The Children Act

by Ian Mcewan

  She inferred from his evasive but morose remarks that in the statistician’s bedroom he had not passed through the gates of paradise. Not really so reassuring. He was likely to try his luck elsewhere, was trying it already perhaps, freed this time from the dismal constraints of honesty. His “geology lectures” may have been a useful cover. She remembered her promise to leave him if he went ahead with Melanie. But Fiona didn’t have the time to set in motion such a gross disentanglement. And she was still undecided, she didn’t trust her current mood. If he had given her more time after he left, she would have reached a clear decision and worked constructively to end the marriage or rebuild it. So she abandoned herself to work in the usual way and set herself to survive a day at a time the subdued drama of her half-life with Jack.

  When one of his nieces dropped off her children for the weekend, identical twin girls aged eight, matters became easier, the apartment grew larger as attention turned outward. For two nights Jack slept on the sofa in the sitting room, which the children never questioned. These were girls of a straight-backed old-fashioned sort, solemn and intimate in their manner, though not above the occasional explosive row. One or the other—they were easy to tell apart—would seek Fiona out where she was reading, and stand before her, resting a confiding hand on her knee, and release a silvery stream of anecdote, reflection, fantasy. Fiona would join in with stories of her own. Twice on this visit it happened that while she was speaking, a wave of love for the child constricted her throat and pricked her eyes. She was feeling old and foolish. It bothered her to be reminded how good Jack was with children. At the risk of putting his back out, the way he did once with Fiona’s brother’s three boys, he indulged some wild horseplay, which the girls took to with fits of inhuman shrieking. At home, their resentfully divorced mother never tossed them in the air upside down. He took them into the gardens to teach them an eccentric version of cricket he’d devised, and he read a long bedtime tale with booming comic energy and a talent for the voices.

  But on Sunday evening, after the twins had been picked up, the rooms shrank back, the air was stale and Jack went out without explanation—surely a hostile act. To an assignation? she wondered as she made herself busy, tidying the spare room to keep her spirits from lowering further. Restoring the soft toys to the wicker basket where they lived, retrieving glass beads and discarded drawings from under the bed, she felt the mild enveloping sorrow, a form of instant nostalgia, that the sudden absence of children can bring on. That feeling lingered into Monday morning and swelled into a general sadness that followed her on the walk to work. It only began to fade when she sat at her desk to prepare for her first case of the week.

  At some point, Nigel Pauling must have brought in the post, for the pile was suddenly there at her elbow. At the sight of an undersized pale blue envelope resting on top, she almost called her clerk back to open it. She was in no mood to read for herself one more outpouring of illiterate abuse or a threat of violence. She turned back to her work, but couldn’t concentrate. The impractical envelope, loopy hand, absent postcode, the postage stamp slightly awry—she’d seen too much of it. But when she looked again and noticed the postmark she had a sudden suspicion, weighed the letter in her hand a moment and opened it. Instantly, she saw from the salutation that she was right. She had vaguely expected it for weeks. She’d spoken to Marina Greene and learned that he was making good progress, out of hospital, catching up on schoolwork at home, and expected back in his classroom within weeks.

  Three pale blue pages, with writing on five sides. The first had a circled number seven centered at the top, above the date.

  My Lady!

  This is my seventh and I think it’s going to be the one that I post.

  The first several words of the next paragraph were scored out.

  It will be the simplest and the shortest. I only want to describe to you one event. I realize now how important it is. It’s changed everything. I’m glad I waited because I wouldn’t like you to see the other letters. Too embarrassing! But not as terrible as all the names I called you when Donna came and told me your decision. I was sure you’d seen things my way. In fact I know exactly what you told me, that it was obvious that I knew my own mind, and I remember thanking you. I was still raging and ranting when that awful consultant, Mr. “call-me-Rodney” Carter, came in with half a dozen others and the equipment. They thought they were going to have to hold me down. But I was too feeble for that, and even though I was furious, I knew what you wanted me to do. So I held out my arm and they got started. The thought of someone else’s blood going into mine was so disgusting that I was sick right across the bed.

