The Ice is Singing (10 page)

Days of order, days of grace, days of measured contentment. I thought they would come again. Days that I could control.

* * *

Days that I could control. The worst and blackest day, when I had to leave them. Gareth’s ultimatum; you will come away with me for a weekend, you will leave Ruth and Vi
with your mother. We haven’t had a single night without them since Ruth was born – it’s ridiculous. They’re not the only people in the world, you know.

He was jealous. Once I recognized this I despised him for it. How typical of a man to be jealous of his children, instead of lavishing all love upon them and basking in the tenfold warmth they
return. How silly and possessive of him to insist on his wife’s individual attention.

But having said that the children would miss us, would keep Mum awake at night, would be unsettled – what other reason or excuse could I give for not going? To say I couldn’t bear to
leave them for forty-eight hours would have sounded ridiculous, even to my ears.

He booked a hotel in the Cotswolds. I began to pray that they would be ill, so I couldn’t leave them. Vi was just weaned, she must have been nine months. I lay awake at night agonizing
about it. I had never left them, not for so much as an afternoon – except for leaving Ruth while I gave birth to Viola – and she was excited enough about the idea of the new baby not to
be too upset by that. The contortion in my brain, of course, was that it was entirely ludicrous not to want to go; that I was pathetic, laughable. Where was my healthy selfishness?

It was in loving my children. Selfishly, I wanted to be with them. If Gareth had offered to go away on his own I would have been thoroughly relieved. I was ashamed. I talked enthusiastically
about all the things we would do during our great escape; about the luxury of not being woken at 4 a.m., about the joys of an uninterrupted dinner. And in Gareth’s every word of eager
anticipation I saw betrayal of the children, how little he cared for them.

During the week before, I shopped as if preparing for a siege: bought stocks of disposable nappies and baby bubble bath, then new pins and plastic pants in case Mum couldn’t do
disposables, jars of juice and first-stage baby goo for Vi, sweets and treats and special colouring books to keep Ruth happy. I washed and ironed every article of clothing they possessed, while
they ran about in old and outgrown garments; I bought a set of new bottles for Vi so that I could leave enough sterilized for the whole weekend. I agonized over which toys to pack, I planned and
foresaw needs and dangers until my head ached with the pressure.

They were both healthy. My mother was looking forward to having them. On Friday morning there was no escape. I knew from the terror in my mind and the looseness in my bowels that if I left them
they would almost certainly die. And yet I was going to leave them. Because I was too ashamed of myself to stand up to Gareth and tell him I didn’t want to go. By my own actions I was
bringing catastrophe on myself.

At lunchtime I bundled a packet of nappies and a change of clothes each into a plastic bag, put it and the children in the car, took them round and unceremoniously dumped them on Mum. I left
without kissing them goodbye. I ran back to the car and went to collect Gareth from work, so we could set off early on our wonderful second honeymoon weekend. Since leaving them was tantamount to
condemning them to death, what hypocrisy to pretend concern, and ease my conscience with provision of bubble bath, favourite toys, and puréed beef broth.

That was the first, and the worst. But I never learnt to leave them graciously. I could never bear it. I always had to dump them and run.

What sort of a mother?

* * *

Sun. 23

And more recently, Marion? On the more recent occasion of you leaving your children, your younger children, your baby twins – did you make any provision for their welfare
in your absence?

It was not the same. And I did make provision. Sensible Sarah was in the bath, the twins sleeping in their cots. After her bath she would come down to watch News at Ten with me, and find my note
and the money on the kitchen table. She came from Edinburgh to help me with the twins; she had come to shoulder the very responsibility I left her with. The babies are not abandoned, they are left
with a responsible aunt, better able to care for them and look after them than I.

I try to imagine them and I can’t. I try to imagine them crying, but I can’t see their faces – or decide which one I’d be looking at. I try to confront the damage I may
have done to them; the gaping insecurity opened up under their scarcely balancing baby feet. I consider how I may have scarred the new lives entrusted to me.

But I hardly can. They are shadowy. I have never been able to see them. And by leaving them, I relinquished control.

