by John Nicholl
‘You haven’t seen them for months.’
‘I know, but…’
‘I’ve talked to them for you. There’s no easy way of telling you this. They don’t want to be there.’
‘They’re not coming?’
‘No, Richard and another trusted contact will act as witnesses, that’s more than sufficient. The quicker we get the damned thing over with, the better for everyone.’
‘You could talk to them again.’
His expression hardened still further. ‘Let’s just forget the whole thing, shall we? It’s not like I haven’t got more important things to do with my time.’
‘I didn’t say…’
He glared at me and shook his head slowly and deliberately. ‘I really thought you were committed to your child’s future, but it seems I was very sadly mistaken. I’ve gone to a great deal of trouble. I’ve put myself out on your behalf. And what thanks do I get? I only hope you don’t come to regret your indecision when your little one is residing with foster carers and doesn’t know you.’
I swallowed the tablets urgently and fell to my knees as if in prayer. ‘Please, I don’t want that. I really don’t want that. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.’
He raised an eyebrow and sighed. ‘I’ll give you one more chance. One final opportunity, and that’s it.’
‘Thank you so much.’
He held a finger to his lips and pointed at the clock. ‘I’d be silent now if I were you. You’re a mess, girl. You’ve got less than an hour to sort yourself out. You need to attend to your appearance. I want you in the hall and looking presentable by 3:40 p.m. precisely. I do not want to be late. I do not want you to make a bad impression. Do not let me down. Do you hear me? Do not let me down!’
My memory of the ceremony itself is somewhat hazy for obvious reasons I’m sure I don’t need to explain. I can vaguely remember arriving at the registry office, I remember seeing Richard Sherwood at some point or other, and I can recall returning home by taxi, but that’s about it. No details, no nuances and no photos or other mementos with which to look back on the day. Not that I’d want them, of course. Some things are best forgotten.
He pushed me through the front door and into the hall when we arrived back at the house, dragged me to the kitchen by my arm, approached the sink, filled a glass full of cold water, took a single step away from me and threw it in my face. ‘Think of that as the first stage of your rehabilitation, my dear.’
‘Why, why did…?’
And then he hit me. For the first time he hit me. No more threats, no more gestures, he drew his arm back behind him and brought it around in a sweeping arc, connecting forcibly with my left cheek, causing me to stumble sideways and fall to the red quarry-tiled floor immediately next to the dresser. I lay there in a huddled ball, clutching my abdomen, waiting for another blow that thankfully didn’t materialise.
I was strangely accepting of the assault. I think the shock must have been alleviated by the numerous threats that preceded it. What was my crime? What warranted such an extreme punishment? I’d broken my vow of silence and spoken to the registrar. I’d said too much. My stupidity reflected badly on him as my partner in life. ‘You need to learn to keep your mouth shut, my dear. I have a reputation to maintain in this town. I don’t want it ruined by your stupidity.’
And then he wrote in that notebook of his before returning it to his pocket. What was he writing? What on earth was he writing?
‘I’m sorry, Doctor. I’m sorry, I’ll try harder. I promise, I’ll try harder.’
And I did. I tried, I really tried. I considered each deed carefully before acting, and attempted to please him in everything I said and did. I always tried to do the correct thing, but nothing was ever good enough. It wasn’t remotely good enough. Whether it was cleaning, or cooking, or ironing, or anything else, there were always flaws. There were always problems, which he was eager to highlight. He’d stand there, staring, frowning and catalogue whatever deficiencies he’d identified, invariably followed by a toxic tirade of verbal abuse, a prod, or push, or slap, or worse.
My bruises gradually changed from red to blue to purple to green and finally yellow, before fading away completely, but the psychological scars remained and became more ingrained as the frequency of the attacks increased, and I retreated further into my protective shell. My world had become a very small place, limited to life within the walls. I felt a complete failure, unworthy of love or even basic human courtesy. And he never failed to drive it home. His stinging criticisms became a mantra, the soundtrack to my life, a flood of poison words that engulfed and damaged my fragile spirit. ‘I’ll try to do better, Doctor. I promise I’ll do better.’
