by Max Hardy
A jet of water shot out of the plastic gun in a spectacular arc, splatting straight into a photograph of Saul and Sarah on the far wall of their minimalist living room. Sarah shuffled through the door into the room, waving the water pistol in front of her.
‘Gotcha you knob jockey!’ she exclaimed while raising the half empty bottle of wine she had in the other hand to her lips, guzzling down the contents voraciously.
There was a point, earlier in the evening, when she had looked stunning: dressed elegantly, her hair and make-up professionally done, having spent two hours in a beauty salon getting ready for their anniversary dinner. Now, that perfect porcelain façade which accentuated her elfin features was gone, replaced by a tirade of tears and smears. Bright rouge lipstick now adorned her chin and cheeks, mascara flowing in torrents with earlier tears, carving black shadows into her beauty. Hazel shoulder length hair had been straight and pristine. Now it was tousled and tangled, the ends caked with running make-up. She still wore the fitted scarlet YSL dress, cut low at the front, accentuating the gentle swell of her cleavage, highlighting the slender curves of her hips, her long legs still wearing black stockings. Sparkling Jimmy Choo high heels had been kicked off long ago and replaced with a pair of tatty Uggs. Over her dress, she was wearing a thick cotton dressing gown which was stained with, and stank heavily of a child’s milky vomit, slightly overpowering the subtle odour of the Chanel perfume she was wearing.
Gently swaying, mumbling curses under her breath, she stared at the photo of the two of them, their heads inclined in and cheeks brushing. They were smiling from their eyes, a tacit intimacy evident in the glow from them, not just from the jet of water that she had sprayed. There was a time when they had been happy. Her gaze moved right, to a large canvas portrait over the wall mounted fire.
A fleeting smile wiled its way onto her lips, stopping the grumbles for a moment as she took in the image. The canvas was a pencil sketch drawing of her. She was draped seductively over a table on her back, long tousled tresses of hair cascading over the edge as her head tipped backwards looking out of the picture. Her beckoning eyes were suggestively following those of whoever was taking in the image. She was naked, the sensual placement of an arm here, the bend of a leg there discreetly covering her modesty. She adored the sketch both for what it was and for the moment it captured: the moment she met John, the moment he exposed her soul bare.
That moment was the 3:00pm on Thursday the 2nd May 1996. She was in the last week of the last year on her Performing Arts degree at Newcastle University and was putting together her final portfolio of photographs and images. She needed something alluring to complete the collection so had agreed to be a nude model for the Art class. There had been a fleeting moment of concern about the idea of 30 plus testosterone loaded Art student’s perving over her. Very fleeting, before her naturally extroverted tendencies kicked in and reminded her if she ever wanted to be an actress, this was the type of thing that you needed to be comfortable with: or at least act like you were comfortable with it.
She was attracted to John immediately. Yes, he was handsome, with an angular profile which could be soft or sharp depending on his mood. He was tall, well over 6ft with a toned physique honed by hours spent playing football and at the gym. But it was his eyes that drew her to him. Most of the other students were looking her up and down, lust in their actions as they were sketching. John hardly ever veered away from her face and there was an obvious intensity in his gaze as he looked deep into her eyes. Rooms in the recesses of her memories opened, proffering up personal thoughts and feelings willingly through the dilating pools of the facade she was trying to portray, straight into the resonating emerald of his irises and out of his dextrous fingers onto the canvas.
During the sitting she had been on a chair, legs crossed to cover her lady garden, breasts exposed. Most of the sketches took the pose verbatim, with varying degrees of caricature and accentuation of her assets. John’s didn’t. The physical nudity of his sketch was discreet, the pose totally different, with attention drawn away from the luscious form of her body to her face. A face which conveyed the naked truth of her innocence, insecurities, beauty, temper, avarice and wanton soul breathing from every stroke of his pencil on the canvas.
‘Why aren’t you like that now, why can’t you see inside me, why can’t you read me anymore?’ she blubbered out as she raised the gun again and shot a jet of water at the sketch. The droplets started to trickle down, smudging the pencil in trails that mirrored the current state of her mind and body, blurring the clarity of what had made their relationship so special.
