Eight Rooms

by Various

  “Farah, the police are here to see you as well. They would like to see you alone,” Jena said.

  “They can see her with me here,” he hurried over a possible objection, “this is the first time I’ve seen my wife since she was injured – I’m not leaving now.”

  Jena tried to speak and he interrupted.

  “I don’t want her upset by them, they don’t like our kind.” He was clearly immovable.

  To my surprise Jena didn’t give in to him, she politely held the door and firmly told him he could return after they had been. He looked furious, clenched his fists, but eventually stood and walked out. “I’ll be back as soon as they’ve gone babe.”

  There was one policeman and one policewoman. They had asked me about the accident several times by now, and I was tired again.

  “I just slipped. I don’t know how, it happened so quickly.”

  I couldn’t do this anymore. I closed my eyes.

  They were speaking in low tones outside the room, but the walls were thin. “We’ll talk to him as well, but there’s nothing else we can do right now. She’s clear on what she says happened. You might be wrong, you know?” There was an almost audible shrug. “We’ll see about sending a community support officer to speak to her again when she’s back at home.”

  Tobe was shaking my arm. I felt angry. I was asleep, and enjoying sleeping. I did not want to wake up. He persisted, and I reluctantly let my mind surface.

  “You’ve been asleep for ages.” It was a complaint.

  “I am meant to sleep. It helps me heal.” My tone was apologetic, if the words were not.

  “How long are you going to be here?”

  “I don’t know.” I looked at his face, hastily added, “They don’t even know, it depends on how quickly my face gets better.’

  “I need to go now, my shift starts soon. Do you need anything? Can I bring you anything?”

  “Perhaps,” I considered, “some clothes? For when I can get dressed.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow. I hope,” he hesitated, “you feel better soon.”

  The door admitted some childish voices as he left, the same nursery rhyme filtering through as the door slowly closed itself, ‘… Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, then I let it go again.’ I smiled at the lyric, happy to know the fish’s fate, and appreciated the silence as I regained my room. Despite the space it gave me to think. I picked up the book, held it high so that I didn’t have to bend my head down to read it (that started the blood pounding around my face) and disappeared into it. A world of chivalry and people doing the right thing, and happy endings. That was essential. I’d read many of the classics, the ‘literary’ books, but for relaxation I always came back to those where goodness wins.

  It was the same time, mid-afternoon, when Tobe came again, with a box of chocolates this time. I asked him to lift the flowers he’d brought last time from the corner behind me to the table by the TV.

  “So I can see them. The cleaners move them you see.”

  They didn’t – I chose not to have a reminder that the room was no longer mine now, but it was a lie that he wouldn’t be likely to catch me out with.

  “How are you managing?”

  “Oh,” he fidgeted, “good. I’m going next door for meals.”

  His mother lived next door, with his younger brother and his wife.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for being angry.”

  There was an unspoken world between us, a flimsy (what was the term Dr Partha had used?), eschar, over recent events that I was not going to test for strength.

  “I know, that’s OK.”

  He told me his family’s news, and handed over cards that my aunties had sent. He’d already opened them. The rumour at his work was that there would be lay-offs soon, the company was not doing well, and it was unlikely that his casual work would become permanent. He had talked about staying put, when the family moved on, but it seemed that he would be rejoining his dad. He did not visit long, the machines, my face and the staff popping their heads round the door every few minutes made him uncomfortable.

  I had another visitor that day, a lady, who knocked and asked if she might come in for a chat. She was, she said, Sarah, a hospital visitor, and I was the only one awake. She was a little older than me, early-thirties perhaps, and had wonderful clothes. The kind of relaxed tailored look that tells you how well regulated someone’s life is, how cosy and safe they are. I could imagine Dr Partha wearing those kind of classic clothes. Beige and brown and cream. We chatted about my book, laid face down on the cover. I was enjoying it, gripped by the story from the word go. The author was one of her favourites, she said. I’d always ignored them in the library, thinking that they looked like men’s books; what a waste not to have discovered them earlier I exclaimed! She laughed, and I did too, as the notion that there would ever be enough time to read all the good books in the world was ridiculous.

  She asked about me, whether I had children, and quickly stepped into the silence when I didn’t reply.

  “I don’t,” she said. “It was one of the sadnesses of my married life. My husband desperately wanted children, a boy particularly, to carry on the name.”

  How did she know I wondered? She couldn’t.

  “That was when,” she paused, took a deep breath, “he first hit me.”

  I felt furious that she had barged in to my room, that I had not invited her, that she had the nerve to come do-gooding to me. I looked up, my mouth full of bitterness, trying to choose the words that would cause her to leave immediately, but found the sounds stuck. She had tears in her eyes, was pleading with me silently not to reject her disclosure. We have all done that. Floated a line in front of a friend or acquaintance, a line we want them to follow, to pull on, to land the subject and to dissect it. To help. And, maybe I’ve been unlucky in my life, but on the occasions when I’ve thrown out that lure, it has never been grabbed. The moment would pass and I’d know not to try again.