‘Those had better not be empty words. That wouldn’t go well for you. It wouldn’t go well at all.’
I carried out my domestic responsibilities as best I could betwixt wedding and birth, although it was a particularly taxing period both mentally and physically. He decided it was in the baby’s interests to stop my medication completely on the day after our marriage, rather than wean me off it gradually as he’d originally planned. It was his decision and his alone. I had nothing to say on the matter. Nothing worthwhile to contribute. Not that he’d have listened anyway. ‘There’ll be no more tablets as of now. You’ve taken your last, my dear. You may experience some minor withdrawal symptoms. It may be somewhat unpleasant, but they shouldn’t interfere with your work.’
‘I’ll do my best, Doctor.’
He laughed sardonically and sneered. ‘Oh, you will, will you? Madam will do her best and I should be grateful for that.’ He was yelling now, with an animalistic snarl distorting his features. ‘You took the tablets, you came to rely on them, you didn’t reduce the dose when you should have. Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough. Any withdrawal symptoms you experience are your responsibility and will not interfere with your work. Do you understand? Is that simple enough even for you?’
I nodded and stared at the floor. ‘But you gave them to me. I trusted you. I didn’t know what I was…’ Did I really say that out loud? Did he hear my ramblings? Oh my God, he must have. Why did I say it? Why on earth did I say it?
He glowered, incredulous, furious and indignant with rage. ‘You were falling apart, you stupid girl. You were suffering memory loss. You never fully recovered from that insipid boy’s death. You were in psychological crisis. Perhaps I should have let you wallow and sink, you ungrateful bitch.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Suck it up, bitch. The coming days may give you some idea of the suffering you’ve inflicted on your child in the early weeks of its sad life. That’s your responsibility and yours alone. Don’t even think about blaming me for your inadequacies.’
As the hours passed, my body yearned for the drug, and the resulting irritability, increased anxiety, panic attacks, tremors, sweating, wrenching, palpitations and headaches well and truly kicked in. I was racked with pain. I had never felt so low, I had never felt so ill, and I had never felt so desperate. And worse, much worse, I had never felt so guilty. If my helpless baby were to suffer even a tenth of what I was experiencing, it was unforgivable. I had a great deal to answer for. Dr Galbraith told me that again and again. I was responsible. It was my fault. What a terrible reality to accept. My baby hadn’t yet entered the world and I’d already done irrefutable harm. What a loathsome creature I’d become.
I would have been more than happy to leave this world in favour of oblivion or whatever else followed by that stage, but I repeatedly told myself that I had to live on for the sake of my unborn child. If I was the worthless individual he described so diligently, the child was precious and unsullied by life. I’d make their care the primary focus of my existence, my reason for living. I was determined to be a good mother despite my limitations, despite my many flaws, and that kept me going through one of the worst periods of my life.
Elizabeth, lovely, wonderful, beautiful Elizabeth was born at South Wales General Hospital just three days a
fter my due date, weighing in at six pounds and four ounces. Not a heavyweight, but not a lightweight either. Maybe things weren’t going to be as bad for the child as I’d feared. That’s what I hoped for. That’s what I prayed for. I prayed and believed, but it seems miracles are all too rare. My child was not to receive one.
Dr Galbraith was surprisingly attentive and supportive during the birth, offering encouragement and kind words, charming the nurses, chatting to the doctors, so very different from the man I experienced on a daily basis. He appeared captivated as the baby eventually left my body, but his true feelings showed just for a fraction of a second when the midwife announced it was a girl. I couldn’t even get that right. That’s what he told me when we were alone that first night. ‘You stupid bitch, you couldn’t even get that right. I can’t rely on you for anything. What the hell is wrong with you?’
