Isolated World

by Susan Eastwood

  As she walked into the living room she said ‘Here is something small for both of you and my name is… oh dear, I can’t remember!’ She handed us the tray and said if we needed anything please don’t hesitate. She was a good neighbour over the years that followed.

  I liked the area, as it was close to the church and the park and only a short walk to my grandmother’s and the supermarket. Soon our house was coming along nicely and it was cleaner with my family all running around helping with the improvements. My father even took out the antique fireplace in the front bedroom and bricked up the wall and plastered it. My family rallied around helping with the house, which really helped us to save our money in a big way. But where was Michael’s family when we needed their help with the house?

  My parents also helped to sort out the solicitor’s fees and made several phone calls helping with the paperwork. Michael had cousins, uncles and aunties but we never saw them. For our wedding present, my parents paid for the rewiring of the whole house and my grandmother give me £400 which we used for a new carpet in the living room. That helped to make our house comfortable and safe.

  Before we got married, Michael lived there on his own for a few weeks. After the wedding, I moved in with him and we made it a nice home. I continued working at the town hall and still enjoyed it.

  Then Uncle Russ came to see Michael to inform him that he had found him a job as a welder at Scunthorpe. I was not very happy about this as there was work for welders twenty minutes away from our house. Uncle Russ claimed it was a favour from a friend he knew. The new job meant Michael would come home at the weekend and return to work each Sunday night by train, while I stayed home and went to work. This went on for a few months until I managed to find him a job at Remploy doing welding work. There were many other people there with different disabilities and deaf people worked there too. The money was not the same as he could earn at Scunthorpe, but we were together and that was the main thing.

  We made more improvements on our house, getting rid of the antique fireplaces in the living rooms and replacing them with two wooden gas fires that fixed onto the walls. Michael knew someone who did joinery and he mentioned that we could do with new windows. We did have some money in the bank and I agreed to have new windows for the whole house and a new kitchen.

  We both worked hard and saved up the money for these things. I earned more money than he did, but that didn’t matter. However, after a few months, I did notice that he liked to drink. I don’t drink, but I do enjoy going out to socialise. I saved up enough to get him a car and paid for his driving lessons, but I then got worried, as he would drink and drive.

  After we had been married for about five years, I became pregnant. I did think then that Michael would change his ways, grow up a little and look after me. I also thought that he would have the sense not to drink and drive any more. I hated him smoking in the house as I cannot stand the smell of cigarettes.

  When I was seven months pregnant, like any first-time mother, I was excited and was saving up for things. I prepared the baby’s room and bought clothes, a pram and a cot etc. I even got my small case ready to take to the hospital (toothpaste, flannel, soap, nightdress etc). Just one thing was missing that hearing people would never have to think about - I thought I’d better go and see the social worker for the deaf, to ask if there was any sort of special lamp for deaf people that would flash when the baby was crying. I had learned that these lamps existed and wanted to ask for one.

  When I met her for the first time I thought the social worker’s sign language was very poor. She seemed to be making it up as she went along. I remember thinking that the lady at the careers office was 20 times better. Did she attend British Sign Language classes, or any deaf awareness training courses? Or have an understanding of deaf culture? I suspected that she had never done these courses.

  I wanted a flashing lamp with microphone near the cot, so that if the baby cried in the middle of the night needing to be fed, it would wake me up. The social worker said I couldn’t have one and asked how far I was. I said seven months, and she said ‘come back when the time gets closer’ and looked at me as if I was being silly. I thought ‘Who does she think she is? When am I supposed to come back? Why should I have to do that? Was she right to refuse?’

  I told her Michael was also deaf. I did not like her attitude and refused to leave the room. I demanded that the flashing light lamp was sorted there and then. She was taken aback and looked at me in surprise. She was reluctant, but then she agreed to fill in the form and I was told to return in two weeks’ time to pick it up. When I went back to pick it up, the social worker didn’t say anything other than to ask me to sign the paperwork.

  I was worried about going to hospital, because how would the nurses and doctors communicate with me? I was also worried about the first time giving birth. I did not need anything else to add my anxiety.

  On the 28th September 1983, early afternoon, I began to feel uncomfortable. I was full term at this point and I had really bad back pains. By the time Michael came home from work, I couldn’t eat my tea, but he ate his and said he was going out with his friends, even though I told him I was not feeling too well. I asked him not to go out, as I was scared of being home alone when it was my first time being pregnant and so close to going into labour. I was huge!

  He told me I would be fine. I asked him not to go again and not to have too many drinks, and he just shrugged his shoulders.

  I started to have contractions more frequently and I was extremely uncomfortable, and to add more worries, I knew that I would have to face Michael’s drunkenness when he returned home. I had not slept and when he returned and went to sleep I didn’t try too hard to wake him up as I knew he would lose his temper.

  As the night progressed, I kept looking at Michael on our bed, hoping he would wake. When he eventually did wake up he could not keep his balance. I needed to him to go to my brother Stephen’s house, which was only few streets away, so he could call an ambulance for us and call my parents. I was in a lot of pain and unhappy with Michael for his behaviour because he had gone out that evening and left me alone all night while he boozed and then arrived home heavily drunk while I was having contractions.

