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CHAPTER 25. A Shattered Marriage
- University Press of Mississippi
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A Shattered Marriage CHAPTER 25 { 286 } A SHATTERED MARRIAGE Harriet remained with the baby in St. Marylebone Hospital for the next three weeks. I understood why the baby had to stay. At only four pounds and a few ounces he was very fragile and required nine feedings a day. The doctors and nurses were jubilant when the baby began to gain weight, an ounce at a time. On Tuesday, October 2, 1956, I went to the offices of the Metropolitan Borough of St. Marylebone and registered the birth of Wolfgang Thomas Samuel, son of Harriet Samuel and A/1C Wolfgang Samuel of Clarendon Gardens in Wembley. When I proposed Wolfgang as a first name and Thomas as a middle name, Harriet agreed. Whenever I visited, Harriet looked healthy and seemed to be in good spirits with no apparent complications from her fall. She seemed to thrive on the attention she received from the hospital staff and doctors. “I can’t tell you how cute he is,” Harriet said to me one day. “I can’t believe he is real. He looks like a little doll.” But he wasn’t a little doll. Wolfgang was a little baby with many needs his mother would have to tend to very soon. I wondered if Harriet was actually capable of doing that, but thought maybe such things came naturally to women. After all, Hedy had raised Ingrid and me under extremely difficult circumstances. Harriet’s mother departed abruptly. I began to see the always polite, seemingly reticent and gentle woman in a different light. Concealed under her polished exterior was the toughness of a woman who expected to attain her goals no matter the cost. Precisely what goals she focused on in London was not clear to me at the time, but it seemed that things hadn’t gone exactly her way. She completely avoided me at the hospital whenever I came to visit and left England without saying goodbye to me. I didn’t even know of her departure until Harriet quite casually said, “Mother is flying home today.” No explanation. I found it all very strange, even odd, that after spending months in London with her only daughter, she would choose to leave immediately after the premature birth of her one and only grandchild. I tried to cope with the situation as best as I could. But coping for a twenty-one year old with no one to share the pressures and uncertainties of the past year was a tall order. Looking in the mirror I noted that I looked haggard and thin. I figured that whatever caused my weight loss would in [44.211.35.130] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:40 GMT) { 287 } A SHATTERED MARRIAGE time work itself out on its own. What did surprise me though was that I hadn’t had any nightmares. Harriet began breast feeding baby Wolfgang, who continued to thrive. I loved holding my tiny son. I still wasn’t sure if I was prepared to be a father yet, but then who is? My father Willie had been mostly absent and inattentive throughout my own childhood, so I had no fatherly example to follow. But I whispered a promise to be there for him when he needed me. The third week of October both Harriet and baby Wolfgang returned home accompanied by a live-in nurse. The nurse was a tall, thin woman who had seen combat in North Africa and the Mediterranean. One evening she revealed to me the terror and helplessness she felt as a young nurse on a hospital ship off the coast of Italy under attack by German bombers. Her eyes took on that distant, faraway look I had seen all too often in combat veterans who tried to cope with memories too difficult to relate to others. “All those men drowned,” she said. “They were so helpless . I can still hear their screams. What was worse, I couldn’t help them. Helping them was my job. That’s what nurses do. All I could do was save my own life and watch and listen as they drowned.” She fell silent, tears rolling down her thin face. She wiped them away, embarrassed at having revealed herself to a stranger who might not understand. I felt compassion for the woman and wanted to put my arms around her, but of course I couldn’t. She had no idea of my own background. Our nurse, who...