Where to Find Me

by Alba Arikha

  Fletcher makes me feel female. Emboldened and female. Not like the young girl I was with Ezra, but a different sort of woman, a more decadent one.

  Fletcher whispers dirty things to me in bed. He always wants to make love, and has a preference for kitchen floors and stairwells. He calls me his little French whore, and although I mind it at first, he quickly reassures me that it is only a figure of speech. He loves me, he says. He will leave his wife. He doesn’t love her any more. He loves me. Not Rosalind. I am beautiful, and he wants me, only me, no longer her. I sleep badly at night. I want him by my side. I want him for myself only. “I love you,” I say to him in English. The words ring false to me, but I cannot tell whether it’s because I’ve only uttered them in French before, or because I’m trying to convince myself to believe them. But I must believe them, because whenever I think of Fletcher my cheeks glow. I look well, I’m told. I smile a lot and dream of Fletcher. I wait for him to ring me, usually from the office. I ask him where he works, and he is vague. Mayfair, he says. He names a bank I don’t know. Then again, I know very little about banks. I would like to see where he works, but he won’t let me. Everywhere is dangerous, he says. Office and home. He cannot ring from home. Rosalind will find out. That would not be a good thing. Not yet. But he will tell her about me. Of course he will. I must give him time. He will tell her.

  *

  I find out in October 1955 that I’m two months pregnant. We weren’t careful enough. Congratulations, says the doctor. He asks about the father. I tell him that he’s away. The doctor looks uncomfortable. He asks me more questions. He wants to take back the congratulations, I can tell. I leave his office. He doesn’t say goodbye. When I tell Fletcher, his lower-cushion lip trembles. His face contorts into a strange grimace. I am shocked. He looks like a different man. Then he tells me that I must get rid of the child. I cannot have this child. He will not recognize it. It is not the right time. I look at him and tell him that I do not understand. He was meant to leave his wife. He had promised. What does he mean by the right time? So Fletcher’s tone softens and he embraces me. He will leave his wife, but I cannot keep the child. He doesn’t want another child. Not now. Later maybe, but not now. Also, what will people say? Am I aware of what it means in this country? Unmarried women don’t have children alone. It is considered shameful. So he will help me find a doctor. It will be a straightforward intervention. I must not worry about anything.

  I don’t care what people will say. I will keep this child. I will not have an intervention. Fletcher says that in that case he cannot see me again. And that he no longer loves me.

  I cannot live without him. I cannot function properly. I have lost everything in my life. I cannot lose him too. I cry for him. For my parents. For Paris. For who I was and who I have become. I have morning sickness. I am thirty-five years old, unmarried and I have morning sickness. The scent of perfume makes me ill. Shalimar especially. Every time I smell it, I have to rush to the loo. My supervisor is suspicious. She takes me aside and I confess. She is very upset. She mentions words like illegitimate. How could I. How did I. Who is he. Imagine what the others will think. Imagine what the child will think.

  She fires me.

  *

  Fletcher is back in my life. I am four months pregnant with hardly anything to show for it. We smoke cigarettes in bed. He drinks whisky naked. We listen to Schumann. Fletcher has convinced me to give the child up for adoption. I must leave my flat and go somewhere else until the child is born. No one should know. No one. There is a good place, a mother-and-baby home. They will take good care of me. And he will come and visit. Once the child is born, he will leave Rosalind.

  But I don’t want to give the child up for adoption. I want to keep it. I want to tell Fletcher who I really am. That I’m not a French Catholic. That my parents died, that I’m a Jew. That I lived in Palestine. where the air smelled like pine. That I had a lover there. That I’m not who he thinks I am. That I want this child. But I want Fletcher too.

  He tells me I must choose. Between him and the child. He will give me money to help me. He will pay the rent of the empty flat. But I must choose. He will leave his wife if I leave the child.

  A vicar tells me I have committed a sin. Tells me it is unacceptable for a child to be raised without a father and mother. When he says the word “unacceptable”, his voice rises. He has red lines on his nose and wears a signet ring. I confess to him that I am Jewish. I do not believe in sin. The vicar looks at me and says nothing more.

