In my half-asleep stupor I felt hands on me, heard a voice saying, ‘Come on Antoinette, move on to the trolley now,’ and I felt myself being gently rolled over. A blanket was tucked around me and I felt the movement of the trolley as it was gently pushed. Then it stopped and a bright light penetrated my eyelids. Something covered my nose and a voice told me to count backwards, but I know as consciousness slipped away I called for my mother …
Nausea more intense than I had ever felt interrupted my sleep. Opening my eyes I saw that a metal dish had been placed on my locker. I reached for it to vomit as unheeded tears ran down my face. For a few seconds I wondered where I was. Then I remembered and reached down between my legs to find a sanitary towel had been placed there. Ill informed as I was on the facts of life, I knew the baby had gone.
Sleep returned until the sister came with a tray of tea and sandwiches. As she placed it on my locker I noticed that a clean bowl had replaced the earlier one and wondered how long I had been asleep for.
‘Your tea, Antoinette,’ she informed me, unnecessarily, as she turned to walk out of the room. Then she glanced back at me with a look of intense dislike. ‘Oh, you’d be wanting to know: the baby, it was a boy.’
Then she left and the baby became real to me. I lay there with my appetite gone and grieved for my dead baby boy until sleep returned, taking me into an uneasy slumber where I dreamt again that I was falling.
Morning came and, with the first rays of sun, a ward orderly arrived bearing a tray of tea, toast and a boiled egg. This time, feeling ravenous, I fell upon it, hardly leaving a crumb on the plate. Soon after breakfast the ward sister appeared. Glancing at my empty plate she sniffed disapprovingly, ‘See your appetite’s all right’, then grudgingly she informed me that after the doctor’s rounds I would be free to go.
‘Is anyone collecting you?’ was her only question, and her only response to my answer of ‘No’, was a small grim smile.
Feeling sticky and dirty I asked her where I could bath and wash my hair.
‘The nurse will bring you water to wash. You can bath when you return home. Your hair can wait; sure it’s only vanity.’ She paused, looking at me with the same expression of cold dislike. ‘If it wasn’t for vanity, maybe you would not have been in here.’ And with that she walked away.
My stomach ached, but I was not going to ask for anything more. Instead I washed as best as I could in the small dish of water that was provided, dressed and waited for the doctor who had performed the operation to arrive.
When he, accompanied by the ward sister, came he hardly looked at me and didn’t ask me how I felt. He simply informed me I was free to leave. So, picking up my case, I walked out of the hospital and went to the bus stop.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Something had woken me, but outside the small window of my bedroom was only darkness, inside only quiet, and for a few seconds I wondered what had disturbed me. My mind struggled to waken as it told my body it must. Then I felt it, a warm stickiness between my legs. My hand crept to my pyjama bottoms and came away warm and wet. Panic rose in me as I swung my legs out over the edge of my metal bed onto the linoleum covered floor and stumbled to the light switch.
The yellow glow from the low-voltage bulb, which hung unadorned by a shade, gleamed dully onto my bed. A puddle of dark red blood stained the sheet. Uncomprehending, I looked down at my pyjamas to see that they were soaked with it. Blood clung to my fingers where I’d touched myself; I could feel it running down my legs as I screamed for my mother.
Within seconds she came, took in at a glance what was wrong with me and instructed me to return to bed. Then my father appeared, bleary eyed in his crumpled pyjamas.
‘What’s wrong? What’s all the noise about?’ he muttered.
With a look of disgust my mother pointed to me.
‘You’ll have to call an ambulance,’ he told her and I heard a note of fear in his voice.
‘I’ll call the doctor,’ she replied. ‘He’ll know what to do.’
Dimly, as though from far away, I heard my mother descend the stairs, heard her voice as she spoke on the phone. Then a few minutes later I heard the voice of the doctor as if through a fog. Opening my eyes, I saw his blurred outline.
As if in a dream their whispered conversation penetrated my ears and drifted into my mind.
