Escaping

by Henrietta Taylor

  She continued with her diatribe: ‘You get one chance at bringing up children and that passes so quickly. All those tests and injections for IVF — what were they all for, if you didn’t really want your children? And you didn’t conceive them all by yourself, you know: your husband has a share in their gene pool. There is a strong possibility that there will be something of him in them to look at day after day if you decide to stick around. Where’s your fighting spirit?’

  Leave me alone. I want to die. They will be better off without me. I have no spirit; it’s gone. I want to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up again.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, I waited patiently for Georgina to return from the stash beside her car. She came back with a box of aspirin, giving me only two, and went to fetch a glass of water.

  ‘Get dressed and pack a bag. You’ll have to come home with me.’

  Bossy bitch. There was no way I’d go home with her. No. I would not budge.

  I handed over all my sets of car keys as a compromise. What harm could I do to myself now? There was nothing left in the house that was remotely flammable, toxic or sharp, and now no transport. I was ready to keel over and needed to get into bed as soon as possible. I dropped my towel to the ground and slipped my nightgown over my head.

  Her gasp was distinctly audible. ‘What have you done to yourself? There’s nothing left of you. Tomorrow I’m taking you to see a doctor.’

  Leave me alone, you cow. Tears were splashing down my face as I struggled into the tightly made bed.

  ‘Cow’ was what I called her then. Looking back now I realise she probably saved my life.

  I was swaying, incoherent and dizzy. Georgina could see that I was ready to pass out and decided to leave me where I was for tonight. I rolled over and she patted me on the back until I was in the arms of Morpheus and away. The storm continued to howl around the house, but the one I had churning within me had abated for just a while.

  I will deal with all of this later.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Coming Up for Air

  AFTER THAT HORRENDOUS NIGHT things slowly got a little better. As promised, Georgina took me to see the doctor the next day and waited patiently until I came out of the surgery, clutching in my hand a long list of homeopathic remedies and vitamins to buy. One way or another I had to put some meat on my bones or I ran a serious risk of being hospitalised for malnourishment.

  Kate didn’t manage to get to me until that second afternoon — by which time the immediate crisis was over. I was able to convince her that I needed to stay in my own home rather than inflicting further bedlam on her chaotic house. But from then on, she rang regularly and visited whenever she was able.

  And Georgina rang every evening to check that I was still in the land of the living, and to find out if I needed any transport. She would accompany me to my appointments and then see me back home. No detours via shops selling alcohol or anything that could be used in a self-harm exercise. I was a home-based prisoner. Prize cow, I hate you. Now I knew how Norman had felt, unable to drive and lying around day after day in the same environment. I’d only had a few housebound days so far and already I was going round the twist. It would take me years to realise that Georgina was only doing it for my own good.

  Cancer is an insidious disease; its tentacles extend across the whole family. Sheilagh had been such a support as Norman and I lurched from crisis to crisis — but after he finally passed away this wonderful help came to a grinding halt. Just before Norman’s death my mother had seen several oncologists because she knew that something was amiss. Sheilagh’s own cancer had spread from her breast to her lungs and she was suddenly too ill herself to deal with my problems. Mothers will do anything to be with their child in their hour of need — and now I needed her more than ever, to help me through my first harrowing months of widowhood. Yet she was powerless to come to my aid in any shape or form. Cancer threatened to blight our family all over again.

  My father, preoccupied by my mother’s condition, was blunt. It was time for me to grow up and start taking some responsibility myself. ‘Pick yourself up, girlie. Stop snivelling. Being Ophelia, dripping around, does not become you. One chapter has closed, another has opened. Have you not learnt anything? Life is too fucking short.’ It was usually my mother’s language that was coloured with obscenities, so it was quite frightening to hear them peppering my father’s diatribe; his mouth was contorted to get his thick Sean Connery brogue around the unfamiliar words.

  So that was it. Neither he nor my mother was able to help me this time. Whatever I did, it would have to be done solely by me.

  For the past eight years I had lived in Norman’s company, and now there was just me, rattling around alone in the house. It was the first time I had ever been absent from the children’s little lives — not counting the five days when Norman and I went to Fiji after his chemotherapy. Most of the time I slept, and the more sleep I had the more I needed. I couldn’t get anything done. Curled up into a tight ball under the starchy white sheets, I tried to lie as still as possible, and wished that time would stop. The days were warm for June and our house was a suntrap in winter, but I was constantly freezing, my teeth chattering and my fingernails turning blue.

  Before I knew it, the first week without the children was over. The weather was improving, so they said. The heavy rain that had been lashing the coast every day for over a week was finally getting to the parched countryside inland. And with the break in the weather came the overwhelming feeling that the children should come home to be with their mother. Bad or good, I loved them desperately. Nothing would get better instantaneously, but it could get a lot worse if they were absent for much longer.

