The Water Children

by Anne Berry

  ‘The most important thing with baby is to have a strict routine.’

  Her mother’s words haunt her as she stumbles about, with absolutely no idea of what comes next. As she staggers downstairs the post falls on the mat. There is a letter postmarked ‘New York’, where Rosalyn now lives, that she doesn’t open. ‘Not now,’ she whispers, putting it to one side. She knows it will be full of all the exciting things her cousin is doing. The remaining envelope she does open – a final demand for the electricity. The one for the gas is due imminently. She wonders how it will pan out, her and Bria in this falling-down house, with no hot water, no means of cooking, no fridge, no lights. Each day her world will get smaller. If they don’t pay the rent, eventually the bailiffs will come and put them out. Then what? God forbid that they will have to move in with her parents.

  Sitting at the kitchen table feeding Bria her bottle, she stares down at the unopened letter from her cousin. The accident on the ice – some days she wonders if it might have been better if she had died – not Rosalyn, though. She deserved to survive. She is one of the bright shining stars they stared up at through the skylight in Wood End. She has gone on to glory, made something of herself, is a gifted photographer. But for Catherine, her bleakest premonitions were realized that day as her frozen legs bicycled in the icy water and she travelled precisely nowhere. Rosalyn, her cousin, was worth the saving, she was not. That’s what she saw when she glimpsed the hooded face of death on the far bank. Her cousin dying would destroy so many lives – her parents, her brother, her many friends, even the foundations of Catherine’s own family would quake with grief. Burying Rosalyn in the unforgiving soil, leaving her to the worms, would be obscene. The gods themselves would clamour with outrage to see her scintillating torch snuffed out, and heaven would rock with thunder.

  But for her, what would they do for her? What would have happened if Catherine had died that day, if it had been she who was sucked under the ice? Nothing. Nothing would have happened. Her mother would have looked very stylish at her funeral, Dinah Hoyle dabbing her dry eyes carefully so as not to smudge her mascara. She would have expended considerable efforts with her outfit. Elegant, chic, a tower of coiffured hair, not a tress out of place. The mourners would have looked on admiringly – in short, her mother would have been momentous grief in haute couture. Her brother would have roared in on his motorbike, mumbled a few meaningless prayers with the rest, and roared gratefully back to his dark, oily garage. Her father would have been the saddest, but even his would have been closet grief. He might have blown a bit more London grime on his crisp white handkerchief, dashed away a stubborn tear or two. But he would have hidden it behind his newspaper as he rode the commuter train to Waterloo, as if feeling the loss of her was something to be ashamed of. And Rosalyn? Well, yes, she would have suffered, alighted on the anniversary from the full diary of her own life to lay flowers on Catherine’s grave. But that was all. The breach in the ice would just have healed over, until no one would have been able to tell that a girl had died in that pond, that Catherine Hoyle had ended her life there.

  And she did die that day, or something of her did, like a balloon with a slow puncture she has been deflating ever since. It doesn’t really matter whether her Don Quixote husband is home or not, because . . . because of her guilty secret. ‘I don’t love him,’ she tells the flaking walls now in an ignominious mutter. ‘I don’t love your father,’ she speaks into Bria’s ginger-blonde curls. Then she kisses the small dome of her head, the soft wisps of hair. ‘When he’s home your daddy drinks and garbles his impossible dreams. He tilts at windmills, your daddy does. He makes a fuss of you, lights up like fireworks starring the night sky, coos and gurgles, cradles you in his arms. But then, my precious, exactly like a fireworks display, after a few oohs and ahs, it’s all over. And then it’s the drink again. You’re cursed in your parents, and I’m truly sorry for it, Bria Madigan.’

  But as the words form on her lips, so does another truth. Her daughter is the only part of her that is real, that is flesh and blood, a spark of hope. Though she is also a daily reminder of how far Catherine has slipped, how little time she has left before she disappears under the ice for good. She loves Bria, of course she does. But she misguidedly thought that a child would be a companion for her, a salve for her debilitating loneliness. Yet with her baby’s arrival the chasm she is in has widened, until she is certain it will require a miracle to drag her out of it. Being a mother is proving the most isolating experience of her life, only steps distant from being a hermit. She knows it is a dreadful thing to think, unforgivable. But there it is. There is no escaping Bria’s constant demands, and yet she is unable to communicate with her really.

