Present day
‘You all right, Lil? Haven’t heard from you for a couple of days. I said to Norm, I’m worried she’s fallen down the plughole!’
‘I’ve started packing up, Glen, can’t see a way to avoid it really, and it makes me sad and makes me think, but it’s also galvanising me.’
‘I bet, my love, a whole lifetime of memories. Did you take Apollo into school?’
‘No, he’s on half-term, so Clodagh’s taken time off. I quite miss it!’ It was nice to hear how Glenda’s attitude to the young woman had changed.
‘Oh yes, I think Bradley’s boys are on holiday too. So what news?’
‘I went to see Derek Manners.’
‘You never did! Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while!
’ Glenda’s shocked tone was a reminder of how she and everyone in her circle had always viewed him.
Lilly knew that when it came to building a relationship with him, it was a case of too little too late, but she had been greatly touched by his words, knowing her guilt was something she would wrestle with.
The fact was, he had loved her mum, made her happy, and Jeannie had chosen him for a reason.
A reason Lilly was beginning to understand.
‘I did. It wasn’t easy. He told me a few home truths and I left feeling really weird. It’s unnerved me. I feel like I’ve lived my life with only half the cards, Glenda, while she had the other half, and I just wish I could see her, talk to her.’
‘Life doesn’t work like that, mate, does it? We can’t waste time regretting the things we can’t change. It’s futile and will only make us miserable.’
‘True, and I don’t regret much.’ She toyed with the edge of the scarf that was wrapped around her head, trying to contain her curls.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Glenda lowered her voice.
‘’Course you can.’ There was very little between them that was unsaid.
‘Would you have kept it? Had you not started bleeding and all that came next, would you have kept it?’ Glenda asked softly, as if making sure no one in the house could hear, her discretion, as ever, guaranteed.
‘I don’t know.’ This was her truth and a thought Lilly avoided, finding it hard to picture a different life that had been just out of reach.
She swallowed, knowing no good would come of such imaginings.
‘I mean, if it was nowadays, I’d have kept it, no doubt, I’d have found a way, but back then?
Different times. I was so scared. Every aspect of being pregnant was utterly petrifying.
I didn’t believe it was true and just as I was starting to accept it and wonder what on earth might happen next, I started bleeding.
I can’t imagine what it would have been like to do it alone. ’
‘Millions of women do!’
‘They do indeed, and why not? But not so much then, Glen.’ She again offered the reminder, all part of the cloak of shame and humiliation that Lilly had worn for the longest time, knowing that her words were true; different times .
. . ‘And then I think about how that was my one chance, my shot at motherhood. I just didn’t know it.
I sometimes wonder if it was a boy or a girl, not that it helps in any way at all to go down those rabbit holes.
I might not talk about it much, but I think about it often,’ she confessed.
‘They’d be fifty-one now, my baby, nearly fifty-two, actually.
A grown man or woman. Maybe with kids of their own .
. .’ She inhaled the smell of bleach, remembered the waiting room full of cigarette smoke and Dr Rudd addressing her as if she was insignificant, making her feel so small when she was at her most vulnerable. What a rotten thing to do.
‘I know, my love.’ Glenda sounded choked, as if she, too, might think about it often.
With the help of the internet, a chat to her doctor and enough time having passed to enable the discussion, Lilly had researched, as far as she was able, what had happened to her in 1973, wanting to make sense of it.
It had felt odd, yet wonderfully freeing, asking questions without it being something so poisonous on her tongue that to speak of it felt impossible.
‘Different times, Lilly. Hysterectomies were very common. For reasons that nowadays seem hard to believe, sometimes heedlessly done, almost, I fear. I read a case once where a woman had presented to her doctor seeming flustered at the thought of another pregnancy and so they gave her a hysterectomy. She had one child and was twenty-five.’ Marian, the GP, had shaken her head.
‘I think partly it was because of a lack of availability of other procedures, and poor understanding of women’s health.
