Then it seemed, under his mother’s expert tutelage, Tony learnt the art of making comments. He had barely glanced at a pregnant woman before this time, but now began to observe how ‘so and so’s’ wife looked ‘great’ during pregnancy. (Great compared to whom was never explained.) In fact he felt it necessary to point out every woman he found attractive during this time. My name never made it on to the list.
I was never sure if this was deliberately designed to hurt me or just a consequence of his self-imposed sexual frustration. I never asked. My confidence eroded, I felt like a grub being poked at with a stick by a curious boy. All I could do was curl myself up in a ball and hope this barely comprehended threat went away.
Like Meggs the cat, I took my solace in food. In a gob-smacking act of perversity I chose to console myself the absolutely worst way I could have done under the circumstances. Salvation became my damnation: Caramello Bears and cookies and cream ice-cream my substitutes for the sex and affection which my husband was withholding. In the end I gained twenty kilograms, about seven more than I needed to. Mum’s pregnant arse didn’t seem so big in retrospect. I used to scuttle past shop windows so I wouldn’t catch sight of myself in the reflection. Then in the later months my features became distorted with fluid and my fingers swelled so much that I had to remove my wedding ring.
Tick, tick, tick…I counted down every day of this sad and lonely pregnancy. At least the baby kept reassuring me that it was okay, with regular kicks and nudges.
During one of my last prenatal appointments, Greg told me the baby was in breech position and unlikely to turn at that late stage. He advised me that there would be a higher risk of complications if I tried to deliver the baby naturally and I was having none of that.
‘Let’s look at this as an opportunity,’ he said, ‘and deliver this little baby a couple of weeks early. It won’t affect baby’s health in any way and you’ll finally be able to relax.’
We scheduled an elective caesarean and Tony arranged for a weeks’ leave at this time.
At last, at 10.43am on August 12th 2002 Isabel Pamela was born. As I was wheeled into the operating theatre Tony and Greg eyed each other off suspiciously. I had an epidural and was conscious throughout the procedure. When they lifted her out and I heard her cry (she was breathing!) I took my first proper breath in months. They bundled her up and laid her beside me, and as those twin burdens of fear and failure lifted off my shoulders I felt whole for the first time since that sad day in September almost two years earlier.
I lay staring at this magical creation all that first day and felt her healing gaze. As the months wore on Isabel’s eyes assumed the same grey-blue tone of her father’s and grandmother’s, but at the time of her birth they were a peculiar inky-blue-brown - almost a non-colour. Something about that colour made this extremely new human instead seem very old indeed: an old soul reborn perhaps? At the time I imagined those wise, old, unblinking eyes were telling me:
Don’t worry mummy. I’m here now and you’ll never be lonely again.
But it’s equally possible they were saying:
Your troubles are not over yet.
***
Having Isabel was probably the only thing I’ve ever done - ever - that Pamela has approved of. After producing two sons herself she was delighted with her new granddaughter. She arrived at the hospital with a veritable trousseau of exquisitely expensive French dresses and knits, all of which required hand-washing or ironing, but most commonly both. I eventually learnt to dress Isabel in these for visits to the in-laws, leaving her in machine washable all-in-ones the rest of the time.
It also gave Pamela a new repertoire of things to criticise me about and she found this very energising. I paid close attention to the midwives’ instructions and thought I had mastered the basics pretty well, but no, no, the twenty-five-years-out-of-date experience of my mother-in-law apparently trumped any new fangled ideas these professionals could offer me. Within the first few days I found that I bathed the baby incorrectly, burped the baby incorrectly, changed nappies incorrectly, fed the baby too often and let her sleep too much. If I wrapped Isabel in a sheet it was certain she would ‘get a chill and catch a cold’, but if I added a single blanket there was no doubt she would ‘overheat’. I gave lip service to all this but reverted back to my own ways when at home.
No, Pamela wasn’t the problem.
I think it was evening visiting hours the night before I was discharged home, that I realised. I had finally managed to get a fretting Isabel to sleep when I heard my husband chatting and laughing as he made his way, slowly, up the corridor towards us. He entered the room smiling.
‘Nice to see you finally,’ I said, handing him Isabel. ‘I want you to look after your daughter while I have a shower.’
‘What do I do?’ he asked, the smile now gone.
‘Just sit and hold her. It’s not that hard. Try and take as much interest in her as you have in that young midwife.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘What are you being such a bitch about?’
‘I have had a bad afternoon with her. She has been crying and unable to sleep, my scar is hurting, my breasts are leaking milk and I’ve barely seen you.’
‘I told you I was going to play golf with Dad. I don’t get a chance to catch up with him much these days.’
‘Funny, I thought you took the time off work to be with us. And then to cap it off I hear you with that bloody nurse again. I didn’t know flirting with the husbands was in her job description.’
