The Scarlet Sisters

by Helen Batten

  I tentatively asked my husband if he was feeling a little confused, ambivalent – guilty, even? But he said emphatically, ‘No’. And I really think he wasn’t. There was no conflict in his mind, and I resented him a little for being so uncomplicated and, well … so damn all right! He also didn’t seem to twig that I was in trouble, and to be fair I didn’t tell him, either.

  On my second day back from hospital we took Amber for her first spin in the pram. I walked gingerly along the pavements around our house with my husband. Suddenly it started to rain and then it started to pour. We tried to put the hood up but it jammed and we didn’t have a rain cover yet. Our new baby, tiny, slightly jaundiced, in theory still premature, was getting wet.

  ‘Quick! Get her home. Don’t wait for me. Run. Please run!’

  ‘It’s OK, Helen. She’ll be OK. She’s got an enormous blanket.’

  ‘Just do it. PLEASE.’ My pleas turning desperate.

  He got the message and took off. A few minutes later I got home, soaked and sobbing. I grabbed Amber from my mum, and hugged her tight, saying over and over, ‘Poor Amber. I love you, Amber, I really do. Mum, I love her, really I do. I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to her. I’m so sorry, Amber, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Of course you do, darling, of course you love her. We all do.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll be OK?’

  ‘Of course she will.’

  ‘I don’t want her to die.’

  ‘No, of course not. But she won’t.’

  I knew I was acting weird but I couldn’t help it. All around me I seemed to be surrounded by new mummies who were intoxicated with their babies and their new role as mothers. I went out on long picnics with my antenatal group and I realised I was not in the same place.

  It didn’t help that people seemed to think that now I had a baby everything must be better. I tried very hard not to show what I was feeling and even if I had felt free to express what I felt, I couldn’t have, because I didn’t understand what was going on; I didn’t have words for it. So we all colluded in the charade.

  Things came to a head at a friend’s wedding. Amber was exactly twelve weeks old. She cried all the way through the service and all the way through the reception. Halfway through dinner I gave up and carried her, still screaming, to our bedroom. A horrible thought occurred to me – was I being punished for what I did to Poppy? Was Amber punishing me? Was Poppy punishing me through Amber? Was God punishing me through all of them? I put a screaming Amber down in the travel cot and backed out of the room and was just about to go somewhere – I didn’t know where – when I bumped straight into my friend Heather, carrying two glasses of wine.

  ‘Want a drink?’

  She thought I might need some moral support. And then, one after the other, my girlfriends came up, taking turns to keep me company and my glass filled, and Amber finally stopped crying and fell asleep.

  It was under the influence that I confessed my shameful secret – that despite having been taught the hard way just how precious a baby is, I did not seem to have the capacity to love my new baby.

  ‘It gets better,’ Sarah said, and put her arm around me.

  ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  They laughed and exchanged looks.

  ‘God, I cried for the first six months when Louis was born. I was so miserable.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You never told me.’

  ‘You never asked.’

  ‘Gosh, I’m sorry … I just presumed – you looked really happy when I saw you. Although, now thinking about it, I don’t think I did see you. Only the once after Louis was born.’

  ‘Well, it’s really difficult to get out when you’ve got a baby, and then it’s not really the done thing to moan about them.’

  We all paused and drank some more and gazed at the fire.

  ‘But you know, I think it’s more than that. Every time I feel a bit of love towards Amber this great sledgehammer of guilt comes down and I find myself apologising.’

  ‘Have you ever thought of hypnotherapy?’ Heather asked.

  ‘No, strangely enough, I haven’t.’

  We giggled.

  ‘This sounds a bit weird but there’s a lady I know who gives hypnotherapy classes. She’s really special. I think she’s worth a try.’

  That night was a bit of a turning point. Amber slept through for the first time and carried on sleeping through. I felt a bit better but I still couldn’t sleep myself; I was still trapped in my nightmare balloon ride.

  And so I found myself in the house of a hypnotherapist. I was quite nervous and more than a little bit sceptical – I mean, if my whole problem was I couldn’t sleep, how was anyone going to hypnotise me?

  The hypnotherapist said that she would first like to demonstrate the power the mind has over the body.

  ‘Stretch out your arm and say to yourself, “I am strong, very, very strong,” over and over. Now, I’m going to try and pull down your arm and I want you to resist saying to yourself, “I am strong.” Let’s see how difficult it is.’

  So I stuck my arm out and said to myself, ‘I am strong, very, very, strong,’ and she leant on my arm and it took some effort but eventually she brought it down.

  ‘OK. Now let’s do the same thing but I want you to say to yourself, “I am weak. Very, very, weak.”’

  My arm buckled under the first bit of pressure. It was like a feather. I was impressed.

  ‘So you see how powerful the mind is in controlling our bodies? It’s the power of positive thought. Now I am going to demonstrate the power of the subconscious mind. I’m going to hypnotise you.’

  It was just like in the movies.

  ‘I’m going to count down from ten and you’re going to feel more and more sleepy and by the time I get to one you will be at perfect rest. Aware of what is going on around you but perfectly relaxed.’

