Chapter Five: Distance
The front door clicked loudly as Patrick closed it behind him. He stood uncertainly in the dark hallway, unsure of where to go. His wife and son were upstairs by now, long asleep. After his hasty departure that evening, he had found himself at the surgery. There, he could bury himself in his work and put the difficulty of the evening's interview behind him. When he telephoned, late, to tell them he would be out for hours more he was grateful that Timothy had answered. He still couldn't face Shelagh, even over the phone, and he suspected it was no coincidence that Tim had taken the call.
He glanced up the stairs and could see no light coming from under their bedroom door. Sighing heavily, he knew he could not climb the stairs to his wife. Instead, he headed to the back garden. Once his refuge, he had spent little time here since Shelagh came into his life. Too cold and uncomfortable for her during the winter of their extended courtship, the back garden became an afterthought. He preferred to be with her in the warmth and comfort of the sitting room. The space that had at one time been the only place he could wrestle his demons was abandoned.
He took out his nearly depleted cigarette case and started his umpteenth of the night. So now she knew. There were few people now that knew of that time in his life. His parents were both long dead, and his brothers were aware only of an hospitalization, not its cause. The war had separated him from his friends, reunions stalled by the slow return of the nation to peacetime. Even Margaret knew only of a vague time when he was sent to rest. She never asked questions, just as he never asked of her cellist.
He knew why he had never told Shelagh. He told the truth tonight when he said he managed by keeping it behind him. For eight long months he struggled to come to peace with the horrors he had seen in the destroyed cities of Europe: the death, the complete inhumanity of mankind. Yet the therapies used at Northfield hadn't helped. All his life he had been a team player, followed the expectations of others. Even while he chafed at the strictures of military life, he did his duty. Patrick Turner always did his duty. But group time, even the one-on-one sessions with Dr. Main kept the suffering at the surface and he couldn't breathe under the strain. For the first time in his life, Patrick became the difficult one. He stirred up trouble with the other patients. He resisted treatments. By the fall, his doctors worried that he would never recover. Desperate to heal the destroyed man, Dr. Main changed the course of treatment. Rather than talking through his experiences, Patrick was taught to sublimate his pain into the service of others. By reaching out to those so desperately in need, he could begin to make amends for the atrocities he had seen. The hope was that through service he could begin to heal on his own. Poplar, with its desperately poor population, provided exactly the opportunity he needed.
Patrick sat quietly for a long time, willing his mind to a blankness that wouldn't come. For some time now the memories had begun to resurface. Twice while Timothy was in hospital he awoke from terrible dreams, his mind full of images of starved, broken bodies tossed away like rubbish and then again when Shelagh was at Tim Horinger's clinic. His first thought was to find her, to tell her of his pain. He wanted to share with her, tell her of the dark, terrible time, but something in him resisted. Instead, he avoided any discussion of his war experiences. Shelagh was strong, he knew, with a wealth of compassion he knew would equip her with the strength to support him.
And that was precisely why he did not tell her.
Shelagh had given him more than her love. She gave him peace. Her love filled in his empty places. After six months of marriage, and the time before, he still could not understand why she had left her life behind for him. She was so completely everything he could want, and somehow she had chosen him. He was not the easy choice, he knew, so he hid parts of himself from her. Shelagh had already disregarded the many reasons why she should not love him; he did not want to give her the most potent of all. He knew she did not think he was perfect, far from it, but she could think of him as her protector. If she knew how weak and flawed he was, her love might grow cold, her feelings based on duty and commitment rather than the exquisite and profound devotion he had known.
He felt a spasm of pain in his chest as he considered that loss. How could he bear it if her love cooled? Panic rising, he threw his cigarette to the ground. He buried his face in his hands and felt hot tears sting his eyes. In that moment of fear and loss something shifted and Patrick felt an anger he couldn't name. Anger at that woman from the agency, at the damned disease that robbed them of their chance to make a baby of their own, at God for showing him a glimpse of true happiness before snatching it back. And there, hiding in the back corner of his mind, was anger at Shelagh herself. She dragged this out in the open. She had pushed them into this adoption business. Why? Weren't he and Tim good enough for her? Even as he thought this, he knew he was being unfair, but he couldn't stop. She didn't understand the effort he made to control these memories. She was too young; she hadn't seen the horrors of war. She spent the war on a farm in Northern Scotland, far from the battle lines, far from the abomination of war. Who was she to back him into this corner?
Exhausted, Patrick turned back to the house. He would not climb the stairs to Shelagh tonight. To be near her would be like rubbing salt into his wounds. He needed space. He would manage this, just as he had always done, and he began rebuilding the walls that would block out the past.
Only this time, there was the nagging doubt that he wasn't blocking the past out, but blocking himself in.