With that I burst into tears.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
In addition to my earlier listed grievances, I was carrying ten excess kilos, my belly looked like a half-deflated balloon that had been kicked around a five year old’s birthday party, my hair was greasy, I was wearing a nightie my recently departed nana would probably have rejected as too dowdy and my bulging maternity bra housed something that resembled two misshapen mounds of blue cheese. My husband, handsome as ever, had not made any sexual advances to me in nine months and was now openly flirting with a slim-hipped recent graduate nurse who was batting her eyelids at him at every available opportunity. And he wondered why I was upset?
It was pointless trying to tell him this, so I just said, ‘Probably the baby blues. They’re meant to happen a few days after birth. Something to do with my hormone levels changing.’
‘Oh,’ he said, relief evident on his face. My husband was the type who liked to put all unfathomable female reactions down to hormones.
I took myself off to the bathroom, taking my time in the shower, washing my hair and letting the tears flow down the drain with the shower spray.
When I re-entered the room I found him sitting in an upright chair, an incongruous island of testosterone amongst the bouquets of flowers and pink teddy bears and ‘It’s a girl!’ balloons. He was holding Isabel, still asleep, like I imagine someone would hold an unexploded mine.
‘You can relax a bit,’ I said.
‘I didn’t want to wake her up. I hope you’ve got over your hysterics now.’
‘I’m not hysterical, just tired and hormonal and you’re not helping…You know, even if we’d had a boy there is no guarantee he’d have turned out to be the son that you’d have wanted. He might have turned out to be a sissy or a computer nerd who was no good at sport.’
‘What is that supposed to mean? Do you think I’m unhappy about having a girl or something?’
‘Well I’m struggling to find a reason why you seem so uninterested. I understand why you distanced yourself from the pregnancy but now we do have a healthy baby nothing much seems to have changed.’
‘I don’t believe you. I just don’t know anything about babies and don’t know what to do. Do you want me to go or something?’
‘No - I want you to bond with your daughter.’
‘Oh boy,’ he said, ‘well there is so
mething I wanted to talk to you about, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea to bring it up now.’
‘No, tell me,’ I said as I settled myself on the bed to comb my hair. ‘I have nowhere else to go.’
‘Are you sure? Okay…’ He took a deep breath, which gave me forewarning this ‘something’ might be unpalatable. ‘I’ve heard that Cathay Pacific is recruiting first officers at the moment and I’m thinking of applying. I’ve been speaking to lots of people about this and the news is all positive. It’s a profitable airline with good job security and by all reports a great company to work for.’
‘What?…Don’t all those things apply to Qantas? Why do you think you’d be any happier there than where you are now? And they’re based in Hong Kong, aren’t they? I don’t want to move anywhere now that I’ve just had a baby…Of all the times…’
‘Calm down, I’d still be based in Sydney. We wouldn’t have to move - well not for a few years anyway - though to be in line for a passenger command it looks like you have to relocate to Hong Kong at some stage. If I get the job I’ll be flying freighters to start with.’
‘Freighters? That doesn’t sound very glamorous.’
‘Only for a few years - I’ll be glad to get a break from whinging passengers.’
‘Is the money better or something?’
‘No, not initially…as a matter of fact a bit worse. But once you’re based in Hong Kong it’s a different matter altogether.’
‘Less money! How are we meant to manage that right now? My maternity leave pay is not going to cover everything, you know.’
‘We can just sell a few of my shares.’
‘I thought those shares were meant to be our retirement income.’
‘The new job is an investment. I don’t want to sit around at Qantas waiting for who knows how long for all those dinosaurs in the left hand seat to retire. I’m better than most of them anyway and the word is that Cathay is expanding so rapidly that my command will come through much faster - in less than half the time than at Qantas.’
‘Oh so that’s what all this is about - your self-imposed deadline of being a captain by forty. It’s a self-imposed deadline, Anthony - no-one else knows or cares. Anyway Cathay may say all these things, but is there any guarantee it will come off? And what about all the years you’ve already clocked up at Qantas? You’ll be burning your bridges…’
‘I’m not so optimistic about my future at Qantas these days. It seems I have ruffled a few feathers over the years.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I didn’t want to mention it, but I got hauled in by the senior guys the other day for a little chat. There have been some complaints about me. Apparently I have an attitude problem or something or other. “A problem with authority” I think were their exact words.’
‘Oh great…But even so it’s a one-off. Things like that can be overcome if you’re prepared to change.’
‘Actually it’s not the first time.’
‘What? Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?’
‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’
‘Of course I’d be interested. You know, marriage is meant to be a partnership. How am I meant to help you when you won’t tell me what’s going on in your life?’
‘You’ve never been that supportive of my career anyway.’
‘That’s completely unfair.’
‘Is it?’
‘Though it’s hardly surprising you’ve got people offside at Qantas when you go around saying you are a better pilot than most of the captains you fly with.’
‘See - you’re taking their side now.’
‘And I have no say in this?’
‘We’ve talked about it before. It’s not like we’d have to move for years either. I hoped you’d be more reasonable.’
‘I’m not rejecting the idea outright. It’s the timing I have a problem with. If you get the job, which you will I bet, you will have to go off to Hong Kong for training for several weeks, won’t you?’
