Angel Wing

1

1927 – 1939

Movement was my first language. I remember running in circles around the small patch of grass in our garden, flapping my arms like a bee. As if I could fly.

I was just three when I ran away for the first time. I took my yellow-haired rag doll in her pram and ran out of the gate, along to the corner, and half way round the crescent. Then I stopped. I didn’t know where to go next. And anyway, my father had caught up with me. He took hold of my hand without saying a word and walked me back home.

Years later I remember running over the fields - the sheer joy of it - the lightness in my feet as I skimmed over buttercups, and the sun in my eyes.

I was always running - into something I shouldn’t have come across, or away from wherever I was. I wanted to get away. This felt like my whole, big purpose in life.

Movement was my first love. I danced, and when I thought no one could hear me, I sang. That is how words began, the language of words, my second language.

And there the trouble really began, because I could not see how to match the sounds of words to what I was feeling inside, in my body, through my movement. The language of movement and the language of words made no sense to each other. There was no one who could explain the meaning of one to the other, just as there were none who could interpret the words of Esther and Trevor - the people I called Mammy and Daddy - to each other.

They were strangers, unknown to each other, and I was a foreign land. They would visit me from time to time, but we lived in a world of incomprehension and long silences. The art of messaging in our home was a crackle of broken signals, like the static of a wireless stuck between stations.

If I could speak in my first language, I would describe the push-pull excitement of the swing in our back garden. The great tug of effort as my heels thrust through the air, propelling swing and me up and up, and the great thrill surging through my belly. Then stomach tipping over as the swing arced down again, towards the earth, then back and up - whoosh, whoosh - push and arc and the thrill surging up inside me again. I could almost fling myself up and all the way over the top, like a stone tied to the end of a rope. Up and over, down, round, up and over - whoosh - back, forwards.

‘Ellen, that’s enough now. You’re going too high. You’ll fall,’ she would call out from the kitchen window.

‘No, I won’t fall. I’m flying.’ But she would never understand that, with her tight tied-up hair and skirt to match, her neat clicking heels and polished nails. She would never fly.

2

1945 – 1955

I grip the wheel tighter and straighten my back, coaxing my mind to stay alert as the veil of dusk obscures the margins of the road. The car bumps over holes in the tarmac, rattles louder and judders as I press my foot down on the accelerator. I feel tired. No, weary. I carry the weight of the last two years right down in my bones, like an impossible burden I had never expected, not wished for at this moment in my life. Now I have no choice. I have to make this journey. I must find her.

Through the creeping grey of evening mist, the harsh headlights of an oncoming car pierce into the back of my eyes. I want to look away but the glare draws me to stare right into the centre of the beam. The car flashes past and for a split second I am blind. I have swerved towards the centre of the road. I yank the wheel sharply to the left and straighten up again.

The light is fading and still I have forty miles to go. I have driven all day but tonight I will be in Liverpool. In the morning I will catch the ferry, and be in Belfast by lunchtime.

A tune is playing relentlessly in my mind. I begin to sing, quietly under my breath at first, then at the top of my voice, belting it out, just to keep awake.

‘My Bonnie lies over the ocean, my Bonnie lies over the sea ….. oh, bring back my Bonnie to me, to me ..... ’ Just thirty-nine more miles. I must keep going. I’ll buy fish and chips for supper then snuggle into a warm bed for the night. I had imagined a stroll around the harbour, watching the sunset over the Irish Sea. Instead I will arrive in the dark, wishing I had set out earlier. But it had been so hard to leave.

At the last minute James was trying, one more time, to persuade me not to go. During his fortnight holiday we could leave the children with his mother and he would come with me. He pleaded with me. He would drive and I could rest. Some rest would be good for me, he said. But more than I needed to rest, I needed to do this alone.

James was angry that I had to make this journey. Angry that a letter falling onto our doormat one spring morning had thrown my life, our life together, into chaos, and plunged me into a hole so deep he could no longer find me. He felt hurt when I would not let him help.

‘Ellen, this is crazy. Please - if you must go, at least let me come with you. You can’t do this on your own. Not the way you are at the moment.’ By this he meant the madness in my brain that kept me sad and empty and sometimes flying into a rage for no reason that he could fathom. The car keys were clenched tightly in his hand, which was dug deep into his trouser pocket.

Resorting in frustration to my first language, I moved my arms in a wide circle and brought my fists together in front of my chest.

‘I have to do it by myself. I just have to do it, James,’ I managed to articulate after one long moment of staring blankly at him. ‘Please give me the keys.’