33
I was busy in the laundry by 8:20 a.m. this morning, faced with a mountain of overused sheets that I was expected to iron and fold before lunchtime at the latest. I made reasonably good progress for the first forty minutes or more, but I can only assume I lost concentration, because when one of my English students put her head around the door and shouted, ‘Hi,Cynth,’ I placed the steaming iron down on the first three fingers of my left hand. Believe it or not, as the piping-hot metal plate cooked my flesh and I screamed silently inside my head, all I could think was, at least it’s my left hand, it won’t interfere with my writing. Some say there’s no such thing as accidents. Maybe I should take the hint rather than plough on with this exercise.
I leapt backwards, knocking the iron to the floor, and stared at the burned flesh and the red raw peeling skin hanging from my fingers.
‘Come on, Cynthia, let’s get you to the sink. Quick as you like.’
I hurried after the guard and held my hand under the mixer tap as instructed. What made her think that running the hot tap was a good idea is a complete mystery to me. The pain escalated exponentially, and this time I couldn’t keep the scream inside, despite all my prior practice.
She turned the tap off as I urgently pulled away, apologised profusely for the error, and turned on the cold water. It stung initially, as I held my hand under the freezing flow, but after about two minutes the pain began to reduce to a bearable level.
‘How you doing there, Cynth?’
‘Yeah, not bad, the cold water is really helping.’
She smiled self-consciously. ‘So, better than the hot, then?’
‘Yeah!’
‘Sorry about that. If you’re ready, we’ll get you along to the sickbay.’
Not a great start, but the day wasn’t a complete washout. As I focussed on an image of a beautiful tropical beach, resplendent on the front page of the calendar hanging to the right of the door, I smiled despite my pain and the long wait for medical attention. I drank in the detail: the warm blue sea lapping a green and sandy shore fringed with palm trees, and a multitude of varied multicoloured tropical flowers, and I was reminded that we can seek out beauty. We can take pleasure in the small things, like a kind word or a friendly smile, or choose to see the sunrise, even if it is through steel bars surrounded by a sea of concrete.
And I had that day I’d watched my bird as it swooped and turned and soared with seemingly infinite ease, and I felt joy. For a time I’d forgotten my worries and was temporarily oblivious to my surroundings. I focussed on that small full-of-life creature and smiled inside. I hadn’t indulged such feelings for a long, long time, and that’s significant. For those few brief moments, I let the light in and it illuminated my soul. I’m making progress. It’s the only reasonable conclusion I can reach. I’m making progress! Maybe the black dog is more seriously injured than I originally thought. I’ll carry on writing and see how things are when I’ve told you what happened next. Perhaps I’m being much too optimistic. That wouldn’t surprise me one little bit.
34
Within an hour of Elizabeth’s birth, the busy ward sister introduced us to a Dr Anne Carter, a genial consultant paediatrician with a prominent Swansea accent, whose greying hair and deep wrinkles suggested she was fast approaching retirement. She smiled warmly on greeting us, congratulated us on becoming first-time parents, examined Elizabeth for several minutes in contemplative silence, and then pulled up a seat next to the cot. ‘Take a seat please, we have things to discuss.’
‘Is there something wrong with my baby, Doctor?’
Dr Galbraith glared at me disapprovingly, angry, hateful, but I didn’t regret speaking out. I had to know the answer. I just had to know the answer. I was the mother. Why shouldn’t I ask about my child?
Dr Carter adopted a more serious persona that worried me immediately. There was a problem. There had to be a problem. I bit my inner cheek and chewed at it, willing myself not to speak up again.
She looked me in the eye, frowned momentarily, and began speaking calmly and quietly, directing her words mainly at me and only occasionally glancing in Dr Galbraith’s direction, despite him being seated immediately next to me.
‘It’s not unusual for expectant mothers to be prescribed anti-anxiety medication, but regrettably it can cause problems for the child in some cases, particularly when the drug is taken in high doses and over an extended period of time, as in your case.’
I’d never felt so low, the burden of responsibility virtually overwhelming.
