When you watch someone you love suffering, it’s hard, and it
was taking its toll on me. One day Liz and I were sitting in the lounge at home
talking about nothing in particular when for no apparent reason I burst into
tears. One minute I was fine, the next I was weeping buckets. Liz asked me what
was wrong and I said I had no idea. The tears stopped and I dried my eyes, but
about an hour later it happened again. And it happened again later in the day.
I am not, and never have been, a crier: I don’t cry at
funerals, and I don’t cry at sad movies, and Liz knew this. She suggested I
consult my GP. He diagnosed depression and put me on a course of beta-blockers.
They gave me hallucinations and two days later I stopped taking them.
Fortunately the weeping never reoccurred.
When you are living on your capital, it goes out faster than
bathwater, and by 1998, with interest rates rising and our monthly mortgage
payments going up in leaps and bounds, I was getting worried about money. The
capital I had accumulated working with Ron had all but gone. I knew the flat had risen in value substantially, and that if we
sold it we would have enough equity to pay off our debts and have a goodly sum
left over, but I didn’t want to go this route because I didn’t want to put Liz
through the stress of another move. I had to get funds from somewhere, and it
could only be from the bank.
After what Barclays had done to me, I had transferred my
allegiance to NatWest and there was no reason to think they wouldn’t help
because our circumstances were altogether different now. I made an appointment
to see a loan officer. I was looking for a loan of £20,000, secured as a second
charge on the flat. That should keep us going for a year or so.
When I explained to the loan officer why I needed the loan,
I received a sympathetic response and the loan was approved. I was told there
would be papers to sign, and that Liz would need to sign as well, and an
appointment was made for us at the bank’s commercial division in another part
of Bournemouth.
When we went to sign the papers, I drove down the ramp to
the underground garage and parked in one of the spaces provided. We walked back
up the ramp and into the building. The security guard told us to take the lift
to the first floor. The lift opened into a comfortably furnished reception area
in which several business-suited people were sitting waiting to be seen. I told
the receptionist who we were and we found ourselves somewhere to sit.
A young lady with a clipboard approached us and said we
would have to sign independently of each other, because the bank had a policy of
not allowing co-signers to sign in each other’s presence in case one was
trying tried to coerce the other. In our case, this was ridiculous, but we had
to go along with it.
I had been feeling so stressed that I was
taking painkillers for the pains in the back of my neck, and my head was not in
a good place. I would rather have left the building and come back some time
when I was feeling better, but we were committed. Ever the gentleman, I suggested Liz go first. She was
escorted into a room no larger than a basic garden shed and, through its window, I saw her sit at a small table and
the lady with the clipboard close the door and sit down beside her.
Being the size I am, I had always had a problem with claustrophobia in
small rooms and I knew I was going to have a problem when it was my turn. I
felt a panic attack coming on. By the time Liz came out and smilingly told me
it was my turn, my stomach was churning, my heart was pounding in my ears and a
bead of sweat had formed on my top lip. My lips were dry. I ran my tongue over them
to moisten them. I took a deep breath and got to my feet.
When I sat down in that tiny room, and the door had
been closed, I’m not sure I even saw the dotted line the lady with the
clipboard was pointing to. But I aimed the tip of the ballpoint pen at it and sent up a quick prayer. When the pen made contact with
the paper, my hand shook violently, resulting in me producing a slash of black
ink about three inches long.
Extract from my book WILL YOU TELL HER, OR SHALL I? A true story. My story. The story of how I lived with the ten-year terminal illness of my wife. Available on www.booksthepublishersmissed.com
Twitter: Maximillian19
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