Chapter 15

Helena drank too much that night and so there was no repeat of their earlier frolics when they got back to her room. She mumbled for Andrew to stay so he cuddled up behind her but when he needed to pee at 4.00 let himself out and went back to his own room afterwards. The following day he awoke much later than normal, it was good to have a long lie, and went for a longer run. His route went north past St. John’s and out on the road to Girton but he carried on past it. After running for 30 minutes which coincided with getting to Girton Golf Course he just turned round. Cambridge is in an area of England called the Fens and compared to Scotland was flat. The running was smooth and easy going. Andrew thought about the evening with Helena and smiled. They had been relaxed and at ease with each other over dinner, there was no awkwardness. A slight raw ache in his groin a sign that the evening had been good. It was 9.40 as he returned past Girton and so he didn’t loiter and powered home. Andrew needed to shower before heading to Addenbrooke’s, plus find something to eat. The corridor was quiet and so at 10.15 he packed some books for studying later and headed to the bus stop for the short journey out to Addenbrooke’s. He hoped the cafeteria there was open so he could grab a quick breakfast and buy something for his lunch. Despite having screwed up the timing by running so long he was able to have a bowl of cereal and some fruit and grab a sandwich for later before making his way to the volunteer area. Andrew signed in, was given a truly hideous top that did not fit and at 10.55 was standing outside the children’s oncology ward. This was the last chance, if he went through those doors he was committing.

Thinking about his friend Faith, her life cut short, her hopes and dreams transferred to a boy she had barely met, Andrew knew he could do this. In the dark moments, and he knew there would be many dark moments ahead, Andrew could cling on to the memory of Faith, knowing that if the roles were reversed she would be there. So he opened the ward door and travelled back in time. The smells, the sounds, the sights. Oh boy, did a bunch of memories from five years earlier come flooding back. Andrew walked to the nurse’s station and introduced himself to the ward sister.

“Your first day here Andrew?”

He nodded.

“Yes, it is.”

So they started him gently. There was a lot of carrying things for the nurses, the fact that he was tall and relatively strong had him doing some odd things for them, putting things out of the way, getting things down, lots of general dogsbody type stuff. But it was their way of assessing him, both just in demeanour but also asking lots of little questions to check out his responses. He had been younger than any other volunteer at the training session, and children’s oncology was pretty well at the bottom of the volunteer list. Even just in his first hour Andrew could see a lot of children in different stages of treatment, some still had their hair while others were pitiful bald skeletons, veins obvious in their arms, wires and tubes attached all over their bodies.

His first interaction was simple, a boy who looked about 9 but could have been as old as 14 for all Andrew knew dropped his bear on the ground. Andrew stopped and picked it up for him. He whispered thank you and Andrew kept on walking. Then lunch arrived for the kitchen and he was tasked with helping the orderly deliver the food to each bed. From his own experience at least half the time he never touched a thing, or just ate a very small amount. He and Faith had commented many times the waste to bring all the food to the cancer ward just for it all to be returned 45 minutes later untouched. He used his time as a glorified trolley pusher to make eye contact with each of the children, sometimes their parents, and see if anyone engaged him. His tunic or top had a big ‘V’ on the front. A few of the patients looked at him as their lunch was delivered but with parents there for the most part no conversations were started. Once they had finished dropping off the lunch Andrew stood at the nurse’s station again.

“There is a group of children that don’t seem to have any visitors?”

He was asking a fresh faced nurse sitting updating a chart.

“We have patients from all over East Anglia and Lincolnshire here. Not all of the parents can get away all the time, or they struggle with the money to get here. Those seven only see their parents occasionally, and so we put them together so they are not surrounded by patients with lots of visitors.”

Andrew thought back to when he had been in hospital and realised, horribly belatedly, that there had been children then in similar circumstances. There were only two pediatric oncology wards in all of Scotland so for some families their child was more than 100 miles away in Edinburgh or Glasgow for treatment. With nothing to do right at that moment, Andrew went down to the quiet corner of the main ward and for the first time tried to start a conversation. Keeping to the approved script he asked each of them if they needed anything, or if there was anything he could do for them. The first three just mumbled a quick ‘no’ response but the fourth child, a boy of 11 named Graham asked who he was and why was he there. There were interested looks from a couple of other children.

