Sins of the Mother

by Irene Kelly

  ‘Help me, Matt!’ she whispered softly. ‘Help me to stop the pain.’

  ‘Anything!’ I agreed. I was desperate. ‘I’ll do anything.’

  ‘Help me die!’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ I gasped, tears stinging my eyes. ‘I can’t do that, Irene. You know I can’t.’

  ‘If I was an animal you’d do it,’ she said sadly, her eyes shining through her own tears. She smiled at me then and nodded. ‘If you saw an animal suffering like this you’d put it out of its misery.’

  ‘But you’re not an animal! You’re my wife and I love you!’

  The next day she turned on me. ‘Why?’ she asked sharply as we sat in front of the TV. Her eyes flashed with anger as if I’d said something offensive.

  ‘Why what?’ I asked, but she couldn’t hear me. I could see she was gone. Her eyes darted around the room, her head shook – she seemed to be listening to somebody else, but it wasn’t me.

  Suddenly she erupted. ‘Why would you say something like that to me?’

  ‘Please, love, I didn’t say anything. It’s all in your head.’

  But Irene just fixed me with a steely stare and replied, ‘Of course I knew you’d say that. That’s what you’d like me to think, isn’t it?’

  I couldn’t take it any more. Every time I left the house I was terrified of coming back and finding her dead. I was becoming a nervous wreck myself. What kind of life was this? Jennifer deserved better. She needed both parents and Irene needed professional help.

  ‘Right.’ I stood up. ‘I’m taking you to A&E right now. And either you come with me voluntarily or I’ll call an ambulance for you. But one way or another you are going to hospital.’

  Finally, she succumbed and we went to the hospital. This was way beyond my ability to cope. Jennifer was in the lounge watching TV when I told her I was taking her mother to A&E.

  ‘She’s not too well at the moment,’ I explained calmly. I didn’t need to alarm our daughter. ‘So you just wait here while we sort this out. Don’t be worrying none. She’ll be fine. She just needs to see the doctor.’

  She frowned and said, ‘Are you sure? Do you want me to come with?’

  I could see the concern in her eyes and I did my best to reassure her. ‘Nah, I’m sure we won’t be long. You’re better off staying here. We won’t be long.’

  Irene was now limp and compliant as I steered her through the St Mary’s corridors, towards the A&E department. When we got to the waiting room, I guided her to sit in one of the plastic chairs and approached the desk.

  ‘My wife needs to see someone,’ I said to the woman seated behind the glass.

  ‘What’s the accident?’ she asked curtly. She had frizzy, busy hair and a busy manner to match.

  ‘There’s no accident.’

  She looked up then from scribbling on her forms.

  ‘No, it’s not an accident,’ I went on. ‘She needs to see a psychiatrist. She’s hearing voices.’

  It wasn’t long before we were shown into a small cubicle. A slight and pale doctor joined us a few minutes later. He looked like he needed a good feed and about a week’s worth of sleep himself. By now Irene was crying again.

  ‘Why are we here?’ she managed between sobs. ‘You . . . you . . . you know I don’t like hospitals.’

  But I wasn’t going to be deterred.

  ‘You see, doctor, she’s going through a bad patch,’ I told him. ‘She’s having a breakdown, hearing voices, crying all the time, won’t sleep or eat. It’s got really bad.’

  The doctor sat down on a chair opposite us – he tried to get a look at Irene but she kept ducking away, shielding her face from him, occasionally swiping at the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘Listen, doctor, you need to give her something to calm her down,’ I went on. ‘She’s going to have to stay here. I can’t cope with her at home any more.’

  The doctor addressed himself to Irene: ‘Mrs Kelly? Mrs Kelly, my name is Dr Alban. You’re in hospital now, do you understand?’

  Irene nodded dumbly.

  ‘Your husband brought you here because he’s worried about you. Do you think you might like to stay here for the night while we assess you?’

  ‘NO!’ Irene was vehement.

