Postcards From Berlin

by Margaret Leroy

  “I can’t do this,” says Daisy.

  The bell goes. There’s a flurry at the gate, a sudden urgency, the late ones rushing in, hair and schoolbags flying. Suddenly, I breathe out: I can’t do this either. I don’t know what possessed me, why it seemed so necessary to put her through all this. I bend down, put my arms around her.

  “Let’s go home.”

  There’s a huge sense of relief in giving in: then, stitched into the relief, a slender thread of regret, a feeling that I have failed, that we got this close, that she is dressed and here at the gate, that maybe I should have pushed a little harder.

  “We’ll crack this,” I tell her, as we drive home through traffic that’s thinning now school has started. “We’ll solve it. We’ll get there. I promise.”

  I think how often I have told her this. She doesn’t say anything.

  At home, she goes upstairs to change into her pajamas, and I unpack her schoolbag and throw her lunch away. I take the matchbox out of her bag and put it back on the dresser. There seems no sense in keeping it: The seed and the paper clip and the feather have no meaning apart from the purpose for which they were collected, but I feel a thin scratch of psychic pain at the thought of just discarding them. I open up the box. The petal has the faintest flower scent, but it’s freckled with brown already.

  I take Daisy a hot-water bottle and a drink of water. She’s sitting up in bed. Her room is tidy because she doesn’t play anymore, all her Lego and plastic animals neatly in their boxes. It looks dull in the harsh April light, which seeks out all the dust and the flaws in things.

  “Mum, I want …” She swallows. “Mum, give me …” There’s a kind of fog in her face.

  “What is it, Daisy?”

  “I put him down here,” she says. Her eyes are clouded. “I know I did.… Mum, I can’t remember what he’s called.”

  A thin, clear shaft of fear goes through me.

  “You mean Hannibal?”

  “Hannibal,” she says. “Oh. I couldn’t remember.” She’s troubled. “Sometimes I can’t remember the words for things.”

  I turn from her, looking round the room, looking for Hannibal: hiding my fear from her, pushing it away.

  Hannibal has fallen under the bed.

  “There. I’ve got him. I bet he was lonely down there.” My words, cheerful, unreal, seem to hang in the air between us.

  I turn on her television and leave her.

  The kitchen is messy with the remains of breakfast. I sit at the table and leave it all as it is. Dread washes through me like some bitter fluid; it’s in my mouth, I can taste it on my tongue. Things come into my head: BSE, cancer, leukemia, terrible things. When I was at nursery school, one of the helpers, a woman in her forties, had a brain tumor. She became rather quiet and fiddled too much with her glasses and had several minor car accidents and once or twice she fainted. By the time they found the tumor, there was nothing they could do. I try to remember if she used to forget things. And BSE — what are the early symptoms of BSE? Everything seems to start with depression, withdrawal, a difficulty in thinking, an ill-formed sense of something being profoundly wrong. My pulse races; my stomach turns to water. This is one of the worst times — as I sit in my bleak kitchen in the hard spring light, all the dribbles of spilled milk and crescents of burned toast on the table, and outside the spring wind and the silver birch holding the white of the sky in the nets of its branches — when I start to think the very worst things, and there’s no help anywhere.

  I find that I am praying. Mouthing the words like a child in school assembly. Or maybe not praying, exactly: certainly not asking reverently or politely. But arguing with God, demanding, railing. Do something; help us. If you do by chance exist, which I very much doubt, why won’t you help us? What about that thing it says in the Bible? If you ask for bread you will not be given a stone. I’m asking, God. Just now I could do with some bread.

  I’m whispering the words into the stillness of the kitchen. But my voice is swallowed up by the silence as though I never spoke.

  The ring of the phone makes me jump. It enters my mind that it must be the school secretary: I haven’t rung her yet to say that Daisy is off again. I don’t know why she’s bothering me, when she surely must know what’s wrong. I almost don’t answer it.

  “Catriona?”

