Their mother’s brother was the only visitor to the farm. He could have noticed what was going on and, perhaps, changed things. But he didn’t. He was much younger than his sister and lived and worked in a city many miles away. His visits were short and infrequent and didn’t interrupt the normal pattern of life.
Then they left the farm.
The brothers hadn’t been on the farm for weeks and weren’t with them when they left. She never knew what happened to them. They weren’t spoken of again. She did not know she was leaving the farm forever.
Over the next days their cart met up with others and they trekked in a line, like the wagon trains she watched on the television years later. She remembered little except the cold and a beautiful lake with deep blue water that reflected the snow covered hills. She did not remember, even if she had ever known, why they had crossed the mountains.
I hadn’t poured any of the wine as I read. But at this point, as I reached the end of a sheet, I looked away from the tightly written sheets of paper, poured some of the dark red liquid into the glass and drank it. I sat looking at the empty glass for a few moments as the implications of what I was reading began to sink in. This was Monika I was reading about. This was Max who was writing so dispassionately, though obviously with difficulty. I knew that this was not the final document he would have left to be read after his death. Perhaps there were things he would change, leave out. Add.
I poured another glass and turned to the next sheet.
They survived by doing odd jobs on farms, doing those things for people with money that there was no-one else to do. She was told never to speak. If she spoke outside their house people would know they came from a different country and in those times to be from a different country was to be an enemy. Soon no words were spoken inside the house. She said nothing when her father came to her bed each night. She said nothing. It was the way.
She soon found that the men of this country were no different from the boys she had always known. They had the power and the ability to do what they wanted with her. So they did.
She was eleven years old when she was cutting kindling in the woods near the village and felt pain in her stomach. She ignored it until she could ignore it any longer. She hurt with a pain such as she had never experienced. She screamed with the pain but it didn’t stop. No one heard her, no one interfered as her body ejected an unformed bloody mess. The pain continued all through the night and all through the next day. She thought the bleeding would never stop. As the sun set she stared at it knowing she would never see another. But she did not die. She slept. The next morning she did wake up and returned to her home to carry on as if she hadn’t seen the end of the world.
I drank again. Monika must have told all this to Max, yet she had never said anything to me. She would have told me if she had wanted me to know, maybe she had wanted to forget; perhaps she had forgotten.
Perhaps the mind eventually shuts out those things that are too difficult to comprehend.
I had to keep reading, though part of me wondered how I could intrude on this intensity of pain.
She could say nothing. She could ask no one about the pain and the blood. She did not know what had caused it so she could not stop it happening again.
She had bled once, between her legs, but it had not hurt. She had thought it was because of what the men had done. Months later her father found her trying to wipe away blood. He had muttered something angrily and had gone away and never again came to her as he had done most nights since they had left the farm. Never again did he come into her room, lie next to her for a short time, then roll on top of her, thrusting into her for a few seconds before leaving her to her sleep.
She rather missed it.
It was not long after that that he left forever. She never knew what happened to him. For several hours there had been the sounds of guns and shouting, noises that were not unfamiliar but which seemed to go on for longer than normal. The next morning her Mother took her hand and they walked away.
I began to understand something of why Monika was as she was. I had wondered why she had never married, never left us to set up her own home, never wanted all the things that women are supposed to need. Now I thought I knew.
They eventually stopped walking in a village larger than the other and they kept themselves to themselves. As she grew in size no one cared enough about her story that her husband was dead to disbelieve her. She was 14 years old, although small for her age even in those times, and it was not unusual for girls to be in her situation. When the pains started her mother took her out of the village and held her hand as the hours passed. She watched as her mother pulled the baby out of her and strangled it with the cord before burying it under a tree.
Some time after she was walking through the village, which was bright and noisy as people talked that the war would soon be over. She was faced in the square by a group of drunken men who taunted her, called her simple, said what was good for some unknown dead boy was good enough for them and had bundled her into a barn. One by one they had taken what they wanted from her, lining up one behind the other to take their turn, several going back for more as they swigged alcohol from large dark bottles and celebrated the coming end of the suffering of the war.
I had always known that men did this to women, that they were unfeeling and unloving as they dealt with purely physical needs. I had known that women sometimes turned the tables and used men for their ends. I had never wanted to have anything to do with it. I had childhood memories of the power games played out by people in the name of ‘love’. I had never associated ‘sex’ with ‘love’ and I doubted I would ever have experience of either.
One day the men of the village were rounded up and shot against the wall of the church in the square. She did not know why they had been shot, she did not know whether all the people shot had been killed, she did not ask, nor did anyone tell her. She was pleased they were dead.
In the summer another baby was born. It was alive for a short time but now she knew what to do. She did as her mother had done, tying the cord around its neck until its crying stopped, burying it before it could know a world of pain.
