Escaping

by Henrietta Taylor

  Overcome by stress and exhaustion, I was constantly cold and shivering; warm soups would make me throw up violently, when and if I could be bothered to make them. The children did a very good job of pretending to be happy, eating their little sandwiches in front of the incessantly blaring television. Don’t worry, Mummy. Look, we are so good.

  I was still waiting for the tears to flow. I couldn’t grieve for my darling, as I wasn’t ready yet to accept that he had gone. It was at this point that I began to take regular medication, something I had always avoided in the past. The doctors prescribed Prozac as a remedy for my distress and sleeping pills for my insomnia, neglecting to say that they did nothing to cure loneliness or a broken heart.

  Nothing prepares you for the reality of death. At school we had been drilled with knowledge about contraception and marriage breakdowns, but never were we given any information about dying. It was a taboo subject. One best left alone. One that should certainly be dealt with alone.

  And despite the support of close friends and family, at the end of the day I had to learn to cope with life alone, in my remote beachside community. Norman and I had moved into the neighbourhood just before Harry was born, and six months later Norman was in hospital, facing the first bout of the fight for his life. There had never been any time to make acquaintances in the area, let alone friends. The director of the children’s kindergarten was one of the few people aware of our circumstances and she had extended her hand in friendship. Georgina was like Princess Diana on steroids: tall, blonde, good looking, 100 per cent English and a real tower of strength. But she couldn’t hold my hand twenty-four hours a day.

  It was just a few days after the funeral that Norman’s solicitor rang me to arrange an urgent meeting. He asked me to call in at his house after I had dropped the children off at kindergarten. At this meeting I was told of the ramifications of Norman’s final will. It was a will I didn’t even know existed.

  Seven years previously, Norman and I had made reciprocal wills. We were not financial equals and it was highly unlikely that this situation would change unless I won the lottery. After his first operation for the removal of the tumour, Norman had wisely decided that we should look into the subject again. Our circumstances had changed considerably with the arrival of our two children.

  Up to that point Norman had always sought the advice of Deborah Healey; she and her husband Bill had been friends of his for nearly twenty years. Norman was sewn into the fabric of their family, being godfather to several of their children. Deborah was highly respected in her field of law and we both valued her judgment. She and I were dumbfounded when, after the first operation, Norman made the decision to involve a solicitor whom he barely knew. Norman had worked alongside the solicitor’s wife in the high-school staff room, which barely constituted a high recommendation as far as I was concerned. This was the very same solicitor who during a dinner party had regaled us with stories of how he had only just managed to scrape through his law exams. It may have been a gross exaggeration meant to entertain us, but he never inspired me with confidence.

  With very little to occupy his brain over most of his two-year illness, Norman changed his mind almost daily and made will after will. He never once believed that the cancer would completely take hold of him; the wills were only precautionary. I would watch as Norman took large swigs of liquid morphine before the solicitor’s arrival for yet another change to the will. Tension between us was rising daily. It was always over the same two topics: private schools for the children from the age of five; and the most heated one, that they should be sent to my sister’s house until he recovered. I continued to vote NO on both counts.

  While Norman was living out his last months at his sister’s home, he made a final will. It seemed everyone thought it would be best not to mention this to me. By that stage I was barely tolerated in their home, as Norman would become agitated in my presence.

  When the solicitor explained the terms of the final will to me at the meeting, they hit me like a slap in the face. I had brought no money into our marriage, therefore I would be given a stipend that was in fact less than what I’d earned as a teacher. I would keep the house and car, but nearly everything else would be held in trust for our children — and the biggest bombshell was that it would be Norman’s sister who would be the executor. Any time I needed money I would have to speak to her or to a representative of the estate, who I assumed would be the solicitor.

  In the last stages of his life, Norman had implied continuously that it would not take me long to remarry once he was gone. This was obviously why he had handed the control of the family money back to the family. At thirty-six, I was a widow with two children aged four and two. My eating disorder and my drinking problem were on the point of taking over my life. I didn’t think I was a particularly good catch for any man. The devastation was complete.

  My memories of my golden days sitting with Norman in the sun were suddenly blurred by anger and remorse. He had gone and left me to pick up the pieces. I wanted to kill him, except he was already dead. Any financial control over my life or my children’s would now be in the hands of my sister-in-law. It wasn’t that she was treacherous or evil. She was someone who would always put my children’s best interests first, even if in my eyes she had limited financial capabilities. But what I found hard to accept was the fact that our lives would be tied together forever.

  I started tearing myself apart with recriminations that could not be voiced. Suddenly it seemed evident to me that I had been a poor wife and had contributed little to our marriage. Perhaps a better wife would have sent her children away, as Norman had asked?

  Strung out with excessive alcohol and drug consumption and an acute lack of sleep, I came up with what seemed the only logical solution: suicide.

  When I look back on my state of mind during this hideous period, my actions and moods appeared to me completely consistent and steady. I honestly believed that our little children would be better off growing up in my sister’s household than with me. Suicide seemed a truly viable option.