On the coffee table in the middle of the lounge stood an empty wine glass lipstick kissed, an already empty bottle next to it, sitting on top of a weighty tome on Renaissance Art along with her mobile phone and a brown envelope with the ear of a photograph sticking out. She shuffled into the room and put the current bottle down on the table, picked up the phone and dialled a number at the top of the recent call list. It went to voicemail, and she collapsed back into the brilliant white leather sofa behind her in disappointment.
‘Hi Rob, just me again.’ she stuttered with a determined expression on her drawn features. ‘Guess you are probably out on a call or in bed: probably with your girlfriend! Ha, Ha, HA!’ she burst out laughing and then shushed herself.
‘Sorry didn’t mean that. You might have got my other messages about being sorry for making a pass at you earlier. Well, I’m not!’ she proclaimed while raising the water pistol and taking another pot shot at a different picture of Saul on the wall.
‘Cunt.’ she announced.
‘No, not you!’ she apologised quickly into the phone ‘My git of a husband. He has no idea, no bloody idea what I go through every day trying to keep some normality and perspective in this bubble world with Jacob. You seem to understand, you seem to have a lot of empathy for our situation, a lot of feelings for me…and you are hot, god you are hot!’
She flushed, a look of pained embarrassment replacing her determination. She started to nibble on the nail less index finger as she carried on. ’Shit, did I just say that! Sorry, Jesus I’m so, so sorry! Oh fuck!’ she finished and hung up, dropping the phone on the sofa.
‘Silly bitch.’ she whispered, chastising under her breath while leaning forward, grabbing the wine and taking another huge swig of the contents.
Rob was Jacob’s consultant paediatrician. He had been working with Sarah full time for three months now, carrying out research along with other specialists into the neurological disease Jacob had suffered since birth, four short years ago. Although suffered was probably too strong a word given that he seemed to be in a permanently comatose state, oblivious of the world, not even seeing it unless you physically opened his eyelids. The only general reaction his body gave to any kind of stimulus was his eyes dilating under light. They had a daily cleaning and massage regime to keep his body supple and exercised, and the water pistol was a tool they used to see if the gentle sprays would shock his muscles into action. It had never worked, but they kept trying. His body would spasm involuntarily into fits, at least a dozen times a day. He had a mouth guard in place to hold the tongue down so he wouldn’t choke, but the spasms would invariably induce vomiting. Feeding was done via a tube that was fitted directly into his stomach. Full time supervision was a necessity, but most of the time this was generally at the end of a baby monitor now. He wore a motion activated alarm on his wrist which looked like a watch, a picture of Pinocchio on the face.
The only occasion he had ever looked like he had a body movement under his own volition was when he was three. Sarah still tried to do all the usual things you would do with a young child as routine, right down to reading him a bedtime story, closing the blackout blinds and kissing his delicate forehead goodnight. On this occasion, she was reading him Pinocchio and had just reached the part in the story where Pinocchio was being tempted by the ‘lame fox and the blind cat’, to plant his coins under the magic tree. A huge grin surfaced on
Jacob’s face right at that point and the slightest of noises which she convinced herself was a laugh came out between his lips. The utter exhilaration that overtook her in that moment at the idea of her son coming to life, her son becoming a real boy was equally matched by the devastating anguish that consumed her when, after days of testing, the doctors concluded that he had just had his first wind smile. From that day, they named his condition Pinocchio Paralysis.
Once a month Jacob would go to a private paediatric unit in Newcastle to give Sarah some respite from the demands of his disease. Rob had taken him there yesterday afternoon so that she could get ready for her anniversary evening with John. It was as he leant in to peck her cheek in a friendly goodbye that she had turned her head and kissed him fully on the lips. At first he responded but then after a second pulled away, very apologetic, fumbling back from her, being very clear that while he liked her, he couldn’t get involved in that way. Her face flushed red with the embarrassment of the moment as it swirled through her drunken fume.
