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CHAPTER 3

DESPAIR

Paul was getting on for five and in the normal way of things would have been going to school. One of the tortures inflicted on parents of mentally handicapped children at that time was the ordeal by letter. A school doctor was sent to the house to investigate the child’s suitability for normal schooling (in spite of his or her very obvious non-suitability), and then would follow a formal letter, stating explicitly that the child was subnormal and therefore unable to benefit from normal education (the word they used was ‘ineducable’). Everybody concerned was well aware of this fact before the process was set in motion, but for some reason it had to be spelled out, the i’s dotted, the t’s crossed, and the parents’ noses thoroughly rubbed in the dirt. Most parents resented this official humiliation, but they could do nothing about it. When our turn came, and I was told to expect the arrival of a school doctor, I bowed to the inevitable. It was only a routine visit after all.

But it did not turn out quite as expected. I have often hoped that the school doctor who came to see Paul that day was not typical of her species. There she stood on the doorstep, a large, bouncy, tweedy woman whose burly torso positively heaved with excitement. We had not met before, but she absolved herself from the courtesy of introductions. I had barely got the front door open before she announced with breathless fervour: ‘I can’t wait to see this child. Do you think he might possibly be a cretin?’

Blind rage swept over me, and I would have given much to slam the door, or, better still, my clenched fist, in her jolly face. How does it happen that doctors, who presumably set out on their careers because they see themselves as healers, become so frequently insensitive to other people’s pain? For years Paul and I were no more than objects to be examined under a microscope, two animate creatures of momentary interest to medicine. It never seemed to occur to anyone, or if it did it did not seem to matter, that we were also sentient human beings who could be badly hurt. It was difficult learning to be a non-person, but I was learning fast. Building up a hard shell within which to shelter was part of the process of learning. The only sure way to protect myself from hurt was by refusing to be hurt at all, refusing to notice, refusing to care. Ordinary human feelings were becoming a luxury I could not afford.

That doctor had almost penetrated my defences, but my public self-control was still armour-plated. So I forced a smile and asked her in, and we began, as one inevitably did, on the old, old questions. Who is he, what is he, why is he, when, how, where? The questions rolled off an endless cyclic conveyor belt, and were answered as mechanically as they were asked. If I had been better organised, I should have made out a list of questions and answers, and made photostats of them to hand out. They were always the same. We always began at the beginning, at pregnancy if not at conception, and worked right through. No one ever came pre-armed with the relevant facts, there had never been any liaison with previous questioners (even when they came from the same hospital or local authority), no data bank of information was ever consulted, if indeed any existed. We always started with a tabula rasa. The game began on square one, and our opponents were always the victors, if one could judge by the flushed face and air of triumph they wore on departure.

Even with Betty’s help, the strain was beginning to tell. I was getting to the end of my resources. The climax came one day when I was alone in the house with Paul. I went into the room where he was playing and found that not only had he soiled himself, but he was cheerfully smearing the faeces all over the wall. Ours was a largish Edwardian house, with half-landings recessed into a sweeping staircase. Holding Paul under the armpits I began to drag him up the stairs towards the bathroom, paying no attention to his squawks of protest. We had reached the first half-landing when he began to cough. I stopped there, but the coughing fit grew worse. Suddenly, to my horror, his breathing became jerky, he began to choke, and his face went black. I was terrified, stuck as I was half-way up the stairs and nobody within earshot. With a strength born of desperation, I pushed and pulled him up the remaining stairs and inside the bathroom. Shutting the door on him, I fled downstairs to the telephone to order an ambulance. Then I rushed madly up again to try and get him cleaned up.

The ambulance came. Unfortunately, in my panic, I had given no details over the telephone. I had omitted to say that Paul was breathing only with difficulty; and the ambulance arrived without the vital cylinder of oxygen. The minutes seemed like hours as we waited for the second ambulance to arrive, and Paul’s condition got worse with every breath he tried to take.

The oxygen arrived in the nick of time, and Paul was taken off to hospital to recover from the first of many bronchial convulsions. He came out within a week, fully restored and entirely cheerful. But my nerves were raw. The problem of Paul had me utterly beat.

In the summer of 1962, we took the family to the seaside. But I could not relax; the change of environment only made me more conscious that I had come to the end of the road in more ways than one. I had lost sight of myself as a person, I viewed the future with fear, and I realised with a shock that even my rather vague religion had deserted me. I no longer believed in God. What more was there to lose? Self-pity, always lurking in the background, came surging in on a flood-tide. Life was absurd and meaningless, was it not, a dirty-tricks department writ large? And the whole idea of a loving God was a hollow sham, a cosmic joke worthy only of Paul’s crazy laughter. But there was no way out of the impasse, and I could only go on compounding the meaninglessness. Suicide, even if I had not been the devout coward I in fact was, would only have shifted the whole ghastly mess into someone else’s court, and I was not far enough gone to accept that as an answer.

Frank suggested that I should go away on my own for a week. I jumped at the idea, but couldn’t think where to go. I had always disliked holidays, and couldn’t face the thought of one on my own, especially in the depressed state I was in. Perhaps I could go and make myself useful somewhere, offer my services to a charitable organisation, sink my own troubles in the contemplation of someone else’s. But I had never been a very useful sort of person; apart from a flair for cooking, my domestic talents were almost non-existent. Still, I could cook, so I had something to offer. But to whom?

I don’t really know why or how, but somehow that same evening I found myself alone in a church. Maybe I’d gone there to give the Almighty a last chance. Or maybe I’d just gone there for a good howl in private. Anyway, there was no one else in the church, and it was a fine echo-ey building. As even when I’m quite alone I tend to be self-conscious, I didn’t howl, but muttered a defiant if muddled: ‘Damn you, you don’t exist, but I hate you.’ Then I burst into tears, and threw decorum to the winds. ‘All right,’ I heard myself shouting, ‘if you do exist, show me a way out. For a start, what the hell am I to do next?’ After this unbridled exhibition, I was startled by the noise I was making, and ran out of the church at top speed.

Frank was in an armchair reading when I got back to the house, still tear-stained. My mother and Betty had the children in another room, where they were watching television. We had, as we always did, brought with us enough books to withstand a siege, some of them selected from the local library by Frank. Idly I picked up one of these and looked at the title: The Face of Victory by Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, V.C. I could see that it was autobiographical, and I put it down again with a grimace. Cheshire, the bomber pilot V.C., had had a lot of publicity during and after the Second World War, and I was always suspicious of popular heroes. Not content with what others had written about him, I thought scornfully, he was now writing about himself. What an egoist the man must be. Frank saw the look on my face and more or less read my thoughts. ‘Don’t just put it down,’ he urged. ‘I think it would interest you. At least, give it a try.’

I had picked the book up again, and was rifling through the pages as he was speaking. As we went on talking, I stood with my thumb on one page somewhere near the end. When I put the book down it came open at that page. I stared at it, and saw that it was full of addresses, of Cheshire Homes For The Sick, where voluntary help was required. Right at the bottom, one address stuck out; a Home run not by Leonard Cheshire but by his wife, Sue Ryder. Home For Concentration Camp Survivors, Cavendish, Suffolk, I read. As I stood looking down at it, I realised that one part of my prayer in the church had been answered. I had demanded to know what I was to do next, and now I knew. I was going to Suffolk.