Oh Dear Silvia (12 page)

‘But, Silv, surely it’s worth a big fat try, isn’t it? It’s a chance
to awaken your soul and call to your soulmate who will give you health and wellness. The journey isn’t outside you really, is it, Silv, it’s a journey into your inner self. You don’t even have to pack babe. It’s all good. Think of it like this. You know when people have twins and they use bits of one twin to fix a disease in the other one? Use their stems, I think, or something, it’s a bit like that darling. You are going to go and find your not-in-a-coma twin and she is going to inject all her consciousness into you and you will suck it dry and come back to us. The more I think about it Silv, the more real it becomes. Please, please try. Come on now, one big go.’

Jo resumes her position at the side of the bed, kisses her inert sister on the forehead, clasps her shoulders tight, and takes a deep breath. The deep breath is an example to Silvia of how to physically prepare herself. Jo holds her breath ’til she can do it no longer, ’til it hurts her lungs, and then she exhales in a powerful whoosh.

‘There. Right, ah, don’t think it’s working yet. Here we go Silv, one more big big try. And, breathe in, and concentrate, see those other dimensions, there’s the slipstream of molten thought lava. Jump in Silv! Come on! JUMP!’

Tension, tension, wait wait.

And exhale.

Nothing.

Bloody nothing.

Lazy stubborn cow.

Monday 11am

‘… Maybe I should never have told him. Just left him. Let it all get colder and colder until the whole feckin’ sham of a marriage was an iceberg and I could slide off it into the freezing water and swim away. Swim to you Sil. You were definitely the warmer waters. Perilous in your own way, but warmer than him. And anyway, I had no feckin’ choice by then, if I’m honest. It had to be you. BUT. It would maybe have been wiser … not to tell him everything …’

Cat leans back in the chair, takes a big deep breath, and stretches her arms high above her head. She scratches and sniffs. She is tired. She is trying to behave as normally as possible in her injured life, which has been stabbed and is currently on its knees.

Cat goes to work at the practice each day and sees her patients for the allotted fifteen minutes each, or longer if they
cry or have to get undressed. Some of her patients are so familiar and predictable that Cat often wonders whether she should just drive around and drop their various drugs in through their letter boxes, like a regular milk round. It would save time, and nothing would be different. Far more efficient really, then she would have time for the other, rarer patients who present with more unusual problems or with internal, emotional issues. She prefers that to flu and rashes and contraception. She likes the crunchy mental stuff, because that’s where she mainly lives, in her own head with all the noise and shambles that’s there. She gets that.

Normally though, she would be able to share difficult thought processes with Silvia. That’s the hardest part, being separated from Silvia’s calming and rigorous influence. They have shared so much in the last twelve years, and Cat likes how complicated and entwined they both now are. She even likes the ugly parts of it, of which there are many.

Her Connemara childhood of mountains and sea and nature might have seemed idyllic, yes, but the young Cat was over interested in being outdoors back then, because indoors wasn’t so lovely.

Cat has grown up with two bullies. Her father primarily and, copying his idol, her unkind elder brother. Unfortunately for Cat, both men saw her as a chance to flex their alpha muscles, and took every opportunity to demean her. Her mammy was a ghost of a woman, little more than a servant to her much older
husband. If Cat had any position of strength in the family, it was over her weak mammy, Bern. When Cat was lambasted by the men, all she knew how to do was the same to her mammy. At least that way, she wasn’t entirely at the bottom of the ladder. One rung up. Only one, but an important one. She didn’t like the knot in her belly when she was shouting at her mammy, but my God, it was infinitely preferable to how she felt when she was on the receiving end.

So Cat had come to understand how to live with a bullying man. That’s what she thought a proper man was. Physically big, physically strong and physically terrifying with a hefty slice of mentally intimidating thrown in. So, when the time came for Cat to find a husband, two key elements were a surety. First, it had to be a man. She didn’t pause for one homoment to investigate her latent fancy for other girls. And second, he ought to be a
proper
man. Like her dad. A man who could dominate her and control her. Y’know, a man, who was recognizably a man. That’s why, when the very English, dicky-bowed and bull-necked GP, Philip, asked her to marry him, she said yes willingly and immediately.

