by Gwyn GB
The pain heightens. Her head is fit to burst. If John hadn’t been there she would have sat on the floor and banged her head against the wall. Bang...bang...bang... Rhythmic...soothing...thuds... Anything to block out her thoughts...the pain...her emotions. Her dead baby.
Now the pain is so intense she can’t help but cry out with the contractions. She squeezes John’s hand with each one. She doesn’t see him, but he’s watching her. With each groan of pain, he cringes. Even in the private world of hell that’s going on inside of Katherine, she knows he’s hurting too.
She moans, deep moans of pain that resonate through her body, animal like sounds that she’d never have thought she was capable of. She remembers the cows at the Dairy, their mooing at calving time – and later the distressed sounds when the calves were taken from them.
More pain, faster, less breaks and the midwife is there with her now encouraging her to push. Katherine is crying, sobbing with the pain and with grief. She doesn’t care who sees her, what she looks like or who knows it.
Finally, she feels it. A warm, slippery sliding object which leaves her body and is taken away quickly by the midwife. Katherine collapses into John’s arms, both of them crying now. It’s over.
They keep it between them, unable to bear sharing this grief, to face the prospect of talking about it, voicing it out loud. If they can keep it between themselves, keep the rest of the world, the rest of their family out of it, then perhaps it will be less real. A self-contained nightmare trapped inside of them, but unable to taint the rest of their lives.
John is kind and patient, fussing over her, protective; but his grief has limits. Hers has none. Even before she’s stopped bleeding it seems to her he’s already starting to bounce back. He doesn’t have the hormones to contend with, it wasn’t his body that went through the trauma of a pointless labour; it wasn’t his soul temporarily entwined with another in one body. The results come back from the hospital, they can’t find anything wrong with the baby.
‘It must be me then.’ Katherine pronounces. ‘It’s obviously me, my body must be doing something, or not doing something it’s supposed to.’ John doesn’t know what to say, he shakes his head.
‘Not necessarily love, we don’t know what it is. As the doctor said, it could just be a fluke, a very unlucky fluke.’
It’s Katherine’s turn to shake her head. ‘No. I don’t think so.’
Silence, she can almost hear his thoughts.
‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘I’m not going to put any pressure on you. I understand if you don’t want to go through this again. But if you do then I’m here to support you, it’s completely your decision.’ Only of course it’s not. Katherine knows John wants a baby, just as badly as she does.
As the days move into weeks she finds herself withdrawing not just from the outside world but from John. She knows he’s upset about their babies but for him they never really existed, they were just an idea whereas for her they were physical realities and a part of her died with each one. Katherine’s emotional state is so fragile she doesn’t even dare connect with John in case it opens up some floodgate of feeling that will drown her in its misery. Knowing they can find nothing wrong with the baby, that it could have been a healthy child, that’s made things worse, not better.
The depression doesn’t fall down on her like a big heavy weight dropping from on high. It is far more insipid and subtle than that. At first she begins to notice the odd day when she’s feeling a bit down. Nothing she can properly put a finger on: just a bit over-sensitive, prone to crying at the silliest of things, generally not feeling happy with life. Then as the days move on she starts to realise it’s the odd day when she doesn’t feel down that stands out. Her life has begun to look less appealing. She finds excuses to stay inside and not go out, not face people.
The weeks turn into months and still she struggles. Her body is no longer hers, it’s a failed baby making device. Whereas John still treats her as the wife he loves and longs to have sex with, Katherine doesn’t see herself as the individual she was before. She can only see a failed mother. Her desire for sex doesn’t return, and John’s interest in her becomes an annoyance not a pleasure. She’s scared of having sex in case she becomes pregnant because if it fails again, she doesn’t know how she is going to cope. Her mind, her emotions seem to have disconnected from her body.
Every criticism, no matter how small, or no matter if it’s a joke, hurts. She’s become porous, her hard protective shell compromised. She did try to explain to John one day her fear of failing again, but he simply replied that she shouldn’t be negative. She can see no way of explaining to him how fearful she is for her state of mind. Most days Katherine simply exists, working on auto pilot, doing her job, her chores, playing the roles that are expected of her: wife, sister, daughter. Some days she finds it difficult to socialise at all. Anything outside of her comfort zone, which consists only of John, her mother and Margaret, anything else can be daunting and overwhelming. It’s all a struggle. She’s not achieving anything. She doesn’t know why she bothers, why any of them bother? What point is there to life? We exist: working, eating, struggling, and all for what? The inevitability of death.
Sitting watching the Live Aid pop concert she cries herself into exhaustion, partly for the starving people, and partly because it’s the perfect excuse to allow her emotions to flow out without having to explain them. All Katherine wants to do is scream out to everybody to leave her alone so she can just curl up into a ball in the corner and hide.
She doesn’t talk to John about it, what could she say? How could she explain what she’s feeling? He’s sure to tell her not to be so ‘sensitive’, not to ‘dwell’ on things, that he loves her and everything will be all right. After all people go through far worse don’t they? Neither does she let on at all to Margaret or her mother; they would only worry, and their sympathy might increase her pain not diminish it.
