Children in Her Shadow (19 page)

The days that followed Maria’s birth saw Ruth’s mood change rapidly and alarmingly. She became depressed again and cried without any apparent reason. What was more worrying was that her depressive state made it impossible for her to continue to breast feed her baby. Aunt Dorothy saw similarities to some of the mothers she dealt with in her maternity wing at the hospital recognising the symptoms of what she called ‘the blues’ or a state of deep depression. She was unimpressed declaring that Ruth should “pull herself together.”

Medical advances were yet to recognise that a combination of her unhappy marriage, her loss of individual identity and the recognition of the trap she was in were all combining forces that amounted to what we now call post natal depression. The ignorance of the times cannot be excused for the disgraceful way in which Ruth was to be treated in the coming weeks.

Firstly, she was taken to a doctor who referred her to a Psychiatrist at the nearby Mental hospital known locally as ‘The Asylum’. The Psychiatrist had the same attitude to Ruth’s malaise that Aunt Dorothy displayed, that “the girl should pull herself together.” After two further weeks and no improvement, Ruth attended the hospital again when the same Psychiatrist, under some pressure from Edward and Aunt Dorothy to get on with some sort of in-patient treatment, admitted her to the asylum having diagnosed that she had Schizophrenia.

Ruth stayed in that awful place for five months with its wide range of patients whose lives had been put on hold whilst medical science discovered that for people like Ruth, time and gentle cognitive therapy were what was required not to be locked up as mad. Indeed many of the patients in that place for people that failed to conform to society’s strict conventions might well have considered if it was the system and its doctors that were mad and not the patients.

During her time in the asylum, Edward initially visited every week but that soon drifted to every two weeks. Ruth’s pleas to see Charlotte and later to see her new baby were dismissed as being inappropriate. She asked if she could write a letter and only after she had been there for many weeks was she able to convince a nurse that she was sane but sad. That nurse posted the letter to Moira who was beside herself with worry. She knew that Ruth had delivered her baby and that she was extremely tired from a quickly scribbled letter written by Ruth the day after the birth. Moira was therefore relieved but distressed to find that she was in the asylum.

Moira quickly made plans to visit the hospital and after some difficulty she made the journey to the hospital and was shown to a visitor’s room where she met a worn down, very nearly institutionalised Ruth. Ruth came to life over the course of the hour Moira was there, so much so that Moira insisted upon seeing a doctor. The hand of fate was on Ruth’s shoulder that day as Moira confided in a young, newly qualified consultant psychiatrist and opened the book on Ruth’s troubled life. Many unanswered questions led the doctor to concur that the best therapy for Ruth was to be slowly reintegrated with her family. Moira and the doctor were convinced but it took a further four weeks before Edward was persuaded to bring Charlotte to see her mother which he did one Sunday afternoon.

For Charlotte, this must have been a shocking experience. Simply approaching this imposing Victorian building from the main driveway sent a chill up the spine. Built in the early eighteen seventies, this structure had the responsibility to keep people in, to keep those in society that were seen as mad or strange, or different away from the ordered life of the Victorian era. The site had its own infectious diseases sanatorium, train station, theatre, church, cemetery and post office. It would be many years later when images coming out of the war were to show people being taken by train to concentration camps, that Ruth was to reflect upon the similarities. People with mental health conditions were brought to these asylums by train and walked the short distance to their legal incarceration where for many they would spend the rest of their lives locked away.

Entering the building through the large main doors, Charlotte would see and hear the sounds of everyday life in the building known locally as the Whittingham Asylum even though its name was changed in the early nineteen twenties to Whittingham Mental Hospital still the stigma of the asylum would remain for local people. Charlotte would see the wide corridors with wards and individual rooms leading off them and she would have heard the ever present sound of patients crying or calling out and the sound of doors being opened and closed using keys that rattled on long chains held on the belts of the nursing staff.

Charlotte would have seen patients wandering freely along the corridors patients that would have welcomed the sight of a young child in their midst but nonetheless, patients that might have been different and therefore frightening to the young Charlotte.

