Page 28 of Things We Never Said
So Sean had done just that.
On his return, he had peered through the window and seen the baby suckling on her sleeping mother’s breast, and in that moment yet another sensation had washed over him, a feeling so powerful that he can remember it vividly today – and as, looking at the photo, he does so, the hairs on the back of his neck bristle.
He had felt himself disappear, that was the sensation. It was as if he had stepped outside himself and could see his life from an entirely different perspective.
For his whole life, up until that point, had been about him. His only priority had been to work out what he wanted, what he was going to do to make himself happy.
Sure, there had been moments, many moments even, during which he had acted to make those around him happy. No one had ever accused Sean of being selfish. But even those moments of supposed selflessness had, he suddenly saw, been motivated by the fact that doing whatever he was doing for whoever it was madehimfeel happy.
At the moment he looked through that window, however, everything changed, and something, his ego perhaps, had temporarily vanished. The only thing that mattered henceforth was April: protecting April, providing for April, making sure April was happy and healthy and loved. The sensation of selflessness, of total devotion to another, come what may, was like nothing he had ever felt before.
It hadn’t lasted, of course, but that was no small mercy, because who could survive with such intensity of emotion?
But the sensation had returned from time to time – whenever April was ill, or twice when she went missing, and a few times when she ran towards traffic, or rolled out of a taxi in high heels, drunk, in her late teens. And in those moments he had remembered that she was the only thing that mattered, that protecting this child was his only reason for being on this planet.
Cassette #9
Hi Sean.
April has just been to visit me – she has literally just left – which is why I dug this photo out. She told me that Ronan wants to have a baby! Has she told you that yet? If not, don’t say a word! I’m probably not supposed to tell.
She’s such an amazing girl. I’m sure she must have her down moments, but she certainly doesn’t force them on anyone else. She’s always ‘up’, always buzzing around at full tilt.
The idea of her having children is a strange one for me, because I sort of believed that she would never get around to it. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did. Anyway, she’s certainly considering it now, so you may end up a granddad yet.
If it does happen, please don’t get all weepy about my missing out on it all. I can honestly tell you that I have never longed for grandchildren. Bringing up one child was hard enough, but looking after other people’s children has always struck me as a special kind of hell.
Looking at the photo, the first thing I remembered was how worried you were that she might be born on April the 1st! Do you remember? You were totally obsessed about her being called an April fool by everyone. You even asked me if I could ‘hang on’ if she did want to come out on April the 1st. I think you believed that I just had to keep my knees together and she’d stay in there.
In the end she came, or rather was yanked out, at ten minutes to midnight and so was saved the ignominy of being an April fool.
Do you know, I can’t for the life of me remember how she came to be called April! Isn’t that the strangest thing? I think all these drugs they give me are messing with my brain.
I have some vague recollection that I was disappointed she’d been born in March as I wanted to call her April, and you said, ‘Let’s do it anyway.’ So perhaps it was as simple as that.
Giving birth was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It was far harder than all this chemotherapy lark, and this is, let’s face it, pretty bad. But giving birth was so painful, Sean. There are no words sufficient to describe that level of pain. I would guess, though, that if hitting your funny bone is a three and shutting your finger in the door is, say, a five, and if having your leg sawn off without anaesthetic would be a ten, then giving birth must be a fifteen. At least.
People say you forget how bad it was but that’s rubbish – it’s just a lie people tell mothers-to-be to make them a little less scared. But they should be scared. It really is that bad.
I had been led to believe that I could ask for an epidural at any point, but when I finally caved in, by the time I finally thought,Oh, fuck this all-natural lark, there were no anaesthetists available. They were dealing with a pile-up on the M6 or something and were up to their tits in mangled bodies (the nurses’ words, not mine). What a nightmare!
So it was awful. Eight hours, as I recall, including two hours of screaming, horrendous,Friday the 13thhorror-film pain.
By the time April appeared, she had put me through so much that I hated her. I know you’re supposed to feel some instant, incredible bond with your offspring, but I didn’t, I hated her.
I kept that to myself though, I think, and over a few days it passed and was replaced by a terrifying kind of love that changed my entire world vision, so that everything I could see, think or imagine came to represent nothing more, nothing less, than a series of dangers to April.
I became terrified of cars and steps and injections and coughs. I became terrified of kettles and boiling saucepans and dogs and cats and nuclear accidents and just about anything else I could think of that might possibly, somehow, harm our child.
Human babies are so pathetic, that’s the thing. I mean, I’ve seen wildlife documentaries, and caribou foals, or whatever they’re called, pop out ready to run away from wolves. They can literally sprint about a minute after being born.
Whereas April ... she was just this warm lump to be looked after; a dribbling, almost blind, hungry, screaming little bundle of needs, hoping to be protected by me from all of the dangers and all of the evil in the world. It felt absolutely terrifying.
To say that my emotions were all mixed up would be an understatement. I hated her for hurting me, for scaring me, for depending on me, and yet I loved her for ... I don’t know. Just for existing, I suppose.
But if I’m honest, the overriding emotion those first days was definitely terror – terror that something would happen to her; terror that, for no reason, she would suddenly stop breathing. She just seemed so fragile. At times I couldn’t imagine how she’d make it through the next twenty-four hours. Even when April slept, I couldn’t, because I had to watch her breathing.
I think the midwives and antenatal teachers are more honest about all of this, these days, but back then no one ever told me that I might feel upset, or scared or depressed. You were just supposed to get on with it all. And no matter how weepy and grumpy and unreasonable I may have been (and I know that the answer to that is ‘very’), know that I did my best to keep it all under control. Inside me, things were even worse than they looked on the outside, if you can imagine such a thing. Thank God you were there.