  I was in hospital overnight and Michael slept on the chair while I kept walking around the room. He woke up and said ‘I’m going home, I will return later’, which he did, but I was still in labour. He then said he was leaving again! I had been in labour for 27 hours when he returned, drunk again. When I was in the room ready to give birth, he went to sleep.

  I never got any flowers or a card from Michael, either when I was in hospital or when I got home. My mother asked my brother Stephen to get me some flowers which I could put up on top of my drawers at the hospital, and when Michael saw them he did not know what to say.

  Our son, Philip, was born on 1st October 1983.The hospital was very small with only two wards, one for mothers who smoked on the left side wing and the other, on the right, for those who did not smoke. It was ideal for deaf mothers, as there were plenty of nurses, so they had more time for you.

  I was worried about the night time, when I might be asleep if Philip needed to be fed, so I asked one of the nurses to wake me up when he cried. She said she would, but she didn’t. It was the lady next to me who woke me up to tell me my baby was crying, and I got very upset as I could see that he had been crying for some time. I had to go to another room to breast-feed Philip and I got angry and upset with the nurse for forgetting to wake me up. She apologised.

  While I was breast-feeding Philip there was a baby asleep alone wrapped in a blue blanket, and I asked the nurse where his mother was. She told me his mother already had three children and did not want to take him home, and I thought how sad. I was extremely lucky, for at least there was one nurse who could use British Sign Language. She told me that her grandparents were deaf and she had learned it from them when she was growing up.

  After a few days I was discharged. I arrived home to see a
pile of clothes on the table. Michael said that he had left them for me to iron! I could not believe it. I could barely walk and was still feeling weak. We did not have any money as he had spent it all on booze.

  I was not happy at home and my feelings for Michael had changed. I felt I wanted to keep away from him, but at the same time, I did not really understand why I felt like that.

  I started to use the flashing light for the first time (it was a very sensitive lamp - if you even coughed slightly it would flash very quickly). I loved being a mother looking after this little person who was so content. I was breast-feeding and got well into a routine. I knew I would be lost without the lamp, but after I had used it without any problems for a month it suddenly stopped working. I did not sleep that night. I panicked and went to the social worker who had given me the lamp. I did not want to see her, but she was the only person who was available who could help me. I was at her office first thing at 9 am, with Philip in his pram. I walked all the way to the office to ask for a replacement lamp.

  I could see she was unmoved, and she told me to fill the forms in and come back next week. ‘Next week?’ I said, ‘No I want a replacement now!’ Didn’t the social worker wonder how on earth I was going to be able to wake up during the night? Of course not, even though she had three children herself. Philip was only four weeks old.

  Michael told me that feeding the baby was my job and that he had to get up for work. I thought perhaps he would leave his hearing aid on and listen for me, but he did not want to be disturbed. If I dared to ask him to listen for Philip’s cry, I knew he would lose his temper.

  I wondered what I was going to do. How on earth was I going to wake up to feed him during the night? The only way I could think of doing it was to move the cot closer to my bed and sleep with my arm in between the rails with my hand on my son’s chest all night, every night for a week. It was November and we didn’t have central heating. My hands were freezing!

  I kept waking up and checking the clock for his next feed (I was still breast-feeding). I didn’t sleep a wink for a week and was deprived of any sleep. I could not sleep during the day either. On the day when the new lamp was ready to be collected, I was at the door of the social worker’s office at 8.45 am. I couldn’t wait to get the flashing lamp and get away from that social worker. Did she ask how I had managed for a week? Certainly not!

  It was heaven when I got the flashing lamp and I could sleep and keep my hand warm! I was very careful with the lamp after that and did not have any more trouble with it, thankfully.

  A few months later I realised I needed an alarm clock, but again not the standard type. I went see the same social worker as before - I didn’t want to, but I had no choice. I explained that I wanted to get up earlier so that I would be able to get ready before my son got up, but she refused to let me have one as I was not in full-time employment. Typical!

  Michael did have a vibration alarm clock under his pillow for him to get up early for work but I didn’t want to rely on him waking me. Also I preferred an alarm clock that had a flashing light built into it. This type is specially made for deaf people. It is an electric alarm clock with a light that flashes on and off instead of a noise. My mother and I went to many shops around the town looking for this type of alarm clock and we eventually found one. It was old and dated, but it was better than nothing. As expected it didn’t last very long, and I was unable to replace the bulb, although I searched for one, so I just had to do without.

  As part of the baby’s growth development I would regularly see the same health visitor who had come to my home when he had been a few days old to check on his weight and growth. I would take him to the surgery to see her to check on his development, vision, growth and speech. I expected her to be qualified and to have undertaken further training and education in child health and given immunizations at the same time. When Philip was nine months old I went to see her, and it was always the same one; I never saw any other health visitors. I could not understand why on that particular morning she invited me to sit on a chair which was placed very close to the door and facing it, with colourful charts on it. I did not like it and felt a bit uncomfortable. No explanation was given beforehand, but I did sit on it and she put Philip on my lap and said ‘do not move’. I sat looking and facing the door, and Philip was so excited at looking at the colours.

