Simon Mark Smith’s Autobiography
CHAPTER 4
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The Church Spire
I have often seen that church’s spire from my window but until this morning I’d never heard its bells. Everything right now feels like it’s in slow motion. We walk from the house, across the road, to the car and as we get there a couple pass us pushing a child in a buggy. I get in the car as you lean over the passenger seat organising your bags, a car passes too close, too fast. I feel its danger. “What would happen if they lost control?” I say, but you’re not sure what I’m going on about. We set off, the first two speed bumps hurt you, so, I slow down, and on these quiet Sunday morning roads, we make our way.
* * *
A Few Days Earlier
Driving home I call to see if you’re still at the house, you ask me how long I’ll be, “I’ll be there in 5 to 10 minutes”. Normally when I come home, I call out to say hello but this time I don’t. There’s just silence and as I get to the top of the stairs, you’re sitting on the sofa in the dining room, cigarette in hand. I want to greet you with a kiss, but your poise says not to. You nod towards the table. I’m not sure what I should be looking at, but as I scan the clutter, I see a pregnancy test showing a positive result. I ask you how you feel, and you say, “Nothing”.
I walk towards you to hug you, but as I bend down, I knock the ashtray over you. As I clear it up, I ask if you feel this was symbolic, you half laugh, “Yes, it’s a fucking mess”.
* * *
200 Yearning Texts
Over Christmas, you’d gone on holiday with a friend and somewhere amid 200 yearning text messages, you’d asked me to, “come inside you” upon your return. To play, as you put it “Russian Roulette between the sheets.” So, after picking you up, we made our way to yours, handed each other the revolver, clicked back the hammer, and pulled hard on the trigger.
In the logical madness of passion, I wanted you to fall pregnant. A month before you’d previously come on late and told me you’d started to get used to the idea. But this time, you didn’t think it’d be possible anyway as you were still on, so we spun the chamber without fear. The next day I came inside you again, but this time you looked shocked and scared as if I’d betrayed you, so from then on, we returned to playing safe. For some who lose at Russian Roulette, when the bullet hits the brain, there’s probably a moment when they think the gun didn’t go off.
* * *
Unspoken Words
As the month drew on you felt as if you’d ovulated, but then started feeling smothered and sensing that, I felt scared. You went off sex and I felt even more insecure. Up till then, I thought we’d be together for a long time, but these changes said otherwise. You started to feel pain in your groin and womb, and your breasts felt tender, but still, we both reassured each other your period was late due to stress. In my gut though, I knew.
When we spoke about it and you said you hoped you weren’t pregnant, I asked if you were thinking about an abortion and when you said you were, my heart sank. You made it clear, you didn’t want a child now, but I also heard those extra unspoken words, “a child with you.”
* * *
Blindsided
Later in the evening, after the pregnancy test, you searched the internet for information about terminating a pregnancy and came across the Marie Stopes website. They had a 24-hour, 365 days a year, telephone line which you called. Within minutes you’d booked an appointment for the following day. Several times as you browsed the website the page just closed without any obvious reason. I’d never seen it do that before, so, took it as a sign we shouldn’t go ahead, but you didn’t see it that way at all. You asked me what I wanted, so, I told you I didn’t want to terminate “it”. But I loved you so would support whatever your decision was. Then, as we got into bed, I kissed each of your breasts and your stomach. You asked me what I was doing. I said I was kissing “it” goodbye. Unsurprisingly, you told me you found it disturbing and I wasn’t helping matters, especially given you were only just keeping it together and you started to cry. Of course, I look back at this moment from the future and see what I did as cruel and cringe, but even now I kind of understand us both simultaneously, these were desperate times and my love for you was still based on a love for myself. We both saw a future beckoning and neither of us wanted it.
It was clear we had very different objectives and instead of us both taking on board that maybe we also shared some common ground we took our positions and saw each other as a little blindsided. You turned your back and went to sleep, but in the night you reached out.
* * *
The Next Day
The system at the Marie Stope’s Centre did not lend itself to anonymity. Just like any doctor’s waiting area, we were all on show to each other. First, we were called in to pay the consultation fee, then a doctor asked what the reason for the termination was. My partner said she felt, “physically and emotionally unfit to go through a pregnancy”. The doctor wrote the words down without question. Counselling pre-and-post-termination was offered, but my partner opted for the latter only.
Even though it was me who’d pointed out the centre’s 24-hour telephone line and therefore instigated the “fast track” approach in the first place, I justified it to myself because I didn’t want to be part of a process that terminated a foetus with a functioning nervous system. If we delayed further, it may have been a matter of weeks before the termination could be arranged. Still, I hadn’t quite expected it to be within 12 hours. Nervous system or not, week 1, 8 or 28 it still felt like a possible human to me.
