by Kate Bradley
And the question that burnt more than any other: did my son hurt his son?
After all the injuries he’d given me over the years, I lay there, tortured that Jack was in danger and it felt like there was nothing I could do about it.
thirty-seven:
– before –
On Saturday morning, feeling fragile, I got up, still holding the bunny toy, and rang the only person who could help. Nick. To his credit he answered – he always did.
‘Nick, Jack’s got Jack.’
He swore and called out to his wife. I heard her answer and he came back on the line. ‘Sorry, Lisa, we were about to go out, but it can wait.’
He always paused his life for me when it came to our son. I don’t know what she thought, but it felt like he was still prepared to suffer with me. ‘I don’t want to interfere with your day.’
‘It’s just food shopping, Lese – I’ve got a minute. I’ve been meaning to ring you anyway.’
I still loved it when he called me Lese – it made me feel that I belonged to him. I told him what had happened.
‘Well . . . this is good, isn’t it?’ he answered, not sounding surprised at all. How was it that I’d been blindsided, but he thought it was all perfectly to be expected? ‘We always wanted him to come back for Jack and to face up to his adult responsibilities.’
That was true, I knew it was, but it just felt abrupt. ‘Is he going to do a good job though? Jack’s so young.’
‘I checked again recently, he still hasn’t got a criminal record – he’s never done anything wrong. It’s possible that he –’ I could hear the shrug in his voice – ‘just finally grew out of being a shit.’
It felt good to hear Nick’s levity. It made me feel that I was in it with someone; that I wasn’t alone. Then he said the perfect thing as usual. ‘Lese, I know you’ll get Jack back. Jack just wants another try at being a dad. He’s older now and—’
I heard his wife calling him.
‘You go, Nick. You’ve got stuff to do. I feel better; I can wait it out until tomorrow.’
‘Anne-Marie can wait a sec. I just wanted you to know—’
I heard her calling him again, louder this time. ‘Honestly, Nick, I get it. I’m not alone. I geddit.’
I geddit was something I used to say to him a lot when he would over-emphasise a point. He laughed at the memory – I did too. I promised to call again on Sunday and hung up.
Hearing that Nick thought it was a good idea made me feel a little better. I tried to be productive and tidy the flat, to get on with jobs that needed doing, like cleaning the grout in the bathroom.
As I scrubbed, I thought about Nick. I thought about how I missed him, how, despite being married to Anne-Marie for years, he still felt like my husband.
Nick tried so hard to be a good husband, a good father. To his credit, he always tried to do his best – not just with our son, but also with me. He would come home from work as promptly as he could. It was difficult to clock out on time as a copper, and I think his desire to look after me drove a wedge between him and his bosses at work, but – love him – he did it anyway. He would come home, make me a cup of tea and then when things were really bad, he would examine me, looking for scratches and bruises. There was a bad time involving an iron burn when he lost it – badly – with Jack, and another time when I needed stitches to my lip. Plus, the broken finger of course, and several broken ribs. And a broken nose. I had suffered, but I think it took courage for Nick to walk out of our front door every day and not know what he’d come back to. He was unable to muscle our son into good behaviour, so in some ways I think the abuse was emasculating. He knew he should be putting a stop to it, but like me, just didn’t know how. It was so hard not getting help from the GPs, but then, bad behaviour in children just wasn’t medicalised.
We tried to be self-sufficient and read up on what was available – not much then – and made plans which, to our credit, we stuck to. We tried it all. Nothing worked.
Now, things would’ve been different. Most likely, Nick would’ve been investigated, but this was before, when people looked the other way to domestic abuse and I was left to make excuses about clumsiness that were instantly believed. I know, as a nurse who’d done a few stints in A & E, that I’d seen injuries to wives and suspected, but it wouldn’t have occurred to us to do anything.
It sounds so stupid, so improbable now, but times change.
