by Anne Bennett
‘Oh my dear!’ Gloria said in sympathy. ‘Why don’t you tell the doctor?’
‘I couldn’t. He’d think me a monster.’
‘No, I’m sure he wouldn’t,’ Gloria said, putting her arms around Hannah. ‘Maybe it’s linked to that first time. You know, perhaps you won’t let yourself love because of what happened?’
‘Can you turn love off just like that?’ Hannah said, shaking her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘The mind’s a strange thing,’ Gloria said. ‘You do things sometimes without being aware of why and how.’
‘Oh, Gloria,’ Hannah cried. ‘I’m so scared.’ Gloria held Hannah’s shivering body in her arms. She knew the girl was suffering terribly and yet she didn’t know what to do to help her. She realised this was a demon she’d have to fight on her own and all she could do was be there for her whenever she needed support.
All in all, Hannah thought it would be easier to stay in bed all day, and each morning she had to force herself to her feet. As soon as everyone had gone their separate ways, she often returned to bed and stayed there for the rest of the day, until everyone came home in the evening. Pauline was the only one aware of this, but she didn’t tell Arthur. She thought he would hardly be interested anyway, because he didn’t seem to know or care what Hannah did.
Angela learned to recognise Pauline, Arthur and Josie and smile at them and kick her legs and wave her arms in excitement when she heard them approach or when they leant over her. She was a sunny baby, but then she was never let cry, her wishes were attended to immediately and there was always someone to play with her and amuse her.
Arthur was captivated by his beautiful daughter. His creation! He bought a camera and recorded almost daily photographs of the baby. Certain she was the most beautiful and cleverest child that had ever been born, he was forever showing pictures of her around the office. ‘God, the man’s besotted,’ Reg told Elizabeth one evening. ‘The baby is all he talks about. It’s nice that he so enjoys being a father, but I hope he soon shuts up about it, it gets incredibly boring after a while.’
‘I’m glad he likes being a father, too,’ Elizabeth said. ‘For I’m sure Hannah doesn’t like being a mother. In fact, I’m desperately worried about her.’
‘Oh?’
‘I called in to see her the other day,’ Elizabeth said, ‘and she looked dreadful, Reg. Really ill.’
‘Must be these wretched nerves Arthur says she’s had since the baby was born,’ Reg replied. ‘Do you remember we asked them to dinner that time and that’s what he said?’
‘Yes, and they didn’t go to the New Year do either,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I hope it is just nerves, though heaven knows they can be disabling enough, but I have a horrible suspicion it could be something more sinister.’
‘I certainly hope not,’ Reg said. ‘Hannah is such a pretty young woman. And Arthur is besotted by her, that’s obvious enough, and little wonder. It’s always such a pleasure to see them together.’
Someone else besides the Banks was desperately worried about Hannah too and that was Doctor Humphries. Not that he’d been summoned to see Hannah, but to see her daughter Angela. She was five months old when Pauline went to lift her from the cot one morning in early April. She’d been fretful all night and was grizzling again, but apart from that she was also limp and so hot Pauline believed she was running a temperature.
Arthur had already left for work and Pauline knew there would be no point in asking Hannah’s advice. She had to do what she thought best, although she did tell Hannah she was sending for the doctor and mentioned her concern for the child she held in her arms. Hannah made no response and Pauline sighed. The woman was definitely not right.
She took the baby upstairs and mindful of convulsions in babies with high temperatures, bathed Angela with tepid water before phoning the doctor, grateful that Arthur had at last got the phone installed and she hadn’t had to leave Angela in Hannah’s care while she ran to the phone box.
Doctor Humphries, when he arrived, didn’t like the set-up in the house at all. Knowing Hannah’s history, he’d expected her to be a doting mother. He knew Doctor Marshall at the hospital had recommended she have a nurse for a few weeks after her discharge, his letter had been included in her notes. He would have probably suggested the same after her emergency Caesarean section, but the child was five months old now, and the nurse obviously well installed and no sign of Hannah.
