Where do I begin with memories? With the earliest, or the most recent; vivid or life changing; the happiest, or the most painful? So many moments – not lost: Suspended. I've heard people stream memories, years of them. Recollections of childhood, family holidays, school friends, teenage discoveries, student life and so it goes on. But my brain is different, dysfunctional perhaps. Full of darkness. If I feel my way around the void, I find random windows that open onto brief snapshots. I don’t know whether the emotion I sense is of the original moment, that of the child looking out from the image, or the viewer, looking back. And perhaps my brain is not dysfunctional at all, but just extremely efficient at choosing what is OK for me to remember. It’s not an isolated moment that I am missing, it is years of my life. Moments are all that I am left with. And now, as I enter middle age, I strive to shrug off these absences. To let them go. Yet I cling to those open windows.
A man – my father – walks through the garden gate with a white paper bag of toffee bonbons from the village shop. They are coated with white icing sugar. I remember the crack of the sweet, powdery shell, like fresh snow underfoot; teeth sinking into the hard toffee beneath. The same man sterilizes a needle to remove a splinter from my foot. We are outside the family cottage in Wales. And then he is lying in his bed. It is daytime and people visit. That is the last picture I have of him. I can search and search for more, but he is gone. It is then Christmas morning and men come to our house, and I have a sense that he is there, but I don't see him. The house seems full of people, and they are all much bigger than me. I don't recall anyone speaking, but I remember the inside of my bedroom door and footsteps passing outside. And the emotion? I am just alone. Invisible. A silent child.
Of course, the adult me has many, many images of him, but they are not my own. The stories repeated by family and friends at dinner parties or during quiet moments. My mother and older brothers seem to have so many warm, happy memories of their time with him. This is the man I grew up missing. A childhood beset with loss and being lost. I even passed their stories on, as if they were experiences of my own, trusting their validity, adopting that history of myself, of my parents, without question. That is the narrative I give the child psychiatrist, week after week throughout my teenage years, until at my final session, I look him in the eye and say “I need help”, and he says: “I know”.
There are no memories of kindergarten, except for the final day: A bunch of flowers for a child who is leaving to begin primary school. The child is me, although it feels confusing, distant. Nothing to do with me. I hadn’t been aware I was leaving, but my sense of that moment is of kindness and sympathy. It feels a good place. My adult self calculates that this must have been after he died, and I would have been four years old. I think I revisit this window because of the flowers. I focus hard on identifying the emotion, but I struggle. There is a sense of it being an unfamiliar experience and that seems to override everything else. All the children are drawn to the flowers, yet they are for me. I don't think it is about possession of them, but about being the subject. Most of my life since then (and I assume before) I have been the one that no one notices.
Primary school is a further cause of bewilderment, as I seem to have gone to two. My window on the first is brief: It is morning assembly, and we are all standing up. There is pee running down my leg and onto the wooden floor. The emotions are simple, stark and familiar: shame and panic.
I have more details from the second, as I must have been there for several years: I remember three of the teachers (mainly with fear) and a number of the children. I have two friends, Estelle and Julie, and I frequently go home with one or the other of them after school. If it isn't with them, it is with a much older girl whose mother is friends with mine. The girl is cruel: She practices putting makeup on me when she is happy and kicks me repeatedly in the ankles when she isn't. There are others at that school who are equally vindictive and so begins my long career as the perfect target for bullies. For the first year I have some protection: the son of family friends is in the top class. He is very tall and called Tom, and each playtime I cling to his hand and follow him around. I sense his kindness from within the image, but even more so as an adult, looking back. I don't know if he is teased by his peers, but I do know that he doesn't once protest. Then he starts secondary school and is gone and there is no one to hide behind.
I think that my friends are predominantly the children of people my mother chooses to mix with, rather than those I feel any affinity with. Perhaps the one exception is Estelle, who is another loner. Slightly podgy and bespectacled and probably very clever. She doesn't seem to seek company, but I find hers to be uncomplicated and undemanding. An only child of older parents, she is cossetted, but never conceited. Strangely grown up and unperturbed by her own uniqueness, she does not judge not fitting in to be a failure.
During school holidays we make the long drive to the family cottage in North Wales. My mother has an old Renault 12 which cannot do more than about sixty miles an hour, so sits in the slow lane on the M5 and frequently breaks down. I am profoundly car sick. We regularly pull over so I can get out and vomit onto the tarmac or into a hedge. The inside of the car is hot with dog breath and my mother talks endlessly about making the same trip so many times with my father, stopping to eat sandwiches and make tea on the prima stove. We break at a road-side cafe and she says he'll be turning in his grave. I cannot see my brothers, so they must have left home by now. They are absent from most of my earlier memories, and it is just the two of us. Once at the cottage, I take myself off into the nearby hills where I pretend I am a horse. I imagine that I gallop for miles and then I sit in the short grass and watch storms moving up the valley. I am part of the landscape. One time I get up to watch the sun rise. I climb up the hillside and wait as the light filters over the mountain tops and trickles down into the valley, illuminating every rock and blade of grass. The sheep down below form an orderly line and file along the track, before dispersing across the slopes and commencing the day's grazing. They always look as though they are hobbling, with their matted tales bobbing and heads nodding, jaws rhythmically chewing. An unwavering sense of purpose.
