Un Crime Maternel

What did they call you? Miss Jacobs? I find that very strange. Only a mother, surely, can understand a mother. What is their purpose in having me see you? If anyone is crazy, it’s the law, not me. If it asks for psychiatric reports, which frankly I see as both demeaning to me and damaging to my children, it might at least find someone competent to do the reporting. Or do they have to scrape the barrel for people such as yourself? I don’t suppose it’s a barrel of laughs, coming here to Holloway and sitting in this horrid little airless green room smelling of cabbage with a locked door and not even a window. In fact the room is rather like the inside of my head used to be before I battered my way out of it, made a hole to let in the air and the light.

Fortunately I can wear my own clothes, being on remand; I don’t have to wear their nasty dingy dresses. There isn’t an iron available but I keep my skirt beneath my mattress overnight, so the pleats stay in. I like to be smart. I am in the habit of being smart. It’s so important to set an example to the children, don’t you think? But I suppose you wouldn’t know.

Now listen, Miss Jacobs, I will have to make do with you since you’re all I have to work with. It is absolutely imperative, do you understand, that you declare me of sound mind. It would do Janet and Harvey no good at all to believe that their mother was insane. It would be too big a burden for them to bear. They are already having to cope with the loss of their father, and Janet’s birthday is tomorrow – she will be eight – and she will be disturbed enough that for the first birthday ever I’m not there by her bed when she wakes to say ‘Happy birthday, darling.’ She may begin to worry, or doubt what she’s been told; which is, very sensibly, that I’m on holiday in Greece getting over Peter’s death and will be back soon. When I’m out of here I’ll be able to talk the whole thing through with the pair of them. It’s so important to tell children the truth: if you do, their trust in you is never diminished. Time passes so slowly for children: it is vital that I get back to them as soon as possible: that all this silly and unnecessary fuss comes to an immediate end. They’re with Peter’s parents, and though Graham and Jenny are not quite as child-centred as I’d like them to be, for people of that generation they’re not bad. I can be confident they’ll have the sense not to let Janet see the newspapers and of course Harvey isn’t reading yet. I used to worry about Harvey’s slowness at letters – Janet read at four, and he’s already six – but I admit it has its advantages, however unexpected. Crime maternel must be recognized in this country, as crime passionnel is in France. To kill for one’s children is no crime: rather, it is something for which a mother should be honoured. I want a medal, Miss Jacobs, not to be had up on a murder charge and remanded without bail for psychiatric reports. I did what it was my duty to do. I chose my children’s interests over my husband’s interests. Their lives, after all, were just beginning. We do give children this precedence as a matter of course.

It is imperative that I stand trial as a sane person and am properly acquitted, Miss Jacobs, because then the children can deal with it. It may mean moving house and changing schools and names afterwards, of course, but that is nothing compared to the avoidance of trauma. You must see, Miss Jacobs, that I did the only thing I could, in the circumstances I was in.

I had a troubled childhood myself. A father who molested me, a mother who let it happen. I was fostered when I was twelve by a very kind and pleasant family. I know there is good as well as bad in the world. I always wanted to have children, and to give them a perfect life. What is there more important in the world than this? I became a nurse and did well in my profession, but always with my future role as a mother in mind. I am not bad looking, and could, and indeed would, have married on several occasions, but each time I felt the man involved would not make a good enough father. He would have to be loving, kind, genial, patient, intelligent, sensitive to children’s needs, and able to provide the proper male authority role within the family group. I began to think I’d never meet the perfect father. I could settle, even happily, for less than perfection for myself, but not for my unborn children!

And finally I met him! Peter! He fulfilled all my requirements, as I did his. He looked for the perfect mother, as I looked for the perfect father. We married, and agreed we would wait a year before starting a family so the children would be born into a settled and secure domestic framework. And that year, I may say, was exceedingly happy. I had always felt, because of my early experience, that sex was not for me. That year with Peter proved me wrong! Then, according to plan, I became pregnant with Janet, and of course after she was born sex became impossible. She could only sleep if she was in the bed with us, and then only if she was at the breast, and I got an ulcer, and you know how it is with small babies. Well, you don’t, do you. Let me just say Janet was a sensitive baby, and cried a lot, and then when Harvey came along he turned out to be hyperactive, and I’m sorry to say Peter’s views on child-rearing began to change: they simply did not coincide any more with mine.

