From the Outside

by Clare Johnston

  When the evening was drawing to an end, Mark asked their group to remain behind just for a moment. Gathered together, Ben could tell just from Mark’s face that he was pleased with how the event had gone.

  ‘I want to thank you all for coming – and to thank Jason for your amazing work,’ he began.

  ‘Tonight, we sold all five drawings, which is incredible. I wanted to tell you after my other artists had left because I didn’t want them to be envious. The drawings were snapped up by collectors who know an emerging talent when they see one. So, I’ll be taking Jason’s work as fast as he can come up with it and, pretty soon, I think I’m going to have to join the line.’ He turned to Jason now and put his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Buddy, I’m gonna need you to come back over here next year to do a larger exhibition with me, and this time there’ll be no other artist involved, just you. You think you can come up with the goods?’

  ‘Aye, no problem,’ said Jason, his eyes wide with excitement.

  ‘Terrific.’ He clasped his hands together to show his appreciation before bidding each of them goodnight.

  Ben tossed and turned in the hotel bed, desperately trying to get rid of the persistent ringing in his ears until he realised it was his mobile. He slowly stumbled out of bed and began the hard task of trying to find his phone in the dimly-lit room. Luckily, he discovered he had left it lying on top of the dresser the night before so it was within easy reach. He glanced at the handset to see it was Sarah, suddenly remembering he’d forgotten to call her the day before. ‘Hi,’ he answered wearily.

  ‘I’m sorry to call you so early,’ she said, sounding nervous.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He glanced at the clock to see it was only 3.20 in the morning in New York.

  ‘I think I’m in labour,’ she said.

  ‘But the baby’s not due for another two weeks?’

  ‘I know, but I’ve been getting pains on and off all night and my waters just broke.’

  ‘Have you phoned the hospital?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve to go in now to be checked but they may send me home depending on how far on I am.’

  ‘Shit, I’m so sorry, Sarah. I should be there.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Ben. My mum is on her way. I’ll try and hold out until she gets here.’ She laughed unconvincingly.

  ‘But are you going to hospital now on your own?’ He felt a pang of sadness that Sarah had no one with her when she needed help most. It would take Angela at least three hours to travel from Cumbria.

  ‘I’ll be fine, Ben. I’ll let you know what happens. I just don’t know what to do about Paul.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, her voice suddenly strained, ‘I’m having another contraction.’ Ben felt cold with anxiety as he listened to Sarah puffing at the other end of the phone, clearly in agony.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked helplessly.

  ‘It’s passing again,’ she said, her breathing still irregular. ‘Paul’s been hassling me, demanding that he brings a doctor to the hospital as soon as the baby’s born to do a paternity test. He says if I don’t do it, he’ll pursue me for breach of his human rights. I was supposed to be meeting him for lunch today so I either stand him up or phone him and have to explain I’ve gone into labour.’

  ‘Stand him up, Sarah. What were you thinking of agreeing to go for lunch with him anyway?’

  ‘I had to do something to keep him off my back, Ben. He’s been hassling me to meet him for weeks. He’s also threatening to go the press if I don’t allow him immediate parental rights.’

  ‘We’ll try and get an earlier flight. I’m going to call the airport now. Call me when you can.’

  ‘Ben.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Will you let your dad know? I said I’d call him if anything happened.’

  ‘Of course. And Sarah...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ll be thinking about you. Hope everything goes okay.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She hung up, leaving Ben standing in shock clutching his mobile phone. He turned to find Emily sitting up in bed, looking alarmed. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘Sarah’s in labour. I’m going to see if they can put us on an earlier flight.’

  ‘Why do we need to go back now, there’s nothing you can do, Ben, and we’ll be home in a couple of days.’

  ‘We’re going now,’ Ben snapped, his voice full of irritation, ‘because she’s on her own and is being harassed by that idiot Paul Davis. You can stay if you want but I need to get back.’

  ‘Okay then,’ Emily sighed. ‘I’ll stay.’

