. Destroyed by two earthquakes”

He reminded us we were standing on Syrian earth, where they bombed Israel from before it was captured in 1967.

“You can see why this is so necessary for Israel,” he said, sweeping his hand backwards, motioning to the whole of the Golan. “If you are down there, you have no chance”

We walked back to the car in silence, wondering if he was Israeli or Arabic. Then he drove us back to the top, along the road to Afiq and dropped us off right outside the gates.

•

Anna lies on the bed whilst the nurse changes her dressing and comments how nature does indeed take its course. The breast looks almost as it did originally, bar a small concave area and an obvious incision mark where they cut into it. I smile, remember the teenage lad on the metro opposite, all intrigued when she pulled her top out and peered downwards to see if the dressing was doing its job. The nurse disappears. Anna unfolds her newspaper, reads the two front page headlines; a genetic master switch which would allow cancer to be turned off. And how Jade Goody’s children will live with their father when she dies.

Then the doctor comes in.

He brings another nurse with him, a medical student too. Opens the file with eyes cast down. Looks up and tells us her results. The invasive cancerous lump was small and has been removed successfully. But when they opened her up there were pre-cancerous cells around it that hadn’t been detected. Also, two of the four lymph nodes they took out of her armpit were infected with cancer. They have no option but to remove the whole breast, to start a course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, to prescribe Tamoxifen and probably Herceptin too. They’ll also have to take more lymph nodes out, probably all of them, because it’s through these that cancer spreads, if it hasn’t already. I look at Anna, mouth on hand. Stunned. The doctor looks at us both in sympathy. But we can’t speak so he says a little more. The medical student fidgets, doesn’t know where to put herself. And still we can’t speak. And so the doctor asks if we understand everything. Anna nods, clamps her knuckles with her teeth at the same time, understands perfectly. It’s everything we didn’t want to hear. She’s going back for surgery. The cancer may have spread through her body. She’s going to have her breast cut off, have chemotherapy every three weeks for six months. Her hair is going to fall out. And there’s a chance that the cancer will kill her, will kill Joe and Isla’s Mammy. As usual, she thinks little of herself and more of how they would cope. The doctor leaves and her head goes down. And the tears flow out. The student squirms and slips away. The nurse gives us a few minutes alone. I try my best to fight back tears but eventually break and join her.

•

Days of work followed. I partnered an Israeli called Rufel, climbed ladders, cleared ivy from gutters and roofing. Anna cleared grass with Helen and a few others. On the afternoon we sat outside our houses in the sunshine, wrote letters and diaries, walked to Piq or the Syrian House on the other side of kibbutz, watched kaleidoscope sunsets down valleys and over the Galilee; always Anna, Helen, Rob and myself. I watched Anna and Helen move whenever I could, like I watched them move in the waters of the Galilee. I watched them come back from work together, chat and laugh, become great friends.

Out walking in the Golan, we came across an old Howitzer, its long barrel pointing down at dusty earth; then nothing, no landmark at all except the odd withered tree. Until half a mile later, a half destroyed bus. Further on, an old desert coloured army truck. We took pictures of ourselves in them like excited children, idiot tourists brought up in a peace taken for granted. We found pillboxes and trenches along the top edge of the Golan that spied down on Tiberius and the Galilee. Crawling through them we discovered rusty beds burrowed inside rock, tried to imagine what this alternative reality must have been like. The next evening Rob and I ventured out the kibbutz in the dark, to a phone box by the side of the road, using light from thousands of stars as our guides. The haunting cries of wolves echoed around us like wailing ghosts of Syrians destroyed in the fight for their homeland. We hurried to the safety of the phone box, stood inside during each other’s calls. On the way back two of them walked alongside us, just far enough back on the edge of our sight for us to make out the faint silhouettes of their bodies. Howls came from the other side of the road, out in the darkness, thirty, forty feet away. But these two walked silently alongside, as if leading us back to where humans belonged, back inside the tall wire fences of Afiq.