Cat is considering all of this as she stretches.

‘Honestly, when I think about it now, all the clues were there with that twat, right from the beginning. Sure, even the way he asked me out was an order. “You will meet me at six blah blah blah. You will be back in your home by eleven thirty blah blah blah. We will travel in my car. You will enjoy your meal.”

Dear Lord he was a barking Nazi robot, why did I not mind that? Felt safe, I s’pose, familiar. Plus, to be honest Silv, being Irish was like having leprosy then. Everyone thought you were carrying a bomb. I kept saying I’m from feckin’ Connemara you eejits, the only thing that explodes our way is the poitin! Wasn’t the point, it was any Irish accent. Couldn’t make any friends, felt utterly achingly lonely in England, and he pops up from nowhere showing me a deal of attention. In a town of thousands, he was the only person who connected.

‘It’s bloody grim bein’ so … so grateful. Ha! Yes, that’s it, I was grateful for a controlling freak of a husband. So I bought into it really, didn’t I? It is definitely my fault. Partly. Such a bad choice. Ugly, bad choice. Jeez. When I think of how compliant I was. No wonder he took charge. Who was I then? Totally different now. It was so … insidious, the way it escalated. I’m sure if someone had said to me, “Would you like to be married to a man who will isolate you and then batter you?” I would have found that preposterous. Yet – look at what happened. Exactly that. Jeez.

‘It crept up on me Silly, it starts with orders which, perversely, can make you feel safe, cradled in the regularity and routine of it. I was used to that, so nothing wrong there then. Then, of course, it’s stealthy, isn’t it? Incremental. Few more orders, unreasonable snipes and before you know it, five years on and subordination has tipped into subservience. I questioned nothing, Sil. I simply obeyed. Even that would have
been tolerable if the bastard hadn’t thrown in the slaps. Do you mind if ? – slap. Could you pass me the? – slap. I’m not sure that’s altogether correct – slap. Then the slaps get a bit slappier and a bit punchier and then they are punches. I lost count of how many times I ended up on the floor looking up at him. I didn’t beg. I refused to. I always stayed calm. Calmly accepting blow after feckin’ blow. From Dr Philip Harris. The respected and much trusted sadistic General Practitioner.

‘I wondered sometimes if me being quiet made him worse? It might have. His face was black with violence when it kicked off. He literally went from ruddy to cloudy in seconds. I offended him deeply. Just my nearness, he said. Everything about me was something for him to defile. But he still managed to overcome his repugnance to have me every soddin’ night. He could copulate his way through his repulsion, couldn’t he? He wanted to put his mark on me, so he hammered away at me and honestly Sil, I had to pretend it was like going to work every day to a grim job I had little to no interest in. Nothing was required of me really other than to be present and not resist. So that’s what I did.

‘Christ, sometimes these days, I make the mistake of lettin’ my mind wander back, and I imagine how many times I laid there, being violated like that. It was … bloody … loveless. Vile. I would close my eyes and try to not be there. Sometimes …’

Cat stands up and moves to the end of the bed, where she
turns away from Silvia. Having her back to her somehow helps Cat not to feel so ashamed.

‘Sometimes … he would order me to move as if I was enjoyin’ it. To make sounds … y’know, to help him. I wouldn’t. Funny really, I could deal with him rapin’ me, but I couldn’t act for him. Well now, was he rapin’ me? I didn’t resist. I knew it was futile and would only hurt more. But when I wouldn’t do a performance for him, that’s when he was the most insultin’. He would call me evil names, punch me. Never where it would show, o’ course. Give it to him, he was skilled at that. I really … begrudged being attacked in bed, when I was naked. Just why clothes make such a big difference, I don’t know, but they really do. There’s something … childlike about being naked, so it’s somehow more of an outrage. More of an offence, to do that. To a naked person. To me. To a grown child. With no clothes on. Feeling feckin’ helpless. Awful.’

She walks to the window and although she is looking out at a bleak hospital courtyard garden, that is certainly not what she is seeing. She is entirely in her mind’s eye and revisiting those terrifying years. For the first time though, she is seeing herself there, as a spectator. She has managed to remember it all, but from the outside. She can see her own face, frightened and wary. She sees her own eyes darting about and looking closely at his face, trying to predict his next move, readying herself for another lash out. Constantly reading him and trying to anticipate his sudden astonishing changes in mood and
temper. She is on a bed, naked and curled up, looking up at him, the tormentor. She sees the pleading in her own eyes and finds it pathetic, unbearable.