Charlotte was slow to recognise and go to her mother when they arrived at Ruth’s room but over the course of a few weeks they re-established their relationship. The next and important test was to see how Ruth behaved in the company of Maria. That took more time as the young doctor built confidence in Ruth who slowly unlocked her concealed maternal instincts.

Life came back to Ruth; she was one of the fortunate ones who walked out of that place less damaged than when she went in. The memory of that institution would live with Ruth for the rest of her life.

Ruth left hospital in the March of nineteen forty six but not before Edward had agreed, in close consultation with the hospital and with Ruth that the key to a lasting improvement in Ruth’s health was for the couple to have a life of their own in their own home. Edward took some convincing before it was agreed that they would lease Bowland Moss Farm House where they would live with the two children. It was agreed that Ellen would continue to care for the children during the day but Ruth would return home each night to Bowland Moss to be with the children rather than staying with Moira in Blackpool.

Before Ruth returned home, and without anyone other than the Carmichael’s being aware, Edward along with fifteen thousand others attended, by invitation an event at the Royal Albert Hall in London. It was a low key but fitting tribute that would be made to the Voluntary Interceptors, who were presented with certificates of appreciation for their work in the war. In keeping with that work, the event was not publicised and for many who attended, their visit to London was as wrapped in secrecy from their families as was their work throughout the war. The simple parchment certificate was signed by Herbert Creedy, a senior Civil Servant who had been recalled from retirement to the Security Executive, for the duration of the war. The citation message on behalf of the government was suitably vague and yet to those who served as Voluntary Interceptors it said all that was needed:

‘In the years when Civilisation was menaced with destruction Edward Carmichael who served from 1940-1945 gave generously of his time, powers and technical skill in essential service to his Country’.

This opaque but meaningful tribute to people who put their own lives at risk should Britain have been occupied, captured the grateful thanks of a nation who would not know of the bravery and service of these people for decades, and for many their wartime secret was taken to their grave, the evidence of which would have only been discovered in their papers by their families. This secret was also kept from Ruth.

Bowland Moss Farm House, Ruth’s new home was a delightful cottage situated alongside a farm machinery repair yard that always seemed to be busy with the comings and goings of farmers with their broken equipment. The cottage had two bedrooms and a modest size kitchen that served also as the main living space. There was an inside toilet only but the lack of a bathroom was seen as no problem, the children would do as Ruth did as a child, and bathe in the galvanised tin bath that would be brought in from the yard and placed in front of the open fire to be filled with warm water.. The cottage came fully furnished and so for the first time in her marriage, Ruth was able to play her full role as wife and mother.

The arrangement seemed to be working well for the first few weeks. Ruth was happily back in the cockpit with her friends and although the transport arrangements to and from work were tedious Ruth was prepared to cope with that for the sake of her marriage and her children. But it wasn’t long before Edward had moved back to living with his parents complaining that Ruth couldn’t cook, and was a poor housewife. The children were also difficult to wrench from Ellen each evening and soon Ellen was insisting ‘for the sake of the children’ that they remain with her on week nights.

Edward seemed to be being deliberately difficult and disagreeable and it was only occasionally that he would stay at Bowland Moss Farm with her. The long standing arrangement that Sam would take Ruth and Edward by car to Preston had evaporated and Ruth would start her day at six o’clock going to Garstang with a neighbour on the back of his motorcycle and then catching a bus to Blackpool. The return journey would see her walking about three miles home from where the nearest bus would stop and yet Ruth persisted in the hope of salvaging a marriage that was dying before her eyes.

Edward was becoming a stranger and the Carmichaels were slowly and Ruth would say deliberately easing themselves and her children out of Ruth’s life. Visits to see the children were rare following a confrontation with the family when Ruth arrived at Eastbrook Farm one Saturday afternoon in late July.

