Invisible Child

by Mary Hayward

  Lindsay sat in her pushchair, watching everyone milling around, when Jimmy first came up to me.

  “Where’s Billy?” Jimmy asked.

  “Don’t know—thought he was with you?”

  “No, he’s not with me, haven’t seen him. Hasn’t done a runner, has he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I wandered around the site and searched all the tents.

  “He doesn’t seem to be here, Jimmy.”

  “Oh, no.” He rolled his eyes upward.

  “I’ll leave Lindsay with Roz, and drive home.”

  “Yeah, that would be good. If you find him—get him back here pronto! Wanker! We’re pushed for time now.”

  “Okay.” I drove back to the house.

  When I got there, I found Billy in bed, hiding under the covers, frightened and paranoid, saying he couldn’t do the gig. I just left him there and went back and told Jimmy and Roz.

  “He’s crying and refusing to come back to the gig. You’ll have to do it on your own!”

  “Fuck it! I bet he’s taken some stupid drugs or something—fucking bastard. Now what do I do?”

  “You’ll have to do it alone, Jimmy. But look on the up side, you won’t have to share the take!” I chirped up. But it didn’t make him any happier.

  “Fucking bastard—I’m sorry Mary, but Billy is becoming a complete waste of my fucking time. Did he tell you that we have a manager interested in us doing a recording?”

  “No. Didn’t say anything to me.”

  “Yeah, all set up to go to Austria for an audition, right? Billy is all over the place like a fart in a trance. He fluffs his frets, has so much drink before he goes on that he can’t remember the lyrics, then he stumbles on the stage and falls over! I’ve fucking had enough of him and, to be honest, the manager guy—well, he wasn’t best pleased with him either.

  “This is fucking it with Billy! I’m sorry Mary, but Billy has pissed me about so much that this is the last straw. I am going to have to go it alone from now on. I tried to keep him in on it; the guy wasn’t that interested in Billy anyway, but at least he would have been in the backing group, but now! I just don’t know.”

  “Okay Jimmy—don’t worry.”

  He turned to go, walked a few paces, and then spun round and spoke tenderly.

  “If there’s anything I can do for you Mary, just let me know.”

  “Thanks Jimmy, I’ll be okay.” I gestured with a little wave, then left to go back home.

  I was sickened with the prospect that Billy was now taking drugs, on top of everything else. I was furious. I didn’t know he was screwing up his stage performances; this was news to me.

  Billy left for work on Monday morning. He said he had thirty-five grievances with the company, and was going up to their head office, in Leicester, to complain about the management. I said good luck, but inside I was very sceptical about what the company would do about it.

  He came home some time later, exhausted, having had to travel down from Leicester by train. He told me they took his car keys from him there and then, gave him his cards, and he was out of a job again.

  It was some months later that we decided to go away for a caravan holiday break at Hastings. He ended up jumping on the bed, banging his fists on the wall, breaking all their cups, and it ended in disaster again. I just left him there and walked down to the beach with Colin and Lindsay. Then when I got back to the caravan I simply packed up and we came home.

  The hunt was on for another job. He managed to get two job offers, one with less money and one with slightly more money than he had been getting at Thorn Lighting. He wanted to take the job with the lower salary so that they wouldn’t expect so much of him, and he got quite stressed when I told him we couldn’t live on it. I managed to persuade him to take the job with the higher money, although even that wasn’t great.

  It seemed to stress him out and he started hitting me again, landing the first blow on my upper arm. He spun round on his heels, strutted into the kitchen, and opened the first kitchen cupboard.

  “Don’t tell me what to do!” he shouted. “I’ll teach you!”

  I watched in disbelief. He pulled it open with such force that the cabinet tore away from the wall. Plates and cups all tumbled and crashed onto the floor, exploding, shards of broken pottery bursting in every direction.

  Holding my head in my hands, I listened to the deafening onslaught as the torrent of it all fell around me. The words of the lady at Refuge echoed in my ears as loudly as a church bell. “He will do this again,” she had warned.

  My hopes, like my kitchen, lay shattered as I was reduced to a quivering wreck.

  Each cupboard in turn was pulled from the wall, glass shattering, spinning and spitting around the kitchen, until it all lay in a jumbled heap on the floor. I felt like an earthquake victim, stumbling through the rubble, for that was what it was.

  Lindsay, sucking her dummy, walked through the chaos of white flour, eggs, and shattered glass. I leaped into action, snatched her up in my arms, and ran upstairs to the bedroom. Wiping her feet over the Mickey Mouse waste bin, I cuddled her and bathed her with my sobbing tears. I slept in her room that night. Restless thoughts chased round in my mind. In the morning I rose early. My decision was made. I kept my powder dry.

  Rallying help from friends at the local church, I was able to rebuild the kitchen as best I could, limping on with what crockery I had left, but none asked the question about what was going on in my life.

  Soon Billy started to complain about the cost of the dishwasher, and how we couldn’t afford it—blaming me for making him buy it. He didn’t know what was coming next. War had been declared.