He recalled now the health visitor saying they’d never seen little Angela Bradley’s mother, but some nanny or some such. But that had been in the early days. He had no idea it was still going on months down the line.
Angela had measles. ‘Don’t ask me where she got them,’ the doctor told Pauline, ‘because I don’t know. But got them she has. I’m sure you know what to do. Bathing her down with tepid water was a good idea for lowering the temperature, but I’ll give you something to help keep that down. Keep the light shaded and the blinds drawn, plenty of fluids, and keep an eye out for secondary infection on her chest or in her ears.’
‘Thank you, Doctor. I’ll see to it.’
‘Now where is her mother?’
Pauline hesitated. Often she’d gone back to bed, not long after breakfast, but she hadn’t heard her come up the stairs that day. ‘She could be in the breakfast room.’
‘Does she know the child’s sick, that you sent for me?’
‘I told her I was concerned and that I’d sent for you,’ Pauline said. ‘But honestly, Doctor, Hannah isn’t right and hasn’t been all the time I’ve known her. I’d never met her before she had the child but … well, you’ll soon see what I mean.’
When the doctor saw Hannah sitting in the breakfast room he knew she was far from right. Her face had no vestige of colour in it and her hair was tangled around her face, but it was her deadened eyes and expressionless face that told Doctor Humphries that Hannah was very sick indeed, and he felt his stomach contract in sympathy. He sat down beside her at the table. ‘My dear Mrs Bradley,’ he said gently. ‘Have you been ill?’
Hannah smiled a sad little smile. ‘Not ill, Doctor, but bad. Shameful!’
‘Come, come. That isn’t true.’
‘It is, Doctor. Oh yes, it is,’ Hannah cried. ‘I’ll tell you why and you’ll be shocked. You see, I don’t love my baby, not a bit, not at all. Pauline Lawson cares for her and Josie helps and even Arthur, but not me.’
‘Listen to me, Mrs Bradley,’ Doctor Humphries said, covering Hannah’s agitated hands that she was wringing together, with his own. ‘I think you have an illness that some people have after childbirth. A sort of depression.’
He remembered as he spoke that some fellow doctors would refute such an illness existed at all, but he’d seen a fair number of cases, more certainly than could be put down to coincidence. It was made harder by the fact that many women could not face the fact that they felt nothing for their child. They felt it an unnatural reaction and certainly not something to confess to their doctors.
‘I am depressed all right, and disgusted altogether with myself,’ Hannah said. ‘And I’m always so tired. Sometimes I’m too tired to make an evening meal and if Josie didn’t help me with the washing on Saturday, it wouldn’t get done.’
‘Tiredness is a classic symptom,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ve glanced over your notes from Oaklands and you had an emergency caesarean operation and then were separated from your baby for a few days. Bonding didn’t take place between you.’
‘Will I always feel like this?’
‘No, no, not at all,’ the doctor said. ‘Will you come down to the surgery tomorrow morning? I want to give you a thorough examination.’
‘And then will I learn to love my baby?’
‘I’m sure you will. Of course you will.’
Although the doctor was soothing and reassuring with Hannah, he was worried and angry that her condition hadn’t been brought to his attention before. Surely, no one could think she was behaving normally? Why didn’t her hus
band spot it? Usually the last person to recognise he or she is ill is the depressive themself. That has to be brought home to them. Now he feared it would be a long drawn-out course of treatment before any significant improvement would be seen.
And it did take a long time for Hannah to pull herself out of the dark abyss she’d fallen into. At first, the improvements were almost unnoticed. She’d felt she was surrounded by a deep, dark fog and that everyone else was on the other side of it and she couldn’t reach them. Everything was such an effort anyway that, in the end, she’d stopped trying.
But, gradually, with the doctor’s encouragement and the tablets he prescribed, she grew a little stronger. She began to notice that some days the fog would lift slightly before swirling about her once more and it gave her hope and she began to fight the black despair that swept over her at times. She knew, as she began to improve, how near she’d come to true insanity and she also knew that she still walked on the knife edge of it.
‘When will I get out of this?’ she asked the doctor one day.