“I am a student at the University and I decided to volunteer here on a Sunday. My name is Andrew, and I had cancer when I was 13. I wanted to try and do something to help here. I am not a doctor and am not training to be one, this is more just trying to help in some way.”

The fact that he had survived cancer was the key to unlocking the questions. In quick succession he was asked what kind of cancer he had and what treatment he had undertaken. Andrew talked about the two hospitals he had been in, the surgery, followed by radiation followed by chemotherapy. He even lifted the back of his shirt so that they could see the small scars on his back which were the only visible signs of the episode. Then things got serious pretty quickly.

“Were you scared Andrew?”

Now there were five sets of eyes watching him. He felt even more enormous than normal so pulled out a chair and set it down in front of one of the beds so that everyone could still see him but he didn’t feel so much of a lumbering giraffe.

“It went in phases. I was scared when it first was diagnosed, but then the doctors said I should be fine after the surgery so it lessened, but then I had to come into hospital for the radiation treatment and I got scared again. Finally when the radiation didn’t work and I had to go through chemotherapy I was pretty much scared the whole time. I was a horrible whiny shit for the first month I was in hospital. But everyone was in the same situation, dealing with this horrible situation so I grew up a bit at that point and stopped being a pain in the arse to the nurses. I was still frightened though.”

“Did your parents not help?”

Shit he was already out on the ice and could hear the cracks beneath his feet.

“It was only later that I realised how scared my parents were. At the time I was too wrapped up in my own misery to notice but they were so stressed and worried as well. And even worse, they were so relentlessly positive to me. That was the thing that I did not understand, how the doctors, nurses and my parents could be so endlessly positive and upbeat when I was in hospital for the fourth month. At some level I understand it now but at the time it felt like they were lying.”

“So what did you do?”

“Talked to the other patients. I went to the adult hospital for my chemotherapy, I had the surgery and underwent the radiation treatment at the separate Children’s hospital in Edinburgh. In the adult ward I talked to the girl next to me. We were the two youngest so the very first girl I ever spoke to for any length of time was in the bed next to me. I couldn’t escape from her and she couldn’t escape from me.”

That got a few giggles. Andrew noticed that it was three girls together and then four boys together, almost segregated into their different packs.

“We talk about football.”

This from the 11 year old. There were two Cambridge United fans, one Norwich City fan and a Lincoln City fan and the banter was comical coming from the four of them. He noticed that one of the girls rolled her eyes.

“What about you girls? No football chat I’m guessing.”

That got him 10 minutes on the relative merits of a whole bunch of bands, Duran Duran, Wham, Spandau Ballet. Despite being in the cancer ward the girls still were engrossed in the teen music scene. Andrew ended up feeling like he was a mediator at some international summit, or the referee at a tennis match. He would talk to one group only to be engaged by the other and had to switch attention. There was typical primary school playground chat between the sexes and it was fun to see them get so passionate about something. He only hoped that he had not stirred up too much trouble. The increased volume inevitably caught the attention of the authorities in the form of the sister and she came down the ward smiling away. Andrew had been sitting chatting to them for nearly an hour, and the time had flown by. He went and got the trolley and pushed it as the orderly collected the last of the lunch trays and took them all to the entrance of the ward for the kitchen staff to deal with.

“Andrew, could you come here a minute please.”

Oh, oh he was up in front of the beak. Instead the sister smiled.

“That is the most animated I have seen these children in days. I don’t know what you said to them but it was effective. We don’t get many volunteers in this ward, understandable I suppose but you did some good today. I saw several of the children who had their parents with them looking enviously down at the little group that rarely gets visitors. I think that your visit will be welcome next week. You are planning to come every week?”

The last was asked with concern.

“Absolutely. If I have an OTC weekend then I will let you know in advance, but I think there are only three or four of them over the year so I guess one a term. I will stay through the end of the first weekend in December before I head north so eight out of the next nine Sundays.”

