"Fair quiet, have I found thee here / And innocence thy sister dear?" *

'Thanks, you've just woken me up,' said the dying sister when I phoned through to her room. The others were in the pool and I imagined I could hear their splashing. I carried my bag slowly through the rain to where my own room was, and once inside stood completely still and in absolute silence. Moments later, I saw a 1981 first edition on the shelf of a book written by a journalistic tribal elder who once came to an exhibition given by the artist. The crowning moment came ten minutes later, shortly after reading about the deliberate running down of the railways of all things to support the car industry: the sister I had rung so unsuccessfully suddenly knocked on my door. Gleaming with the certainty of inner peace, she embraced me most wholly and warmly. Her hair was an honest blue grey, illuminating the blue of her eyes. Her skin showed none of the ravages of the cancer or chemotherapy. She wanted to tell me she had a present for me - Machiavelli's The Prince and The Art of War - and there was a serenity to her movement which challenged all negativity. I sat her down in the armchair in the corner of the room and sat myself on the end of the bed. We sort of fell into each other's eyes, and yet were strong and unsentimental and as thrilled as we were energised to see each other. Without hesitation, our late parents, whom I never really knew, were discussed, and I was told immediately how splendid they were as parents - a bonnie woman, she said, our mother read five books a week and made everyone's clothes - and how our father loved our mother so much it was small wonder he found life so hard after she died so young. She didn't need to mention the fact that by the time he'd pulled himself together, on the weekend of her wedding he literally exploded from a mass haemorrhage. She also mentioned the mysterious plate in his head after an explosion in a training exercise during the war. But the personal was soon swept aside and political issues were now my sister's required subject matter. (She felt the troubles in the war zone were deeply regrettable and probably avoidable, though I said I wasn't so sure if they were avoidable.) She then spoke of her new found faith but how she felt no need to be evangelical about it. The truth is, I'd never seen her look so well in my life and had never felt her strength so much as I did in that room. There was no pettiness - something I suppose we are capable of - and as I opened the door to let the first of the other white dressing-gowned four sisters in after their swim, I felt a huge and fortifying sense of pride in the lack of self-pity on the part of my sister who had stared at the cancer devouring her and most confidently and philosophically taken it as a sign that life was a precious and dignified thing. Thanks, I should have said, you've just woken me up.
* Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)