That evening her Mother gave her a small parcel, an envelope wrapped up in brown paper and tied with string. She told her never to lose that envelope. She didn’t tell her what it was, simply that she should never lose it. Monika sewed the envelope into the hem of her dress. The next morning her Mother was gone. She never knew what had happened to her.
She walked away from the village with no idea of where she was going. She remembered nothing of the world. In all her life she had never made any decisions. She had gone where her father and mother told her to go, done what others made her do. But now she was alone. She saw young men returning to the village and she knew she did not want to stay.
For the next two years she survived. When she found her body swelling there would be a woman who would get rid of it for her. If the hot baths, the alcohol and the knitting needles didn’t work then she would give birth alone and, without feeling, would strangle and bury the bloody mess.
She moved across the country invisible and unhindered, her actions unnoticed by anyone in the world. She was as near to invisible as she could be – a homeless, stateless individual in a chaotic world.
I had always thought my childhood unhappy, it was part of my view of myself, I had been so centred on my own perceived loneliness. But I had always had a roof over my head, there were always people who loved me and who fed me and made sure I was comfortable and well looked after; no one had tried actively to do me harm. Yet I had still thought myself unbearably unhappy.
As I read of Monika’s childhood I realised something of what real misery could be and I was ashamed.
It was a ritual for her that whenever she obtained new clothes she would cut the thin parcel out of the old hem, would look at it and would sew it into the new. The familiar lines comforted her, they gave her the feeling that there was somewhere safe in the world.
>
Through those times she acquired no knowledge other than that required to keep alive. She could neither read nor write, if she had ever known how to she had long since forgotten. She could understand some English, French and German but she didn’t like to speak at all.
By the time I found her, in the summer of 1947, she was nearly 17 years old. She had had at least three children who were all dead as were, as far as she knew, all the members of her family.
But she had survived.
As I turned the last of the sheets of paper Max had given me I poured the dregs of the wine into my glass, drank it and leaned back.
This was not the whole story. I knew enough of Max to know this was just the minimum he accepted I must know. Only part of the truth it may have been, but it was enough to change everything for me.
In the years I had known Monika I had understood she had not had an easy life. But she had never told me anything of this. I had only been a young child when she had first come into our home as Nanny, but that had been nearly 25 years ago. Why had Max never told me? Why had he never trusted me with any knowledge of all this? Would he ever have told me if he hadn’t had his hand forced by Graham?
He had sheltered me as he would a young and vulnerable child.
I suppose I had never given him any reason not to.
I had let the years pass taking advantage of the security and ease of life at Sandhey. I had never had to grow up; I had never needed to earn a living, had never been asked to do anything I didn’t want to.
I had done nothing, achieved nothing, been nothing.
How Max must despise me. How everyone must despise me.
I was in a black mood as I switched out the lights and closed the study door behind me.
“Where is everyone?” Susannah was alone in the drawing room and my question was meant to be casual. Under normal circumstances it may have caused no offence but I suppose the pain of what I had just been reading had given an edge to my voice that she chose to misinterpret.
“If it’s of the slightest interest to you I’ve spent the last hour with our grandmother and grandfather and that little shit of a cousin of ours. Where’ve you been?” Susannah’s response showed her irritation as she continued without waiting for any reply from me. “He’s a nasty minded little pervert. He went on and on about the things he had heard through the afternoon. How women were gossiping about ‘poor Alicia’ and ‘the husband’s bastard son’. He must know something. He kept winding me up about what they said about him. How ‘very clever’ he was ‘doing so well’, ‘so good looking’ blah blah blah. Then he cut to the nitty gritty. He was positively glowing with pleasure as he put on a stupid female voice imitating those bloody stupid and ignorant women ‘didn’t he spend a lot of time with Alicia when she was so ill?’ ‘I heard that they were unnaturally close.’ I wanted to hit him.”
“Well that’s something we’ve got in common at last little sister.” I said, trying to make the peace.
“Don’t be so bloody sarcastic.” She shouted at me. “Where’ve you been anyway?” she was working herself up into a state just as she had when she was a young child.
I couldn’t tell her. When I didn’t answer, she goaded me “Running away again?” Perhaps I did run away from things; I had run away from school but she had no idea why; I had run, with Monika, to Max’s house but there had been good reason. “You don’t know anything.” I spoke as unemotionally as I could but it didn’t stop the inevitable argument.
“Well, where were you when you should have been helping? I know you didn’t care about Mother as much as I did.”
“Oh shut up Susie, you don’t know what I thought about her.”
“Don’t call me Susie! Only Carl can call me that.
“OK. Shut up Susannah, you don’t know what I thought about her.”