  I waited for a couple of minutes, wondering what on earth what was going on. Then she turned me around to face her. She was holding a bunch of car keys.

  ‘I am very sorry, but Philip is deaf’ she said. That word will haunt me forever. I refused to believe she was right. It just seemed like such a lazy diagnosis, shaking a bunch of keys once. Just because Philip did not react she was very quick to suggest that he was deaf, and that was that.

  I went home and burst into tears, and I cried and cried. Then I put Philip into his pram and walked for about 20 minutes to my mother’s, looking at Philip and thinking ‘My beautiful baby is deaf ’. So many thoughts raced through my mind, and the worst thought of all was that he would have to go to Beverley school.

  I arrived at my mother’s house very upset and told her what had happened.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she said. ‘There is nothing wrong with Philip’s hearing, he is coming along really well with his development!’

  We made an appointment the following day to see the same health visitor together; she greeted us with smiles, not realizing how angry we were about the bombshell she had dropped so unsympathetically. My mother immediately said, ‘There is nothing wrong with Philip’s hearing’ and told her how angry she was. She explained that Philip’s speech was coming on normally and that he could hear fine, as she had been taping him talking and having conversations through a microphone and tape recorder! The health visitor just said ‘Is he?’ ‘Yes’ said my mother.

  I felt so reassured when my mother stuck up for me. It was like a massive weight being lifted from my shoulders! The health visitor seemed embarrassed and very apologetic.

  I still felt unhappy with my marriage at this point as Michael seemed to want to enjoy the single lifestyle, and was out with his friends and boozing all the time. We didn’t have much money as I was a housewife looking after our son and had decided not to return to work. We needed to be careful and manage with money, but he was only interested in wasting it on drink and cigarettes. He would regularly come home at all hours of the night, and I got scared of him as he would be very aggressive when he was drunk.

  One night I could not sleep knowing he would come home drunk and unable to balance. I was half asleep when the hall light came on and I pretended to be asleep but I could see what he was doing. He opened my wardrobe and instead of using the toilet he urinated all over my clothes! I went back to sleep very afraid and kept still. I had to wait till the morning to confront him. I knew there would be no point arguing, as I had learned that you cannot reason with a drunk person.

  The next morning I was angry and pointed at the clothes, which stank of urine. He just shrugged and told me ‘wash them, it will be fine’. He didn’t care or apologize. He behaved as though it was nothing. I had to take nearly all the clothes out and wash, hang and iron them all, then put them away in the wardrobe, which I also had to clean.

  There were other times when he would climb into bed after his night out drinking and urinate in there. I would have to go downstairs and sleep on the sofa, which was extremely uncomfortable, and wait till morning. I would have to have another argument, this time about the bed, and he would say ‘clean it and leave the window open, it will dry out itself ’.

  I wasn’t sleeping very well and one night, I woke up at three o’ clock in the morning. Michael was not in bed. I got worried as he did drink and drive. I got out of bed to see if he was downstairs and found him in the bathroom sitting on the toilet, asleep, with his trousers down. I couldn’t move him and I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’

  I thought I’d better leave him there and go back to bed, though
I was very unsettled about it. He must have woken up and come into bed some time in the night because he was there when I woke up the next morning.

  Sometimes I would lie awake and wait for him to come home, as he would be drinking and driving. I knew when he arrived because I could see car lights outside our house and then the hall light would come on. I would then pretend to be asleep. I hated it when he used to come into bed because I had to put up with this very strong, unpleasant smell and he would be stinking of beer.

  One time I woke up at seven o’clock on my own. I quickly went downstairs to the living room and found him fast asleep on the armchair. I woke him up and he was angry with me and went upstairs to bed. I noticed that the armchair was covered in his urine and there was an ash tray full of cigarettes. At no point did I ask him about the armchair. I just cleaned it.

  I then suggested that he should sell the car as we were struggling with money. He did not want to at first, but then he agreed to get rid of it. In a way, it was better, because no matter how many times I told him that he should not be drinking and driving, he carried on. He did not care. One time I hid his car keys, and he was furious. It got to the point when I did not care if he came home at all, because I had had enough. There were two occasions when he came home with his face covered in bruises because he had been beaten up by some men when he was walking home, but at that point, I honestly couldn’t care less.

  At one stage Philip would climb out of his cot and come to our bedroom a few times during the night, and Michael would be furious and throw him back into his cot. I was terrified, as Philip got very upset and so did I. One time I had had enough and I went next door to ask them to call the police, but they said they didn’t have a telephone, so I went back to the house very upset. Michael was laughing and teasing me.

  Only two days after that, my mother came to my house one afternoon and said ‘what is going on with that phone next door? It never stops ringing. They must be out’. That’s when I knew they had lied and didn’t care that I had a disability that prevented me from using the phone myself, or that I had a baby.