  Ben swung around to look at her. ‘I thought we were supposed to be a couple now Emily. We’re getting married, remember?’

  ‘Sarah doesn’t need me, Ben. But I’ve got some more people I want to meet here and I’m not cutting my trip short.’

  ‘Can I remind you that Sarah’s paying for this room?’

  ‘She’s not the bloody queen, Ben,’ Emily snapped, in the first display of anger Ben had seen from her. ‘You don’t have to jump every time she asks you to.’

  He started stuffing clothes into his travel bag, not even stopping to look at her as he mumbled, ‘Suit yourself then. I know where your priorities lie.’

  After much haranguing of the airline, Ben managed to get himself on to the 7am flight that same day which meant he’d get to Edinburgh in the evening. He’d only had a minute to bid an uncomfortable goodbye to Emily before he rushed off to get a cab to the airport. He didn’t know where their row had left them but he was too angry to care right now, and too intent on getting home.

  Leaving the hotel so early also meant he didn’t have a chance to explain to Jason, Gary and Sandra or even to say goodbye. Instead, Ben scrawled a short note which he pushed under Jason’s door on the way out.

  ‘Had to get on earlier flight. Sarah having baby. Emily staying here. See you back home. Ben.’

  He didn’t imagine Jason or his parents would see daylight for a while. They had all gone on to a wine bar the night before, across the road from the gallery. While Ben and Emily had left at midnight, the Weirs looked as though they still had a couple more rounds in them as they celebrated their son’s success.

  Ben had thought he’d heard their voices in the corridor at around 1.30am. Still half asleep, he’d registered Sandra shushing her husband who was drunkenly serenading her, before their room door slammed closed.

  Now in the cab, on the way to the airport, Ben watched the night scenes of New York from the window and hoped he would be back to see the city properly again before too long. He reminded himself he’d made the right decision leaving; that it was what I would have wanted him to do, especially with Paul Davis on the prowl and ready to pounce. Just the thought of him was enough to turn his stomach. He represented everything Ben disliked in life – self-interest and a total lack of regard for anyone else’s feelings.

  And in many ways, Paul reminded me of my old self. So I didn’t care for him much either.

  CHAPTER fifteen

  WE HAD SOME BITTER ROWS, Sarah and I. The victor would usually be me – often by overstepping the mark and saying the unsayable, shocking her into storming out. Our first year of marriage was spent bickering almost solidly over the tiniest things. There were the domestic disputes in which I would usually be accused of not doing enough around the house, while Sarah saw herself as the hard-pressed working woman pushed to the edge of exhaustion by a selfish husband. She had a point, but once she started pulling me up on the fact that I was leaving things lying around and not doing the dishes, I dug my heels in until eventually we upped our cleaners’ hours, putting an end to that argument. In subsequent years she would complain that I no longer showed her enough attention and seemed to be more interested in the other (female) guests at a dinner party instead of her. Again, she had a point, but I saw myself as a harmless flirt. And I thought flirting helped fan the flames of passion that were so much part of who I
was. Sarah, though, had a much more traditional outlook on things. Looking back, I guess I could describe that as loyalty. But the more she moaned about my flirting, the more I did it. It became a bit of a sport – and a dangerous one at that. Then two years ago, just as things were really beginning to crack on the fertility front, I remember waving goodnight to our hosts after one particularly raucous dinner party – which I’d thought had been thoroughly good fun – only to be berated by Sarah the whole way home in the taxi.

  ‘What’s your problem, Harry?’ She’d pressed herself into the side of the taxi seat, arms tightly crossed in front of her.

  ‘What you talking about?’ I slurred.

  ‘You flirted with that stupid woman Gloria all evening?’

  ‘Glorious you mean,’ I chuckled heartily at my own joke. Sarah hadn’t found it funny.

  ‘Don’t you even see me at all now, Harry? Have I become so insignificant to you that flirting outrageously with other women in front of my face becomes fair game? Because if it is, I don’t want to play. I’d rather be on my own again.’

