by Dinah Latham
Not so a broken marriage. This man I had loved, trusted and believed in for more than twenty years seemed to have neither the principles nor the integrity I had supposed. He was able to absent himself from mine and the children’s lives without a backward glance it seemed; to write us all off as though we had never existed. What did that say of my judgement of character? To be so mistaken meant all certainty gone, all sands shifting, leaving me pulled down into the quicksand, threatening my every breath. How was I ever to trust my way of thinking when it had let me down so badly?
It was at this time that I began sifting in my mind the variations between grieving when a partner leaves to go on to another life, and grieving when losing a partner to death. After death he may indeed be travelling to another life, but one we won’t actually get to know the details of. While there are many parallels between these losses, there are also distinct differences. When you lose a partner to death, you don’t lose his love. When your partner chooses to leave you, you are left with the reality that he took away the love he had once given you, to give to someone else. I found this shook my belief system, made me doubt myself and lose confidence in my own thought processes.
It was many months, probably a couple of years, before I could enjoy looking at the family photograph albums again. Previously, I would look at a picture of a family day out with us all having a picnic and I would think, ‘I believed that was a happy day’. He says he was always unhappy in the relationship and never enjoyed such times. How could I have read it so wrongly? How do I trust what I believe to be true ever again?
Nothing Left
The girl who once lived here has gone away,
The girl who adored you has fled.
She who wove round you a carpet of dreams,
While you slept in another girl’s bed.
She stood on the shore and she waited,
Worn by the wind and the rain.
Worn by the sky and the rocks and the sand:
She waited and waited again.
At last in the cold grey of morning,
She picked up her pumice stone heart;
The dance of the sunlight had faded,
The magic had fallen apart.
Gone were the gold and the yellow;
Gone were the pink and the red;
The colours she treasured had trickled away,
While you slept in another girl’s bed.
Sadness seemed to become the skin I lived in for a while; so many losses, stirred continually by changes: returning to full-time work, moving house, great financial insecurities. I remember an almost burning need to find my sense of humour again, running alongside fear, fear that it had perished – that there would never be a return to times when, with absolutely everything going wrong, impromptu laughter would make everything seem all right again. Children learn what they live. I wanted fun back in their lives.
* * *
Harriet suddenly bounded ahead and turned to face me with jaws clamped on a stick. She immediately went into play bow mode, with front paws splayed wide and hind quarters up in the air, topped by a vigorously wagging tail. She is an expert in absurdity. She understands the real meaning of fun.
* * *
One day, hurt gave way to hope; humour reached into the dark pit and showed me a way forward, offering me healing.
A letter to the mistress from the wife
Now that my husband has decided to leave and move in with you after the rather clandestine affair that I gather has swept you both off your feet, I thought you might find his transition from lover to live-in partner somewhat difficult to cope with.
A few helpful hints gathered over the last twenty years might be useful.
He likes his toilet things kept separately on his side of the bathroom cabinet, not all jumbled up with yours – please note this is very important.
Don’t worry too much about his lack of communication in the mornings; it’s nothing to do with you, it’s something to do with his body clock and unfortunately it’s getting worse as he gets older. Emergence from nocturnal slumbers is often accompanied by a headache. Hot sweet tea, cold flannels on the forehead, crushed codeine and effervescent salts seems to do the trick on most occasions. Failure to provide these can cause the mood to move rapidly through the irritability zone to sheer bad temper, which can quite ruin a weekend, so it’s advisable to check stocks of same regularly!
It’s a good idea to make sure the hall table is clear for him to put his briefcase on when he comes in from work. It gets the evening off to a really bad start if he has to put it on the floor.
While we’re on the subject of the hall table, it’s advisable to dust it, however hastily, when you hear his key in the door, as any hint of finger marks seems to indicate that you have lain on the sofa all day popping chocolate mints in your mouth – a squirt of spray polish in the air before he opens the door works wonders. Incidentally, a bottle of wine served with a rushed supper will sometimes stave off the comments about the frozen meal too.
I’ll enclose his foot cream with the rest of his things. He likes to apply it at night, sitting on the edge of the bed last thing. I’ve tried for many years to persuade him to do it in the bathroom with no success, I’m afraid. The toenail picking that accompanies this can be a bit of a turn-off, particularly if you’ve donned the black negligee and planned a night of bodice-ripping passion! It’s probably better to stay in the perfumed bath a little longer and try to time your entrance into the bedroom between the foot creaming ceremony and when he falls asleep… can be tricky!
By the way, the bottom sheet will always be smoothed, however carefully you’ve made the bed, and the pillow will be turned twice before it’s fit to lie on.
Of course, I don’t need to tell you not to be quite so trusting as I was, and maybe you need to be a bit suspicious about those meetings at work that go on rather late. I believed him always; maybe you shouldn’t.
