The One Day You Were My Husband (2)
That’s what I used to do when I was back in our London flat, alone at night, and it played on repeat: the machine guns, the bullfrog, the betrayal of all he had promised. I would get out of my bed and sit at the kitchen table as London grumbled gently in the background, and I’d look at those light clusters photographed from space.
For a few moments I would mute my rage, my loss, and just think about him, remember how it felt to be his wife. Just for those few hours before he was taken and I found out who he really was.
Two.
Now: Devon, December 2022
I step outside the front door most nights at ten o’clock, which is really the time I should be turning off my light. But I’m never in bed by ten because of this: this deep lungful of moorland air. This wild space under the stars, thatch creaking above, bats zigzagging like demented bullets overhead and owls calling through the darkness. This time is for me.
Since Robin and I got the twins to sleep earlier I’ve ignored all the warnings I used to give my patients about googling their medical conditions—or, worse still, their children’s medical conditions—and have been googling recent research on chronic lung disease. The medic in me despairs of this kind of behavior but I don’t have a phone full of clinical contacts anymore and besides, I’m a parent first.
I’ve also been messaging my sister, who lives in Colorado. I sent her pictures from this evening’s nativity play: Raffy dressed as a tube of Rolos and Maeve as an “elite gymnast.” Maya sent me photos of her dog eating a block of smoked tofu, which we both found disturbing. Inevitably, though, our messages turned to our father. Dad’s partner Nicola and I have accepted, finally, that he needs residential care. None of us can take the anxiety any longer; my body pitches into fight-or-flight just at the sound of my phone and my once-mellow stepmother can’t sleep for fear of him disappearing onto the moor at night.
Maya is flying over here for Christmas to help with the move, which is a great relief. Nicola and I have been managing the situation for three years now; things only worsening, never getting better. We are both exhausted, especially Nicola. We need a break.
And so, no matter how happy I am to be seeing my sister, there’s a river of deep grief flowing through her forthcoming trip. Neither of us is ready for this to be happening. Dad, for all his faults, was always the solid one. He was the place we called home.
* * *
—
The sky is clear after a day of rain and fog, the moon fat and gibbous above the moor. Up at Buckland Beacon I can make out black clumps of bracken and gorse as the hill climbs; a few windblown, ancient hawthorns silhouetted darkly against the ink-sheet sky. Seawater has hung like curtains around our house all day, but now it’s lifted the air bears all of my favorite smells: wet moss, damp peat, the gentle spice of wood smoke from our neighbors’ house over the hill.
Raffy, of course, will be fine; he’s tough, my little boy. There’s no reason he shouldn’t outgrow his lung disease in time. And in the moments that I can switch from daughter to doctor I’m able to accept that my father deserves to be safe. He will soon be in the hands of competent, trained professionals and that’s exactly what he needs, no matter how great the ache in my heart.
I lean against the cold stones of our porch, repeating these words while my nervous system settles. He deserves to be safe. Competent, trained professionals. What he needs.
Bats swoop and dive above the narrow stream that cuts our garden in two, and a soft square of light from Robin’s office lies quietly on the grass at the side of the house, near our little holiday let, the Pig Shed. We’ve got guests from London at the moment. They took pictures of the Pig Shed door sign and posted them on Instagram. Their caption described this as “the REAL countryside.”
People often ask: What brought you down here? Most are curious, but plenty see us as blow-ins from London. We aren’t Londoners, either of us, but I’ve stopped explaining that because nobody listens.
“I grew up here” is what I normally say. And I did: you could see the ancient loaf of Hameldown from my bedroom window if you leaned out at an angle. But when I left this place for medical school, I never imagined coming back. I craved the richness and experiential intensity of city life. In the years that followed I worked in London, Manchester, Johannesburg, Newcastle; a fellowship in Chicago was on the cards. I worked in Major Trauma centers in major cities and I thrived.
Then I delivered my twins three months early, spent six months in NICU, and stopped thriving.
I limped on in London for nearly two years before accepting as truth my need to move back here. To this otherworldly land of operatic seasons and enormous skies. To the healing peace of the moor with its ancient lanes, moss-covered boulders, that light breaking through the clouds in quivering plates: rose, copper, gold.
And so we came back here, to the REAL countryside.
* * *
—
Robin’s unboxing what looks like a secondhand camera lens when I come in. Next to the parcel is his laptop, open on the NASA space station tracking website. On the other side is a large Pyrex dish of macaroni cheese from dinner, hardened and cold. A fork has been speared into the top of it. My husband is an unapologetic defender of comfort food. He has an app full of recipes for shepherd’s pie and jam roly-poly and he laughs out loud at the fastidiously healthy lunches I make myself these days while he eats fish finger sandwiches.