THE final scene fades on the women of Positive Action walking at last towards their longed-for Tribunal of Inquiry. Overhead, the camera zooms slowly in on the tricolour fluttering above Dublin Castle, until finally it comes to dominate the screen.
The anti-D women try not to think about death: 'When we die, they put us into body bags'
Patronised,
ignored, bewildered, afraid, desperate for information: the
women infected with hepatitis C united to fight
the Blood Transfusion Service Board and the State. The shocking story, which
began in 1977, is dramatised by RTÉ in a moving series starring Brenda
Fricker. Kathy Sheridan reports
Brigid McCole's daughter Brid said:
'I think we've made the right decision. We'd like you to go ahead.'
What she was saying was that she wanted me to play her mother
Brenda Fricker
This is what we are left with, the flag, symbol of the State. But the pole-axed viewer is also left with the unspoken question. Whose State? The one that purported to represent us by tormenting Brigid McCole in her death agony, or the one that she came to represent in all her humour, practical goodness and courage? Her suffering haunts the mind long after the credits roll: the image of her husband and children struggling to raise a smile for her as her eyes flicker on her death bed; the long, lonely journey of the little cortege bringing her back to her beloved Donegal; the coffin being borne by her sons and daughters to the flower-lined grave where she is laid to rest as she asked, facing the sea.
In No Tears, she is called Grainne McFadden and, as played by Brenda Fricker, answers the description of Brigid McCole by anyone who knew her, physically and spiritually: a tall, striking woman with great bearing and a quiet dignity about her.
Fricker got the imprimatur of Brigid McCole's eldest daughter, Brid, after a meeting so emotionally charged for the actress that she had to leave the room. "I had to leave because I couldn't take anymore. Brid said 'I think we've made the right decision. We'd like you to go ahead'. What she was saying was that she wanted me to play her mother."
Though described necessarily by the producers and writer as a composite, Grainne is Brigid McCole, says Detta Warnock, chairwoman of Positive Action, who, with other members of the group, had a private screening on Monday. In which case, for those concerned that the purpose of No Tears is merely to milk tears, the truth is that the agony of Grainne/Brigid may even be under-played.
We are spared the screams of pain that Brigid's family had to listen to, night after night, during the last three to four years of her life. The wedding from her home in August 1996, for which she left a Dublin hospital only six weeks before she died, acquires even greater poignancy when we know that it was the wedding of her own child, rather than a niece. "She went back to hospital that Monday \after the wedding and she never came home", Brid told the tribunal in January 1997.
The scenes of her last farewell to the places and people she loves - "Be good to each other, won't you?" - are similarly under-stated though all the more powerful for it.
Small wonder that the series writer, Brian Phelan, though "petrified" to begin with - "were they going to lynch me?" - remembers only the quiet sobbing at Monday's screening. Grainne McFadden and every woman on the screen represented a part of them all. "Every one of them cried at some stage during the four hours. And you would hear a whisper: 'That was me. That scene was me' ".
And it probably was. The tragedy - and ironically, the triumph - for the women of Positive Action is that they have so much in common.
Some 40 hours of taped interviews that he undertook with Positive Action members from all over the country, combined with great masses of documents and transcripts, clippings and broadcasts, were Phelan's "bible" when he sat down to write.
There is no hypothesising.
They are the women up there on the screen with the joint pains and the crushing tiredness which failed to register in any test or x-ray for close on 17 years. The women whose miseries are compounded by the dry, gritty eyes (from which the title, No Tears, is taken) and dry mouth.
They are the women who endured the clueless, patronising doctors; the referrals to psychiatrists; the good marriages shattered by exhaustion and recrimination; the "blue babies" who would grow up to be haunted by nightmares and guilt; the children who would become infected with their mothers' virus; the general ignorance which compounded the loneliness of the women and their families by treating the hepatitis C virus as a shameful plague.
They are the women who in some instances, through that shame and stigma, couldn't bring themselves to tell even their husbands for a long time and, according to psychologist, Pauline Beegan, who has counselled some women with hepatitis C, still haven't in a few cases.
They are the ordinary, reserved family women, many of them virgins on their wedding day, who had to face the loaded questions of Blood Transfusion Service Board (BTSB) medics - sometimes in front of husbands - about the number of sexual partners they had, or tattoos or drug use; the women dismissively herded into a public queue at the board's HQ when they arrived, bewildered, for testing; the women desperate for information from a "counsellor" who sniffed that they should have "parked their anger at the door" - and who was quickly outed as a BTSB doctor. They are the women so desperate finally for objective information that they had to fly in their own independent expert from London.
In the film, we see Grainne's husband remain steadfast and supportive as her mysterious condition deteriorates. But through the story of 30-year-old city woman, Kitty (played by Maria Doyle Kennedy) - a composite, undoubtedly, though recognisable in large parts to Positive Action women as a committee member - we see the slow, painful disintegration of a marriage as she changes from vibrant, fun-loving wife and mother to the snappish, forgetful creature in a dressing-gown, apt to fall asleep without warning at the few gatherings of their rapidly dwindling circle of friends.