•

Joe’s a tall five year old, slim built with hair in between wavy and curly, in between finally turning from blond to brown. People look at Anna and I, both brunettes, then ask where Joe gets his blond locks from. I tell them he looks like the fruit and veg man who used to come round every Thursday in his shiny new van; that Anna was always quick to climb his little steps, caress his cauliflowers. And he certainly took a shine to Anna as well; of that there’s no doubt. Those who know us well laugh my suggestion off easier. They see not only my height and sometimes languid style in Joe, but other characteristics too. The way he completely ignores everything you say if his mind is somewhere else, even if your face is right in front of his. The way he can’t see any point in putting effort into something he isn’t interested in. And in his otherworldliness and his love of books.

Isla is a different kettle of fish, blessed with beauty like her brother but with lips that can turn from smile to pout and back again within seconds, all framed by long straight brown hair. And if you put your face inches from hers and sharply insist she did something you’d likely be heading for a slap. Joe can be bribed. Threats and treats usually work, especially if they’re related to something he values, like pudding or telly or books. Isla will stare and stamp her feet. She’ll call your bluff or make a pre-emptive strike. If she doesn’t get books until she’s brushed her teeth then so be it; she’ll just go straight to bed instead. And she’ll do it with a swagger rather than a stomp. Her favourite hobby is changing her mind. And her favourite word is “actually.”

•

Disgruntled at having one bottle of wine between eleven at the Shabbat meal, Anna, Rob and I waited until everyone had left, then sneaked though the kitchens and stole seven unfinished bottles. At the time we felt little shame in this. After all, one opened bottle of wine was placed on every table and most Israelis drank very little. It wouldn’t keep for a whole week until the next Shabbat surely? However, like naughty children getting away with something and enjoying the rewards, this soon developed into a weekly habit, much to the amusement of the Golani. They came over to our table quite often, sometimes even ventured up to the far edge of the kibbutz where our volunteer houses were situated. Sharon, Shirley and Helen had been along to their section of houses, nicknamed The Bronx by the rest of the kibbutz. Of course the soldiers were more interested in females than males, and the girls didn’t seem to mind. Attention from swarthy young males with machine guns, with an underlying sensitivity too, captured in a situation beyond their control, inspired notions of romance and excitement. There were female soldiers too, and it always seemed odd to see girls younger than me, hair down their backs, carrying Uzi submachine guns. But they were content to stay within their group in the main, not venture out our way. With the exception of Marla and Denis, her American footballer husband who converted to Judaism to raise a family in the Golan, and a couple of others, the residents of Afiq said very little to us, just nodded or smiled or did neither. The soldiers though; they worked with us, were away from their homes too. About thirty in number, they were separated into eighteen year olds who had just joined the army and would soon have to see ‘real’ service, and those in their early twenties who were finishing their final year and were up at Afiq to recuperate before going home. They saw young people their same age, from another side of the world, and they looked at us in wonder, sometimes in envy. To be brought up in peace, to be free of paranoia as you walked down the street, to not have to worry about invasion of your country or being called upon to invade another, to be able to roam the earth and discover new worlds. This was all something they found difficult to comprehend.

•

My first day back at work. I walk alongside huge concrete walls, damp lichen curling over the top, climbing out from inside, rising from the bottom too, as if reaching out fingers to help. What look like barnacles crust into the middle, standing their ground. Fixed into position to keep the two growths apart. The singing of birds in nearby trees is disturbed by the barking of guard dogs stretching their vocal chords, straining at the leash. I walk into the staff entrance, take my shoes and belt off. Empty my pockets.

People want to know how the results went, expect good news. I’ve decided five is the maximum number of people I can speak to. I wanted to go out for dinner, get away from everyone, but there’s a leaving buffet. I’m eating crunchy bread and paté when someone slides up to me.

“Alright? Where have you been then? Off on holiday?”

He nearly spits his pork pie out when I tell him. Two minutes later, another colleague tells me dogs can smell cancer; start behaving differently. I feel blank in response, can’t think of anything to say. Can’t remember our dog acting any different.

