I Am an Island

by Tamsin Calidas

  After five arduous weeks, I have produced only two eggs. I listen quietly to the consultant. I know to stay positive and relaxed, but my heart is stretched as taut as a tripwire. You want to believe it is going to happen, but you have to be realistic. There is every chance it might fail. Two eggs mean I have only two chances of fertilisation. I try to keep my spirits up. I tell myself, ‘One is better than nothing, and two is double that hope.’

  Later, when the phone call comes, my eyes are shining. The fertilisation was successful.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Rab jumps up, elated. ‘Twins!’

  He clings to me, tears in his eyes.

  And then we hold each other, unable to speak.

  Our twins are only a cluster of cells. But every family starts this way. I know it is too early. But I need to mark the start of their life. ‘What shall we call them?’ I ask Rab.

  His eyes light up. ‘You name one,’ he says, ‘and I’ll name the other.’

  We do not talk about what sex we think they might be. Yet, when it comes to their naming, I write down Maggie and he writes down Eve. There is no discussion, but there it is. Two girls’ names. We hug and, for an instant, our fatigue is swept away. Because we are having twins. And these are their names. And suddenly our life is beautiful again. These are the names of our children. It matters that we name them. Even if we never get to see them born.

  And then we put those scraps of paper into the oak box, with tiny flowers and shells from the fields and beaches. I add a blank card on which I have written down all my dreams. I have read it’s important to write them down as if they are real and concrete. They are quite simple. I dream of my children. I dream of being a mother. I hold that box every day.

  It is the day for those wishes to come true. It is an incredible feeling. When I wake up in an hour, two new lives will be breathing inside me. I imagine minuscule hearts beating and the soft tissue of lungs opening and closing, a fluttering of breath, like beautiful shells underwater.

  ‘Are you ready?’ the anaesthetist asks me. He smiles, squeezes my hand. I lie on the trolley bed, a thin white gown over me, wearing a wristband with my name on it and a hospital blanket. It is bright yellow, like a ray of sunshine. I watch him slowly load up the syringe. I nod. I am elated, barely breathing. Full of hope, wonder and fear.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. Just close your eyes and go to sleep. When you wake up, just think, it won’t only be you lying there.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, and I am moved by his words. I look at his name tag. He is the senior anaesthetist. ‘Thank you, Will.’

  ‘Just a small scratch.’ I wince as the sharp point of the needle pierces my skin. It takes a while for him to find the vein. It hurts, but not as much as daily self-injecting. My skin is covered in bruises. Blue, purple and brown marks mottle my belly, my arms, my buttocks and thighs. I clench my teeth and lift my jaw, and I stare hard into his eyes. He has kind, serious eyes.

  ‘That’s it,’ he nods, as the vein stands up. ‘Not long now, and then your baby will be safe inside.’

  My eyes widen as my heart contracts. I feel something twist within me and try to pull my arm away. Suddenly I want my husband here beside me. He is in the hospital – I am so glad that he has finally taken two days away from the croft to be with me – but at this precise moment he is nowhere in sight.

  ‘Not one,’ I say urgently. ‘I am having two.’

  He looks away. And because he doesn’t say anything, I panic.

  ‘Not one,’ I insist. ‘I have two babies. Will, I am having twins.’

  There is a long silence. My heart fills with fear. And then the thin curtain rustles, and the nurse breezes in.

  ‘No,’ she tells me. She pats me on the shoulder. ‘Just one today.’

  ‘But I have two babies. They are together in the Petri dish.’

  I look at the nurse and back at Will. He fiddles awkwardly with a fresh syringe, and moves it closer towards my arm. And suddenly I am trying to get up off the bed. ‘Where are my babies?’ I demand.

  ‘Lie down,’ the nurse says, ‘or you will rip this drip out of your arm.’

  As I lie back down, Will tells me not to worry. I feel the cold solution flood my vein.

  ‘But where is the other one?’ I ask faintly.

  He looks me straight in the eye. ‘The other one died. I’m sorry. But look, you’ve got one. It’s going to be OK.’