Then there’s the guilt. Not just the guilt for letting down her babies, but the guilt that she should feel like this. So self-indulgent in her grief. Millions of women have miscarriages: it’s just something that happens, part of the process, a way to ensure that only the healthy babies are born. How much worse the grief of the mother who has lost a child? A baby she has held and nurtured, a child she has sung to, looked into its eyes and talked of dreams and possibilities. How much worse her loss?
When Katherine is in that dark place, the old guilt is there to nag her too: Anne. Maybe this is payback. Maybe not supporting Anne, being an accessory to her death, maybe that has cursed Katherine. Cursed her children. She shouldn’t become a mother because she’s proved herself unworthy even of a friendship. Anne’s been on her mind a lot lately, not that she ever went away. Maybe this is what Katherine deserves - but not John. John is suffering now because of her past sins. Now she has that guilt on her conscience too.
26
1986, Jersey
Work is a welcome distraction from Katherine’s personal grief. Here she seems to make a difference, achieve recognition for the things she does. Here she can work harder for promotion and lose herself in a world where babies, family and guilt just don’t figure. This is a world of black and white common sense, of numbers and business principles – not emotion. Katherine sits at her neat desk, everything in its place. They all know to come straight to her if they need to track down a file or find some client information. Here she is in complete control. There’s nothing left to chance or luck, no possibility for nature’s seemingly random cruelty. This is a world of cold hard economics, and it’s her sanctuary.
It’s summer, but a rainy day. Everyone glad to be indoors out of the weather. At Katherine’s office there’s a waste bin full of dripping umbrellas by the front door. It looks like it’s going to be another day much like the others that have gone before it, but then her boss calls her into his office.
Katherine’s boss is a thin stick insect of a man. Small features on a small head and skinny body; hair that’s
more downy and infant-like than a grown man’s should be. Although he’s married he’s nervous around women. She hears some of the others in the office complaining about him failing to sort out disagreements. Conflicts, especially with a female, are just not his thing. Numbers are though, he’s got a quick sharp mind for business which Katherine respects. She’s witnessed numerous times when colleagues are having a problem with a job, they’ll show it to him and you can almost see the processors in his brain working. His eyes flick over the information, page after page, turning back to check something he’s read, and then coming up with a solution in what seems like mere minutes. He’s not a Jersey man, the Head Office sent him over a few years ago, but he loves being here. If he’d stayed in London he probably would have gone a lot further, still could go further if he wanted, but he and his wife started a family a year after they arrived and have chosen lifestyle over money and career.
‘Katherine come and sit down a minute,’ he beckons her in.
As she walks towards his desk she searches on its surface for a clue as to what it is he wants to talk to her about.
He sits up, placing both hands palm down on the surface in front of him. ‘Katherine your work has been consistently excellent. I know you’re capable of far more, but we have a little problem.’ She panics. Has her recent depression been noticed? Has she been foolishly thinking her torment is hidden, whereas in fact it’s there for all to see? ‘Your qualifications are the issue my dear. For me to be able to start pushing you and giving you the bigger jobs I need you to have some formal accountancy qualifications to your name.’
‘Oh I see,’ is all she can answer, relieved but at the same time disappointed she’s not up to the job.
‘You have a lot of potential, but obviously this is going to have implications for your husband as well as yourself so you need to consider what I’m going to say carefully.’ He pauses, the possibilities hanging between them. ‘I would like to propose you for the company’s apprenticeship scheme. Are you familiar with it?’
‘I’ve read about it. It’s not something you can apply for though is it? I thought it was only offered to employees who are thought to have management potential...’
‘Yes that’s right, and I think you do have management potential. So do the assessors. I’ve already recommended you for it and you’ve been accepted.’
Katherine is shocked, she doesn’t know what to say. ‘Oh wow! Thank you. I’m really surprised I had no idea...’ she stutters.
He smiles, then looks more serious. ‘Yes, but the downside Katherine is it’s going to mean some sacrifices. You would have to go to London for a while, train there. It’s something which will have an impact not only on you, so you need to think carefully.’ He looks at her now, scanning her face for information, his data processor mind trying to work out if he’s come to the right conclusions.
A million different things run through Katherine’s head. ‘How long? How long is the training for?’
‘Two years,’ he replies.
‘I see. OK.’ What does she say? He wasn’t joking when he said it has implications. Two years away from Jersey. Not such a bad idea if she were single but John is unlikely to want to leave the farm – that could mean two years away from John.
As if her myriad of indecisions are there to read on her face he quickly steps in to reassure. ‘Look, there’s no pressure at all. You’ve got plenty of time to think about this. I’ve got an information pack here which tells you about the scheme, what’s expected of you and what you can hope to achieve at the end.’ He holds out a large coloured cardboard brochure to her. It’s covered in images of smiling professional types in suits with briefcases and the look of success. Is she really suitable for this? Could she really be one of them?
‘So did you say I’ve definitely been accepted?’ Perhaps she’d heard wrong.
‘Yes. You’ve definitely been accepted.’
‘When would I need to start?’