  Being drunk and unable to understand the gravity of the conversation I ended up nudging Sarah like a cheeky schoolboy before clumsily trying to put my arm around her.

  ‘Don’t,’ she hissed. ‘Don’t touch me, you drunken, stupid bastard.’

  Stupid bastard. The words bounced around my head, dislodging my senses and before I knew it I had grabbed Sarah by the arm and yanked her towards me.

  ‘Don’t you ever call me stupid again, you ungrateful, little bitch. Understand?’

  I saw Sarah’s feelings for me change in that one moment. And I think I knew even then that it was irreversible. My temper had got the better of me again. I’d used pride to justify attacking my wife. Of course, I hated myself for lashing out, for showing true colours I didn’t even realise existed within me; and so I entered the vicious circle of anxiety, paranoia and self-loathing. I was walking a path of psychological decline.

  Sarah took a cab to the hospital – a 30-minute journey that seemed to last a lifetime. Shortly after she put the phone down to Ben her contractions had started in earnest, around 20 minutes apart to begin with but now very close together and growing in intensity. She writhed around in the back seat trying not to draw attention to herself while the taxi driver talked endlessly of his wife’s three labours and how he’d essentially spent most of them watching football. ‘Well, good for you,’ she wanted to yell sarcastically at him, but instead she stayed silent, trying instead to focus on her breathing. When the pain hit it was totally overwhelming, drowning out everything around her apart from her overriding sense of fear and loneliness. Before long she started to sob, quietly at first and then loud, drowning out the sound of the taxi driver trying to reassure her, saying it would be okay. She was longing for someone to be by her side, holding her hand, sharing this moment. But while she knew that someone should have been me, the person she really wanted with her right now was my brother.

  And then the guilt over my death set in again. She didn’t know how it could be linked, but it seemed that since that night with Paul her life had spiralled out of control until it brought her here; to the back of this cab, alone and about to give birth to a baby who, at this moment, didn’t even have a father. Then another contraction hit and her emotional pain was replaced by a more violent, angry, physical one that was out to punish and brutalise. She wished she was at the hospital puffing gas and air. That moment drew closer as the taxi pulled up outside the maternity unit and the driver leapt out, like a cop on a TV show, racing to her door then helping her out of the vehicle. He supported her as she walked to reception and stood with her when the midwife came to ask her name.

  ‘Sarah Melville,’ she said through gritted teeth as she braced herself for another wave of pain.

  ‘Come through,’ the midwife instructed, waving her towards an examination room to the side.

  ‘I hope you get on alright, love,’ the taxi driver said, his eyes full of concern for this frightened stranger.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be okay.’ She pressed thirty pounds into his hand, holding on to him anxiously for a moment before following the midwife into the room.

  Sarah’s mother, Angela, arrived just as the baby’s head was crowning. She found Sarah lying on her back, screaming like a wild animal as she desperately struggled to push her child into the world. Angela rushed to her daughter’s side and immediately took up her role as chief encourager.

  ‘Good girl, Sarah,’ she said. ‘Keep pushing, you can do it.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Sarah yelled. ‘I’ve been doing this for half an hour and I can’t take it any more.’

  ‘You’re nearly there, Sarah,’ the midwife said. Angela marvelled at how times had changed as she looked at the small, sparrow-like woman who was gently and calmly helping her daughter deliver her grandchild. In Angela’s day, midwives always seemed to be austere characters who would bark orders at you. This woman was quite the opposite of that stereotype. Instead she was kind and reassuring. Lucky Sarah, Angela thought.

  Suddenly her daughter let out a guttural scream that Angela feared must have echoed around the entire hospital. A few seconds later, however, the midwife held a little dark-haired and red-faced baby up in the air, before declaring: ‘It’s a boy.’

  She then weighed the baby – 7lb 3oz – and wrapped him up before laying him on Sarah’s chest.