  A man’s voice. It’s familiar, but I can’t place it, I feel a slight warmth of comfort, without knowing why.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Fergal.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “From the school gate. Remember? We met at your carol-singing party?”

  “I know who you are.”

  It sounds a bit abrupt: I worry he’ll think he’s upset me.

  There’s silence for a moment, as if he’s working something out.

  “I’ve wanted to say this for ages,” he says. “But I’m sorry if I alarmed you with all that stuff about The Poplars.”

  There’s such warmth in his voice. I want to wrap it round me like a blanket.

  “That’s OK,” I tell him. “It was just a bit of a shock.”

  “When I saw you at the gate today, I thought I might ring.”

  “That’s sweet of you.”

  Another silence. I can sense his uncertainty.

  “Are you OK?” he asks then. “You don’t sound OK to me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  His warmth loosens something inside me: There’s a sob in my voice.

  “It’s Daisy?” he says.

  “I’m so scared.” I find that I am crying. I don’t know if he can hear it over the phone. “She’s started forgetting things. What does that mean — forgetting? I keep thinking such terrible things.”

  “Of course you do,” he says. “Anyone would. That doesn’t mean you’re right about those things.”

  His voice is level, soothing; he takes me to a safer, gentler place. Somehow, talking to him, I start to feel that maybe I’ve been hysterical, even imagine, for a glimmer of a moment, that one day we will be through this, through to the other side, that this will all be something that has happened, part of our history.

  Immediately, I am stronger, clearer, seeing a way forward. “I know what we need to do, really,” I tell him. “This doctor we’ve been seeing — he’s just no help at all. I guess we need to see someone different. I need to go back to our GP and ask for another referral.”

  “That sounds good,” he says.

  “I’m being pathetic. It’s just a bad day. I mean, most sick kids get well in the end, don’t they?”

  “Of course they do.”

  “I’m not like this usually. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he says. “Look, I mean what I said — about coming round. You could bring Daisy if she wants to come; Jamie’s got the world’s biggest collection of Nintendo.”

  “She’d love that.”

  It’s the end of the conversation, but I’d like to keep him there for a moment, fending off the fear.

  “Take care,” he says, and puts down the phone.

  Afterward, I sit in the silence for a moment, thinking how things used to be, how they might be again.

  There’s a photo on the mantelpiece: Daisy at four, in muddy yellow Wellingtons. I took it at the farm park. We had a season ticket and we often spent afternoons there in the lazy, easy year before she started school. There were geese on a pond, and goats and fabulous peacocks. Daisy loved the goats. I found them rather alarming, with their hard, insistent heads and the agitations that would ripple like a sudden wind through the group of them and the way they chewed your clothes. But she’d always want to pet them, to rake her fingers through the coarse hair of their coats; and she’d laugh when they pushed at her with their lean, bony flanks or when she fed them and they nibbled her fingers. Once we saw two kids that had just been born, shaky with newness but avidly sucking at their mother, the placenta spilled in the straw, glossy and marbled with color, inkily blue and magenta, lavish and shocking
. There was a smell of birth, a hot, rich smell of mingled hay and blood, both intimate and strange. Daisy went as close as she could, watching, intent, wide-eyed. That’s how she was then — always, from very little, fearless, curious: wanting to reach out to the world, to dig her fingers in. At two, she’d climb to the top of the climbing frame and let go with both hands and stand there, flushed and laughing, so I’d constantly have to be biting back the instinctive words of warning. And if she ran off, you’d always have to go after her; she’d never come back on her own.