‘It’s bad,’ I heard him say. ‘She has to go to a hospital. It’s up to you, Ruth, which one. The one in town or the one where she had the operation?’
Clearly through my haze I felt the silence, then I heard my mother say, ‘The one where she had the operation.’
Then the voices left and I felt myself floating in limbo land, neither awake nor asleep but aware of movement around me. I heard my mother tell my father to stay in their bedroom, heard the doctor’s voice talking to her outside my bedroom door, and I knew without caring that I was dying.
A piercing noise, which I recognized as the siren of an ambulance, penetrated the fog I was in and through my window I saw the blue light flashing. Hands lifted me gently. I felt the bump of each stair as the stretcher was carried downstairs, felt it being slid into the ambulance, then heard the siren restart as we drove away.
The picture of my mother, with the doctor, as they stood side by side outside, watching the door close once I was placed inside, has remained engraved on the retina of my eyes for ever.
The hospital my mother had chosen for me was thirteen miles away. The only roads to it were narrow and winding, as there were no motorways near Coleraine in the late fifties.
I felt cold, icy cold, although the sweat was running from my body, and the blood seeped out between my legs. Black spots danced in front of my eyes while a bell started to ring in my ears, almost obliterating the noise of the siren.
A hand stroked my head, then reached for my hand as a spasm shook my body, and bile drooled from my mouth.
‘She’s going! Drive faster, man,’ I heard a voice shout. The ambulance shuddered with the driver’s efforts and I heard the walkie-talkie radio crackle into life as instructions were shouted into it.
‘Hold on, Antoinette, don’t go to sleep now’, the same voice pleaded with me above the ringing in my ears, then I felt a bump as we screeched to a halt. I felt the stretcher being lifted, heard running footsteps as unseen bodies carried it, then bright lights dazzled me. There was a stinging sensation in my arm and my eyes stopped trying to focus on the white-coated bodies that surrounded me.
A figure in blue was at my bedside when next I awoke. My eyes met the brown ones of the ward sister. Her hostility had disappeared and compassion had replaced it, now I was a patient in need of her care. Gently she stroked my head, held the bowl as I vomited into it, then sponged my face with a cool, damp cloth.
At the side of my bed, I could see a clear plastic bag suspended on a metal pole; inside it was a red fluid, which I knew to be blood. A tube led from the bag to my arm where a needle was taped on to it.
‘Why, Antoinette, did they send you back here?’ she was asking, unbelievingly. ‘Why not to the nearest hospital?’ I had a feeling she knew the reason as well as I did.
Not answering her I closed my eyes, but in my mind’s eye I kept seeing the image of my mother watching me being lifted into the ambulance as I went on what she must have believed to be my final journey. Not wanting to accept what I knew to be true, I forced that memory into a box, one I never opened.
‘Stop,’ I silently screamed in the hospice as I tried to shut out the whisper of that childish voice. ‘Stop. I want the lid of that memory box left closed!’
‘No, Toni, you have to remember it all,’ the soft voice murmured firmly as I felt myself being pulled between two worlds: the one where Antoinette lived and the one I had created. Against my wishes my inherited game of ‘being a member of a happy family’ was being forced to an end.
The box stayed open and I saw again the picture of my mother standing next to the doctor outside the ambulance as my stretcher was placed ins
ide.
The next time I awoke the sister was again sitting at my side.
‘Am I going to die?’ I heard myself ask.
She lent across, took my hand and gently squeezed it. I saw a gleam of moisture film her eyes. ‘No, Antoinette, you gave us a fright but you will be all right now.’ She then tucked the bedclothes around me and I fell into a deep sleep.
Two more days passed in the hospital. Doctors came, said soothing words and left. In my waking hours I lay gazing hopefully at the door as I waited for the mother I still loved to come, until the bitter realization dawned on me that she was never going to.
