Oliver Twist Investigates (18 page)

Nancy's parting from the Dodger was perhaps her last truly distressing moment, but it was not mine. Nancy had no wish to let the disease totally destroy her brain and on those days when she had moments of lucidity she begged me to end her life before her mind was lost for ever.

‘Oliver, my brain is on fire. It feels as if my entire body is being simultaneously bitten by adders and hacked to pieces by knives. No torture rack could match what I feel and I am slowly but surely having all my memories scattered away like dust. You know there are days when I cannot even remember words let alone recognize you. This is no life for me and I hate you having to see me like this. Please, I beg you, I implore you, if you love me take steps to end my
existence before madness takes me over completely. I've seen enough of what the final stages of this disease can do to fear what will happen next. One woman whom I knew ended her days howling like an animal while another began collecting and drinking her urine because in her mind it had become the elixir of life. Is that the kind of existence you want me to endure? Do you want to see me a chained and bound madwoman, my brain eaten away?'

At first I refused to contemplate what she desired but, after one especially bad day when I feared there was only a very short time before I was doomed to tend only her physical shell, I became more receptive to her pleas. I was constantly praying to God that she should be allowed to retain some shreds of reason and recognition in her syphilitic frame, but in my heart I increasingly feared that she was right and that I would be reduced to tending a raving madwoman. Death appeared a welcome alternative to a life in which the real Nancy no longer existed. And Nancy, even in the final stages of her illness, proved stronger than I. One evening her feeble hand grasped mine and, looking at me through dilated eyes with such deep love that I wept, she struggled to speak in a voice I could understand. At last by an intense act of will she mastered control of her quivering mouth and whispered:

‘Don't let me die a stranger to you, Oliver. You have borne much in your life and I do not want you to bear that.'

‘I can bear anything but losing you,' I sobbed.

‘But lose me you must, Oliver and, much though I love you, I want to die with dignity. My life has contained precious little of that. Please, I beg you not to let me continue with this slow creeping death which unrelentingly eats away at both my mind and body.'

Her life had indeed had little dignity and was I to deny her one remaining wish? I knew in my heart of hearts that Nancy, whatever the sins of her youth, did not deserve a living death. And so the two of us said our final farewells – I cannot bring myself to write how painful that was to me – and then I placed a pillow over those features I had come to love so much. And, God forgive me, I murdered Nancy.