  One day, when Daisy was three, Adrian and Gina took us for a picnic tea in the New Forest. There was a broad expanse of grass, like a great wide cloth thrown down, stretching almost as far as you could see. Animals grazed there, cows with blotched coats, and horses. It was one of the last days of summer, the sun low in the sky, laying golden light across the land. Gina had brought an elaborate picnic, with a checked cloth and different kinds of salad all neatly sliced and segregated in various plastic containers. I as usual had contributed the pudding, a raspberry cheesecake I’d made. Adrian, who didn’t much like picnics, had some white burgundy in a cooler, to compensate for the afternoon’s irritations, all the twigs and insects. We ate and drank, and sat around in the sunlight, talking vaguely, flicking through the papers. Sinead sprawled on the grass, intent on some teen ghost story; Daisy, in red dungarees, worked her way determinedly through a packet of ginger biscuits. Then, as if in response to some irrefutable inner prompting, she licked the crumbs from her fingers, and got up and started to run. Her long hair streamed behind her. I watched her, small and blond and intrepid, moving across the grass between the slow, laconic cows, the red of her dungarees singing out, and the brightness of her hair.

  I stood, rather reluctantly, warm with Adrian’s wine. “I guess I should go after her.”

  Gina looked up from her Sunday Telegraph. “Don’t worry, Catriona, they always come back,” she said.

  “Daisy doesn’t. She just keeps on going.”

  “No, dear, really, you don’t need to worry,” she said. “Little children never run far from their mothers. I read it in Penelope Leach.” She took off her glasses and polished them on her cardigan. “Richard always came back,” she added contentedly.

  Richard, hearing his name, put down the business news. “Just relax, darling.” He yawned. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

  “I guess so.” But I didn’t sit.

  “Any time now,” said Gina. “Just you see. She’ll turn round any moment.”

  We watched, but Daisy kept on going, diminishing in the distance, a little red dot with flying yellow hair.

  “I think I should get her,” I said.

  I walked at first, so as not to look overprotective — thinking how Gina might turn to Richard with a slight, knowing smile. But Daisy was moving rapidly, running straight into the sun. I called, but she ran on, not hearing, not aware of me, or choosing not to hear. I wasn’t gaining on her. I started to run. But the grass, which had looked so beguilingly smooth, was rough and uneven to run on, and the light was dazzling, meaningless dark shapes skimming across my sight. I ran faster: I was short of breath, my chest was tight from running. I had a sharp, urgent fear that I would never catch her, that I’d lose her there in the sunlight, that she’d disappear in the brightness and go away from me.

  And then suddenly I was almost on top of her. She heard me, put on a spurt of speed, let out a gleeful shriek. I flung myself at her, the momentum of my running carrying me forward so both of us toppled and fell. I remember how warm and solid she felt, and her smell of ginger biscuits and sun-warmed skin, and the sound of her breathy laughter. I’d like to be there again, everything restored.

  Chapter 19

  IT’s DR. CAREY AGAIN, in her crisp red jacket. But today she isn’t smiling.

  “I haven’t brought Daisy,” I tell her. “I thought it might be easier to talk without her here.”

  “Absolutely,” she says. “So how are things?”

  “She’s just the same,” I tell her. “We went to see Dr. McGuire.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I have a letter from him.”

  I know what I will say; I have rehearsed this.

  “I felt he didn’t listen. I’m really not at all happy with what he’s doing,” I tell her.

  Her eyes are on me. This doesn’t seern to surprise her.

  There’s a thick, hot smell in the surgery, as though the smell of an earlier patient, someone unwashed and anguished, has lingered on in here. A slice of sunlight falls across the floor.

  “I rather gathered you had a difficult time,” she says. She takes some typewritten sheets from Daisy’s notes and smoothes them with her fingers. I can tell that she’s read them already. “Is Daisy taking her medicine now?” she asks.

  “She can’t: It makes her sick.”

  “I think he’s worried she isn’t taking her medicine,” she says. “Most children of eight can take medicines.” There’s certainty in her voice. “If you’re firm. You need to give them a reward, like a sweet or a biscuit.”

  “That doesn’t work,” I tell her.

  There’s an edge to my voice, perhaps. A slight frown creases the skin between her eyes. She’s looking at the letter.

  “I need to tell you what it says in here,” she says. “I’m afraid he does mention …” She hesitates. “He does say that he thought you were quite demanding.”