Her last resort is a blameless psychiatrist who finds nothing wrong with her mentally. Certified healthy in body and mind, she is left with no excuses, no credibility, no means of stalling the death of her once-happy, lusty marriage.Through another broken husband, we learn of the mother who became a total alcoholic, so irrationally resentful of the boy who had been her "blue baby" and the reason for her anti-D injection, that she cannot be in the same room as him, never mind talk to him.
Looking at the screening on Monday undoubtedly opened some old wounds, says Warnock. "Certain things came back as more painful than others, like the time Brigid was refused anonymity in the courts. And the time we were looking for a statutory compensation tribunal and the Department of Health offered us something they described as a 'benevolent institution'. From beginning to end, the series upset us. In one case, you see a husband who is non-supportive and the marriage is breaking down - and we did go through that. And there was the reminder of the time when Jane O'Brien \a journalist and co-founder of Positive Action wanted to start Positive Action and the blood bank wouldn't deal with her, wouldn't even pass on her contact number to women on their list."
The aspects that "floored" Brenda Fricker, a newcomer to the story, "were the way women were ignored completely at the beginning - told to go home and have an early night - first by the doctors, then by the politicians. Then when the doctor in Munster \Joan Power investigated and put a name to the illness, they were just treated as a bunch of irritating women. But to see how they won through all on their own, with such admirable dignity - that was very humbling. It had a huge emotional impact on me".
So important does she deem the story that she "asked for the cover of the RTÉ Guide" this week - an honour which went instead to Fair City's "1,000th episode". "I asked for the cover - and this is no criticism of Fair City which is a good show, dealing with good issues - because this is RTÉ's flagship. I wasn't asking for this for myself - I hate doing publicity - but I cannot understand their priorities. This type of blood scandal happened in several other countries but this is the only one where women got together like this and beat the State. Why would RTÉ be nervous of that? Maybe taking on the State and winning upset some people. Maybe people will react to the treatment they see of other people. I don't know."
Meanwhile, the women continue to live with the virus, with the untreatable, "unbelievable tiredness" which Warnock describes as the kind we associate with flu, where no amount of sleep is ever enough; with the agonisingly painful joints and the dry, gritty eyes and mouths.
It would be hard to over-state the quiet, undramatic wretchedness wreaked on so many lives by this chronic illness. One woman is already in a wheelchair. But unlike the men and boys with haemophilia who were also given contaminated blood products, there is no terrible death toll up to now; Warnock estimates that six of Positive Action's 800-odd members have died since 1994, and not all of these could be certified as dying as a result of the virus.
"Some may have died from a heart attack. But was that a result of the side effects?" The prognosis for some remains uncertain. "Seven years ago, the future looked bleak. It's better now for some, but not for others".
Jackie Larkin - who co-produced the series with Lesley McKimm - notes that "for women infected in 1977, they are into the third decade and it is beginning to affect their lives and well-being. They have to live with the memory of what happened to Brigid McCole and ask if this is the road they're doing down."
Various powerful drug combinations are being tried which, says Warnock, are really about "giving the liver a rest". While a recent combination has proved very effective in some women during treatment, others have simply had to give up, unable to live with the side effects.
SHE refuses to comment on the political content of No Tears and anyway, there is no need. Short of captions with real names to spare some confusion, the viewer will need little prompting in this regard. Michael Noonan will have no trouble in recognising himself.
She tends to absolve the medical establishment of any blame for its early dismissiveness. "I wouldn't say anything against the doctors. Hepatitis C was actually only named in 1989 and at that stage, as far as they were concerned, the only people who had it were drug users. The fact is that they're discovering new strains all the time; they're now up to hepatitis F. But it would be true to say that because of the huge amounts of information that we get in Positive Action, they can't pussyfoot around us anymore. We know too much. They can't not answer us".
Women all over the country have been radicalised in their dealings with the medical profession, in Brian Phelan's experience. "Several women told me that their fight had changed that relationship forever. You do not patronise these women anymore, you do not tell them 'go home now, you have a couple of kids, you're bound to be tired'. They demand proper answers now in a way their mothers never did."
Positive Action has much to be proud of. Their bond of solidarity, care and friendship - movingly shown in No Tears - has yielded material compensation, not to speak of a fine working relationship with the Department of Health, and a healthcare package that now includes physiotherapy and chiropody as well as free GP access, medicines, counselling and home-help services. Amid all this positive talk, Warnock admits: "We do think about death, no doubt we do, but we try not to". It's just as well - though for reasons that might not apply to the rest of us. "Did you know that when we die, they put us into body bags?"
No Tears begins on RTÉ 1 at 9.30 p.m. on Monday