‘Twat Face!‘ she shouted, another stream of water flying from the pistol, smacking into a photo of John with Jacob in his arms on the day he was born. She clumsily managed to stand up, glugged the last of the wine, dropped the bottle on the floor, picked up her phone and rang John. Her fury was evident as it went to voicemail and she scowled into the handset.
‘You are a piece of work John, you really are!’
Shuffling toward the photo, she fired again.
‘You have been gone all bloody weekend. I know. I know, you are the big I am. Look at me! Away supporting my son, raising money to pay for research into his illness!’
Closer still she moved, to within a few feet, where another shot was dispatched.
‘You are a cock. A bona fide one hundred percent knob. You can’t even make time for our wedding anniversary. Our fucking wedding anniversary John! What is it? Why not! Are you scared? Or just bloody bored!’
She was right up to the photo now, the muzzle of the pistol in John’s face, where she forced it hard into the glass with an obvious vitriol.
‘Or are you just avoiding me, so we don’t have to continue the conversation you started the other day. And where did that come from, how the hell did that curve ball pop into your head? What warped world does your mind live in that thinks its okay to consider killing our son!’
2:15 am
After more than an hour in silence, the insidious glare on her face abated, the prolonged straining of every sinew against the restraints dissipating in a second as Rebecca figuratively slumped back into the chair. A huge sigh escaped through caged lips as she spoke. ‘That wasn’t the first time I kissed him. It was the last.’
She fell silent again.
‘Well done Rebecca, it may have taken a while, but that’s the first time in two weeks you have been able to answer that question and remain rational.’
She burst out laughing, a further release of pent up tension apparent. ‘Doc, for the things I can explain, my mind has always been rational. It’s the things I can’t explain that test my lucidity. I don’t think it’s insane to want to kill myself for the things that I have done. I am sure if you went out and canvassed opinion, asking people if a multiple murderer should be allowed to commit suicide, they would consider it reasonable. They would probably offer to help!’
‘Multiple?’ he questioned.
Silence again, then after a moment, in which she resumed the slow grinding of her wrists against restraints, Rebecca continued.
‘The first time I kissed my son. Hannah was in labour, more than eight centimetres dilated with contractions coming every two minutes, well into the second stage. We had wanted a home birth, fully natural, just the two of us. The pain was getting too much for Hannah though and I thought that the baby was breach, so I decided to take her into hospital, which was only a ten minute ride away.’
‘She was lying on the back seat of the car, panting through the contractions and swearing profusely at me for letting her do the hard bit. It’s the only time in our relationship that I ever felt like the man. It was only for the briefest of moments though, as through her controlled breathing rose the most gut wrenching scream. I was trying to concentrate on the road, with my left hand swapping between changing gears and seeking out to hold hers with what little comfort I could offer in the circumstances. The scream reached a crescendo and she started to shout ‘He’s coming, he’s coming, he’s coming!’ at the top of her voice.’
‘’Cross your legs you silly bitch, he’s nowhere near yet.’ I sympathetically said, my attempt to keep the mood light while trying to quickly turn around and see how far on Hannah really was. She was fully dilated now, and I could just make out a little vernix as I glimpsed the baby’s scalp. That told me he wasn’t breach but that he was fully engaged and on his way.’
‘As I turned back to look at the road I just caught out of the side of my right eye a lorry heading straight for the car, the rising drone of its blaring horn drowning out Hannah’s groans. Ironically, the words ‘We Deliver Your Promises’ flashed past my startled eyes as I realised I had just gone through a ‘Give Way’ sign at a crossroads, straight into the path of the lorry. I put my foot on the accelerator, not panicking but realising I had a better chance of driving past it now. I was too late.’
‘Huge plumes of acrid black smoke began to rise from the braking delivery lorry as its front end slammed into the rear wing on the driver’s side of the car. It was sent spinning with a wrenching screech of metal on metal. I tried hard to steer into the skid as the impact buffeted me in my seat, braking now as well. Panic overtook me as I heard Hannah screaming my name, felt her arms slap into my side, as without a seatbelt on, she was ungraciously thrown around the back seat.’
