The Last Witness

could ever have got her to speak out against my father on anything — that it was more to do with Michael’s family background. Only two things counted to my father: serious money or status within British society, preferably both. Michael’s father had a successful landscape gardening business, but it fell far short of where my father had set his sights by then, and his nationality too was a drawback.’

Elena noticed Gordon look quizzical for a moment, not fully grasping, and she went on to explain about her father’s early days in England and the discrimination he’d felt, both shielded and overt. How even at the stage he’d built up a successful import trading business, he was still refused membership of the local golf club. ‘Don’t forget it was the Fifties, and minds were narrower then. But those memories rankled deeply with my father; that’s why later he completely anglicised himself and buried his Greek-Cypriot background: to feel accepted, part of British society. Apart from the transformation to Anthony George, he wore tweed and herringbone, tried to play the perfect English gent you might see on a Pearl amp; Dean advert.’ Elena smiled crookedly. ‘And so with Michael’s family being Irish, my father saw them as only one rung above the Cypriots in British societal acceptance. It just wasn’t enough for my father by then.’

Gordon still looked vaguely puzzled. ‘But why was that all so important? You were only fifteen — you could have been looking ahead to scores of different boyfriends over the years before getting close to finding the right one.’

‘The pregnancy. The pregnancy was what made it so important right there and then. If Michael had fitted the bill more, my father might have pressed him to marry me, do the right thing. But instead it quickly became I told you so time: “I told you he was no good”.’

Gordon nodded knowingly. ‘So that was the abortion?’

‘Yes. But I lied about everything else about it — not only to you, but everyone else at the time. Which is what caused most of the problems. You see, it was nine weeks before my sixteenth birthday when my period didn’t come on, and I hoped first of all that it was something else. Then the second month, and still I didn’t say anything. I was desperately fearful of my father’s reaction not just for myself, but by then for Michael as well: I knew that if my father discovered I’d conceived under-age, he’d have been blind with fury, would have probably called the police and had Michael locked up. So I fluffed and kept quiet about it until after my sixteenth birthday — though the first point I could have worried I was pregnant then from missing my period wasn’t until about seven weeks after. The earliest date of possible conception I proposed was ten days after my sixteenth birthday — which was when I claimed I’d first had sex with Michael. I said that we’d been together only twice since. But instead of trying to get the ‘poor girl has just been unlucky’ sympathy vote, I should have been more concerned about that three month lie — because it almost ended up costing my life.’

Elena watched Gordon’s eyes cloud and glance down for a moment: some sympathy at last, thirty years later. Elena took a hasty gulp of wine and shook her head.

‘You know, nobody actually asked me if I wanted an abortion. I’ve never seen a family rally round so fast — all of them talking and arguing about what to do as if I wasn’t there, had no say in the matter. Only Uncle Christos boldly ventured that I should be asked what I wanted, but he was shouted down — mainly by my father with everyone else just numbly going along, too afraid to go against him. Single mothers were social lepers in those days, Michael wasn’t suitable, so it was the only remaining option: a quick, quiet abortion. The whole matter quickly swept away and forgotten.’ Elena waved one hand as if she was swatting a fly, her eyes filling. She closed them tight for a second.

‘Oh God, I was so frightened. I knew nothing, read nothing, was so young and naive — and even my closest girlfriends I didn’t confide in because I feared the secret would get out. And for the same reason my father didn’t have any tests done that might have revealed that I was lying about the date I conceived. All he did was arrange a back-street Kilburn butcher — and lead me there by the hand a month later.’ Looking across and recalling that the last time her father had held her hand like that was five years earlier at a fairground, leading her safely onto one of the rides. The welling tears spilt over, started running down Elena’s cheeks. She dabbed at them with the back of one hand. ‘He thought I was only two and a half, three months pregnant — but I was already almost six months gone.’

She glanced at the light glinting off a lone knife and spoon left on the table after dinner. Instruments glinting on a white cloth. The cold press of the Formica table against her back. Staring up at a bright fluorescent strip-light that washed in and out of focus. ‘It was all decided in those twenty minutes: the dye cast on practically my whole life ahead. I remember the doctor giving the abortion — if indeed he was a doctor — had a faint Irish lilt. And I remember, looking back at it all, if that was all part of my father’s cruel humour: “an Irishman to give it to you, another to take it away”.’