‘Well it’s fairly open, there are two start dates a year. The first one we could get you on would be next September, so you’ve plenty of time to think about it, and there’s an option to hold over until the following spring. It’s all explained in there,’ he points to the brochure.
‘OK, thank you. Thank you for putting me forward.’ She gets up now wanting to escape his gaze and allow her face to dissolve into the shock and excitement that are trying to erupt from below. He believes in her, believes in her potential. This is something Katherine has always dreamed of. A ticket to bigger things, a new world, London and the stairway to management. A few years ago she would have jumped at the chance without a second thought, only now... Recently her mind has been consumed by other things but then perhaps this is what she needs. ‘Is there any alternative? What I mean is, if I don’t go, will I still be able to go further, to do some training here perhaps, or distance learning?’
He gives nothing away on his face so she guesses he’d been expecting this question. ‘We can look at other options but, I’ll be honest, they won’t take you as far as this can. This course will make the most of your talent, give you all sorts of options and fast track you up the ladder. But I’ll understand perfectly if it’s not right for you, if you don’t want to spend the time away. You’ll do well whatever path you choose.’ He smiles at her reassuringly, but she knows exactly what he’s thinking.
How lucky Katherine is to have John, he’s always so supportive.
‘Of course I’ll miss you if you go away,’ he’s saying to her.
She’s sat him down at their little kitchen table at home, the scene of so many different announcements in their short time together. A small thin vase containing a drooping yellow rose is the only other thing on the table besides the colourful brochure of smiling professionals. The matured scent of the rose is in Katherine’s nostrils and she’s absentmindedly stroking the cool china of the vase with the fingers of her right hand.
‘If it’s what you want Kathy, if it’s really what you want then we’ll manage. We’ll work something out. Maybe I could try and find somebody to look after the farm, come over with you for a year or so. Two years isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things. We’ll do it somehow.’
‘Really? Would you really not mind?’ she asks him, looking up from the table.
‘Really. If it’s what you want, then it’s what I want too,’ John smiles at her, but there’s a sadness behind it.
She can feel the difference in their emotions: hers excited with possibility, his muted. She’s asking a lot of him and she knows it. She also knows what else is on his mind - will it mean an end to their dream of a family? ‘Look I don’t know yet.’ she adds. ‘I’ll have to read up on it, think about it carefully. It’s a big step.’
He simply nods his head at her and gets up to leave the table. Katherine’s eyes drop back down to the folder. Is she kidding herself? Could she really fit in with those slick suited professionals in London? Is she really management material? Or has her boss taken pity on her, maybe simply made a mistake? She’s only got one suit. She’d have to buy a whole new wardrobe; her clothes are more personal assistant than manager. Then there’s the whole prospect of living in a big strange city. She’s visited London of course, but always with somebody else. To contemplate navigating the tube or the buses on her own, of being a single tiny grain of a person in those busy streets surrounded by strangers, is daunting.
Katherine isn’t convinced John is all for it, he’s just saying the words. She knows he’ll do it for her, but in his heart she just doesn’t think it’s what he wants. She knows he wants her to be here with him, and preferably with a baby. She’s asking a lot, but then again doesn’t she deserve something positive at last? Besides it would be good for them in the long term.
‘Just think of the money,’ she says to him. His back is facing her as he fills up the kettle at the sink. ‘We’d be able to buy our own farm. I could get you that tractor you were eyeing up at the Foire last year. We’d be able to affor
d proper holidays.’
He drops his head down before turning to her. ‘I don’t care about those things Kathy, I’m happy with what we have. Getting a bigger tractor isn’t going to improve my life that much. I want you to be happy, fulfilled. If this is what it takes, if this is what you want to do - or you need - then go for it but not for money. Please don’t do it just for money.’
‘I wouldn’t... I was just saying...’ Katherine trails off, he’s made her feel almost embarrassed by her avarice and his humbleness. If she’s honest she doesn’t really know what she wants anymore.
27
1987, Jersey
Christmas comes and goes and then while Spring wakes up the world around them, Katherine is too busy helping Margaret with her wedding plans to think too much about September and beyond. As the weather warms up, without realising it, she finds herself creeping out from the fog which enveloped her. It isn’t until one fine spring day when she’s standing on the beach; the sea a refreshing blue, Jersey’s coastline curving away in front of her, it’s only then, as she’s thinking how beautiful it all is, that she realises her depression has given way to renewed hope.
They go to the new James Bond movie with Timothy Dalton in the role and John spends the next few days repeating catch phrases from The Living Daylights and calling her Kara while driving round in his tractor as though it’s a Bond car. It makes her smile again.
By the time Margaret’s wedding arrives she finds the old connections with John starting to buzz. She watches him dressing for the occasion and thinks how handsome he is: tall and well-toned from physical labour. She looks at him properly for the first time in what feels like ages. It’s as though they’ve co-existed in two different time zones. Two people living in the same house but not really connecting. It’s nearly five years since their own wedding, but it’s been a tough time with the pregnancies. There was no long honeymoon period for them, life threw them straight in at the deep end. It’s now she realises the old longing has come back: the longing to give him a child to complete their family.