  ‘I think it would be for the best, Mrs Kelly,’ he persevered. ‘We can look after you here and make sure you get some proper rest.’

  But Irene was adamant, and despite the doctor’s best efforts he couldn’t persuade her to stay. So instead he sent us home with some Valium and organized for psychiatric nurses to come to the house to assess her.

  The next morning, the nurses arrived and that’s when I discovered that Irene thought her mother had taken over my body.

  ‘I just don’t understand why he would let her do that,’ she told the nurse in front of me. ‘He shouldn’t have let her take him over like that. Now he’s saying everything that she wants him to say.’

  I tried to speak but no sound came out. This was unbelievable. I knew that Irene was hearing voices but I didn’t know she imagined they came out of my mouth!

  ‘We think you would benefit from some respite care,’ one of the nurses suggested gently. ‘This is not a hospital, Irene, it’s a safe community, not far from here, where you would have your own room and your freedom. It’s like a hostel. You would have therapy and access to counsellors. But best of all, you’ll get some time on your own away from the house. It seems that a lot of these voices and visions that you’re experiencing are wrapped up in the home environment and Matt. I think you need some time out.’

  And so, that same afternoon, I accompanied Irene to the respite home where she would spend the next ten days. Luckily, it was just a short walk from our house.

  ‘I’ll call every day,’ I told her. ‘And if you want to see me, I’ll come by with the dog. We can take a walk together.’

  ‘Matt?’ She seemed scared; her hand reached for mine.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I smiled, clasping her cold, slim fingers in mine. ‘It’s all going to be fine. This is for the best.’

  Then I kissed her and we hugged one last time before a pleasant-looking woman in jeans and a patchwork jumper led her to her room.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the woman said as I hesitated at the door. ‘We’ll take good care of her here.’

  And with that, I turned and walked out. As I left the building and turned onto the busy main road, I felt lighter and happier than I had done in weeks. Tears swelled behind my eyes. It was like somebody had lifted a huge weight off my shoulders and all I could feel at that moment was immense gratitude and relief. Guilt prickled at the edges of my mind – Why do I feel so happy leaving my wife in a strange place? Shouldn’t I want her at home? No, I knew this was too much for me to deal with alone. I needed this respite as much as she did.

  How have things got so bad? From the early days of knowing Irene she had told me about her difficult upbringing but I never imagined that it would lead to this. I thought that as the years passed it would get easier for her, not harder. When we first arrived in England, everything was good. We both worked, we went out at the weekends – we went to the park, to car boot sales, the cinema or out for meals. We enjoyed life. Irene had her ‘dark days’ occasionally but they were never that bad.

  But ever since her mother died, they had got worse and worse. And now this bloody Redress Board had destroyed her mind. How could the Board ask these damaged individuals to reveal the worst experiences of their lives and then not believe them? It was cruel and inhuman.

  20

  MATT

  The Faceless Woman

  For a while I kept discus fish. Beautiful things they are, they look like their name – flat with a big, circular body – and they come in the most incredible bright colours and patterns. From the moment I first set eyes on these tropical fish in an aquarium near our home I fell in love. They were just such extraordinary creatures, like something from an alien planet. Once I got my tank and a dozen fish, I’d sit and watc
h them for hours, observing the way they interacted with each other, their behaviours and their group dynamics. Irene and Jennifer would catch me sitting watching these fish all the time and they’d say I was just sitting around, not doing much. But that wasn’t true. Watching and observing – that’s how I learn stuff.

  The thing about discus fish is that they come from the Amazon and, though exquisite to look at, they are the hardest tropical fish to keep alive. They’re notorious for dying from the smallest thing – which is why you have to be so careful with them. They’ve got to be fed a special diet in the right quantities, you’ve got to have the right chemicals in the water and the right sized tank. The temperature of the water has to be exactly right, the filter has to work perfectly, you’ve got to have the right plants in your tank and then you’ve got to watch them, watch them, watch them all the time for signs of illness.