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “We met after college. My degree was in history, his in economics. We’d both moved to the City with our first jobs and were in the same graduate intake for a bank.”

  Sarah looked happy as she remembered, and I was intrigued by a life so different to mine. I’d never even had a job.

  “For a while it was wonderful, I’d never felt like that about anyone before, and he was rich. His family were lovely, they welcomed me, and I enjoyed this new unconscious assumption that Christmas meant Klosters and August the Med.” She looked embarrassed. “We didn’t even have to struggle to buy our first flat – it was a wedding gift from his parents.”

  I didn’t envy her wealth, it was just different. Her face twisted again and I realised it was pain she was feeling, not embarrassment.

  “We hadn’t talked about it before we got married, but we knew we both wanted a family.” Sarah went on, more slowly now. “I was ambitious; I wanted to achieve in my career before having children, but he wanted everything then. He started highlighting anything negative I said about work, agreeing wholeheartedly if I worried about having done a good enough job on something, assuming for me that I wouldn’t get promoted very far, that I didn’t have it in me to make a success of myself in a tough corporate world.”

  I could say nothing; I had no experience I could console her with.

  She smiled, wryly. “It’s very easy to think you can’t do things, especially if you have an alter ego telling you all the time that you can’t. I agreed, in the end, that we should leave having children to chance, that if I got pregnant then I didn’t have a great career anyway so it wouldn’t matter.”

  Her eyes were wet and she apologised.

  “I’m sorry, here you are, so brave with your proper injuries and I’m weeping over things that happened a long time ago.” She smiled waveringly at me. “I don’t think I’m as strong as you. I’ve only recently been able to talk about this at all, and I’m afraid that I’m not very good at it yet.”

  That someo
ne else could see me as strong amazed me and that she was apologising for her pain felt very wrong. I murmured inarticulately.

  “When I didn’t fall pregnant, he started to blame me. He upped the amount of times he told me I was useless, and started to push me around. Just a little, you know? Apush here and there, a shake if I was being particularly stupid, and then he graduated to proper punches. Just occasionally, when he’d come back from a night out, or had had a few drinks at home. I started to have to take time out from work, to cover up the damage.”

  “And then?” I wanted her to leave him now. For the happy ending to come soon.

  “I couldn’t face the world every day, I felt incapable, so I left work.”

  Even I knew this was a bad idea. She’d have no one else to listen to, no validation other than his corrosive comments.

  “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “No. Oh, I tried to bring the subject up with his mother, once, when she noticed me wincing with pain. But she changed the subject, wasn’t interested in a truth that she knew would be uncomfortable.”

  Sarah seemed wrapped up in her thoughts, was absorbed in her memories.

  “How did you escape?” I noticed my choice of words with surprise.

  “An old Uni friend came to visit. She was furious with me for having lost touch and determinedly came to stay for a couple of nights. It was luck that he was out for one of them. She’d had no idea what had been happening, and of course I didn’t tell her. But she saw the bruises, heard that I wasn’t working and saw me jumping out of my skin at any noise. She fed me a bottle of wine and asked me questions until she knew everything.”

  Expressions flitted across Sarah’s face; I could see shame and embarrassment.

  “Even then I didn’t leave. My friend told me to, but I couldn’t. What would I do without him, where would I go, how would I live? Who else would ever love a failure like me?”

  She saw my intent look, could see that I was gripped.

  “It took another year and a broken arm.” She was wryly humorous and we both smiled. “My friend came to the hospital and, against my protests, took me away with her when my husband had gone home for the night. She did some research and made me contact a wonderful organisation for battered wives.”

  “And that was that.” She made it sound easy for her.

  “Not quite. I nearly went back to him several times because I knew he loved me.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “I gradually met some other women at the hostel, and when they told me their stories I was so angry for them. Furious that they could let anyone abuse them like that. It was a shock when I realised that they thought the same about me. They made me realise where I’d let myself get to, that I was just the same as them.”

  Sarah laughed, in control again. “Battered wives! Makes us sound like fish, doesn’t it?”

  That tune. Why did they let the fish go?

  Sarah’s voice recalled me. “The people at Women’s Aid were amazing. They gave me a home and helped me to find a job.” She visibly squared her shoulders, sat up straighter. “That was three years ago, and I now have a life that I am in control of and that I feel confident in again. I’ve just started volunteering for them, and this is my first hospital visit. I want to be the friend to someone else that I was lucky enough to have.”

  She looked at me, at my face. I’d forgotten why she’d come to see me, was shamed by the reminder.

  “The biggest thing in an abuser’s favour is that they create a climate in which the victim feels she cannot turn to anyone for help, that there is no choice. And there is. There is always a choice. All the help you need is here.”

  My neck, my arms, my legs, everything, were tired from listening to her story. She pressed a contact card into my hand and got up to leave. I struggled to move my mouth.

  “Thank you for visiting me.”

  She touched my hand, lightly. I tried hard not to be overwhelmed.

  “If you are in the hospital again,” I swallowed, “I would like it if you were able to visit again.”