  ‘Don’t worry, hen.’ The nurse leans over and pats me on the arm. ‘Trust me, one is more than enough.’ And suddenly their faces blur and I feel myself drifting away.

  As I lose consciousness, I whisper, ‘I am going to be a mother.’ I try to go to sleep focused on manifesting and welcoming new life into my body. But those words stick in my throat. I am overcome by a great wave of grief. As the anaesthetic kicks in, I feel I am drowning. It is like diving into cold water: the world disappears, and all that should be warm inside is suddenly cold as ice. All I can think about is that I have already failed. I feel the loss of that little one so sharply.

  I wake in the middle of the procedure. The pain is excruciating. It feels like being hooked on to a piercing barb. I only realise I am awake when I see the anaesthetist chatting to the surgeon. My mouth is open and I am crying out, calling as hard as I can, but no one can hear me. And then they notice as the low murmur becomes a high, strangled cry.

  ‘Oh Jesus, she’s awake!’ I can hear their panic. The clatter and glint of bright metal instruments. There is a flurry of activity. Bodies move quickly. I am in that room but watching from somewhere more distant, above the operating table. Something inside me struggles to reach them. All I can hear is a constricted, high-pitched wailing. It is not my voice. It comes from some place deeper inside me. And then a rush of sleep overtakes me. It comes like a train and all goes dark again.

  When I wake I am unable to walk. I cannot stay in the hospital overnight because there is no room. So they wheel me out to the car and lay me down on the back seat. My husband is pale. He does not look at me. It feels strange to see him here. Sometimes I feel like laughing, and other days I feel like crying. I wonder if it is like this for everyone. I feel as if I am having an immaculate conception. We are making IVF babies but we haven’t been near each other in weeks.

  It takes three things to make a baby. Sperm, ovum and a lot of luck. I have two out of the three. I think our luck died when I was told that fragile life had perished in the Petri dish, for a few weeks later, its twin – the embryo they put inside me – dies too.

  Yet some part of you still carries on believing. Some days drift by more easily than others. It is so hard to let go.

  Sometimes I wonder which of my children was lost first. I think it was Maggie. In the end it is of no consequence. Because after I knew Maggie was dead, I knew Eve, too, would be grieving, in that dark place beyond gravity. Sometimes I blame myself. I wonder if my crippling sadness that day stole the breath of my other unborn child. Whoever it was that was left was dead in a matter of weeks.

  It does something to your head when a child dies inside you so early on. My body is tied to the earth and the seasons, even as it resists its natural cycle; my instinct harnessed to an imprinted map designed to pass on our genes. In the island community, my voice is one of a few concealed under a crippling weight of silence. It is hard to know how to break or heal the silence of buried motherhood.

  With each failed attempt, the doctors advise just to keep going. So I persevere. I try to do everything right. I am a baby-making machine. I eat right, sleep well, go for walks with my dog. I visualise that I am a mother. I imagine a tiny glimmer of light like a falling star.

  Eventually, I have my last chance. So when, after weeks of injecting myself with drugs, I have produced only one egg, the disappointment is crushing. That egg looks so lonely on the scan in the darkness of my womb. It feels as if my body has given up after losing the twins. It is impossible not to place all my hopes in one Petri dish, because I have n
o other option. No further treatment will be offered. This time I go through the procedure alone. Rab does not leave the island. Every night I ring him. ‘Will you come and visit me?’ I say.

  But he just sighs and asks, ‘And who will look after the croft?’

  ‘It is a strong embryo,’ the consultant smiles at me. It will have to be, I think. Creating a flicker of life is harder than I ever imagined. I wonder how this can be, when it should be so effortless, so natural.

  Once the embryo has been put inside me I wrap my hands about my tummy. I go to sleep with a smile on my face. ‘Stay with me,’ I whisper to my baby. And this time I am convinced it has worked. I feel different. I am sure I am having a boy.

  When there is no sign of my period, I take a home pregnancy test. It shows positive. I am elated. So it does not matter when the hospital is unable to confirm the pregnancy. ‘You’ll have to wait another week to ten days,’ the receptionist tells me. ‘The systems are down.’ Only it takes longer.

