As Millie drains her glass, the ice cubes slip and crash into her teeth. She flinches, taken by surprise, and tears flood her eyes. She’s on a knife edge these days, so emotional. Unless it’s tiredness—she should go home, get an early night. But she can’t summon the strength to stand up from the table. Another ten minutes.
There’s an explosion of laughter. As it subsides, Toni faces Atticus. She puts her arms around his waist, pulls him in for a full on-the-mouth kiss. Millie tries not to watch, but it’s difficult to look away; she’s addicted to a game of compare and contrast. Aiden and she were affectionate with one another, and pretty demonstrative with it too. But not so . . . hungry as Toni appears to be with Atticus. Did Aiden need more than she could offer, more than he was prepared to admit? Is a break-up inevitable when her “no libido” meets a “low libido”? Millie reckons she’d kidded herself all along—she and Aiden would never have worked out, not in the long term. She won’t make that mistake again.
It’s no use. It’s time to go. Millie picks up her coat from the next chair. She takes a deep breath, exhales slowly, and at the end of her breath, she feels a prod. Like the blunt end of a pencil poking her from the inside. The baby moved! She stares down at herself, unblinking. This isn’t how she imagined first contact—of all places, in a pub. Instinctively, she places her palm on the side of her belly. She feels the prod again. She looks up and waves to catch Toni’s attention. When Toni glances over, she instantly reads Millie’s pose and rushes across the pub.
“I felt the baby! First time,” says Millie.
“Let me feel.”
Millie takes Toni’s hand and flattens her palm against the bump. And they wait. Then comes the baby’s third prod, and Toni’s glee. “Oh my God!” she whispers. “Is this early?”
“Late end of normal. Twenty-four weeks. I’ve been a bit anxious. You know . . . waiting for it.”
“You should have told me.”
Millie laughs. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“You know what this means? If it’s a girl, you’ll have to name her after me. I felt her first.”
“That’s how it works, is it?” She laughs again.
“I’ll be the best fake auntie.”
Millie pats Toni’s hand. “I’m sure it’s a boy. And let’s face it, you’ll be the worst influence of all.”
“Hey. We know who’ll take that trophy. Your hippie sister.”
Toni puts her arms around Millie’s shoulders and gives her a gentle hug, as though Millie were breakable, as though she were a child. Millie murmurs, “I’m going. I’m knackered.”
“I’ll walk you to the bus.”
“Don’t bother, Toni. It’s been lovely to see everyone.”
“I don’t mind. I’m happy to walk with you.”
“Please, don’t. You’re having fun.”
As Millie leaves the Hermit’s Cave for the number 412 bus, she casts a glance through the engraved pub window and sees that Toni has rejoined the group at the table. Millie imagines her group of friends frozen in the moment—rendered conspiratorial in a staged photograph, with all eyes on Toni’s animated face. The backdrop to the photograph: the timeless setting of the Hermit’s Cave. There’s nothing architectural to pin the scene to a specific period within the past two hundred years. Dimpled pint glasses hang from pegs above the polished bar. The oak table has a patina of accumulated stains from cold drinks set down without beer mats. It wouldn’t surprise her if a serving wench wandered over and deposited a hunk of spit-roasted lamb on the table. Millie pauses and raises her hand. She beams a smile when Toni, and then Atticus and Alice, look up and wave back.
How does Toni do that? Whenever Millie sees Toni in a group photo, it’s as though Toni has cast a spell on the photographer: she looks natural, unforced. Most likely, the person taking the photo waited until Toni looked good, had the perfect authentic smile—not a pasted-on smile, not a smile to order. It’s as though the photographer doesn’t check if anyone else is ready for the shot. Millie wonders if she can learn how to do that. Is she missing some essential magnetism? Would that actually fit with her lack of libido?
She sits on the narrow red bench in the bus shelter. The 412 is due in eleven minutes according to the overhead display. She messages her sister: Baby moved!!! Robyn replies: Hurry. I want to feel! xxx. Millie replies: Waiting for bus. Home in 30 xxx.