  36

  The Final Blow

  SITTING IN THE SOLICITORS’ OFFICE I had time to think about what I wanted. A short elderly man sat in front of me, and had clearly been practising law for many years, seemingly intelligent, although I seemed to sense an unwillingness to take on the full confrontation with Billy. I started to tell him about the violence. He shrank down in the chair. I could see that he didn’t want to take the case, and I just listened to my inner feelings; I got up and left.

  On my way home I passed another solicitor’s office in Waltham Cross and just walked in. I was annoyed enough to demand some action. The rooms were covered with so many documents—scattered on desks, tables, chairs, in fact, just about anywhere where there might be a horizontal surface on which to keep them above the ground. It didn’t bode well. I was one for organisation and tidiness, and this was far from the organisational skills I was looking for. Still, I had come, and so I approached a small gentleman, his grey balding hair suddenly appearing from the chaos, as if risen up in some sort of dumb waiter from behind another pile of documents.

  “I’m sorry about the chaos,” he said, “our receptionist is off sick at the moment.” He cleared a space. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, I am looking for a solicitor to take on a domestic violence case. I want a divorce!”

  “Oh, well, er, I can’t take you on, I’m afraid.” He walked backwards, then, turning, he gestured for me to follow him. “But you might want to talk to Mr Williams here.” He pointed into another dingy office. I peered carefully into the room, wondering if I was about to fall into some black hole.

  A hand appeared and was thrust towards me. He led the way to his office. “Hello, my name is Peter Williams. Can I help?”

  He was a young man, probably around twenty-five, clean looking, glasses, neatly set wavy hair, smartly dressed, very well spoken. I had my doubts: was he too young? Yet I felt comforted by his sharp approach.

  “Hello, my name is Mary. I will get straight to the point. I have a violent relationship and I want a divorce. Now I warn you that my husband is a big man; he will come round to your office and may attempt to intimidate you. He has beaten me up on a number of occasions and…”

  He put his hand up as if to stop the traffic.

  I stopped; he stopped leaning backward; I turne
d; he turned, swinging his chair to face me. He put his hands down and clasped them before speaking.

  “It’s okay. Get the gist.” He frowned, then nodded.

  “Will you take it on?”

  “Yes of course I will, no problem.”

  “What about the violence? He may come round, pace up and down outside, come in and threaten you. I have had one solicitor tell me that he thought that Billy was ‘a red rag to a bull’, and said that he didn’t want to do anything that might upset him. Now can you deal with that?” I stood in front of his desk, ready to leave.

  “Mary, I might be young but I do not take fright. We have a police force, and that is what they do. I have the law and that is what I do. I want to make a name for myself and in order to that, I need a cause to champion, and yours sounds good to me.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Please do not concern yourself on my account. I have a very experienced assistant who will pick you up and take you to court if necessary. You just leave that to me. I simply call the police if we have any problems.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of the violence—he’s a big man?”

  “I will deal with that, it’s not your worry. He will not have any effect on me and I can assure you that he will not intimidate me. My assistant, Andrew, will make sure that no harm will come to you, and rest assured, nothing will prevent you from getting your case heard.”

  “All right. You give me confidence that we can work together—let’s do it.”

  “Now will you sit down, and I will take some details.”

  “Thank you.” I smiled at him. “I look forward to working with you.”

  I shook his hand. It was like his manner—firm, dry and straight. I sat down.

  Shortly after the meeting I moved out of the main bedroom and slept in Lindsay’s room from that night. Billy received a letter telling him that his wife had petitioned for divorce on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour.

  He didn’t say anything, just grunted, then he went out, and I went off to bed without him.

  Billy was towering over my bed in the middle of the night, swaying from side to side and the light blinding me. He was spitting his words and slurring his speech, trying to say something, but I found it difficult to understand what, exactly, and it took a few minutes to adjust my focus. Lindsay didn’t wake, so I quietly got up. Colin continued to sleep in the other room, undisturbed as far as I knew.

  “I’ve taken thirty-five paracetamol tablets, with five cans of lager and I cannot do this anymore.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it?” I rested on my elbows thinking what a pathetic prat, wondering how on earth I had married this excuse for a man.

  “I would rather kill Lindsay than let you have her,” he said, now lurching down the stairs. ”I’m gonna take her back to Scotland wi’ me, then when I come back—you’ve heard of the Hungerford Massacre!”

  In 1987, a man walked down the high street of a little town in Berkshire, called Hungerford. He shot sixteen people in his path, including his own mother, before finally killing himself.

  I felt a mixture of anger and pity for him, and it reminded me how I had felt about my father. My childhood amounted to full blown coping strategy, and that’s exactly how I dealt with him. I got up and quickly got dressed and went downstairs, chasing after him as he lurched out of the front door.

  “So what have you taken?”

  “Thirty-five paracetamol and cans of lager.”

  I believed the cans of lager, but wasn’t sure about all the paracetamol that he had taken. He always said thirty-five whenever he couldn’t think of a good number; still, I couldn’t take a chance and as he stumbled out of the house, he fell face down in the snow while I went back in, and dialled for the police and an ambulance.

