Miss Carter's War Page 29

  ‘But that’s nonsense, Tony. Just malign gossip. Why on earth would some illness be confined to gay men? You’ve got to get a grip. You keep looking on the black side. You’re depressed.’

  ‘Well, everything is bloody depressing. The country’s going to the dogs.’

  Marguerite seized on an opportunity to change to a subject that always invigorated Tony.

  ‘Nonsense. I know she’s anathema to you, but I think Maggie’s doing a good job. You’ve got to admit she’s got guts.’

  Tony rose to the bait.

  ‘I hate her. She’s caused mayhem. I’ll never get over that sick-making entry into No. 10. What a joke that turned out to be. Where there is discord let there be fucking harmony? Some hopes. The destruction of our industry. Race riots. The Troubles. It’s bloody civil war, I tell you.’

  ‘That’s my boy. Now stop worrying about nothing.’

  Whereas in the past, with the Queen’s Coronation and Churchill’s funeral, they had felt part of the patriotic unity in the country, Marguerite and Tony did not join the rest of the confused British public as they went from cheering the meek girl submerged in billows of crumpled ivory silk, nervously eyeing her husband, the future King, to half-heartedly waving their flags in the victory parade, not attended by the royals, to celebrate the defence of some islands few even knew existed.

  Apart from one visit to Greenham Common to support the removal of American missiles, Marguerite’s radicalism again faded. Tony did not actively support the miners either in their struggle for existence. Activity generally seemed to be too much of an effort for him. Sport at school was limited as they had no playing fields, since they were sold off by the government.

  Tony was surprisingly pleased.

  ‘I can’t run up and down a football pitch any more. Blowing my whistle for a gentle game of girls’ netball in the playground is about my limit nowadays. Bugger the health of the nation’s youth. What about mine?’

  Over the years Tony’s face had matured into craggy good looks but Marguerite had to reassure him.

  ‘You’re still devastatingly handsome. You look like Paul Scofield. Much more interesting than that Greek God blandness you used to have.’

  But Tony was inconsolable. Being in his early sixties troubled him deeply.

  ‘I hate being old. My body doesn’t do what I want it to, and I don’t want an interesting face. I want to be young and beautiful again.’

  ‘I’m the one who should be saying that. I’m a woman. It’s supposed to be worse for us to lose our looks.’

  ‘Well, it’s not. I’m turning into a decaying old queen and it horrifies me. You’re an attractive mature woman. That’s much nicer.’

  ‘Well, I love you. And so does Donald. So shut up and count your blessings.’

  Marguerite frequently found herself boosting Tony’s ebbing confidence and joking him out of depression. Usually these grey moods engulfed him for no apparent reason, but as time went on and Donald seemed often to be sick, Marguerite too began to be worried about his health.

  After several years’ respite from the repeated illnesses that he had suffered at the end of the 1970s, he was ailing again. One of his feet had a painful spur, which made every leap torture, and there were signs of early arthritis in his overstressed knees. He missed several scheduled performances because of various maladies. Due to this unreliability in the age-averse world of ballet, at forty he was deemed too old for romantic leads. He was now less in demand, even for smaller character parts. There was talk of him becoming ballet master, which involved teaching the newcomers roles that he had danced.

  Donald and Tony began to discuss their future. The talks included Marguerite as their lives were so entwined. Tony, frustrated as he was at teaching sport with no facilities and his reluctant physique, planned to retire in four or five years’ time and what with Donald being less involved with the ballet company, they looked forward to travelling and generally enjoying themselves. Marguerite was not so happy at the idea of retirement but considered leaving the grind of school to do more part-time tutoring with the Open University. The prospect of more travel, more fun, had great appeal. Having spent all her working life controlled by timetables, she felt cautiously excited about the idea of more freedom from responsibility. The three of them made lists of countries they wished to visit, journeys they would make. When Tony suggested they go to France and see her old haunts in Paris and the Vaucluse, she agreed to Paris but demurred at the Vaucluse.

  ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘After forty-odd years?’

  ‘I don’t want to open old wounds.’

  ‘You’d prefer to cover them up and let them fester?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Since his disenchantment with the cosy memories of his own past, Tony was understanding of Marguerite’s fear of revisiting hers.

  ‘OK, fair enough.’

  ‘He’s probably dead or married. I’d rather not know. I prefer to hang on to my memories, carpe the diem, and look forward to lovely new adventures with you two.’

  Chapter 40

  A few weeks after the night when they began planning their futures Tony and Marguerite were watching television in her flat, waiting for Donald to join them for supper after a performance. He was very late, and when he eventually arrived he looked wild-eyed and had obviously been drinking. Tony, ever worried that Donald would leave him for someone younger, upbraided him for being rude to Marguerite.

  To their alarm Donald burst into tears.

  ‘I’ve been having a drink with Rudi and some of the boys. He was telling us how many people have died in America. There has been some research done and they have found this thing called GRID. Gay Related Immune Deficiency. There’s no cure. You can be tested to see if you’ve got it. Rudi said we should be. He has, but he wouldn’t tell us the result. I’m terrified. All those illnesses I’ve been having. I think I’ve got it.’