  Three more weeks was too long to wait. Mrs Smith, the foster mother, brought the children back to the house a few days later, telling me how much she loved being able to do something constructive in a moment of crisis. Never before had I met someone of such unselfishness. She explained that, as luck would have it, she lived nearby, so the children’s lives had barely skipped a beat; they were taken to the same playgrounds, shops and library.

  When they arrived home they rushed straight off to grab a piece of chalk for a fabulous new game they had learnt called hopscotch. They had been happy with Mrs Smith and her family but were infinitely happier to be home.

  Life started to take on a more normal routine. The local bookshop recommended a great book about a non-threatening subject: a sandy beach. This became part of our evening reading ritual. We would all sleep together in my big bed; both the children would hurl their little arms and legs across my body and cling on like oysters to a pier. In the mornings they would go off to kindergarten — and I’d go back to bed and try to sleep. During my time alone I’d caught up on all the rest I needed, and instead I now had incurable insomnia, something that I’ve never quite managed to shake.

  I usually needed several large drinks to calm me before the night descended. Disentangling myself from the children at three o’clock in the morning, I would pass hours sitting in the dark waiting for the daylight to come.

  This was the time when the furies came out of their box. If there was a blanket of alcohol around me, I could feel them fluttering past my eyelids, taunting me. Mostly they found me sitting by the dying embers of the log fire wrapped in a mohair rug, shaking, glass in hand, ready to do battle with them as they banged on the doors of my heart.

  The worst thing was that I just didn’t know what to feel. It would have been such a relief to grieve like any other widow — but the sense of loss was mixed up with so many other emotions that the tears refused to flow. I was seething with resentment at what Norman had done to our children’s future, and with self-hatred because of this resentment. Large question marks that would never be resolved hung over my head. I desperately wished I could communicate with Norman and somehow unravel the mystery of why he’d found it necessary to make a will without my knowledge. Deep down I still loved him as he had once be
en, but this just made it harder to accept that he had betrayed my trust and left me alone with two small children. How could you have done this? How hard did you want it to be for us? Can it possibly get any worse?

  How many times can you go through the same scenario? Basically, I didn’t want my life as it was, and as far as I could see there was no possibility of change. Suicide was becoming less of an option, but I felt I was sliding further and further into a bottomless abyss with no idea how to stop the descent.

  What I didn’t know was that I had already hit rock bottom and now, very slowly, I was resurfacing. Coming up for air.

  Financially, though, things were already becoming unstable, as I no longer had access to any funds apart from the small stipend. The mere thought of how we were going to live had me quaking with terror.

  When my parents suggested grief therapy it was met with a howl of derision. ‘Grief therapy is the last thing I need! How about anger management and a shit-hot city lawyer? How could someone you love go behind your back and write a final will in secret? How furious do you think that makes me?’

  Anyway, what would be the point of grief therapy when I hadn’t begun to grieve? I wanted floods of tears to course down my cheeks; I wanted to shake with uncontrollable sobs. But nothing ever happened. I was as dry as the desert.

  Obviously there was no easy solution to the problem of the wills. We could tell by now that the Taylor family were going to uphold Norman’s dying wishes. Family money would stay under the careful eyes of Norman’s sister — controlled 100 per cent by the family. No interloper — admittedly the wife and mother — entered into this picture. Being at the helm of our finances would keep Norman’s sister in constant contact with his children for decades after his death. They would receive small amounts of their inheritance from the age of eighteen until well into their mature years.

  It was an untenable situation. I wanted freedom for my children so they would be able to make decisions without constant family consultation; it seemed ridiculous to have their financial futures linked to someone who was not with them every day of their lives. Nothing I said to Norman’s sister would make her change her mind. She felt obliged to maintain what Norman had written in his final will. Negotiation or mediation was not possible. A court case was the only solution.

  I spoke to friends, consulted legal eagles from my parents’ wide social circle, and even rang up Legal Aid. Eventually I found a very dapper Englishman called Mr Dimock who specialised in cases like mine. For a city lawyer hellbent on moving up the slippery ladder of success, Mr Dimock seemed to have a great deal of common sense and street knowledge, which had great appeal for me. He told me he was willing to take on my case as long as I was willing to open my heart and work hard with him. Most importantly, he wanted me to see someone for grief therapy, to help me work through some of the unhealthy anger and resentment that he could even hear bubbling over into my speech. And at last this message got through.

  Mr Dimock shook my hand and the deal was done. The case would not be resolved quickly and I had to be prepared to go to the Supreme Court for a judgment. We would get a hearing within six months if we were lucky. We would have to prove that Norman had written an unfair will whilst heavily under the influence of morphine. A cut and dried case — or so I thought.

  Meanwhile, I had to try and drag myself out of the mire: get off the alcohol and antidepressants and learn about motherhood — ‘keep my pecker up’, as my father would say.

  What the hell is my pecker?