With Ruth and Vi I couldn’t bear to. It was like handing over control of my own body, letting someone else eat and sleep and breathe for me. I knew how to do every little thing for them,
down to the smallest detail; how they should be got up and washed in the morning, how potted and dressed, how breakfasted and groomed. Each detail of their daily routine was as clear in my head as
my own, and the notion of someone else doing it – of any of it being done differently – appalled me. I remember Sunday mornings when Gareth offered me a lie-in, and I lay fretfully in
bed listening to him forgetting to clean their teeth and not knowing which drawer the clean socks were in, until I came to dread Sunday more than any other day of the week. Once or twice I stupidly
got up and barged in to help. He was furious.

I controlled them. I owned them. Their attention was mine to dispose. How I showed them – everything. Look at the doggy / horse / pretty flower / trees in the wind / sun on the sea / boy
in the book / girl on the bicycle. Listen to the fire engine, burglar-alarm, ice-cream van. Smell the roses, shoe polish, niffy cheese. Look listen learn say; they were mine to give the world to
and the world was mine to give them.

When Ruth was three I took her to a mothers and toddlers group. Vi was asleep in her pram. It was raining, and the church annexe we were in echoed with the pattering of rain on roof and windows;
was full of the smells of floor polish and damp hair and old wood. For the first ten minutes Ruth clung to my knees, then gradually she became interested in the toys in the hall. There were small
bikes and dolls’ prams, a wooden climbing frame and slide. I watched her investigate the climbing frame; standing staring at the children on it, then plucking up courage to test it with an
arm and a foot. I was bursting with pride – she looked so compact and perfect, held her back so beautifully straight, and gazed with such absorbed interest at the world around her – I
couldn’t help thinking she must be a magnet for all attention in the room. As I watched her wander from toy to toy – always slightly wary of the other children, slightly reserved,
exploring – the pride and pleasure I took in her swelled to bursting point and I could hardly stop myself from crying. She was on her own there. Following her own interests, having her
attention caught by varying objects and incidents, undirected by me. That sense of her as separate – and yet as connected to me as my own limbs – was unbearably poignant. Like being in
love, yes, piercing like being in love, and seeing the other person so magical so beautiful so perfectly close to your heart’s desire – and so separate. So able to walk away, at any
time.

Because I was in love with Gareth and had that heart-rending sense of his separateness from me, I married him. It’s why grandparents have their dressers clogged with photographs of babies
and weddings. Real children grow up, real marriages crumble.

A story.

What Sort of a Mother

He’s sleeping. His quick shallow breaths fill the air like fluttering insects above the bed. She always leaves the lamp on till she comes to bed, because he’s scared
of the dark. Standing by the bed she looks down at him. His face is tilted up on the pillow, his lips parted to suck in the air. His big face is like a baby’s.

The fat woman undresses methodically, padding quietly about the room. She pulls on a long flannel nightdress. She likes getting in bed with him. He’s hot. Not sweaty: hot and dry as an
oven-baked potato, with smooth skin. He sleeps deep; doesn’t even stir when she crawls in beside him. His quick breaths just raise his ribs beneath her arm. As she settles and quietens, she
falls into the old pattern, one breath to two of his, one breath to two of his. To the rhythmic pull of their joint breaths she launches out into his sea of sleep.

She’s never slept so well as with him. The others came in bed when they were little, but they tossed and turned, or pulled her hair. When they were babies she’d fall asleep slumped
over Donna or Wayne or Tracey on her tit and force herself awake in a panic, scared to death she’d smothered them: find them curled like fat little leeches further down the bed, and her
half-full tit still dripping for them.

And men – none of them was so good, for sleeping. Men were noisy and smelt bad; snoring and farting, turning their bulks in stiff heavy movements that jarred her sleep, knocking against
her – foreign bodies. Their breath stank. Gary turned and flowed with her like he was still part of her own body – abandoned and floppy in his sleep as a little child. The sun-heat of
him pervaded her aching, work-horse body.

The woman in the dock was short and puffy with ill-health. She also smelt badly – mixed body and vegetable odours – sweat, stale urine, cooking fat, and a sourish tang familiar to
the escorting warders: fear.

