The Eagle and the Rose (31 page)

Still, though, there remained in her that spark of independence and a stubborn refusal to lie down and die. She still laughed, still played with her dolls, Jennifer and Susan, and of course her teddy, living in the make-believe world she had now created for herself. A world of make-believe friends—a world of love.

Of course, there were good times, and there were the times when the sisters played together and had fun. When she was eleven or twelve the girl's older brother, Terry, started going out with a young woman who was a music teacher, so piano lessons were arranged for her. This was great, as the girl showed a certain aptitude and found yet another way of escaping the real world when things at home weren't right.

She would sit for hours in the front room and play. Hardly anyone came in to disturb her, as the room was cold, even in the summer. In winter it was freezing, and she would sit, well wrapped up in a coat and scarf, oblivious of everything around her save her music. Not by anyone's standards could the girl be considered a brilliant pianist. Sometimes well, sometimes clumsily, her fingers would embrace the keyboard, but her thoughts were set free and she could express herself in a way she never could with words. And her parents, although they never were especially encouraging, never discouraged her.

But when she was fifteen, something happened that almost destroyed any ability she might have had to remember with affection the good times she must undoubtedly have had in her childhood.

The family were on holiday again, this time in Ireland and also this time with her father.

The four sisters had gone to the local village dance, but Judy and Midge decided halfway through the evening that they were bored and went home. The girl would quite willingly have gone with them, but Audrey, the eldest, persuaded her to stay. Audrey was nineteen and having a great time. The young Irishman dancing her around the floor was very handsome.

Eventually the dance finished, and the young man asked if he could walk her home. Of course she said yes, but she persuaded the girl to act as chaperone.

Soon they reached the house where the family were staying for their holiday, and the girl was all for going straight in. But Audrey wanted to stay and talk to the boy, so again the girl was persuaded to wait with her, and was told to stand a few feet away from her sister— near enough for protection, but not close enough to hear what her sister and the boy might say to each other.

Ten uneventful minutes passed, and the girl was just beginning to get fidgety and on the point of telling her sister that she was going in, when the door of the house flew open and out stepped the girl's father.

In an instant she froze, some instinct telling her of danger. Then his great bellowing voice, like black thunder rolling across the street, moved both sisters into action, and they raced into the house.

“Get yourselves in,” he had roared, that was all. Just three words, but the girl felt the rage that lay behind them, and her stomach lurched in fear and dread of what would happen next.

Audrey reached the door first, and her father's hand came out expertly to give her a resounding clout across the head.

Close on her heels came the girl, who also received a sound blow across her head. But it didn't stop there.

All the way up the stairs she was beaten soundly by her father. They reached the upstairs living room, but still he didn't stop. Somehow, with blows raining down on her thick and fast, the girl managed to get to the bedroom and tried to protect herself by curling into a ball on the bed.

Audrey had been screaming and yelling at her father to leave the girl alone (it was the first time the girl could ever remember anyone trying to help her), and then Audrey jumped onto her father's back in an attempt to pull him away.

With one raging sweep of his hand he flung her off, and she landed with a thud in the corner of the room, tears of rage and frustration pouring down her face.

He drew his attention back to the girl huddled on the bed, her arms trying to protect her face and head, and he beat her and beat her until eventually his rage was spent.

She had long since stopped screaming out and had lain shocked and numb as her father's fists had thudded down on her thin and narrow frame. It seemed to her later that only one thing had registered in her mind. At one point, somewhere in all this, she had looked desperately for her mother and had seen her standing with her other two sisters in the doorway to the bedroom, watching. Just watching. She didn't move, or speak, or yell out for this barbaric act to stop. Nor, when it eventually did stop, did she lift one finger to help the girl in any way. She just turned on her heel, taking her three daughters with her, and the girl was left once again by herself, and all alone.

Why, you may ask, was the girl beaten this way? Why? Why?

The girl's father may know, or maybe he doesn't, and her mother may have an inkling as to why.

But the girl never knew!

Years passed, and the girl, now a woman but still a girl, shy, sensitive, and self-conscious, was married.

Would her life become easier now that she had found someone to love and who loved her? Well, he did, didn't he? Even though, just two days before the wedding, he had been to bed with another woman.

But it seemed that the girl was fated, as only a few months after she was married, illness struck. She was rushed to the hospital, desperately ill with what at first the doctors thought was some sort of viral kidney infection. It turned out to be much worse, but after two rounds of major surgery and lots of care from the medical profession, the girl slowly recovered her health.

During all the months of her illness she had just one visit from her eldest sister, Audrey, and one from her mother. There were no cards or flowers or phone messages. Nothing to show the girl that her family cared.

She could have died, but what would it have mattered to them?

Nothing, she felt, just nothing!

So she clung more and more to her husband, needing him to fill the desperate loneliness that was her soul.

She lost her first baby, and her second, and can remember coming round from the anesthetic after they had scraped her clean, screaming for her baby. But an injection soon sorted that out, and after a long sleep she woke to find that physically she could cope. It was only her mind that screamed out now. Why? Why?
Why?

Years passed, and her third baby was born, a girl. She was well and healthy and became the girl's salvation.

Twice her husband left her, once with the girl's best friend. There were always other women, always debts, always problems of one sort or another. But the girl had grown dependent on her husband, believing firmly in her own inadequacy and her inability to manage without him.

Twice she took him back, willing to believe him when he told her that it was only her he loved. In fairness, he probably meant it at the time, or at least for the time it took him to say the words.

During this period, the girl, from time to time, would invite her parents to visit, always hoping that somehow they would be able to build up some kind of loving relationship.