Tempting food was brought to me in vain. Feeling depressed and unwanted, I just pushed it around the plate and left most of it uneaten. On the third day the sister once again sat by my bedside, took my hand and gently stroked it.
‘Antoinette, you can go home today.’ She paused, and I knew that more was to come. ‘You should never have had that operation – you were too many months along.’ I heard anger in her voice that for the first time was not directed at me. ‘Antoinette, you almost died. The doctors had to work hard to save you, but I have to tell you something.’ Still I waited as she struggled to find the right words to tell me something that she knew I would find devastating. ‘Oh child, whatever you did you don’t deserve this. Antoinette, you will never be able to have children.’
I gazed at her uncomprehendingly at first, and then her words sunk in. As my hope of one day having someone to love me, having a family of my own to care for, left me, I turned my face away to hide the feeling of absolute emptiness that swamped me.
Later that morning she returned.
‘Come Antoinette, let’s get you into a bath before you go home,’ she said with a cheerfulness I was aware she did not feel. Somehow I knew there was still something she had not told me, but listlessness dampened my curiosity and I followed her wordlessly.
In the bath I washed my hair and tried to scrub away the memories that soiled me, then reluctantly I climbed out, towel dried myself and put on my clothes, which now hung loosely on my thinner frame.
A bag had been delivered for me that must have been packed by my mother, containing my trousers, shirt, toiletries and a small amount of money. The doctor had brought it in I was told when I enquired.
Feeling that I had been completely abandoned, I packed my few possessions, and on legs that still felt weak I walked out of the hospital to the bus stop where I caught the first of the two buses I needed to get me home. Sitting outside was my father’s Jaguar, which told me he was in. Parked beside it was a car I did not recognize.
Nervously I opened the door. My parents were waiting for me with the doctor. The doctor spoke first.
‘Your friend the teacher has gone to social services. They have informed the police – they are coming in the next few minutes.’
After those words he left and silence descended. I felt ill and weak, my stomach ached and my head started pounding with the build-up of pressure. We all heard the car pull up outside and my mother raised herself from the chair and, stony faced, went to let the police in.
‘In future,’ she said as they walked in, ‘if you need to speak to my husband or daughter, would you have the decency to come in an unmarked car? I’ve done nothing wrong and I refuse to be embarrassed.’
The policeman who introduced himself as the sergeant in charge of the case gave her an inscrutable look, simply read my father his rights and then requested both of us to accompany him and his female constable to the police station. He asked my mother, as I was a minor, if she wanted to be present when I was interviewed. She declined the offer. She was then informed that a social worker would be present in her place.
My father and I were escorted to the car and we all drove off. I knew that although one nightmare had ended, another one had started. But I had no way of knowing how terrible it would be.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thirteen days had passed since I arrived at the hospice. Now the clatter of the breakfast trolley no longer heralded my release, because now I had a new painstaking duty. Spoonful by spoonful I would have to feed my mother. First I placed a napkin around her neck, then held a cup to her lips to allow her to sip her morning tea. She would sit with her hands folded. Her eyes, now dull, looked into mine as our circle of role reversal was completed. Small portions of lightly scrambled eggs or smooth fruity yoghurts would then need to be spooned into her mouth. After each mouthful I would gently wipe around her lips with a damp cloth as the residue trickled down her chin.
Doctors’ rounds followed the departure of the trolleys. ‘How long?’ I would silently ask, but their faces gave nothing away.
It was my father’s visit that now I waited for. At the sound of his tread I would rise and make my way to the lounge where coffee and cigarettes awaited me. The solitude of the lounge was not to be that day, for another woman sat in the area for smokers with an unopened book lying on her knee.
Tentatively she smiled, then introduced herself as Jane. Over the next hour we learnt that both of us were sleeping at the hospice. For her these were the last days of what had been a happy marriage and her final gift of love to her husband. His bone cancer, she informed me, had now spread to his brain and he hardly recognized her. The loss that was to come had etched fine lines upon her face and smudged dark shadows under her eyes.