  Sarah smiled. “I’ll try not to cry next time! Oh, and I’ll bring you another of that author’s books. His earlier ones are better, I think.”

  She left me to think about my baby, the one that a Doctor had told me I could have. Perhaps I might be able to persuade Tobe to see someone. I slept then, at peace with hope.

  I must be making progress, I thought, although the needle was left in my arm, the drip was disconnected and I was given proper food and tablets to take instead. Eating was slow, each opening of my mouth wide enough to get a loaded spoon or fork in cracked the precious new surface of my face, and chewing ground those edges together like a pepper mill. The only upside was that my face felt more mobile afterwards, the cracks and fresh wounds allowing my words to sound normal. I looked around my room; it must be deliberate that there was no mirror.

  It was sing-song time down the corridor again. I liked hearing the children’s voices,

  ‘…Then I let it go again.

  Why did you let it go?

  Because it bit my finger so!’

  I felt a peculiar satisfaction in hearing the ending, and I liked it. Well done Fish I thought, you set yourself free.

  I was not in a great deal of pain – periodically, yes, when I ate or smiled too widely – but any sudden shocks like that that soon subsided to a dull thud of blood. I could, I decided, manage with less pain relief. The next time Jena came with the tablets I suggested that I take fewer.

  “You’re best off just to keep taking them for the moment,” the easy smile, “No point being uncomfortable if you don’t have to be.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, and then changed the words to agreement. I swallowed one and discretely slipped the other safely to one side. Perhaps I’d need it later.

  “How long did you have to train to be a nurse?” I asked her, interested in her job. It seemed so varied, some parts were highly skilled, others very mundane, and yet her love for it, for me, ran through all her actions.

  “I did it the long way.” She looked up from tucking in bedsheets. “I wanted to get a job immediately so I could leave home, be independent, so I started work here as an assistant and did a part-time Pre-Registration course. They give you some time off work to help, but it’s hard work, you barely have any free time with studying as well as working. Took me five years. Worth it though.” She patted the sheets approvingly. “You’re done, see you shortly!”

  Sarah came again to visit, bringing the promised book. I’d finished the other one already, was looking forward to it. I liked very much that I had invited someone to visit me, to share the hospitality of my room, and that they had come. I was worried that she’d bring up things I wasn’t keen to talk about, but she didn’t. We just chatted. She liked coffee, I was tea all the way; we both liked the countryside; she was interested in local politics, I only ever bothered to vote for the Prime Minister. She was smart and in control, it was difficult to believe that she’d been the ground down person she’d described before. Until we moved onto books, then I caught a glimpse. She jumped and apologised when I disagreed with her praise for Thomas Hardy, and then realised what she’d done and blushed. I didn’t comment, how could I? Anyway, I was transfixed by how clearly I’d been expressing my point-of-view; I’d never talked about books before in this way, and it was fun.

  She asked me about my family. I didn’t like to bore her, but she seemed really interested. I told her how we lived, the dominance of just a few extended families among my people, that the majority stuck to the old ways.

  “It’s a very male society in lots of ways, we have a strong tradition of honour and justice, and colourful revenge!” I was proud for a moment, laughing. “Women have to maintain that honour, for their own family before they marry, and then for their husband’s family. Things are changing a little. Sometimes, if it’s needed, a man joins with his wife’s family, rather than the wife leaving to join his, but it’s still unu
sual. The old ways dominate, and if there is justice to be dispensed it’s done by our elders; the families close ranks to protect each other.”

  “And do all the young people believe the same things, behave the same way?” Sarah was curious.

  “There are a few who leave, every generation. My brother was one.” I stopped. And then continued, telling Sarah his story, briefly.

  “I don’t know where he is now, or how to find him.”

  She was sensitive, changed the subject. “What do you mean by your own kind of justice?”

  I felt uncomfortable; I’d already said more than I should to an outsider – our life sounded mediaeval when I heard my words bounce around my clinical room.

  “The elders can pass judgement against someone, fine them or assign tasks if it’s an offence that they are aware of.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, anything serious, like theft. Smaller disagreements are normally sorted out without the elders; they only get involved if it gets out of hand, but that’s only occasionally.”

  “Like how?”

  “A man was killed a couple of years ago in another family.” I was conscious that this sounded bad, and hastily added, ‘But it’s only what happens in other groups, other societies. We just sort it out ourselves, that’s all, without troubling anyone else.”

  “So, what happened?” She didn’t seem like she was judging me, us.

  “It was hushed up, an accident. The police were suspicious, they got involved despite the family efforts, but they didn’t get anywhere. The elders banished the killer, even though it was not thought to be a premeditated murder. He is not considered part of our people anymore.”

  “And what about other things? If I had been one of your people, would it have made any difference to me, to the way my husband treated me?”

  “No.” I tried not to sound sad. “We are very supportive of each other, and women are meant to be respected, but what happens inside each home is considered the business of the head of the house. Just like your mother-in-law, most people would not have wanted to know because of the shame.”