I think if we had all been born later, it might’ve been OK. Now people are more aware. Behaviour problems have found medical recognition. Someone, somewhere, would’ve been able to offer us support. At the time there was no Google search, no help groups. At the time, we thought it was just us. And when you think you are the only ones, you don’t talk. You keep shtum. It’s hard – even as adults being abused by loved ones – but you fear the not being believed, the nothing changing, the shame of being found out and not being understood. Nick worried about people thinking he was an abuser, but not able to put them right. Both of us found it easier to bear the shame of people thinking he beat me rather than us trying to find a way to find a way to say: No, you’re wrong, it’s our son.
Nick and I have had our problems, but he was a good father and a good husband. In many ways, he will always be my hero.
I wish someone had asked. When he and I were still in a good place with each other, if someone had raised a question, we would’ve cried out in response, glad for help. But instead, we were on our own with it and we just didn’t know what to do. We loved our son; we just kept hoping he would grow out of it. Besides, what else could we do? We could hardly just give him away as faulty goods. Sorry, have you got another one? We think this one is broken.
Don’t think that there weren’t dark moments, during dark nights, when I didn’t think of it. But it was rare.
But on we went and on went the bad times that kept amassing like stones in a cairn; they built up, defiant against raw elements, until there were too many to take down. Sometimes, I would stand, metaphorically hands on hips, and just look at my life. And not believe.
There were just so many times, so many stones.
We all heaped our stones on that cairn. Not just our son. Nick and I brought our imperfections to our family life.
But a huge one, the stone that started the topple, was the death of Winston. Like the key all those decades later, the dog’s death caused a huge earthquake through our world. What he did to the dog changed our family forever. Winston was so lovely. In some ways, he was like Nick’s and my second baby. But as soon as our son was old enough, he made it clear he didn’t like our family dog. Even as a twelve-month-old, he would throw his Lego bricks at him.
By the time he was three, I no longer allowed him to be alone with Winston. Except that one time, the day of the letter.
Despite what I might say, I didn’t blame Nick for making the most of his freedom from us – I never have. Through it all, even when he found happiness somewhere else, with his new family, I never begrudged Nick for trying to squeeze some joy from his life. If I ever felt envy creep up on me, I remembered him on his knees, body bent over our dead dog, the terribleness of his heaving, silent sobs, and then that final moment when he raised his head and looked at me with huge, helpless eyes, and I could see the pain our union had brought him.
Finally, standing back, my home was clean and it’d become evening. I felt proud of myself: surfaces gleamed, I still hadn’t touched the codeine, I’d survived my first day without Jack and I’d worked a little bit more of Nick out of my system. Suddenly starving, I ate two bowls of cereal. Then, with aching shoulders and knees from the day’s chores, I gave up on the idea of TV and went back to Jack’s bed. I thought I’d be awake all night, counting the hours and minutes until Sunday morning, but instead, feeling almost peaceful, fell asleep.
In my last waking moments, in the dreaminess and honesty of near-sleep, I wondered who I was looking forward to seeing more: Jack or Jack.
thirty-eight:
– before –
When I went to pick Jack up on Sunday morning, I got there for 9.30 a.m. I had been awake since 5.00, but thought that any earlier and I’d risk being labelled difficult. My son came to the door, already dressed. He was clean-shaven and had a cocky look in his eye. ‘Bit early, isn’t it, Lisa? Jack’s just eating his pancakes.’
I was too surprised to argue when he shut the door to – albeit left ajar. I was surprised about everything: surprised he was letting Jack come back to me even though that was what we’d agreed; surprised my son was up and dressed at this hour, surprised he’d make his son breakfast, even more so, Jack’s favourite.
When Jack came to the door, he looked happy and relaxed. He was dressed in clothes I hadn’t seen before – they looked nice. More surprise. Even better, he was clearly pleased to see me, but not too eager – not enough to suggest there had been any concerns for him.
My son simply handed over Jack’s school bag. ‘We did his spellings homework. See you next Friday,’ was all he said before he shut the door in my face.
