Rage

Saturday 14th March 2015

How to sum up Bink’s new, surreal state of mind succinctly?

I was reminded of David Storey’s, Home... except that my memory of the play is that you think the inmates are all sane.

Alex, Bink and I were driving to Cambridge on Saturday afternoon for a concert.

I was talking to her about this and that.

Suddenly the atmosphere changed like a Mongolian sky. Balmy summer’s day to evil storm in moments.

What are you thinking?

I’m thinking I won’t come back with you tonight.

Why?

I don’t feel safe.

Silence for an hour. 

We couldn’t get her out of the car.

The minutes to the concert were ticking by.

No sound out of her at all. No facial expression. Nothing. 

With infinite patience, Alex teased it out of her over the next half hour: 

I had said something illogical which made her feel we were all as mad as she is. 

That evening the mutism returned.

Four of us – Serena, Christian, Alex and I – up till 2.30 on Sunday morning. Trying to unlock the words. Trying to guess, supply the meaning, work out what was trapped in her mouth, stuck to her tongue, to make any sense at all. 

If this wasn’t causing you so much distress, Serena observed, it would be a great parlour game.

The right person had to ask exactly the right question with exactly the right words, with no clues other than eye-movement from one to another, an almost imperceptible nod if we get it right and acute distress if we get it wrong.

Then, suddenly, after forty minutes of trying, someone somehow manages to decode the secret – somebody had said something which had upset her – and she could talk normally again. 

Until the next blockage which could be only minutes off.

I have used the word heartbreaking too often in this blog.

I had only had four and a half hours’ sleep since Thursday, and was coming down with the ’flu which had put Shaun in hospital.

The next day, Serena said let’s not to do that again.

What?

Stay up half the night. I’ll explain to Bink. Never again. If she can’t speak, she can’t. But we resolve matters by day.

Sensible Serena.

Over the next few days we had conversations like this for hours:

Me: You have my full attention. You wanted to talk to me. What do you want to say?

Bink: You’re ignoring me.

Me: How?

Bink: You’re not listing to me.

Me: How am I not listening to you?

Bink: How I just said.

Me: How was that?

Bink: I just told you.

Me: What did you tell me?

Bink: What I said.

Me: What did you say?

Bink: I told you.

Me: What was that?

Bink: I said.

Me: Lara, give me some help here. What did you tell me?

Bink: What I said before.

Ben: Lara, she doesn’t know what you said before. Can you tell us what it was?

Bink: Yes.

Ben and Me: What was it then?

Bink: Ask me.

Ben: Ask you what?

Bink: Ask me, that.

Both of us: What did you say before? Is that what you want us to ask you?

Bink: Yes.

Both: Ok. What did you say before?

You wouldn’t believe this extend for half a day, but it could.

Like the mutism.

If I thought it profitable to be angry, I wrote to my prayer group, I would be angrier than I’ve ever been about anything in my life before – except possibly Rachel Nickell’s murder – that a “friend” could watch someone get this ill...

And not tell her family.

Over several years.

Silence

Friday 13th March 2015 [Cont]

Try this exercise.

If you want to feel a little of what it was like to have Bink home at last, that day, try this with a friend. If no one is to hand – or you are embarrassed to share the experience – your own reflection in your bathroom or bedroom will have to do.

You have an urgent message to convey. The house is on fire. Or there are burglars with knives coming through the window. Or you are very, very frightened for any reason you like. A huge spider. A ghost. Extreme and excruciating pain.

You must communicate this. You must tell the other person. (Or your own self.) You are desperate for help. The urge to speak is almost overwhelming.

In fact, it is overwhelming. So overwhelming that you can’t use words. Or gestures. Or sounds.

You may open your mouth as if to speak. You can jerk as if to gesture. Your throat might emit glottal stops.

No more.

Try it. Now. For just a few minutes.

See how distressing it is? How exhausting?

Then imagine it for hour after hour after hour.

Day after tortured day.

I had never been in the presence of mutism before. It is quite unspeakably – of course – distressing.

My little group had been praying for Bink for barely weeks, in all her years of pain. Already, God had answered our prayers in a way I hadn’t dared hope.

I had been so worried, so frightened that somewhere deep in my heart, in my desire to help my daughter, I wished harm on Gatsby. In order to have Bink free.

Some accident... some illness... some mishap.

And now she was free without any harm coming to him at all. That I knew of. At the time.

I arrived in Cambridge at lunchtime that Friday, as requested. She was almost ready, waiting for me, as promised. She was coming home... for a few days, at least.

She and Gatsby had simply fallen out.

Perhaps this could have been predicted? When a relationship is that destructive, to both, perhaps it is bound to implode?

Or perhaps it can drag on for years and years and years, doing damage to all in contact with it.

The downside, of course, was that they could fall back in again...

That evening we sat together round the kitchen table.

At Bink’s request, we’d invited neighbours over for a bottle of wine and a crackling friendly fire. Followed by an impromptu supper.

Somebody said something and suddenly we were laughing again, as you only really can if you have Ben at the table. So much that I thought the room must burst its seams. 

The next moment, quick as an eel turning, she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t smile, couldn’t communicate, could only look intently at Alex like a captured mute pleading silently for help from her only friend. I had been warned of this, and told the only thing to do is hug her... but she became very agitated at the gesture of a hug.

After her call at 1.30 that morning I hadn’t slept again at all, and was tired enough to shoot myself.

The boys sent me to bed.

Much later Alex came and got me up again because she was able to speak once more and wanted to say goodnight.