“Then it turns out that, lo and behold, they’re exactly like everyone else! And they fall apart like everyone else, and finish out the miserable end of their lives like everyone else: either with some Bulgarian in the spare bedroom who despises them and sneaks their whiskey, or in a cynical institution that cuts corners by serving meat-paste sandwiches on stale white bread for every lunch. Yes, my father was once nattily dressed and erudite. If, back then, a Ghost of Christmas Future provided him with a vision of his life in his nineties, fleeing from a wife he imagines is an MI6 agent whilst streaked in his own waste, don’t you think he’d tell that ghost that he’d rather be dead?”
“That’s what I’m rounding on,” Cyril said. “I’ve seen enough geriatric patients come and go to surmise pretty conclusively that very few people sustain that ‘quality of life’ we currently take for granted beyond about the age of eighty. The chronic conditions come thick and furious. Even if the mind doesn’t go, the body implodes, and daily life almost exclusively concerns pain. Every advancing year entails a whole new set of things that you used to do and now you can’t. Worlds shrink, nothing in the newspaper matters, until all you care about is lessening the pain, or at least not letting it get any worse. And possibly food, in the unlikely event that you still have an appetite. It’s a good round number. So I fancy that eighty is the limit.”
“At which point, what?”
“As a physician, I’m well positioned to obtain an effective medical solution well in advance. The key to not ending up like everyone else is to be proactive.”
“Hold on. Let’s be clear.” Kay swung her feet back to the floor and sat up straight. “You’re proposing that we get to eighty and then commit suicide. You didn’t use the word. Anyone who concocts a plan like that shouldn’t rely on euphemism and evasion.”
“Quite right.” Cyril recited, “I am proposing that we get to eighty and then commit suicide.”
“But assuming you’re actually serious—”
“Deadly serious. For that matter, the flesh is heir to a thousand natural shocks at any age. We should really keep the means to a quick exit at the ready on principle. There are things one can experience over the course of ten minutes that would have either of us begging for oblivion well before the ten minutes were up.”
“Is that a threat?”
“An observation. I don’t have to remind you what we’ve both seen.”
“But how would this pact work? You’re over a year older than I am. So I watch you nod off after taking your nefarious hemlock, don’t call nine-nine-nine—for which, in this fantasy paradigm of yours, I’m not arrested—and then I loiter about mourning your passing for the following fourteen months? At which point I’m under a contractual obligation to top myself.”
“I’d rather we did it as we’ve done everything else since 1963: together. We could opt for my birthday, but unless you’re ailing, which of course you might be, that would entail a small sacrifice on your part. So I would propose that I hang on, in whatever shape, and we wait for yours.”
“Some birthday,” Kay muttered.
“Our commitment would need to be fierce. Although it might comfort you to know that life expectancy in England and Wales for men is presently seventy-three, and for women seventy-nine. Your father was an actuarial aberration. A bookmaker would give us better than even odds of never having to make good on such a pact.”
Only a few years later, anyone who rattled off the life expectancy for men and women in England and Wales would fail to impress, as eight-year-olds with access to a phone line would retrieve such statistics in seconds—like magic. A few years after that, eight-year-olds would carry in their hip pockets the means of retrieving such statistics from the very air—as well as the acreage of Micronesia and common treatments for corns—thereby rendering broad general knowledge nearly worthless. But at this time, Cyril could summon these up-to-date figures only because he was a general practitioner who kept up.
“What if I say no?” Kay asked. “Would you still do it?”
“Possibly. As a favour. A big favour, if your father is any guide.”
“It might not feel like a favour.”
“True kindness doesn’t require credit.”
At this juncture, Kay could have fobbed her husband off with a casual agreement that would get him off her case, and then they could have carried on as before. As the more vivid images of her father’s decay began to fade, Cyril might forget all about his absurd pact. But she knew him better than that. He would not forget. She hadn’t fostered a condescending relationship to her husband, and was not about to do so now. After twenty-eight years of marriage, Cyril would easily have detected any insincerity on her part. After twenty-eight years of marriage, Kay would have detected any insincerity on his part as well—any element of whimsy or passing rashness that he was bound to take back. He was a serious person, too serious, often, for her tastes, and she had sometimes found his idealism oppressive. Without question he had contemplated this matter for quite some time, perhaps for years. If he’d now gone so far as to put the proposition on the table, his resolve had reached a point of no return. The least she could do was consider