‘In that panic, I still managed to count four complete spins of the car, right across the crossroads, as my gaze agonisingly darted from the windscreen, to the side windows, then behind me, trying to see what we were going to hit next.’
‘What we hit next was the trunk of an old and wizened oak tree that stood in an open playing field at the far side of the crossroads. The rear of the passenger side slammed into it, glass shattering as the back door was crushed on impact, stopping the car dead. I could see Hannah being hurled back as the glass flew in, her head banging into the bark of the tree. She screamed. My god did she scream, not just with the impact of the crash but as the next contraction overwhelmed her. There was very little damage to the driver’s area and apart from a few scratches from flying glass I was relatively unscathed. I tried to jump over to help her but my seatbelt was locked tight. I quickly fumbled and released it and started to scramble into the back seat just as Hannah’s contraction reached its crescendo, just as a fountain of blood spurted from an open wound visible on her neck where the glass had severed an artery.’
‘She was jabbering, shaking in shock, in agony, in the last stages of bloody labour, with cuts all over her head and blood seeping down her face, mingling with tears and sweat. She was awake though and in her next breath she screamed at me ‘The baby Becca, the baby!’, a look of terrified concern consuming her.’
‘I didn’t know what to do first, find something to stop the oozing from her neck, which had eased off as the contraction passed, or to check between her still open thighs. I froze in absolute shock and did nothing until she slapped me a split second later and said in a calm yet purposeful tone ‘Becca, please check our baby. I’m okay, I will be okay and you need to see if he looks alright, please?’’
‘That’s my Hannah, in a nutshell: absolute clarity in her purpose, absolute courage in her convictions. I finished scrambling over into the back seat, gently positioning myself as best I could between her thighs. She was fully dilated now with the baby’s head crowning. I couldn’t see any abrasions on his visible skull, or any injuries to her vaginal area. ‘He looks okay.’ I said, obvious relief in my voice, which echoed in her otherwise pained face. ‘But I don’t think we will be making it to hospital fo
r delivery!’’
‘It was then I heard a voice from outside. It was the lorry driver in his bland brown delivery livery. He was frantic and blubbering. I let him know that we were both alive but did need an ambulance urgently. I later found out he was called Colin. He ran back to his cab to call it in on his C.B. radio. God, what did we do before mobile phones? Hannah was panting again, the next contraction starting. With her left hand, she had the collar of her blouse pushed into the wound on her neck, slowing the flow of blood from it. With her right, she held mine tightly, anxiously. ‘Becca baby, when has anything in our life ever been normal.’ Hannah said, raising our entwined hands to her lips and kissing my fingers gently. ‘It’s always been you and me against the world. It looks like we will be bringing our son into it the same way, just as we wanted.’ With that, I could see the tension of the next contraction begin to contort her features, I could hear the low guttural growl start deep in her lungs and I could feel the pain as she crushed the bones in my hand.’
‘She pushed. She pushed hard, banshee wails assailing the confined space in the car. As she pushed, blood started to pour profusely from the neck wound, even through the pressure she was applying to keep it in check. ‘Stop pushing Hannah, stop pushing!’ I shouted, hollow consuming my stomach at the sudden realisation of what was happening to her. ‘Hannah listen to me. I know this will be hard, but you have to stop pushing until we can get that wound sorted or you will lose too much blood.’ The contraction started to subside but the next one was only a minute away.’
‘‘Becca, I have to push.’ she told me, a look of inevitable realisation visible in her eyes. ‘He won’t be able to breathe for long in the canal, you know that. We have to get him out while I have the energy. The more blood I lose the less chance we have of that happening.’ She was right. I knew she was right. Colin appeared back at the car, letting us know the ambulance was on its way and asking what he could do to help. I directed him to Hannah and he took off his brown jacket, scrunched it up and pushed it hard into her neck, taking over that duty. He was wearing a ‘Fields Of The Nephilim’ tour t-shirt underneath. I remember the image vividly, an angel sitting cross legged, naked on the ground, her wings battered, feathers broken and falling out.’
