by Annie Murray
‘Al thought he’d gone off home,’ Karen had told Joanne on the phone. ‘They couldn’t see him at first, because he’d gone and sat himself round by the wall over at the side. It really upset Al – he said he’d never seen anything like it. Dave was just sitting there on the ground with his head against the wall, staring up at the sky. He couldn’t seem to move – could hardly even speak – and he was a funny colour . . . Al said they could see there was something really wrong. Course they tried to get him up, but Dave wasn’t having it. That’s why they called an ambulance in the end.’
‘Well, what’s the matter with him?’ Joanne had asked.
‘They don’t really know. Some sort of breakdown. He’s not said a word except that he wants you.’
Would he lash out at her? Surely not, in here, with all these people watching? But she was still afraid. It had become a habit. Cautiously, she sat down on the chair next to the bed.
Dave didn’t speak, but she could feel emotion coming from him. His breathing deepened and became louder, alarming her because she couldn’t work out what was going on.
‘How are you?’ she asked matter-of-factly.
There was no reply, but when she dared turn and look at him, he was shaking his head, tears welling in his eyes. In silence he let them roll down his cheeks, but though she waited, he still couldn’t seem to speak. With a growing sense of compassion, she began to realize what a state he was in. He looked different: the sharp-edged, spruce Dave had slackened into someone who looked winded and defenceless.
She wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry for leaving you . . .’ But she was still too hurt. She needed to hear his apology too, not just see his self-pity.
When she had sat for some time, he wiped his face with the back of his hand. She stood up to pass him some tissues.
‘I’d best be off – Mom’s got Amy.’ She’d spent the morning trekking back and forth on buses to drop Amy off. ‘But I’ll come tomorrow. Maybe I’ll bring her.’
Dave moved his head as if to say something, but she was turning away. He’d had plenty of chance to speak.
‘See you then,’ she said.
On the way out, one of the staff nurses intercepted her. She was a petite blonde woman about Joanne’s age. Joanne felt rather awed by her, as well as wondering how on earth someone so small could manage to lift some of the big men on the ward.
‘Are you Mrs Marshall?’
Joanne felt on the defensive immediately. You caused this. You left him – wasn’t that what everyone would be thinking?
‘Yeah,’ she said, more aggressively than she intended.
‘It’s all right, I just wanted a quick word.’ She drew Joanne close to the wall near the doors. ‘Mr Marshall’s mother has been in and has said that he could be discharged to her house. We’re getting a psychiatric assessment done on him, but physically there’s nothing wrong with him, so we can’t keep him in here for long – d’you understand?’
Does she think I’m thick? Joanne thought, even though she could see the nurse was being quite kind.
‘Well, yeah.’
‘I just wanted to ask your opinion – about the discharge. Mr Marshall has not stated any preference himself, but . . .’ She spoke as tactfully as she could. ‘Mrs Marshall – his mother, I mean – did mention that you are not living at home at the moment. So are you happy with him being discharged to her house?’
Joanne’s mind raced. It was hard to think straight about any of this. ‘Yes – well, I think so. That might be the best thing.’
‘Right,’ the nurse said, looking relieved. ‘That’s all right then. I just wanted to check with you.’
On the stairs she met Wendy, who seemed to be dressed today in the guise of a fortune-teller. She had on a very full, calf-length black skirt with a red band running round it about six inches from the bottom; a black lacy blouse with a fringed black shawl over it; and her hair, which was now dyed a dark, coppery brown, was piled exotically on her head and held with pins and combs. She was thickly made up, her lips a glossy scarlet.
‘Oh, Joanne! You’ve come back to him – oh, love, I’m so glad!’
Joanne found herself enveloped in lace and scent as both of them teetered on the same step of the stairs.
‘Well, I’ve come to see him,’ she said.
‘D’you know,’ Wendy confided, her mascaraed lashes fluttering earnestly, ‘I’m going to take him home – they’ve told you, haven’t they?’
‘Yes – listen, thanks, Wendy . . .’
