Evelyn stubbed out her cigarette and then looked at me with eyes that had been washed hard and clean a long time ago.
“Funny thing is, even though nothing ever happened between us, not even a kiss, I think Sandra might have been the love of my life. Do you think that’s possible, Lina?”
I shrugged. I was too drunk now to trust myself to speak.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter because we’ll never know. That’s what makes me saddest, you know. The fact that I’ll never know. I’ll always wonder and I’ve a feeling that won’t be good for me.”
She waggled her nearly empty glass at me.
“I see spinsterhood beckoning, Lina.”
She drained the drink. “I’m getting another. You?”
I shook my head gently. It seemed too heavy all of a sudden.
“I think I should go, Evelyn. Can you get Robert for me?”
She smiled and sashayed across to the bar where Robert looked like he was propping up Douglas, who had broken another of my stereotypical assumptions by getting atrociously drunk on just three beers, despite his girth.
Robert came over and sat down, putting his arm around my shoulder.
“Evelyn has just told me the saddest story,” I slurred. “So terribly, dreadfully sad. I don’t know what to do with it.”
He pushed my hair off my face.
“Do you want to tell me? Or shall we wait until the morning? There’s always plenty of time for sorrow, Lina. Let’s not rush it. Not today.”
I nodded and let my head slump onto his shoulder.
“I think it’s time for you to lie down now,” he said. “I know I said be happy but you might be a little bit too merry now.”
He winked and I giggled and just like that, we were the same people we’d been in Oxford. Before. The spell lasted all the way to the hotel where we were to spend our wedding night, and all through our lovemaking, which was newly tender and slow as though we had all the time in the world. And even though we didn’t, we also did because that night we made you and despite what happened later, you and yours have pulled Robert and me into the future, despite our best efforts.
CHAPTER 17
The day you were born, August 28, 1946, a tempest blew through St Albans and whistling, raucous gusts of wind frayed the rain into spray. One could read something into that but it would be as vapid as guessing your destiny from the position of the stars at the hour of your birth. I sneer but one of my secret vices is my daily scan of the horoscopes. I have no loyalty to any particular astrologer – I will read them wherever I find them, the more obscure the better. I always read mine first, then Robert’s, even now, and then yours. Gemini, Leo and Virgo. It is an utter waste of time but it amuses me to try to fathom the meaning of platitudes masquerading as enigmas. I feel a ridiculous sense of achievement when I link a particularly vague phrase – a challenge awaits – to something that is really happening. I checked the stars today in the local newspaper. Apparently, I must fight against those who seek to control me while you will find happiness in the mundane. As with everything, horoscopes sound better in French. I hope you do find happiness, be it in the mundane or the extraordinary, today and every day, my dear.
To say I was ill-prepared for giving birth would be a gross understatement. I had no idea even though I had devoured Grantly Dick-Read’s Revelation of Childbirth, hoping for just that. His emphasis on allowing the mother to do what she needed to ease the pain did not exactly allay my anxiety. Charlotte had told me in her typically serene way that there was no point in her describing the pain as it would be beyond imagining. I had laughed at the time, believing she was joking. She did not contradict my mirth, which was a bit cheeky.
Robert was not allowed to be with me. I had wanted him to stay, telling him only half in jest that whatever happened it could not be worse than what he had seen during the war. He did not seem convinced but help was at hand.
“We don’t hold with such new-fangled notions,” the brutally efficient midwife told us. I opened my mouth to disagree but she fixed me with a furious glare and I thought better of it. This woman would be shepherding me through whatever was coming. I wanted her to love me like a daughter. I thought I detected a somewhat indecent lightness in Robert’s step as he trotted off to the waiting room after kissing me goodbye and rather shamefacedly wishing me luck.
They let Charlotte stay. She glanced enviously at Robert’s retreating back.
“Charlotte!” I hissed.