  She has read that the majority of mothers soon master the complex language of their new babies, distinguishing between different cries and moods. The knowledge simply serves to re inforce Catherine’s belief that she isn’t a good parent. Not that she would ever do anything to harm her, nor does she resent the broken nights and the lassitude that tails her throughout the days that follow them. But she has seen the faces of other mothers in the rec – proud, aflame with maternal fervour as they clasp their babies to their breasts, or rock them in their prams, or sit in the sunshine cradling them in their laps, studies in supreme contentment. How can Catherine confess to these women, these portraits of Madonna and child, that all she has experienced so far is an all-consuming feeling of inadequacy? And the low self-esteem is seasoned with the constant pricking of her eyes and the constriction of her throat, promising the imminent onset of tears.

  Bria is a pretty baby, Catherine can see that. Contrary to popular belief, not all are. In the maternity ward of the West Middlesex Hospital she had seen some hideous infants, red-faced, bald and wrinkled, like ancient gnomes. Bria has inherited her father’s winning eyes, the pigment of the irises looking blue or green depending on the light. And she has the palest of fine ginger-blonde curls that gather charmingly at the nape of her neck. She has a cute button nose and a sweet pink bow of a mouth. But perhaps sensing her mother’s lack of confidence, she is unsettled, insecure, constantly crying and rarely sleeping.

  ‘Well, this won’t do,’ she counsels them both. ‘Sitting here feeling sorry for ourselves. Fresh air and exercise, just what Doctor Newell would recommend.’ A quarter of an hour later she sits on a bench at the rec, rocking the pram, enjoying a rare moment of quiet. It is late morning, and extremely hot. Despite the fine weather, few people are out this afternoon. There is a middle-aged man walking a black Labrador around the circumference of the field, a couple of girls pedalling the paved paths on bikes, a group of boys in the farthest corner from her kicking about a football, and a grey-haired woman, perhaps a doting grandmother, pushing a toddler on the swings.

  Catherine would dearly love to talk to someone. She finds herself wondering occasionally if she is losing the power of speech entirely, if she is unlearning it through lack of practice. She supposes this is what it is like for the aged living alone, seeing no one from day to day. When she talks to Bria, her voice seems to rebound spookily off the drab walls of the Hounslow terrace. She feels ridiculous too, as if she is carrying on a conversation with herself. And as Bria’s blue-green eyes grow more knowing, it is as though she is becoming increasingly wise to this fake mother.

  Catherine grows aware of a woman walking towards her. She has the engaging face of a pixie, short black hair, and a petite slight frame, the flowered smock dress she is wearing stretching over her pregnant belly. Catherine judges that she must be about six months along. She assumes that she is going to stroll by her bench, but then the woman pauses to peep inside her pram.

  ‘Oh, what a lovely baby,’ she says, smiling. ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

  ‘A girl,’ Catherine answers, feeling as if a vow of silence is being broken.

  ‘How stupid of me. I should have known by the pink bear stitched on the quilt. And besides, she is so sweet. How could she possibly be a boy?’ Her voice is husky, p
erhaps a smoker.

  ‘I know what you mean. In the hospital, seeing the babies all lined up in their cribs, they looked identical, wee hermaphrodites. What . . . what are you hoping to have?’ she inquires hesitantly. This is a question she finds tricky to pose. On the one hand it seems too personal, too intimate a matter to take up with a virtual stranger. On the other, she lives in terror of committing the ultimate faux pas, that of assuming a woman is pregnant when, most embarrassingly, she is merely plump.

