by Liz Nugent
For the first time, I saw Hannah tearful. I felt a surge of power. ‘Yes, but that’s her money. She’s helping us out until Daniel can get established, that’s all.’
‘Well, I’m sure she can help me out too. Don’t worry, I’m not looking for a fortune. Just a monthly payment, into my post-office account. Two hundred pounds a month. You can tell her you had to give the nanny a raise.’
A look of relief swept over her, and I knew that she’d thought I was going to ask for thousands. I am not greedy though. I only wanted to fund my private affair.
‘We don’t have a bloody nanny any more. Why do you think I look like this?’ She was bare-faced and her hair showed an inch of dark roots. Her jeans bore a stain that had dried in and crusted. Cornflakes, perhaps.
‘I don’t care. It’s not a lot of money to you, or Mummy. I’m sure you can manage it. For now though, I’d like to have whatever is in your purse, please.’ I was thoroughly enjoying myself.
‘Delia, for God’s sake, you think I won’t report you to the police as soon as you leave?’
I picked up the handbag that was hanging over the back of the chair.
‘I know you won’t. Remember, I have nothing to lose. You have all this.’ I waved my hand around. There was forty-five pounds and some change in her purse. I took it all. She didn’t try to stop me. I left a piece of paper with my post-office account details on the kitchen table. ‘Next week, please. Two hundred pounds. I’m taking this as a sign of your good faith. Have a nice day.’
‘I always knew I was dealing with a fucking peasant. I was right all along,’ she screamed at me as I walked into the hall, dragging my muddy boots through her thick-pile carpet. I slammed the front door and tasted victory, power and freedom.
I caught the train to Brighton and walked the pier, reviving myself in the salt air. Then I sat in a newly opened wine bar and had a long boozy lunch. A group of businessmen invited me into their company, but I shunned them as I flicked through the glossy magazines I’d bought. I had another two glasses of wine on the train back. I bought a bottle from the off-licence on my way home. Normally, I was a solid drinker: it took a lot to get me drunk. But that day, I drank a lot.
When I got to the flat, Chiara and James were waiting outside in the cold. I joined them on the doorstep. I hugged her, thanking her profusely. But she shrugged me off.
‘You are drunk. You should not be caring for a child.’
‘I agree completely,’ I said.
‘We went to cinema to see the Teenage Turtles, so he has not had his dinner. He won a gold star for his drawing today. He is exceptional boy.’ She kissed James and walked away. He waved at her, grinning and blowing kisses, until she disappeared around a corner.
I let us into the flat. James was excited, no doubt full of fizzy drinks and sweets that Chiara had fed him. He wanted me to look at his prize-winning scribble, but I was trying to fit the corkscrew into the bottle and ignored him. I poured myself another glass and turned on the television in the sitting room so that he could watch cartoons. I set about preparing dinner.
My memory grows fuzzy at this point. I was too tired and drunk to make much effort. I remember chopping potatoes clumsily and putting the pot of oil on to the electric ring to heat up. I went into the bedroom with my replenished glass and turned on the radio. Then I remember the sound of Peter shouting and pulling at me, and not being able to see anything. I remember something falling across my face and shoulder. I remember that I couldn’t breathe. I remember being outside in the open air, facing the sky, and being able to breathe again. I remember him screaming James’s name. I remember looking at the faces of neighbours who were crying and praying. I remember the sound of sirens. The strange thing is that I don’t remember physical pain, not that day. I remember being in the ambulance, and I remember another stretcher containing a mass of hot burning meat being pushed in alongside me. It was days before I realized that was James.
Chiara
I thought I would have had my own child. It is normal for woman.
I had been working in the family restaurant, in Rimini, good restaurant, top class, later take care of my mother and my father until they die, both demented in their last years.
My brother won a bursary at the Milan University, where he never came back. He stay there now, a retired professor of psychology. We live different lives. I do not know him, even with the letters and phone calls. He never got married as well. I think that, if I was a boy too, my parents would make me study more hard.