‘Mammy, when will you be back? Will you be away for long? Will you be back to take me swimming tomorrow?’ Martin came running in from the garden, mud on his knees and a smear of jam across his pink cheek. I had already said goodbye to him, but now would have to do it all over again.

Anita toddled in after him a few moments later, her yellow beach pail in one hand and a blue plastic spade in the other. Her red curls trembled as she swayed precariously. Her toes fringed the edges of her soft padding feet like two rows of small pearls.

My heart fell at the sight of them standing in the hallway, mouths open, identical lost expressions on their faces, a plea in their wide eyes - Anita’s blue as a lake, Martin’s deep brown, like my own. They sensed that this was more serious than just an outing to the coast or a shopping trip to Newcastle. I faltered as I looked into their innocent upturned eyes, unsure if I had the courage to leave them behind.

But I did. James finally gave me the keys - more to avoid a scene in front of the children than from any skilful persuasion on my part. Thankfully the car coughed into life after a burst of choke and two sharp turns of the ignition, saving me from the indignity of the cranking handle. That would surely have stalled my flight.

I could not look back as I drove away. I knew their forlorn faces, and Anita’s plump little fist clenching and unclenching a ‘goodbye’, would break my heart and bring me right back home again. Tears were brimming in my eyes, but my heart was set.

*

My life had seemed perfect. After the battles and tumult and lies of my growing up years I had finally found happiness with James. But that was before the letter arrived. The truth that Liza’s letter brought seared through my life like a volcano cracking open the crust of hardened earth. The years of joy were swept up in the firestorm and burnt to ash. It happened so quickly - in the time it took to read one solitary page of blue-inked words, my life with James and Martin was ripped apart.

I was eight months pregnant and looking forward to Anita’s birth, but I cannot remember the sweet anticipation now. Only a turmoil of confusion, followed by an anger so strong I thought my swollen belly might explode. Then a moment of stark and cold clarity as I understood all that had happened. A grief so deep burrowed into me, so that when Anita arrived I could not even welcome her. I gave her to James to hold because I couldn’t bear to look into her tiny cherub face. There was nothing of a mother in me, just a gaping hole where the fire in the earth had erupted and emptied itself out into my life.

Poor Anita. I had nothing to give her. When she is older I will explain and tell her how sorry I am, but for now she is much too young to understand the dark feelings that came between us.

*

The night is black now. My shoulders are tight and aching, my breath shallow. I have stopped singing but still hum fragments of the tune softly. The road has narrowed and demands my full attention. Even so, my left hand slips into my cardigan pocket now and then. It’s a habit that has grown unconscious and firmly engrained, like an old olive tree spreading its roots wide and deep into dry earth to find the source of nourishment. I finger the small square of rough paper, like a blind person reading a message in Braille. Just to be sure the words are still there. Just to be sure I know where I’m going.

Of course, I can remember the words, but still .....

The Convent of the Sacred Heart

Ormeau Road

Belfast

A simple message. Nine words that I have learnt by heart, like a poem. Like a thread connecting me to another world, tying up ends, making things right. At least that is my hope.

I wriggle my shoulders and try to relax, take a deep breath, and centre both hands near the top of the steering wheel, at ten-to-two, just as James taught me. I can almost feel him sitting next to me in the passenger seat, doing his utmost to teach me how to drive.

‘Stop! Put the brakes on. NOW!’

‘Oops. Sorry. I didn’t see it.’ We were tipped, nose-down, into a shallow ditch and a bruise was coming up on his forehead where he had hit the windscreen. The bridge of my nose had met the top of the steering wheel with a sharp crack, and I felt a warm trickle of blood. On the other side of the ditch three sheep were staring at us, too startled to run away, as they ought to if they understood anything about motorcars and learner drivers. We both burst out laughing. At least I had been driving slowly and we weren’t seriously hurt.

James climbed out and took a photograph of the three bemused sheep, then one of me leaning over the bonnet, sweeping a Chaplinesque forearm over my brow as I tried to push the car out of the ditch. Laughing, he snapped away with his new Brownie box camera, before coming to my rescue.

Remembering that day, a smile begins to soften my tight face. What a gift James has been in my life, despite all the worry I have caused him. He stands by me, dependable, enduring, bold in the face of every obstacle. Troubles seem to give way in his presence, like water flowing round a boulder. He stands like a rock in the midst of my turbulent life.

*

As I come round a bend in the road, another set of headlights is veering towards me. I sense a steep drop down through the woods to my left. In the glare of the lights I can barely see the space between the side of the lorry and the edge of the road. There is a very narrow passage. There is barely space for me to squeeze through.

