A WRITING EXERCISE: DOORWAYS
HAMBURG 1955. I remember I was walking in the Park Planten un Blomen with my father in the twilight. I carried a lantern that flickered and it made little dots of light on the pathway as I walked alongside the lake and passed the tree with the hollow, where fairies lived, I imagined. I was walking slowly and dragging my feet determined not to give into whatever caused my lethargy. It was a special treat to have my father all to myself. He was always busy with his work as a British Consul and it seemed he had little time for family life but he was a devoted husband and father. I saw more of him in Germany, than in England, but I hated being in Germany. I had to spend a lot of time alone or with Lottie, the maid. I didn’t like her – she was so bossy. We had three maids in the space of a few months and my mother called them all Lottie. My parents had a hectic social life and often went out in the evening and a lot of people came to our Apartment, sometimes in the daytime. They would sit in the lounge that overlooked the park, drink gin and tonic, fill the room with cigarette smoke and their chattering. The chattering was an insensible buzz to me.
I so wanted to enjoy the walk in the park but my head was swimming and my legs felt like jelly.
The next thing I knew I was in my parents’ bed propped up on pillows and struggling to breathe. I was aware of my mother flapping in the background. My father was sitting on the bed beside me trying to comfort me but he looked puzzled.
Everything blanked out.
When I became aware of my surroundings again I was in a bed in a small white room. It was so bare, so stark. The whiteness was only broken by a functional brown wooden bedside cabinet and the wooden door. Periodically the door, which was in juxtaposition to my bed opened and a nurse would appear. There were different nurses that tended to me but they came through the same door and possessed the same demeanour. They were as impersonal and stark as the room and when they spoke it was to inform me of the imminent injection to my bottom. I complied, diligently, objecting to it, did not occur to me. I said nothing and I asked nothing. Sometimes, the doctor in a white coat came through the door also and he listened to my chest with a stethoscope. He was kinder to me than the nurses. I was unaware of time, cocooned in starched white sheets. I was not in pain or uncomfortable really, I was told nothing and ostensibly the days passed into weeks; I had no notion of the lapse of time. I existed and the only clue that there was something beyond the four walls of the room was the door.
One day I noticed that a colouring book and colouring pencils had appeared on the bedside cabinet. I turned the pages and found a picture of daffodils that appealed to me. I coloured them in delighting in the golden daffodils, the soft golden light. It was a haze, almost a vision. After that day, a nurse would sometimes appear with a huge jar of sweets and I was allowed to have one and I began to feel happier. I saw less of the doctor but on one particular day when he came to examine me, he appeared to be in good spirits and lifted me high above his head. He was smiling and seemed very pleased with me. What did this mean? When he placed me back on the bed the door burst open. It was my Mother and Father. It was my Mother and Father. I stood up on the bed hugging them both, crying with joy and relief.
“Are you going to take me home?” I asked.
“Yes.” My father said.
My mother was going on about how thin I was, as she helped me into my clothes. I didn’t care, I was going home.
I was to learn later that I had been in hospital for six weeks and had survived Tuberculosis. I also learned that life is about doors, revolving doors, sliding doors, automatic doors and doors that lead down the wrong corridors and doors that lead back to the right pathway. Doors open and doors close but when some doors close they close forever.
On my return to England I was told that my father had died in Hamburg soon after my discharge from hospital. I was five years old and another door would open but where it would lead, I had no idea.