  But I needed time to arrange it without the pressures of looking after the children. I made an appointment to see Dr Porter, our IVF specialist, who had also become a friend, and whom I considered a rare commodity: a doctor with a heart and soul. My wild eyes and the thin black cardigan wrapped tightly around my nervous body made the other patients in his waiting room ill at ease. Amongst the collage of baby photos that adorned his walls, the success stories, I could see my two babies beaming out at me. Don’t worry, Mummy. We love you. Look at how good we are.

  Finally it was my turn to see Dr Porter. ‘I’m not a good mother. You must help me. I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Come on. Sit down. We will work through this and find a solution even if you don’t think one exists. Two heads are better than one.’

  A little time without the responsibilities of children was the remedy the doctor ordered. An appointment was made for the Northern Sydney Health Service to visit and discuss some immediate respite care; if I measured up, a short-term foster family would be found in a nearby neighbourhood. It was imperative that I come across as no more than a grieving widow struggling with the complexities of young children and bereavement. I had no intention of ending up in hospital under psychiatric observation.

  I made a list:

  1. Tidy the toys and videos.

  2. Hang out the washing.

  3. Throw the rotting flowers onto the compost.

  4. Throw all the alcohol bottles into the recycling bins or hide them under the stairs.

  5. Buy some food to put in the fridge.

  6. If there’s time, clean the oven.

  By the time the Health Service representatives arrived, the house was gleaming like a shiny new pin. No evidence of chaos and mayhem anywhere. I calmly explained that as my mother was suffering from breast cancer, my sister had three children of her own and worked full-time, and my sister-in-law was too grief-stricken after losing her parents a
nd brother in quick succession, there were no family members able to help me with the children. I urgently needed some respite, as I was having great difficulty coping after my recent bereavement. Eyes followed my every move, measuring and assessing, as I walked around the room gathering the children’s prized treasures for them to take away with them.

  Questions were asked about my physical and mental health. Was I seeing a specialist in grief counselling? How was I sleeping? Did I take any sort of medication? Never, I responded. I only believed in alternative medicine.

  I listened to my lies and even to me it all rang true: I was just a poor grieving widow with two little children, desperately needing sleep and time for herself. Yes, it sounded so believable.

  Papers had to be signed, and the Health Service would notify the kindergarten that I was relinquishing control for a very short period of time, marked ‘One to four weeks’ on the form. I kissed the children and held them in my arms, imprinting their hopeful little faces onto my retinas forever. They didn’t dare ask what was going on; Mummy knew best. She knew that they would be better off without her in their lives. Permanently.

  The afternoon passed by silently. No telephone calls. No television blaring. No noisy children. Nothing except the deafening sounds inside my head — thoughts flying in aimless circles, memories of happy days — and the searing pain in my heart at the thought that Norman could have betrayed my confidence and written a secret will.

  I made yet another list:

  1. I am worthless.

  2. I am useless.

  3. I am hopeless.

  4. I cannot balance a cheque book.

  5. I am inept and unskilled with all mechanical objects.

  6. I am incompetent in all fields.

  7. I am not up to the rigours of dealing with life.

  It was very obvious to me that I should not poison my children’s lives by inflicting myself upon them as the perfect model of an incompetent and unskilled mother.

  The telephone’s shrill ring suddenly broke the silence, and then my sister’s voice came through on the answering machine.

  ‘Pick up. I know you’re there.’

  She always knew everything.

  ‘I know what you’re doing. You must speak to me immediately.’

  I took the telephone from its cradle and nursed it in the crook of my neck, at first unable to speak, only capable of acknowledging that I was on the other end of the line. I looked out to sea; it was black and clouds were rolling towards the shore. Heavy rain and storms had been predicted for the entire week.

  ‘Kate, make me a promise that you will always look after my children. Tell me that there will be enough room for my babies in your house.’

  It didn’t take Kate too long to work out that I had suicidal tendencies and that I shouldn’t be left alone. ‘You have to promise me that you won’t do anything until I can get to you. Give me twenty-four hours. Promise me. Promise me like you did when we were kids. You can’t break our promise.’

  Kate might have been the eldest, but I was the one with the biggest mouth, and everyone assumed that she was bullied and ordered around by me. I suppose it was true most of the time, but when her fuse was ignited, stand back — she would say ‘Jump!’ and I would say ‘How high?’ I promised her faithfully that I wouldn’t do anything until I saw her.

  I certainly made no attempt to harm myself that night, as I soon passed out on the floor.

  By the next day there were heavy squalls on the horizon, which had gone an ominous gunmetal grey. The outline of a huge tanker slid across the boiling sea. A streak of lightning split the sky and the house was plunged into darkness as the fuses blew from the surge of power. From vast experience, I knew that the whole area would be without power for many hours, while the emergency crews looked after more pressing matters before restoring electricity to our grid. Too often we had animals caught up in the intricate coils and wires of the network in our district, blowing us from the system. Norman always had candles and flashlights ready for this emergency, but this was the first time I’d had to deal with the situation alone. I laid out some little tea lights and watched, fascinated by the feeble glow flickering in a circle around me, my glass, the bottle of Jack Daniel’s and packets of Norman’s morphine tablets.

