The Last Mountain
An attractive and successful young couple are looking forward to a happy family life together. Then routine treatment for haemophilia brings the shocking news. Phil is HIV positive. He will die of AIDS. ‘The future had been snatched away from us and we asked questions such as Why? Will we be able to have children? How long do we have together?
Suddenly they are thrown entirely on to the resources of God as they struggle to make sense of their lives. Told with insight and sensitivity, THE LAST MOUNTAIN (pb Hodder & Stoughton) is a powerful and moving tribute to faith laid bare, love stretched to the limit, and triumph beautifully brought out of tragedy. ______________________
When Hodder asked me to write what was, ultimately, to become THE LAST MOUNTAIN, my initial response was to decline. Various health issues had, for some years, taken their toll on my family, and I had no desire to put further pressure on the household by taking on something which I knew would impact me emotionally. Phil Godfrey, the subject of the book, had died of AIDS, and I was sufficiently aware of the condition to know that it would have been a horrible death.
‘Would you at least look at the diaries his widow has kept?’ my editor begged me. And so, a fortnight later, I found myself sitting up in bed with the early morning post, reading aloud to my husband.
As I had thought, it made a harrowing account. In the last stages of his illness, Jana, Phil’s wife, was having to carry his emaciated body up and down the spiral stone staircase to their flat every time they went out. There was even one story of how she had purchased a set of navy wash cloths for Phil’s bum, so that on those occasions when he didn’t make it to the lavatory in time (he became doubly incontinent), staining would be less obvious. My eyes filled with tears as I read the diary entry to my husband, and I had difficulty in making myself heard.
What clinched it for me, however, was, once again, the humour
that prevailed. It reminded me of my brother-in-law who, at the
time, was dying of a brain tumour, and who, when his skull was
drilled for some medical intervention or other, joked that the
purpose was for the insertion of a chimney (he was a heavy smoker).
Somehow, Phil and Jana had that same, irrepressible, ability to
extrapolate absurdity from a situation so dire you’d think
the faculty for fun would have rolled over and died. There was no
way, I decided there and then, that I could turn down the
opportunity of letting the world read this story.
And so it was that soon afterwards I met Jana, for the very first
time, in the London office of Hodder & Stoughton. A contract
was swiftly agreed, and within a matter of weeks I was on my way to
Switzerland, courtesy of my publishers.
Jana was an American; Phil a Brit. They’d met in America when he’d taken a post-graduate job, married, and subsequently moved to Geneva, where he had accepted a post with Glaxo, as a research scientist. Whilst there, knowing that Phil had full-blown AIDS, they had taken the controversial step of starting a family. So when I stepped off the plane in Geneva, it was to be greeted by the cutest three-year old blonde bombshell you could imagine.
‘My Daddy’s in heaven,’ she told me, thrusting
her hand into mine. ‘He’s getting new legs so
he’ll be able to play with me one day.’ Dry eyes, I was
discovering, were to be a thing of the past for the next few
weeks.
My time in Geneva passed in a flurry of poring over diaries,
scrapbooks and photograph albums (Americans are exceptionally good
at this sort of thing), meeting the Godfrey’s friends, and
trying to get under the family’s skin. In addition, there
were visits to various medical centres. And to the Glaxo
laboratories, where I learned that Phil had been a greatly
respected member of a team whose research was to lead to new
methods of treating Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and
where my education in neurons and dopamine receptors was never to
be surpassed. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has its
Headquarters in Geneva, but per head of population, the city also
had the highest percentage of HIV and AIDS sufferers in Europe.
On my return to UK, I began to write up the first draft of the story. But in so short a time of acquaintance, I had found it difficult to get to know Jana sufficiently well to stand in her shoes, and to walk her walk. And, of course, of Phil, himself, my knowledge was limited to hearsay. My draft amounted to little more than a factual account of the story, and lacked the humanity that would make it attractive to the market for which I was writing. In due course, it was decided that I should spend some time with Phil’s family, in Kent, where Jana and her daughter had returned, after seeing out the period of their tenure in Switzerland, planned prior to Phil’s death.
It was a profitable time, but I somehow doubt that I ever portrayed Phil’s humour to the satisfaction of his family. It’s an awesome responsibility trying to commit to paper the character and personality of a human being whom you’ve never met. And there are always the constraints of the publisher’s expectations, contracts, and word-length to be considered which, inevitably, curtail the amount of material family members would like to have included in the story.
Nevertheless, the book met with success. At the time of its
launch, I was researching a novel which had, as one of its main
characters, a Member of the British Parliament. It just happened
that my own MP was also an author. And it just happened that on the
very day that he took me for lunch at The Houses of Parliament to
further my research, Geoffrey Howe was in full flight in the Tories
ill-conceived intention of toppling Margaret Thatcher.
I knew that law suits were being filed against the British
government because of their negligence in bringing in contaminated
bloods from the United States of America; bloods which were used as
Factor 8 in the treatment of haemophiliacs in the UK. It transpired
that in the USA, any down-and-out drug addict could become a blood
donor, and screening was non-existent. An initial £10 million
grant had been made available by the UK government, which was to be
distributed via the MacFarlane Trust, which was set up for the
purpose. However, a deadline obliged litigants to have their names
on the Writ by a certain date, beyond which there would be no
chance of their receiving compensation. This was a flawed
prerequisite. Haemophiliacs who had contracted AIDS were being
refused life assurance, mortgages or credit. More importantly, they
were dying before the evidence to support their case could be
amassed, with the result that their bereaved dependents were often
bereft of support.
On the accession of John Major to leadership of the Tory party, one
of the first things he initiated was to facilitate the means by
which individual cases might be presented, and a further £42
million was paid into the Trust. At last, the government announced
that it was prepared to make a settlement to litigants and their
families.
Naturally, it made news. Big news. And naturally, THE LAST
MOUNTAIN, telling, as it did, the real live story of a family who
might, otherwise, have been left without compensation, leapt to the
fore. Over the next few weeks, sales of the book shot up in the
regions, until, eventually, it reached No. 4 in The Sunday
Times Best Seller list. Phil Godfrey might have had to go to
heaven in search of new limbs. But his book had legs!
Awards