Elena smiled crookedly, but Gordon could see that it was just a weak attempt at relief from the descent into hell at play behind her eyes.

Elena shook her head. ‘But at the time I was too numbed, to frightened to think anything. The abortionist realized halfway through that he was dealing with a fully developed baby rather than something hardly beyond a foetus — but by then it was already too late, the damage was done. My water had broken and I was bleeding heavily from a ruptured womb.’ Blood running off the table, droplets starting to splatter rapidly against the linoleum floor. The doctor shouting frantic instructions to her father for fresh instruments, swabs, fresh towels, water.

‘There was a suspended moment between my father and the doctor when my father said, “Do something with him.” And after a moment the doctor very slowly and deliberately stated that he merely stopped babies being born, he didn’t kill them. The main problem by then was with me, the doctor reminded him: If I didn’t get urgent attention, I could die. And whether to appease what he thought was a dire concern of my father’s, he added that born so prematurely it was unlikely the baby would survive in any case. We couldn’t go to a hospital, too many questions would be asked — so he rang ahead to a colleague in Swiss Cottage, a doctor with a fully equipped surgery who dealt with a lot of ‘quiet’ pregnancies for Arab and foreign clients.’

Elena closed her eyes for a moment. Her voice trembled with the effort of biting back the tears to get the words out. ‘You know, that was the first moment, holding him in my arms on that four-mile drive, that it hit me what I’d done.’ Streetlights flashing in rapid bars across his tiny, bloodied body, his eyes struggling to open and see against the piercing strobe effect. ‘Call it that moment of maternal bonding, or what you will — but it hit me then that it was a life. A life that was a part of me and I’d tried to get rid of. My life-blood was fast flowing away over the seat of my father’s new Mercedes-’ That crooked smile again which didn’t quite make it — ‘But all I could think of in that moment was him. Willing with every ounce of me that he would stay alive, and too numbed, beaten up and washed out to care anymore about myself.

‘And as I hugged him close, my father fired me a strange look that I just couldn’t read: anger at the nightmare I’d caused, still wishing my baby dead, or anger at seeing me so close to someone else? A closeness I’d never really shown him. But I remember thinking: thank God it’s not me driving and him holding the baby. A horrible, creepy feeling that he might have smothered or strangled it en route.

‘Four days in an incubator and little Christos — that’s what I’d decided to call him by then — survived, as did I.’ Elena waved a hand dismissively and shivered, as if someone had laid a cold hand on the back of her neck. ‘Except that part of me that would ever again be able to have children.

‘I wanted to keep him… Oh God, I wanted to keep him — but again I was given no voice in the matter. I was too young, had my whole life ahead of me, didn’t have a husband. My father made the running, and the rest of the family quickly supported: he was going for adoption. I was still too numbed with it all — and in any case felt it would have done little good — to even trouble to fight back. But as those plans became set in stone, that feeling of powerlessness and a terrible sense of loss and desolation at what I’d done, gripped me hard. I felt totally worthless: that with him gone, there could be nothing good ahead anyway, even if I could face another day, or myself, with what I’d done. I tried to take my life, emptied half a bottle of aspirins from a bathroom cabinet down my throat. My mother found me, my stomach was pumped… once again I made it.’ Elena tapped her chest and fired a brief, laconic smile. ‘Either God was watching over me… or more likely he wanted to keep me alive because he had a much longer, more fitting punishment in store. That would have been too easy a way out.’

Elena cradled her forehead for a second before running her hand roughly through her hair. She took a quick sip of wine. ‘But at least when I came around, I’d found my voice: I wanted to keep him! My father fought me every inch: papers are already done, cut and dried. Then he brought up the suicide to get a court ruling that I was unstable, unfit to be a mother. Finally, he said that if I fought him any more over it, he’d have Michael charged with having sex with a minor and put away. I dropped it, didn’t even trouble to turn up for the final ruling — I knew