Michael, Michael

by Wendy Perriam

  Tessa speared a chicken piece, helped herself to rice. No more snivelling from either of them. They must damned well toughen up, look after one another, show the world they could cope. And once the child was born, it would actually be a huge relief to let her cheerful mother take him over. She’d still have him more than half the year; wouldn’t be like Heloïse, who had never seen her son again, once she was cloistered in her convent. And she’d still have Michael, in a way – more of him than that loathsome almost-wife. She was carrying his first-born; his genes and cells and temperament fused with hers in something that was part of him, however much he might struggle to deny it, or want to flush the child out.

  ‘What are you going to call the little mite?’ April was spooning overflowing rice grains from the table to her mouth.

  ‘Michael.’

  The silence felt uncomfortable. Tessa tried to fill it. ‘Oh, I know you’ll disapprove, but I’ve been calling him that for a good two months, and I can’t bring myself to change now.’

  ‘But what if it’s a girl?’

  ‘I’d better call her April.’

  ‘I’ll pray heaven it’s a boy, then.’

  ‘I’m certain that it is. I’ve got this sort of hunch. I’m so sure about it, I’ve already chosen his other names. He’ll be Michael Peter Astrolabe.’

  ‘Astra-what?’

  ‘Astrolabe. It’s the name Heloïse gave her son.’

  ‘Heloïse? Who’s Heloïse? Oh, you mean that funny little friend of yours we met when we were punting? I didn’t know she had a son. She only looks about sixteen! And what a mouthful and a half to saddle the poor nipper with. Foreign, by the sounds of it. But then she can’t be English herself, can she, with a fancy name like Heloïse?’

  Tessa didn’t answer. She’d told April about Heloïse several times before, but her mother’s memory had off-days, like her feet. Astrolabe was certainly an odd choice – meant an instrument for measuring the height of the stars – and, as Ruth Sylvester had remarked, it was rather like christening one’s child ‘Telescope’ or ‘Computer’. But it must have had some significance for Heloïse – maybe a reference to the starry heights she envisaged for her son. The name also had the same initial letter as Abelard, and the same ring and rhythm to it, so perhaps she’d been hoping to create a second Abelard.

  ‘Can I try a prawn?’ she asked, deliberately changing the subject before her mother launched into a list of her own favourite babies’ names. ‘The chicken’s pretty good, but it’s mostly nuts and sauce.’

  ‘Help yourself. I’m glad to see you eating. You should never starve the womb, you know. You weighed ten pounds-six when you were born, and the midwife said … She was Scottish, I remember, and had a husband back in Glasgow who used to duff her up. ‘‘Now listen, Mrs Reeves,’’ she said … She always called me ‘‘Mrs’’, which I must admit I liked. ‘‘I’ve never seen a bonnier bairn, and I’ve seen plenty in my time.’’ Which reminds me, Tess – I hope you’re doing all you should – check-ups with the doctor, cod-liver-oil-and-thingummy.’

  Tessa said nothing, simply bit into a prawn.

  ‘In fact, now you’ve come back home, I think you ought to stay here, at least until you’ve had a little chat with Dr Cunningham. He was asking how you were, just the other day. I’ll phone the surgery first thing Monday morning and fix up an appointment.’

  ‘Oh, no, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Mum.’

  ‘Well, only if you let me pay for dinner.’

  ‘No, I told you, it’s …’

  ‘Listen, Mum, you’ve spent all evening running round in circles for that pittance Connie gives you, and now you’re spending twice as much on …’

  ‘We hardly ordered anything.’

  ‘Okay, let’s order more. I want to celebrate. We’ll have some wine, to start with, and this is definitely on me.’ Tessa grabbed the wine-list, tried to blank out the high prices. She would spend her father’s money, or some of it, at least. It pleased her sense of irony that Dave should pay for April’s tipple, when he had stinted her so long. She called the waiter over, chose a sparkling white. She and April both deserved some fizz.

  Once he’d brought it, poured it, Tessa raised her glass, turned her back defiantly on all the happy loving twosomes. There were other sorts of couples, equally devoted. ‘To a fantastic generous grandma,’ she said slowly. ‘And the best mother in the world.’

