Lost Apostrophe – the Diary of a Writing Group
by Rosalie Warren
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE THIRTEEN: February 2015 – Miri Dubois
Swearwords: None.
Description: EPISODE THIRTEEN: February 2015 – Miri Dubois
I dreamt about it again last night. Her. Or him. That’s four months and I’m still not over it/her/him.
I still have that heavy sadness inside me. Not so much guilt as mourning. It feels like something that has happened to me, not something I have done.
I never told Joe that my affair with my PhD supervisor made me pregnant and that I had an abortion. At the beginning, I hoped that I would one day confide in Joe. But I never could do it, and now he has left me too.
The sisters, at home in Bretagne, they also do not know. They think I stopped my PhD because of stress. Or perhaps they think it was too hard for me. When I go back in the summer to see them, I may tell Antoinette. Or perhaps I will not.
Since I came to England, I have had two failed love affairs. I’m afraid it says a lot about me. My stupidity, my innocence, my naïveté. My lack of experience of men. The sisters gave me some advice, but of course not enough. So I am now suffering for my arrogance, my belief that I understood enough of the world to survive in a foreign country, away from my home. And that I would be strong. I’ve discovered that I am not strong, not at all. That I fall in love too easily.
If it was love. With Gavin, Professor Lee, yes, I believe it was true love. On his part too, I think, but not enough to make him leave his wife and children. Of course not. I see now that he never would do that, even though he loved me. I will always believe he truly loved me; I will comfort myself with that. I hope I am right.
Joe – he is a very different man. I don’t think he loved me at all. I think he only wanted sex but I told myself, I convinced myself, it was much more. So many women have been in this place. So many stories, all different and yet all the same.
Joe’s mother, Julianne. She cannot look at me. I don’t blame her at all, since she is not responsible for Joe. I think she wants to apologise to me, but she doesn’t know how to do it. I wish she didn’t feel like this. I should say something, but I don’t know what to say.
I came here to Castlehaven to have a break and recover from my time at university in York… and now I am in an even greater mess. Perhaps it is better that I go home. Return to Bretagne with a dog’s tail between my legs. Cry in the arms of Antoinette and Berenice. England is not a good place for me.
But I have not yet finished what I came to do. The PhD, yes, perhaps I will give that up, though I can’t bear to think of Berenice’s face. Always she helped me study and encouraged me. But the hunt for my mother’s family… I have hardly begun. I must do it while I am still here in Yorkshire. I may never get another chance.
A mother… yes, I have my dear sisters, but a mother would be so good to have. A mother who understands me. For it appears she may have been like me, an unwanted pregnancy, but perhaps for her at a much younger age. We do not know, but the rumours say a young girl, perhaps fourteen, fifteen? Oh my poor mother – are you still alive? If so, will you comfort me? And perhaps I can comfort you.
I must do some work. I must write. These feelings inside me, like the gale-stricken sea – they will not subside. I must occupy my mind.
The sea: of course it is my theme. Not the sea here, though I love this North Sea too, but the coastland of my home. I write as the sea, though no one understands. The sea, always looking, always seeking, always covering, recovering, reworking, revising, replenishing. No one sees what I am trying to do, so I must make it more clear, or make it so they do not mind that they do not understand. All the questions at the meeting, they drive me potty. I want to say, just read, just listen, hear – just take from it what it gives to you, don’t work your conscious mind so hard, trying to tease the meaning out of it.
Perhaps I try to do too much. Perhaps I am – what is that word, the one that Tony used? Pretentious. He thinks I pretend to be more clever than I truly am. Perhaps he’s right. I do not know. When I listen to the sea and write down the words, I’m not pretending anything at all. But perhaps, even to think I can hear words from the sea and they will make a book – perhaps that is pretentious. I don’t know.
The baby is nowhere now. It would probably, in time, have been a child. A little of me, a little of him, of Professor Lee. Can a tiny foetus know it was not wanted, not loved? Oh God, oh my Father, forgive me for this. If the child is still somewhere, if it knows anything at all… please tell it I am sorry. I hope it will find a better place to go.
Me, with all my sophisticated ideas of God – I’m now pleading like a child myself, heavy with guilt. Will I be haunted all my life by this little one – the one I turned away?
The sisters will understand, I know. They are forward-thinking, liberal-minded, not at all stuck in the traditions of the past. But that will be worse. I need someone to swear at me, to rail and howl and tell me I’m a murderer.
No. Not that. It’s OK. It was my choice; the right choice. Better for us all. I was not ready to be a mother. Perhaps I never will be.
Oh Antoinette, oh Berenice…
Let me go back to the sea, where this self, these feelings, can be subsumed in a million tonnes of water, made too dilute to influence anything at all. Let me drown this self I cannot bear. Let me float in the ocean’s enormity until I dissolve, disperse and disappear.
Let me go.
I still have that heavy sadness inside me. Not so much guilt as mourning. It feels like something that has happened to me, not something I have done.
I never told Joe that my affair with my PhD supervisor made me pregnant and that I had an abortion. At the beginning, I hoped that I would one day confide in Joe. But I never could do it, and now he has left me too.
The sisters, at home in Bretagne, they also do not know. They think I stopped my PhD because of stress. Or perhaps they think it was too hard for me. When I go back in the summer to see them, I may tell Antoinette. Or perhaps I will not.