  Again the woman smiles at her. And Catherine, who has thus far avoided direct eye contact, meets her gaze bravely. She is struck immediately by the most extraordinary aspect of her large charismatic eyes: the irises are of different colours, one a light radiant blue, the other a soft, intense brown. ‘I should like a boy, I think,’ she replies thoughtfully. She straightens up and shades her unusual eyes, looking far off. ‘Phew, it’s hot,’ she mutters. Catherine nods. She notices that the ends of her hair are bleached, that the colour has grown out. She is older than she first thought too, giveaway lines around the eyes, the brow, the mouth. ‘You’re not supposed to say that, are you? That you have a preference for a boy or a girl?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Catherine asks, the thread of the conversation lost for a second.

  ‘Oh, you know . . . the correct answer to that question, whether you want a boy or girl, is that you don’t care so long as you have a lovely healthy baby. It’s blasphemous to start complaining about the sex, when you should simply be grateful that it hasn’t got two heads and a dragon’s tail.’ She turns back to her, seeming to remember herself. ‘At least, that’s how my doctor’s been with me. Ready to rap me over the knuckles if I start moaning about how much I want a boy.’

  ‘Oh, I get you,’ Catherine says in sudden understanding. ‘Yes, I came across one or two nurses like that when I had my ultra-sound. Where are you going to have your baby?’

  ‘Kingston Hospital. What about you? Where did you deliver yours?’

  ‘West Middlesex.’

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘Not too bad, I suppose. The midwife was pleasant enough, but looking back, it did seem to go on forever – the labour, I mean.’

  ‘Mm . . . I’m dreading it. My name’s Mara, by the way.’ She offers her hand and Catherine sits forward and shakes it, noticing as she does so her bitten nails. They look endearing in a funny way, childlike. And yet she would have said that Mara was well into her thirties.

  ‘I’m Catherine. Pleased to meet you.’ She hopes the newcomer does not detect how pleased she really is, how she is seizing on this scrap of social contact the way a starving man might fall on a loaf of bread.

  ‘Do you mind if I join you for a bit?’ Mara asks politely.

  And again Catherine has to force herself not to leap up and skip joyously about in thanks. ‘Please do.’ She taps the seat welcomingly. Mara lowers herself onto the bench, a hand pressing into the small of her back.

  ‘My ankles have started swelling up when I’ve been on my feet all day. I’ve only recently given up work and it’s such a relief. I was a shop assistant and I can tell you, by the time we shut I was in agony.’

  ‘Is this your first baby?’ Catherine says. Privately she speculates that if it is, then she is quite old to be having it.

  ‘Yes, I know. I married late,’ she replies, reading her thoughts. ‘Honestly, Catherine, I was starting to think that I was destined for spinsterhood, that the right man was never going to show up.’ She places her hands over her bump and flexes her ankles. Catherine, catching the gleam of a pretty gold ankle chain, reflects privately that her ankles do not appear in the least puffy. ‘But Stewart came along in the end, and actually,’ she lowers her eyelids demurely, ‘he was worth the wait. He works for a firm of architects. It took ages to fall pregnant but he’s so excited now, I can’t tell you. He bought this book of names and he sits up in bed most nights and reads them out loud to me.’ She places a hand on the sleeve of Catherine’s blouse, surprising her, and drops her voice to a confidential whisper. ‘Last night just before I turned the light out, he said he thought Peregrine was a smashing name. Can you believe that, Catherine? I shall have to put my foot down, swollen ankle or not. Is this your first, too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s your baby’s name?’

  ‘Bria. My husband, Sean, chose it. He’s from Ireland.’ She hopes that the disappointment in her own marriage and in motherhood is not betrayed in her face.

  ‘Oh, that’s a lovely name,’ Mara says admiringly. ‘Now if Stewart came up with something like that I’d be able to stop panicking, but as it is I shall have to be vigilant.’ Across the field the man with the dog draws back his arm, readying himself to throw a ball, while at his feet the Labrador prances, tail wagging, barking enthusiastically. In the playground the woman is bundling the toddler into a pushchair. And in her pram Bria stirs and blinks up at the blue sky’s plumage of faint white feathery clouds. ‘What about your husband, Sean? Is he enjoying fatherhood?’

  ‘Mm . . . I think so. He works in London. Long hours. Often he doesn’t make it home. He has a flat he can stay in.’ She fiddles with a loose strand of cotton on one of the buttonholes of her cuffs, unravelling some of the stitching.