“Sorry, darling,” she said. “It’s just not very pleasant and I’ve never liked the sight of blood. But don’t worry. I’m here for you. This is what mothers must do. After all, I brought you into the world. It’s my job to stand beside you.”
You may find it hard to believe but her words have rung in my head all these years, Diane. I was never Charlotte’s equal and I suppose I must conclude that I had a different interpretation of a mother’s duty. I believed I must let you live. Sometimes standing too close can be stifling.
Your birth was what birth is. There were no epidurals then but I had gas and air, although to be honest I wasn’t quite sure how to use it and nobody else seemed to be any the wiser. The best I can say is that it took the edge off. Possibly.
After panting and cursing for what seemed an eternity, you squirmed your way into the world. You were squashed and slime-covered and pug-dog ugly and I needed to hold you in my arms immediately. I watched breathlessly, sweat still dripping into my eyes, as they wiped you down, counted your fingers and toes and did whatever checks they had to do. Then you were on my chest and although Charlotte was crying and I was whimpering, everything seemed to have gone silent, like a forest awaiting a fire. The midwife and nurse stood by the bed, all of us gazing at this tiny being whose very existence seemed a blatant act of defiance against the death that had ruled us for so long.
Another cliché I fear but I fell headlong in love with you. I threw myself into this new obsession, arms outstretched, feet peddling me into the void. I was ecstatic and terrified and so eager to get to know you. And yet I was already also in mourning. With a clarity that was divine and awful, I glimpsed the true tyranny of time. As you grew, I would age. Our Fates were linked in a vicious circle of growth and decay. I felt dizzy with the knowledge. I looked at Charlotte for reassurance. She leaned over the bed, put her hands on my cheeks and said, “Now, you know. Beyond imagining.”
She left quietly and a few minutes later Robert burst in and I watched him fall in love too. For an hour, before they took you away to be properly cleaned, we huddled together on the hospital bed, a completed trinity. It was the happiest hour of my life. We were all and all was us. You, Robert and I. The closest I have ever come to experiencing such otherworldly calm again has been on those few occasions when I thought my time was up and there was nothing I could do. Like once on a plane high over northern Africa when we hit an air pocket and dropped 100 feet in a matter of seconds. Everyone was screaming and crying but I felt the most preternatural calm. It’s not that I am particularly brave. Quite the opposite. It seems that when fear hits its peak, my body and brain shut down, transporting me to a state I can only describe as bliss. That is why I don’t fear death now, my dear. My fear has peaked. Death now is so terrifyingly close that the thought of it spins me into the kind of calm that only perfect happiness and perfect fear can produce.
A month before you were born, we moved into a two-bedroom house we had bought in Folly Lane. It had a rose-covered, red-brick front and a little garden with a mature apple tree and a small wooden shed. After we brought you back, it felt for a while as though we were playing house, performing our new roles like self-conscious actors. During that time, we were beyond happy. We were living off Robert’s inheritance, you were sleeping relatively well and although I was constantly tired, I felt as though I was doing what I had been born to do. I was completely absorbed by sleeping patterns and feeding schedules, nappy rash and laundry. Temporary hormone-driven insanity, I’m sure, but there can be a pure
delight in managing these things if you do not fight their dominion.
Today, as we demand the right to do everything, all the time, we sometimes forget that pure domesticity can have its attractions. Or maybe it is less the tasks and more the single-minded focus. I have found similar joy in writing. It is the pure release of losing oneself in another or others.
Robert and I were planets to your sun. You were our talisman, the living proof that beauty and grace were still possible after the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the concentration camps. You were a delightful surprise, the kind that seems inevitable after the fact. We had never spoken of having a child. There was no point during the war, and then you were here. I doubt we would ever have talked about it explicitly. We would have felt it was in poor taste. How could we, who had already been gifted so much, expect another blessing? Your birth, your health, your indisputable presence reassured us that life was not a zero-sum game. We didn’t have to lose because once upon a time, we had won. It seems obvious now but we had to relearn these truths.
