Open Writing

Chapter 5
Descent into Hell

It was impossible for me to confide in anyone that I’d been
stricken. I felt entirely alone, and had begun to endure the life of a
leper, shunning contact with other people. On rare occasions when I
was conscious enough to open my eyes to the wider world it seemed
suddenly that radio and TV was full of discussion about AIDS; even
the bloody fruit seller below my flat had been joking about it.

‘Look at them tomatoes luv,’ he bawled to one of his regular customers,
during one of my infrequent forays to stock up with fresh
food. ‘You ‘av a couple of them every day darlin’ and you’ll never get
that AIDS business!’

He and the woman had roared with delight at his evident wit.

Where was all this awareness coming from? I hadn’t seen a single
poster in Britain. Even Daniel Arap Moi’s government had done better
than that. Mystifyingly, Thatcher and the ‘Mad Monk,’ – that
fuckwit Sir Keith Joseph who advocated that the lower classes
should be deterred from having children – steered the government
clear of public information and prevention work. They claimed the
disease was not a significant problem in Britain. The job of explaining
otherwise was left to underfunded non-governmental agencies
like the Terrence Higgins Trust, whose information I had still to absorb.

I’d never been through such a bleak and miserable time. And then
one day, a powerful sequence of thoughts overtook me. My ritualistic
praying was surely a waste of time. A happy life with Amina was
now quite unrealistic. She would never have me, even if I could find
her. My early end was as inevitable as night following day. Yet I didn’t
have to suffer the indignity any longer, or bear the heartbreak of seeing
myself slowly fall apart, wracked by one illness after another, or
worse, one on top of another. I could end it all today, or tomorrow.

All I needed to do was choose a means, and then show enough courage
to act.

Contemplation of suicide is bad enough but planning it is as sure
as hell a sign that life is no longer tolerable; that physical or mental
pain has begun to overtake one’s capacity to cope. I considered a few
ways I might do it. There was the bottle of codeine in the bathroom.

Enough there to do me in, I figured, though there was always the
chance, remote though it seemed, that I’d be discovered by some dogooder
who’d arrange to have my stomach pumped. Hanging was
another way out, though I shuddered at the prospect and wondered
how people had the fortitude to choke to death. Slitting wrists in a
warm bath? Possibly. Putting a hose pipe over an exhaust and slipping
it through a car window? Painless, I supposed, though I’d have
to hire or steal a vehicle. Then the method I’d use, struck home. It
was crystal clear.

I sat at the kitchen table and wrote a simple will. There was nothing
much to consider except the disposal of my thirty grand and the
cash I’d been living off from the post-departure sale of my Mercedes
in Nairobi. I instructed that £5,000 should go to Jamila. The
rest I wanted to be kept in a trust in case Amina turned up. I penned
some details about her last known movements in Somalia and asked
for the involvement and help of the Foreign Office to locate her
(okay, I can see with hindsight that there was fat chance of that!).

The money would be my way of saying sorry for any hurt I may
have caused by failing to return to Mogadishu. If within five years
there was still no sign of her, the cash would go to RSPB. I then
wrote the proverbial suicide note; just a couple of lines. I put this in
my jacket pocket and headed off to the Royal Bank of Scotland to
deposit the cheque. There were dark clouds overhead.

Across the road from Brixton’s oppressive looking cop station I
took the P4 bus to Dulwich and walked to the woods. This had always
been a favourite retreat. It was a place you could get away from
it all. You might see a fox, or if you walked stealthily, an occasional
deer. There were always grey squirrels scampering around, chasing
their tails. At any time of year the woods were filled with the usual
assortment of birds: wood pigeons, robins, blackbirds, thrushes, blue
tits, chaffinches, wrens, rooks and crows, all chattering and cawing
away happily in their endless search for food. That day however, my
mind was rigidly fixed on something else.

Half a mile into the wood, there is a disused railway track, though
if you didn’t know you might not guess it given the extent to which
it was overgrown. I followed this until I came to the place I’d
planned to see out my final moments. It was an old tunnel, long ago
boarded up. Above the tunnel was a bridge. I needed to reach the
top, for it stood almost twenty metres above ground level, quite
enough I’d estimated, to kill myself if I fell head first to the moss
covered concrete below. It would all be over in seconds.

Reaching the bridge was a struggle. Both sides were so overgrown
that I had to snap away branches of invading sycamore trees, and
carefully push aside the remains of autumn’s bramble runners.

The
slope was muddy but I finally scrambled up, breathless.
I looked over the edge. My heart began to pound harder. It
seemed an even steeper drop from up there. This is it, as Michael
Jackson famously said; he could never have known how prophetically.

I climbed up onto the wall of the bridge and sat with my legs
dangling over the side. One push now and I’d be gone. I’d need to be
sure, I calculated, of flipping my body far enough forward so that
the momentum took me down head and chest first, arms stuck to
my sides. Had I’d covered everything I needed to in my will?

Yes. No
regrets? Not about ending it, only to lose what could have been a
good life. I was ready then. The human immunodeficiency virus
could go and fuck itself.

‘What are you doing up there?’

For Christ’s sakes! I nearly shat myself with the fright of it. I’d
been so absorbed that I hadn’t seen or heard him approach.

Standing
below, just off to my right, was a man looking up at me with a puzzled
expression. I focused on his wellies, working man’s cap and his
Bellstaff wax-cotton coat (I’d always wanted one of those). He
looked like an extra in ‘Wuthering Heights.’ To complete the picture a
dog bounded up to his side and jumped up plastering mud onto his
corduroy trousers.

‘Get down,’ he commanded. I thought at first this instruction was
aimed at me but then realised of course he was speaking to his dog.

‘Are you all right up there?’

I didn’t answer him. I had to do it now if I was going to do it at
all. Then I thought, poor bugger, there’s no way I’d appreciate
someone topping himself in front of me. Suicide is supposed to be a
private act, unless you’re a fan of Jonestown, or like one of those
Iraqis who delight in taking a score of victims along for the ride.

What the heck, I felt with mixed emotions (disappointment? relief ?),
another day would make no difference. I swung back onto the safe
side of the bridge and scrambled back down to where the man and
his dog were still waiting.

‘I was just enjoying the peace and quiet, and the bird song.’

‘You know it’s dangerous up there, don’t you,’ he said quite
matter-of-factly. ‘People have died falling off that bridge.’

‘Oh? I should have more sense, shouldn’t I.’

‘There’s nothing more daft than folk,’ he smiled, still fending off
his pet.

‘Nice dog,’ I ventured, thinking that I might no longer have existed.

‘It’s a lurcher, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Her name’s Bingo.’

You’ll recall I’d seen the breed in ‘Out of Africa.’ I crouched and
gave Bingo a rough rub on her face. She playfully clamped her
mouth over my hand. I envied this fellow the simple company and
pleasure of that animal.

‘Well, enjoy the rest of your walk,’ I said.

A spatter of rain began to fall and within a short time the heavens
had opened, as threatened. I waved cheerio to the man and hurried
off in the direction from which I’d come. Bingo made a half
hearted attempt to follow but then, as dogs always do, turned back
to his master.

**

Chapter 5 continues next week.