A Bird on My Shoulder Page 7

  ‘Bebi bilong mi. My baby,’ she would say about Edward with shy pride. And now George, also ‘my baby’.

  •••

  When George was about six months old, we went to England. It was wonderful to take him home to see my parents, my sister Libby and her children and my ageing grandmother, Granberry, who was now in her nineties. Charlie was travelling through Europe and also came to stay with us. After about three weeks, the holiday ended and Julian went on to Brazil to see Henry, who was on a student exchange, while I stayed in the UK to spend more time with Libby and her three young children, Hannah, Beatrice and Samuel. Florence was to come later.

  When Julian and I were reunited in Sydney a fortnight later, however, I was surprised to see him walking slowly with a slight stoop.

  ‘You’re not going to believe this,’ he said as we threw his bag into the back of the car. ‘I sneezed on the plane and I think I’ve cracked a rib.’

  I laughed. That was ridiculous. ‘It’s not like you to be a hypochondriac,’ I teased.

  I soon felt bad for making light of his injury as it became clear that he really was in a lot of discomfort. The next day he organised to see a doctor who confirmed his diagnosis. It was strange to think he had done such damage due to something so seemingly trivial.

  After we returned to PNG and the pain had subsided, we both shrugged off the incident as one of those inexplicable events and, once Julian had fully recovered, I thought no more about it.

  Dear darling Lucy,

  Twenty-eight storeys up with a splendid view is a fine place to think of you and George and reflect on the world . . .

  I love being alive and I love having you. Little Georgy fills a lot of gaps. The feelings always get stronger and I’m looking forward to tomorrow very much.

  . . . I get in at ten to seven – should we go to early church? There is a lot to be thankful for.

  Love you, darling, very, very much xxx J

  I wrote in reply:

  Darling,

  Thank you for your lovely letter. I will treasure it always. With your care I feel as though I am blossoming in many ways. For everything you do, everything you are, thank you. You, who have been a parent for so long, might have got used to the feelings I am only just experiencing now. That feeling of belonging, a sense of place in the world. Thank you for all the beautiful things you have given me.

  All my love,

  Lucy xxxx

  I had stopped working for AAP just before George was born, but after a year of sporadic and unsatisfying freelance work, I started to miss the intellectual stimulation of daily journalism and the contact with my former colleagues. ML was now working for The Australian and had just broken an extraordinary story about a decision by the government of Sir Julius Chan to hire mercenary soldiers from Sandline International to wipe out the leaders of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. The cost: a staggering US $36 million. By the time the story became public, the soldiers were already in the country and preparing to launch a military offensive. With this news causing international outrage, it seemed a good time to travel to Australia to see if The Sydney Morning Herald needed a part-time journalist on the spot.

  There was another reason we wanted to go to Sydney. Since cracking his rib, Julian had been complaining of back pain and of a general feeling of malaise. He decided to have some more blood tests – he was not at all confident in the services offered by the increasingly decrepit and often dysfunctional Port Moresby hospital.

  Once my discussions with the newspaper had concluded and we had agreed I would be their new correspondent Julian told me he’d been asked to stay on for further examinations.

  ‘Well, I could stay as well, if you like,’ I suggested, thinking there was no need to rush back.

  ‘No, I’ll be fine. I think you should start working.’

  I felt a little nonplussed by Julian’s attitude, however there seemed little point in arguing about it – he clearly wanted to be alone.

  •••

  I arrived back in Port Moresby to absolute turmoil. My friend Jo, who picked me up at the airport, said she’d heard there had been a military revolt and many expatriates were considering whether they should leave.

  We turned on the radio. It emerged that early the same morning, Brigadier-General Colonel Jerry Singirok had ordered the Papua New Guinea Defence Force to place all the mercenary soldiers under military arrest. He then publicly demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Julius Chan and two of his colleagues.

  Thank God for Nina. As I struggled up the stairs with George and our luggage, she took the baby from my arms and deftly swung him onto her hip.

  ‘Tripela hevi long guvman,’ she said, shrugging. ‘Big problems with the government.’

  •••

  I walked into my humid office to a spewing fax machine and an answering machine in revolt.

  For the next few hours I worked feverishly on the Sandline story, completely absorbed in all the intricacies of the crisis. Very late that night the phone rang again. Surely not the foreign desk again.

  ‘Hello, darling, I’ve been trying to get through. What’s happening up there?’

  Breathlessly I told Julian all about the day’s events. But as I talked on I could tell he was not really listening – he sounded flat and distracted. I felt a sliver of unease; he was normally so passionately interested in politics.

  ‘How’s everything with you?’ I asked eventually. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  There was such a long pause I thought the line had dropped out.

  ‘Jules?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, darling . . .’

  My palms began to sweat in the still night.

  ‘The doctor says I’ve got cancer.’

  11

  On the edge of love lies the precipice of fear.

  That night I dreamt of a lake surrounded by arching trees, their towering shapes perfectly shadowed on the still surface. Out of the empty sky, a large brutal stone suddenly fell, scattering droplets of startled water as it plunged down to the muddy deep.