  But that isn’t the one thing I wanted to tell you. It’s this. My mum couldn’t bear to watch so she was sitting outside my room and I could hear her crying and I felt really sad. I don’t know when my dad turned up. I think I passed out for a while and when I came round they were both there by my bed—and they were both crying and I felt even sadder, for all of us for disobeying God. But this is the important thing—it took me a moment to realize that they were crying for JOY! They were so so happy, hugging me, and hugging each other and praising God and sobbing. I was feeling too weird and I didn’t work it out for a day or two. I didn’t even think about it. Then I did. Have your cake and eat it! I never understood that saying before, now I do. Your cake is still in your hand even though you’ve just eaten it. My parents followed the teachings and they obeyed the elders and did everything that was right and can expect to be admitted to the earthly paradise—and at the same time they can have me alive without any of us being disassociated. Transfused, but not our fault! Blame the judge, blame the godless system, blame what we sometimes call “the world.” What a relief! We’ve still got our son even though we said he must die. Our son the cake!

  I can’t work out what to make of this. Was it a fraud? It was a turning point for me. I’m cutting a long story short. When they brought me home I moved the Bible out of my room, I symbolically put it out in the hall facedown on a chair and I told my parents that I won’t be going near Kingdom Hall again, and they can disassociate me all they like. We’ve had some terrible rows. Mr. Crosby has been round to talk sense into me. No chance. I’ve been writing to you because I really needed to talk to you, I need to hear your calm voice and have your clear mind discuss this with me. I feel you’ve brought me close to something else, something really beautiful and deep, but I don’t really know what it is. You never told me what you believed in, but I loved it when you came and sat with me and we did “The Salley Gardens.” I still look at that poem every day. I love being “young and foolish” and if it wasn’t for you I’d be neither, I’d be dead! I wrote you lots of stupid letters and I think about you all the time and really want to see you and talk again. I daydream about us, impossible wonderful fantasies, like we go on a journey together round the world in a ship and we have cabins next door to each other and we walk up and down on the deck talking all day.

  My Lady, will you please write to me, just a few words to say that you’ve read this letter and that you don’t hate me for writing it?

  Yours,

  Adam Henry

  PS I forgot to say that I’m getting stronger all the time.

  She did not reply, or rather, she did not post the note it took her almost an hour that evening to compose. In her fourth and final draft she thought she was friendly enough, glad to learn that he was home and feeling better, pleased that he had good memories of her visit. She advised him to be loving toward his parents. It was normal in one’s teenage years to question the beliefs one had grown up with, but one should do it in a respectful manner. She finished by saying, although it was not true, that she had been “tickled” by the idea of the boat trip round the world. She added that when she was young, she’d had dreams of escape just like his own. This wasn’t true either, for she had been too ambitious, even at sixteen, too hungry for good grades on her essays to think of running off. Teenage visits to her Newcastle cousins had b
een her only adventures. When she looked at her short letter a day later, it wasn’t the friendliness that struck her, it was the coolness, the dud advice, the threefold impersonal use of “one,” the manufactured recollection. She reread his and was touched again by its innocence and warmth. Better to send nothing at all than cast him down. If she changed her mind, she could write later.

  The time was approaching when she would be on circuit, visiting English cities and the old Assize towns in the company of another judge, whose field was criminal and civil law. She would hear cases that otherwise would need to travel to the law courts in London. She would stay in specially maintained lodgings, impressive townhouses of historical and architectural interest where, in certain cases, the cellars were legendary and the housekeeper was likely to be a decent cook. It was customary to be invited to a dinner given by the high sheriff. Then she and her fellow judge would return the compliment at the lodgings and invite notable or interesting types (there was a distinction) from the locality. The bedrooms were far grander than her own, the beds wider, the sheets of finer weave. In happier days, there was, for a securely married woman, guilty and sensuous pleasure in such unshared accommodation. Now, she longed to be gone from the silent and solemn pas de deux at home. And first stop was her favorite English city.