  I keep my secret to myself. I do not want to jinx it until I am certain. With every crushing disappointment you tell yourself it is not your fault, but you don’t believe it, and the weight of expectation gets harder to bear. But each day that passes brings me another day closer. I cannot wait to tell Rab. I am so happy, even when I make a last trip alone to the hospital. I still have not had a period. My baby has been growing inside me ever since it was implanted six weeks ago. I sit and wait after they take my bloods. I am smiling when the nurse comes in with the results. At first she looks at me without recognising me. And then she smiles uncertainly. ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she says. ‘Your test was negative.’

  I stare at her, my smile draining away. ‘Are you sure?’ I say.

  ‘You should have received a letter.’ She frowns. ‘I’m sorry it was a wasted trip for you to come all this way.’

  And then she moves on to the next patient in the queue. My legs are shaking. There is no one with whom to share this news or hold my hand, so I put one hand in the other and sit like that on my own, squeezing my own hand.

  When I get home, I have to face telling Rab. He is in the barn, and doesn’t stop working.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he says. It is a relief that we don’t have to speak about it. I put on a jumper and start making the rounds.

  That day he gives me a sickly newborn lamb to look after. I love it. I nurture it. I spend every waking hour keeping it alive. Then one morning it is not breathing right. It dies in my arms. And that is when something breaks inside me. I cannot stop crying. I try to stop but the tears keep on flowing. It is exhausting but strangely comforting to hold the warm, dead body. I am still holding it when it turns cold and stiff. I keep it in a box whilst I say goodbye to it. After a week Rab incinerates it.

  It takes me a long time to get over losing that lamb. It takes me even longer to talk of my own lost little ones. I cannot bring myself to throw away the box containing the names of our babies. I put it under the bed.

  A few months later, I am in the shop. One of the old ladies from the island ‘granny bus’, a local service that offers free vehicle transport to the elderly, approaches me. ‘What, no babies yet?’ she says, tutting and shaking her head. And suddenly it seems everyone is listening and has an opinion to give.

  A farmer jokes, as he brushes past me, ‘Should put a notice up. Looks like you’re needing a new bull.’

  I am too broken to say anything. It hurts that I am unable to be a mother, to fulfil the basic task of creating life and giving birth. I want to ask, ‘What if the problem is me?’ But I don’t. I know what happens to cows and sheep and bitches that are unable to have offspring. They are discarded as ‘yelled’, meaning barren. Even in the market they are worthless. No one wants a cast ewe.

  I am disorientated. I don’t know what to trust or believe or feel any more. When your body fails you and you stop trusting yourself and your instinct, it alters your bearings.

  I try to keep myself busy. I go out walking. When I am tired of walking, I just lie down. I am so exhausted that sometimes it feels as if it is the only thing I can do. Lie down in the grass, on a hill, and feel gravity holding me even as my eyes fall into the sky. Sometimes I just close my eyes and sleep. Often when I wake, it is nearly dark. As I feel the evening dew on my face, it is as though some inner hurt is soothed. I do not sing or whisper their names any more. I just stand and watch the sun set. I write my own name in the wind. Then I walk slowly home. I start to wonder if I should carry on with my job. I am not coping. I am finding it increasingly difficult to look after the under-fives in the school. Sometimes I have to make excuses to leave the room.

  It is hard working in a world made up of tightly knit families when I cannot turn to my own. My brother is overseas, my sister is estranged and my parents have not been to stay since a disastrous visit the previous year, during which my father anaesthetised his usual anxiety by getting drunk and abusive. It is horrible to find your own father stealing whisky from the house like a teenager and your parents screaming at each other in front of you. I am tired of having to lift him up off the floor. In the end I had to ask him to leave, and he looked me in the eye and said, ‘I wish I had never come.’

  I know, deep down, he didn’t mean it. As upset as I was, I remain protective of him. I know it is his way of coping. He is as worried about my mother as the rest of us. They stayed in a one-bedroom rental cottage down the road, because ours was a tip amid fresh renovations. For all her pretence, it didn’t escape me that she could not find the bathroom or the bedroom, or simple things like the fridge in the kitchen. Everyone has secrets and problems. Knowing I cannot share them for fear of adding to the chaos makes it harder. Our roles are disrupted, my parents behaving like children.