On her arrival Charlotte ran to the gate to greet her mother and was abruptly stopped by Aunt Matilda who told her to go indoors. As Charlotte did so, Edward, Sam and Ellen did the same leaving Ruth at the gate with Aunt Matilda. Aunt Matilda had a sense of purpose in her demeanour and gave the impression from the outset that she was acting as the family spokesperson. In a voice of the headmistress that she was, she began by telling Ruth that she should waken up to the reality of her situation, explaining that she was and always had been tolerated rather than welcomed into the family because of her foolishness in getting pregnant. She said that Ruth’s mental illness and her prolonged absence from the children had served to confirm that her two children were “blossoming” without Ruth’s interference in their balanced and ordered life.

Ruth attempted to interrupt and was abruptly silenced by Aunt Matilda. Ruth persisted and spluttered that she was trying hard to be a good mother but that Edward was continually seeing Sarah. Ruth resisted Matilda’s attempt to regain the conversation by explaining that their marriage had been overshadowed by Edward’s continued contact with Sarah. Ruth explained that she had a first hand account from one of Edward’s supervisors who had seen Sarah and Edward embracing and kissing in Avenham Park in Preston. Ruth explained that Anna, her supervisor was so shocked that she deliberately went across to Edward and asked him what the hell he was doing, a married man, cavorting in this way. Aunt Matilda was unmoved by the evidence of Edward’s ongoing extramarital ‘relationship’ with Sarah, indeed it seemed to hasten bringing her to the point she was so eager to make.

Aunt Matilda began by pointedly stating that neither Edward nor the family or the children wanted anything more to do with her. She asked Ruth to acknowledge that her marriage to Edward was over and that whilst she remained it prevented the children from getting on with their lives and stopped Edward from pursuing the happiness he so deserved. As though to counterbalance her last point she looked into Ruth’s eyes and said, “You don’t fit here in this family in this part of the country and you should go back to Wales and start a new life of your own and leave us to bring up the children.”

Ruth stood silently absorbing what she had heard. It was true that the children saw Ellen as their mother rather than grandmother and, yes, they were happier in Ellen’s company than hers. It was equally true that she was not welcomed by the family and deep in her own heart, Ruth knew that she would never be happy unless she was out of this family and the trap she found herself in. But what she was being asked to do, to walk away from her marriage and her children was just too big a step to take to achieve her own happiness for the future …… or was it?

Ruth suggested to Aunt Matilda that she ask Edward to come to Bowland Moss Farm that evening when they could discuss their future. Matilda agreed and as she strode back to the house her posture suggested she was satisfied that she had achieved her task and without emotion, she turned and went indoors.

As Ruth walked home, she began to evaluate what she had heard. Yes she was young, still only twenty three and her whole life lay ahead of her. Perhaps, she thought, there will be room for happiness in her life and perhaps she could put behind her the events of the past few years. Ruth started to build a picture of a future where she was back in South Wales amongst people she loved and who loved her. All of the people that knew she had married were now gone from South Wales and her thoughts constructed a scenario whereby she would simply slip back without people knowing of her marriage and her children.

Ruth began to build pictures of secretly returning to Lancashire periodically to see her children and she felt, these visits might serve to rekindle the relationship she once felt she had with Edward. As she arrived at the front door of Bowland Moss Farm, the picture was complete.

Ruth’s naive belief that what Aunt Matilda had proposed was good for her only served to underscore the extent to which the Carmichael family had taken control of her life, her self esteem and her perspective of what was right and appropriate for her and her children, though she couldn’t see it.

Ruth was not a simple person but she lacked the ability to put herself and her children at the centre of the discussion and held onto the belief that if she was good, if she humoured Edward and if she went along with the ‘wisdom’ of the family suggestions, all would come right in the end. She had no other reference points; her father and mother never took decisions preferring to put difficult problems to one side in the belief that ‘things will come right in the end’. What this did for them and what was happening now for Ruth was that alternative scenarios were never explored and so Ruth was being manipulated and was slowly sleepwalking into her own future nightmare.