Mother and Child

by Annie Murray

  She keeps saying those words over and over and I can just about hear them and hold on to them from in the depth of swirling water and the churning and the sick press of the sobs that begin to choke up from inside me.

  Once the weeping stops, after who knows how long, I push myself up on to my knees, my hands over my face. I can feel someone’s warmth right next to me and I know it’s Kim.

  ‘You’re OK.’ She’s kneeling, right there so I can feel her thigh against mine, her hand still on my back. The hand that has pulled me through, a wire-tap back into the rest of the world. ‘It’s all right, love. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Whatever it is, we’re all here for you.’ Her arms reach round my shoulders, holding me close, and I cry a little more, but the pressure has gone, has been blasted away. Gradually I take in her closeness, smell her perfume, something spicy, sweet and lovely.

  Eventually, as Kim releases me, I dare to take my hands away from my face. Stunned, I realize I am in a circle of women, all watching me, the candle still flickering in the middle. I am beyond embarrassment. I feel exhausted, wrung out. And their eyes are full of kindness and concern and seeing this brings on more tears.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say, dragging my hands down my cheeks. ‘I’ve spoilt your class.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ everyone chimes in and they make sympathetic noises. ‘We’re just worried about you . . .’

  ‘Here you are, love . . .’ Sheila reaches across with a packet of tissues.

  ‘Thank you.’ I try to smile but more tears course down my face. It feels as if, over the course of a few moments, I have been befriended and it wrings my heart. ‘Oh, God – I’m so sorry.’

  ‘No – don’t be.’ Kim keeps stroking my back again, tender, motherly. ‘It does happen like that sometimes. Something physical like yoga can set things off. We don’t always understand it or have any idea it’s going to happen.’

  I shake my head. I feel so bewildered, and yet so safe in this room, among these strangers. It’s as if it has shifted a huge block in me, the stone jammed in at the door of a tomb.

  ‘We don’t even always know what it’s about,’ Kim says softly. ‘We don’t always have to know.’

  ‘Oh, I know.’ I look down. I can’t look into their eyes at this minute, but I want the door to stay open, for this flow to continue – I have to let it. I can’t look up, but I want to speak, have to. Looking at the edge of my blue mat, where it reaches the wood of the floor, blue on brown, I say, ‘My son, Paul – he was our only child – was taken from us . . . Killed, just over two years ago. Just after his twenty-third birthday. I just . . .’

  I hear their gasps of shock and sorrow.

  ‘I haven’t . . .’ Again the emotion hits me, another wave, though nothing like as overwhelming as the first. ‘Haven’t been able to cry . . . Not really properly cry. All this time. And then suddenly, I come here and . . .’ I shrug. More tears run down my cheeks.

  ‘Oh, you poor, poor girl,’ Sheila says.

  ‘It’s a long time since anyone’s called me a girl.’ Wiping my cheeks, I manage a brief smile at them all, then look down again.

  Kim puts her arm round me again and squeezes my shoulders. ‘It’s OK, love. It’s what you need – it’s fine.’

  I look at her. ‘You must have been a really good midwife.’

  ‘Oh –’ Kim gives a quick smile, but I can sense her flinch somehow – ‘thanks.’ And I see her brown eyes fill with tears.

  Seven

  The first thing I noticed about Ian was his eyes.

  It was the summer of 1982. Ange and I had just finished our teaching degree and we were out celebrating. We’d never done much clubbing, partly because we were short of money and by the end of the week we often didn’t have the energy. We’d go and sit in the pub instead. But now we decided to take ourselves into town with a couple of the other girls and dance the night away. We started off at Kaleidoscope and moved on to Sam Wellers.

  Ange was always the dressy one. She had glammed up in a silver sequinned skirt, all layers of ruffles, and a sparkly bronze top. Her eyelids were coated in spaceman silver and thick black eyeliner. With her copper hair she didn’t half stand out, glowing and metallic, unmissable. Some bloke was forever coming up to her, show-off dancing, giving it a try.

