by Jan Carson
I’ve spoken her name just twice: once to the births-and-deaths lady at City Hall and once, on the telephone, to my mother in New Zealand. With my mother I practised before calling. I wanted to get the intonation right, like people I’ve observed in BBC dramas making important announcements. I wrote everything down in full sentences.
‘Congratulations, Mother,’ I said. ‘You’re a grandma now. Her name is Sophie. She’s perfect.’ I read this statement off a Post-it note. I expected a question to follow, such as, who is the child’s mother? And where is the child’s mother? And have you learnt nothing at all from our mistakes, Jonathan?
Instead, my mother said, ‘No, thank you,’ quite politely, as if turning down the offer of super-fast broadband. Then she hung up. I remained on the sofa, holding the phone against my ear for so long it left a red pressure mark on the side of my cheek. I waited for her to call back but she didn’t. My mother’s not the sort of woman who ever calls back. ‘Am I angry?’ I asked myself and, when I finally decided that this turned-stomach feeling was not anger but relief, I placed the phone back on the charger and determined that, when she is old enough, I will tell Sophie both her grandparents are dead. I’ll say it was a car crash that killed them.
This was the first time I’d considered Sophie in the far-off future. It isn’t so much of a stretch to picture her tomorrow: drinking milk and sleeping, sometimes turning over in the cot. From one day to the next there are changes in the child. But these changes are slight and incremental: an extra pinch of hair, longer fingernails, or the possibility of a tooth pushing through her gums, a little paler every day until one evening it is a solid sharpness biting into my finger. Most mornings when I lift her she is exactly the same baby I’ve laid down. Sophie at sixteen or seventeen is impossible to imagine. She’ll have breasts by then and a face of her own. She will be a stranger to the child now draped over my shoulder.
I do my best not to speak in front of Sophie. I don’t say her name or allow her to hear songs with lyrics. Classical music is fine because it is mostly just instruments. I wouldn’t deprive her of music altogether. I’m not a monster. I only watch television when she’s asleep or with headphones on. I don’t want her to hear speaking of any kind, even from a distance or in a foreign language. I’m trying to keep her quiet for as long as possible. This is for her own good, I remind myself. But the fear of her wee voice rising is with me constantly.
I won’t ever forget the stories her mother muttered in her sleep. Shipwrecks. Carnage. Cruel things done to men, just for the thrill of hearing them plead. Afterwards, awake, I’d try to question her and she’d neither admit nor deny the truth behind these mumblings. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. But I still knew she was capable. And that was the horror of her: the vile possibility.
For the last few weeks I have been too preoccupied to pay any attention to the news. Sophie eats all my energy: the washing and feeding and cleaning of her; the fretting over what should be done in the long term. When I’m not thinking about Sophie I’m asleep, dead with exhaustion, still dreaming of her. Later, when I begin to re-enter the world, one six o’clock news bulletin at a time, my ears will prick up at the mention of young men setting fires and flinging themselves into violent situations, ruining their futures for an ideal already failed. I’ll wonder if her mother might be behind all this havoc, all the needless suffering. Could it be her voice singing the violence into these boys’ ears, her sick words planted and beginning to sprout? I can picture her skinny arms raised above the city, like those of a wild conductor, orchestrating all manner of chaos. It’s easy enough to imagine her implicated in the whole mess.
Maybe she’s behind the madness. Maybe she isn’t. I might never know for sure. Everything seemed fine and healing, until she came floating up the Lagan. People were ‘hopeful about the future’ and ‘moving towards peace’, slowly, slowly, but making progress. Now the city is like a raw wound, gaping. Now, they are all of them – politicians, Provos and public Joes alike – coming to pieces at a rate of knots. The whole situation stinks of her. So much hangs in the see-saw balance of this moment. The old trouble could kick up its heels and go in for another round. The place might slip twenty years backwards before Christmas. Into chaos, which is only a wordy way of saying war. I can’t wash my hands and walk away. Not if she’s the bad seed turning the whole city sour. Not if she’s planted this darkness in my Sophie too.