We plan to spend the day in the garden, sorting out a timetable for the coming six months, how to get the vegetable plots bursting with goodness. But I need to send out invites for the launch of my first novel and Isla is off nursery sick and needs attention. So the day becomes a couple of hours instead. It’s Anna’s favourite place, the garden. Under these circumstances it could prove the difference between life and death. I pull old sprout plants out, cut them into the compost, tell myself I need to pull my weight in the garden more, research cancer and the immune system.

Joe’s watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, climbing onto the arm of the couch and jumping off, seeing how far he can propel himself through the air before landing on the wooden floor. And all this without taking his eyes off the telly. Another text comes through, one of many, the same as phone calls. Anna replies to most of the texts, leaves the majority of phone calls unanswered. Says she can only manage one conversation a day. If she answered the phone every time, accepted all requests to pop round, she’d be talking about her own cancer from the moment she woke up to the moment she put her head down. I pick the Sunday paper up, see the headline, “Cancer deaths to double in next forty years,” put it down instead, turn the radio on to find football scores, find out Eastenders Wendy Richard died just hours ago from the same disease.

Walking Caffrey early morning I see Brian about fifty metres away, stick in air, border collie ready to spring into action. I turn left instead, head away from him, towards the dene and muddy puddles. He doesn’t see me. But I’m sure he’d understand.

I get a group e-mail from Richard, Anna’s brother, about the annual summer party weekend he throws. He updates everyone on his wife’s pregnancy, then tells about Anna, states “survival has been downgraded from very good to good.” The sentence sticks in my throat, highlights stark truth, no matter how positive I want to be. It sounds terrifying. I don’t see the larger percentage that makes up ‘good’ when I read that sentence. I see the removal of ‘very.’ I see the smaller percentage, the one that stands for death, the one that’s increased, that could still be growing. My brother-in-law works just a few corridors away from where Anna was diagnosed. He’s a doctor.

My sister phones, the first time I’ve spoken to her since Anna was diagnosed with cancer. She breaks down on the phone, eventually gets it together again, says she loves us all, will do anything she can to help. I’m on the Internet, researching. Anna doesn’t want to herself, says she’ll take advice from me but won’t alter her lifestyle too much. I don’t understand. Her basic knowledge is far greater than mine. I have to start from scratch. But maybe that’s part of the reason. I read how chemotherapy and radiotherapy destroy healthy cells as well as cancerous ones, how they do more harm than good according to some reports, how some people recommend going nowhere near them. I read that a study of more than six hundred cancer patients who died within thirty days of receiving treatment showed chemotherapy probably caused or hastened death in twenty-seven percent of cases. In only thirty-five percent of these cases was care judged to have been good by the inquiry’s advisors, with forty-nine percent having room for improvement and eight per cent receiving less than satisfactory care. I read a study that shows chemotherapy can change the blood flow and metabolism of the brain in ways that can linger for ten years or more after treatment, that this could help explain the confusion, sometimes called “chemo brain,” reported by many chemotherapy patients. And The Times’ website tells me 300,000 patients now receive chemotherapy in the uk each year, a sixty per cent increase compared to 2004. Furthermore, cancer causes thirteen percent of all human deaths. And according to the American Cancer Society, 7.6 million people throughout the world died from cancer during 2007. I don’t tell Anna about these findings. She’ll put her life in the hands of the medical profession. She comes from a medical background. It’s the only thing she can do. If there’s any complimentary medicine or vitamins on offer and the medical profession don’t argue against them, then she’ll have those too she says, as long as there aren’t too many.

I come up with four supplements that are said to be vital in fighting cancer, but then I find another four, and then more too. We can’t afford all of them and Anna won’t pop loads of pills each meal time anyway. I don’t know which ones to buy. I don’t know which would be more useful, which could be vital. So I click on four, close my eyes and hope for the best.