‘My poor boy. I know exactly what’s wrong: his ch’i has got completely out of balance. I have a friend who can help . . . And I’ve got a room ready for him with exactly the right flow in it. I’ve got rid of those awful curtains – the new ones are a bamboo colour . . . Now—’ She put her head on one side, stopping herself in full flow and smiled.
Joanne couldn’t help smiling back. Wendy was a good sort, despite her crazes. Other people passed up and down the stairs around them as if they were a traffic island.
‘I don’t know what’s been going on between you two, exactly. I’ve heard things I’d rather never have heard about my own son, and I’m not going to call you a liar because I’ve never known you to be one, Joanne. He’s admitted a certain amount to me anyway – and there were the police . . . Oh, Joanne.’ She laid a hand over her heart. ‘I never thought I’d see my boy taken in by the police. Not for that.’
Joanne found herself feeling almost as if she ought to apologize, but she said nothing.
‘Anyhow,’ Wendy rallied herself. ‘Dave’ll come home with me and we’ll take it from there, shall we?’
Joanne nodded gratefully.
‘He needs to see his daughter. Don’t keep her from him, love?’
‘Okay,’ Joanne said. ‘I’ll bring her in.’
Wendy moved her head back to look carefully at Joanne. ‘Are you going to move back home? Don’t you think it’s time?’
Tears slid into Joanne’s eyes and she looked away, shrugging. ‘I don’t know.’ After a moment she turned back to Wendy. ‘If I did, he’d better not come back – not yet.’
They parted with a hug and Joanne realized she was lucky. Some mothers-in-law would have taken sides with a vengeance, no matter what their sons had done.
As she walked out to the traffic-clogged Dudley Road, she felt drained and exhausted. Nothing could go back to being just as it was. She saw that now, even if she had not seen it before. It wasn’t just that she had left home: everything had changed. It was like rebuilding a house after an earthquake – if anything could be rebuilt. She and Dave would have to start from a quite new place.
Mom had not been quite as snotty with her as she expected, when she’d gone to drop Amy off late that morning, before the hospital visit.
‘You’d better come in,’ was all she said when Joanne arrived. Her tone was ominous and Joanne expected a diatribe, but it never came. She’d been away from home nearly three weeks – maybe they’d all got past the explosive stage and come to terms with it a bit. And Wendy would have talked to Margaret, as well as Karen.
Margaret had greeted Amy in her usual way, and Amy looked at first dazed, and then delighted to be back with Nanna in a familiar place at last.
‘You’re going to the hospital then?’ Margaret said, going to the ashtray on the TV to stub out her cigarette. ‘What’s actually up with him?’
‘I don’t know really.’
‘Karen says he’s had a breakdown – but you know what she’s like,’ Margaret said, as if she doubted anyone did ever really have a breakdown and considered such a thing to be some sort of myth. She often seemed annoyed with other people for having emotions.
‘Anyroad, go and do what you need to do,’ she said gruffly. ‘There’s no need to come carting over here all again later – your father can drop her back.’
‘I’ll have to meet him in town,’ Joanne said. ‘I’m not allowed to tell him where the refuge is.’
Now that she ha
d seen Dave, and knew she could move back home without him being there, Joanne couldn’t get there fast enough. Suddenly the prospect of another night in the refuge was unthinkable.
She hurried to the nearest callbox.
‘Mom?’ She felt excited. ‘I’m going home. I’ve got to get my stuff, so tell Dad he can drop Amy off at home. I should be there after five o’clock!’
Fifty-One
Joanne spent her first half-hour at home wandering from room to room. Every inch of it was so familiar, but it felt as if she had been away for years.
It was upstairs that made her emotional: the sight of Amy’s little bed with her bears and other toys rowed up on it, and their bed – hers and Dave’s. She had pulled the duvet up over it before leaving, and it seemed just as she had left it. It was remembering how things had been when they were good that hurt the most. I want my man back . . . Thinking of all the nights they had lain there together, she was almost overwhelmed with sadness and longing and made herself go back downstairs.