Jack’s flat was only fifteen minutes’ walk from my own. As I walked home, feeling much better to have Jack’s hand in mine, I asked about his weekend. He said his dad had taken him to London Zoo, and that they’d had fish and chips for dinner. ‘Not both nights?’ I asked.
Jack giggled. ‘Both nights,’ he said. He looked at me, his face lit with amusement.
‘Hmmm,’ I said, before Jack giggled again.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Daddy said you wouldn’t like me having it twice in a row – but he let me choose.’
I smiled back at his laughter, and actually – to my utter amazement – realised I meant it. I liked the idea of them having a shared joke. I liked the idea that Jack had been a bit spoilt. I even liked them poking fun at me a little – perhaps I was being too optimistic, but it felt affectionate.
After the terrible worry I’d suffered, I was delighted for this peaceful anticlimax. Not only was Jack safe, but he was happy. I’d survived. My son had stuck to his word and I had Jack back, when he said I would. I relaxed – the tiniest, tiniest fraction.
Within three more weeks, I began to even feel magnanimous. Jack had always sung to himself, but now he was never without a tune. He’d started to ace his spelling tests and told me that: ‘Daddy showed me a new way to learn.’
Daddy.
Part of me simply glowed to think of my own son finally finding his way with his own boy. It wasn’t just that it was a good thing for Jack, it was also great for my son. It felt like he was waking up to his responsibilities as a parent. Of course, it made me feel good about myself – how I worried I had screwed my son up! – but Jack was so rewarding, so delightful, how could his father not find it wonderful to have him in his life?
The possibility that he’d just get bored and stumble off as he normally did remained, although the permanence of his new flat gave me something to hope for. And when he turned up the next week and the next, I relaxed a tiny bit more.
I was impressed with the flat. I was never invited in, but it was in a very nice block. He must’ve been making good money, although how, I was still unclear. When I asked Jack if he knew whether his dad had a job, he said that he worked in ‘phones’, but whatever that meant, I never found out. Although I was pleased, I still struggled to mentally align this successful, working man to the stoned teenager who was so resistant to work. Sometimes, in darker moments – usually on Friday nights which remained hard for me – I thought of leopards and spots, but I also recognised that he was older and time and regret could change anyone. Plus, Jack was older too, and to the fickleness of someone like my son, possibly more engaging than a baby.
The best thing I could do was watch and wait. But how could I not want the best for my son and for Jack? After all, I loved them both. I didn’t ring Nick back either – I didn’t want to push it with him or Anne-Marie. I’d save him for emergencies, I decided, and week after week, there was no emergency.
But it didn’t take long for it to go wrong.
I still always attended the school pick-up on a Friday, and then one day, just eleven weeks after my son started turning up, he simply wasn’t there. I saw Jack’s wide-eyed search amongst the waiting parents for his dad. Clearly confused, in the end Jack allowed me to take him home. He tried to hide his tears from me, but he was only six. I hugged him close and promised to ring his dad. He didn’t answer when I did.
That weekend, I did my best to lift Jack’s spirits. But I felt let down too – again I had been too easily trusting. I thought we wouldn’t see him again, but then the next Friday, he was there in the school playground as if nothing had happened. Jack ran to him and my hope withered.
After three months, the arrangement continued to deteriorate. But we never discussed it – if I tried, my son simply shut me down. Our only contact had always been, and continued to be, as strained and brief as a divorcing couple. Every Sunday morning, at 9.30 a.m., he’d simply pass me Jack’s school bag and say the same thing: ‘We’ve done his spellings homework.’ Then regardless of whether we would, he always said: ‘See you next Friday, Lisa,’ before shutting the door in my face.
I became frustrated and angry. It was one thing to muck me around, but my heart bruised for Jack. His stammer began to get worse again and he started biting his nails on Thursdays, anxious, asking me if I thought that his dad would turn up tomorrow. He’d struggle to sleep and on Friday mornings, would be dark-eyed and edgy.