  Because here’s the thing about discus fish – when they’re ill, they don’t show it. It’s almost as if they hide their pain. So you can be doing everything right and thinking everything is fine and then, without knowing it, one of your fish gets sick and dies overnight. Then the dead fish infects the rest of the tank and they all go. I went through three batches of discus fish this way. I lost a dozen every time, sometimes in a few short hours. That’s just how it is with these fish – the challenge is in keeping them alive. It’s not like having danios, barbs, tetras or gourami or any of those standard tropical fish. Those are ‘tank fillers’, the non-aggressive fish that can tolerate a mixed environment, a fairly standard diet and a PH range. They’re good, strong community fish, and if one or two die it doesn’t usually affect the shoal. Even if it does, you can go out the next day and buy yourself a whole load more because they’re not expensive and pretty much every standard aquarium stocks them. Those are the common fish that most people start with. Not me! No, I suppose it’s because I’m not really interested in the easy stuff. I like a challenge.

  That was always the thing about Irene – she was never an easy person but when you made her happy, it was that much more rewarding because happiness was so elusive for her. And yet there was always a deep pain that she masked from me. Like the discus fish, she hid her sickness. There is a picture that hangs in our living room called The Faceless Woman which I painted many years ago. It is Irene as a young woman in a black top with a white scarf at her neck. She was a beautiful woman back then – not that she ever realized it – and so alluring. The portrait is of the top half of her body and everything about it is a normal portrait except there are no features on her face. It is just a smooth blank. This was how I felt about Irene – it felt like she wore a mask all the time and her true feelings were deep below the surface. Often, I found it infuriating, as if there was a padlock to her heart and I didn’t have the key to open it. The trouble was, she didn’t know how to open it herself.

  So all I could do was be there for her when, every four months, she would have a complete breakdown. We could be sitting watching TV and she’d be fine one minute and the next I’d turn back to find tears streaming down her face. When I asked her why, she wouldn’t tell me. She refused to let me into her head. She cried, she didn’t speak, she had no interest in anything, never wanted to leave the house. On the few occasions I did go out without her, there were suicide attempts. It got to the point where I was frightened to leave her on her own, which meant the painting and decorating work dried up. That was how we ended up both out of work – Irene with her depressions and me, looking out for her.

  Now I sat at home, staring at the empty tank, my last batch of discus fish having long since died. I had left Irene at the respite home a week ago and, though it was hard, I tried to keep life at home as normal as possible for Jennifer. It had only been a couple of months since they got back from Ireland and I could tell my daughter was scared at how the trip had affected her mother. I could see that, but I didn’t know how to comfort her.

  I have never been a big one for talking about things. Where I came from, men didn’t talk about their feelings and, even though I’d changed, it still didn’t come naturally to me. In any case, with Jennifer just a child, she didn’t need to know the ins and outs of her mother’s illness.

  So, during the day, when the house was eerily quiet, I locked myself away in my studio to paint, and in the evenings I stayed downstairs, watching TV with my daughter. Occasionally the kids in Ireland rang for updates. I always tried to sound bright and positive, telling them about Irene’s daily psychiatric counselling in the hospital. I didn’t tell them what I learned from her GP, that she had taken so few liquids in the last few days before we went to A&E that her kidneys had stopped working properly. She was put on a special rehydration programme since she refused to have a drip. She was also given a build-up drink to help her put on weight.

  Darkness crept into the room as the sun disappeared behind the rooftops and I felt the dog jump up beside me and nuzzle my hand, eager to be taken out. This was our usual time for a walk.

  ‘Alright, girl – just give us a minute.’ I stroked her head affectionately. Bess was a rescue dog, a fawn Staffie, and when we got her she was a wreck. The people who had had her before us used to beat her and so Bess was terrified of being touched. But in the year that we’d had her, she had completely changed. With love and attention, she had become the most affectionate dog I had ever known. Now, as she pawed at my leg and jumped up to lick my face, I spoke. ‘I let her down, Bess. She was five stone. Her organs were failing. You know what that means? She nearly succeeded in killing herself right in front of me.’