  My body ached from lack of food and sleep. I couldn’t remember the last time I had actually eaten a proper meal; corn chips were replacing all food groups. So delicious and nutritious, washed down with copious amounts of alcohol of any description. Thoughts came crashing through the miasma in my head. Don’t move too quickly. Don’t think too fast. Sink deep into the numbness. Open your arms and swim into it. From within the dark recesses of my mind, I could tell that the storm had reached the coast, unleashed: torrents of rain lashed against the windows, branches slapped the sides of the house and there was an eerie blackness outside.

  Why, my love? Why?

  Not a light on in the street. It was as if all the houses in the neighbourhood had been spirited away, sucked up into the eye of the storm; or as if a tornado had scoured the land. Sea, land and sky had joined together in inky blackness. Armageddon.

  Sleep deprivation is one of the most effective forms of torture — like those first months of motherhood, when the harsh reality of a crying, unsettled baby blows away all the myths. Memories of this night still make me shiver. I was so wholeheartedly convinced that suicide was the best alternative for me that it never crossed my mind I was deranged or grief-stricken — that my behaviour was dangerously erratic and unpredictable. Thanks to this behaviour, the two children Norman and I had fought so desperately to produce were on their way to becoming orphans.

  Absentmindedly I played with the morphine packets, hitting them against the cold parquet floor, sliding them through my fingers into a lopsided pyramid. Lost in a fugue of thought, I didn’t hear the constant pounding on the front door or my name being screamed out.

  Suddenly the glass panel beside the door exploded in all directions and a hand slid through the shattered opening and unlocked the door. Georgina burst in, rivulets of rain running down her hair and face, the light from her flashlight reflecting her image in monstrous form on the opposite walls: Boadicea in full battle dress.

  ‘I know what you’re up to. What have you taken? I’m calling an ambulance straightaway.’

  She looked down at me from her 195-centimetre vantage point. She could make a grown man wince with fear — the school captain and the head of the hockey team rolled into one fearful package. As a kindergarten director, Georgina was used to difficult two- and three-year-olds and their late-paying fathers, most of whom had wall-to-wall muscles, and who visibly shrank around her and bowed to her every wish. Nothing I could dish out would remotely faze her.

  ‘The Health Service officers came to see me this afternoon to inform me about your relinquishment of your rights. What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded. She knelt beside me, pulled the packets of morphine away from my clenched hands and laid them on the bench. But they were all still intact.

  ‘I am not going to let you do this. I’ve already lost one friend to a stupid suicide. You are not going to be the next. Do you understand? And why are you sitting here in the dark? Where’s your fuse box?’

  I pointed lamely towards the laundry. This was not the time to argue with her. The light from her flashlight whirled around the laundry, looking for the box, and finding it, she pushed the switch up. Light flooded the house. Suddenly I realised the lights outside were back on too.

  I could have done that. But the reality was that I coulnd’t even turn the lights back on, let alone cope with the self-hatred that was roaring in my head.

  Georgina went through the house systematically, room by room, stripping it of anything that she considered dangerous. Shoeboxes were filled with Norman’s old drugs, aspirin, paracetamol, cough medicine. The bathroom cabinet was emptied except for one lone box — she felt it would be highly inventive of me if I could manage to strangle myself with a
packet of tampons. Bleach and anything vaguely caustic were removed from the laundry, and then the petrol in the jerry can beside the lawnmower and other combustibles from the garage. Everything was put into neat piles beside her car.

  She worked quietly, without saying a word. Her hair was still plastered to her head and dripping down her back from the driving rain, but nothing was going to take her attention away from the matter at hand.

  I didn’t have time to tell her that I thought she was a prize cow and had no right to barge into my life like she did into everyone else’s, as I was too busy vomiting violently across the kitchen, spraying all the kitchen appliances that stood along the benchtop.

  She groaned, knowing she had her work cut out for her that night. ‘Go on, get yourself under a shower and I’ll clean up here.’ The kitchen reeked of my best friend, Jack Daniel, and the acrid smell of vomit, which would probably linger for days.

  As I made my way to the bathroom, Georgina’s clipped English vowels kept droning in the distance: ‘What right do you think you have to check out of life? Sure, you’ve lost your husband. But somebody should have told you before: you are a spoilt little brat, who has never had any responsibility in her life. Well, grow up, and do it fast! You have it all! Your children are healthy. When was the last time you held them in your arms and cuddled them to sleep?’

  I couldn’t reply. She was right: my children were in robust health. Georgina’s own baby, Lucy, had just been allowed home after weeks attached to respirators and tubes, but her future was still extremely bleak and uncertain. Georgina had taken me to visit her in the hospital and I had felt a special connection to the tiny infant who lay among countless tubes in her little pink bootees. The will to survive was astonishing in someone so small; it reminded me of Norman, whose spirit and determination dragged him through day after day. I felt truly awful when I thought of Georgina’s sick baby. Years later I can see why she was so critical of me, but at the time I was incapable of taking anything in.