  Five minutes later, arriving in a cacophony of flashing lights, they were dragging Billy off in the early hours of the morning amongst the hoard of twitching net curtains now flapping in the background; however, he wouldn’t go with the ambulance crew and came back into the kitchen. He showed the Divorce Petition to the policeman and moaned about it to him.

  “She’s taking my little girl away and I won’t be able to see her,” he muttered amongst his drunken tears. “I would rather kill her than let her have her!”

  “Have you taken any tablets?” the ambulance man asked.

  “Yes—Paracetamol.”

  “How many?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Thirty five,“ I volunteered. “Washed them down with beer, though I don’t believe that he took that many.”

  “Okay, thank you madam.”

  The policeman pulled Billy to one side and spoke to him. He listened patiently, and although resistant, Billy was eventually persuaded to go to hospital.

  In the meantime my attention was distracted by the sight of my three-year-old. Lindsay. Woken by the shouting, she stood in her little pink pyjamas, looking on, puzzled and helpless, amidst the chaos. Colin wandered down the stairs and stood next to Lindsay.

  For a brief moment I saw another image, that of myself standing there as a child; an onlooker, as if the images were so close in my imagination, that somehow my brain had selected the wrong one. I was horrified.

  Covering my face, I felt this sudden deep gut-wrenching sadness grab me by the throat. The trauma of my childhood; my wooden leg was upon me. Was I creating a repeat of my own childhood destiny, I wondered?

  Wandering back into the kitchen, the young officer started to speak to me. He sent Colin to take Lindsay upstairs out of the way and then turned to me. I spoke first. I was worried that he was going to tell me off in some way.

  “I’m sorry—I will have to stop the divorce action! I can’t risk it—you don’t know what Billy is like when he’s all fired up. I can’t have him harming my little girl.”

  “You mustn’t be upsetting yourself.” He spoke softly, seeking out my eyes. “You must keep in mind that you meant to go through with a divorce when you handed him the letter.” He waited for me.

  I nodded.

  “Now this is emotional blackmail and I’ve seen many cases. Don’t you take it to heart, love. If you want a divorce, you just carry on with it. Go on—don’t let this stop you. Have the strength to go through with it; don’t listen to emotional manipulation.”

  “You think I should carry on with the divorce?”

  “I do,” he said. “If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for the kids.” He was very precise.

  “Thanks—that’s really helpful. I feel better about it already.”

  He strengthened my resolve to end this nightmare, for myself, Colin and Lindsay.

  Billy remained in hospital for three days whilst they pumped his stomach. If he had taken thirty-five paracetamol as he claimed, then he would have been dead, and the fact that he wasn’t gave me a much greater strength to see this situation through. He was due to see a psychiatrist, but he discharged himself before the appointment and came home.

  He started to do things differently and claimed the main bedroom as his, using it like a lodger, staying in there all day and night, only leaving to pick up more cans of lager. I slept in Lindsay’s room and she slept on a little red single foam bed. She didn’t mind and thought that it was quite nice to have me sleeping with her.

  We all chugged along for a week or two. When I say chugged, I mean on tenterhooks, wondering what he was going to do next. Billy started a new game.

  Colin earned twenty pounds a week from his part time jobs, having just been promoted to the sales office. He had his own bedroom at the front of the house. He tried to keep himself out of the arguments and tensions, trying to stay in his own world to some extent. He paid me a little for his housekeeping, the rest of the money he kept for himself, and in return, I let him do pretty much what he wanted most of the time. With the small income from Colin and my child benefit, which I saved for emergencies, I could manage.

  As Colin came home from work, Billy stood at the door and dema
nded Colin’s wages. Then he rang Social Security and tried to stop me from getting my child allowance. He wasn’t giving me any money himself, and now, I guess, he thought that he could starve me out.

  Right, I thought, if there was one thing I was equipped to deal with, it was hunger. I had done it before and I could do it again. If he thought he could starve me out, then he had picked the wrong person. I was more than capable of living with bread and jam.

  I started to get very much stronger. I raised myself up and on this day, I made a decision. There was no turning back and no matter what Billy did, I would be there, stronger and smarter, until I had finally got rid of this man. I had declared outright war.

  He started to record my voice. He would play with Lindsay at bedtime, or bath nights and stop her from cooperating, until I would get fed up with it and shout at her. Suddenly he would start recording my shouting at Lindsay so that he could prove that I was a bad mother and obtain custody.

  I would wake up in the nights, and hear my voice booming out over the house. He was playing tapes of the conversations I had during the day. When all this didn’t work he came home drunk, muttering about taking Lindsay, and threatening me with all sorts of rants about what he was going to do to me. I worried about it, but thought it was all words, until one night it wasn’t.

  The bedroom door exploded, scattering splinters of wood over the floor. He burst in, stood over me, swaying from side to side like a sailor in a storm as I lay cowering beneath him in my bed. For a split second I was so frightened that I couldn’t move, as if my body had suffered a seizure. He was shouting.

  “You’ll never have her! I would rather take Lindsay back to Scotland wi’ me and kill ’er, than give her up to you!”