There were, of course, signs that our idyll might not last forever. As the weeks went by, it became increasingly clear that Robert was tormented by something but I did not dare probe any deeper. You have to understand, Diane. We didn’t have words to describe how we felt. There was no talk of PTSD then. With no vocabulary, how could we expect to understand? We knew soldiers struggled because even those of us who never saw battle were struggling to readjust to peacetime. Once again, our leaders demanded the impossible; change, forget about the war, as you were. But the war had pulverised our norms: men-turned-soldiers were encouraged and badgered and shamed into ditching decades of so-called civilisation to become killers and executioners and destroyers. Then they were supposed to shrug off the new rules along with their battledress jackets. It was a ridiculous idea and there were no feel-good posters to guide them or us in this impossible endeavour.
Robert started to disappear. At first he would go for an hour or so, and only every now and then. Then his absences became longer and grew more frequent. When he came back, he seemed unsure of where he had been. I wondered if he just did not want to tell me.
“Walking,” he would say.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Here and there, all around. I don’t really pay attention. I just like to be moving.”
You will no doubt wonder why I didn’t see this for what it was – a clear indication that the man I loved was losing his grip. All I can say is that I was lulled into a false sense of security by the dull quietude of our lives, Diane. When Robert first began to wander off, I assumed he just needed a break from our near-total domesticity. I had darker thoughts too but my own behaviour with Penrose removed my right to give them space. When he went to bed early, complaining of a headache, I didn’t remark on it because I too wanted to sleep and I too had daily headaches. When he fell silent in the evening, his eyes glazed and empty, I told myself it was new father fatigue. I didn’t press him on what he was feeling because I was so eager to forget what we had been through. I assumed he felt the same and so I decided to draw a veil over those years. That meant turning a blind eye to Robert’s obvious struggle to rebuild himself. I could have asked him more, pressed him to talk of his feelings but I had no desire to look back. Knowing what I know now, I realise we were both tongue-tied by guilt.
In January 1947, one of the coldest winters ever, the plates we were spinning began to fall off their poles. Snow covered the ground and the washed-out sky hung low and mournful over our heads. Electricity was cut and animals froze to death in the fields. You were struck by colic and our freezing house was filled with your plaintive cries, all day and all through the long, bitter nights.
I had no idea what to do. We tried all the medicines available in the poorly stocked chemist. Charlotte spent hours walking you around the living room while I tried to sleep, the pillow pressed over my ears, my eyes screwed shut so tightly that my temples hurt. Robert started leaving the house more often and for longer. I slipped into a kind of depression. I was either lethargic or furious. At times, I scared myself with the strength of my hatred for you. It is unpleasant to write and, I’m sure, unpleasant to read but it is the truth. Some days, I loathed you, Diane. Your crying was a form of torture and I was terrified that I would do anything to make it stop. We know so much more today about post-natal depression and although I am reluctant to give myself an out with a handy label, I do think I was suffering from something more than the blues.
Of course, we had no real understanding of depression then either. We would have said I needed to cheer up, buck up and turn that frown upside down. I didn’t know how to describe what I felt, much less what to do to silence the screaming that echoed all day in my head, a counterpoint to your wailing. I felt trapped by the cold, by the post-war economic hardship and by my own apathy. I began to see you as my jailer and the guilt was excruciating. I would start crying from frustration at my inability to comfort you and then I would be filled with self-pity and then I would cry for Penrose, and for Robert, and for all of us, and finally I would cry hot tears of shame. Saint Augustine was wrong, Diane. Repentant tears do not wash out the stains of guilt. They just wet your face.
One breath-freezing, bitter day, I pushed your pram into St Albans, slipping and sliding on the icy pavements, beyond caring whether I fell. I could no longer bear to be in the house where your cries seemed to pierce the walls and colour the air with a suffocating sadness that I feared would haunt the rooms forever. You were still crying but it was manageable outside; your wailing was muffled by other snow-smothered sounds.