I know I need to do something. I’m trying to formulate a plan.
It isn’t easy. I have no friends for advice, no family worth considering. Beyond their basic anatomy I have a limited knowledge of babies. I don’t know what to do with a faulty child. In work, Social Services is always the answer to children’s problems that cannot be cured with medicine. Social Services takes messed-up families and fixes them or splits them up into slightly more functional units. I’m absolutely certain that Social Services won’t believe me if I call up and say, ‘I have accidentally produced a child with a Siren. Is there some sort of protocol for this kind of thing?’ I’m struggling to think of another relevant authority: police, hospital, priest (I’m not a Catholic but wonder all the same if there is something to be done for Sophie with prayer or exorcism).
Occasionally I imagine myself as a patient presenting at my own surgery.
‘I have an infant daughter who is not yet speaking but may, perhaps, be capable of hurting people with her voice,’ the patient version of me explains to the doctor version.
In this scenario the doctor version immediately calls the psychiatric unit. The real me can’t imagine an alternative outcome.
I don’t even bother consulting his medical textbooks. I know there are no Sirens listed in their tables of contents. There is a section somewhere on mental health, and people who believe they are mythical beings, such as vampires, or Jesus Christ. There is nothing on how to deal with people who are actual mythical beings. There are thousands of pounds’ worth of textbooks in my study and I don’t trust any of them now. They are like monuments to a different time, a time when it was easy for me to believe things printed in books with diagrams. I am particularly keen to avoid those that concern themselves with ear, nose and throat surgery. I’ve pushed them to the back of the bookshelf, lest I be tempted to lift them down and fixate on the very many ways it is possible to silence a human being with kitchen scissors or a scalpel.
In the absence of other, more scientific, solutions I have watched hours and hours of The X-Files looking for answers. That isn’t quite true. It’s not answers I’m searching for. Sophie is not a question. She’s a problem to be dealt with. I watch The X-Files for inspiration and affinity. When I try to draw a line between fact and fiction it isn’t a straight line any more. One is truth and the other is also a kind of truth. They are not the neat opposites they once were, in university. There is some weird stuff in The X-Files, particularly the early seasons. I am not at all surprised by the vampires and werewolves, but the liver-eating man, who stretches, like pulled gum, through drains and plugholes, gives me the creeps and I pause the episode, ten minutes in, to place a weight on my toilet lid. I have yet to come across a Siren but there are at least three seasons left to watch. The truth might still be out there. I fast-forward through the credits to cram in more episodes per evening.
I’m not sure what I’ll do if I find an X-Files episode about a Siren. Aside from their aliens, Mulder and Scully have little compassion for anything beyond the basic human. The other is always the enemy, and I don’t think I can stomach watching a Siren killed or kept in a laboratory for experiments. There’s still an itch in me for Sophie’s mother. My head can hold her coldly, like a long-ago war, but my body remains sympathetic to her. I feel the pull of her in my teeth and the tips of my hair every time I shower. Sometimes I dream about her. She is always singing in these dreams. This is an invention on my part, drawn from mythology and, perhaps, a yearning for the sort of mother I did not have. I remind myself that she never once sang to me in all of our time togethe
r. This is a relief, also a kind of disappointment.
I’ve looked up Sirens on Wikipedia. I don’t, as a rule, trust Wikipedia but there are few options left. The Sirens have their own entry – Siren (Mythology), not to be confused with Siren (Alarm) – though it seems likely they are both derived from the same root. It is possible to add content to a Wikipedia page and, for a while, I consider removing the parentheses and changing ‘Mythology’ to ‘History’. Perhaps I’ll even tag on a paragraph about contemporary Sirens and the way they are now capable of using telephones. I know these additions will be removed as soon as they come to the censors’ attention. Wikipedia doesn’t have a sense of humour. Still, I’m amused by the idea of instigating this small act of vandalism. The possibility of it is like another, braver, person trying to climb out of my fingers.