  ‘Now I will blub,’ April flurried, dabbing mouth, then nose, then eyes, with another of her seemingly inexhaustible lilac tissues. She sipped her wine, clinked the glass to Tessa’s. ‘And I’ll propose a second toast. To my grandchild – my very special grandchild, who may have knocked me for six and turned my legs to gravy, but is welcome just the same. Mind you, I hadn’t planned on being a grandma until the ripe old age of forty. Never mind. I’ll have to work on my grey hairs, buy a pair of granny-specs.’ She picked up her prawn cracker, snapped it into pieces, stowed the largest fragment in her mouth. ‘Where was I? I’m so confused this evening, Tess, I keep losing track of what I’m trying to say.’

  ‘You were about to drink a toast – I think.’

  ‘So I was – that’s it.’ She gulped her wine again, then held the glass up, so that it caught the pinkish light. ‘May Michael Peter Astronaut, or April Tessa Doodah be happy, healthy, and the image of its gorgeous brainy mother.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tessa stood by the window, trying to breathe through the contraction – breathe slowly and deliberately, and not tense up her body. She kept rocking backwards and forwards, which seemed to help a little, though the nurse had advised her to remain lying down in bed. The pain eddied, shimmied, clawed her stomach, sent jolting shudders across her lower back, then withdrew and sighed away, like the backwash on a breaker. She took a sip of water, wiped her sweaty forehead. Only a few minutes’ grace before the next contraction. They were more frequent now and stronger, although she was still alone – only the odd nurse popping in to ask her how she was, or check her pulse and blood pressure. The hospital had encouraged her to bring someone with her who could act as a companion – her mother, or a friend or neighbour; anyone she chose. She’d chosen no one. If she couldn’t have the baby’s father, then she’d rather be alone. She had also refused pethidine, or any other painkillers. She didn’t want the pain killed; felt she ought to suffer it, as the baby had to do.

  She could feel the next contraction already rolling through her body; did her best to ride it, but the rhythm of her breathing and the rhythm of the pain were somehow clashing with each other, jarringly out of sync. She waited until the spasm had passed, then tried to gain control once more, sponging her damp face, smoothing back her hair. Strange, that word ‘control’. People bandied it about, yet you could control so little, actually – not your body, or the pace of labour, not men, or love, or fate.

  She used the lull between the pains to look out of the window. A child was playing in the garden of one of the red-brick hospital flats; his mother pegging out her washing on the line. She watched the woman’s calm unhurried movements, the way she stooped and stretched, shook the clothes out carefully, before securing them with orange plastic pegs. The child was digging in his sandpit, equally intent, pressing down the sand in his broken-handled pail. It astonished her that they could work and play so tranquilly, when her own body was in turmoil, her whole attention focused on her womb. They were only yards away from her in terms of simple distance – she could have hammered on the window and caused them to look up – yet there was a barrier between them far more solid than the pane of glass. She felt totally cut off from the outside world, the normal world, from people who could laugh and chat, turn out sand-pies, launder shirts and pants.

  She gazed up at a huge grey cloud drifting slowly across the sky. She was cut off from that, as well; from the vast mystery of things, which again defied any semblance of control. ‘Stop!’ she wanted to shout – to the cloud, the world, her pains – but nobody would hear. Suddenly
a real shout tore harshly from her throat, as she struggled through the worst contraction yet. She was clammy-cold and trembling, despite the stale fug of the room; longed for somebody to come, someone kind and motherly, who would hold her hand and make everything all right; tell her she was safe now, that the bogies had all gone. She could hear noises from the ward: footsteps tramping past her door, the rattling of a trolley, a burst of conversation, a barked order from a nurse. She hadn’t realized they would put her in a side-room, treat her like a leper, somebody in quarantine who might infect the other patients.