  I was aware of what was going on, but relaxed. She told me to open my eyes, stand up and hold out my arm.

  ‘This time your arm is made of steel. Look at it. It is a steel pole. Like on a scaffold. It is so strong. Nothing, nothing is going to make it bend.’

  And the hypnotherapist put all her strength on my arm and my arm wasn’t going anywhere and then she lifted herself up on it. I was standing there supporting a grown woman on my outstretched arm. It was as if it was completely detached from my body.

  She brought me out of the trance. And asked me what I thought.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ I said.

  She nodded, smiling a little. ‘OK, you can’t sleep, but what’s the real problem?’ she asked.

  And I told her everything about Amber and me, and most of all about Poppy. I confessed everything, even those things I had trouble admitting to myself.

  She hypnotised me again and she took that image of the hot-air balloon and told me I was there with Amber and Poppy and the three of us were together and we were healthy and happy. Then we were landing in a beautiful field full of flowers and we got out and played.

  When it was time to leave and Amber and I got into the basket, but Poppy was left in the field. But that was OK. Poppy wanted to stay in the field and it was the right thing to do and Amber and I were happy to leave her. Loving her, but knowing she had to stay and we had to go and that was right. And Poppy was happy that Amber was with me and we were together. As we sailed up into the air, Poppy waved goodbye and we waved back. As we went up she looked smaller and smaller, but we felt happy because Poppy was in a beautiful place, where she wanted to be. And we would see her again one day when the time was right.

  Then the hypnotherapist asked me to go to my favourite beach. I was suddenly lying on that beach in Norfolk and I felt the warmth of the sun on my face and could see the gathering storm clouds in the distance and she asked me to look at the wide, endless ocean and believe that my love was as big as that endless expanse of blue, infinite, and big enough to love Poppy and Amber and indeed any other children I might h
ave, because my love was a mother’s love and a mother’s love is infinite.

  I don’t know whether hypnotherapy works. What I do know is I walked out of that house and I never again had any problem loving Amber, and I have never felt guilty for loving her. Whatever the hypnotherapist did, she erased all those complicated, negative feelings I had about Poppy and Amber and me, and I was finally free to start loving my new baby.

  Amber and I got off to a tricky start, but I don’t think that matters. Yes, for me, she will always be in some way connected to Poppy, but that doesn’t mean I love her any less. In fact, I think that it has given us an extra-special bond. She helped make me happy again. She is my special girl. Who knows what travels down that umbilical cord? I can’t help feeling that her powers of perception and empathy might have come from those long months of grieving and tears when she was in the womb. I was right in the middle of a huge, personal journey and she was there with me, hanging on for all it was worth. And she is still there with me, together forever travelling through life in the basket of our hot-air balloon, my precious Amber.

  According to some theories, post-natal depression makes a difference and leaves an imprint. But I’m not sure. My experience is that despite, or even because of, what Amber and I went through together, we are very close. I wonder whether Dora too eventually saw her twins as the sunshine after the tragedy of her father’s death, and felt closer to them because of that. Because while I don’t know how or when Dora started to feel better, there is no doubt that at some point the twins bonded with their mum. They describe their childhood as very happy, and the family all agree how contented the twins were and adored by their mum. They stayed very close to her always. I have a photograph of them, at probably about four years old. Dora is smiling at her girls, who sit immaculately dressed, with huge bows in their hair, staring confidently at the camera. It’s a happy photograph. I don’t think the camera is lying.

  Angela, Jackie and Dora

  I guess the lesson I take from this is not to give up, and the resilience of love, particularly maternal love.

  And I begin to start seeing this story in a different way.

  Much of my work as a psychotherapist is about rewriting narratives (which is not unrelated to what the hypnotherapist did with my nightmare). I had a client who seemed so hopelessly sad. She could not see one good thing about her past, there were no happy memories, she never smiled. After many months of her saying she had achieved nothing in her life, nothing good had ever happened, I challenged her to a rewrite.

  ‘You know, we are constantly choosing how we tell our story. You give a different version to a prospective employer than you would to an aunt, or a new lover.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Really? Because it really is the way you tell it,’ I said to her.

  ‘No, it isn’t. There’s only one way you can tell my story and it’s the way I’ve told you. Many times,’ she said to me.

  She was right in that she’d only told her story one way so far.

  ‘OK, I bet I could write it in a different way.’

  ‘No, you couldn’t.’

  ‘Don’t bank on it,’ I said. ‘I’m good at telling stories.’

  So we agreed that we would spend the next session having a go at rewriting her life story. This client popped into my mind at this point, and I started to wonder whether I was in danger of falling into the same trap.

  Me, Amber, Mum and Nanna

  The more I have got to know the twins, and think about what they and my mum and indeed all of my kind, funny, clever second cousins faced, the more I begin to see the story of the Scarlet Sisters not as a tragedy, but as a story of survival. The ‘in spite of’ tale of resilience. What strikes me most is how open and loving they are. I think I have been looking at this the wrong way. When I first started uncovering the family story, it left me feeling a bit hopeless. There was an inevitability to it – how could I or my children ever hope to find a happy, stable life with those layers of trauma as our foundation?

