‘I—’ but her voice caught as adrenaline flooded through her. Phyllida had worked hard to push away the heavy thoughts; the sick niggling sense that things were not good. She had worked hard to convince herself that her intuition was out of kilter—that all would be well—so that now she found herself tripping over the idea of sharing anything at all. David had expressly asked her not to, which should be reason enough. Still, Caleb was a doctor, and yes, he wassomewhatfriendly with David from his Saturday bookshop visits, but Caleb was bound to secrecy in this context, wasn’t he? She was the patient, so it didn’t matter what she told him. It was confidential.
‘Anyway,’ she said, resolved now to her task, ‘is there an information sheet you can give me, on nutrition in cancer for helping immunity? A booklet? I realise there are many types, but surely all varieties respond to a boosted immune response if the cells are properly fed?’
Caleb appeared to be far away for a moment, staring at the wall behind her. She had an odd desire to check behind her shoulder, even though she knew it was only the door there.
Finally he said, ‘You’ll want specific information on the type of cancer you’re dealing with, I expect. Not just the nutritional side of things. And it will be important how early they’ve caught it. What stage it’s at. I can give you information, but it will bedifferent for each type of cancer, and … will depend on the severity of the disease, and on the treatment he’s decided to undertake.’
‘He or she,’ said Phyllida.
‘He or she,’ agreed Caleb.
‘Well …’ She took a breath, thought about how to answer. She didn’t actually know much. They had told her he would be starting treatment in Sydney, next week. Then, on the phone, David had been making an appointment and mentioned some details. He would be staying with Miriam in Sydney, he said, so not to worry herself about accommodation.
‘Well,’ she began again, ‘I know he told someone on the phone that it was …’ She hesitated, bringing the conversation to mind. ‘It was stage four.’ She ignored his deepening frown. She took a breath and focused. ‘And it was pancreatic.’
Phyllida had studied herbs and ancient medical texts over the years; had a good handle on the human body. As a young woman, she had sold a first edition ofGray’s Anatomyto a young woman in a trench coat who said she wanted it for the diagrams. Printed in 1858 but still in pretty good condition, considering. But there was nothing in her shop right now that was even remotely useful in this situation. David had told her about these new computer inventions, recently. Information superhighways that could be accessed at your fingertips, apparently. Internets, he called them. They sounded very complicated, and anyway, she didn’t have one. So, Phyllida had no information available to her about pancreatic cancer. She hoped it was one of the curable ones. ‘I assume it can be …’ She trailed off as she noticed his eyes, now as big as saucers. ‘He said he needs to delay the start of his universitycourse work, that he needs time off. Or …sheneeds it … Is that enough information for you, though? Is it useful?’
Phyllida regarded Caleb with interest. Her urge to cry had completely cleared now. She was zipping with resolve. She’d made the decision to confide, and she would soon get the correct information. Did her lovely boy need chicken soup or was spinach better? Turmeric was thought to detoxify carcinogens, but milk thistle might work too. It was good for your liver, and there was bound to be some digestive system interaction with the pancreas, surely?
Phyllida just needed some more details about how the systems interacted with food and with each other. She was aware that some herbs, while used for healing certain ailments, could be harmful for others. She just needed clarity and for Doctor Patel to tell her that all approaches were valid. And if she was honest, she wanted the reassurance of modern medicine; for the doctor to tell her that David would be all right. Ancient herbal knowledge passed down by her grandmother was one thing, but when it came to the crunch, to David, she wanted a guarantee from someone with a medical degree.
‘I see,’ said Caleb, not meeting her gaze.
She wanted his eye contact; she wanted to explain her thought processes, her ideas on how her own medicinal research might interact with his learnings. She had read an Ayurvedic text not long ago in an Orientalist collection of books she’d bought. It was fascinating the way they considered herbs as powerful medicines. Ancient wisdom, still so relevant. She had so many questions about smoothing the way to a quick recovery. And did David really need to do chemotherapy in Sydney? Was there some sortof option locally? Caleb was sure to know. Caleb would be her co-conspirator in herGetting David Betterproject.