  I felt like the quiet, mousey one next to Ange. After all, my hair is mousey, although then I’d just had it cut, short and neat – gamine, Ange said when she first saw it. I didn’t – and still don’t – like feeling overdressed so I’d usually go for a simple look. That night I had on a straight, short, strappy black dress and I was glad of it as I danced myself into a lather on the floor of Sam Wellers, my head all swimmy with the Malibu Ange had insisted we drink and the hot air thick with sweat and smoke.

  Everything felt great. We’d finished training, that long slog was over and we’d soon get a job! But first Ange and I were going Interrailing round Europe. I always loved travelling then, saved up, did pub jobs, anything to earn myself that free feeling of taking off, the adventure, exploring new places. (Mom and Dad thought I was mad of course. Why go to all those foreign places when you could be saving for a nice little flat?) The first summer it had been India and Nepal – on my own – the next doing Camp America, teaching kids in Pennsylvania, then two weeks of freedom, heading south on the Greyhound bus.

  ‘Come on . . .’ We’d sat out for a rest, but Ange stubbed out her fag and pulled me back on to the dance floor. ‘We’ve got to do this one!’

  Alison Moyet’s voice belted out, ‘Don’t Go!’ and a rhythm you couldn’t help falling into. I was spacey, half drunk, mouth oversweet with the pineapple mixer. I closed my eyes but it made me feel as if I was going to fall over, so I quickly opened them and the room was a kaleidoscope of broken shapes and colours all swimming about. When I blinked, whole people came into focus. ‘Don’t Go!’ And I found my rhythm again.

  Eyes, just opposite me. Brown eyes. A nice face, good hair, nothing too fancy, just dark and wavy and sitting right with the shape of him. Medium-sized, not overly tall, jeans, shirt. That was what I took in under the flashing lights. I looked away, looked back. Our gaze danced back and forth. The third time, we both smiled, at the same time. For the next couple of dances, it was just eyes, glancing away, drawn back, his smile – a nice smile.

  ‘I’m just a grease-monkey,’ he said, once we’d sat down to talk – shout almost – over a drink. He’d bought me a Coke, a lager for himself. We were at the side of the dance floor but I suddenly wanted to be somewhere else, in a quiet place, talking. I couldn’t just go off and leave Ange, though.

  ‘I want to set up my own place one day,’ he said. ‘I’m working my way round – getting as much experience as I can.’

  He was impressed by me being a teacher. ‘You must be brainy.’

  ‘No, not really,’ I laughed. ‘I just need to be one step ahead of them. That’s my mate, Ange –’ I nodded towards the dance floor where she was with yet another bloke. ‘We trained together.’

  He glanced at Ange, then back at me. ‘Whoa,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘She’s all right,’ I said. ‘We’re going off travelling together next week – round Europe.’

  Ian looked at me in amazement. When I told him where else I’d been, he seemed almost bewildered, as if travelling anywhere was another life that he could not be part of.

  ‘I couldn’t go away for that long anyway,’ he said. ‘I want to keep this job.’

  We had to lean close to talk. I liked his face, liked the attentive way he tilted his head to hear everything I said. And I liked the way he sat, the shape of his forearms close to mine, the curved muscle under the skin, his fingers round the glass, strong, with wide nails he must have scrubbed clean before coming out. There was something right about him from the start.

  He said his name was Ian Stefani. He was twenty-six: I was twenty-three.

  ‘Isn’t that an Eytie name?’ Dad said, when I told them about Ian, weeks later. His fa
ce wore a little frown. Even the war had not managed to widen Dad’s horizons. He was in RAF ground crew and never left British soil.

  ‘He’s born and bred here.’ I laughed to cover my annoyance. ‘His mom’s name was Doreen Parsons before she was married. He’s not foreign or anything.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dad said, nodding. ‘I see.’ He didn’t quite add, Well, that’s all right then.

  And of course they always liked Ian, from when they met him; he was polite and, like them, practical and a hard worker, so they approved of him.

  Ange and I went on our travels and after that, Ian and I started seeing each other seriously. After my first year, teaching in a school in Lozells, I moved across the city to Greet, to be closer to where Ian was working in Balsall Heath. We moved in together, to Mom’s disgust. I knew Dorrie was none too impressed either, though of course, she wasn’t one for making harsh judgements. With her it was just a bit of a ‘Huh,’ and, ‘In my day you got married first,’ half-joking, even if she was actually quite shocked.