  But is it inevitable, are we predestined? Yes, it might make life harder, but actually might it not make us deeper? Do we not have some choice and agency in our lives? Do I not have the ability to break the spell myself?

  I think about my relations, and I start to think I can.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Heroine and The Boyfriend?

  I am standing in a park in Glasgow at four o’clock in the morning. It may be August but I’m absolutely freezing. No matter. I am kissing Mr D, our cold noses brushing, and I have an Elbow song going through my head that is so loud, it threatens to take over:

  ‘We took the town to town last night. We kissed like we invented it.’

  Indeed, it was some party we had been to and I love the way we kiss. I could stay here for ever, even if it means I freeze. No past, no future. It’s enough. I’m happy. I’m also merry on a cocktail of warm, cheap prosecco drunk from a mug (sorry, Nanna, not classy), shouty conversation and that feeling of smiling brown eyes watching me from across a crowded room. Just checking.

  I had made up my mind that we should part – a noble sacrifice for the greater good of myself and my girls. I needed to prove I could survive on my own.

  But my friends were horrified: ‘Don’t be daft!’

  My girls were horrified: ‘But we really like him!’

  And a wise old psychoanalyst friend said: ‘Why are you trying to write the end of the story when you are barely at the beginning? Hasn’t he got some say in this? What would be wrong if, for once, you let the story write itself?’

  And I thought about it and I remembered all the years I had told myself a story about my relationship with my ex-husband. That we were childhood sweethearts who grew up together, went to London, made our fortunes, and had three beautiful daughters and then shared our grandchildren. I thought we would be buried together. I had held on to it for too long, because I loved that story and it blinded me to what was really happening. I had written the end before it had actually happened, and that’s dangerous.

  And now was I not writing an end to my story with Mr D? It was the opposite – a negative end, but still, I was just making it up. That ‘gap’ was still driving me. Before, it had kept me in a relationship; now it was driving us apart. Could I not work at growing up, and being a heroine, and still have a relationship? Is the heroine not allowed a boyfriend?

  I decided it’s all about the difference between need and want. As long as I am with Mr D because I want to be with him, rather than need to be with him, then that’s OK. Besides, every time I see him, all resolutions quickly evaporate. He disarms me. Yes, I want to be with him. For now. Another song keeps going round my head called ‘It Is What It Is’. It’s country and western, on an album full of trailer parks; early, disastrous marriages; love and loss. The lyrics are so darkly humorous I chuckle and somehow it seems to fit the story of the Scarlet Sisters. But that one line has become my mantra: ‘It is what it is, ’til it ain’t anymore’.

  For now, with Mr D, all stories are banished.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Sisters at War

  Grace sat on the train from Paddington to High Wycombe seething. Something had got inside her head and was driving her mad. Like an annoying and potentially lethal hornet buzzing in her ear, she would have no peace until she squashed it. So, after opening the letter from the ministry, Grace had grabbed her bag and run for the station.

  Alice, her sister, indeed her closest sister and best friend, had been conning her. It took her breath away. She was so angry that the train could not travel fast enough to confront her. She got out the letter and read it once again.

  It was a hefty bill from the government demanding money to pay the expenses they had been giving Alice to look after Grace’s children for the last two years. Which would have been fine except Grace had already been paying Alice directly and generously, which meant that it looked as if Alice had been deliberately taking money (which Grace could barely afford,
and Alice knew that) both from her and from the government.

  What really wound Grace up was that she felt she had had no choice, and Alice knew that. The bombing had got so bad in Essex that her children, Dennis and Glenda, had ceased to have any recognisable childhood, their lives had been in real danger and both children, even robust, bubbly Dennis, had shown signs of psychological damage, or, as Grace put it, they were ‘starting to go round the bend’.

  Of course the first few months of the war had been a deceptively damp squib, which is why Grace and her family had left Alice and High Wycombe and gone back to their new home, just down the road from the rest of the sisters, in Hornchurch, Essex. There was no bombing, and as for the rest of it – well, it was scary, but not in a real way; more in a what-might-happen way, and it did provide a bit of excitement.

  There were many good yarns through the chaos of people not knowing where they were going. There were no street lamps, all the windows were blacked out and cars and bike lights had to have masks over their lenses. Then the signposts were taken down, and finally plastic protection was put over the windows of buses and trains. One time, Grace had set off with her children to see an old Crisp aunt in Walthamstow and ended up in Epping Forest.

  These minor upheavals drew everyone closer together in a spirit of united purpose and shared sacrifice. Being Grace’s son, Dennis relished the excitement – he was delighted with his new identity card and freaky gas mask. He watched, fascinated, as gas decontamination centres were built – concrete buildings where you went for treatment if you were gassed. Then white wooden posts appeared at regular intervals around the town. They were about one metre in height, with a metal plate on top, coated with a special mustard-coloured chemical. The children were warned to keep an eye on them as they would turn red if there was gas about. At first Dennis was always nervously checking them, then almost wishing them to change colour, and then forgot about them as the Germans failed to unleash that horror on the population.