Since I came to England, I have had two failed love affairs. I’m afraid it says a lot about me. My stupidity, my innocence, my naïveté. My lack of experience of men. The sisters gave me some advice, but of course not enough. So I am now suffering for my arrogance, my belief that I understood enough of the world to survive in a foreign country, away from my home. And that I would be strong. I’ve discovered that I am not strong, not at all. That I fall in love too easily.
If it was love. With Gavin, Professor Lee, yes, I believe it was true love. On his part too, I think, but not enough to make him leave his wife and children. Of course not. I see now that he never would do that, even though he loved me. I will always believe he truly loved me; I will comfort myself with that. I hope I am right.
Joe – he is a very different man. I don’t think he loved me at all. I think he only wanted sex but I told myself, I convinced myself, it was much more. So many women have been in this place. So many stories, all different and yet all the same.
Joe’s mother, Julianne. She cannot look at me. I don’t blame her at all, since she is not responsible for Joe. I think she wants to apologise to me, but she doesn’t know how to do it. I wish she didn’t feel like this. I should say something, but I don’t know what to say.
I came here to Castlehaven to have a break and recover from my time at university in York… and now I am in an even greater mess. Perhaps it is better that I go home. Return to Bretagne with a dog’s tail between my legs. Cry in the arms of Antoinette and Berenice. England is not a good place for me.
But I have not yet finished what I came to do. The PhD, yes, perhaps I will give that up, though I can’t bear to think of Berenice’s face. Always she helped me study and encouraged me. But the hunt for my mother’s family… I have hardly begun. I must do it while I am still here in Yorkshire. I may never get another chance.
A mother… yes, I have my dear sisters, but a mother would be so good to have. A mother who understands me. For it appears she may have been like me, an unwanted pregnancy, but perhaps for her at a much younger age. We do not know, but the rumours say a young girl, perhaps fourteen, fifteen? Oh my poor mother – are you still alive? If so, will you comfort me? And perhaps I can comfort you.
I must do some work. I must write. These feelings inside me, like the gale-stricken sea – they will not subside. I must occupy my mind.
The sea: of course it is my theme. Not the sea here, though I love this North Sea too, but the coastland of my home. I write as the sea, though no one understands. The sea, always looking, always seeking, always covering, recovering, reworking, revising, replenishing. No one sees what I am trying to do, so I must make it more clear, or make it so they do not mind that they do not understand. All the questions at the meeting, they drive me potty. I want to say, just read, just listen, hear – just take from it what it gives to you, don’t work your conscious mind so hard, trying to tease the meaning out of it.
Perhaps I try to do too much. Perhaps I am – what is that word, the one that Tony used? Pretentious. He thinks I pretend to be more clever than I truly am. Perhaps he’s right. I do not know. When I listen to the sea and write down the words, I’m not pretending anything at all. But perhaps, even to think I can hear words from the sea and they will make a book – perhaps that is pretentious. I don’t know.
The baby is nowhere now. It would probably, in time, have been a child. A little of me, a little of him, of Professor Lee. Can a tiny foetus know it was not wanted, not loved? Oh God, oh my Father, forgive me for this. If the child is still somewhere, if it knows anything at all… please tell it I am sorry. I hope it will find a better place to go.
Me, with all my sophisticated ideas of God – I’m now pleading like a child myself, heavy with guilt. Will I be haunted all my life by this little one – the one I turned away?
The sisters will understand, I know. They are forward-thinking, liberal-minded, not at all stuck in the traditions of the past. But that will be worse. I need someone to swear at me, to rail and howl and tell me I’m a murderer.
No. Not that. It’s OK. It was my choice; the right choice. Better for us all. I was not ready to be a mother. Perhaps I never will be.
Oh Antoinette, oh Berenice…
Let me go back to the sea, where this self, these feelings, can be subsumed in a million tonnes of water, made too dilute to influence anything at all. Let me drown this self I cannot bear. Let me float in the ocean’s enormity until I dissolve, disperse and disappear.
Let me go.
About the Author
Rosalie Warren was once a university lecturer, specialising in Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing. But her earliest love was books and stories, and since taking early retirement ten years ago she has been following her dream of writing and publishing. For details of her publications for adults and children, including science fiction and romantic suspense, see http://srg521.wix.com/mybooks and https://www.facebook.com/RosalieWarrenAuthor/
Rosalie has been an exile from Scotland for the past fourteen years, but still has many happy memories of the wonderful city of Edinburgh, where her children were born and raised, and of the equally amazing Dundee, where she worked for a further three years. Going back even further, she was born and brought up in Yorkshire, and regularly returns there to visit a seaside place not so very different from the town of Castlehaven in her serial.
Rosalie is also a qualified proofreader and editor and (under the name Sheila Glasbey) her editing services can be found at http://www.affordable-editing.com/
Rosalie has been an exile from Scotland for the past fourteen years, but still has many happy memories of the wonderful city of Edinburgh, where her children were born and raised, and of the equally amazing Dundee, where she worked for a further three years. Going back even further, she was born and brought up in Yorkshire, and regularly returns there to visit a seaside place not so very different from the town of Castlehaven in her serial.
Rosalie is also a qualified proofreader and editor and (under the name Sheila Glasbey) her editing services can be found at http://www.affordable-editing.com/