Andrew went back down to the group to say goodbye and told them he would see them the following Sunday. As he walked home he tried to not get carried away. This had been the first day and it had gone okay. What would his reaction be if when he got there next weekend there were only six of them? Andrew didn’t want to borrow pain forward but had to guard himself emotionally. The day had gone well and he felt like he had done something useful. He stopped at the library and let the four hours drain away, he needed to be ready for the following week and so until 6.00 Andrew reviewed the week’s notes and got back into the frame of being a student again. Being late for dinner meant there was no one he knew at the table so he sat beside a group of PhD students, contributed little but listened lots as they talked about their research, their undergraduate universities and degrees. The group he was with were all post grad Freshers at Trinity having been awarded degrees elsewhere. The evening was relaxing and a nice end to a good week.

The next three weeks followed a very similar pattern, study all day and stay late at the Department on Monday and Thursday; OTC after a full day on Tuesday followed by drinks after; and hockey practice on Wednesday after another full day at the department. The drinks after hockey were just in the College bar so Andrew was in his room less than a minute after leaving the bar. After a shorter day studying on Friday he would go out on the town with some of the group. Saturday was hockey in the morning, swimming in the afternoon and then laundry before a quieter night on the Saturday. Finally Sunday was a run in the morning, four hours at Addenbrooke’s, library time and a quiet dinner. Andrew could see and feel his life was quickly reverting to a pattern.

OTC was exactly the experience he was looking for. The focus was not on officer training at first, rather it was the fieldcraft expected of every soldier. Before training them as officers, first the Army were going to train them as soldiers. Andrew observed the training officers, listened carefully to their instructions and asked lots of questions of the sergeants. The platoon was split into different squads, under the notional command of a lieutenant but in reality, it was the sergeants and corporals that maintained order and discipline. The four of them, without ever discussing it, had each other’s backs and were a strong unit. Jack was mister organised but was not the perpetual leader. Andrew was learning a lot and glad that he had applied to join the OTC. The students from 2^nd and 3^rd year were the Cadet Under Officers, part of their continued training was helping lead and teach the new cadets.

Hockey was an area where Andrew’s leadership was immediately tested. The coach was a little taken aback to discover he had a qualified Level 2 coach on the team but Andrew was careful to not show him up and the 19 of them who remained, three having had enough after the monsoon weekend, had a lot of fun. They practiced hard but didn’t take it too seriously. The team motto was ‘as long as we don’t lose to Newnham’. Newnham was a women’s only College and it was Navya and her team that had to follow through on the motto. Andrew worked on his stick handling every single practice, it was by far his weakest area, but in matches at the weekend almost never attempted any dribbling. He was anchored firmly in the centre of defence and tackled hard and orchestrated the defensive free hits. They were competitive with the other Colleges but lost as many as they won.

Socially, life continued to settle down. Andrew saw Helena and Navya most days, they ate dinner together if they were at Hall at the same time. Helena’s request to make sure she was out of bed meant that Andrew saw her for a few seconds every morning but often the conversation was limited to a grunt. Navya flirted with him in a meaningless way, just for fun. He would see her with the short guy with the mop of hair from Cindies every now and then but he asked no questions and therefore was not told to fuck off and mind his own business. It wasn’t that he stopped prowling at the pub or at Cindies, Andrew played sidekick when necessary for Pedro or Jack or whoever he was out with but pickings were slim. Of Raquel there had been no sign since the first evening escorting her home. Andrew and Rupashi had not had another long conversation but he walked her home one night and they made out in a darkened doorway for a long time. Rupashi might be torn between being a dutiful and chaste Indian daughter but it didn’t stop her attacking Andrew with passion. But on the scale of intimacy it was still bumping along at the bottom, although Andrew held her arse while they made out. They weren’t getting their own chapter in the Kama Sutra anytime soon. For perhaps the first time in his life Andrew was playing the long game, happy to spend time with Rupashi but knew he wanted more. He was prepared to take his time and see what developed, if anything.