•

We bounced along on the back of a trailer, half asleep and holding on for dear life as the sunrise slowly announced itself and smoke from our cheap cigarettes curled upwards to meet it. Fifteen minutes later a large man with curly black hair and straight face introduced himself as Amit, showed us a square of wood with a circle cut out the middle. We were picking apples he said, and he didn’t expect any that fitted through the circle. They were too small and had to be left on the trees. We set off in pairs, apple measurers around necks on string, four empty buckets each. When we filled our buckets they had to be emptied into large crates which were moved by tractor to ensure they were always in front of us. The picking was hard work and by seven in the morning the sun started to burn. But it was soothing too, once you got used to the boss barking instructions, as it took so little concentration, allowed your thoughts to wander. I worked with Rob down one line of trees while Anna and Helen had the next. Amit followed, checked trees, shouted we’d missed apples. Then he went and checked crates and shouted we’d put apples in that were too small. It was not a joke he said. The future of kibbutzim depended upon agriculture. The fruit went all over Israel, some of it abroad too. It was the kibbutz’s main source of income. They couldn’t survive without it. At eight we were back in the cabin eating omelette and salad for breakfast, speaking quietly as Israelis shouted across the table in Hebrew. Then we were given water bottles and sent back to work. I wandered along with Rob, climbed trees, chatted, found comfort in the combination of activity and silence. Whenever the opportunity arose though, my gaze drifted backwards to the two English girls smiling and chatting their way through the line of trees next to us. Faster they went, driven by childish competition that didn’t want boys to finish in front of them. I smiled and pointed, told them they’d missed some, would be in trouble. We stopped for cigarette breaks when the boss wasn’t around, sat crossed legged on the earth. That’s when I first became aware of Anna and myself staring into each other’s eyes, losing ourselves in a whirl of iris, in wonder and admiration. But there were times when we couldn’t look each other in the eye, when we had to look away, had to look anywhere but the eyes. I knew during those early days which way my hopes were turning. But there was one significant stumbling block. Anna was returning to England in December to study to be a nurse. Helen, like me, had no timescales to adhere to.

•

We’re on a wild manure hunt armed with wellies, spades and empty bags. After an hour we find some by the side of the road, a large pungent heap beautifully ready. We decide we should ask at the farm but the gate’s padlocked so we just help ourselves instead, all of us getting stuck in. As I dig out the better manure from the bottom of the pile, the top caves in and a little field mouse jumps comically for its life and scampers away. We fill eight bags and put them in the boot, then go home for dinner. Then we go to the school field for bike practice, assault course and family football. Nobody talks about cancer, about life or death. We simply live for the moment. And it’s a beautiful day, a perfect Sunday.

It’s last thing at night before bedtime. She’s in the shower when she notices this one as well. She doesn’t shout me upstairs, just waits until I walk into the bathroom, says it matter of fact. Points to her other breast.

“I’ve got another lump”

I move forwards, press my finger into her breast and squash it, just above the nipple. It’s there alright. It doesn’t feel much, just a tiny firm lump the size of a pea, a little smaller than the one on the other breast but similar in all other ways. It moves when I press it, like it’s trying to evade me singling it out, slip back to being unnoticed until it can spread its vile malignance further. Anna stands there in some kind of daze, water dripping from her naked body.

“It might not be cancer,” I say. “You’ll probably think it is just because of the last one, but it might not be”

She doesn’t look at me.

“It feels like the last one,” she says.

“Yeah I know, but the last one felt like a cyst according to the doctor so that’s no definite sign”

She smiles. One of those flat ones

“And even if it is, then it’s probably better to find it now anyway. Better that than wait two years down the line and think you’re in the clear”

Her face does nothing so I continue mumbling whatever comes into my head.

“They can probably just deal with everything in one go as well”

And then she looks up at me, scared puppy dog eyes.

“But can they operate on both at the same time?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I don’t know”

And I reach out to her naked body and pull her in close.

I’m going for lunch with Kathleen, a colleague and friend who’s been through it all herself fourteen years ago. She takes my hand, tells me everything will be alright, looks at me with eyes that understand. I telephone Anna who starts crying on the phone. The hospital doesn’t have any appointments until Thursday and that’s with a nurse, not a doctor, so she can’t be examined. She’s waiting for our GP to phone back, needs to speak to someone today. Needs someone to tell her that there really is a lump in her other breast. That she’s not imagining it.