The Siren page on Wikipedia is illustrated with heavy oil paintings by Draper, Armitage and Waterhouse. Their work reflects a macabre obsession with Hellenism. It is rife with decapitated heads, alabaster nymphs and naked gods, the kind of art that demands a heavy gilt frame. I follow a cyber-trail of art, clicking from one page to the next, and eventually return to the original Wikipedia entry. I scroll past the introduction and a list of books referencing Sirens. These include Homer, Pliny, Kafka, and Borges’ Book of Imaginary Beings. I have it in my study, a leftover from my parents’ collection, which is, like my parents, angled towards the overbearing. Borges is, of course, wittier on the subject, though the Wikipedia article is far more extensive. It is this I return to several times during Sophie’s first weeks. I’m quick to disregard the hyperbole. I’ve seen both Sophie and her mother naked; neither has a tail or feathers of any kind. The suspicion of cannibalism strikes me as a sort of joke. Sophie consumes nothing but milk and her mother survived on liquids, such as tinned soup and custard, as if anxious to surround herself with fluids both inside and out. I can’t imagine either eating anything as solid as a human arm or thigh.
It is the talk of singing and the talk of speaking that grabs me and keeps me reading. The Siren’s voice has always been pitched towards destruction: shipwrecks, madness and vicious death. I drag up the memory of Sophie’s mother – her stranger’s voice on the telephone and then, later, the way she cried out shrilly, like touched glass – during sex, and I understand her kind capable of calling all manner of calamities into being. With prior warning I might have been Odysseus, plugging my ears against temptation, or Orpheus, raising my own melody to resist, but I know myself too well for such comparisons. I’m not a brave man and I was far too hungry for her company. Even if all this happened again tomorrow I’d still press the telephone to my ear and listen. I’d still drive up the Castlereagh Road to her fourth-floor flat. I would destroy myself gladly for another hour in her bed.
All this is no longer relevant. She is long gone. She hasn’t even left me a name to hold on to. I have a child now, and no idea what to do with it. I read the Wikipedia article over and over again, hoping it will rearrange itself into a kind of plan, a beginner’s guide for parents of Sirens. I learn the Siren names off by rote: Aglaope, Leucosia, Ligeia, Parthenope, Peisinoe, Thelxiope and Molpe, who, with her squat name, I imagine as a dumpy Siren, a not-yet-woman, nothing to look at until she sings. I’m glad I’ve called my daughter Sophie. This name will call the ordinary out of her every time it is spoken.
I stumble upon a quote from Kafka’s short essay ‘The Silence of the Sirens’: ‘Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence. And though admittedly such a thing never happened, it is still conceivable that someone might possibly have escaped their singing; but their silence certainly never.’
I’ve never been a big fan of Kafka. My parents loved his work and this association is enough to keep me sceptical. However, there is something in the quote that reads true. Sophie’s silence is just as magnetic as her mother’s voice. I’m ruined whichever way the next months go. For now I choose silence, and in the silence I can think of nothing but the fear of her speaking.
It is not just the speaking that worries me. I have other, more ordinary, concerns. It is almost a year since my last pay cheque. Now I’m dipping into my overdraft just to make the monthly mortgage payments. I can’t ask my parents for money. They will not, for a moment, humour the idea of me as a stay-at-home dad. They’d consider it common, like signing on or going on a package holiday with strangers. I can already hear the click-hum sound of my mother hanging up every time I think about asking them for a loan. I could tell them I’m ill and cannot work on account of cancer or something equally long-term. They might send me money if I was properly ill. But my mother would still find a way of letting me know she was disappointed, that all this, even the cancer, is somehow my fault. I don’t think I can have this conversation. I’m not brave enough.
I do my best to make the money stretch. I wash our clothes in the bath to save electricity. I eat yellow-label food, which is cheaper because it’s just past the sell-by date, and buy Sophie imported nappies from Poundland. There is Polish writing on the back and sometimes they leak, but they are three pounds cheaper than the big-name brands. Thankfully, it’s hot out, so I’m not spending anything on heating. Save the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. But this only holds true when there are still pennies to save.