When he turned up on the Friday afternoon to collect Jack, my grandson’s face was an unwavering beam of love for his father. Their time together was still great – when it happened. I hated weekends without Jack, but began to like them more than weekends with Jack – it was better to know that he was happy, than to have to deal with a disappointed little boy.
My hope for them waxed and waned depending on my son’s ability to turn up; it never gained enough strength to became a full flame. Instead, sometimes it was little more than a flicker on a damp wick, sometimes it burnt much brighter, yet sometimes it seemed not to be alight at all.
If Jack’s father had been an ex-husband, I would’ve been far less tolerant of the inconsistencies. I would’ve been in front of the court, demanding full custody. But not only could I not do that because I had no rights, I was prejudiced by wanting the best for my son. He was here, he had bought a flat within walking distance of his son’s school, this must be what he wanted. He was still young – only twenty-four – and I reminded myself constantly to make allowances.
But when Jack’s anxiety spread to Wednesday night and his teacher mentioned he seemed distracted and tired, I decided I had no choice but to take action.
It didn’t take long to make a plan – it was a thin, raggedy little plan. Tissue thin, it wouldn’t give me much, but it might be just enough to get a sense of my son’s mind. If I could look in his flat, perhaps secure an invite in, that could be a start. If I could find a way to chat to him, I could find out why he sometimes didn’t attend, and then perhaps I could help. It was clear that our relationship wasn’t going to build up naturally. I would have to instigate it.
I couldn’t let things limp along as they were. For Jack’s sake.
thirty-nine:
– before –
The day I used my thin, ragged little plan to get a better idea of my son’s life, was a spring day only a few months before we moved to Herefordshire. Of course, I didn’t know that then and the cottage on the hill was unknown to me.
I hadn’t slept well the night before – too much wine and not enough food. I always found it difficult to eat at the weekends without Jack to keep me company. Just the thought of him being with his father left me lonely – I’d have loved to have occasionally joined in with them, perhaps had a meal with them sometimes or accompany them on a trip to the park. That was my long-term goal still – that one day, my son would relent and allow me in a little. We’d never had an official falling-out. Th
ere was no one particular incident that led him to be cold and distant to me. Since he’d been an adult, no words were ever exchanged. If anything, I would’ve hoped that Jack being well cared for by me was a reason my son could be friendly to me one day.
I couldn’t stand not knowing any longer what Jack’s situation was like when he was with his father. Were Jack’s bed and clothes clean? Was there food in the cupboards? If I was satisfied, perhaps I could relax a little – and I dearly wanted to because I couldn’t change the situation.
Around five o’clock I left the house. In a bag I carried my son’s favourite cake – carrot. I also had what they would know now was missing from Jack’s school bag as I had purposefully removed it – his spelling book. My plan was to turn up before tea, when I knew they would be hungry, and offer the cake and then produce the spelling book and hope for an invite in. If he didn’t allow me access, I would take the matter to Nick, I decided, but for now, to try was enough.
If my son relented and let me, it would give me the chance to have a look around and – in my wildest, craziest hopes – to have a conversation about him providing Jack with consistency. It was unlikely to work, but that was not a reason not to try.
Before I could change my mind, I’d grabbed my bag and my props. But as I took my coat from the hook, I hesitated. I felt a shiver, a sense of foreboding.
I paused. Was I sure I wanted to do this? Suddenly, before I could change my mind, I sent him a text, telling him I was coming round. He might not let me in, but there was no advantage to surprising him – I knew my son and understood he wouldn’t answer the door if he didn’t want to.
Standing there, coat in hand, I remembered him as a child, taking him to see my mother after giving up the buggy. I remember towing him by the hand, his every fibre resisting me every step of the way. He always resisted me with everything and this would be no different. But perhaps he would want the spelling book enough to answer the door. And then, if Jack saw the cake, perhaps that would be enough. Probably not, but I lived in hope that my son would open the door to his closed heart. Constant love had to be the answer.