She was restless waiting for Amy to arrive. Instead of sitting fidgeting, she hurried out to buy milk, called in to see the Coles next door, then unpacked while drinking tea. At six she turned on the TV, realizing that she had heard no news in weeks. Horrifying images met her eyes: faces honed razor-sharp by starvation, clusters of flies round their eyes and mouths – the worst famine in recorded history in Ethiopia. Unable to bear the thin wails of anguish, she turned it off again.
‘Thanks for everything,’ she’d said to Marcia, who had hugged her goodbye and wished her luck, saying, in the nicest possible way, that they didn’t want to see her back again. Megan would be round to see them both very soon. Marcia offered advice and caution.
‘Be strong, girl – he’s got to know he can’t get away with it again. I’ve got faith in you.’ She’d held Joanne’s shoulders and looked deep into her eyes.
‘Thanks, Marcia,’ Joanne had said tearfully. ‘Thanks for everything.’
Sue hadn’t been there, but Joanne parted with Jackie as well. She was sad at the thought she would probably never see Marcia again. Doreen’s doleful face had lifted into some sort of smile as they said goodbye and wished each other luck. Mariam, to Joanne’s surprise, held out her arms and they hugged. By this time Gina had left (noisily and emotionally) to resume her life with the man Joanne thought of as ‘psycho Benny’ – without their children. Gina’s life was too awful to think about: the refuge would almost certainly see her again.
The letterbox rattled and she leapt to her feet. Fred was at the door with Amy, and Karen as well.
‘Welcome back, love,’ he said awkwardly. But there was affection in his voice and sadness, not judgement.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Joanne said, tears coming on again. ‘You coming in for a cup of tea?’
Amy was running round, squeaking excitedly as she recognized toys she had not seen in weeks.
‘How’s Dave?’ Karen asked as Joanne put the kettle on. The sisters stood in the kitchen, and Fred stayed with Amy.
‘I don’t know. Not too good,’ Joanne said. ‘He wouldn’t really speak. It’s . . . it’s like he’s in shock or something. Like someone who’s been in an explosion. I even wondered at first,’ she confided, ‘whether he was putting it on, sort of thing.’
Karen had on her listening face. ‘I think it’s gone too far for that.’
‘Well, I know – now I’ve seen him.’
As they drank their tea in the back room, they talked a bit about her visiting Dave at Wendy’s in Northfield.
‘It’s a bit of a jaunt for yer,’ Fred said.
‘Maybe it’s a good thing he’s not too close,’ Karen said. ‘And his car’s still at work, isn’t it? So he’s not going to turn up too easily.’
Joanne didn’t feel like talking about it much. She needed time to think about what she was going to do.
‘Mom seemed all right yesterday,’ she said cautiously. ‘How d’you think she’s doing?’
‘Oh, not too bad,’ Fred said.
Realizing he would have said much the same if she had just contracted bubonic plague, Joanne looked at Karen.
‘She’s going along,’ Karen said. ‘I think she’s coming round a bit. Yesterday she did say she thought she’d been a bit hard on you.’
‘Did she?’ Joanne said, feeling relieved.
Karen leaned forward. ‘I think she needs to get out a bit, so she’s not so sunk into herself. Actually, I had this idea about something she might like. The library are putting on this thing – it’s called a reminiscence group – and they’re going to be talking about the war first of all: people of Mom and Dad’s age and older. They’re saying people ought to record their memories before it’s too late. She never talks about it, but I thought it might be a good way of, you know, sort of getting her going on things. Maybe even make some friends . . .’
‘Can’t see her going to that,’ Fred said gloomily.
‘To be honest, nor can I,’ Joanne said. As usual, she saw, they were all tiptoeing round Mom as if she was a ticking bomb. ‘Have you asked her?’
‘Well, I did show her the leaflet,’ Karen said. ‘It’s on a Thursday morning. She didn’t say no straight away.’
‘But she didn’t say yes, either?’
‘What she actually said was, “What’s all this rubbish?” You know what she’s like. But she did pick the leaflet up again.’
‘What – to put it in the bin?’ Joanne suggested.
‘No! That was the thing. She put it down by the phone. Anyway, I did say to her I’d take the day off and go with her the first time, if she decided to go. I thought it might be interesting. But we’re quite busy at work. Now you’re back, I wondered if maybe you could go?’