  One morning in early September, a week before she began her journey, she received a second letter. Her concern was greater this time, even before she opened it, for the blue envelope lay on the doormat in the hallway at home, along with circulars and an electricity bill. No address, only her name. Easy enough for Adam Henry to wait outside in the Strand or in Carey Street and follow her at a distance.

  Jack had already left for work. She took the letter into the kitchen and sat down with the remains of her breakfast.

  My Lady,

  I don’t even know what I wrote because I didn’t keep a copy but it’s okay that you didn’t reply. I still need to talk to you. Here’s my news—big rows with my parents, fantastic to be back at school, feeling better, feeling happy and then sad and then happy again. Sometimes the idea of having a stranger’s blood inside me makes me sick, like drinking someone’s saliva. Or worse. I can’t get rid of the idea that transfusion is wrong but I don’t care anymore. I’ve got so many questions for you but I’m not even sure you remember me. You must have had dozens of cases since me and loads of choices you’ve had to make about other people. I feel jealous! I wanted to talk to you in the street, come up and tap you on the shoulder. I couldn’t do it because I’m a coward. I thought you might not recognize me. You don’t have to reply to this one either—which means I wish you would. Please don’t worry, I’m not wanting to harass you or anything like that. I just feel the top of my head has exploded. All kinds of things are coming out!

  Yours sincerely,

  Adam Henry

  Immediately, she e-mailed Marina Greene to ask if she could find time, as a matter of routine follow-up, to visit the boy and report back. By the end of the day she had a reply. Marina had met Adam that afternoon at his school, where he was starting an extra term to prepare for exams before Christmas. She spent half an hour with him. He had put on weight, there was color in his cheeks. He was lively, even “funny and mischievous.” There was some trouble at home, mostly over religious differences with his parents, but she thought there was nothing unusual in that. Separately, the headmaster told her that Adam had done well in his time after hospital to catch up with his essays. His teachers thought he was turning in excellent work. Contributing well in class, no behavioral issues. All in all, it had turned out well. Reassured, Fiona decided against writing to him.

  A week later, on the Monday morning she was to leave for the northeast of England, there occurred a minuscule shift along the marital fault lines, a movement as near-imperceptible as continental drift. It was unspoken, unacknowledged. Later, when she was on the train, thinking it through, the moment appeared to straddle the borders of the real and the imagined. Could she trust her recollection? It was seven thirty when she had come into the kitchen. Jack was standing by the counter with his back to her, pouring beans into the grinder. Her suitcase was in the hall and she was preoccupied with gathering up a few last documents. As usual, she was reluctant to be in a confined space with him. She picked up a scarf from the back of a chair and left to continue her search in the sitting room.

  Some minutes later she came back. He was taking a jug of milk from the microwave. They were particular about their morning coffee and over the years their tastes had converged. They liked it strong, in tall white thin-lipped cups, filtered from high-grade Colombian beans, with warmed, not hot, milk. Still with his back to her, he poured milk into his coffee, then he turned with the raised cup only slightly extended toward her. There was nothing in his expression to suggest he was offering it to her, and she didn’t shake or nod her head. Their eyes met briefly. Then he set the cup down on the deal table and pushed it an inch or so toward her. In itself, this need not have meant much at all, for in their tense prowling around each other they remained pointedly courteous, as though each was trying to outdo the other in appearing reasonable, blamelessly above rancor. It would not have done to make a pot of coffee only large enough for oneself. But there are ways of setting down a cup on a table, from the peremptory clip of china on wood to a sensitive noiseless positing, and there are ways of accepting a cup, which she did smoothly, in slow motion, and after she had taken one sip she didn’t wander off, or not immediately, as she might have on any other morning. A few silent seconds passed, and then it seemed that this was as far as they were prepared to go, that the moment contained too much for them and to attempt more would have set them back. He turned away from her to reach a cup for himself, and she turned away from him to go and fetch something from the bedroom. They moved a little more slowly than usual, perhaps even reluctantly.