  *

  I tell my friends that I have to go to France. Something to do with my uncle. I will be gone for a few months. I don’t explain, they don’t ask questions.

  A Church of England home takes me in, in Hackney. The women who work there are nuns. A matron interviews me. I lie and say I’m Protestant. She doesn’t ask me for proof. “There is no bar to the kind of spiritual work we have always endeavoured to do for the patient,” she says, in a voice she clearly reserves for all spiritual matters. “The hands of Jesus will reach us all with their healing powers.”

  When I visit the first time, all the pregnant women are smoking, busy talking to each other. There are about twenty of them in the home. Some are knitting clothes for their babies. I understand later that the knitting is a way of atoning for our sins. We’ve all been guilty of a terrible deed. Therefore by knitting clothes for our unborn baby, we are giving something back to society. No one seems to question it. Most of the women are younger than me. There is a chaplain there, and we have to attend Sunday services. During the day we have chores. Cleaning the stairwells, polishing the banisters. In the afternoons we’re allowed out or have tea in the home. No one knows I’m here except for Vivian, who comes to visit at weekends. She swears she will never tell a soul, and I believe her. She assures me that the home is the right place to be. That society will not accept me if I keep the baby. That life will be very difficult for me.

  Society means little to me, as do healing powers. But not for Vivian or Fletcher. He visits twice and seems very uncomfortable. Doesn’t say much, except that I’m doing the right thing. Once he holds my hand. His palm feels warm. He speaks of the office, of his work. Says his sons are not doing well at school. I don’t want to hear about his sons, and I tell him so. He gets up quickly. “I’ll come back another time,” he says, as if I had upset him. I apologize, although I’m not sure what for. Then one of the girls starts to shout, and we understand that her contractions have begun, and in the commotion Fletcher leaves without saying goodbye.

  I have to share a room with eight other women. We sleep on bunk beds. We become friendly. But I feel desperate. I miss Fletcher, miss my books. No one here reads books. Except for one nun, Sylvia. She’s a nice woman. When my waters break, she takes me to the Hackney Hospital. She assures me I will be fine, and then she’s gone. From then on, nothing is fine. I can hear the other women screaming in the labour ward. We are separated by a thin curtain. The midwife is brutal. She knows why I’m here. “Your child will go to a deserving married couple,” she says. I tell her my age. “I’m not a young girl,” I think I answer, as if that matters. As if age has anything to do with being deserving. She doesn’t flinch.

  The contractions become unbearable. I scream with pain. I beg for pain relief. She ignores my cries. I think I tell her about my parents. How they died. I have never told anyone before. I’m not sure what she says. I don’t remember much. All I know is that she wants to hurt me. But then he’s born. Maurice. He has black hair and a tiny face. He screams loudly. I’m asked to sign a document on the dotted line. Dot-like Maurice. A dot of dreams. I don’t want to sign, I cry. But a nurse tells me that I have to. So I do. 18th May 1956.

  Maurice Baum Schumann.

  11

  Maurice’s adoption has been arranged privately, through the vicar with the signet ring. I am reminded that I cannot and will never see my child again. That I have to get on with my life. That’
s what girls in my situation do. Get on with their lives. I am told that I can keep Maurice for six weeks, until the couple come to collect him.

  “This is not a collection,” I cry out. “You’re taking him away from me!” The vicar says nothing. Maybe he hasn’t heard me. Or maybe he doesn’t want to listen. I don’t think he likes me. I take Maurice back with me from the hospital to the mother-and-baby home. I hold him against me and nurse him. He wears light-blue pyjamas, a cherished gift from one of the women in the home. There is also a simple white pair the hospital has given me. They smell of him, my son who never sleeps, as if he knows that he will have to leave. There are many other women there with their newborn babies. I don’t remember much of them. All I remember is Maurice and how I lay awake looking at him and holding him in his light-blue pyjamas. I want Fletcher to see him, but he never comes. I send a note through Vivian, asking him to get in touch, but nothing happens. Then when the six weeks are up, one of the nuns tells me that the couple has arrived to take him away. I have to say goodbye. I hold Maurice in my arms one last time, and he smiles. His first smile. He focuses his dark eyes on me and smiles. I break down. I cannot do it. I cannot part with him. But it’s too late. The nun says I have no choice. Now I can see the couple through the window. They are waiting, the nun says. I can see their shadows.

