Travelling to Infinity (65 page)

Alone in my room after the first wave of attack had finally subsided, helplessness reduced me to hot, angry tears. My spirit rebelled at the shallowness of so many of the people who had recently
come into our lives. They had never come face to face with successions of multiple crises. They had never had to confront the overwhelming trauma of living in the face of death, day in day out for
more than a quarter of a century. They had never plumbed the depths of emotion or been torn apart by moral dilemma. They had never been stretched to and beyond the utter limits of their physical
and mental capacities. Their experience of these issues had been facile, skimming the surface of reality, motivated by self-gratification, dictating absolute values to others that they themselves
could not observe. Indeed in their eyes I was a mere automaton with no justifiable claim to any human reactions at all. My need to be loved for myself alone was dismissed as preposterous.

After this fiasco Stephen and the Masons returned to England, and Tim and I stayed on at the Moulin. The lovely old house and garden gathered up my spent body and charred mind into the comfort
of their embrace as the calm of rural France descended once more. If Stephen really did not want me, I reasoned, I could make a good life for myself in France. I could support myself by teaching
English and Spanish, and Tim could become completely bilingual. At the beginning of September he started going to the village school, where he quickly made friends, unperturbed by the demands of
the language. He would cycle off down the road to the village every morning while I stood waving and watching as he climbed the hill opposite and disappeared under the trees. At home we often spoke
French. English and England had become alien to me, a country and a language which harboured and expressed extreme personal torment – not to mention the widespread political injustices of the
Margaret Thatcher years – while France offered a new lifestyle, new friends and a sense of equality. Moreover France, a predominantly Catholic country, worshipped and prayed to the Mother of
Jesus, the feminine intermediary to the masculine figures of the Trinity. There a woman had a recognized place in the divine order of things. Mary had a human presence which was tragic, loving and
comforting. Often, in French country churches and cathedrals, I would be drawn to the figure of the Virgin Mary – a crudely painted plaster saint perhaps – who offered the solace of
shared suffering.

Tim and I quickly settled into a routine which I was confident of being able to sustain. We could live in France permanently if need be, or eventually we could return to England when Stephen had
resolved his problems. Jonathan, who had gone back to Cambridge to play a series of organ recitals, kept in touch regularly, urging us to stay in France if that was where we felt at ease.

Stephen also telephoned almost daily, but he urged us to return to England. He missed us, he said, and he needed us. He was so persuasive that I trusted that he really intended to restore some
harmony to our lives and keep his nurses under control. Later that September, believing that my lost child really needed me, we set out for England across stormy seas, determined to avoid
confrontation. The family, that is my parents and Robert, were delighted to see us when we arrived home late at night after long delays on the motorways. The reception I, but not Tim, received from
Stephen was distinctly frosty. It was not the lost child who came to greet us, but the despot. At once I knew that I had made a grave mistake in coming back to England.

The following Monday, Tim returned to his primary school and I took up my teaching again, committing myself at least for the term if not for the whole academic year. Then,
exactly a week after our return, Stephen gave me a letter announcing his intention of going to live with Elaine Mason. That evening, by a sorry coincidence, Robert was dealt a broken jaw by muggers
who attacked him on his way home.

The execution of Stephen’s decision was considerably delayed for the extraordinary and eminently practical reason that he and Elaine Mason had nowhere to go. In the meantime we lived in a
maelstrom of chaos and confusion, while I clung like a limpet to the belief that the storm would eventually wear itself out and that, despite his present sad emotional disarray, Stephen would
choose to stay with his family. As if blown along like a dry leaf in a gale, he came and went, often without any notice. Extreme pressure from outside was exerted on him, and each explosive episode
would be succeeded by a period of calm as if nothing had happened. Those periods, though, were just the eye of the storm, only presaging further unforeseen elements which blew in at hurricane
force. Reports reached me that the nurse was already announcing her forthcoming marriage to Stephen. I lived with the constant fear that there might well be a battle to gain custody of Tim, and
Jonathan was banned from West Road under threat of a court injunction, so he had no choice but to keep to his own home. Open discussion was impossible, because an insurmountable barrier had arisen
between Stephen and me and, the more he appeared to lose control of his own situation, the more I felt he sought to control me, as if I was simply a piece of property. The duty nurses posted
unpleasant letters through my car window just as I left for work each day, and impossible demands were made of me each evening. Unpleasant remarks and false motives were attributed to me. I was
told to give Jonathan up and “put Stephen first in everything”. I even found myself reluctantly drawn into clashes about money, not just with Stephen but with Elaine Mason as well.
Through the concentration required by teaching – especially by teaching the absorbing, intellectually teasing novels and short stories of Gabriel García Márquez – I
managed to preserve some sanity, while among my colleagues in the staffroom I found a quiet sympathy and supportiveness which brought a sense of stability to the few hours each day that I spent
away from home. At other times music soothed and solaced my battered emotions, though often its intensity caused my voice to falter and fade. Otherwise bedlam reigned and our home became the scene
of unprecedented violence as other people’s madness forced its way into our household and left Tim and me terrified, with not the least gesture of support from the two professional nursing
bodies, the Royal College of Nursing and the UK Nursing Council, who refused to become involved.

Later that month, as I waved the two eldest children goodbye on consecutive days – Robert to Glasgow for a postgraduate-degree course in Information Technology and Lucy to Oxford –
it seemed that my entire existence and the structure on which it rested were crumbling away. My personal identity, which I had desperately tried to construct over the years from all the disparate
fragments – the jigsaw pieces of everyday life – had been shattered. I was alone and without shelter in the midst of a private war. Wherever I looked, I saw the rubble and ruins of the
brave, bold but fragile edifice that Stephen and I had built. A dark chasm had opened up in the ground, swallowing up that edifice and with it more than twenty-five years of my life – all the
years of my youth and young adulthood, all the hopes and all the optimism. In their place there was left little more than an insubstantial, vacant shroud, ghostly and withdrawn, the object of daily
mental torture. The only certainty for the future was that my youngest and most vulnerable child, Tim, had to be protected and, however crushed and broken I might be, I had to muster the strength
and the courage to fight for him.

