Iris (22 page)

None the less the disquiet returned in full force when the extremely nice Israeli novelist Amos Oz came up to speak to me next day. He said nothing about Iris, but from the way he looked at me I
was suddenly aware that he, so to speak, knew all. Perhaps as a fellow novelist, perhaps just because he was an extremely shrewd, observant and knowledgeable man. He said casually that he lived in
the Negev desert not far away, and would love us to come and stay with him. Any time, for as long as you want, it would be no bother. I could not make out whether this was pure kindness on his
part, whether he meant it, whether he was lonely, whether he had taken a fancy to Iris, or wanted to study a fellow-novelist who had gone off the beam, or was going off it. Oz’s handsome and
youthful face, which reminded me a little of Lawrence of Arabia, seemed none the less far too natural and too much on its own to be concerned with any of these motives. Or so it seemed. And I think
it was equally natural for him to say, and to want, what he suggested. I have sometimes wished that we could have gone, but it seems much too late now to take someone up, even this seraphic man, on
such an offer. I have always enjoyed his novels. He might – looking back – have been a kind of angel of the desert, like the one who appeared to Jacob.

That was in the spring of 1994. Jerusalem, ‘city of light, of copper and of gold’, was looking marvellously beautiful. In the autumn, by coincidence, we received another exotic
invitation, as if such things had begun to arrive – for one reason or another it was years since we had been abroad in this way – at a time when Iris’s ability to respond to them,
and to do a good job, had begun to falter. It was to Bangkok, to take part in the ceremony of awards at the South-East Asian Writers’ Conference. All went well. Possibly the writers from
Thailand, Singapore, Malaya and the Philippines were not sufficiently in fine tune with their European colleagues to detect when a novelist like Iris, who happened to be the only writer from the
West present, was in trouble with what had begun to amount to speaker’s, as well as writer’s, block.

Writers are not usually behindhand in talking about themselves, their projects and methods of work, and Iris’s backwardness in this respect may have seemed at this voluble oriental
gathering a becoming sort of modesty. Or perhaps they were too polite to notice. Even when the Crown Prince awarded the prizes, and we had each to make a little speech, Iris acquitted herself well.
I had rehearsed her, and written out a suggested version of what she should say, in block capitals. Each writer who attended the ceremony was required, on reaching the podium, to present a sample
of his or her work to the Crown Prince. Iris duly presented a Penguin
Under the Net
. This the Prince accepted and passed behind him without looking round. A courtier received it at the
crouch, at once passing it to another official behind him, as in a game of rugby football. The book eventually reached the end of the scrum and disappeared through a doorway. I wondered what
happened to the books at the end of the day: whether they were preserved in the royal library or quietly incinerated in some remote compound.

I was the more reassured during this visit because an extremely pleasant Englishman who worked on the
South China Times
sought us out whenever his duties permitted, and himself seemed
to find Iris’s company and conversation reassuring. He told us he often felt extremely lonely and depressed out there. That didn’t seem surprising. We ourselves felt weighed down by a
sort of Far Eastern melancholy, not wholly attributable to the monsoon weather, for the monotonous rain and soft overpowering warmth was something to be enjoyed, at least for a time. The broad
river spilled over the hotel frontage like tea brimming over a saucer, and we used to stand watching it, fascinated by the huge branches wreathed in green creepers that floated past at high speed,
level with our eyes. They did nothing to intimidate the drivers of the slender craft that buzzed about the river, propelled by a sort of eggwhisk at the end of a powerful engine that roared and
echoed down the
klongs
like an express train. It was a special relief to stand outside in the warm rain because the hotel rooms, heavily air-conditioned, felt icy. Our suite, furnished in
ornate colonial style, advertised itself as the favourite stopping-place of Somerset Maugham on his Far Eastern trips. His chilly presence certainly seemed to pervade it.

Jackson had been finished at last, and named
Jackson’s Dilemma
. Iris was gloomy about it, but so she was about any novel she had done with, and I did not feel unduly perturbed.
For the first time I took to enquiring about her ideas for a next novel. She had ideas she said, but they wouldn’t come together. She was trying to catch something by its tail, and it always
eluded her. She sounded resigned. Hoping against hope now I worried and importuned her every day. Any luck? Is anything happening? You must go on trying. If I went on too long she would start
crying, and then I stopped quickly and tried to console her. After the Far Eastern trip the sardonic face of Somerset Maugham, smiling from signed photos all round the hotel room, still haunted me
at moments when I was telling Iris that all writers at some time suffered from writer’s block. ‘I never had writer’s block,’ he seemed to be saying, with an air of
contempt.

Nor did Iris have it. That soon became clear. Alzheimer’s is in fact like an insidious fog, barely noticeable until everything around has disappeared. After that it is no longer possible
to believe that a world outside fog exists. First we saw our own friendly harassed GP, who asked Iris who the Prime Minister was. She had no idea but said to him with a smile that it surely
didn’t matter. He arranged an appointment at the big hospital with a specialist in geriatrics. Brain scans followed; and after an article appeared about this famous novelists’s current
difficulties the Cambridge Research Unit of the Medical Council took a special interest, giving her a number of exhaustive tests in memory and language which she underwent politely, seeming both to
humour the researchers and to enjoy working with them.
Jackson’s Dilemma
came out and got exceptionally good reviews. I read these reviews to Iris, a thing I had never done before
because she had never before wanted to listen. Now she listened politely but without understanding.

