The End of Men(83)

Hi,


I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to do this. Do you want to meet for a chat? I thought we could go for a walk together in Brockwell Park. Let me know if you’d like that. Cat x



And then, in a rush because I worry my message is too cold:


I miss you x



The messages burn in my pocket but after only two minutes, there it is. A reply.


I’d love to. How about Saturday at 11? x



I feel calmer and more centered, knowing I’ve taken the first step toward narrowing this fissure between Phoebe and me. Libby and I head toward the Barbican, where we’re seeing a “multimedia art installation” with pictures by Frederica Valli, the famous war photographer.

We make our way into the gallery and I’m looking in my bag for chewing gum when I hear Libby.

“Oh my God,” she says, her face caving in on itself in pain.

“What? What’s wrong—”

There’s no need for her to answer. I realize now why the room, full of people, is solemnly silent. The first picture is a huge black-and-white photo from the Oxenholme riots. A woman, giving birth on the tarmac of the train platform, surrounded by people and yet looking so alone. Where is her husband? I hope he was trying to find her help. Her expression is one of pure anguish and primal fear. It says both, “Somebody help me,” and “Please, please stay away.”

I had heard about the riots, I watched them on the TV, but this photo conveys more than any grainy helicopter footage ever could. The roiling mass of people in the background yet no one is stepping forward to help. This woman reduced, in the twenty-first century, to giving birth on a cold, dirty floor out of sheer desperation to escape the inescapable.

I’m desperate to know what came of her but there’s a queue to read the card by the photo. Eventually, endless minutes later, we reach it. Woman in pain, by Frederica Valli. January 7, 2026. That’s it. Nothing else. No mention of whether the baby was a boy or a girl, or if her husband survived, or if the mother was okay in the end.

We move along the corridors, awestruck by the photos. There has never been a shortage of images of the Plague and the pain it wrought but I hadn’t realized until now the absence of these kinds of images. Quiet, taken not for a news program but with care, in the moment. Art, in other words.

The next picture needs no explanation of the identity of the subject. Marcus Wilkes, author of Good-bye darling: A Memoir of Fear and Acceptance. Marcus was a popular journalist who recounted his life in journals from the day he first heard about the Plague in November 2025 to the day before he died, delirious and able to only write the words “Good-bye darling” to his wife of thirty-four years. It only spans six months but it’s a beautiful book. This is Marcus in three stages, all lined up. The first with his wife in November 2025, fearful but pasting on familiar smiles. They are the smiles of careful optimism; two people who can’t hope too much to be spared because it will be too painful when the disaster comes to pass. The second is in March 2026 after the death of their son. Their faces are old, weary, desperate. The third is in April 2026. Marcus is clearly dying. The picture is in black and white but a thick layer of sweat is visible on his forehead, his face a mask of pain. But it is not this illness that pierces me and makes me weep. It is the sight of his hand tightly held by his wife, who is looking at him with hunger. I recognize that look. It is the look that says, “Please don’t leave. Please don’t leave me all alone. I can’t bear it, so I really need you to try and stay.” It is unavoidable, the tears that tip themselves freely down my cheeks as I think back to the awful night when my kind, strong, calm husband had to leave me. To walk upstairs in our happy, love-filled house knowing we would never see each other again unless, by some miracle, he recovered. A tiny hope so small we never articulated it.

I wish I could have held his hand. If I could have anything in the world in this moment, go back to any point in my life, I would go back and hold his hand at the end. I would do what Marcus’s wife did, and hold his hand so he knew he wasn’t alone. Anthony died all alone, with no one to comfort him, hold him, reassure him, tell him that at the very least he was loved. He died alone and I can never go back to that moment.

I feel Libby’s hand slip into mine and with her other hand she cups my head and pulls it onto her shoulder where, in the middle of an art gallery full of women, some of whom are crying as openly as I am, I fall apart at the seams.

We leave a few minutes later, unable to cope with the images of grief so close to us. It is unbearable, like looking into the sun. We walk to the station, me still crying silently, Libby looking at me with the desperate need to make it better, but she can’t. I wave away her offer to take me home and insist I am fine. I’m alone now and I have to get used to it. I get onto my train and she follows me. She sits on the other side of the carriage, takes a book out of her bag and reads it for the entire thirty-minute journey. We get off the train at Crystal Palace and she walks the fifteen minutes back to my house, always a few steps behind me. I walk down the path to my house, put the key into the cheerful, red door of my home and turn around. Libby is standing, smiling at me. “You’re not alone. I love you,” she says, and turns around to make the hour-and-a-half journey back to her own home.

Perhaps it is the images of Marcus and his wife at the gallery, or Libby’s kindness or the heavy silence of my house, but I lie down on the sofa in the living room and keep weeping as though I hadn’t ever stopped. It’s a faucet of grief that has released itself and as I listen to the thoughts racing I realize that I have to forgive myself. I did the best I could. I couldn’t hold his hand; I was protecting Theodore. I couldn’t tell him I loved him as he took his last breath; I was protecting Theodore. Anthony wanted me to keep Theodore safe with every fiber of his being. He didn’t blame me for leaving him alone at his time of greatest need, but I have blamed myself. I’ve blamed myself for the deaths of my husband and son, for my failure to protect them, and my failure to save them. That belief—that I had wronged my family and brought doom upon myself—is preventing me from acting upon the need I desperately feel to have another baby. I want another baby. I want to be a mother again, I want to have a child and to have a family. I want to gain someone into my life rather than merely cope with the aftershocks of loss. Surviving and living a life I want are very different things.