  She lumbered round the tiny room like a sick sheep in its pen, pulling at the skimpy gown which was gaping at the back. She remembered being twelve again, and too big for her clothes; even too big for the house – that cramped confining semi, which had quashed her huge ideals, when she’d believed that she could save the world – a new-minted Florence Nightingale fused with Martin Luther King. In the last three weeks, the foetus seemed to have grown and grown, until she had lost her personality, her intellect and brain cells, all her normal interests and concerns, and become nothing but a baby-growing machine. Her womb was no longer even her own, but had become public property; poked and prodded by a string of soulless doctors; scanned, screened, monitored and probed. And then the batteries of tests – urine samples, blood tests, checks on bowel and bladder, diet, weight and heart rate. Before her pregnancy, she had never given her health a second thought. Her body simply functioned – automatically, efficiently – and no one had shown the slightest interest in any of its processes. She preferred that state of things; hated revealing it to strangers, having every private cavity open to inspection, every function scrutinized.

  She lurched retching to the basin as another fierce contraction shook her in its grip, combined this time with an urgent need to be sick. It was useless trying to concentrate on relaxation-breathing whilst also throwing up. Though there wasn’t much to throw up – she hadn’t eaten a mouthful since supper yesterday. She stood leaning over the basin, cross-currents of nausea guttering through her stomach, conflicting with the pain. The contractions were getting stronger all the time, now etched and scored with panic. She had never known anything could hurt so much, take over her whole body, disregard her totally, as if she were just a squatter crouching in the attic, with no say over what happened in the main part of the house.

  She pressed the button by the bed, kept her finger over it. If someone would only sit with her, distract her from herself, chat about the weather, the headlines – anything. She realized how unwise she’d been to have refused her mother’s help; to have told her so insensitively that she could manage on her own (upsetting her into the bargain). But it had been difficult to make the right decision, especially in advance. It had seemed wrong for April to be there – taking Michael’s place – suffering for no purpose. Yet if she’d known how harrowing it would be, she would have clung on to her mother for dear life.

  A nurse appeared – an Indian – one she hadn’t seen before. She’d glimpsed so many different faces in the last six or seven hours, but none of them had stayed long enough to become a friend or ally. And most of them were foreign, which only increased her isolation. Impossible to communicate when their English was so hard to understand, and when they were so rushed off their feet, they had no time to spare in any case. It was all she could do not to scream or swear; tell the harassed lot of them that she’d reached the end of her tether and couldn’t bear another minute’s pain. Instead, she lay down quietly on her back, and let herself be inspected yet again – her gown shoved up to her armpits, while clumsy fingers groped between her legs.

  ‘You’ve quite some way to go yet,’ the nurse observed, as she removed her surgical gloves.

  Tears slid down Tessa’s face, tears of disappointment and frustration. She had assumed that it was nearly over, that she’d deliver in the next half-hour, and the terrible ordeal would end. They had given her some pessaries first thing in the morning, and she’d already had contractions since early afternoon; had breathed and paced, breathed and rocked, even puffed and panted while tapping out the rhythm of a tune, as another means of dealing with the pain. Yet, apparently, all that effort and exertion had been to no avail, and she still had hours more to endure. How could one small baby take so long to be born? It was as if her body were reluctant to expel him; had decided to hold on to him, shield him from more trauma. There had been so much waiting anyway, in these last few interminable weeks – waiting for appointments, waiting for results, sitting like a sack on hard uncomfortable chairs, with rows of other wombs, prattling, knitting, swelling all around her.

  She rolled over on her side, in an endeavour to evade the pain, which was shooting through her back now, fanning out in jerky waves.

  ‘Why not have some pethidine?’ the nurse suggested, handing her a box of paper hankies. ‘There’s no point suffering for the sake of it. Shall I go and ask the doctor to write you up for some?’

  Tessa shook her head, torn between her desire to stay alert and the sudden lacerating spasm gnawing at her back. ‘Yes, okay,’ she muttered, embarrassed by the shameful tears still streaming down her face. They, too, appeared beyond control; had turned on like a tap, regardless of the fact that she had resolved to keep her dignity, not to cry or scream.