Leonie Doyle. Forty-one. Mother of six. From flat 213, Christie’s Tower, Blackhill Estate. Charged with the murder of her youngest son. She watched the court with a stupid, vacant
expression, and had to be asked several questions twice. The medical report stated that she was of average intelligence, but suffering from severe depression. It was at this early stage in the
trial that the murder charge was dropped, and replaced with a charge of manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility. In court she never spoke more than five words together; in the safety of
a cell, she talked freely to her social worker, whom she had known for fourteen years.

Leonie Doyle had lived on Blackhill Estate since it was built in 1961. She had been seven months gone with Donna, when they offered her and Des a twelfth-floor flat. Ten years later she was
living in a bigger, fifth-floor flat, with her six kids and no Des. Good riddance, as far as Leonie was concerned. He was rough when he’d been drinking, and one time he broke her arm. That
was when she was expecting Gary, the youngest. A few months after the kid was born he left. The Social traced him to Blackpool, trying to get maintenance out of him, but then even they lost track
of him. He never had any money anyway. He drank it all. She was better off without him.

Her babies were all born perfect. Not even a birthmark on them, she was proud of that. Gary didn’t get ill till he was nearly one.

Something’s wrong. It’s light. It shouldn’t be light. He’s never slept through – till eight o’clock? No. They’re yelling and
screaming next door, enough to wake the dead. That’s how it starts, I remember. He’s lying in the bottom of his cot, lips blue, back arched. It’s that what woke me, not the
screaming,
the light. And that little gasp of his. His eyes’re rolled up till the pupils’re nearly out of sight. I’m fumbling, letting the cotside down, quick, reaching
for him – he moves. He’s curling. Crisping. Like a strip of bacon under the grill. I’ll never not see that again. Crisping. When I wake nights I see it. I see it when I look in
his face sometimes. His little body crisping with pain. Don’t talk to me about God.

Unlike many babies, Gary did not die from the acute meningitis he suffered at the age of eleven months. The infection responded to treatment, and after three weeks Leonie was
told she could fetch him home. She had to take Darren and Tracey (the others were at school) and they ran around the consultant’s room screaming, while he explained to Leonie that Gary had
suffered a certain amount of irreversible brain damage, due to lack of oxygen during the convulsions.

He’s a little baby again now. His mouth’s gone slack, he’s dribbling again. He’s no more better than I am, he’s going backwards. He was
crawling three months ago. Look at him now. As if I haven’t got enough to do. And he feels different. Heavier; he’s not helping himself. Poor little sod. It’d be better if
he’d’ve died.

Gradually she stopped noticing the difference. He was just the youngest – always, by a long way, the youngest. When they started taking him to that special school by taxi
it was all right; for the first time, they were all off her hands during the day. There was time to sweep the floor, wash up, stuff a couple of bin liners with dirty washing and set off for the
launderette where there were other women to talk to, and no sense of guilt in taking the weight off her feet for an hour while the wet clothes slopped round and round in a grey froth on the other
side of the thick glass.

Days and nights and days and nights of them getting older, getting out from underfoot. Fewer of them in her bed at night, though no extra sleep because they still fought morning, noon and night,
scrapping and yelling and breaking the furniture, shrieking and giggling in their bedrooms till the small hours – or out with the other kids, running up and down the walkways and dropping
things off, trapping each other in the lifts, getting stoned on glue and cider, fighting. They ran wild. She didn’t want them to, didn’t intend it – but there were too many of
them, and as each one grew older she stopped being the person that mattered and became simply the drudge – the one that brought food into the flat that could be taken from the cupboard,
fridge or table, the one that locked the door at night and paid the telly man and the club for clothes. She simply was the flat – a place to hide or sleep. And she was money, either by asking
or by theft.

Gary was the only one who didn’t get older. Didn’t stop needing her. Didn’t stop smiling at her and hugging her and creeping into her bed at night. When it got to the stage of
them all being out with the gangs of other kids on the estate, she and Gary had the flat to themselves. She’d cook a tea for him and herself – the others came and went as they pleased,
grabbing food when they fancied it or begging money for pies and chips.