  The clear blue winter skies of July arrived and the woollies were brought out of the cupboards. Scarves and hats were bound around my children’s heads and we headed for the beach to walk up and down looking for driftwood, shells, trinkets and messages in bottles from happy faraway lands. They would demand to go there at the end of every day, only forgoing this ritual if the rain was lashing relentlessly at the windows. Our book about the sandy beach was now imprinted in our thoughts and the children would recite page after page while standing on the windswept beach looking out to sea — or across to Auntie Kate’s? We coped — or at least we managed to give that impression. Seeing me strolling along the beach in my layers of winter woollies, those who didn’t know me thought I was looking brilliant. Lucky no one could see inside my head.

  ‘You’re doing so well. You’re managing really well. Lucky you have the children, hey?’ the local butcher said one day.

  I tried so hard not to flinch when he said this. Everyone made it sound like I had just recovered from a bad case of the flu and was finally up and about. Even though having the children around was truly wonderful, the pressure of caring for them was just unrelenting. Being responsible for their lives overwhelmed me, and I kept wondering what permanent damage I was doing to them in my current state.

  Now that Norman was dead and Louisa the nanny was gone, it was proving to be very difficult to take up the reins of motherhood again. Who was I meant to consult about major education and health problems? Only recently, my baby boy — instead of Mimi, for once — had ended up in hospital with a severe asthma attack that I couldn’t control. The doctor had wondered what was happening in our household that prevented me knowing the basics about my own son. He sat me down to explain that Harry also had acute hearing difficulties due to blocked ear canals and that day surgery would be necessary to rectify this problem — a small operation taking no more than half an hour. Little plastic stents — I shuddered when I heard the word — would be inserted into the eardrum to allow the fluid to drain out of the ear canals. Harry would then need a course of speech therapy to get him to a level appropriate for his age. How dumbstruck can you feel? I didn’t seem to know the first thing about my own son.

  One of Georgina’s duties as director of the kindergarten was to supervise the children’s lunchtime meal, so she had filled me in on my children’s favourite foods. The list she gave me appeared very small. Didn’t children eat more than that? Wasn’t there meant to be food from all food groups? When did they start eating fatty fried food and fizzy drinks? It was all a mystery to me. Georgina still refused to return any of my knives, just in case, so my culinary potential was fairly limited; a typical meal would be baked chicken fillets and raw grated apple — cutting apples was impossible. And occasionally I’d actually eat some of it.

  By this stage I was embarrassed to call on Georgina’s aid; she needed help as much as I did, with her little baby Lucy struggling from one medical emergency to the next. The reality sank in that I had to make an effort to get to know other people in my neighbourhood; I was still isolated in a strange community, virtually without friends or support. But it was very difficult to launch myself into the local social scene when it always came down to questions like: ‘We never see your husband — what does he do? Are you a single mother? Divorced?’

  I only had to say it once to learn quickly: never tell the truth to a group of strangers. Sobbing women rubbing their red eyes in unison is a frightening sight. No more playgroup for me and the children. Tell lies. And lots of them. Lay it on thick. Invent. ‘He’s in the God Squad up north.’ I didn’t know what else to say. Everyone would assume that they hadn’t heard correctly and that I’d said ‘Drug Squad’, after which they would look anxiously at each other, hoping that no one had been discussing their husband’s irritating use of recreational drugs. Otherwise, if they knew they’d heard correctly, they’d assume that my missing husband and I were in one of those religious cult groups that take root everywhere. Either way, I was a pariah to be avoided at all costs.

  Lying is so easy once you get into the groove. You find that the falsehoods start to slip off your tongue, and before you know it you’re waiting for a telephone call from a dead husband who is meant to be interstate and alive. It was so much easier to deal with our family problems by sweeping them under the carpet.

  Occasionally men would smile weakly at me while pushing their child on the swings in the park, trying to indicate their availability, a thin strip of pink ski
n shining in the sunlight where their recently removed wedding band used to sit. I could never bring myself to take off my own wedding ring, as I still considered myself unavailable and very much married. But bad news travels fast; as long as it doesn’t concern you or your family it’s wonderful to hear salacious gossip. Young, very thin widow wandering aimlessly around the suburban streets, slightly spaced out . . . an easy mark?

  So it wasn’t particularly surprising when neighbourhood men came knocking on the door, asking if they could help in any physical way, leering and undressing me with their eyes. Their agenda was obviously different from mine, as they didn’t think that mowing the lawn or stacking wood for the winter would be of any great help.

  After Norman died, many of my friends, some of them ex-sexual dalliances, called to offer their support. Thankfully, very few of them wanted to pick up where they had left off. As I could barely remember the majority of their names, I really didn’t feel there was any point. But sometimes you find yourself dragged towards actions that you know are wrong, as helplessly as a moth to the flame. And so it was with one friend, who was having difficulties with his partner and told me he wanted some mindless sex with me if I wanted the same thing.

  I hated him for what he was doing but I despised myself even more. I was partaking in something that wasn’t giving me any great joy but could end up ruining their relationship. My self-esteem was at an all-time low. I was desperate to prove to myself that I was still desirable and alive, but it turned into yet another demonstration of my self-hatred. Deep down I just wanted Norman back.