  She was always good to me. I was nervous meeting her. Ian is her only son and I thought she might be overprotective and determined to criticize me whoever I was. Ian had never made out that she was like that, but I was still a bit scared. But I remember us going round to her neat little house when she still lived in town. When she opened the front door, she looked at me – really looked – and there was something lovely in her eyes, as if she liked me on sight and didn’t mind showing it. She’d laid out a nice tea for us – a tablecloth with proper cups and Mr Kipling’s slices and Bakewells and would I like some toast as well? And she was warm and kindly and interested. I think I actually loved her from the first day and not just because I loved Ian. There was something all-embracing about Dorrie. In her simple, straightforward way she gathered you in and you knew she was on your side.

  By the Easter of 1985, we gave in to the pressure and got married in the registry office in town, Ian in that grey suit, me trying to look just enough like a bride to keep Mom happy. Then we spent a week away in Wales and it rained almost all the time. There were long mornings in bed; afternoons being almost blown off the coast path, laughing our heads off. We were very, very happy and we laughed at most things then.

  The first time it happened, I was terrified for days afterwards. It was soon after we’d got married, as if the very fact of this legal contract made some sort of difference to being careful. We were in our little rented terrace in Balsall Heath and had had a Friday night pizza and a few beers.

  Tumbling muzzy and tired into bed, we made love – matter-of-fact, end-of-the-week love, but love all the same. We lay cooling afterwards, side by side, the curtains still open to the marbled grey of a summer night sky. Ian turned sleepily to give my bare shoulder a goodnight kiss. And it hit me.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ I jerked up, horrified.

  ‘What?’ Ian sounded jarred and indignant.

  ‘My pill – I haven’t taken it! Not for two days!’ My heart was pounding, stress beating through me. What the hell was I thinking? We had no plans to have kids – not yet at least. We needed to work for a few years, try and get a place of our own, get Ian into his own business – and have some fun and freedom.

  Ian stroked my back. ‘It’ll be all right. Two days won’t matter, surely?’

  ‘One day can matter.’ Furious with myself, panicking, I scrambled out of bed. ‘I’ll take one now. Maybe that’ll do the trick.’

  The next morning, Ian seemed to have forgotten all about it. He got up early for work, brought me a coffee in bed, pulled his overalls on and kissed me goodbye.

  I’ll never forget that day because in the end, it was so bittersweet, so ironic. There I was, crouched with my mug under the striped duvet, staring at the weird coffee colour of the wood-chip wallpaper, my mind revolving. I told myself I was overreacting. Most women took ages to get pregnant, didn’t they? One time of being careless wasn’t going to matter. But I just couldn’t stop obsessing about it. I felt as if all my future was changing shape. My mind kept whirling round the same track: what if I am pregnant? No, I can’t be – but I might be . . . Calculations. When would it be due if I had conceived last night? It was 21 May, so roughly . . . next February. Maternity leave would take me up to the summer holidays and how were we going to manage everything? Everything I had thought and planned up until last night felt suddenly fragile, subject to being punctured open by the disruption of another life.

  Finishing the coffee, I lay back down and rested my hands on my belly, wonder and dread mingled so closely I could hardly tell one from another.

  The moment I got my period – in the middle of the day, at school – I sat on the staff toilet, hands over my face, and sobbed. Whether it was relief or grief I was not sure. I hadn’t said anything much to Ian because while it was so uncertain I felt silly. He didn’t really get it anyway – he had not spent almost every waking moment of those weeks wondering and worrying, that was for sure.

  I sat up and stared at the dark red lino of the toilet floor. However relieved I was, I also felt bereft, as if a new little presence who had been standing just in the corner of my eye, waiting to move into my life, had crept away. Everything felt suddenly dulled. I pulled off a strip of tissue, wiped my face, blew my nose.

  ‘Still,’ I whispered to myself. ‘Just as well really.’

  It happened again, once, about eighteen months later, and again it was a false alarm. Looking back, I took the pill unnecessarily for the best part of five years. I might just as well not have bothered because when we did at last decide to go for it and try to conceive, months passed and it made no difference whatsoever. My body remained like an unlit candle.