“There is,” I say. “I felt it”

“I know,” she says. “But I need to see someone today. I need to speak to someone”

“I’ll cancel my class this afternoon, come back home”

“No, don’t worry”

“It’s not a problem. Everyone’s really understanding here”

“Honestly. It’s okay. Helen’s coming round in her lunch break. I’ll be fine, really I will”

So I put the phone down because she’s waiting for the doctor to ring. And Kathleen smiles gently, tells me everything will be alright.

We go for a walk across the cliffs, just the two of us and Caffrey. We walk right along the edge, look down at waves and rocks, curlews and gulls. Remember the time we saw what looked like the body of a shark washed up. When we first moved here I used to cycle along these cliffs to sign on in Whitley Bay, then sit down on an overhanging rock and write, wait for Anna coming back from work. It’s the first time she’s been here for years. It’s not the place to take young children, right on the edge, and it’s me who does the early morning and late night dog walking. We hold hands all the way, reminisce further; how we used to clamber over rocks together, take hours because we had no responsibilities, no time constraints. We look for the giant hole where we joked King Rabbit must have lived. Remember how we used to see men with guns and dogs out hunting. Hawks perched on shoulders. You don’t see hunters out here anymore. Disease has wiped most of the rabbits out.

•

The Golani came round most nights after a week or two; names like Hagai, Itsic, Moses, Uzi, Yossi and Hanan. It was a mutual fascination between us and them, outsiders together but a world apart in every other sense. Hesitant at first, they dropped by in groups of two or three. They asked about England, about London, hoped they would be able to travel themselves when they left the army. The older Golani said little about their military experience, found mutual interests and pressed these instead. Did we like The Doors? Velvet Underground? The Beatles and the Stones? Simon and Garfunkel? We made a fire, played chess, drank cheap Russian vodka from Tiberius. I played my tapes: Primal Scream, Van Morrison, KLF, Neil Young. A passing German called Holgar told of a place on the edge of the Egyptian Sinai Desert called Dahab. Said people of all nationalities went there to smoke cannabis, take opium, listen to Hendrix and Marley, scuba dive and chill by the sea. I added it to my agenda, straight in at the top of the list. He told us about Jerusalem, said we had to visit, but that two German girls were murdered there a few days before for being western. It happened in the Arab quarter where he told us to go to a cafe and ask for water pipe and hash. In the meantime, I climbed down rocks from Piq, found a fresh spring, picked fruit from the pomegranate tree, brought them back for Anna who was feeling off colour. Then one night, fed up with not being able to buy beer and sometimes cigarettes at the shop because kibbutz residents and soldiers were allowed in before volunteers, we set off at half past ten to walk to Bnei Yehuda, a settlement with a shop and pub more than a mile away. Three English and one Scot, walking through the Golan Heights in the pitch black, shuddering at the howling of wolves. Motivated by alcohol rather than adventure. On the way back, we laid down flat on the road. Looked up at a sky full to bursting with stars, pin pricks in heaven. Watched meteors enter the earth’s atmosphere, streak above us, leave behind shining trails of gas. Then, after just a few hours sleep, we were up again, spending the morning in baking heat, on cherry picking machines that allowed us to zoom up to the larger apple trees with our buckets. Anna, Helen and I agreed on a cigarette break every hour. Wherever we were in the orchards, we pulled the lever down until we rose higher than the trees, could see mile upon mile of Golan, watch the colour of the sky change, look out for eagles and vultures, wave to each other, lean back carefully and enjoy our smoke.