‘Yeah. A few months actually.’
‘A few months - just when we have a new baby!’
‘I’m hardly around that much anyway.’
‘And the fact you seem to have made the decision without me. Can’t we stay put for another six months and then look at it?’
‘They’re recruiting now.’
‘So you’re just going to do it?’ (I subsequently found out he had already done it.)
‘It can’t hurt to go for the interview.’
‘Oh well, I’ll shut up then, because my needs aren’t important obviously.’
He stared at me quietly for several seconds before rising carefully from the chair, walking over to me and handing me our sleeping child.
‘I’m going now,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back to pick you up tomorrow.’
And then he walked out without a backward glance.
***
Although he denied this, Tony had been hoping for a son. He had grown up in an all-boy household and the only version of parenthood he understood was the testosterone-charged, rough-and-tumble football game variety, the cricket games in the backyard-type. I’d seen enough of his interactions with our nephew Thomas to guess he’d been imagining instructing his son in the finer arts of the ruck and maul and the forward defensive stroke.
But this was small fry compared to the bigger problem. I believe that if we had had a son, in my husband’s ordered way of thinking, we would have ‘replaced’ William. The problem would have been ‘fixed’ and we could have filed away the sad story of our lost child in a tattered old manila folder stored at the back of the filing cabinet and labelled: Inconvenient facts that don’t fit with Tony Cooper’s world view. It would never have been like that for me, a second son would have always been just that, but for Tony, who never saw our little lifeless baby, who knows?
He would say I’m talking shit, of course.
None of this was helped by the fact that Isabel turned out to be a difficult baby: difficult to settle, difficult to breast feed, difficult in general. She would sleep fitfully for at most three hours at a stretch and every evening, starting at about 5pm, would cry for several hours straight, a high pitched whine that seemed to penetrate to my very bone marrow. The older generation declared her ‘colicky’ and our medicine cabinet overflowed with every colic remedy known to man, but nothing seemed to relieve her distress. Then she added vomiting to her repertoire: I had to change her clothes at least half a dozen times a day and became accustomed to wearing a new perfume, that distinctive fragrance known to new mothers as Curdled Milk. My GP referred us to a paediatrician in case it was reflux, but a prescription he wrote didn’t seem to have much effect. I was even admitted to the Tresillian residential facility for a few days and whilst I did at least get to catch up on my sleep all the advice the nurses offered, which seemed simple enough to implement when I was there, somehow became much harder to apply at home. The quaintly naïve thoughts I’d had in hospital about settling her into a routine, so she would sleep peacefully while I went out for coffee, to the hairdressers and the gym were all turned on their head. Mum helped out when she could but the only excursions I took in those early months were to the doctors, the chemist and the grocery store. In the brief hours when Isabel was asleep I would simply try to catch up on my own. In this nightmarish netherworld night and day merged into one. It was purely survival mode.
Throughout all this, Tony kept flying and preparing meticulously for his interview at Cathay. Interviewing for a position with an airline is not just a case of dusting off the CV and rocking up for a chat. It’s a very rigorous process. If I remember correctly he had two demanding interviews (one in Sydney, and then when he passed that, another in Hong Kong), a technical assessment, psychological profiling, a full medical and a flight simulator assessment. Only the very best candidates make it through. No d
oubt this is reassuring for all the Frequent Flyers out there, but all it meant to me was more time away from the neglected wife. I was actually meant to accompany him to Hong Kong so they could check me over as well, but in view of the fact I’d recently delivered a baby I got an exemption from that part. I had a few mutinous thoughts about going along anyway and sabotaging the whole process, but I still wanted to stay married at that stage.
For a while I attempted to keep up appearances. The first few occasions that Tony went away I would clean and wash like a madwoman before his return, but I think after the third or fourth time I realised I might kill myself and perhaps my child in a psychotic sleep-deprived rage if I continued along this path, so I stopped.
I can still remember the look on his face when he walked in that evening.
‘Jesus Christ…what’s happened here? The house looks like a pigsty.’
‘Sorry, but if it’s a choice between sleeping and cleaning the house I’ve decided I’m going to choose sleep.’
‘You know I’ve been working all day. You’re not the only one who’s tired. Is there anything to eat in the house?’
‘No…I haven’t had a chance to get to the shops either.’
‘So what am I meant to do?’
‘Get takeaway or go to your mother’s place, I don’t care.’
I think he took one look at my Medusa hair and sunken eyes and comprehending that he might be the next victim of a psychotic rage incident if he pursued this further simply said, ‘I might just do that.’ Although first he couldn’t help clearing the benchtops and loading the washing machine - it’s a compulsion with him.
For a time there Tony took over almost all the domestic duties of the house. Maybe I should have been more grateful, but the self-righteous manner in which he performed these tasks (‘harrumph’ as he hung out the washing, ‘sniff’ as he packed the dishwasher) suggested this was less an act of consideration than one of self-preservation; he simply could not live in such a state of chaos.
Happily Ever After? Page 8