But the only thing they want from me is grandchildren. Neighbours and cousins have children, but I am busy for so many years, working all day long, taking care of my parents, keeping them company.
I had boyfriends but they are not always kind. When I fell in love, it was with a man who is married. He swear he will leave his wife. It never happen. Time went by. Twenty-two years after the beginning of my love story, I still was spinster with no children. My lover choose a younger woman.
I could no bear the betrayal. I go to his wife and I tell her everything. I hope he come back to me, but he went spend a week with the new young girl before accepted back with wife and children.
Now I was the bitch, the family-wrecker, someone to avoid. The mayor, a friend of my lover, raise the restaurant rent. My loyal customers eat somewhere else.
When my father died after some years, I sell the restaurant, to go travelling around. I hoped for romance, an encounter on a faraway beach, just like in the novels I reading.
I have been in pensiones, guest houses and B&Bs all over Europe. But nobody fell in love with me.
In two years I run out of money, but in London my English was good enough to sign up to a childminding agency, looking for a job as a live-in nanny. The woman who interview me said I am too old for that job. I had fifty years.
‘You need energy for the kids,’ she said, but I insisted: I have been fit for the job. As I was older, I was cheaper too. That’s why the Russells choose me.
I immediately like Peter. Delia seem just fine, but that woman no want her own child. I no understand why. James was the perfect boy. They had everything: a big house, good clothes, good furnitures. And the loveliest boy. Since when he was just a little baby she did no care of him. It was me to feed him, change his diapers, to watch him in the eyes. Peter say that Delia would get used to the boy: it was just a matter of time. Meanwhile I was get used to the boy, even if he wasn’t mine.
She kept doing nothing at home. As soon as she lost her big belly, she go out party until late. I no understand her husband allow her doing that. He was so in love with her. It was him to get the money home, but she was the boss in the house. He allow her to do whatever she wanted to. He try keep her happy. I realized that I should say nothing about Delia. I would be fired.
She was no cruel to me, but she prefer me and her child not exist. Sometimes, when she bored, she allow me to have lunch with her. Then she had been asking about my family, but she had no interest in me answering, switching the radio on. In the beginning, it was me doing the cooking, like in my family restaurant at home. I am very good cook. Then she start watching me and she start cook. Just because she was bored, I think.
The boy was my reason of life. For four years and half, it has been like James was my own child. We loved each other. Peter work a lot. When he back home he tried to spend time with his son, but it was usually bedtime. They rarely did something together, like a family. During weekends, Delia have been saying that the boy had exhausted her, and that it was right for him to spend time with his father. Then it was Peter to go out with him, to the park or for a milkshake.
I will never forget James’s first day of school. That little man, in all his buttoned-up uniform. Peter went to work early as usual. I had given for granted that Delia would have brought James to the school of St David’s. James had been nervous the night before, after I had spent weeks trying to reassure him that everything would have been fine, with new classmates and friends. He calmed dow
n, falling asleep while I was reading him a story. In the morning, I prepare the breakfast and I dressed him up, waiting for Delia to appear. I knocked her door. ‘Could you not bring him?’ she yelled, without even opening the door, without even getting out of the bed. I was glad. I worry about how she have managed the stress, how she react if James start crying. That day James was nothing less than a brave boy: the only sign of nervous, his hug to me on the classroom door, longer than usual. Delia did not even ask me how had it gone, back home. At least she went to take him from school, only to leave him to me and go back to watch the TV beyond a close door.
Then I had from Delia the notice of dismissal. She was as upset as me; I was struck by her distress, until I realize that what it was upsetting her was she had James from now on her own. The last week in the house I feel anxious for what could have happened to the boy. Only God knew how he would have been without me, and who would take care of him.
I could not help thinking of James, after I had to leave. I went to the St David’s: chatting with the other nannies, I came to know that the Russells must relocate to Cricklewood; James now was going to a state school. I do not care that he was in a worse school, now: I worry about his life at home.