I silently applauded her courage; she was looking at the end of her life as she knew it, whereas I had mine to return to.
Our conversation drifted to asking the questions which form the first steps of forging a friendship, even though we both knew it would only be a temporary one. She asked me my surname and where I came from in Ireland. Without thinking I told her.
‘Why, Coleraine is my home town,’ she exclaimed as, with momentary pleasure, she discovered a bond between us. ‘You have a familiar look about you – have you a cousin called Maddy?’
Memories of my Irish family and my numerous relatives, unseen for many years, sprung into my mind as, for a few seconds, I returned to Coleraine. As I searched for the right words I saw fleeting expressions of recognition and embarrassment cross her face. Knowing that in a hospice friendships are just ships that pass in the night, formed to give support through difficult and painful days and nights, I felt no awkwardness. Instead I simply answered her.
‘She’s my father’s cousin.’
Her gaze focused on a spot above my shoulder and without either hearing or seeing him I felt my father’s presence. Feeling incapable of any other choice I hurriedly introduced them.
To his ‘hallo’ and questioning look, she filled in the silence with a forced brightness I was sure she did not feel.
‘Yes, your daughter and I were just having a conversation about Coleraine – that’s where we come from too.’
The silence that followed her innocent remark hung heavily in the air, then my father managed to find a polite response.
‘Nice meeting you. Excuse me, but I have to speak to my daughter now.’
I felt his fingers close on my elbow. He propelled me to the corner furthest from Jane, and then abruptly let me go. I looked into his face, into those glowering bloodshot eyes of his, and saw that all trace of the sad old man from a few days ago had disappeared. In his place was the ‘nasty’ father of my childhood. I saw not the man fast approaching eighty but the angry forty-year-old the year he went to prison. The years fell away, taking my adult self with them, leaving in their wake that small, frightened child who once had been me.
Through my inherent fear I heard his threatening voice: ‘Don’t you be talking about our business, my girl. There’s no call for you to be saying that you lived in Coleraine. Don’t you be telling what school you went to. Do you hear me now, Antoinette?’
The six-year-old that lived inside me nodded her head and whispered, ‘Yes.’
My adult self knew that the moment for subterfuge had passed. My parents’ fear of being recognized if they stepped outside their insular live
s had now been realized. How ironic, I thought, that it was my mother’s fear of dying that had made it a reality.
I fought for control over both the fear and the hatred from my childhood, forcing the mask of Toni, the successful businesswoman, back onto my face. Giving him a look of contempt, I walked away.
On returning to my mother’s ward I saw a fresh vase of flowers proudly displayed by her bedside. Smiling with the animation that my father’s visits often brought her, she pointed to them. ‘Look, dear, what Daddy’s brought.’
Let the game of happy families begin, I thought wearily, but the feel of his fingers on my arm stayed imprinted on my mind as I slipped into the role of dutiful daughter.
The afternoon routine no longer included the slow, agonizing shuffle to the bathroom. Tubes and a plastic bag had replaced that need. Instead I helped her into bed, washed her, then piled the pillows high. Exhausted, she would close her eyes and drift to sleep. I would then open a book and try to lose myself in the pages as I waited for the trolleys that brought tea, supper and painkillers. After the last had been administered, finally I could make my escape to the lounge.
In between the trolleys large families would sit around loved ones’ beds, but once my father’s visit was over only I kept the vigil by her bedside. A musician would visit to play the melodies that both soothed and entertained the patients, and my mother always asked for her favourite tune. ‘Ask her to play “Londonderry Air”,’ was her nightly request. Then the lyre strings would be lovingly plucked, letting the haunting notes float in the air to an audience of four old ladies and me.
As I sat in the lounge on the thirteenth night, I felt tears sliding down my cheeks and angrily brushed them aside. Control over my memories departed as my memory box for the year of 1959 unlocked itself and the contents flooded out. That year one nightmare had ended and another one began.
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