Although Millie put no pressure on Robyn, she’s relieved her sister moved in with her last week. It makes so much sense, though she wonders if Robyn will regret her decision one day; family life—the routine that a baby forces on a household, plus the play mats, toys, prams, not to mention the disturbed sleep—may prove suffocating. Millie won’t blame Robyn if it doesn’t work out, but her sister’s presence in the house has already eased her many apprehensions about the future: Will she cope with the baby? Will she feel lonely?
Growing up, Robyn was the laid-back, sunny sibling, though this never seemed to win over their parents. Old family photographs exposed the pretence that the Drs. Dack held all three children in equal favour: it’s clear to Millie that her brother, Bryan, the eldest of the three, came first in more ways than one.
When Millie visited home last, she skimmed through the albums, and with motherhood approaching, she selected photos to frame—photos of herself as a baby, of her sister and brother, of her grandparents in their prime. Millie couldn’t find a single photo in which she took centre stage. Even in a rare photo of Millie sitting in her mother’s lap—no other siblings in sight—she fails to grab the camera’s attention. It’s her glamorous mother in a wide-brimmed hat who fixed the photographer’s gaze. It looks as though her mother was showing off her new hat rather than her child. That’s how Millie reads it, but she could be wrong. Yet even in the photos showing all three children, she’s never the focus. It’s her brother, Bryan, always. Millie—to a lesser extent her sister—is invariably not quite present. She’s partly obscured, or looking away from the lens, or caught with a deathly half-blink of the eyes.
Still, framed up and set out along the shelves and mantelpiece in her sitting room, these family photographs charm Millie. She’s surprised how they’ve transformed her flat into a home. It’s an unexpected spin-off. Her sole intention was to look for similarities between the baby and her family. Even if the baby doesn’t look like her, it will be comforting if he looks like one of her siblings. Next time she’s home, she’ll nab photos of her other relatives.
She recalls one sepia photo, in the oldest black-leaved album, of a starchy elderly couple. No one in the family can identify either the woman or the man. Looks early twentieth century, possibly late nineteenth, but it’s not the usual posed photograph of that era, shot against a painted backdrop in a studio. However, both figures are well dressed. Millie reckons that someone in the family, or a friend, bought an early camera. Millie can imagine this friend, or whoever, calling by after Sunday church, and saying, Come on. Let’s have a photograph of you both! Stand in the back yard. It’s too dark inside the house. Maybe that Sunday, he (and Millie assumes the photographer was a he) visited all his friends in the vicinity and shot a whole film. Did he develop the film himself and give the prints as gifts? More likely, he hoped to start a small business—a new cottage industry. How many frames were on a roll of film? Had roll film been invented? Or did the camera capture an image on a single photographic plate?
In this particular photograph, the couple are posed in the paved, grim back yard of a small house, a Victorian miner’s house most likely. This couple—they could be man and wife or brother and sister—they look worried. The woman looks particularly dour. People in those days hadn’t learned the art of self-presentation. The man looks sixty or so—upright, solid build, neat white beard. Handsome, though severe. Whoever he is—now lost in time, lost in space—he’s the spitting image of Millie’s brother, Bryan. It gives her the creeps that no one knows this man’s name, or how he’s connected to their family, yet her brother’s face stares out.
She cringes because she can’t dissociate the word father from the stupid comment her own father made when she and Aiden started dating. She’d tried in the past to explain about her sexuality, or lack thereof, and when she told him about Aiden—explaining that Aiden wasn’t fussed about sex either—her father said, at his most affected, “At least you’re not gay any more.” Treating her as trivial and dissing her ex-girlfriend in one fell swoop. Millie was stunned. She couldn’t look at his eyes, only at his nose, and she wondered why her mother hadn’t told him to trim his nostril hairs. This tangential thought seemed to defuse her anger, and she feels proud that she mustered a retort: “You know, you actually thought that aloud.” She didn’t bother to explain any further. He wouldn’t have been interested. But from then on her parents started to refer to Aiden as “Millie’s friend” or “Millie’s companion.”