The irony did not bother her or even occur to her. Nor did I tell her that there had also been a number of letters about the reviews, pointing out small errors and inconsistencies in the
narrative of
Jackson’s Dilemma
. It was clear that these points were mostly made by fans, fondly indicating that the writer they admired so much could sometimes nod. Meanwhile I was
anxiously canvassing medical opinion about the possibility of ameliorative drugs. An old friend and fan, a Swedish expert on autism, sent some pills to try, a mild stimulant of the intellectual
processes. The new experimental drugs were not recommended, and no doubt wisely, for they have since been shown to be all too temporary in their effect, and apt, during a brief period of possible
effectiveness, to confuse and even horrify the recipient. The friendly fog suddenly disperses, revealing a precipice before the feet.

When writing about the onset of Alzheimer’s it is difficult to remember a sequence of events; what happened when, in what order. The condition seems to get into the narrative, producing
repetition and preoccupied query, miming its own state. I remarked on this to Peter Conradi, Iris’s future biographer, who had already become a pillar of close friendship, support and
encouragement. He and his friend and partner Jim O’Neill were longstanding friends of Iris’s, who had in former times often visited them in Clapham. He is a passionate admirer of her
books and knows them inside out. Even more important, he loves her and the atmosphere in which she lives and moves. He knows her thought; and he responds to her own knowledge with deep feeling. The
same goes for Jim, whose sense of Iris’s being gives her a unique kind of comfort. He too is widely read in her novels, and a shrewd and practical critic.

Iris loved seeing their blue-eyed sheepdog Cloudy, and she loved talking to this extraordinarily dedicated and relaxing couple about books and philosophy and Buddhism. Both somehow fit a routine
of meditation, retreats, hospitality to visiting dignitaries from Tibet or Bhutan, into their own working lives: Jim a psychotherapist, Peter a professor of literature. In now distant days Iris
used to return to Steeple Aston or Hartley Road full of her visit to them, and of what they had told her about their Welsh cottage, a converted schoolhouse. They told her of the pool they had built
in the field beneath it, the kingfishers and otters who came to visit there.

They were always pressing us to come and stay. When we managed it at last Iris already needed all the support this great pair could give her.
Jackson
came out in 1995: Iris’s
condition has deteriorated steadily over the past eighteen months. Like someone who knows he cannot for much longer avoid going out into the cold I still shrink from the need for professional care
– helpers, the friendly callers of Age Concern, even the efforts of kind friends. All that is to come, but let us postpone it while we can: Iris becomes troubled as well as embarrassed if she
feels a visit is to keep her company, or to look after her if I have to be absent. In fact I am never absent, so helpers are not now needed. We are lucky to be able to go on living in the state to
which we have always been accustomed; Iris can still go out to lunch alone with such an old friend as Philippa Foot.

And Peter and Jim make all this still easier. They do not bother about the dirt in the carpet or the stains on the glasses, although their own home is kept like a new pin and so is the Welsh
cottage. They pick us up as often as it can be done, and carry us off there.

We proclaim Auden’s lines joyously together sometimes, sitting in the back of the car. It’s a joke, for we know better. So it seems does Cloudy, who sleeps during the journey with
her head in Iris’s lap, but who opens her muzzle to smile, while her blue eyes shine with anticipation.

PART II

1 January 1997

Didn’t Margaret Thatcher, at mention of whose name Cloudy always starts barking, use to say there was no such thing as ‘society’? She didn’t put it in
inverted commas of course: she knew what she meant. But her point wouldn’t have been so obviously untrue if she had said there is no such thing as the ‘people’, a word that today
only achieves some sort of meaning if placed, whether accidentally or deliberately, in a given context. It made sense afterwards to say that Diana Princess of Wales was ‘the people’s
princess’, because when she died everybody grieved, publicly and together. But ‘the people’ are a fictitious body, invoked by politicians in the interest of democratic
emotionalism, whereas ‘society’ is still a neutrally descriptive term, making sense in any context. The only way ‘the people’ can be contextualised is as ‘ordinary
people’, another purely emotive phrase which has just been used by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his New Year’s speech on TV. Every ‘ordinary’ person is in fact
extraordinary, often grotesquely so, and in every sort of way.

Pondered such matters while making Iris her drink, after the Archbishop’s speech. Important to make a routine of this. Around twelve o’clock or a little before. The drink itself
slightly dishonest: a little drop of white wine, a dash of angostura bitters, orangeade, a good deal of water. Iris likes it, and it has a soothing effect, making her sit watching TV for longer
periods. Otherwise she is apt to get up and stand with her back to the TV, fiddling incessantly with her small
objets trouvés
– twigs and pebbles, bits of dirt, scraps of
silver foil, even dead worms rescued from the pavement on our short walks. She also puts water – sometimes her drink – on the potted plants by the window, which are now wilting under
the treatment. But she never does this with a real drink, an alcoholic one. Sensible girl, her old fondness for bars still stands her in good stead.

Teletubbies. They are part of the morning ritual, as I try to make it. I have to insist a bit, as Alzheimer’s now seems to have grown inimical to routines. Perhaps we all
know by instinct that an adopted routine preserves sanity?

Just after ten, as part of the BBC 2 children’s programme, the Teletubbies come on. One of the few things we can really watch together, in the same spirit. ‘There are the
rabbits!’ I say quite excitedly. One of the charms of this extraordinary programme is the virtual reality landscape supplied. An area of sunlit grass – natural – dotted with
artificial flowers beside which the real rabbits hop about. The sky looks authentic as well, just the right sort of blue with small white clouds. The Teletubbies have their underground house,
neatly roofed with grass. A periscope sticks out of it. A real baby’s face appears in the sky, at which I make a face myself, but Iris always returns its beaming smile.