  By early afternoon she was in Newcastle. A driver was at the ticket barrier to take her to the law courts on the Quayside. Nigel Pauling was waiting for her by the judges’ entrance and led her to her room. He had driven up from London that morning with court papers and her robes—the full fig, as he put it—because she would be sitting in the Queen’s Bench as well as in the Family Division. The clerk of the court came in to make a formal welcome, then the listings officer paid a visit and together they went through the cases listed for the days ahead.

  There were other minor matters and it was not until four that she was free to leave. The forecast was of a rainstorm sweeping in from the southwest in the early evening. She told her driver to wait and took a stroll on the broad pavement by the river, under the Tyne Bridge and along Sandhill, past new pavement cafés and floral displays by solid mercantile buildings with classical facades. She went up the stairs to Castle Garth and paused at the top to look back toward the river. She had a taste for this kind of exuberant tangle of muscular cast iron, of postindustrial steel and glass, of old warehouses teased out of decrepitude into a fantasy youth of coffee shops and bars. She had a history with Newcastle and felt at ease here. In her teens she had come several times during her mother’s recurrent illnesses to stay with her favorite cousins. Uncle Fred, a dentist, was the wealthiest man she had ever known. Aunt Simone taught French at a grammar school. The house was pleasingly chaotic, a liberation from her mother’s airless polished domain in Finchley. Her cousins, both girls about her age, were jolly and wild and forced her out in the evenings on terrifying missions that included drink and four dedicated musicians with waist-length hair and droopy mustaches, who looked debauched but turned out to be kind. Her parents would have been amazed and distraught to know that their studious sixteen-year-old daughter was a familiar face in certain clubs, drank cherry brandies and rum and Cokes and had taken her first lover. And along with her cousins, she was a faithful groupie, tolerated as a novice roadie for an underequipped, unpaid blues band, helping to haul amps and drum kit into the back of a rusty van that was always breaking down. She often tuned the guitars. Her emancipa
tion had much to do with the fact that her visits were infrequent and never longer than three weeks. If she’d stayed longer—never a possibility—she might even have been allowed to sing the blues. She might have married Keith, the lead singer and harmonica player with a withered arm, whom she shyly adored.

  Uncle Fred moved his practice south when she was eighteen, and the affair with Keith ended in tears and some love poems she didn’t send. This was an encounter with risk and riotous fun she was never to experience again, and it remained inseparable from her idea of Newcastle. It could not have been replicated in London, the seat of her professional ambitions. Over many years she had been back to the northeast on various pretexts, and four occasions on circuit. It always lifted her spirits to approach the city within sight of Stephenson’s High Level Bridge over the Tyne, and to arrive like her excited teenage self, stepping off the train at Newcastle Central under the three great curved arches of John Dobson’s creation, and to come out by way of Thomas Prosser’s extravagant neoclassical porte cochere. It was her dentist uncle, rolling up to greet her in his green Jaguar with her impatient cousins on board, who had taught her to appreciate the station and the town’s architectural treasures. She had never lost the impression of having come abroad to find herself in a Baltic city-state of curious optimism and pride. The air was keener, the light a spacious luminescent gray, the natives friendly but with sharper edges, self-conscious, or self-ironic like actors in a comedy. Alongside theirs, her southern accent sounded constricted and contrived. If, as Jack insisted, geology shaped the variety of British character and destinies, then the locals were granite, she was crumbly limestone brash. But in her girlish infatuation with the city, her cousins, the band and her first boyfriend, she believed she could change, become truer, more real, become a Geordie. Years later, the memory of that ambition could still make her smile. But it continued to haunt her whenever she returned, a hazy notion of renewal, of undiscovered potential in another life, even as her sixtieth birthday approached.