It also irks Millie—the irritations cascade once she starts thinking of her parents’ shortcomings—that her mother and father, both hospital consultants, have no conception of how other professionals operate. They have no respect, put brutally, for any talents other than the diagnosis of ailments, and the dexterous invasion of the body to cure said ailments. The fact that Millie passed the Civil Service exams appeared to be of no interest to them. She and her sister didn’t choose medicine. And Millie detects in her parents a gut-punching disappointment; they see themselves as shooting stars while their offspring aim low, for downright ordinariness. Yet Millie considers her own work in recent years—briefing departmental and even cabinet ministers—as equally worthwhile despite her relative invisibility. She has considered hinting to her parents—it wouldn’t be true—that she works within a special area of the Civil Service. She could intimate, for the hell of it, that she’s involved in the secret services.
Of course, her relationships with her mother and father have changed since she became pregnant, and Millie is slowly adjusting to seeing her parents, her father in particular, in new guises. In fact, she occasionally thinks of them now as mum and dad, as she used to.
Her parents were dismayed about her pregnancy, bemused about her decision to go solo, but perfectly unconcerned that Aiden had moved on. To Millie, it seems they’ve rewritten the narrative they present to the world concerning their younger daughter: now she’s a capable, independent woman with a guaranteed pension. However, Millie’s interpretation is this: they like the idea of becoming grandparents; they look forward to discussing medical, pregnancy-related matters with their daughter; and they’re relieved to avoid the nuisance of an underachieving son-in-law.
The bus arrives and she takes a seat downstairs. As the doors are about to close, a young man jumps aboard and swipes his pass. She assesses him, as she tends to assess most men of late. She wonders if he could be the sperm donor.
He fits the spec—looks smart, professional, intelligent. He climbs the spiral staircase to the upper deck. And once again she’s prompted into a circular argument. Even if Aiden had agreed to father a child with her—after all, it’s not as though they never had sex—she guesses she’d renege on her promise of “no strings attached.” She’d try to forge a relationship between Aiden and the child, and she’d become resentful if he took her at her word and felt no obligation. Of course his mother, Betty, would dote on the child. Then Aiden would feel under even more pressure, if Betty tried to draw him in, which naturally she would do.
Again, she concludes she’s better off going solo.
Much to Millie’s surprise, her parents were galvanized into action once the shock wore off. Her mother declared, with the slightest crack in her voice, that no daughter of hers would have a baby while living in rented accommodation. Millie can’t help but smirk; her parents’ archaic attitudes played out, for once, to her benefit. They drew down a chunk from each of their pension pots so they could help her to buy a flat. And, knowing Millie had little spare time or energy, they offered to spearhead the property search. They approached that search as a military exercise—one that had to succeed before “B-Day,” as they called it. Birth Day. Her mother said, “Mark an area on the map of London where you’d like to live, and leave the rest to us.” And that, pretty much, was that. They found two properties they considered fit for their daughter. Millie viewed them and made her choice.
Millie hears the bell ring for the next bus stop. The fantasy sperm donor reappears from the upper deck and waits by the exit doors as the bus gently glides to a halt. The doors hiss open, he looks over his shoulder. He must have felt her eyes boring into him. Their eyes meet, and then he steps off. The doors hiss shut.
Well, that’s the end of him.
She’s on her own. But soon there’ll be little Rudy.
SOMEONE TOTALLY RELIABLE, WITH BLUE EYES
Toni Munroe decides she’ll pay the concierge to remove the mirrors from both bedrooms and the hallway. Two mirrors are more than sufficient in one flat—a mirror in the bathroom over the sink and a full-length mirror somewhere else, anywhere. She slouches towards the bathroom. It’s ridiculous—seeing yourself at every turn.
She switches on the shower, and while the water is warming, she cleans her teeth. Another midweek drinking session. What was she thinking? At thirty-two years of age, she’s getting too old for this. And she has two major deadlines this afternoon. At least she can work in her pyjamas. Eyes down, she avoids seeing the fallout from last night’s excesses at the Hermit’s Cave—bloaty eyelids, sagging cheeks. She won’t look so bad after a shower.