  Eight

  I feel shy going back to the yoga class the next week, but drawn to it all the same, to the feeling I had from them of acceptance and friendship.

  As I push open the door to the hall, the few people in there – Sheila, Pat and Sunita – all turn and call out hello. With Pat is a man who I take to be her husband, a lean, bald, suntanned bloke not much taller than she is. They are both laughing at something with Sunita.

  ‘You all right?’ Kim asks as I go over to hand her the money. She ticks me off on the list. I feel ridiculously happy to be on any sort of list – to belong somewhere again, even just a little.

  ‘Yeah. Not too bad, thanks.’ I manage a smile. In fact, the week hasn’t been too bad. Up and down, of course, but I’ve kept busy, popping in to see Dorrie and gradually getting the house straight.

  I’m just laying out my mat in the circle when Hayley comes in and takes the spot next to me.

  ‘Hello.’ She gives her rather dreamy smile as she settles cross-legged on her mat and I’m struck afresh by just how pretty she is, and how lovely her thick, honey-coloured hair. Hayley also has a sweet, friendly manner, hesitant, as if she has no real idea how beautiful she is.

  ‘How are you?’ she says as we sit side by side and I feel touched. Hayley can only be in her mid-twenties, but she has a calm, self-possessed manner that makes her seem older.

  ‘Not too bad, thanks,’ I say again. Not wanting to go into anything about me, I say, ‘You’re not exactly what I’d think of as a “Creak and Groan” sort of person.’

  Hayley laughs. ‘Well – I love doing a yoga class and I can’t come to the one in the evening ’cause I’m at work. This one suits me, and it’s a lovely group.’

  ‘We’re all a bit old for you, though,’ I say. Being beside Hayley suddenly makes me feel old. I certainly could be her mother.

  ‘I don’t mind.’ She rummages in her bag and brings out a bottle of water. ‘To be honest, I live with my nan and help to look after her – I quite like being with older people.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’ I nod, wondering about this.

  ‘I don’t really get on with my mom – she and my dad split up when I was quite young – and I’m close to Nan. She sort of brought me up, you see.’

  I say, ‘That’s nice,’ as I’m not sure what else to s
ay and then Kim comes over to sit on her mat. ‘Right – everyone ready? Let’s make a start.’

  We begin, as before. The group is much the same as last week – Hayley and Sunita, Kim and Sheila, and Pat and me; there’s also Liz, the quiet lady, and Pat’s husband Fred. He’s wearing sporty grey tracksuit trousers and a white T-shirt and cracks little jokes all the way through the class. I find myself wishing he’d shut up.

  I’m quite scared to start with that something might happen, the way it did last week. I went home afterwards and managed another cry that afternoon. I felt quite a bit better – lighter, as if each tear had literally carried a heavy weight. But today I want to enjoy the feeling of stretching my body, of breathing deeply, just a quiet time to move in and out of the postures.

  And I do. And I feel a bit calmer.

  The next week, Kim says, is the last one before Christmas – I’m trying to ignore Christmas but of course every single tinselly, jingling place you go forces it to your attention. Afterwards Sheila comes up to me.

  ‘By the way, Jo, every Thursday afternoon, three-thirty, some of us meet up from this group for a cup of tea and a chat – at my house. You’re very welcome to come.’

  The others make encouraging noises about it being a great chance to talk without Kim putting them through various tortures etc.

  I hesitate, almost automatically. Since we’ve been here I’ve hardly been anywhere except Dorrie’s, yoga and Sainsbury’s. And, of course, the cemetery when I can get there – when Ian leaves me the car, or on the buses, which takes up a good portion of the day. It’s so much easier to be alone in some ways, but I tell myself not to be stupid.

  ‘That’s nice. Thanks. Yes – I’d like that.’

  ‘We’re a friendly lot, you know, out here in the sticks,’ Sheila says. ‘Here, I’ll write down my address for you.’ During these last two classes we haven’t chatted much – we’ve all just got on with it and as my mind adjusts to it I realize the tea idea is a really nice one.