‘You are getting better all the time, you must see it for yourself?’ Doctor Humphries reassured her. ‘Your mind has been badly hurt. It takes time to heal. If you’d broken your leg, you wouldn’t expect to be skipping down the road the next week, now would you?’
Hannah smiled at the thought and realised that the smile felt strange. She put up her hand and touched her mouth. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled.
The doctor took it as a good sign too. ‘That’s nice to see,’ he said. ‘A beautiful smile.’
Hannah liked and trusted her doctor and thought him a kind man and one never too busy to talk to her, to listen and reassure. And so, though she longed to return to the old Hannah immediately, the one on the other side of the fog, she did as the doctor advised and took one day at a time.
The spring drew to a close. In June, Josie made her confirmation and Hannah strived for her sake to be more alert, more able to cope. It fooled no one, however, and when Hannah looked back on that day, she found she could remember so little about it, it was as if it had happened to someone else.
In July, Elizabeth Banks paid a call. By that time, Hannah was rising every morning and finding it easier to do. Threads of mist still clung to her mind at times, though, making her forgetful and unsure of herself. Elizabeth saw this, but she also saw that Hannah was much improved from her previous visit.
‘I thought there was something wrong the last time I came around,’ she told Hannah. ‘I said as much to Reg, but I never imagined … I should have done, I suppose, because I had a touch of bad nerves after I’d had my second.’
‘I’m almost recovered now,’ Hannah said.
‘Oh my dear, I can see that,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘The doctor has prescribed something for you, I suppose?’
‘Oh yes,’ Hannah said. ‘He’s very good. And the tablets help me cope.’
‘That’s what you need,’ Elizabeth said. ‘A sympathetic doctor. They can do wonders these days.’
Hannah continued visiting her doctor, taking the tablets religiously, and slowly but surely her recovery continued.
By the end of August, she was much better well enough in fact to regret missing so much of Angela’s babyhood. The baby, now turned nine months, was fully recovered with no aftereffects from the measles. She was a happy child who laughed and chuckled at anyone and pulled herself up to stand on anything to hand. She could drink from a cup and clap her hands and say Dada, Po, her name for Pauline, and Jo for Josie.
However, she didn’t know Hannah when she popped into the nursery and her smile was tentative and unsure. Hannah bent down to her haunches and held out her arms, but Angela, who’d been standing holding on to a toddler truck, dropped to all fours and began backing away. Pauline scooped her up. ‘Here’s your mommy,’ she said. ‘Say Mommy.’
Angela said nothing till she was placed in Hannah’s arms and then she began to scream and writhe and struggle and hold her arms out for Pauline to take her.
‘Every time I go into the nursery, she does the same thing and each time it’s like a knife twisting in my heart,’ Hannah told Gloria who’d come on a fleeting visit a fortnight later. ‘It hurts like mad to know my daughter can’t stand the sight of me.’
‘It’s bound to take time, pet,’ Gloria said. ‘The child hardly knows you.’
‘I know, but oh, Gloria, look at what I’ve missed already.’
‘I know. You’ll never get those moments back, you’ll have to face that and move on.’
‘I know that,’ Hannah said. ‘Oh, don’t I know it.’
‘Maybe you should think of getting rid of the nanny?’ Gloria suggested.
Hannah shook her head. ‘Arthur would never allow it,’ she said. ‘Anyway, the child would fret, she truly loves Pauline, and I couldn’t do that to Angela. After all, none of this is her fault. I know none of it is Pauline’s fault either, but I can’t help being jealous of her. But then what would have become of Angela without her? To tell you the truth, I wasn’t much help to Josie either those past times. She’s admitted now that she was frightened of me.
‘God, that child has not been dealt a good hand in life. All those she loves either die or disappear from her life and I drag her here to a place she doesn’t want to come to, with a person she doesn’t want to live with, and then produce a child of my own and go doo-lally-tap.’
‘Stop it,’ Gloria said firmly and added, ‘and you were never doo-lally-tap.’