Does this sound like the tale of a mad woman? I promise you I am not mad.

Peter was teaching at the time, and spent far too much time away from home. I know he had obligations to pupils and college, but he had obligations to his children as well. I insisted that he always be home by bath time. It is imperative that children have the reassurance that a rock-solid routine provides. But sometimes, on some spurious ground or other, he would be absent. I would have to watch their little faces fall. Splashing about in the water, so important to the development of their tactile responses, their creative drive, just wasn’t the same without Daddy. And so he and I began to quarrel. The atmosphere in the home became tense, and that’s so very bad for children. They pick up really quickly on vibes.

Peter could, and would, sometimes even in front of them, say terrible things to me. ‘Why do you always ask those children questions?’ he’d yell. ‘Why do you say, “Are you sleepy? Would you like to go in your cot?” Why don’t you say, “You do feel sleepy, darling. Now I’m putting you in your cot”?’ And of course the answer was so obvious! For one thing, children are not there for the parents’ convenience, to be shut up; for another, even with the smallest child it is important to develop consciousness of self. The child knows what it feels; it is up to the parent to decipher those feelings and act upon them. I don’t tell my child it is hungry: I require it to give me an accurate account of what’s going on in its head. That way it learns self-expression. How else? Peter would accuse me of unforgivable things – of over-stimulating the children, of depriving them of pleasure – by which he only meant he’d shut them up if he could by shoving ice lollies in their mouths which would rot their teeth and give them a liking for sweet things which might stay with them all their lives, for all he knew. Or, I’m sorry to say, cared. Please don’t think he was a bad father, he wasn’t. He loved Janet and Harvey immoderately, and they loved him, which was of course the trouble. I’d feel like tucking them under my arm and running off with them, but how could I? Within two minutes they’d be grizzling and pining for their father.

The upshot of our disagreements over child-care, together with the actuality of those two small lively children, meant I was easily riled and distressed, and spent quite a lot of time in tears which I could not control. Try as I would to be brave and bright for the children’s sake, I failed. They would see me red-eyed and depressed, and hear Peter shouting. It couldn’t go on. It is the most traumatic and damaging thing for children to hear their parents rowing. Unforgivable to let it happen but it was not my doing. It began to look as if we had to part. Between us we had to provide two loving and caring environments between which Harvey and Janet would travel, since we could not make one. Now I knew I would do my part in this. But I was not convinced he would do his. Already Peter was seeing another woman, a junk-food addict whose idea of an afternoon out with the children was to go to McDonald’s on the way to the zoo – can you imagine, a zoo? the torment of those poor wild caged creatures – and Janet and Harvey actively encouraged to gawp and throw peanuts. Now I’m well aware that it’s best for children to see their parents happy, and Peter’s sex drive was such that he could only be happy if it was more or less satisfied. I had no grudge whatsoever against his girlfriends, one or all of them, so don’t be misled by anyone who says mine was a crime passionnel. It was most definitely – if crime it was – a crime maternel. An act committed for the sake of the children which involves the death and/or disenabling of an incompetent and/or damaging parent. It wasn’t Peter’s fault that this was what he was. Blame God, if you must blame anyone, for creating parents and children whose emotional interests overlap but do not coincide. But there it was. I could see no other way out of an impossible bind.

Divorce, when it comes to it, is so crippling to the child’s psyche, is it not? The children suffer appallingly when a family breaks up. Statistics show that a paternal death has a less damaging effect on the children than divorce, so long as the family home is maintained and family income does not fall. So what else could I do, Miss Jacobs? In my children’s interests?

I insured Peter’s life and he and I, his girlfriend and the children went for a country walk and we picked mushrooms, including a death cap, and I made a beef casserole that evening, and he and she ate it – I am a vegetarian and I never let the children eat beef because of the possibility of mad cow disease but Peter of course would never renounce beef: what he liked he had to have – and it proved as fatal as the books said. Don’t worry – I got the pair of them into hospital promptly so the children witnessed nothing nasty. I hadn’t realized how suspicious coroners and police can be – I suppose I do tend to think everyone is as child-centred as I am. But this is not insanity, Miss Jacobs, is it? I was doing my best for my children, as the statistics in our society suggest the best to be: and I must get back to them as soon as is humanly possible, for their sake. I presume the court won’t be so stupid as not to understand that? What do you think?