Stepping into the shower cubicle, she reaches out and places her right palm on the medic console—she hates the damned thing. She hasn’t checked her health status for well over a month, but now she wants to jolt herself. It’s time to grow up. Flashing red text: Alcohol Alert: Toni, do not ride your bicycle before 1500 hours.
“Oh! That’s really, really bad,” she murmurs.
Then: Drink plenty of water. And then: You are pregnant. Congratulations, Toni.
“Fan. On.” The steam begins to clear.
She sits naked on the bathtub’s scroll top and stares at her wet footprints. Wet feet, dry feet. Knowing, not knowing. It’s tempting to walk backwards through the bathroom and slip back between the sheets, start the day afresh.
She could terminate, straight away—today or tomorrow. “Christ. Which night was it?” she says under her breath. Since she last checked her health stats, she’s stayed over with Atticus once or twice a week, possibly nine times in total. Her periods are never particularly regular, so, at worst, if she fell pregnant the first of those times—could be five or six weeks ago?
She looks up at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. “Jeez!” This is not how she planned it. She drags a towel around her shoulders and leans forward to rest her head on the sink rim. Yes, she wants a baby, but not with Atticus. She hardly knows him. She’s not starting a baby by accident. It’s just sex with Atticus. Was. She’ll end it. Toni wants agreements in place before she ever starts a family. And she’s sure there’s a better guy out there, someone ready and eager for fatherhood, someone totally reliable, with . . . blue eyes?
The kitchen still reeks of fried eggs—her late-night supper. She can’t think with a mess around her, so she wipes the scattered salt from the worktop and scrubs the congealed remains from her plate. Satisfied, she brews her tea, adds a drop of milk and sits at her breakfast bar. No music, no news bulletins; she sits quietly, sipping her tea. Toni knows she’s in shock, but she can’t stop herself chasing ahead. Her thoughts are scrambled. She won’t tell anyone, not yet. She won’t tell Atticus. Hell
! She can’t not tell him. She should tell him and suggest a termination. He’d probably agree, or would he? Is he religious?
If she doesn’t terminate, he might . . . She can’t think straight. She places her hand on the baby-smooth skin of her stomach, slick with sweat. Atticus hasn’t even met her dad. How would she break the news to him? What would her mum have said? Toni is on the verge of calling Millie, but changes her mind. How can she talk to Millie about an unwanted pregnancy?
She stands up from the bar stool and, on automatic, switches on her vintage coffee machine. That’s her routine, a mug of tea followed by an espresso. For once, she doesn’t refill the reservoir with fresh water—yesterday’s will do. She watches the green light blink as the coils, or whatever, heat up. While she waits, she gazes at the three small paintings that sit on a shelf above the kitchen work surface.
She used to keep her collection of espresso cups on this shelf—she collects miniature cups and saucers on her travels; it gives her a fun personal quest when she visits any street market. But she relegated the cups and saucers to a cupboard when her dad gave her these paintings, a triptych. He came over on Toni’s birthday, a couple of years ago, and said, “These paintings were always yours. You should have them here.” For the previous twenty years, the paintings had sat on a kitchen shelf in their family home. Toni looks at them now and blinks away tears. Her dad is so thoughtful, and this is how she repays him.
He painted the pictures himself. They’re oils, unframed—painted from photographs she snapped in China. She had joined her dad on a business trip after her mother died, a year after, in fact. The paintings show close-ups of carved graffiti—pale brown Chinese characters carved into green bamboo—which she discovered in a fairy-tale garden in Suzhou, the Master of the Nets Garden. She never had the graffiti translated; she wants the carvings to remain as mysterious as they seemed to her thirteen-year-old self. These days, the paintings remind her of her confusion back then, so soon after her mother’s car accident. Toni still feels she returned from China in a better state of mind—as though the onslaught of unfamiliar sights had rebooted her brain.
Dreams Before the Start of Time Page 2