The next job for the doctor was to scan the womb using an ultrasonic device. I’d had a number of children before, so, I was used to seeing foetuses of 14 weeks upwards, and I was dreading seeing anything that resembled those previous images. My partner asked me if looking would be a good idea. I felt that if I saw a human-like figure I would have had to ask my partner to re-evaluate the situation. However, what the doctor zoomed in on was a small floating dot. To me, this half-formed shape that floated in silence wasn’t a human-shaped embryo, nor was it a connected nervous system, but instead a mass of potential. I convinced myself my future child was not going to feel anything, but I was still haunted by whether it had a soul or not. I looked at my partner and reassured her that what was there wasn’t going to suffer physically. But I didn’t know, not really.
* * *
After the scan, my partner had to provide a urine sample, but she hadn’t drunk anything for hours, and as she may have had to have a general anaesthetic, the ‘nil by mouth’ rule had to be followed. The consequence of that was there was a very slim chance of her peeing. We both went into the disabled loo together, as this had been the nature of our relationship, very intimate, very ‘get to know who you really are’. Finally, she managed to fill the file.
* * *
Once the initial assessment was completed there was a short walk from one building to another a few streets away. My partner referred to the street as, “Termination Terrace,” where all the neighbours watched the comings and goings. As we got to the building there were several doors to choose from, I opted for the wrong one, whereas my partner got it right the first time. Once in, the same people who’d gradually left the previous building were also waiting. It was like a scene from Kafka’s “The Trial”. Eventually, the time came for my partner to go upstairs, we kissed goodbye, told each other we loved each other, and then, once she was gone, I was told to come back at 4 p.m.
I walked to the front door where another man was going out too. As the door closed behind us, he adjusted his coat, I sighed and said, “It’s an awful thing this.” He looked at me and nodded, “Yes, it is”.
“Do you want to come for a cup of tea with me?” I asked.
He nodded again, and said, “That’s a good idea”.
We went for our tea, exchanged our stories, and through our time together – one of those immediate connection meetings – I felt and reported to him my pangs of awful loss and wondered at which moment the termination was taking place. He said he was wondering the same.
* * *
Shortly after returning at 4 pm, my partner emerged, a little bit shaky and smiling as usual. The journey home was gentle.
* * *
Later that evening my friend Denise knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to come to a party. I said I couldn’t because my partner was ill. She looked at me with a concerned look and said, “Don’t forget your friends.”
* * *
The next day my sons came around to play and understandably my partner didn’t want to join in. To her the place was a mess, nothing was organised in a good way for her and when we’d been out a bit earlier she felt the crowds too threatening, and worried about being bumped into. At that point, she snapped at me that I wasn’t paying attention to her needs.
After my kids had gone back to their mum’s and she was still clearing up I went into a room away from her, but a bit later she came up behind me and put her arms around me and sobbed. She said sorry for having a go so I told her it was alright, that I understood and hadn’t taken it personally. We went into another room and sat together, and for the next hour or so talked and broke into crying fits as the feelings of grief began to strike home. No matter how logical the justification, the doubts, fears and awful feelings of loss kept sweeping over us. Later, we cried less but the little things that set off the thoughts and feelings surrounding this were everywhere.
Needless to say, in time, the relationship ended, and even now I feel one day I’ll have to face my unborn child and ask for forgiveness. But then the same may be true for both my sons and daughters who got to live too.
* * *
The Doors of Unreality – 1958
Angela wakes from a dream where she hears a baby swaddled in a basket crying from the doorstep of her parent’s house. She gets out of bed, walks downstairs and opens the front door but there’s no one there. She goes back up to her bedroom, and as she steps onto the landing, she sees her mother watching her from her doorway.
“What are you doing?” her mother asks.
“I thought I heard someone at the door,”
Her mother scowls, “What at this time of night?”
“I must have dreamt it,” Angela says quietly.
Her mother shakes her head in disbelief, “Now, go back to bed before you get a cold.”
* * *
Dream
I woke from a dream where I was back in the termination assessment clinic but had to go through a doorway because I was scared of a Dalek patrolling the area. Once through the doorway, I found myself in an unending wasteland. I felt like I’d been banished from the Garden of Eden and wanted to go back through the door, but the Dalek kept screeching, “Exterminate!” and I knew if I was to face it, I would die.
* * *
End of Chapter 4