  A moment later, everything was apparently serene. But that disturbance, although fleeting, was too great to ignore. When I woke the following morning I felt a dull pain, like a large weight, pressing on my heart.

  •••

  Cancer had never touched my world. The word felt bitter on my tongue, insidious. I tried ringing Julian before breakfast, still half wondering if his words were something I had imagined. But as the phone rang out I gradually remembered, with dull clarity, the conversation we’d had the night before.

  I’m sorry to tell you this, darling . . .

  As soon as I got to the office, I received a message saying that Singirok had been sacked but was still demanding that the prime minister resign. It was going to be another day of drama.

  Against the backdrop of the greatest political crisis to engulf Papua New Guinea and the most critical story of my career, Julian returned to Port Moresby.

  We had managed to have another brief conversation before he left Sydney, but I was totally consumed by work and found myself quite confused by the contradictory accounts he was giving me.

  ‘I don’t think the diagnosis is all that bad,’ he said quite cheerfully as we hurtled home from the airport.

  Large crowds were milling around the streets and the city was tense. Most people were not there to cause trouble – they were passionately concerned about the future of their country and wanted to be engaged in the decisions of their leaders. But some soldiers had begun to disobey orders and there had been a very ugly standoff outside the army’s weapons storage building. Extra police units were being drafted in.

  ‘They’re not talking about immediate treatment, just regular tests,’ Julian said. He slammed on the brakes as one of the city’s many wild and mangy dogs sauntered across the road, oblivious to traffic. ‘It seems there are a few options. Lots of peop
le live a long time with this situation.’

  I glanced at him. Situation? The word cancer seemed to have vanished from his vocabulary.

  He gave a tight smile. ‘I don’t think there’s much to worry about yet.’

  We had no time to talk that day. In between caring for George, who was still occasionally breastfeeding, I was frantically gathering updates on the crisis.

  •••

  Several journalists from Australia had flown up to cover the story, including Ray Martin from Channel Nine. The next morning Ray rang me to say he was on his way to the army barracks to interview Colonel Singirok and suggested I follow him in my car. As we drew up outside the gates, I watched as his vehicle slowly inched forward through the crowds. Suddenly, the atmosphere turned to excitement.

  ‘Eray! Eray!’ People began to converge on Ray Martin’s car, smiling and waving. Another group surrounded my car and one man started banging on the roof. Feeling very anxious, I lowered the window slightly.

  ‘Yu go we? Where are you going?’ Several faces jostled for space in the small gap.

  ‘I’m with Ray,’ I said hastily.

  ‘Okay, okay,’ the man replied with a huge grin. ‘You with Eray, you can go!’

  Still shouting, ‘Eray! Eray!’, the crowd parted like the Red Sea and I sailed through the gates like royalty.

  •••

  That night, after I’d finished work, Julian and I went out onto the veranda to a relatively cool, dry night. Although my mind was swimming with the events of the day, I was still keen to get a full and uninterrupted account of his meeting with doctors at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.

  ‘Just tell me what they said again.’

  He sipped his beer. ‘They said I’ve got something called myeloma – it’s a cancer of the plasma cells. Apparently that’s why I cracked my ribs on the plane.’

  ‘Really? You mean it’s in your ribcage?’

  ‘I suppose so. That’s why I stayed on – to have the scans.’

  He hadn’t mentioned any scans.

  ‘How did they find out there was a problem in the first place?’

  ‘Do you remember I told you my friend John White wanted me to have regular blood tests? I didn’t know what they were for, but apparently I’ve had a high level of protein in my blood for quite a while. It’s not usually a huge problem, however if the protein levels get too high, it’s indicative of other issues.’

  ‘Like this cancer?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Julian sounded resigned. ‘I think John must have known a long time ago. I wonder why he didn’t tell me?’

  Julian was not a man who often expressed his deeper feelings; he definitely had a case of the classic English stiff upper lip, a quality of self-restraint and dignity I admired and understood. He wasn’t a cold person, not at all, but his true feelings often remained unspoken. Even so, I could sense what a terrible blow this was for him.

  ‘They can slow it down,’ he said, trying to sound reassuring. ‘They also said I might be a candidate later on for a bone marrow transplant, which could be very effective. I may have to start some very low-dose chemotherapy in the next few months.’

  I stared at him, bewildered. I just could not make sense of what he was telling me. In our earlier conversations he had been optimistic, so why was he now talking about chemotherapy? Later I discovered that there is a common phenomenon when people are given an initial diagnosis of a serious illness – particularly if they are alone: afterwards, they don’t necessarily recall clearly all they have been told.

  Julian’s account seemed to come back to him in disjointed fragments like an unsolved jigsaw, incomprehensible and impossible to frame. But the underlying facts were clear enough – after only eighteen months of marriage, any certainty we had about our future was over.

  I reached over and took his hand; our wedding rings glowed in the evening light.