  ‘Oh dear! That must be lonely for you. How do you cope?’ Catherine swallows hard. Beside her, Mara combs her tufts of hair with her bitten fingers and fluffs up her fringe. The tears suddenly rush unbidden into Catherine’s eyes, as if someone had turned a faucet on. She is helpless to stop them. ‘Oh, you’re crying. Whatever’s the matter?’ asks her new friend, gently, solicitously.

  As if a switch has been flicked, Catherine is back in the icy waters of the pond, staring across at Rosalyn, bluish specks of light seeming to race at her from the snowscape around them. She was snatching at the frosty air, battling her way through her terrible story, shouting at Rosalyn, telling her cousin she would hate her if she did not listen to the end of it. And her head hurt with the crushing weight of the bitter cold. And it hurt, too, with the effort of furnishing her impoverished imagination with a cast of characters, and with the mental feat of trying to net an orchestra of sounds and sensations. She had to snare Rosalyn’s mind, and hold it back from the brink for just a few seconds more. While across the cracking floor of ice, death loured at her from under his hood, waiting for the moment she would flounder, the moment her voice would fade away, the moment he would gather up Rosalyn and clutch her to his vacuous ribcage. She had so nearly failed then, the way she is now. Only this time she is in mortal danger from the ice.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This is pathetic,’ she sobs, reaching for the precautionary clean hanky she had tucked into her skirt pocket before setting out. ‘I feel so embarrassed.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ Mara says congenially. ‘You look shattered. Don’t forget, I’m pregnant too. I may not have a baby yet, but I know what it’s like not to get any sleep and to still be trying to stay on top of things.’

  She lays a hand on her shoulder, and Catherine feels the en couraging pressure of those nibbled fingers. And then it all comes tumbling out: the lack of rest; night after night up with Bria; not knowing what to do for the best; fretting that she is ill; Sean never home and then when he is, drinking too much. And the debt too, the mounting debt ever at their backs, the unpaid bills, the final demands, the gambling, falling behind with the rent as well. She stops short of telling Mara that she is living a lie.

  In the middle of her outpouring, Bria begins to whimper and then to cry in earnest. Catherine is about to haul herself off the bench and pick up her distressed daughter, when her companion asks if she can have a go. She nods a bit uncertainly. And Mara hoists herself to her feet and gathers the baby up, holding her to her chest, and rubbing her tiny back as if she has been doing this every day for all of her life. Amazingly, her daughter quiets, peering down curiously at her mother over Mara’s shoulder.

  She is so kind, treating her, Catherine thinks, not as if she has just met h
er but as if they have been close friends for years. What’s more, none of the scandalous things that she confessed seem to have shocked her, not even Sean’s drinking which, up till now, she has divulged to no one. Perhaps it is because Mara is older, has more experience of life, of men, that Sean, with all his manifest shortcomings, does not seem to disconcert her in the slightest. And this, despite being married to a man who is clearly a model husband. She feels so much better, so much more hopeful about the future. Mara lives a couple of miles away, she tells her, and she would like to have Catherine over to her house when she feels up to it. But in the meantime, as they are just embarking on their friendship, why not meet again the following morning? They agree a time and before they part Catherine thanks her profusely.

  ‘Nonsense. You’ve done me as much good as I’ve done you. It has been so nice to chat to you.’ She bends over the pram and chucks Bria under her chin. ‘And to have had the pleasure of making your acquaintance too, young lady, and letting you dribble all over my new smock.’

  ‘Oh gosh, I’m so sorry about that,’ Catherine apologizes hastily.

  ‘Not at all. This is excellent practice for me.’

  They move off in opposite directions, Catherine towards the main road, Mara over the playing fields heading for the passageway that runs behind the care home. After a few yards, Catherine stops pushing the pram, and looks over the green expanse of grass at her retreating back. She is energized and full of optimism. She has made a friend, an empathetic woman, a woman who is going through her first pregnancy, albeit in happier circumstances. She has made her believe that things can improve, that it is worth resisting the advance of the ice.