On the next Shabbat, Anna, Rob, Pete and I decided to hitch-hike to Hamat Gader on the Jordanian border. After walking for three hours in boiling heat we split into pairs to see if it made things easier. All the boys wanted to go with Anna. The company of a pretty girl was motivation enough but it also meant you were more likely to get picked up. Rob won. So he and Anna got a lift before Pete and I, who had to wait another half hour and then were dropped off a mile before our destination and had to walk along the road by the barbed wire and electric border fence. We were stopped three times by soldiers, advised to turn back at the border post of watchtowers, jeeps, Howitzers and rocket launchers. Still, on we continued. Anna and Rob were waiting at the gates with nervous smiles. Being Afiq volunteers we were able to get in without paying, due to some arrangement with the kibbutz that probably included free avocados, apples or chickens. We stripped off and sampled the bubbling hot water, fed by mineral rich hot springs that welled up from deep underground. Then we walked around the ruins, tried to imagine two thousand years before, when it was one of the largest and most luxurious health resorts in the Roman Empire. Finally, the alligator farm and a picnic on the grass, where we looked up from our low position to the two mountains either side of us, one Israeli occupied, the other Jordanian. And then, as our eyes returned towards ground level, we noticed for the first time, soldiers with machine guns on the roof of the expensive restaurant.

•

Cancer is a mistake cell that is growing wildly out of control, that may consume the patient through malnutrition, organ failure or infection. Nearly all cancers are caused by abnormalities in the genetic material of transformed cells. These abnormalities may be due to the effects of carcinogens such as tobacco smoke, radiation, chemicals, or infectious agents. Other cancer-promoting genetic abnormalities may be randomly acquired through errors in dna replication, or are inherited, and thus present in all cells from birth.

On such tiny details whole lives and families can be ripped apart.

Primary causes of cancer include:

•Poor nutrition; leading to an excess, deficiency or imbalance of certain nutrients

I put the book down and stare out the window. Anna has a better diet than anyone I know. She loves fruit and vegetables, salads and seafood, hardly ever eats fatty foods or ready meals. In the garden last year she grew potatoes, spinach, kale, carrots, broccoli, beans, peas, radishes, turnips, beetroot, tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, peppers, watercress and about five different types of lettuce. I walk into the kitchen, open a cupboard door. These are the different types of herbal teas we’ve got: revitalise, detoxify, clarity, peppermint, chamomile and spearmint, nettle, fennel, ginger, green tea, white tea, Egyptian spice, perk me up and sleep easy. Anna likes all of them. Combined they alleviate insomnia, relax nerves, relieve anxiety, reduce fever, reduce pain and swelling, eliminate excess fluids, enhance weight loss by reducing appetite, lower cholesterol, prevent tooth decay; soothe stomach aches, allay ulcers, bladders, kidneys and urinary tract ailments, cleanse the colon, soothe and promote healing of minor burns and skin irritations, provide the essential elements and dietary minerals lacking in our bodies, protect us from the formation of free radicals by neutralizing them before they can cause cellular damage and disease, promote endurance, increase stamina, enhance memory, improve circulation, boost the immune system, act as a digestive aid for nausea, vomiting and motion sickness and ease irritable bowel syndrome and menstrual cramps. I shake my head, shut the cupboard and walk back to my book to find out the second primary cause:

•Stress; the mind generates chemicals that can lower protective mechanisms against cancer

Anna is the most stable person I know, the most stable person I have ever known. People have always come to her when they’re in need of balance and neutrality, when they require a safe haven of calming energy, someone to listen without judgement. I feel like throwing the book through the window. This isn’t the way things were supposed to be. This wasn’t Anna’s role in life, just like it wasn’t her mother’s and her mother’s before that. She comes from a female blood line of angels upon earth. She’s had one day off sick in the last seven years. She’s never been a victim in her life.

•Sedentary lifestyle; exercise helps to oxygenate and regulate the entire body

The only programme Anna sits down and watches is Gardeners World; that’s half an hour a week. And she often doesn’t read until she’s lying in bed. She cooks, cleans, washes, chases after children, digs, plants and walks the dog. Since moving up to the North East nine years ago she’s worked on the home care, walking round the village looking after the elderly, then taken people with physical and learning disabilities out into their communities. Before that she worked as a massage therapist, massaging people with terminal cancer, and for the home care service in London. She doesn’t sit at a desk, fiddling around on a computer or answering the telephone. She couldn’t.