  I hate that word: It triggers a brief, wild rage. I’m the girl in the ad, who could be rather demanding, the girl that nobody wanted, although she smiled and smiled.

  “That’s utterly unfair.”

  She gives me a wary look from under her eyelashes. She’s flushed as though she’s nervous.

  “And that you wouldn’t let Daisy speak for herself.”

  “She was really scared. She was trembling. Of course I would speak for her.”

  She shakes her head a little. “Children of eight are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves.”

  It’s happening again: The consultation is slipping away from me.

  “But doesn’t he say anything else — you know, about the illness?”

  She’s wearing a low-cut T-shirt under the jacket. There are weird red blotches on her neck and chest.

  “I was coming to that,” she says.

  She clears her throat, an abrupt, sharp sound, as though she’s making a speech.

  “Tell me, Mrs. Lydgate, have you ever heard of Munchausen syndrome by proxy?”

  “Kind of.” Magazines articles skimmed through come back to me. “You mean, like Beverly Allitt — that nurse who killed those children?”

  She moves her mouth a little, as though she’s trying to smile.

  “Well, it’s nothing like that usually,” she says. “It’s usually in the family.”

  “Like when people poison their children?”

  “There are some terribly disturbed mothers who do behave like that,” she says. “It’s a very strange condition. But there are also mothers who perhaps exaggerate their child’s illness, or do odd things like putting blood in the child’s urine sample, so the children end up having lots of unnecessary investigations.” She’s straightening Daisy’s notes between her hands, as though this is important, to have them exactly aligned with the edge of the desk. “Sometimes today we call it fabricated illness.”

  I shrug. “I’ve never heard of it,” I tell her. I don’t know why she’s saying all these things when time is short and we haven’t started talking about Daisy.

  Her throat moves as she swallows. “Dr. McGuire says that Munchausen syndrome by proxy is one diagnosis that he’s considering here.”

  For a moment the words don’t make any sense: as though she’s speaking in a different language. A kind of mirthless laughter starts to move through me.

  “This can’t be true.”

  She shakes her head; “I’m serious, Mrs. Lydgate. This is about you and Daisy.”

  I’m in a looking-glass world; this is all
so crazy, so bizarre. But I feel how my pulse is skittering in my wrist.

  “He thinks I’m like that? He thinks I’m making it up?”

  She moves her head; it might be yes or no. The blushing deepens on her throat, the blotches red as peonies.

  “It’s just one of the things they’re considering,” she says. She’s looking down at the letter, not meeting my eye.

  “But why on earth would I do that? Why would I make it up, or hurt her, or do any of those things?”

  “I guess he’s got to cover ail the bases. He’s got to consider everything,” she says. She’s careful, cautious, moving a word at a time. “When the illness is quite confusing, and the child doesn’t seem to be responding to treatment.”

  “But what do you think?” I’m pleading, trying to reach her. “You don’t believe him, do you?”

  She hesitates. Some anxiety or uncertainty flickers across her face. I sense the conflict in her, that there’s part of her that wants to stay on my side.

  “He is a very respected physician,” she says. “But, to be honest, I do think this is a rather strange suggestion. From everything I’ve read, we tend to find mothers who do these things will be people who’ve had very disturbed childhoods — really quite damaged people.” She smiles at me, a warm, inclusive smile, a smile that says how very undamaged we are, Dr. Carey and me, how very undisturbed our childhoods have plainly been. “Nothing like what we’re dealing with here.”

  I’m worried she will hear the thud of my heart.

  “As you know,” she goes on, “I do think that there may well be a psychological element to Daisy’s illness. But that’s a different thing.”

  The nurse in the treatment room next door is saying good-bye to someone. Her voice is vivid, cheerful; it resonates in the corridor. From the waiting room I hear a child shouting. It amazes me that all these ordinary things are still happening.

  “But I don’t understand,” I tell her. “Why do they do it? The women you were talking about, who make their children have all these investigations?”