  Tony was silent.

  Marguerite said, ‘Why on earth do you think that? How do you get it? Is it infectious or contagious?’

  ‘They don’t know for sure. It seems to be through sex. Gay sex. No one seems to know anything for sure. But people are dying. More and more people. And nearly all gay.’

  Tony was poleaxed by fear for Donald, but Marguerite decided to find out all she could about this secret scourge. Few seemed to either know or care about what was happening to the increasingly ostracised gay community. Soon the news began to filter into the papers, as deaths were reported in England. The tabloids made a meal of this ‘gay plague’. Little was done about it, whilst it was thought the illness only attacked homosexual men.

  She didn’t want Donald to know that she was scrabbling around for help until she had some good news to report, so she only talked confidentially to his best friend in the company who recommended she talk to a ballerina, now retired, whom Donald had partnered in leading roles. Still exquisite, hair swept back in a bun, erect and graceful with her tortured, turned-out feet now in comfortable furry slippers, Isabella told Marguerite all she had found out in an effort to help her former colleagues.

  ‘It’s no longer called GRID because they realised it’s not just gays who get it. It’s now Human Immunodeficiency Virus. That’s the first stage, which can last for years. That develops into Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. If you get that, you’ve had it.’

  ‘Surely not. There must be some cure?’

  ‘Nope. And what’s more, nobody’s really trying to find one. Did you hear what that charmer in Manchester said?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh the Chief Constable of Police, no less, James Anderton by name. He waxed poetic, saying homosexuals were swirling around in a cesspool of their own making. Nice, eh?’

  Although Isabella gave Marguerite little hope for a good outcome, she recommended a visit to a doctor they all knew.

  Dr Patrick Woodcock lived in Pimlico, where various actors, dancers and singers picked their way through the street market to his elegant
house for supplies of purple hearts, pep-up Vitamin B12 injections, beta-blockers for stage fright and advice on plastic surgery. He understood and was deeply fond of his colourful talented patients and was distraught at this catastrophe that was engulfing them. He had known Donald since he was a pupil at the Royal Ballet School and had kept him dancing through injuries and the wear and tear on his body of the brutal regime of a dancer. When Marguerite took Donald to see him he gave Donald a physical examination, checking his glands and lingering over a raised black patch that had recently appeared on his back. His hand was trembling as he took a sample of blood. When Donald went behind the screen to put on his clothes Dr Woodcock looked at Marguerite and slowly shook his head. Then Donald reappeared and he assumed his usual jolly demeanour.

  ‘Well, lovey, I’ll let you have the results in a few days. In the meantime take it easy. No lifting those girlies. Take some time off. Let Tony and Marguerite here make a fuss of you.’

  The results of the test confirmed their worst fears. Donald was HIV-positive and had already started the terrifying descent into full-blown AIDS.

  Tony seemed unable to comprehend what was happening. He wandered around the flat in a state of shock, sometimes sitting by Donald’s bed or chair, holding his hand and muttering, ‘I love you. Please, please, get better.’

  It was left to Marguerite to do what she could to nurse Donald through the horror of the illness. She was pleased to do it as it gave her no time to think.

  Donald’s suffering was appalling. Over a few months his perfect body wasted away to a skeleton, and was further desecrated by the purplish black pustules. He could not swallow or talk properly, because a vile fungal infection blackened his mouth. His sight began to fail. He was dying before their eyes, and they were helpless.

  She wants to go back. She doesn’t want him to die convulsing, bleeding on his own. He writhes in agony but she runs on. Jacob wants her to escape. That’s why he is dying. She has no choice but to run on.

  As she sat with Tony by Donald’s bedside watching the sweet man they both loved trapped inside his rotting body, yet still struggling to comfort them with word or gesture, she could hardly bear her pain, but for Tony’s sake she had to simulate calm. The outside world was seething with hatred towards these grotesquely suffering men. More and more of their friends were dying and nothing was being done to help them. It was confirmed that drug addicts too were falling victim to the scourge and nobody cared about them either. Marguerite was terrified that wherever she was Elsie too might succumb.

  Despite some drugs from Dr Woodcock it was obvious to Marguerite she lacked the expertise to ease what was clearly becoming the final stage of Donald’s life, so that he could die with the same grace with which he had lived. She tried desperately to get him into a hospice, but none would take patients with AIDS. He eventually died an appalling death on a trolley pushed into a corner of a hospital emergency ward, with one doctor, masked, gloved and gowned, looking nervously on. Marguerite and Tony each held one of his hands, as his cracked, bleeding lips tried to smile, before his lids at last, mercifully, closed over his gentle brown sightless eyes.

  Then ensued the horror of finding an undertaker that would handle his body. Eventually Donald was cremated in a bleak chapel, with a rudimentary service, conducted by a vicar who did not know him. They were both too consumed by despair to arrange the funeral. His family had disowned him years ago and it seemed unfair to ask the beleaguered members of the company to put their minds to the funeral of someone who had died of the disease of which they were all living in dread, so they left it to the vicar.