  Maurice is taken from me and given to the shadows.

  *

  I pack a small bag and leave the home. I take the pyjamas with me. I say goodbye to no one. It is a sunny day. Crisp air, blue sky, warm sun. A beautiful day. Maurice is gone. I have lost a part of myself. That part which makes a woman whole. Without it, I will be diminished. An incomplete woman. But I have Fletcher. He is waiting for me at my flat. He will make me feel better. We can be together now. He has left his wife. We are free now. Free to start a new life.

  *

  I enter my flat. I drop the bag on the ground and call out Fletcher’s name, but he isn’t there. He hasn’t left a note, and the flat looks immaculate, as if no one has set foot here in weeks. And yet, Fletcher said he would be waiting for me. “I’ll be here for you when you return,” he had said.

  Perhaps it’s because he’s at work. Yes, that must be it. He’ll be back later.

  I walk into my bedroom and lie down on the bed. The pain I feel inside is close to unsustainable. I need Fletcher to come and rescue me.

  I fall asleep. When I wake up, it is dark. There is still no Fletcher. No sign of him.

  And so I understand. There will never be a Fletcher. He hasn’t left his wife, and he never will. And I have no way of finding him. I don’t know where he lives. Where he works. The bank name he has given me is a lie. Everything about him is a lie. I know nothing about him. I know nothing about anything any more. I am suddenly overcome by a terrifying thought: I can no longer see myself clearly. I can no longer see. The outside has dislocated from my inside. It has snapped in two, like a wire.

  *

  I am interned in a psychiatric ward. Someone takes me there. Was it Fletcher? Did he find me, lying on the ground? There was a pair of hands with slender fingers and clean nails. That is the only thing I can remember. Those slender fingers, then those nails and a hospital room. I am diagnosed with psychosis. Days blur into each other like a series of doors – opening, closing, opening, closing. Twice a week I am given electroconvulsive therapy. A rubber contraption is inserted into my mouth. Electrodes are placed on my temples, and I scream. The doctor says that he understands how I feel, but promises that it will cure me. I am too weak to protest. Too weak to tell him that I can feel that first jolt of electricity crack through me. I have terrible headaches afterwards, and drool like an old woman. I watch the burgeoning berries on the tree outside my window. I don’t know what tree it is, but the berries look beautiful.

  I barely eat, I see things, I hear people speak that aren’t there. There is a multicoloured carpet in my bedroom. I distinguish shapes in it, like wings. I imagine what it would be like to fly out the window. But if I fly I might die. And I cannot die, because I have a son, Maurice. The top of his head smells like blossom.

  My blossom boy.

  Do I tell anyone about him? A doctor, perhaps? A man who wears a tie takes notes and prescribes me small white pills. I swallow the pills from a plastic glass. So do all the other patients. We always seem to be swallowing something. I share my room with a woman whose face is lopsided because of the treatment. We speak, the two of us. She is worse off than I am. She laughs to herself at night. She has entered the corridors of madness, whereas I stand on its threshold, trembling.

  I am discharged on a rainy August day. I remember seeing myself in the mirror after I leave the ward. I feel and look like a different person. Strands of my hair have turned white. I have shed all my pregnancy weight and appear very thin. My skin is covered in small spots, which take years to fade. And when they do, scars remain, long and thin like threads of saffron. From that day on, I always appear much older than I am.

  *

  The days and months after my hospital stay all seemed alike. Stagnant. Hazy. I was given more pills, which helped me function. When my friends from the Slade tried to get in touch, I told them I had been ill in France and was still convalescing. They seemed concerned, and I told them I would be in touch as soon as I felt better. I don’t know if they believed me; I didn’t care whether they did or not. I cared only about hiding. But Vivian, loyal Vivian, decided otherwise. “We all miss you,” she said. “There’s no point in staying home alone. You need to come out with us again. Be strong again.”