  Sometimes it makes me question if I am crazy to long to be a parent myself. Yet it does nothing to lessen my desperation for children of my own. It hurts even to see friends who have young children, creating another distance that means their sporadic visits become even rarer.

  I am a season out of kilter. My heart is still frozen from such a long winter. Infertility is like a great fault line running not just through my body, but through my life. It is strange to think that when I die there will be no part of me that continues. It used not to matter, but now it sometimes stops me in my tracks.

  When I am feeling brighter, I know in my heart this is not true. When I die, I will be in all and everything. I will breathe a lungful of sun and a heartbeat of moon. And even though I am childless, my spirit will beat with the fullness of love. I will be out in the wild places, free on the winds. In the high clouds and the early dew. In some part of the soil, or salt, or the lift of a wave. I will be in a songbird’s throat and on the spit of spray of a gull’s wing. I may not be seen, but I hope that in my death, as in my life, I will be felt. That my life will help to nourish other lives. And that one day, in my own small way, I will be mother to all.

  Most days I go to the shore. I watch the sea furling and unfurling as I stand with Maude, listening to the waves. In the half-light, the geese are calling. A graze of sound on the horizon, tearing a low glimmer of sky. Out there, in the further darkness, a stirring wind is up. Whitecaps crest an incoming tide. Above, gulls are circling, thin cries skirling, white feathers fraying against the sharp edge of the northerly wind. Sounds blur, carry, lift or are lost. Every few minutes, a gust of spray hurls itself fierce against the sharp limestone rocks. My cheeks are wet with spray. I listen to its steady-building crescendo, a lull, and then its inevitable fall. A low rushing sound follows, like a slow, heavy release of brakes.

  I whisper softly to the waves, ‘If it’s meant to be, one day a child will find me.’

  I gaze at the horizon. Its fragile light has never looked quite so far away, so untouchable. But as I breathe, I feel those waves quietly gathering and spilling a deeper strength inside me.

  8

  Brakes

  It is early spring. Around the croft, the neighbouring fields are
burning with acrid, dark fires. Ashen, dense plumes of smoke drift slowly upwards, curling like wraiths into the air, and catch the back of my throat. Fiercely, I blink back hot tears. It hurts me to look at these charred, shriven fields. It is the traditional culling of the season, a vital paring back of dead growth. Some farms set small areas aside where wildlife can find safety, but others just laugh at the desperate, shrill cries. ‘Nothing but vermin. No good for new growth.’ Once the grasses are lit, and the wind catches and lifts, nothing will stop the fierce flames. Afterwards, it is hard to imagine life returning from those charcoal-blackened stumps.

  I am beyond fatigue, yet still I do not move. My heart feels leaden. Inside, I am consumed by a deep sadness and a slow, smouldering anger. Rab has been playing away. Every day I try to smother those close-licking flames but it is like trying to put out a fire with your bare hands. Yet I cannot leave it alone. Betrayal hurts like a burn. It ravages my heart and keeps my skin alive at night. I long for the cool, billowing grasses that once ran over these hills.

  My lips are too cold to whistle, so I start calling for Maude. I call for her again and again. When she does not come, the pain and fear well up. I am so tired. I am scared not just for her, amidst those burning fields. I am scared for me, too. And suddenly, I am crying uncontrollably, sobbing at the sky, ‘Please, help me … someone … I don’t know … what to do.’

  It hurts to know you are vulnerable. Infidelity comes in many guises, but it shows itself long before and long after each event. It is a subtle language built of whispers. But on an island whispers are like the wind that flicks the low, smouldering flames. It hurts to discover an abuse of trust. I am sick of sadness, retching ill with it when I think back to all my hopes for the New Year: injecting myself daily, and then the miracle of twin embryos waiting to grow inside me, the light of their life shining like bright stars. All of this joy was shattered on the night of the Hogmanay dance at the community hall when, inexplicably, Rab didn’t come home.