I found an opportunity as nurse to an old war veteran, but my new home was close to the new James’s school. Sometimes, hiding, I have gone there to watch him playing in the courtyard. I want to talk to him. Sometimes I waited for the moment Delia went to take him. She always was the last of the parents. I could see how sad and upset he was when she arrived. She no even take his hand, walking ahead of him as he was a dog. I could not bear it.
Delia was happy of my proposal to have James with me for two afternoons in a week. I did not care of no pay. I just wanted to spend some time with him. Our secret. The last day I spend with him, James was happy. He had some friends at school, now, and he had made a drawing for me. I still have it. We went to the cinema, with me stare at his little face, lit by screen. I wish I could run away with him. I wanted him to be my child.
When I brought him back to Delia, she was completely drunk. She fall against the gate. We had to wait for her opening the door for half an hour. I should no have give him back to her.
Peter is right. I should have told him Delia was a bad wife and a bad mother.
Yesterday, I see a boy in park and he look like James much. I go talk to him and he smile, happy boy like James. I take his hand and we go walk. Then lady is scream at me. Police come and now I warn must not talk to children.
21
James survived. I was informed that my son’s scarring and physical deformity as a result of the fire were extensive. He faced a lifetime of surgeries and skin grafts. It might have been better if he had died. For all of us. We would have been able to move on.
When I became fully conscious and aware of my surroundings, a hospital counsellor came to see me. She told me that I mustn’t blame myself for what happened to my son. She said the important thing for me to do was to support him through what was going to be a very long and complex recuperation process. I looked at her and wondered who was going to support me through my recovery.
I endured the daily agonizing undressing and redressing of my face, neck and right shoulder with lanolin cream, gauze and bandages. Surgery was not an option for me. The polyester curtain in our bedroom had fallen in flames on to my head and welded to my skin. The flesh was red raw, and exposure to the air was excruciating. My eyelid drooped on one side, and the right corner of my mouth turned downwards. Muscles in my neck and shoulder had contracted, and I needed daily physiotherapy to stretch those muscles out again so that I could hold my head up. The painkillers barely took the edge off. A nurse offered me a mirror in those early days, but I declined. While I knew the damage was bad, I did not have to see it.
As it happened, I did not see James after that first day in the hospital because the truth came out about everything while I was heavily sedated. Apparently, Chiara had seen the fire on the television news and rushed to the hospital to visit James. She was inconsolable and blamed herself. She told Peter everything – that I had never cared for James when she had lived with us and that she had continued to see him twice weekly for the last two years with my consent. She told him I was drunk when I got home that day. Peter was furious with her for keeping all of this from him. He banned her from ever seeing James again and stopped her from coming to the hospital, but not before she had found me in my ward and laid vicious blows on to my bandaged head. I have a vague recollection of her being escorted from the hospital by burly security guards, and I heard her screams echoing down the corridor as all the other patients and visitors in my ward shouted abuse at her.
That afternoon of the fire, Daniel had rung Peter at work, demanding to know what I was doing, blackmailing his wife. Peter didn’t know what he was talking about. He thought it must have been some kind of joke and promised to talk to me, but our home was on fire when he got there. He rescued his wife first and then went back into the flames to find his son. The other occupants of the building had not been in at the time. Peter’s hands were burned and he suffered from smoke inhalation, but he only spent one night in hospital. The last time I spoke to him, he told me that the biggest regret of his life was rescuing me first. He told me I deserved to be ugly. ‘What is wrong with you?’ he asked, tears in his eyes.
‘I’m sorry, it was an accident.’
‘You never cared about him. You haven’t even asked to see him. Your own son.’
I did not have the energy for histrionics, and I wasn’t even shocked by what Peter said next. ‘We can’t go on. I’m divorcing you. I’ll be looking for sole custody of James, though I don’t imagine you’ll put up a fight about that. You’re on your own, Delia. You’ll be better off that way.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t believe you. Do yourself a favour and don’t get involved with anyone again. You’ll only end up hurting them, and yourself in the end.’
He turned and walked away.
