Thinking about Madeleine (1)

"Every parent's worst nightmare". Not just the tabloids and the women in the local sandwich shop have repeatedly trotted out this phrase: Radio four started an early segment about the disappearance of Madeleine McCann with the same tired cliche. We're all supposed to accept this, it seems, our agreement signalled by a dutiful nod implying sympathy and compassion. I’d go along with it too, except that it's nonsense, and a distraction from the real tragedy of this case.
There are a number of reasons aside from pedantry for my refusal to let this pass as mere sloppiness, but let's start right there. As stated, it's simply not true: for this parent at least, nearly seven years have gone by without my sleep being disturbed once by any sort of nightmare about my children. Perhaps this is because I spend so much of my waking existence worrying about actual or likely situations affecting them that there's little room for them in my dream-life. Sleep is about the only time I have for myself, and my subconscious knows this. If we're honest, I think, most of our dreams and nightmares are about us, not our children or anyone else we love. The whole familiar Freudian menagerie—horrors of missed exams, apprehension of pain, torture, disease, public nakedness or other humiliation, decay of tooth and claw, the discovery of suppressed urges—all of these things are reasonable candidates for the title "parent's worst nightmare": child abduction is not. It's not that suddenly losing our children is hypothetically better or worse than any of these; it's merely that it doesn't feature in our dreamscapes. (Unless I'm so much more selfish than everyone else, this is generally true.)
A natural response to the foregoing is: "But that's not what they mean. They just mean 'our worst fear'. Don't be so literal!" This is no better. I am chock-full of fears and concerns about my children: such apprehensions pervade all aspects of my personal and professional thoughts, crowding out useful and coherent ideas; they infiltrate each waking moment, impinge on every other concern, from the intimate to the mundane. It’s a tremendous nuisance, really. Among my daily fears: that Sean will have an accident at school, or, more likely, when we drive somewhere in our aging Fiat; that Julian will fall on the concrete step again, or touch the hot oven, or catch one of the few communicable diseases from which his already over-immunised body has not been officially protected. Longer term, I worry that they will fail where they could have succeeded if only I had done something right, or will not learn to deal with the jolts that are a normal part of growing-up. And these are only chronic low-grade fears. I have many worse fears, of course: that somehow the children will be orphaned, or become chronically—even terminally—ill, or be taken from me by drugs as teenagers. The list goes on...
Added to these are a plethora of selfish fears concerning them: that I may be denied custody or access in the event of divorce; that I will lose contact with them if they’re taken abroad; that they’ll hate me or hold me in contempt.
But abduction or abuse, particularly by complete strangers in a holiday resort, just doesn’t come into it. I don’t fear they’ll be taken by extra-terrestrial life either, or worry about the psychological trauma they may suffer if suddenly we were to become lottery winners, or hapless members of a witness protection programme, or political refugees.
The point is not that one shouldn’t fear these things, but that one doesn’t. And the reason has to be probability: our legitimate fears are based on proximate probable universes: what could well happen with only a slip here, some carelessness there, the unexpected—though not improbable—meeting of contiguous synchronicities. Sliding Doors.
However comfortable our domestic lives might seem, we live only a few streets away, figuratively speaking, from bankruptcy, unemployment, homelessness. We’re right next door to traumatic car crashes, heart disease, separation, the mild dystopias of other people's everyday existence…But we’re not even in the same metaphorical country as gangs of child snatchers that have targetted our beloved children. That is Vulgaria (remember Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?), not Portugal. For what it's worth, my money is currently on the little green men: the odds are about the same as for human abduction, but it’s a lot more interesting.
I’ll take up the probability theme again in the next post about Madeleine. But for now, the point to observe is that it is Gerry and Kate McCann’s current situation, not the loss of Madeleine, that represents “every parent’s worst nightmare.” To be formally suspected of your child’s murder and threatened with a trial in a country whose language and legal procedures are alien, to be pilloried by a completely ignorant public, and to face the real prospect of losing your other children to state-sanctioned abduction: these are indeed nightmares worthy of Kafka. This is true whether the McCanns are completely innocent of their daughter’s fate or, as some now believe, complicit in the removal of her body following an accidental homicide: unless they are masochistic, publicity-seeking psychopaths or victims of a bizarre form of Munchausen by proxy—which not even The Sun has alleged...yet—these people are now in Hell. There is no more appropriate word. The most remarkable thing about this case is that neither of them has broken down completely: in their position, I would have been committed weeks ago. God knows where they get their strength: it may indeed be from God. If only they could wake up.



[to be continued]