Take care of him, hug him, cherish him, and I hope you can love him for as long as I have. Be patient with him, don’t ask him to push away his past too quickly. No, he wasn’t married to someone who didn’t understand him; it was a marriage full of love and laughter before you came on the scene. He finds it difficult to talk about feelings but there are bound to be times when he reflects and wonders where twenty years of life with me and his four beautiful children has gone.
I guess it’s difficult to build a relationship on lies, deceit and other people’s unhappiness. I hope you succeed, for both your sakes.
From the wife
P.S. He likes the crusts cut off his sandwiches and same cut in half lengthways.
I wrote this letter on the day I ‘celebrated’ my decree absolute. As I re-read it now, some twenty-five plus years after it was scripted, the pain is there on the page; without my diary I wouldn’t be able to recall its intensity.
It took time to get over the emotional bruising but healing happens; something lifts the misery and I began to discover that I was happy again. It was to take me some long time before I recognised how good it was to live my own life, rather than always struggling to avoid his displeasure. Needing to work harder than I’d ever imagined for many years to maintain the family was as nothing compared with that struggle.
When I turned out my mother’s flat after her funeral I found a roll of my school reports tied up in a green ribbon in the bottom of her ottoman. I sank to my knees on the floor with anticipation, excited to read them. My eyes filled with tears as I found the same or similar comments repeated throughout all of them.
‘Dinah has worked extremely hard this term. C-’
I seemed to have spent most of my schooldays continually striving, always working hard, to accomplish very little. Had my life been a continual battle to repeatedly fail?
It actually took another forty years for me to be able to finally realise that maybe the failure labels that had haunted me weren’t altogether accurate. I was fifty years old when I used my annual leave allowance to attend universi
ty one day a week to achieve my master’s degree, while still working full-time as a district nurse. I then began to lecture in both palliative and community nursing. I still don’t know whether ‘late developer’ or ‘slow learner’ is the pertinent term for me; perhaps both. But what I do know is that to write someone off as academically unable at the age of eleven is absurd.
5
THE CAREER BEGINS
It’s a most glorious walk this morning. The cow parsley is piled high on either side of the footpath, like two big frothy waves threatening to collapse and crash down and meet one another. I stride forward like Moses commanding the sea to part before me, while Harriet’s tail wags high, joining the white flower waves, first this side and then that.
We walk on along the bridle path that has the main wood on the right and a line of large trees to the left; they are unusual trees, with much of their root formation above ground. Harriet has a great time jumping up and over them, and weaving in and out and down the mossy bank to run up again and round the next one. It’s quite a dark wood most of the day and, somehow, the rooted trees seem quite foreboding. I’m glad when we veer right and head up the steep hill into the back of the crescent where, although it’s still quite early, there are signs of life.
There are a couple of suited and booted gentlemen with their briefcases hurrying off to the station, and a newspaper delivery lad throws his bike up against the hedge and runs up the path, hastily pushing the paper through the letterbox, a resounding clatter announcing its arrival on the mat the other side. His bike has a wire basket on the front, with both newspapers and a satchel in it. The satchel is bursting open and books are spilling out at the side, all ready to take on to school.
* * *
I wonder which books they are. I tip my head sideways trying to read a title. What are they about?
I’ve developed a fondness for my books since I’ve retired; proper books, not medical textbooks, which is all I seem to have read for years. I’m an incredibly slow reader. Even I can’t believe how long it takes me to read a chapter. All through my nursing, particularly in my later post-graduate studies, I spent hour upon hour reading all the necessary research books and papers. Even reading my own essays as I composed them was so time-consuming. There was never time to even read a magazine, let alone some of the wonderful books that now form part of my post-retirement collection. I’ve spent many a wet weekend absorbed in a book, totally consumed by how many books I still have to discover and read when I am so behind in the race. I don’t have enough time or years left to get them all read. I’ve discovered that non-fiction is my addiction – probably a continuation of my fascination with how people and families live and operate; an extension of the many intimate conversations I had with patients and their families over the years, exchanges which were the heart of the work I did. It’s only possible to provide the care people really need if you find out who they are, how the family group functions and what’s important to them. To recognise and respond in any significant way to those needs requires setting aside judgements and being prepared to get involved in differences.
I remember reading once (it was Schon’s work) that nurses divided roughly into two groups: those who worked on ‘the high hard ground’ being technically rational and really efficient with equipment; and those who worked in ‘the swampy lowlands’ where difficult conversations with patients and families were the heart of their craft. I was definitely a ‘swampy lowlands’ labourer.
* * *
A warm walk this morning; a bit of a heat wave, so Harriet and I have left early, done a long walk, using as much woodland as possible to keep us in the shade as the temperature begins to rise. It’s not yet nine o’clock but very warm, and even though I have the flimsiest of cotton trousers on, I’m aware that I’d be more comfortable without my gilet. I haven’t yet discovered how you dog walk without some article of clothing that will take the mobile phone, door keys, treats, poo bags and, of course when walking with Harriet, the obligatory ball and telescopic thrower.