  The new mother gazed lovingly into her newborn boy’s eyes. She couldn’t believe how perfect and how beautiful this little man was. He had a proud, angelic face and Sarah thought he was everything she had ever dreamed of. She unbuttoned her shirt to allow the baby to feed for the first time and, as she looked up at her mother, she realised they both had tears streaming down their faces.

  ‘Doesn’t he look like his daddy,’ Angela said, causing Sarah to cry harder with the agony of this statement. Her mother was another person she hadn’t told the truth, along with most of her own family and friends. She just couldn’t face shattering their belief that she had been a doting and faithful wife. The cruel thing was, that for all but a couple of hours of our marriage, she had been exactly that.

  Sarah looked back down at her baby, who was happily feeding from her left breast.

  ‘What will you call him?’ Angela asked.

  Sarah appeared to think for a moment, although she knew that despite the possible consequences, there was only one name she could ever choose for her baby boy.

  ‘Harry,’ she replied. ‘Harry John Melville’.

  Dad was sitting in his armchair listening to his favourite gardening programme when the phone rang. He was delighted to hear Sarah’s voice at the other end as he’d been anxious ever since Ben had called him from JFK airport that morning to tell him she was in labour.

  ‘Hello John,’ she said cheerfully. ‘It’s a little boy and he’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Well done, my dear. Are you alright?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. A little tired, but everything went okay.’

  ‘Excellent news. And does the little fellow have a name?’

  ‘Yes, he’s Harry John Melville.’

  John’s voice cracked as he tried to get his reply out: ‘That’s… a very fine tribute… to me and my son. Thank you.’

  ‘I need to stay in overnight, but you’re very welcome to come in and see him if you can hop in a taxi?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘What a lovely thought,’ Dad said. ‘I think I’ll do that.’

  ‘We’ll see you later then.’

  ‘Goodbye dear, thanks for calling.’

  Dad sat back in his armchair and smiled. So he was finally a grandfather. A proud moment, he thought. He reached into the cabinet at his side and pulled from it an old tattered photo album which he opened and began leafing through the pages, taking in row after row of pictures of Ben and I from baby-stage up. He would take a couple of photos with him to the hospital, he thought, so they could compare this young newborn with his father as a baby. Dad let the tears fall
as the memories rose to the surface. He lingered over a family portrait in which we were all pictured together on our old leather sofa, Mum with her arms around her five-year-old twins and dad smiling proudly to my left.

  They were happy times for all of us. These were the days when Ben and I would just muddle along together, sometimes fighting, sometimes rolling around the floor laughing, but always brothers. Just a decade later, and the divisions of rivalry and jealousy would have already set in, severing our bond.

  Dad sighed as he remembered his family together and longed for us all to be reunited again, somewhere, some time. His thoughts were then abruptly interrupted by the phone ringing again. He answered quickly thinking it would probably be Ben to tell him he had landed.

  ‘Hello,’ he answered.

  ‘Hello. Is that John Melville?’

  ‘Yes, who’s speaking please?’

  ‘My name is Paul Davis. I’m an old colleague of Sarah’s and I was due to meet her for lunch earlier but she didn’t show up. I hope you don’t mind me calling. I found you in the phone directory. It’s just I’m aware that she’s expecting a baby and I wanted to check whether everything’s okay?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Dad replied. ‘Everything is very good, thank you for checking. She’s had a little boy called Harry earlier today.’

  ‘Harry,’ he paused. ‘I see. Well, I’d like to organise some flowers for her. Do you know when she’ll be home?’

  ‘I think she’ll be home tomorrow.’

  ‘Thank you so much. Sorry for troubling you. I was just anxious for news – and I’ll be sure to pass it on to all her former colleagues here.’

  ‘No problem at all, my boy. It’s very good of you to call.’

  ‘Thanks again then,’ said Paul. ‘Glad to hear mother and baby are well and I’m certainly looking forward to seeing them.’

  Dad put the receiver down again and smiled to himself as he considered what wonderful and supportive friends Sarah must have to be so caring. He found a piece of paper and scribbled down the words ‘Paul Davis’. I must remember to tell her that he called, he thought to himself.