The lorry hurtles out of the mist and is looming towards me before I can take another breath. The rusted chrome of the fender glints in the two beams that my headlights throw out, as if in response to them - a bizarre conversation of signals, as foreign to me as those of Esther and Trevor. The silver-red grate of its mouth is leering at me, as if to bite, chew and swallow me up into its entrails of acrid smoke. Headlights flash brighter, like eyes - startled, threatening, and finally enraged. I am in the way.

Esther’s face flashes across my vision. The gloss of sleek blonde hair, the sharp glint in her ice blue eyes - a dart of light, a bright pinprick. I was always in Esther’s way. By the time I was five it was clear to me she did not want me there.

A fraction of a second and the image is gone - the time it takes for my feet to brace against the clutch and the brake, but the car speeds on.

The headlights are close now. I should get out of the way, but I don’t. Perhaps I could manoeuver through the narrow passage. But that would take such presence, such skill and great effort.

I can’t focus. I can’t summon the energy and the will to steer myself through the clear space between falling and being crushed against the metal teeth of the lorry that is bearing down on me.

Oh God, James. I wish you were here now. Just take the wheel from me and steer me through, as you always do. I cannot do this by myself.

My mind feels so jangled by the sleepless nights, the crying of my baby, the torment of the lies that were told. In the sliver of space between this moment and the next I cannot find the will to care whether I scrape my way through or not. It would be easier to simply let go, be done with all the heartache and betrayal, the exhaustion. My failure to nurture my baby girl is a constant knife turning over in my soul. I can barely face myself. Better, then, to let go, to surrender and be done.

With that thought, the urgent need to reach Liza springs up again, and I struggle to summon the effort, to make my hands turn the wheel and steer the car through. But my body has frozen. I am as brittle as ice. For once in my brief life of dancing, running, flying, I am unable to move at all. My fingers grip the wheel, tight, white-knuckled. I hold my breath. My arms and legs protrude like rigid sticks, wedging me against the wheel and the metal body of the old Ford. Movement, my first language, fails me. I am wholly inarticulate.

It is almost on top of me now.

Time slows down. I swerve and feel the long arc of the movement. Far away, a planet orbits in space, around its star. I feel extended, eternal.

The great rusting chrome mouth surges into me, turns me over, splits me into pieces like dry clay soil in the path of the plough. I see a flash of red paint and enormous black tyre. There is a smell of petrol and burning rubber, the screech of brakes, a crescendo of metal drums and glass breaking.

Blood rushes up out of the dry soil.

A tangle of smashed ploughs and twisted furrows spreads across the road.

Thick silence descends.

*

There is a sensation of being dragged backwards, but a flood of images rush through my mind, pulling me towards them. I am diving through sand dunes and sunlight, then dark rooms thick with the smell of furniture polish. I fall back but find I am leaping forwards to a point of departure. My life is strung out on a thread. It has knots and coloured beads all along its length. The ends are frayed.

Back at the beginning there’s a sense of softness - something touches me with tenderness and I am curled up and content. Then this feeling is broken by hard edges, harsh movements that sound like church bells clanging out of tune. An overpowering smell of disinfectant. I bury myself into the moments of warm contentment. Then I am snapped open again by the clanging bells and harsh smells. I am falling inside out, falling apart, snapping, breaking open. I try with all my will to go back to the memory of tenderness but it’s too fleeting to hold onto.

Another image. I am sitting on a cold linoleum floor – brown and yellow squares run diagonally across a narrow kitchen. Esther with her neat, blonde hair is looking down at me. I bang a wooden spoon on the floor, jerking my body up and down and laughing. She frowns. I bang louder and squeal. Her face reddens and some harsh noises come from her mouth. The room turns dark and cold, like clouds gathering, and I feel afraid. I shrink into myself, make myself smaller and harder around my edges. She turns away and I am quiet now.

*

I am falling. The metal box of the Ford is tumbling through trees, splitting them into spikes. There is a crashing sound of metal against tree and the sharp loud snapping of wood. I feel nothing. Time stretches out all around me. Tree branches glow eerily in the tunnel of light that is turning and turning.

Dark branches crack and snap, releasing showers of amber leaves - bright jewels, flecks of light that tumble around me, fluttering up and down like snowflakes unsure where earth is, where to land.

My head feels dense, throbbing, my hands and feet numb. Somewhere in the centre of me I am torn open and my heart bursts out. The breath cannot find a way in and my lungs constrict, wanting to scream, but pain sears up instead. There - a feeling. I am still alive.

I am tumbling in my black box down a cliff. I roll over and over.