‘You mean if she suddenly decides to go?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘But she won’t, will she?’
Once they had gone and she had Amy tucked up in bed, Joanne began to feel very stressed and uneasy. The nights were drawing in and it was soon dark. Several times she went to the front door to make sure it was locked and that the chain was fastened. Then she checked the back. She realized she still had a split image of Dave in her mind. There was the helpless, seemingly broken man lying prone in a hospital bed. She recalled his tears, his desperate silence. Surely no one could put that on? But the controlling, scheming, violent Dave still haunted her mind. Did he know she was home? What if he discharged himself and came back? What might he do then?
Mrs Coles had told her to call in any time she was worried or wanted anything. But Joanne didn’t feel like sitting with the Coles, kind as they were. And she couldn’t keep phoning Karen. Instead, she searched her bag and found the scrap of paper on which Sooky had written her number, saying it was fine to call her.
‘Are you sure?’ Joanne had said. ‘It wouldn’t get you into trouble?’
‘No, of course not! You can phone any time. Why not?’
She felt nervous dialling the number, unsure what to expect, and once it was ringing she almost chickened out and put the receiver down. But she was in need of a friend.
A male voice answered, nasal and not all that old. One of her brothers, Joanne thought, not her father. ‘Yeah? Hello?’
‘Hello, can I speak to Sooky please?’
‘Sooky? Yeah, hang on . . . Sukhdeep – phone!’ The yell switched into Punjabi. There was an uncomfortable pause, then she heard Sooky’s gentle voice say, ‘Hello?’
When Joanne told her who it was, she sounded pleased. ‘You phoned! Oh, it’s really nice to hear from you! How are you?’
‘I’m back home,’ Joanne said, feeling her composure slipping. She wanted Sooky to say that she’d come round now – keep her company.
‘Are you? That’s great. I mean, is it? What about . . . ?’
Joanne explained and Sooky was full of sympathy. ‘Look, I’m just starting on my first assignment tonight, but why don’t you come over with Amy one afternoon this week? Priya would love to see her. It’d b
e fun.’
They agreed on an afternoon. She would fit visiting Dave around it somehow. When she’d put the phone down, Joanne sat for a long time, hugging her knees, rocking gently back and forth.
The next afternoon she took Amy to visit Dave. She was glad he was still in the hospital, a public, neutral place. Wendy would be along at some point as well. She felt very grateful to her mother-in-law, who despite her ditzy ways could be suddenly practical.
Amy caught sight of him along the ward and cried, ‘Dadda! Dadda!’, squirming to be put down.
Hearing Amy’s voice, Dave turned his head and Joanne saw a smile appear on his lips. She put Amy down and the little girl ran to her father. Dave managed to reach down and lift her up onto his body, cuddling her tightly. His chest began to heave. He was holding her too tightly, and as Joanne reached the bed she saw his face contort and Amy was pulling away, panicking, crying out, ‘No! Don’t like it!’
‘Sorry – sorry, bab,’ he said releasing her. ‘I never meant . . .’
Amy was sliding off the bed with a tight, terrified look. She ran to Joanne and clung to her leg, bursting into tears.
‘Oh, Amy, it’s all right!’ Joanne said, upset. She could see the terrible hurt on Dave’s face, knew he had not meant to frighten his daughter. But she could feel all Amy’s distress and shock in this strange place, after all the changes of the past weeks.
‘Oh dear, what’s the matter?’ One of the nurses was down their end of the bay and came over to them.
‘It’s me,’ Dave choked. ‘I can’t even get that right.’
‘It’s okay,’ Joanne said, heaving Amy up into her arms. She felt like crying herself. ‘She’s had a lot of changes and she’s not used to seeing her dad like this.’
‘No – it’s a funny old place, hospital, isn’t it?’ The nurse was middle-aged and sweet, and jollied Amy along, though Joanne just wished she’d go away. ‘You can come and talk to your daddy, can’t you? He’s just a bit poorly, but he’s going to get better.’