•Toxic burden; hence detoxification becomes crucial

I look to my mother, her allergies in this unnatural world we’ve created through our desire for progress, power and money, our fascination for technology and our need to fit into a world that gets faster and faster. I wonder about all the fruit and vegetables we’ve eaten, the chemicals that have been sprayed upon them to stop nature taking place, disease or pests consuming profits. If you took all the pesticides we’ve eaten throughout our lives, added them together and then offered the collection to us to drink right now, would there be a glassful or a bucketful? I think of the time Anna worked as a cleaner, squeezing out bleach, oven cleaner, multi surface sprays and bathroom mousses, ironically all with fragrances such as lavender, pine and lemon fresh; how she tried not to breathe in or had to leave the room for half an hour because of the fumes. And all those times when she just had to get on with it, breathe the fumes because she had to get finished on time. Had someone’s ironing to do before they came back from this slavery trap of modern life. And I wonder....

•

The dark had set in hours before. We carried on because there seemed no other choice. Pete was in a good mood, whistling and making up limericks. And he walked behind Anna and I most of the way, which was fine by us. Our initial intention was to walk all the way round the Sea of Galilee but we’d set off too late, probably for the best as we hadn’t realised it was more than fifty-three kilometres in circumference. Instead we bussed fourteen kilometres to Tiberius with the intention of hitch-hiking from there to Capernaum, where the apostles Peter, Andrew, James and John were born and where Jesus first began to preach to the masses. After half an hour Jane moaned enough for Helen to go back with her, leaving just Pete, Anna and I. By five p.m. we gave up the idea of hitch-hiking in favour of walking as far round the Sea of Galilee as we could, before sleeping in a bus stop until a bus arrived. By six p.m. it was pitch black and we were already tired, just Pete’s whistling and silly songs to motivate us. But on we went, because there was nothing else to do. At nine p.m. we reached a fish restaurant next to the ruins of Capernaum and stopped for one beer each, an extravagance we'd earned but could ill afford. Relaxing in welcome light for a change we were approached by a slight English lad called Ricky who described himself as an “alcoholic skinhead from Stoke” and had a tattoo on his forearm spelling ‘Riot.’ Ricky had been thrown off his kibbutz but had found work at this restaurant during the day. We finished our beers and he walked outside with us, said he was pleased to meet some English people for a change. Off the road we went, along the shore a little, found ourselves a spot. He gave us free beer and wine, steak with pitta bread, ice cream for pudding. We got drunk under the stars, cooked on a fire that lasted all night through, dipped our toes in the Galilee and laughed at Pete, who had a cardboard box to curl up in and looked downright miserable. Anna, Ricky and I settled down on thin mattresses and warmed ourselves to sleep by the fire. Then promising to visit again, we said goodbye to Ricky in the morning and got a hitch straight away, missing completely the new church built on the site of Saint Peter’s house, the ruins of the old Roman town, one of the oldest synagogues in the world and an excavated fishing boat from the time of Jesus. Another lift took us to the bottom of the Golan, where Pete accepted a lift to Bnei Yehuda. Anna and I decided to walk. And it was here, among the golden slopes of the Golan, pausing to look back down at the shimmering Galilee with aching legs, that I first realised I was falling in love with the girl beside me. We didn’t speak much, just smiled at each other and continued climbing, turned round to convince ourselves we were really there. I touched the top of her sun darkened back, her shoulder that glistened with sweat. I pretended to pull her up, an excuse to hold her hand while she laughed along, and Ricky got the sack back down below. It took us three hours to arrive at the top, another hour to make our way back to Afiq. But there, climbing that dusty road under deep blue skies, unable to venture off track because of signs that warned of landmines, we were as happy as we ever could be.

•

Anna goes off to Newcastle for her hastily arranged appointment with a breast care nurse, hoping to find something for Isla’s birthday beforehand. I pick Joe up from school, ask if he wants a story cd for the car as we’re going to get Isla from nursery.

He wants “rock-star” music, asks if I have any.