But then, Phyllida realised something wasn’t right. It was the strangest thing. Caleb’s lovely rich complexion had vanished.
He looked pensive for a long time. ‘I’m going to proceed on the basis that we are talking about David,’ said Caleb. ‘And that David has stage-four pancreatic cancer.’ He took a breath. ‘If so, Phyllida, I need more information to be sure, but in such a case, I would say that the prognosis is likely not good.’
20
PHYLLIDA
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
It is a strange thing, being unable to move and yet encased in one’s body. Phyllida smells disinfectant and a hint of something sweet; she hears hospital foot traffic. There is pain in her back. Her mind remains foggy and slow, and as she forces her eyes open, her courage wavers.
When she went into the psychiatric hospital thirty years ago, the doctor told her it was the avoidance of the terrible reality—the non-acceptance of what had happened with David—that was causing her brain to malfunction. He was a lovely doctor. A psychiatrist—Doctor Fedeline. He collected tiny diecast toys and trains and other rare micromachines. She had wondered what piqued his interest in such small items, but Phyllida too had always enjoyed the smallness of life, the scraps of things. She had enjoyed hearing about them.
Back then, at the age of fifty, she had learned a great deal from Doctor Fedeline. Attachment theory, disassociation, a need for control due to her childhood rejection by her mother. In addition, of course, there was the trauma at nineteen, then again at twenty-nine, not that she had confided the latter to Doctor Fedeline. She had created a type of protective thinking: that as long as she lived a good life—a life for others—bad things would not happen to her again. But then came the third trauma:David.
Doctor Fedeline was surprised she recovered so well during her stay in that dismal ward. But he didn’t know her nature. She was interested. Curious.Fascinatedabout the capacity of a brain to skip and run and bend in all those incredible ways. She had her intuition too. She knew he was a good man, and that on every level, he was right. That day back in 1995—in Doctor Patel’s surgery when David was still very much alive—Phyllida had been in a daily dialogue with herself that would only allow for the possibility of David’s recovery. Never for the idea of untreatable illness or death. It was protective thinking.Marvellous and magic. Until it wasn’t.
She supposed she sounded naive, silly even, the way she talked to Caleb Patel back then. But in those days, there was no Doctor Google. You had to go to a library to look things up or ask an actual expert.
She had her herbal remedies, but she had lost her confidence in them. She didn’t know exactly what she thought Caleb Patel might do, but she believed he would help. The idea that David’s life could be snuffed out, just like that, was the furthest thing from her mind. There was surgery, chemotherapy, radiation. It was 1995 for goodness’ sake. Theycuredthings. So, she hadignored her niggling sense of foreboding; thought the Morrigan’s appearance in the garden was related to Miriam’s pregnancy.
She wanted to blame Miriam when things started to go downhill, but that was never going to stick. Miriam’s pregnancy meant they were bound. David insisted the baby was his, and that Phyllida must be there for both mother and child. Phyllida couldn’t tell him she had sensed the pregnancy the day she and David had met the woman at her mother’s funeral. Instead, she let him die with the comfort that he was leaving something behind. And Phyllida acquired a granddaughter.
So, life comes, then death, and then life. That’s the way it’s always been. Back then, she simply could not accept that David was gone. She had been afraid of his death. He was her beloved, the only part of her old self in her new world. But Doctor Fedeline taught her to trust herself again. To trust in the circle of things. To trust in the small. Birds, books, small diecast trains; each a spectacular gift.
She read. She studied nature. She honed her intuition.
It is funny, she thinks now, that her lessons began in a bookshop. A place where there were so many lessons to learn and yet she took so few. All her years working in her first bookshop—at eighteen, nineteen, well into her twenties—reading and restoring and selling old books—she had barely become any wiser. Back then she may have been a seer, but she was not yet the Cailleach her grandmother had promised she would become. That wisdom was yet to be earned.
And she honestly thought she had earned it; that the tablets were the answer. Yet, here she still is. What can it mean?
21