Jonathan and I had never contemplated the possibility of a future together without Stephen. We had no fantasies, no dreams. The thought of change was alien to our thinking: I had closed my mind
to it and did not seek it. In the past I thought that we had achieved a balance whereby everyone could flourish, even if that demanded considerable contortion, restraint and self-discipline at a
personal level. This had evidently proved to be nothing more than complacent wishful thinking, for I was now forcibly given to understand that Stephen had been dissatisfied with our way of life for
some time. I found this revelation quite surprising. If Stephen had been seething with resentment for so long, why had he not told me about it? How had he managed to be so successful, creative and
dynamic if he was really unhappy? Apparently he had not liked being treated as but one member of the family when he considered his rightful place to be on a pedestal at the centre. Someone had come
along who was prepared to worship at his feet and make him the focal point of her life. That someone was promising him that he would never have to employ nurses again, since she alone would care
for him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and would travel everywhere that he wanted to go. Patently I could not match such single-minded devotion and, as a result, change of the cruellest
kind was being forced upon me. I was threatened with being thrown out of the family home, and my role in Stephen’s life was being systematically denied, as if all reference to me, all memory
of me, had to be erased from all the records.

Once the term had started and Tim and I were entrenched in the Cambridge routine, there was no going back to France, yet I badly needed a bolt hole. Jonathan’s house was out of the
question, since a move there would signify that I was ending the marriage, which was not and never had been my intention. Any bolt hole had to be neutral territory, where Tim and I could escape the
tensions, the battles, the venom and the recriminations which were creating bitter chaos at 5 West Road. There was just one option open. Although the College had been in possession of our house in
Little St Mary’s Lane for years – in part-exchange for the College flat – the property still technically belonged to us. As I knew that the house was unoccupied, I wrote to the
Master pleading with him to allow Tim and me to use it temporarily until the battles had died away and the crisis had resolved itself for better or for worse. The Master was new to the College
– I scarcely knew him nor he me. His reply was unequivocal: much as he regretted it, there existed a formal agreement between Stephen and the College for the exchange of the two properties,
and until Stephen revoked that agreement, I could have no access to the house.

By day asthma stifled my breathing and befuddled my mind, while my hands tingled to the tips of my fingers with fright each time Stephen announced that he wanted to speak to me. Every night the
terrible nightmares returned, waking me in a terrified panic: my heart pounded as buildings collapsed on top of me, burying me in a dark underground tomb. Tim too had nightmares in which he dreamt
that he was being chased by baddies along corridors and down streets. By day he became excessively introverted and anxious. The doctor prescribed beta blockers for me and sent me to see a
counsellor. The only remedy for Tim was to distance him from the troubles, but since Little St Mary’s Lane was denied us, that was not easily done. I asked his headteacher to warn his staff
of the intolerable strain that Tim was under at home. Too late I discovered that he had omitted to pass my anxieties on to his staff, and poor Tim often came home from his primary school in
tears.

The battles continued to rage furiously for the rest of the term with only a short truce during the visit to Spain for the presentation of a prestigious award by the heir to the Spanish throne,
the Prince of Asturias, in Oviedo. Being in Spain lifted my spirits and made that visit bearable. Although the truce brought its own minor superficial tensions in the form of repeated public
appearances, press conferences and interviews, at least these gave me the opportunity to prove myself professionally again and reassert my own qualifications as a linguist and as Stephen’s
companion. The underlying tension which resulted from his lately announced resolve of buying a flat for his favourite nurse was much more severe. The mind which had mastered the mathematical
secrets of the universe was no match for the emotional upheaval which now overwhelmed it. Like his Wagnerian hero, Siegfried, Stephen had wrapped himself in a protective cloak, the stiff cloak of
determination – inspired by unrelenting reason, steeling him against sentimental frailty in the belief that he was invincible. But like Siegfried he was vulnerable, and helpless when his
vulnerability was exposed to attack. Stephen’s physical weak spot had been his throat, but he also had a second, psychological weak spot, which was an utter lack of resistance to
manipulative, emotional pressure. He had never been subjected to it before and had no armour against it. This was the sort of pressure being exerted on Stephen: it built up a head of steam, hissing
with relentless energy until it erupted in a series of emotional surges of volcanic force, which engulfed all obstacles with a red-hot flow of anger and passion. Then, quite miraculously, each new
eruption would subside as quickly as it had exploded, and peace would descend once again on our home life. He would become gentler, more docile and regretful, genuinely concerned to put the turmoil
behind him and resume the family life on which he had thrived in the past. Then he would admit that he was being tossed by conflicting emotions and needed support, understanding and the possibility
of a reconciliation. This I was all too willing to give, for I shared the tragedy of his situation and wanted to help him get through it – but the lull would last only until the awful moment
when another missive, another ultimatum, another summons, would seek out its target. I learnt to dread the outcome as Stephen dashed off, abandoning meals and social engagements to appease and
become even further enthralled. And so it went on until Christmas. My parents’ plans for celebrating their Golden Wedding were a catastrophe on the ebb and flow of that tidal force. With a
randomness which had become perversely predictable, Stephen spent Christmas Day in the bosom of his family, but then late at night his van drew up outside and he vanished into the darkness, leaving
home with Elaine to go and stay in a hotel before setting off for a conference in Israel the next day.