  Bess listened with her head tipped to one side – as if she really could understand me. Her eyes were full of love.

  In my head, I heard myself reply: But you got her help just in time! She needed so much more than you could ever give her. You couldn’t fix her, Matt. You couldn’t change what happened to her as a child.

  We had spent so long running from the past and yet it was with us all along. I had almost let it destroy my beautiful Irene from the inside.

  The last week without her had been hard. Every night I’d tossed and turned, unable to sleep without her beside me. In the mornings I opened my eyes expecting to see her next to me and my heart always sank when I remembered she was in the hostel. Now I glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was 5.45 p.m. – I had better get going. I had arranged to meet Irene for a walk at 6 p.m. that evening. So I attached the lead to Bess, who barked enthusiastically, and we walked the short distance to the hostel.

  For a second, I almost didn’t recognize the woman who met me at the entrance. I had braced myself to see the Irene I had left here a week before – petrified, frail and confused. But this wasn’t her. This woman’s cheeks were round instead of sunken in, her head was up, her hair clean and shiny, and her clothes actually clung to her body instead of hanging in sad folds. But it was her eyes! Her eyes were completely different.

  ‘Wow! Irene!’ I couldn’t help smiling, and the funny thing was that this time she smiled right back. I hugged her. She was solid, not a fragile collection of bones.

  I stood back to admire her and then, because I couldn’t think what else to say, I said it again, ‘Wow!’

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s your eyes, Irene.’ I couldn’t believe the difference. ‘The bags have gone from under your eyes. I can see life back again.’

  Irene stood there nodding.

  I went on, ‘You were dead, Irene. Basically you were the walking dead – there was nothing in your eyes. What a change! Your eyes are bright, your face is filling out. You look well!’

  We walked together down the busy main road and then turned left onto a quiet street where there was a little park to let the dog off for a run. When we got to the entrance of the park, I leaned down to unhook the lead from Bess’s collar and she bolted away. We both watched her as she bounded excitedly across the grass. I turned to look at Irene and, in that split second, I caught a sparkle in her eye and she smil
ed at me. My heart soared.

  ‘I’ve got hope again, Matt,’ she said quietly. ‘This has been a good time for me. I can see now there is a way through this. I’ve got hope again that I can be happy and free of pain one day.’

  ‘You nearly died, Irene.’ I couldn’t look at her now. ‘Your body had actually started to shut down.’

  ‘I wanted to die,’ she replied, her eyes now fixed on Bess who criss-crossed the park in search of adventure. ‘I was so tired that the thought of dying was the only relief I had. I’d shut my eyes and see myself as a little girl with rosy cheeks in this beautiful meadow with all these wild flowers, birds and rabbits. I was free. I was happy. There was no other human being there, it was just me. I wanted to go to that place, Matt. I wanted to be that happy little girl sitting under the tree with all the rabbits and the birds.’

  It was hard for me to hear this but I knew it was true. I had seen the way she had disappeared into herself. I knew that, no matter how much I loved her, I wasn’t enough to keep her alive. She had to want it too.

  The hostel, it’s been so good for me,’ she went on. ‘I’ve had a complete rest and I’ve been able to let out all the pain. It was like my heart was broken, Matt. I’ve cried so much since I’ve been here but it’s been a good crying – and the counselling has been brilliant. I know this is hard work but it’s work I’ve got to do because, really, I don’t want to die. I don’t want to leave you, I don’t want to leave my children or my grandchildren, and I don’t want to give up fighting.’

  I just listened as she spoke, the way I had always done, without interruption, without judgement.

  She went on, ‘A week ago I was in a lot of physical pain. It was so hard to just walk. Every bone in my body ached. At night, I didn’t sleep – the pains in my stomach were horrendous and I’d stopped going to the toilet. The medication they’ve got me on now, it’s increased my appetite. That’s why I look better. I’m eating more.’

  We stood there a while longer as Irene talked about the hostel and the people who were helping her – I could sense that the danger was over. She had come back from the brink.