  ‘I don’t want you to worry, darling – I plan on being around for quite a while yet,’ he said with a pale smile. He squeezed my hand.

  Exhausted, we sat for a long time, buried under the rubble of our own thoughts.

  •••

  It was not long before news of Julian’s cancer was common knowledge. It came as a terrible shock to his older children. They all came to visit as soon as they were able, something that cheered him up enormously.

  On the surface, Julian dealt with the diagnosis with his usual grace and equanimity; at times he was even quite upbeat. Learning about his particular cancer became his new mission and he threw himself into the task with his usual gusto.

  Julian was not easy to pigeonhole or predict; the layered rock of his personality defied simple labels. After the diagnosis I presumed he would take the most conventional route and simply follow an orthodox medical path.

  However, when he came home one day enthusiastically brandishing a newsletter from the Ian Gawler Institute in Melbourne – a radical approach to life-threatening illnesses which recommended meditation, a strict diet and daily enemas – I was surprised to say the least.

  Julian was a red wine, red meat, cheese and brandy man who lived life at an intense pace; I found it hard to imagine him sitting quietly meditating with a bowl of vegan salad and talking to a group of strangers about how he felt. To my amazement, he decided to go.

  The course, held just outside Melbourne, was to last ten days. Partners were welcome to attend too, but we did not think it was feasible with a young baby.

  I certainly did not harbour any hopes of a miracle cure but going to the retreat made sense to me – even if he could not ultimately beat his cancer, Julian might have more chance to live well for many years despite it. And if he was going to be dealing with any kind of traditional cancer treatment in the future, it was clear he needed to be as strong as possible.

  •••

  While he was away, the national elections were held. Herald photographer Palani Mohan and I followed the main political campaigns. At one point we went to Milne Bay Province to accompany Sir Julius Chan on the campaign trail. After a long day on the hustings, it was decided that we would go to the house Sir Julius was staying in that night to conduct a long interview.

  It was strange to find him alone, without the entourage he had enjoyed as prime minister. The strangest moment of our evening came when someone raised the issue of dinner. By this time, it was long past ten o’clock and no-one had eaten. In the kitchen we found some eggs and bacon, an electric stove with one working ring and some dusty plates. We began to cook. When Sir Julius left the room, Palani and I both began to laugh quietly at this rather strange turn of events. It was extraordinary that we, currently regarded as his enemies in the media and the reason for his political downfall, were planning to share what should have been a hearty breakfast. Papua New Guinea. Always the land of the unexpected.

  12

  We sailed over deep, still waters, undisturbed. Our world was

  calmer then. The storms came later, capsizing our certainties,

  leaving us stranded, on other, more distant shores.

  Julian returned from Melbourne having lost a little weight, no doubt a result of the strict diet he’d been on.

  Initially he seemed quite flat. His verdict? Not bad but the food was terrible, meditation was boring and the only thing that might make sense would be for me to administer the recommended daily coffee enemas to give him a bit of zing.

  ‘What?’ I said in disbelief.

  ‘Well, we have marvellous organic coffee here,’ he said.

  I took a deep breath. ‘I can’t tell whether you’re serious,’ I said. ‘But if you are, you need to know this is absolutely not going to happen. Coffee in a cup, yes. Anywhere else, not a chance.’

  While Julian had obviously benefited from his break, I was disappointed that he had not really connected with anyone he’d met. I’d been hoping he would make some new friends, others who shared and understood his experience, people who could support him and take a little of the burden from my
shoulders.

  I later realised that talking about his situation was my need, not his. Like many women I found a sense of strength and comfort through talking; empathy and connection had always been very important in my emotional world view.

  Selfishly, I really wanted to understand what Julian was feeling in order to lessen my own feelings of fear and isolation. He said so little about what he really felt since his diagnosis and I could sense myself retreating from him, a little bruised by his apparent self-absorption, muted by the vastness of everything we could no longer talk about.

  Later that year Julian went to another alternative cancer treatment workshop, this time in Brisbane. Again there was lots of talk of meditation and a diet free of alcohol, sugar and meat. He returned with a huge bag of apparently immune-boosting vitamins.

  I remember him lining up all the bottles of co-enzyme Q10, vitamin C and I honestly can’t remember what else along the open kitchen shelf. Every morning he would down several of these tablets with his morning juice.

  ‘Delicious,’ he would say with heavy irony.

  •••

  The most obvious obstacle to Julian’s continuing good health and the possibility of receiving the best treatment was the fact that we lived in Papua New Guinea, where medical care of the kind he might need was almost non-existent.

  But this was our home and we both had careers, friends and a life neither of us wanted to leave. With Nina and her extended family, we had a quality of loving care for George I knew would be almost impossible to find in a Western society. I had certainly thought I was in PNG to stay for many years to come and I know Julian did too. Where would we go and what would we do?

  We put off any decision for as long as possible. While Julian was relatively well and trialling low-dose oral chemotherapy, which seemed to have little ill-effect, there seemed to be no real pressure to leave. So we coasted along in denial, working, living, enjoying our daily walks and life with George.