As for the other two women in the corridor, Andrew had no idea of what to make of Emma and Abigail. Emma looked at him with wonder and longing but he was mindful of giving in to a crush from the girl next door, literally. What was funny was Emma had no idea how to flirt, yet it didn’t stop the occasional noise leaking through the walls. She might have a crush but Emma definitely wasn’t pining for him! As for Abigail, he had no clue. According to both Helena and Navya she had been fascinated, as in ‘tell me again what you guys did’ fascinated after the second time with Helena but when they were out she was remote and aloof. She was by far the prettiest of the four women in the corridor but there was a distance behind her eyes, almost a loneliness. Everyone was kept away from the real Abigail. Andrew guessed she was constantly propositioned and she drew a crowd whenever she was at the bar or club. But she never let her guard down, or at least whenever he was around her, and although he found her physically appealing the rest of her left him going ‘meh’.

The highlight, socially, of the first month of term was an evening with the lovely Cassie. Or at least it was in Andrew’s imagination in the run up to their night out. She had been at Cindies and they arranged for dinner the following weekend. Andrew was very taken with her physically, the pale-skinned redhead with green eyes was as captivating to him as that combination had been to so many other men over the centuries. Unfortunately his delightful musings and imaginings crashed head first into a fiery and committed socialist. She was from Liverpool and supported the most militant form of socialism in the country at the time. They never even managed to make it to dinner. They both had liked the look of the other person but the attraction was literally skin deep. Within 10 minutes both of them had realised that the night out was a mistake. Meeting in the pub before dinner meant they finished their drinks and went their separate ways. Three weeks of thinking about Cassie, several days of anticipation, all had exploded in Andrew’s face inside 15 minutes. It was so bad it was comical. Oh well.

The best part of Andrew’s week, even better than his course was the four hours at Addenbrooke’s. He would spend two of the four hours assisting the orderlies and nurses, which meant he was the ward’s dogsbody. By the third week they were leaving some tasks for him to complete on Sunday. The other two hours was spent trying to talk with and listen to the patients. He spent most of his time with the children whose parents weren’t able to be there every day but he also talked to some of the others, always at the prompting of a nurse or the sister. It was the mundane aspects of his life that fascinated the children, what he had done that week. Andrew would talk about the OTC with the boys, telling them a different story from his time in the CCF or the camps to augment that week’s training. He also reinforced the message of listening to the nurses about eating well and doing exercise when they were released. He would be careful at these points because for a lot of them it was not yet clear that life would grant them that chance. He would also give a (very) sanitised version of the nights out. The forbidden allure of nightclubs always held them enthralled, especially the children who were into their teens. Andrew painted Pedro as this heartthrob Spanish pirate and the guys thought he was a swashbuckling buccaneer, and the girls thought he was a dreamboat. Their words not his. Of course Pedro was an 18 year old studying economics at Cambridge University but don’t let the reality get in the way of a good story!

So Andrew was half way through the first term at Cambridge and felt like he was doing well. University life, College life, was good, he was involved as much as possible and had a group of eight or ten good friends, between the corridor, OTC, the course and hockey. But as with life at school, where the excitement in his life came in waves, so it was here at university as well. In the space of a single week Andrew was pleased, excited and devastated.

Andrew had written regular letters to his Grandma, one to his parents, one to Nikki and Fran, and a couple to Leslie and Suzanne. The phones in the accommodation blocks were always busy on a Sunday but he found that there were several phones at the Library that were not nearly as busy. He had taken to phoning Leslie every other weekend, just to catch up. It was a substitute for talking to his parents. That Sunday, halfway through the term Leslie told him to call Mhairi at her home even although it was the weekend. When he called, Mhairi told him that there had been several opportunities come up over the last six weeks, and although she had been trying to hold off from bugging him through term, she felt that they had to meet for a couple of hours to go through everything. Some of the investments would not be there in five weeks’ time when Andrew got back to Edinburgh. He was a little taken aback by this news, naively maybe he had thought that he could forget about his financial affairs during term time. That Mhairi felt the need to meet with him was surprising. As it was late of the Sunday afternoon Andrew figured that she could not be in Cambridge on Monday evening but that was also a false assumption.

“I am working in London all week Andrew. I knew that we would have to meet in the evening so tell me what night works best for you and I will be there. There are regular trains up to Cambridge.”