It was the day I stayed in bed with ’flu. I got up to get breakfast but couldn’t keep still for the aching. I had to go back to bed. Peter said he would take the children to school. If he was late for work, too bad! He would arrange for Miss Watts to keep Fleur after school had finished, and Dan could fetch her and bring her home. He would phone me to confirm these arrangements. I kissed them goodbye and went back to bed. A few moments later, Peter returned and shouted that Dan had forgotten his football, then the door shut and the house was silent.
I only got up once to get a drink of orange, the day vanishing in a feverish, aching dream, but in the middle of the afternoon I woke. It was quarter to three. Fleur would be coming out in three-quarters of an hour, but I knew they would not be back till nearly five, so I went back to sleep.
When the front doorbell rang, I was glad. I didn’t notice the time and even though I felt so unwell, I was excited, as I always was, to see the children after school. I opened the door with my arms ready as usual, ready for their hugs and chatter and saw, instead of the children, a strange woman standing on the doorstep, her face ashen, her voice shaking.
‘There’s been an accident. Please come quickly.’ I had no need to ask – didn’t want to ask – but grabbed a coat, which I slung over my nightdress, and ran with the woman to the waiting car. I lost track of the journey, seeing and yet not seeing. No one said a word. And I fought the hysteria.
Not far from Fleur’s school was a crowd. People everywhere. A police car in the middle of the road. An ambulance. I jumped from the car before it had stopped, stumbled, someone pulled me up. I pushed my way forward through the crowd. Couldn’t hear anything; it’s never real, the silence and the slow motion.
All I saw was the red car. Dan lay in front of it, half in the road, half on the pavement. His body was contorted; blood was trickling from his nose. ‘Don’t touch him, please,’ someone shouted. I took his hand and called to him.
‘Don’t touch him, please. Come on, now.’
I hadn’t thought about Fleur at all until I saw the small body, entirely covered in a red blanket, being carried on a stretcher.
I know I was screaming and fighting to get to the stretcher, but my legs gave way. Someone caught hold of me, but I was so violent, so violently pushing everyone, everything away. They were in my way. Then with a fearful howl I hurled myself at the men with the stretcher. I couldn’t see Fleur; I could only see the red blanket. I tore it away. And Fleur looked at me; her eyes wide open; a piece of chestnut hair had caught in her mouth. ‘Flower!’
Someone said, ‘There’s nothing we can do here. See to the boy.’
Fleur, as planned, had waited with Miss Watts, helping her to tidy up, putting paints away, picking up bits and pieces. Miss Watts gave her a sheet of red sticky paper to take home. She had folded it carefully and put it in her purse, which hung round her neck. She was so excited that Dan was fetching her. She wanted to show him her sums.
Dan arrived at twenty past four. He came to her classroom and looked at all her books and her painting on the wall. She already had her coat on. They walked out through the school gates, Dan holding Fleur with one hand and his football under his other arm. There were a lot of children about. Streams of boys from Dan’s school, having arrived back by bus, were crowding along the pavements. There was a lot of shouting and laughter. Fleur was skipping and talking. Several of Dan’s friends passed and several joked about him having to fetch his sister. Then one boy, fooling around, knocked the football out of Dan’s arms; it rolled into the road. Fleur broke loose from Dan and ran after the ball for him. She didn’t see the red car, but Dan did. He screamed and dived to get her, but it was too late. She was caught under the wheels of the car and killed outright. Dan was tossed up into the air and landed on his head. He was on a life-support machine for seven months before he died.
Fleur’s funeral came and went but I, being totally absorbed with Dan, was hardly aware of it. I did go to the funeral, of course, but my whole being was at Dan’s bedside. My body somehow went through the motions and Fleur, well, I couldn’t register that she was dead. All my concentration and willpower now centred on Dan. All my prayers and faith in God. I was even cheerful, quite certain that my prayers would be answered. There was no way in my mind that this life, with all its potential, with all its love, could go from us. I talked to Dan continuously, read from his favourite books and the sport pages from newspapers. I brought in his Walkman so that he could listen to his tapes. He lay there with the earphones on, the Walkman on his pillow, perfectly still, and all the time the ventilator breathed for him. In-out, in-out. Please God, I want to take him home. Please.
I was convinced that at home he would regain consciousness. I obsessed about putting him in his boat and rowing him up the river. I knew the river, the sound of the oars in water, would wake him up. ‘Is there any way I can take him home – put him in the boat?’ I begged them. But the question was always answered with pitying eyes and shakes of the head. Mad woman, they thought, but understandably so.
Peter got agitated with me, by my continual insistence that everything would be all right, which created in him a complex response of anger and anxiety, yet I saw nothing of this at the time. Only later. Too much later. And so I did nothing, didn’t follow my instincts, and instead left Dan in his hospital bed. Oh, what a terrible coward I was. I was the mother and I knew things they could have never known and I knew that Dan would come back to me if we went home. And yet I capitulated, did nothing. Hadn’t made a scene, hadn’t made a fuss. Oh God, I was so cowardly.
Now I suffered the torture of regret. Why had I been so cowardly? It would have saved him, but I hadn’t the courage of my convictions. I had been too afraid, too afraid of being wrong, of being mad, of finding out that faith didn’t work after all. Better not to know our ultimate nothingness. And so I remained by his bedside, changing his nappies, changing the saline bottles, becoming his full-time nurse. But I knew I was being tested and would be found wanting. If I failed him now, I could never, never in all eternity forgive myself, for, in the last analysis, I had been afraid of looking foolish, of being wrong. Frightened that my faith would not move mountains after all. Frightened of putting God to the test.
Peter, on the other hand, took a view that he described as realistic. He was resigned to losing his son and could not bear to see him for more than a few minutes at a time. Had it not been for me, he would hardly have gone to the hospital at all. My attitude drove him to desperation and, in his grief and driven by his sense of helplessness, he called me stupid and neurotic.
I had almost successfully wiped Fleur out of my mind. But as the months passed and Dan’s condition deteriorated, I began longing for her. I was deserate for her help, as I was so sure that Dan would have woken up for her, with her loving, pixie-bright face, her unquestioning love. She would have demanded he come back to her. Demanded. Hands on hips! Yet how could she bear seeing him like that? Perhaps it was best she wasn’t there.
One evening, I sat on the edge of his bed, stroking his hair. I held his hand. No response. He wasn’t there. The ventilator breathed in-out, in-out, but he wasn’t there. A wave of uncontrolable panic surged up into my throat and I felt myself slipping, slipping slowly, into a black uncontrollable panic. I shut my eyes and repeated, thoughtlessly, ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven,’ over and over again. But nothing. Nothing at all. I was alone and powerless. Powerless. God was not there to answer any prayers.
As they went to turn off the life-support system, I ran from the room. Ran from the hospital, didn’t stay to say goodbye, to look. Nothing. I drove home, got right under the covers of our bed into complete darkness.