Stranger at Home

1989

Part 3: Jeremy

1989

It's become sort of a tradition, hasn't it? When one person dies, the next one picks up the narration. Peter was the one who kicked off this story by telling everything how he saw it. It was a fascinating read, one which I will come to much later in this book. However, the one I have found the most fascinating was the one my mother wrote, and I only discovered it years after the fire in the care home where she "lived".

I was devastated when I heard the news of my mother Jessie's death. I always knew that she loved me, but I don't think I ever told her that myself, not really, and I was never any good at showing it. I always felt awkward around her, as if I was treading on eggshells, and anything I did or said might cause an extreme reaction. She did not deserve to die like that. She deserved to be out of that place, and with her family. That thought, that guilt, always ate away at me, and that is one of the several reasons why I turned to drink.

We were told of the fire of Ivy Lodge the night it happened – one of the nurses who worked there actually had the courtesy to look me up in the phone book and tell me herself, rather than letting me find out on the news the following day. Karen cried, I cried, and the sight of us crying made my baby son David cry, as well. These were supposed to be happy times for us. Karen was pregnant with our second child, David was coming along well, and I was working (it was in a factory, and only contractual work, but it was still something, better than what most of my friends had, which was nothing at all). This news only brought a depression over our house over the coming year, and it was a real downer on what was supposed to be the happiest time of our lives. I wondered if things would ever get back to what they once were with us, if I would ever be the same man again. It certainly did not feel that way at the time.

I cannot totally blame my mother's death on my drinking problem. I liked to drink well before that. Yes, I managed to cover it up. Karen only knew to a certain extent how much I was drinking, and back then it was only considered normal for a man to drink a fair amount anyway, so it was never really any cause of concern for my wife. Her father liked to drink quite a bit, so she assumed it was just the thing to do when you are a man. I lied about how much I was being paid to cover the expenses of the alcohol, so that she would not question where the money had gone. I feel like an idiot, and a right bastard for doing it now, but at the time all I thought about was my addiction, the alcoholism that I was keeping solely to myself. I put it first, for a long time, and I will never forgive myself for that.

I could not hide it any longer after I was told of my mother's death. It tipped me over the edge. At first Karen understood, or at least she told herself that she understood, but after a while, she just could not cope with her alcoholic husband. I doubt many women would have. Then again, you would be surprised at what a person is prepared to put up with just so that they would not end up lonely.

"We can't live like this anymore, Jeremy", she had told me. That was in the May of 1989, I think, five months after my mother had perished so suddenly. In those five months, my drinking had escalated even further. I was not nasty to her in drink, but I would cry a lot, and I would cause a nuisance to her and the baby. I was also failing in my health, feeling more run down and having pains in my stomach area a lot, and the amount I was drinking was having a noticeable effect on our finances, but they were consequences I was prepared to deal with at the time, because the thought of going without booze was even more frightening to me.

I was drunk when Karen went into labour with our second child. The baby, another boy who we (well, Karen) named Matthew, came about four weeks early. He caught me off-guard, and I was not expecting it. Still, as Jessie always liked to write in her memoirs, it was no excuse. I was out at the pub when Karen herself called to tell me that I was about to become a father for the second time. She had left David with her mother, and Joe, her father, was going to drive her to the hospital. She said I had five minutes to get home or they were leaving without me. I appreciated those five minutes that Karen gave me, because if I were her, I would have left to have the baby straight away, because babies do not wait for anyone, after all.