  It proved a challenge to the poor man. Coming from the James Anderton religious standpoint, his chosen readings tended towards ominous warnings about sin and the difficulty of entering the kingdom of heaven. As Marguerite and Tony and a few members of the ballet company were the only people there, none of them was particularly worried about that likelihood.

  The vicar did make one misguided attempt to be tolerant with a passage from the Gospel of St Matthew, ‘ “Jesus said not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs, who are born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are those that choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.” ’

  Marguerite and Tony listened open-mouthed. Their exhaustion got the better of them, and they collapsed into helpless giggles as the coffin slid bumpily through a grubby purple curtain, accompanied by some unidentifiable organ musak. The vicar strode out without a word, and they were left clinging to one another sobbing and laughing.

  ‘Donald would have loved that. What a farce.’

  Then as suddenly as it had started the laughter died. Tony gripped her shoulder, wiping her tears with his other hand.

  ‘I killed him you know, Mags, I killed him.’

  Judging them both to be in no state to talk seriously Marguerite decided to wait until they were home before she asked Tony what he meant. They went into her flat, neither of them able to deal with Donald’s gaping absence upstairs. Marguerite cooked Welsh rarebit. They finished a bottle of wine and then settled in front of the fire with large brandies.

  For a long while they were silent staring into the flames, trying to comprehend the finality of Donald’s death and not daring to articulate the horror that had preceded it. As she poured more brandy into their glasses Marguerite remarked, ‘Thank Christ that’s over,’ meaning the funeral.

  Tony stared at the flickering light of the fire on his glass.

  ‘No, it isn’t. It never will be. Even if one day I get over this wrenching loss, which I doubt, the guilt will never leave me.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Tony? You were his life. You gave him love and support. He adored you.’

  ‘But I killed him.’

  ‘Stop it, Tony. This is nonsense.’

  ‘How do you suppose he contracted HIV?’

  ‘Nobody knows why people get it.’

  ‘They are pretty certain now that one way is promiscuous sex. Now which of us, Donald or me, fitted that category?’

  ‘But not recently.’

  ‘The virus can be undetected for years and years, but you’re still a carrier. Besides—’

  ‘Tony, I don’t want to hear this, do I?’

  ‘And I don’t want to admit it. But I need to. When Donald was away on that tour of America, God forgive me, one night I went cottaging. Force of habit. It didn’t mean a thing. Only once. I was ashamed of betraying him, but could never have imagined what the consequences would be. A mindless, empty adventure, and I killed our beautiful boy.’

  It was pointless trying to argue with Tony. He would not even agree to be tested to see if he was actually carrying the virus.

  ‘What’s the point? If it wasn’t me, then it opens other unthinkable possibilities, and what would I personally gain by knowing? There’s no cure, and I’m not likely to infect anyone else. There will never be anyone else. Anyway, I want to get it. I want to die. Who knows, that vicar and his gang may be right. There may be an afterlife. Donald will be in paradise but he’ll put in a word for me and we’ll be together again. Or there will be nothing. Nothing would be good. Better than this.’

  ‘Come to bed, Tony. Let’s have a cuddle.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid—? Remember the advert, “There’s a new danger that’s a threat to us all.” ’

  ‘Listen, I’ve tried for years to seduce you, I’m not likely to succeed now.’

  All night they clung together as they used to do, gently kissing, stroking, comforting, sincerely loving.

  Chapter 41

  A few days after the funeral Marguerite forced Tony to go with her to work. The febrile atmosphere caused by the leaflets warning against AIDS delivered to every household, and the doom-laden adverts on the television, as well as ignorance as to the cause and means of transmission, made it dangerous to reveal that their
friend had died of the disease. Feeling like traitors, they did not mention the cause of his death, merely that they had attended the funeral of a mutual friend. Neither had ever become close to other staff members at the school so no one was particularly interested anyway. An assumption had been made that Marguerite and Tony were in some sort of relationship, which successfully covered any questions about Tony’s sexuality. Thanks to the innuendoes of some outrageously camp comics on television, people were more aware of homosexuality; as a joke though, not, certainly since the AIDS scare, with much more tolerance. Such was the public confusion, linking homosexuality with paedophilia, that it would have been impossible for Tony to work as a sports master if it had been known that he was gay.

  Over the next few months they struggled to come to terms with their loss of Donald. It felt as if all the joy had gone from their lives. His exquisite taste, his gentle concern for them both, and his indefatigable sense of fun had brought enjoyment to the everyday. He supervised what they wore, what they ate, and had taken over from Tony as ‘treats’ organiser. It was impossible to be bored with him around. He made the ordinary exciting: a walk on Hampstead Heath, a visit to the Zoo, shopping in the food hall at Harrods, a Gilbert & George exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, old-time music hall at the Players’ Theatre, ham, egg and chips at Pellicci’s Café in the East End.

  ‘Hurry up, you slowcoaches, you’ve just got to see/hear/do this.’ Donald’s eyes aglow as he danced ahead of them. His chortle of pleasure when they shared his relish.

  That someone who cherished all that was lovely should have died such an ugly death erased for ever any possibility of a benign God. Marguerite could not be bothered to try and reconcile her Catholic conditioning, which still lurked in the recesses of her mind, with the unutterable cruelty of what had happened to Donald.