“Of course.” I walk over to my music collection. “I’ve got lots”

“Yes Daddy, but does it have guitars?”

“Oh yes”

“And drums as well? Does it have drums?”

I smile to myself. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. He didn’t like “noisy” music before. He preferred classical.

“All rock-star music has guitars and drums Joe”

Fifteen minutes later we’re driving through North Shields listening to The Ramones on high volume and I find myself disappointed that Joe isn’t trying to jump out of his booster seat, that he hasn’t commented how cool the police siren start to Psycho Therapy is. Isla’s overjoyed to see her big brother, rushes to cuddle him. I stand there, proud parent of two beautiful, intelligent and sensitive children. Things are different on the way home though. If Isla isn’t shouting then Joe’s moaning. And if Joe isn’t moaning then Isla’s shouting. Most of the time though, there’s both shouting and moaning. When they start hitting each other I lose my temper, yell at them to behave and keep quiet. But then we turn into our street and Joe spots Anna out the window. His moaning stops instantly and I haven’t applied the handbrake before he’s running down the street towards her. Isla’s not far behind, screaming in delight. I look down the pavement at them all hugging, seatbelt tight to my chest, stopping my heart from falling out. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. They don’t have a clue about what’s to come, about what their Mammy has to go through, about how it could kill her.

Anna’s been reassured by the nurse but can’t remember anything she was told. Later she remembers the nurse has worked in breast care for over eleven years and only once has seen cancer spread from one breast to the other. In all other instances of two breasts being infected they’ve been separate cases of cancer. We look at each other, smile weakly. Every time we’ve received news so far it’s been terrible, the situation worsening. People say ‘don’t worry, she’s young and healthy, she’ll fight it off.’ I’ve heard it numerous times. Don’t they realise? When you’re younger your cells multiply faster. Cancer spreads quicker. But then, what did I know about cancer, even just a few days ago? Since diagnosis she’s received mountains of cakes and chocolates from friends, all well-meaning and given with love. Tumours feed on sugars, devour them. It’s the worst possible thing you can eat. I look at her; that lost expression when the children aren’t around, when she’s not doing something to take her mind from it. She’s slim, small chested too. It wouldn’t have far to travel from one to the other. But I say something designed to be reassuring. She has another appointment on Tuesday, to see if she has cancer in the other breast. And, I presume, to ask about the likelihood of cancer elsewhere; and chances of survival. Tuesday is important for another reason too. It’s March 10th; Isla’s third birthday.

•

We were told to stay in the living room with the lights off until the military exercise was finished. A neighbouring kibbutz’s soldiers were going to invade and see if they could take over some of the houses. If we’d known what was to happen the very next night we wouldn’t have found it all so exciting, wouldn’t have smiled at the irony of such timing. The operation was over the other side of Afiq so we couldn’t see anything. Instead, we lit a candle and told ghost stories. It only took twenty minutes but nobody told us. We stayed like that for over two hours until someone saw Hagai wandering about. Then, with lights on, we talked about travelling. Anna said she couldn’t. It didn’t matter how much she wanted to. She had to move to Newcastle in January to start nursing training. Everything was organised. Helen said everyone was getting itchy feet because three weeks had elapsed and with it came the growing realisation that this was not a holiday. We’d signed up for the kibbutz way of life for three months though it was becoming obvious some wouldn’t make it that far. Natural groups had formed; me with Anna, Rob and Helen; Sharon with Shirley, Jane with Sarah and Pete by himself. Late at night Anna and I walked across the Golan to the pub at Bnei Yehuda, just the two of us. On the way back we walked beneath rockets that made strange hissing noises and lit up the night sky over the Syrian border. I wanted to take hold of her hand as we hurried along but didn’t dare, didn’t want her to realise how scared I was. Then back at the volunteer houses we found a scorpion in the shower room. Rob ushered it out with a broom before we shut all doors tight, checked beds and sleeping bags, clothes and boots as they prefer dark comfy places. And then we turned the lights off and crawled into beds with nerves on edge.