“ Thought! I don’t care what you ‘thought’ I wanted to know whether you actually felt anything.”
“You don’t know what I feel.”
“Do you ever feel anything?”
“What? Like you feel? You have a monopoly on feeling have you?”
“Well at least I can care.”
“For the most unsuitable people.”
“Shut up!”
“Are you saying Carl’s suitable?”
“Shut up”
“Your wonderful Carl. Where’s he today then? Where’s he ever been when you needed him?”
“Shut up”
“Forget him. Get on with your life. Do something with your life.”
“That really is the bloody pot calling the kettle black! What have you done with
yours?”
“Well I haven’t married a complete waste of space and had four children who I haven’t seen for years and have left to others to look after. I haven’t abandoned them just like our Mother abandoned us. I haven’t completely wasted every opportunity given to me. I haven’t…”
“Shut up! At least I’ve loved someone. You never loved anyone but yourself.”
“You’re a nasty minded selfish little bitch!”
The argument descended into the small-minded niggles of resentment.
“What have you ever done for yourself?”
“You’ve always had everything handed to you on a plate.”
“You’ve never done a day’s work in your life.”
“You only want Carl back so he’ll look after you now Joe’s dead and you can’t face up to having to do it yourself.”
“You’re so bloody jammy. You’ve got all the money you need. You don’t need to work. You can’t call your stupid bird-watching work.”
“Well I do. And it’s not stupid. I work at it and I’m good at it. I earn money at it, which is more than you bloody do. You’ve got to get your life together Susie.”
“I’ve told you. Don’t call me that.”
“Don’t wait for Carl to call you Susie. He can’t call you anything! He never sees you. He’d see you if he wanted to. But he doesn’t want a weak, selfish, stupid failure.”
“Don’t call me stupid!”
“You are. You failed at university, you failed in your marriage. For heavens sake Susannah get your act together! Well here’s some news for you. If you don’t do it yourself no one’s bloody going to do it for you. We’re fed up with looking after you like one of your bloody children. We’re all fed up with you moping around like the world’s let you down.”
I knew I had said some pretty hurtful things so I deserved the slap but I winced as she had hit the same spot as Graham.
“I’ll bloody show you.”
“What? You’ll show us what?”
“I’ll show you I can bloody do it. Can you? I’ll get that bloody degree, I’ll show you what I can do. I’ll bloody show you. What’ll you do? I’ll get back in three, four years with a first and I’ll get a bloody fantastic job and show you what I can do and what’ll you be doing? Still living here a kept boy looking at your stupid bloody birds and looked after by your nanny.”
“What about your children then while you’re swanning off re-living your life or are they so unimportant?”
“Sod them! You look after them if you care so much about them. Monika can. I don’t care! I never wanted them in the first place.”
“Well it’s a bit late for that!”
“They were a mistake.”
“Everything you’ve done has been a bloody mistake hasn’t it? And none of it has ever been your fault.”
“You’ve never done anything because you’re so bloody frightened of leaving your nanny.”
“Shut up about Monika, she’s had to put up with more than you could possibly imagine.”
“Putting up with you all these years you mean.” “No. You’ve never understood. She’s…”
“I know …”
“No you don’t …You can’t possibly know that she….”
We had been so wrapped up in our quarrel we hadn’t heard Max come in. He interrupted me. He was as angry as Susannah and
I were, but whereas we were shouting he was quiet and controlled. “Susannah, you look very tired, I will thank you to go upstairs to your room now.” When faced with the authority of Max’s voice she did as she was told.
He turned to me, as severe as I have ever heard him. “What you learned today is for no one’s ears. You disappoint me Charles. I had thought you could be trusted, now I realise you can’t. If I find that you have ever told anyone, anyone, what you have learned today; if Monika learns anything of her past from you; if I find that you have broken one confidence, to one person, be assured you will regret it. Do I make myself clear?”
I went to my room as though I were a child told off by an angry parent. I felt misunderstood and misjudged. I gazed out across the blackness of the estuary to the distant lights of Wales. I hated everything. I hated the life Monika had lead, I hated Susannah for goading me, Max for seeing how close I was to giving away secrets that weren’t mine, my Mother for dying before I could get to know her but most of all myself.
I hated to admit it but what Susannah had said was true. I had never done anything for myself. I had had a sheltered and easy life.
Knowing how they must all despise me I decided I must leave.
Susannah would say I was running away. Again. Perhaps I was, but I didn’t care, too much had happened during the funeral for me to stay.
I had no idea where I would go, or for how long, but I had to get away.
Chapter Eight
When the house was finally dark on the night of Alicia’s funeral Max sat at his desk staring at the envelope that had caused so much trouble.
Walking Alone Page 8