Having a mother working for the local education authority means that she knows many of the teachers at my school: My much older brothers were there before me; she has known the headmaster for many years; and another teacher (who once played rugby for Wales) borrows our cottage in Snowdonia for a holiday with his family. He is very tall and has a big, Welsh voice. I can see myself in the school canteen at lunchtime. There is custard for pudding which has gone cold and developed a thick, rubbery skin on top of it. I cannot stomach it, so sit alone at the table, my bowl untouched in front of me. Everyone else has gone outside to play, but I remain alone until lunch break ends and classes begin again. The dinner ladies clear up around me and I dare not move or look up. No one comes to fetch me; no one speaks to me; it is as if I am not there at all.
My mother's father was a coroner. Her older brothers went into Law and took over the family firm, however, as a daughter, she was not permitted to study the subject. She then married a divorced, much older man, who brought home barely sufficient money for us to live on. Yet she kept up appearances: A cleaner and various nannies were brought in to help her. Even now, fully retired and well into old age, she keeps a cleaner on her pension.
One night when I am about eight years old, I am preparing to go up to bed. The house is cold and my mother is drunk as usual. She fills a rubber hot water bottle from the kettle on the Rayburn and hands it to me. I instinctively clasp it to my chest. The screw-top has not been fastened tightly and the boiling water pours out, soaking quickly into my nightdress and running down my stomach and legs. I can't remember any pain: I watch most of the incident from a place on the ceiling, looking down at myself. The family GP is called and comes to the house. He says that the burns are serious and for many weeks the scars must be dressed, and I am unable to go to school. Remarkably, the incident is never mentioned when I am older and the physical scars eventually heal, yet I grow up with a profound, overwhelming fear of fire.
I have a dream one night that I am walking through the school, and I realise that I am naked. Everyone is staring and laughing. Other nights I find I can fly. I lift off the ground and struggle into the air, but then find I am pulled down again, as if swimming uphill through thick mud. Panic sets in as though I am going to drown, and I wake up.
We have dogs, cats and a pony at home. My mother needs to be busy after my father is gone, so I take ballet lessons, piano, viola...and we have the loan of a pony from somewhere – a small, independently-minded Dartmoor pony. I spend as much of my home time as possible with him at the field with the shed down the road. I am there every morning before school and back again straight after, whatever the weather. When I'm not there, I must practice my musical instruments and ballet steps. I expect there is homework, but I don't remember it. School is somewhere I am dropped each day, but I never feel connected to. Lessons go on around me, but I don’t hear them. Then one day I am taken to a big school in the town near to her office and sat in a room with others; asked to write a story. This is an entrance exam, which I must pass, as sooner or later I am told that I shall be leaving the village primary to start another new school. It is private and my mother will be paying fees, so money will be tight, but she plays bridge with the head mistress. The primary school bullies, most of whom will go on to the local comprehensive, somehow get wind of my new destination and their cruelty intensifies until I leave.
And jumbled up somewhere in amongst these years I am taken to see my first Child Psychiatrist. It must be one evening, as it is dark outside. He appears to be quite old and I find him repellent, but I do some drawing when he asks me to. He is another friend of Her’s. There is nothing more and I don't see him again.
A new family move into the house up the road from us. The daughter is five years older than me and has a pony which will be sharing the field with mine and the mother is an English teacher and has taken a job at my new school. She and my mother quickly become good friends, whilst the daughter befriends a girl her own age from a big house down the road and before long there is a third pony in the field. By themselves, I get on reasonably well with them. However, together they are horrible. It is mostly verbal: teasing and belittling. On one occasion I am shoved into a hedge full of stinging nettles, which is apparently hilarious.
I clean the stable, groom and exercise my pony, then leave as quickly as possible. And this continues unabated for several years, through a number of progressively larger ponies. For a brief time, another local girl joins us and becomes the main object of their unkindness, but she soon leaves and the attention returns to me. Images of one incident leave me cold: My mother has made or bought a cake and it is on the kitchen table when they come home with me one day. She says I can give them one slice each, then she goes out into the garden and leaves me alone with them. After one slice, they want more. It is funny to them, seeing my distress. They help themselves until only a small section remains, then they leave, laughing their way up the road. My fear of her reaction is so intense that I instinctively climb the stairs to my room. I stand behind the window shaking, peering out to where she is digging furiously. I am so afraid to go out and tell her what has happened, it feels as though I am going to die.
Sound rarely touches me, but there is one piece of music that is vivid. And bizarre, really: My brothers are the only people who buy pop or rock music, as well as vinyl recordings of the Goon Show, which I recollect only vaguely. But I know from later experience that they listen to things like Pink Floyd and Jethroe Tull. I remember Fleetwood Mac's “Albatross” well; yet here is a single of Neil Diamond's “Beautiful Noise”. Perhaps it belongs to one of their many girlfriends. I play it over and over. It is 1976, the year my father dies, and it has stayed with me for a lifetime. Many years later I buy it myself and I play it again and again – just as before. I am utterly unable to identify the emotions evoked. It is profoundly emotive, yet I cannot even understand whether what I am feeling is happy or sad: It is just energizing, like drinking caffeine or running very fast. I play it now and there are tears. My breathing slows as the pain grows, then the song is finished. Funny how bursts of adrenaline always make me want to cry. Perhaps depression is a defence against that: It drains all the strength from your body and soul, leaving you empty and closed.
