Life on the Edge - The true story of the hero who saved the lives of twenty-nine people at Beachy Head. Keith Lane
to tremble and sweat with sheer panic. The woman I loved so dearly was lying in my arms and close to death yet there was nothing I could do but wait. I felt so lonely and useless, paralysed with terror that my Maggie was about to die.
‘Don’t worry, she’s going to be OK,’ the paramedics reassured me after several minutes of working on her. Those words were like a ten tonne weight being lifted from my shoulders. They strapped an oxygen mask to her face, and whisked her off to A & E. I followed in the car, and after hours of vomiting and rest Maggie eventually came round fully.
A psychiatrist assessed her, told me that Maggie needed help and arranged for her to see a counsellor once a week. Maggie agreed to the arrangement, but she was more concerned with the fact that she’d put me through the mill again. She was full of apologies and I know she really was sorry. To an outsider, it may appear as if Maggie’s behaviour was purely selfish, but I don’t see it that way at all. I saw that what she was going through was part of an illness. Sure, that illness meant I had to go through a lot of shit with her, but I went through it because I loved her so much and believed we could get through it.
It used to make me really mad when people said how awful it was that Maggie was putting me through so much. ‘Don’t you dare judge Maggie, nor me,’ I’d reply. ‘If you had cancer and were being sick all over the place, would you like to have your better half look after you? Of course you would, so don’t slam her or me just because her illness has a stigma attached to it.’
I don’t care how much Maggie made my life difficult – I won’t hear a bad word said about her. I chose to stay with her because I loved her and that’s it. It wasn’t me that was a victim, it was her. Seeing her in that hospital made it very obvious who was suffering the most and when she said sorry and that she would try to get better I could tell that she meant it. Yet, looking back, I can see that she was so trapped in her illness that she only wanted to get better for my sake. Once again it was me that was putting the words in her mouth.
I asked her if there was anything I could do to help her and she told me that I couldn’t do anything more than I was already doing. I remember telling her that she needed to give up not for me, but for her. She would nod in response and say ‘Of course I’ll stop’, but not once did she say that she needed to give up for her sake, for our sake. I think the points at which Maggie said she would stop are comparable to the situation of a husband who beats his wife but insists he will stop – at the time he says it, when all the remorse and regret is there, he truly believes that he won’t hit her again. Time passes, however, and the original unresolved problem overwhelms the man, whatever his good intentions, and he does it again.
We left the hospital and the cycle started all over again. For a while Maggie stopped, but then she lapsed once more. This went on and on, and every time she lapsed she fell further and crashed harder than before. She began to disappear from the house and stay out for hours and hours without letting me know where she was. Because of her history with booze, I found this hard to bear. The worry her disappearances caused me was overwhelming. On countless occasions I’d let the clock tick until I could bear it no longer – your imagination goes wild when someone you love goes missing, especially when they have a problem. I used to worry that she was in a bar somewhere, smashed out of her head, and that someone might take advantage of her – rape her, murder her even. The paranoia would set in and a number of times I had to call the police to help me find her.
I remember one night when I’d been waiting for Maggie for hours and hours. Eventually, at around 11.30 pm, she called. Her speech was so slurred that I could barely understand what she was saying, but I managed to glean that she had booked herself into a hotel. I drove over and picked her up – literally – before driving home. When we pulled up outside the house, I opened the car door and went to support her. But I misjudged it a little and she collapsed in a heap on the kerb.
As I carried her towards the house I could see a few of the neighbours’ curtains twitching and I knew we were being watched. It sounds awful, but when you have the one you love in your arms, and she’s completely drunk again, and people are watching, it is embarrassing. I felt bad for Maggie’s indignity, and I felt bad for myself – I suppose it was only natural. I propped Maggie up against the wall while I opened the door, then carried her inside. I struggled up the stairs, undressed her and put her into bed.
Then I wept.
It was one of the first times I’d really cried about it all. I’d been holding so much in and had been hoping that things would work out for so long, but that night I just began to fall apart a little. I sat on the edge of the bed, stroking Maggie’s head and crying my eyes out. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I didn’t know which way to turn any more. I’m doing all I can here, I thought to myself. I’ve got her counselling, I’ve got her to AA and I’m giving her all the support I can, so why is she not responding? What am I doing so wrong, for God’s sake?
I knew that there would be the usual apology in the morning. There was, but with a heartbreaking twist.
‘I’ve really hurt you this time, haven’t I?’ said Maggie, her face filled with remorse and sadness.
‘Yes,’ I said. I couldn’t lie to her. The situation was tearing me up inside.
‘Well, OK, go on then,’ she said meekly. I had no idea what she was talking about.
‘What do you mean, “Go on then”?’ I replied, confused.
‘Go on,’ she replied, ‘hit me.’
I was dumbstruck. ‘Why would I hit you?’ I said incredulously. I could hardly believe the words had come from my wife’s mouth.
‘Because that’s what men do. It’s what I deserve. I’ve always been hit. I’ve always been beaten.’
To realise that Maggie felt this way about herself, to know that she thought I wanted to hit her, broke my heart. I took her hands in mine and looked right into her eyes.
‘I would never touch a hair on your head apart from to care for you,’ I told her firmly.
‘Hit me,’ she said again, ‘just give me a good hiding and it will all be forgotten.’
‘No,’ I protested, ‘I won’t hit you, and I’ll never hit you as long as I live. If I ever went for you it would be over. I’d walk because we’d be finished.’
‘Well, what can I do to make it up to you?’ she asked.
‘All you can do for me is get better, darling,’ I said as tears began to stream from my eyes. ‘I love you so deeply that it’s all I want.’
It was one of the most depressing conversations I’ve ever had, but it offered me a little more insight into the causes of Maggie’s depression. In the past, long before we met, she had taken several beatings. I began to think that it was her past that was haunting her and I wondered if addressing whatever demons lurked there might help her.
It was when Maggie attempted to slit her wrists that I decided to try and get to the bottom of her past, and that’s because I saw this incident as little more than a cry for help – I didn’t believe that Maggie really wanted to die, but I felt she was calling out for someone to rescue her. The attempt itself was almost half-hearted, if that doesn’t sound too unsympathetic. Rather than a knife, Maggie used a razor blade and didn’t take the cover off. Perhaps it was because she was too drunk – who knows? – but she only had a few scratches down her arms. I took her cry for help as an opportunity to play the psychiatrist and try to understand her past in order to hopefully help the present. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, if Maggie can exorcize her demons with me, if she can face up to whatever is haunting her, then she’ll be happy in herself, get her confidence back and be able to face the problem of the demon drink. Perhaps it was wishful thinking, but I was desperate to explore any avenue that might lead to Maggie getting well.
So I started to ask about her past and, indeed, she’d had her fair share of trouble. She told me that her problems had started from an early age. Her mother died when Maggie was only three and her father