I put two dozen textbooks up for sale on the internet. They are expensive books, several of them worth more than a hundred pounds each. I think with fondness of the time when a hundred pounds was nothing to throw at a textbook, or a pair of shoes for work. The books will make enough to keep us in food, electricity and formula milk for another four weeks. After this, I’ll have to start earning again. I don’t want to go back to work. I’m not sure that I can. The memory of it has already left me. I wonder if being a doctor is a practice, like swimming, that cannot be entirely forgotten. If not I might kill someone accidentally with the wrong medicine. I add this to my list of fears.
On Friday morning I buy a lottery ticket in the little Tesco at the top of the road. I take it back to my car and hold it in my hand like a communion wafer. Right, I think. If I’m not meant to go back to work then this one’s got to be a winner.
I smile at Sophie in the rear-view mirror. She’s asleep in the car seat I bought online. Everything of hers is off the internet and has the same pale pink stripe running through it, like the seam ribboning through raspberry ripple ice cream. I want her to feel like a little princess. I’ve no idea where this desire has come from. I put the lottery ticket in my shirt pocket and drive home. Later that evening I watch the lottery on television with the sound turned off. I’ve picked one number correctly. It is the number seven. I’m not sure if this is worth anything and don’t know if there is a place I can phone to check. This is the first and last time I’ll do the lottery. Afterwards I pin the unlucky ticket to the fridge. This will remind me to get a job before we both starve.
I deliberate over my options for almost a week. I could be a postman. They’re always looking for postmen in East Belfast. It is not a popular route. Parts of the East are so volatile that postmen require helmets and bulletproof vests. When the kids are rioting, anyone in a uniform is liable to be bricked. The possibility of this does not put me off. It would be nice to worry about something other than Sophie for a change, something less cerebral, like dodging fireworks or bottles. Plus, the anti-social hours might allow me to bring her along, tucked into the bike’s basket or bound to my chest in one of those bandage slings. I could also deliver Chinese takeaways in my car, leaving Sophie buckled into her seat between deliveries. This could work well as she often falls asleep in the car. And there’s always the option of telemarketing. With telemarketing I wouldn’t even be required to leave home.
All these are perfectly feasible options but, ultimately, I’m too scared to try anything new. New involves meeting people I don’t know, and there are already more people in my life than I can cope with. I decide to have another go at being a doctor because that is the o
nly job I’m actually qualified to do. Even this feels like leaping over a dark cliff.
I have a stiff drink before calling work. I try to manage without the whiskey and can’t. I phone up the health centre and speak to a lady receptionist. She doesn’t recognize my voice. I ask to speak to Martin. He is the most senior doctor in the practice. I’ve never before called him Martin, and definitely wouldn’t call him Marty, but I’m dreadfully nervous and this is the name that comes to me in the moment. When Martin/Marty/Dr Bell answers, I say, ‘I’m sorry, there was a bereavement in the family, both my parents, in a car crash. The stress,’ I say. ‘We were very close. I fell apart. I should have called earlier. I just wasn’t thinking.’ I wonder if Dr Bell knows who he’s talking to. I have forgotten to say my name. This happens to me sometimes when I’m on the telephone.
Dr Bell makes sympathetic noises as he speaks. He’s using the special warm-water voice that all doctors keep for patients with mental-health issues. I suspect he’s going to suggest a counsellor or ask if I’d like a prescription for some anti-depressants. I do not want to go on anti-depressants. I have, in the past, often prescribed anti-depressants for sad patients because it is a quick way to get rid of them without having to listen to the ins and outs of their sad lives. I’m not sure they work because the sad patients keep coming back, even after they’ve been on anti-depressants for a really long time. I certainly don’t want to talk to a counsellor. As my parents aren’t actually dead and I won’t be able to mention Sophie, every single session would be an elaborate lie. Just thinking about this makes me even more anxious. I can’t cope with anything else right now. I decide to stop Dr Bell before he has a chance to suggest anti-depressants or counselling. It’s important that he believes I’m well enough to come back to work. Everything depends on this.