As we walked past a teahouse on the high street, I saw Robert sitting in a corner, hunched over a newspaper, his head in his hands, his hair wild. I stopped stock-still, hurt and humiliated and angry. He had left us to come and sit alone here. What gave him the right to opt out? I pushed awkwardly through the door, creating a commotion as I rammed the pram ahead of me. You started screaming.
I saw Robert look up and flush.
I stormed over, lifted you out of the pram and stood over Robert, rocking you on my shoulder. It was all I could do not to scream and swear like a fishwife.
“So you’re here?” I said in a low, strangled voice.
He looked faintly amused. It infuriated me.
“And so are you, it seems,” he said. “Why don’t you sit down, Lina? Let me get you a cup of tea.”
I wanted to refuse but I also wanted to sit and I craved a hot drink.
I slumped, defeated by my own body and weak will, into the chair opposite him.
“Why are you here?” I asked, breathless and tearful. You had stopped crying, Diane, but I was afraid to raise you from my shoulder in case you were sleeping.
“I don’t know. I just couldn’t be in the house any more. I feel like I’m losing my bearings there. It’s starting to seem… not real. I’m starting to feel not real. Does that make sense?”
The waitress came and we remained silent until my cup of tea was steaming in front of me. Emboldened by the prospect of a hot drink, I risked lifting you off my shoulder and laid you in the pram. For a mad moment, I wanted to rush from table to table, urgently whispering that nobody could speak because my child was asleep. “Stir that sugar quietly, don’t touch the sides,” I would hiss. I hallucinated a lot in your first year, Diane. I imagine most mothers do.
I sat down again, gingerly, afraid to disturb the air around you.
“Are you tired of being with us?” I said, hating my sullenly beseeching tone.
“Don’t be crazy,” he said and then added hastily. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean crazy. I just meant unreasonable. No, not unreasonable just… Damn.”
I flushed. He had called me crazy one night when he found me lying on the floor in your room, curled into a ball, fists bunched over my ears as you hollered. We had a furious, muted row, our muttered insults gyring around each other like miniature storms. I whispered that he was walking himself out of ou
r lives, leaving me to carry all the burdens alone. He said I had no idea what he was dealing with, that sometimes he was afraid to leave me alone with you and that I no longer laughed. We slept apart that night for the first time in our married life. It was a fatal decision because afterwards, it became the way we dealt with arguments. We distanced ourselves from each other. Once you do that, Diane, you have broken the covenant. You are saying, “I cannot help you, I do not want to help you and I can live with not helping you.” It is that last part that is so damning and yet so prosaic. The things that tear us apart always are.
In the teahouse, I was too tired to fight.
“What’s in the news?” I said.
He squinted at the paper on the table. He seemed bemused to find it there.
“Nothing much, nothing interesting. You know, even the paper is smaller now. There are fewer pages. It’s because of the cold weather. They’ve had to cut fuel supplies because they can’t get the coal to the power stations. The RAF has been dropping food to some of the cut-off villages and they say they used flamethrowers to clear some of the drifts in Dorset. Can you imagine it? They’re saying it’s the worst snow this century,” he said.
“I feel like we are wearing that word out. Worst war, another worst war, worst unemployment, worst snowfall,” I said. “Is there never to be another best? Are we the worst generation? Are we being punished?”
“If we are, it’s fair and just,” Robert said, shaking his head. “After what we did and what we allowed to happen, maybe we don’t deserve happiness, never mind the best.”
Looking back, Diane, I realise that was when I failed. That was the exact moment when I should have pushed him to talk. But I didn’t ask the question. I didn’t say “what do you mean?” or “what did you do?” because I didn’t recognise the turning point, and maybe also because I didn’t want to know the answer. It was an unconscionable act of cowardice. It was the unconscionable act of cowardice that was to govern the rest of my life.
The Reckoning Page 18