‘Oh my God, but I was, Gloria,’ Hannah said fervently. ‘You weren’t in there with me. It was like visiting the gates of Hell.’
‘All right, so I wasn’t there,’ Gloria conceded. ‘But it was the birth brought it on, hormones or some such. And you’re as right as rain again now.’
Hannah said nothing; she knew she wasn’t, although she was a lot better than she had been. She knew it would take time to completely recover, the doctor had explained it all to her. And she also knew every time Angela rejected her, it knocked her self-esteem again. And yet, she knew she couldn’t just give up. She had to keep trying with the child she was longing to be able to love like any other mother. She was determined that Arthur wouldn’t have it all his own way and push her out of the child’s life altogether.
‘Come on,’ she said to Gloria. ‘Let’s go up to the nursery and you can see the set-up for yourself.’
Chapter Eleven
Pauline felt bad that Hannah had been so ill and that she’d not insisted Arthur get the doctor earlier. She had to admit that she’d not tried that hard and when Hannah began to get better and she saw what a lovely person she was when the depression was lifted from her, she felt worse than ever.
Then there was the child’s attitude to her and the cold way Arthur spoke. She knew Arthur didn’t like Hannah having much to do with the child and though she couldn’t understand it, she knew that he was the boss in the house and Hannah had little or no influence.
However, she still did her best to help forge links between Hannah and her child, encouraging them to go out on their own sometimes. She knew Arthur wouldn’t have approved, but he’d not actually said that Hannah wasn’t to take her out.
The outings were rarely a success, though, for Angela constantly showed Hannah up in public and when she remonstrated with her or attempted to stop her doing something, her tantrums had to be seen to be believed. It did nothing for Hannah’s self-esteem. She knew other people besides Arthur thought her a useless mother when she seemed to have no control over one small toddler.
She took Angela to Gloria’s one day and the older woman had gone to great lengths to make the child welcome, getting in the cakes and drinks she particularly liked and buying her a colouring book and crayons, a couple of jigsaws and a book of nursery rhymes to amuse her.
However, Angela squashed the cakes between her fingers and smeared the resultant mess over Gloria’s sofa and then deliberately tipped her drink over the coffee table. When Hannah scolded her,
she stuck out her tongue and ground the crayons into the carpet while she ripped pages from the book. Hannah didn’t know what to do. She hesitated to smack her because she knew Angela, who’d never been smacked in her life, would be sure to tell Arthur and she’d be afraid of his reaction, not just for herself alone, but also for Pauline for encouraging the visits.
Somehow, young as she was, Angela knew her mother could do little with her and she laughed gleefully as she flung the jigsaw across the room. It caught the teapot which fell over, shattering a cup and saucer before spinning on to the floor, pouring tea leaves and hot water on to the carpet.
Exhausted and embarrassed beyond measure, Hannah took Angela home and the next time she visited Gloria, she went alone. She could see Gloria was relieved and didn’t blame her. ‘Between the lot of you, you have the child ruined,’ she told Hannah plainly. ‘That child needs to know who’s boss and she needs to know how to behave and have her bottom smacked soundly when she’s naughty.’
‘I know,’ Hannah agreed. ‘She’s two years old and she rules the house. But,’ she was honest enough to admit, ‘she isn’t so badly behaved for any of the others.’
And she wasn’t. Pauline only had to say, ‘Your daddy wouldn’t like you to do that now, would he?’ for Angela to conform. As for Josie, she had only to say, ‘I won’t play with you, or take you out if you are naughty,’ for her to be good as gold.
Hannah could use none of these ploys, for if she said she would tell her daddy, Angela would toss her mop of auburn curls and say, ‘Don’t care,’ and she didn’t. Even at her tender age, she knew Arthur never bothered to listen to anything Hannah said. As for playing with her, Angela wouldn’t usually let her play. If Hannah offered to read to her, she’d shake her head. Pauline could, or Josie, or her daddy, but not her mother. If she got down on the floor to help her with a jigsaw or play a game, Angela would be quite direct. ‘Go away, I don’t want you.’