My mind churns, I try to stop it. I don’t want to think about the Assistants. Not tonight.
Turning over, I stare at the dim ceiling and consider how many other people have lain flat on their backs in this two-hundred-year-old room. How many have lived and loved and laughed and died, right here.
Dozens, maybe. And dozens will come after, perhaps. Perhaps my own children will sleep here – yet probably not. I don’t believe I will ever want kids, whether it is because of my dad’s heritable disease, or a genuine lack of maternal instinct: I do not know. I just don’t go gooey over tiny Converse boots like some friends of mine. They can melt like marshmallows at the mere sight of miniature clothes. Kids under four bore me. Why does this shock people?
The thought of children, and my childlessness, reminds me of some of the personal yet peculiar phrases used by Electra and HomeHelp the other day.
Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb …
Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose …
Perfection is terrible. IT CANNOT HAVE CHILDREN …
The implication of these statements was and is clear. The machines were apparently commenting on, or taunting me about, my choice not to be a mother. To unloose my moons, to no purpose, for month after month. That choice which made Simon so unhappy.
Yet these phrases are so odd, the syntax, vocabulary and grammar so distinct. Did the machines invent these lines, or steal them?
In the dark I reach for my bedside smartphone, and lie back. A tap brings me a quicker answer. Most of these lines seem to come from a poem, ‘The Munich Mannequins’, by an American writer. Sylvia Plath. I have heard of her, but I don’t know much about her. I’ve never been interested in poetry. Always found it too depressing. Or boring. I preferred the drama and grandeur of art, hence History of Art at King’s. I only ended up a journalist because learning History of Art, it turns out, is utterly pointless unless you want to teach History of Art to people who will go on to teach History of Art.
So who exactly was Sylvia Plath?
I do a quick Wiki: Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer …
There’s lots more. She’s obviously quite famous – to some. She married an equally well-known British poet, Ted Hughes. I’ve heard of him, too, though I know little about him. In the gloom of my bedroom, I wonder if I saw a movie about the two of them years ago, with a tragic ending? Yes, I believe I did. But what was that ending?
I find a webpage dedicated to her life, and her work, and that ending. And what I read brings a chill that stings like needles.
In 1962 Sylvia Plath separated from Ted Hughes. She then moved back to London, with her children.
As Christmas came and went, the snow began falling. Alone with her kids, Plath was facing the terrible winter of 1963. Insomniac, and isolated, she was diagnosed as depressed; her doctors also considered her a suicide risk. Daily visits were arranged.
On the morning of 11 February, the nurse arrived, as usual, to help Plath with the care of her children. When she knocked, no one answered the door. Nor could she see any signs of life inside. Eventually the nurse broke in.
In the downstairs kitchen she found Plath, lying on the floor with her head resting on a little towel, by the open gas oven. She was dead. Running upstairs, the nurse was at first unable to open the door to the children’s bedroom, because Plath had put tape and towels around the door, to prevent the gas reaching the children. The children were alive, but awake and confused. Plath, it turned out, had placed glasses of milk and plates of bread on bedside tables for her two kids – something to eat when they woke up. The nurse deduced that it must have been Plath’s final act, before she went downstairs to the kitchen. And opened the gas oven. And turned on the gas.
Plath was thirty years old.
I look away from the screen, feeling faintly sick, and horribly sad. I may have no maternal instinct, but I have a loving instinct. Children, little children. How could you simultaneously take such loving care, providing bread and milk for your son and daughter, then go downstairs and deprive them of a mother?
And there is more. The webpage gives Plath’s final address. The house where she killed herself.
It is 23 Fitzroy Road, Primrose Hill, NW3.
It is about three streets, and three minutes’ walk, from where I am lying in my bed, tonight.