Dr Galbraith moved to the very edge of his seat. ‘I’ve already explained this to her, Doctor.’
He had, but it was far too late. Why didn’t he explain the risks before? He should have told me sooner. I desperately wanted to tell her and alleviate my guilt. I wanted to say it with clarity and confidence. I wanted to shout it out to anyone who would listen, but instead I relaxed my shoulders, lowered my head, avoided her gaze and sat in pensive silence.
She ignored his intervention and continued, focussing primarily on me as she had before. ‘Your baby has become used to the drug. We need to address that as soon as possible.’
Dr Carter reached out a hand and patted my shoulder when I began sobbing. A kind woman, a good woman whom I liked immediately. If only everyone was like her.
‘There’s no easy way of putting this, I’m afraid. There’s a significant likelihood of poor feeding with related poor weight gain. The baby’s interactions with you could also be negatively affected.’
I focussed on her intently with pleading eyes, willing her to say something more positive, and causing her to smile thinly in response.
‘We could potentially wait to see what symptoms your baby develops or we can begin treatment now. The latter is my preferred option.’
Dr Galbraith rose to his feet and paced the room, agitated, anxious. ‘So what happens now?’
I suspect he was more concerned about me being at the hospital for any length of time than anything else.
Dr Carter frowned. ‘Please take a seat, Doctor, I’d like to keep this as equable as possible. It’s not in anyone’s interests to heighten the tension, least of all your daughter’s.’
He sat as instructed. Always affable, always reasonable when interacting with anyone other than me. Creating a misleading persona; do you understand? I’m sure you understand. Why couldn’t I see it? I feel so very stupid. Why on earth couldn’t I see it?
‘Diazepam will be administered intravenously until the symptoms have been controlled, at which time the daily dosage will be gradually reduced over three to four weeks.’
He shook his head as I wept into my hands. ‘That’s going to be somewhat inconvenient. Can’t it be done more quickly?’ And then a pensive pause. The manipulative bastard. ‘In the interests of the child, you understand.’
I could see that Dr Carter was beginning to lose patience and she spoke again, this time with an admirable steely determination that made me feel a little better and like her even more, ‘I’m a paediatrician with over thirty years’ experience, not some kid straight out of college. I’m recommending a well-established protoc
ol that’s in your child’s best interests. I suggest you follow my advice.’
She was on my side. I had an ally. Three cheers for Dr Carter. She became my heroine at that precise moment. What a woman, what a wonderful woman.
I’d become expert in deciphering his moods by necessity. I could see the anger in his eyes—he was bristling, wanting to scream—but it vanished quickly. He hid it well, that devious bastard. ‘Whatever you say, Doctor, whatever you say. I wouldn’t dream of questioning your expertise.’
I think she may have seen through him. I think she may have encountered a man like him before at some point in her life, because she didn’t melt and swoon in response to his charm as was the norm. ‘Do you intend to breastfeed, Mrs Galbraith?’
I looked at him momentarily but couldn’t decipher his opinion.
‘Mrs Galbraith? It is the best option for the child.’
I met her eyes and nodded once. It was in my baby’s interests and I was committed to being a good mother. It was my body. Why shouldn’t I agree?
‘Then I suggest you stay at the hospital for the next four weeks. We keep a bed available in the nurses’ quarters for precisely this sort of circumstance.’
I so wanted to concur, I wanted to say, yes, I wanted to shout, yes, but would he agree? I muttered a silent prayer. Please let him agree. Please let him agree.
‘Is there a problem, Dr Galbraith?’
I could see his mind racing, eyes flickering, computing his response. ‘Not at all, not at all. I’ll get off home in a minute or two and pack a few things for her. I think that’s best.’
‘You do that, Dr Galbraith. The quicker we sort things out, the happier I’ll be.’
He just nodded and smiled warmly. Nothing more to say, no objections, no caveats, just placid agreement. What a wonderful woman, what a courageous woman. If only I’d had her warrior spirit. If only I’d had her superhuman strength. How different things could have been.