She snaps back into the now. She turns to Silvia. Her darling Silvia, who would never hurt her. Not physically anyway. Where is she? Why hasn’t she helped with all this? Being nearly dead isn’t how Cat wants her. Cat needs constant reassurance, and this isn’t it. She approaches the bed and looks closely at Silvia. She wishes she could feel more sympathy for her. Cat would only truly derive pleasure from the curing of her. That’s the doctor in her, she’s a solution-driven person.

The first and only time in her adult life she has ever stopped working, and allowed herself to feel something, was when she took Silvia to Connemara and fell in love with her. She tipped into that giant love very quickly and with massive brute force. It was like being at a bacchanalian feast when you have been starving in the desert. The small amount of love that Silvia could show Cat was the most she’d ever had. She was immediately hooked and wanted never to be parted from it. Silvia promised they never would be parted and now look.

So Silvia is a big fat liar.

‘Honestly Sil, I’m not really coping with all of this. Without you keeping the reins on me, I’m spinning again. Not sure which way is up at the moment. All these old bad thoughts keep floodin’ in, like a tsunami. I don’t seem to have the filter
I need. You are the filter, aren’t you, for God’s sake. I keep trying to tell myself all the things you say. I say, “Calm down Cat, let yourself off the hook. Be gentle with yourself. Breathe. Breathe.” Stuff like that, but somehow, when it doesn’t come from your lips, it doesn’t work. I don’t believe myself.

‘And actually, sorry to say it, but I am bloody furious with you. Life was already complicated enough without all this. I have been through a lot for you. I mean … y’know … the feckin’ marriage may have been a sham yes, but it
was
a marriage and at least there was all the … the … respectability … that went with it, and in a small town like this, that goes a long way when you’re a GP, believe me. If he had gone ahead and … told people … about
us
, just as he threatened to, honestly Silly, I don’t think I would still be working. Well, not at this practice anyway.

‘It’s bloody 2012 for feck’s sake, who you love shouldn’t matter. But it obviously does. Everyone knows everyone and it’s all so bloody insidious. Why? Why would lovin’ you make me any different or worse a doctor? I don’t want to leave my practice. I’ve spent years building up relationships there, and anyway, why should I? I had as much right to work there as him. Yes, he was the senior partner, but frankly, so feckin’ what?!’

Cat raises her hands in a huge resigned shrug, which renders her stationary for a moment, while she recalls the disturbing memories of the dreadful day.

‘So … but … maybe … yes, telling him like that, finally letting him know what a prick I thought he was, standing up to him, maybe I said some things … yes. I did. His eyes went really black, I’d never seen that in him before. He always had a look of … sort of … smug entitlement. Assured. Confident. This was the opposite of that. D’you know, Silv, if I had seen even a flicker of sadness or regret or something, anything to show he felt some … love … or something … it might have been different. Instead he travelled from shock to humiliation to boiling rage so fast that I felt like … I would burn like him if I stood too close. He was red and spittin’. His eyes. Christ Silv, his eyes. The hatred. Not hurt, just hatred.

‘It wasn’t about the marriage being over. I think he already knew that. It was that there was you. You, Silvia. You, a woman. That a woman could possibly, in the sleepy hours of the darkest night-time, make another woman utter those sounds he so desperately wanted to hear from me. His power diminished in the instant he realized that. In a second. So, he’s yellin’. “Don’t think you will walk away from all this, you boggy runt, you won’t! I will make one call, one pleading call to the right people, and you, you dirty bitch, you will be sectioned. Fact. Immediately. Sectioned. Locked up. And I will visit you, with my kindest face on, and everyone will pity me because my wife went mad. I might even weep. Watch me! Watch me bury you where no one will ever find you. In insanity. Of my making. And watch you be grateful for my visits, and watch you
beg me to get you out of it. And watch me give you more tranquillizers to put you back in the confused fog of hell where you belong you perverted bitch …”