I often cannot listen to music. It breaks me wide open.
I start to have a recurring nightmare: I am being chased by a monster. I always run past familiar people, but I instinctively know that they cannot help me and I run on. In contrast, I never see what is chasing me, only know that I am running for my life. I wake at the moment I am to be caught and lie paralysed in my bed, engulfed by fear. It is a boundless fear: that of a small child without the experience of survival or knowledge of years. The fear of the dark or the monster under the bed. At its most acute it is not clear which is greater – the fear of death, or the unspeakable nature of the fear itself. Is the fear generated because I believe I am going to die, or would death actually bring relief from the fear I cannot identify? What could be so terrifying that a child might wish for death in order to escape it?
The writing is helping me to remember.
I remember running away. Scrambling under my bed and pressing myself back against the wall, metal springs trapping my hair. Being hauled out by the arm. Once, an act of defiance: I am on my pony and do not stop when told, but ride back to the stable. I know what is coming and it is pointless running; I just stand and wait. I am thrown across my pony's back, face cracking on the hard edge of the saddle, the animal skating sideways as I am beaten. And it does not cease as I grow older and taller: I must be a teenager, standing in the kitchen door one morning, face flushed, heart beating fast as I decide for once to answer back, knowing the risk I am taking. It is like a lightning strike, the rage. I do not hear the shouting, only reel in shock as a full glass jar of marmalade is hurled across the room, smashing into my hip bone. The broken glass cuts through my dressing gown and the stain from the sticky contents never washes out. The physical and emotional horror is something I will experience again in later life. It dismantles. It is not just the glass that is smashed into tiny fragments, but my entire sense of self; my fragile grip on what is right and wrong. Nothing and nowhere is safe; I am just falling.
My friends like my mother – to them she is fun; always smiling. I am often told how lucky I am.
CHAPTER 2
It is not clear what precipitates my outward disintegration. I am not even sure what age I am when it starts – perhaps thirteen or fourteen. I know that I am sitting in a Latin class, and I cannot hold back the tears. They take me to the nurse's office where I am allowed to lie and cry, but it has no end. Nothing can shut down the outpouring of misery and eventually they call her in to take me home. We are walking out of the building into the small, gravel car park and she is containing her rage: her voice is almost a hiss as I hear how weak and pathetic I am; how humiliating it is for her. There is nothing wrong with me – I am just attention-seeking and spoiled. The physical distance between us is cold and rigid. I withdraw as deep inside myself as I can. From then on, each morning I stand at the top of the stairs, frozen with panic, at times almost crazed. I am on the top step, occasionally moving round behind the bannisters, then back; physically, hopelessly looking around for a way of escape, but they are only to be found in my head; I must walk down the stairs, go to the car, sit in the back as we drive into town, then get out of the car and go into the school. It is so terrifying that there are no words to describe it. There are tears the whole way, though I fight and fight to hold them in. And I am utterly alone. She occasionally snaps at me to pull myself together, but otherwise drives in silent fury. And I am so ashamed.
It is not in my power to control the fear or the tears, so again and again I am taken to the school nurse whilst everyone else continues their lessons and goes on with life. I lie alone under a blanket, listening to footsteps in the corridor, teachers going in and out of the staff room, girls running and giggling. The school bell goes, and the footsteps are deafening for a brief time, then there is silence again, except for my irregular breathing. I hide and wait, tears rising and falling in waves. I slide into my inner world and close the door to the outside, trying not to hear any sounds around me that might haul me out of my hiding place. It is the same in class when I am able to attend: I am there, but not. I pray for the teacher to leave me be and if asked a question, my fear, shame and sense of failure is heightened. I have no idea what the answers are. I am trying not to be here.
I am in a school where the only grade expected of students is an A. There are wooden boards in the vaulted hall with the guilt names of former headmistresses, head girls and Oxbridge successes, and although I disassociate myself from the academic side of school life, I have one saving grace: My athletic ability. The school is immensely proud of its sporting heritage, and I prove to be more than able at pretty much everything (except for swimming, which I hate and do anything to avoid). In brief - If it involves running around, I excel. Athletics, tennis, hockey, netball, cross-country. I am the only girl at the end of my fifth year to receive team awards and colours for every sport – including for playing on the first tennis team, made up mostly of six-formers. But I don't feel pride, just deep embarrassment and anxiety. Success ripples the water.
At home, my mother once catches me looking in the bathroom mirror. I am accused of being vain. Another time I enter the kitchen in a miniskirt (all the other girls are wearing them) and am told I am dressed “like a tart”. She spits out the insults with physical distaste. I am dirty; abhorrent. Shameful.
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