My way of coping was not to think about it at all. I had my own scars to deal with. The right-hand side of my face was badly damaged, and it would have been worse apparently if Peter hadn’t rescued me so quickly. That was the end of my perfect beauty, my marriage, my home and my London life. I was exposed. Once the prettiness had been seared from my face, everyone could see the warped and ugly truth.
Peter’s mother, Elizabeth, sat by my bed one afternoon and warned me in tones of pure steel that if I ever tried to talk to her sons or my son again, she would kill me herself. Declan Russell came and stood at the end of my bed for ten minutes one day. He said nothing, just looked at me with pure hatred in his eyes. Eventually he spat into what was left of my face. Moira did not come. Isabelle did not come, though I didn’t expect her to. If Hannah had told her about my visit, she must have guessed that she might be my next target. None of the girls from the salon came. No surprise there.
As the rumours of what had happened began to spread throughout the hospital, I found that the curtains were pulled around my bed by other patients and staff. Their attempts to isolate me didn’t bother me at all. Word of my drunkenness and my boy’s horrific injuries had got out. James had been transferred to Great Ormond Street. My bed was beside a window overlooking rooftops and car parks and factories, but I pretended that it was the sea out there.
When the doctor removed the dressing for the final time, and I saw myself in the mirror, I could not speak. It was not me in the mirror. I heard him saying that the scarring would fade over time, but that the skin would always be somewhat puckered and warped on that side. He mentioned a surgeon in Edinburgh who specialized in cosmetic grafting, but said that surgery was prohibitively expensive and not available on the NHS. He said there was nothing more he could do for me, that the weeping sores would dry up over the coming weeks and that I should continue to see a counsellor and try to get used to my new appearance. All the time he spoke to me, he addressed the ‘good’ side of my face
, ashamed, I think, of his failure to make anything of the bad side.
On the day of my discharge from hospital seven weeks after the fire, I received the salvaged contents of a wardrobe in a large suitcase and a letter from Peter’s solicitor via a courier, saying that from now on all communication was to be fielded through her, Anna Fox. Peter would begin divorce proceedings immediately but would honour his legal obligations to me so I should let her know where I was residing. She strongly advised that under no circumstances should I try to make contact with him or my son again if I wanted maintenance payments to continue, that legal proceedings could be brought against me for child neglect and reckless endangerment if I defied the advice. The letter contained a cheque for eight hundred pounds ‘for a fresh start’.
I was twenty-five years old, single, friendless, homeless, orphaned, childless, mutilated and, according to the hospital counsellors who had come to see me, an alcoholic. But I was free. My beauty had always mattered to other people. I didn’t think it meant a great deal to me. Not then.
The day I left the hospital in May 1991, I cashed Peter’s cheque and went to Heathrow Airport. I purchased some toiletries and ordered a glass of wine at the bar. I sat with it in front of me and resisted the urge to take a single sip. I was never going to drink alcohol again. Shop assistants and wait staff who approached me, smiling, looked away quickly when they saw the bad side, unable to disguise their dismay. My hair was cut in a fashionable short bob, not long enough to hide behind. Young men ignored me, and two of them made joking comments about the Elephant Man within my earshot. I was not bothered by them, not at that point. I left the bar and bought a wide-brimmed sun hat.
Part II
*
22
When I flew into Nice on the 19th of May 1991, my one plan was to go back to Villefranche and to get into the sea, but it was only on the flight that I read the fat folder of medical notes the nurses had given me. There were dire warnings about exposure to sunlight because my skin had been so damaged, and further alarms about swimming in pools and in the sea. I would be prone to infections, it said, and should be extremely careful about hygiene and disinfectant. The damage to my neck and shoulder had already healed fairly well, and I had the full range of movement back. My face, though, was a mess. I soon realized that things that had been so easy before were now difficult. My face had been my passport, my access to everywhere. When I was beautiful, people went out of their way to help me. Now that I was damaged, they either avoided me, stared at me or pretended not to see me at all. Also within the folder were leaflets about alcoholism and contact numbers for AA meetings in London. No good to me here, and besides, I was not an alcoholic. I had been bored.