Strangely, since the girl had left home, she and her father got on very well, and a certain kind of closeness developed between them. They found that they could talk to each other and were on the same wavelength. Never once did either of them mention the past or even refer to the bad times. But the girl felt that her father had finally come to accept and even care for her. She in turn began to understand that her father was not a wicked man, merely a frustrated and unhappy man, living in a marriage he did not want and with a woman too complex to ever understand. He had tried, she had tried, but their marriage was an unmitigated disaster. And since the kids had left home they began to live more and more separate lives, he in his garden and the girl's mother taking holidays abroad, cruises, and visiting her daughters. It was probably her mother's absence from home that enabled the girl to get to know her father better and to grow to like him as well as to love him. This did not mean that she could forget the past, the beatings and the cruelty, and it took a number of years for her to come to terms with this aspect of her relationship with him. But just as things between them were going really well, fate struck yet another cruel blow. The girl's father, the army sergeant, had a massive heart attack and died.

How the girl grieved. She grieved for the loss of her daddy, for the fact that she hadn't said good-bye and that she wouldn't see him again. She grieved for the hurts and pains of the past and for all the lost opportunities. For the love she could have had and for the love she had had. And she grieved most of all for all those might-have-beens.

But the pain lessened, as most pain does with time, and the girl learned through it all that her parents really meant a great deal to her. She resolved to try harder with her mother and began to hope, as her mother visited her more often, that they too could develop some sort of loving or close relationship.

But on one of these visits it was made perfectly plain to her that this could never be.

They were in the kitchen, the girl busy preparing dinner and her mother full of talk about the cruise she had just been on. Peeling potatoes, the girl listened, half amused, to her mother's tales of the man she had met on the ship. With thorough enthusiasm her mother recounted, word for word, all that he had said to her and all that she had said to him.

The girl nodded and murmured in all the right places as her mother prattled on and on. But then something she said froze the smile on the girl's face, and time seemed to stand still.

“Well, I told him all about the house,” the girl heard her say, “and all about my lovely garden, and the dahlias, and of course,” she went on, hardly stopping for breath, “I told him all about my three lovely daughters.”

Not only was the smile on the girl's face frozen, but her hands, poised wet and dripping over the potatoes, never moved; her whole body seemed suspended, waiting, waiting, for what?

Had her mother really said that? Could she have misheard? But no, she knew that she had not, and her mother's words seemed to bounce about inside her head, over and over.

And I told him about my three lovely daughters … three lovely daughters … three lovely daughters…

But her mother had four daughters, hadn't she?

As soon as the words were out of the older woman's mouth, she realized what she had said, and for a few brief seconds she also froze. Then, with a shrug of her shoulders and an impatient wave of her hand toward the girl, she stated matter-of-factly: “Well, you and I have never been close, have we?”

The girl didn't speak. She couldn't speak. The lump in her throat was threatening to choke her. Suddenly she came alive again and jumped into action. Furiously she chopped vegetables, made pastry, mixed gravy.

Her mother, oblivious of the girl's feelings, prattled on and on about her wonderful cruise.

The tight band of pain, so familiar now, closed around the girl's chest, and she felt the sharp stinging behind her eyes as the tears tried to push their way out. Oh, God, no! she cried out silently. Please don't let me cry. Don't let her see my tears, dear God, please don't let her see my pain.

Her mother didn't want her. Nor did her family; nor, it seemed, did her husband. Why? Was she so repellent, so awful to be around, so terrible to live with? Why, she questioned, did everyone she love reject her, and so terribly?

It was hard sometimes to stop the fierce feelings of self-pity from engulfing her completely, especially at the time when her marriage broke down and she was left penniless and alone.

But somehow, from somewhere deep within her, the girl found an inner strength, and she fought her loneliness and her despair. This was not an easy task, but the girl's character was strong, and her ability to laugh and her capacity to love saw her through.

She came to realize that not everyone she loved had rejected her. In fact, the one person in her life she loved the most, her daughter, had been her strength, her support, and at times her only reason for living. Even then the girl came to realize that she must not rely on her daughter too much but learn to go forward in life for herself as well. And she knew that if she wanted to grow, then it was up to her. No one else could do it for her, only she could help herself.

There is an old but true saying: “God helps those who help themselves.” It was up to her to make the effort, and in doing so, the girl knew that she would have the guidance and support from God that she so desperately needed. Strangely, her faith in Him had never wavered, even in the times she had doubted herself the most, she had never doubted God's love for her. Despite her faults and failings, the girl knew in her heart that God loved her. And through Him she finally began to see clearly her purpose in life.

There are many kinds of pain that we on this earth plane are forced to experience. The girl's pains and suffering is as nothing compared to the suffering of a parent forced to face the loss of their child. This kind of pain must surely be the worst to bear.

But any kind of suffering is a lesson, and we can choose to learn and grow or not, as we wish.

Through her pain, the girl learned a little and developed within herself compassion and sensitivity for the grief of others.

In writing this chapter, the girl has had to face many memories, and tears of pain, grief, and sorrow have been shed upon these pages. The telling of this story has been, to say the least, hard. But in looking back on her life, the girl in all truth can say she wouldn't change one thing. She knows that all those hurtful and painful memories, combined with the many joyful ones, have molded her into what she is today.

The medium, strong, laughing, happy, sits in the sun, her daughter, Samantha, by her side, her dog, Karma, at her feet. She can look with compassion into the eyes and hearts of all who seek her help. And with true feeling for their hurts and for their pain can say, “I understand.”

The girl has grown into a woman.