Harriet, too, is hot and heads for the pond on the north road edge of our common. Normally she delicately dips her head in from the edge and laps, but not today; because it has dried out a bit there is less water and more mud and she heads straight for the tall rushes and plunges in up to her armpits. She gallops out with mud right up to the top of each of her legs. I giggle as she prances along in front of me with these thick black stockings on.
* * *
The vision of black stockings inevitably throws me back in thought to nurse training and, in particular, I can clearly see all of us in front of me now, as we were the day we got our final exam results. We all sat as a group on the floor of the nurses’ lounge at the hospital, shoes off, our black-stockinged legs protruding in all directions beneath our uniforms, some knees curled to the side, some with feet planted firmly, knees being hugged by arms, some long outstretched legs crossed at the ankle – oh, how I wanted those long, long legs with those oh so slim ankles – all sharing the opening of the dreaded results.
It was a day that would be remembered by the whole world forever. Amazingly, not because I had become a state registered nurse but because the news broke that President Kennedy had been shot.
We had somehow completed our training and we had passed our finals; a bit of a shock to many of us. According to the Sister Tutor, we were all doomed to fail – the worst ‘set’ she had ever had to try and turn into professional nurses!
Charing Cross Hospital in the Strand had been our home together and we were about to leave. This grand, old, imposing building with all its tradition had grown on us. It had filled our lives throughout our training. She had been the backcloth to our transformation from wide-eyed student nurses, intent on saving lives and laying hands on fevered brows, to fully qualified, state registered nurses who had grown up fast with the experiences of caring; who worked, for the most part, longer hours than our fathers, who had shared our lives and exhaustion so intimately, many of us bound together with a profound friendship that tied us closer than many a family member. Blood is thicker than water they say. This blood of human experience – of being close to birth and death, to sorrow and gladness, the fears, tears and laughter – was to fasten some of us together throughout our future lives, through all our triumphs and traumas.
That laughter was sometimes very inappropriate hilarity, but was oh so needed. Such as the first day I was allowed on to a ward with actual patients after completing my time in training school with dummies (or classmates) to practise on. Here I was ‘let loose’ on a ward full of patients, many of whom were elderly. The staff nurse immediately put me to work, instructing me first to clean the sluice room and then to clean all the elderly patients’ false teeth. The eagerness with which I undertook this task led me to collect all the pairs of false teeth in the ward into a shiny steel bowl and stride to the sluice to give them the best clean they’d ever had, all twenty or so pairs of them. Unfortunately, I took no account of how I was going to match teeth to patient when I had finished. I was diligently scrubbing before I realised my faux pas and, deep in the pit of my stomach, a sense of panic began to rise and render me incapable of rational thought; an experience that was to be oft repeated throughout my training. I crept round the ward a bed at a time offering up my bowl, “Do you recognise any of these?” I stuttered, each patient staring into my collection of sparkling pearlies. “These look a bit like mine, nurse. Shall I try them for size?” I feel sure some patients were discharged home with a different set of teeth than when they were admitted… and not one of them told Sister.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the many patients on numerous occasions who protected me from Sister’s wrath, who covered for me and who made sure the eighteen inches of top sheet, that must be displayed over the counterpane before Matron’s round, was never spoiled with newspaper print.
Sister had an uncanny ability to always be within striking distance whenever some seemingly unforgivable, but probably minor, misdem
eanour had occurred and indeed her voice really did ‘strike’. “NURSE! Why is this patient in a wet bed?” boomed out across the ward as I was scurrying back to Harry’s bed with a clean sheet under my arm. I had spilt the blanket bath water and was rapidly trying to recover the situation before being found out. I slid to a standstill at Sister’s feet. My throat tightened as her glare rendered me unable to move. My jaw locked half open.
“It was my fault, Sister. I couldn’t wait for the bottle.” Harry’s voice rang out clear and steady. This gravely ill man suffered the humiliation of allowing Sister to think he’d wet the bed to save me a dressing down for my carelessness.
The laughter was often an expression of exhaustion that so easily tipped over to tears. The linen cupboard bore witness to many an emotional outburst caused by the angst of caring yes, but many times the red eyes that were visible as we surfaced were the result of Sister’s wrath. It was to be many years later, when I became a ward Sister myself, that I understood the need for both the discipline and the high standards she demanded, and that driving us so hard was about the insistence of excellence for her patients, not just a cantankerous disposition.
Working such long hours meant that life was reduced to a series of small pleasures: the chance to grab a few minutes illegitimate sleep on a stretcher at 2am, closing your eyes while walking along a corridor, a starched collar that has ‘given’ enough to stop chafing your neck; finding your black lace-up duty shoes have been unexpectedly polished by a goodly friend. These things take on a sweetness that can’t be measured. Sometimes these gifts reached dizzy heights; such as the day another nurse friend and I, both on a split duty (a three-hour afternoon break while working a twelve-hour day), decided to go and see the latest big hit film in Leicester Square. We were in our outdoor uniform queuing to buy tickets when we were called out of line by the manager and escorted to the best seats in the house free of charge – a clear indication of the high esteem in which nurses were held back then.