But also’ – her doctor of three decades, a smart woman who of course knew her history, returned her gaze – ‘it was a thing done to women by men. And I wonder if it was in part to stop those women coming back again and again, maybe because women who complained were seen as a little troublesome or hysterical?’ she emphasised.
‘That’s my personal opinion. Hysteria was a common diagnosis right up until the 1980s, and some doctors believed hysterectomy cured a wide range of mental health symptoms, often non-specific in the detail, but it was even seen as a cure for promiscuity.
And believe me, the definition of promiscuity was questionable – “intercourse outside of wedlock”, if you can imagine that.
’ Lilly had felt her face flame and could indeed imagine that.
‘I think possibly some of these older surgeons weren’t so far removed from that thinking. It’s very sad.’
‘You think they, what, used it as . . . as punishment?’ Lilly could barely get the words out.
‘I think that’s probably going too far. If we’re being kinder’ – Marian widened her eyes – ‘I’d say that it’s possible decisions were made with the wholly unacceptable weight of moral judgement behind them.
Just part of the misogyny around at the time and the terrible inequity in women’s healthcare provision.
It got rid of the problem and was probably seen as the “right thing to do”.
There was much autonomy for these surgeons and very little by way of redress; they were seen as God-like, often. ’
Lilly had stared at the doctor. Just the thought that she might have been punished for not being married . . . It was certainly what it had felt like, the way she was treated, ignored. ‘Would I have been thought of as promiscuous, do you think?’
She remembered the way she had felt about Wilkie’s body, the hunger for skin-to-skin contact, that weekend at Royal Avenue on that big old bed.
‘We have no way of knowing.’ Lilly liked her honesty. ‘But what I do know was that your hysterectomy was because of uterine perforation, which means the wall of your womb was accidentally punctured and there was severe bleeding.’
‘So he did something wrong, did something to me?’ She pictured the condescending, overconfident Dr Rudd.
‘These things can happen. Rarely, but they can.’
‘I thought you were remarkable, that day when Norm and I picked you up.’ Glenda’s words pulled her from her thoughts. ‘You were calm and strong, and I was in awe of you, Lil. Still am a bit.’ Glenda chuckled.
‘I wasn’t calm and strong, not really, I was in shock.’ Lilly bit her lip. ‘It was months – years – later that I fully understood what had happened to me. I don’t think it fully registered until I met Rex.’
‘Oh God! I’d forgotten about Rex, dressed like he was in Miami Vice! I liked him.’
‘Mmm.’ It had been a look. ‘I liked him too, everyone did, but he mentioned kids, and it was like this cold creep of understanding that went through my veins when I realised what had been done to me and how.’ It hurt even now to think of it.
‘I can still picture the doctor, a pompous walrus of a man full of his own self-importance. I don’t remember saying a single word to him.
He was dismissive and made me feel as if I should be brushing it under the carpet and carrying on, like it was nothing.
His error did it to me, caused me harm. It was negligent, but that wasn’t even under consideration, I was just a silly girl who had brought it all on herself – or at least that was how I was made to feel.
But it changed everything for me, everything. ’
‘I know, darling. But it’s important to remember that it was done to you. You did nothing wrong. You didn’t make the choice, didn’t give permission, it was all done to you, Lil. You were just a little girl really.’
Her tears came quietly. Glenda was right: she had been just a little girl.
‘Love you, Glen.’
‘Love you too.’
Lilly ended the call. It was an odd thing to talk about, as they never did really, but it was true; she thought about it, often. And as for Dr Rudd . . . she knew she’d never forget a single detail about him or her time on his ward.
That’s a good girl . . .
Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .
Then nothing.
It wasn’t the bluest of days, but the light was good, bright, and it was warm enough.
Despite the pressing need to pack and find somewhere to live, Lilly picked up her paintbrushes and made her way out to the towpath.
Deliberately and calmly she placed her easel, adjusted her seat and pulled out her brushes and paints.
Waving briefly to the other side as was her custom, feeling the pull of nostalgia and regret, knowing she might have inadvertently waved on occasion to her mum.