  She felt more frightened when the nurse had gone, leaving her alone – alone with this wild beast of pain, a sadistic dangerous animal which tossed her on its horns, attacked with teeth and claws. She was utterly defenceless, lying on her back again, while the beast reared and snorted over her, crashing its great hooves through her naked gut and groin. And the fear itself brought more fear. Suppose she went to pieces, became hysterical, or violent? And suppose the doctor didn’t come? They were understaffed – she knew that – and the nurse had vanished what seemed like hours ago. She could hear herself calling out, yelling for them both, imploring them to hurry. The voice didn’t sound like hers – a distraught demanding bellow, growing louder and more agonized as nobody responded. She shut her eyes, prayed to die; tried to shift her thoughts from terror to escape. She must heave the window open, jump down to that garden, change places with the woman hanging out the clothes. How incredible to be that free – free to do the washing, free to scrub a floor, free to have a body which wasn’t kidnapped, taken over.

  ‘Please help,’ she kept on pleading, although nobody could hear. ‘Please come, please someone come.’

  Maybe better to give up, let the wild beast win, stop fretting about what people thought, or how badly she behaved. Typical of her to have to bend over backwards to get a First in labour, to prove she wasn’t inferior; that a dunce from Emberfield could do as well in childbirth as the cream of Balliol. She no longer even cared, just collapsed back on the bed and allowed herself to scream; lay hopeless and inert, nothing moving but her mouth. Suddenly, three faces were looming over her – cold hands on her belly, a needle in her thigh. She fought the needle, fought the hands, but someone held her down.

  ‘Relax now,’ said a deep male voice, one with a strange accent, guttural and harsh. Everyone was foreign, everyone an alien – Michael, too – far away in the remote and foreign north.

  ‘Relax,’ the voice repeated. ‘Take a few deep breaths.’

  She gasped and spluttered as she struggled to obey; trying to remember how she breathed in normal life – calmly and unthinkingly, without this choking panic. A nurse was holding her hand – a different nurse, a tall blonde English one – her fingers cool and comforting; her long hair smelling faintly of some lemony shampoo. Tessa clutched the fingers, used them as an anchor; longed to bury her face in the hair, block out all the hospital smells.

  ‘That’s better,’ smiled the nurse. ‘The injection won’t take long to work. Just try to put your mind on something else.’

  Tessa made a conscious effort to leave the pain behind. She arranged herself more comfortably, then slipped away to Brittany, where Heloïse had given birth in Abelard’s family home: a farmhou
se in the peaceful Breton countryside. They must share each other’s labour; commiserate with one another that neither had her lover there – Abelard in Paris; Michael up in Newcastle. But at least Heloïse had been attended by Abelard’s sister, Denise – a kindly soul with children of her own. Tessa closed her eyes, to make the scene more vivid, shut out the twentieth century. The fair nurse had become Denise – softhearted, sympathetic – and her brood of children were playing in the room; a snug and homely room, far removed from an impersonal hospital ward. Denise had prepared a sleeping-draught: a potent homebrewed herbal tea for curing agues and fevers. Already it had made her drowsy – heavy-lidded, heavy-limbed – so that all the griping torment was stealing miraculously away. She was falling into sand; must have joined the little boy in the sandpit just outside, and had nothing else to do now but turn out golden sand-pies in the warm caressing sun.

  ‘It’s raining,’ someone said.

  Tessa felt her body – wet – ran a finger down her face and neck. They were damp as well. How odd that it should rain indoors, and without her even noticing. Except that everything was blurred, so perhaps she wasn’t inside any more. She forced her eyes to open, saw a doctor leaning over her – black hair and eyes, white coat.

  ‘I’m Dr Mahendra,’ he announced, the small teeth very sharp and bright as his mouth split in a smile.

  She didn’t answer, knew the man was angry, and that the smile was just a mask – something he strapped on to cover up the black hole of his face. She wished he wouldn’t press so hard. He was hurting her so badly she could feel things grinding and tearing. She tried to knee him off, but couldn’t make her muscles work. Perhaps he’d tied her down. He looked powerful and well-built, with an athlete’s brawny shoulders and broad hot hairy hands. The hands were thrust between her legs, jabbing and molesting. Michael must have sent him – too busy to come himself, but making sure that she was punished in his absence. Michael was resentful, furious that she’d tricked him; had been hostile since the day they first met. He’d cursed her that May Morning, almost run her over. She could hear the rain once more, drenching down in that narrow Oxford lane; striking at their naked bodies as they lay in Foxlow Woods. He had sown the baby then, spat it like a grape-pip right into her stomach, then blamed her when it grew.