  That Vivian regarded me as her closest friend I have no doubt. But guilt also played a significant part in her behaviour. She was the one who took me home after my stay in the ward, and I’ll never forget the look on her face when she first saw me. She wanted to make amends. She felt responsible for introducing me to Fletcher. She never said so, but I knew.

  And, to a certain extent, her forcing me out worked. I did see some of my friends again. They were too discreet to ask what illness I had contracted, although a painter I knew wondered if the spots on my face had something to do with it. I told her they did, and that seemed to satisfy her. And, unexpectedly, it satisfied me as well. Speaking about it, even in such vague terms, made a difference. For the first time in a long while I felt a tinge of relief slowly settle inside me.

  I stopped using the pills the doctor had prescribed. I didn’t feel I needed them any longer, and they had made me gain a lot of weight, which didn’t suit me.

  I had a bit of money left at first, but that soon ran out. It became clear that I needed to find myself a job. I could not return to Selfridges, so I thought about applying to another department store. Then I decided that I wanted to do something altogether different. I needed to challenge myself. Use my brain a bit more. Perhaps work in a bookshop, like in Paris, or a school. Something to do with words, possibly.

  One Saturday morning, as I passed by a synagogue on St Petersburgh Place, I heard the sound of a familiar melody and stopped dead in my tracks. It was an Eastern European chant, intoned by a deep baritone voice, a cantor presumably. I had heard it before. When? Then I remembered. It was with my parents at a high-holiday service in 1941, at the synagogue on the Rue Pavée. I had accompanied them reluctantly. We had bickered on the way, because I had argued that I wasn’t religious and found no solace in God, especially not in times of war. “It’s not about God or the war, but duty,” my father had replied tersely. “Duty comes before all else.”

  I had gone with them, but I was uncomfortable during the service, feeling that I didn’t belong. And then, towards the end, the Rabbi had begun to sing. Three other men joined in. It was exquisitely beautiful, and I was transfixed.

  A few weeks later, a bomb planted by the Germans exploded and destroyed the synagogue. Every time I walked past the ruins, I remembered that day, that song.

  And now, here it was again. I still didn�
�t know what the song was called, nor did I wish to find out. I stood and listened. It was very cold outside, and the sun shone a feeble, winter yellow. I could have sought shelter inside the warmth of the synagogue, but I didn’t want to. It would have meant renewing ties with something I had long ago abandoned. It was enough to stand on the street and listen. The melody sounded as beautiful as it had in 1941. The notes were like drops of rain ringing. They rose and rang and burst inside me, and next thing I knew, I was sobbing. I hid in the doorway of a nearby building, hoping no one would see me, and went on crying. I couldn’t stop. I had slipped into that small space where my heart seeped. I could feel the seepage releasing within every particle of my body, like a warm liquid.

  But it wasn’t an impression. There was a warm liquid. I was urinating all over myself. I was a thirty-seven-year-old woman who had urinated all over herself. I felt so humiliated that I stopped crying instantly. The urine had trickled through my underwear into my trousers. I could smell it. A rancid smell, like ammonia. I was sure others walking past me could smell it too, as if I were a tramp.

  I rushed home. I didn’t dare get into a taxi, so I ran, feeling the wetness against my skin. As soon as I reached my apartment, I tore off my clothes, threw them into a basin and scrubbed them viciously clean. I hung them out to dry and lit myself a cigarette, my hands shaking. Eventually, I calmed down and sat on my sofa in my underwear, smoking and looking at the tops of the trees outside my window. I stood up and put on some music – a Frank Sinatra song I think it was. Slowly I began to hum, then sing along. The feeling of humiliation evaporated. Instead, and this took me by surprise, I felt a sense of relief, or perhaps even elation, as if I had finally purged myself of something infectious, like a disease. What the disease was, I didn’t know. Nor did I wish to. I strongly believe that some things in life are not worth investigating. And this was one of them.