Michael, Michael

by Wendy Perriam

  She ambled past the library, its scuffed door locked and barred. They were working shorter hours these days, due to lack of funds, and any book she wanted seemed never to be there. Her mind leapfrogged to Oxford once again – seven million volumes in the Bodleian.

  She veered right towards the Health Centre, which had been built some eighteen months ago and housed six GPs and every sort of clinic from Well Woman to Toddlers. She had never been inside, merely damned the building as an eyesore – one more reason to slate her dismal suburb. For all his other shortcomings, Dr Cunningham did at least see his patients at home – a stately Edwardian house in mellowed brick, with a front garden full of flowering shrubs, and a cosy wife who let you in.

  She slowed her steps as she passed the concrete monstrosity, glancing at the large framed board which listed all the doctors – Dr Alan Reynolds, Dr Malcolm Barr, Dr Anne McNeil, Dr Michael Edwards … Dr Michael …! All the blood which had drained from her face now came scorching back. Her body was on fire – crackling, blazing, exploding in bright tongues of flame, convulsed by heat and light. She reached a hand out, touched the letters gingerly, to make sure that they were real. Yes – Michael’s name, written there by fate – not a trick or mirage, not a mere coincidence, but deliberate and intended.

  She stumbled up the concrete path and through the plate-glass doors, making straight for the reception desk. She cleared her throat, tried to calm her breathing, so she wouldn’t sound too agitated.

  ‘I’m registered with an Oxford doctor, but I’ve just come to live down here, so I’d like to change to Dr Michael Edwards.’

  She was astonished at her voice – its confidence, its coolness – even more surprised when they handed her a form. She had half-expected problems: some stuffy fusspot bureaucrat telling her she couldn’t change, or announcing smugly that Dr Edwards’ list was full. Instead, a cheerful smile, a few brief and simple questions, and, yes, if she wanted to save time, she could fill the form in straight away and return it to the desk.

  Her hand had never moved so fast, pausing only at the entry ‘Any other surnames you have had’. She was tempted to write ‘Edwards’, since she had taken Michael’s name in spirit and in fantasy. But she left that section blank, dared not risk a snarl-up. She was already worried about Cunningham, but it was true that she was registered not with him, but with Dr Pryce in Oxford, and treated as a temporary resident when she came home on vacation. Anyway, there was no earthly reason why you couldn’t change GPs, and doddery old Cunningham had almost reached retirement age, so she’d have to find a new doctor at some stage or another.

  She handed in the completed form, and was walking to the door again, when she suddenly heard a female voice call Dr Edwards’ name. That meant he must be there, just yards from her, and breathing the same air. She swung round, saw a sheepskin – Michael’s coat, identical – even down to its grubbiness, its air of wealth and squalor mixed. She kept her eyes fixed on the buttons, choking back a savage disappointment. She was aware his face was wrong, yet knew she must adjust to it. He was wearing glasses, though of course he didn’t need them. Michael’s sight was perfect, and he never had his hair cut short. But those were trivialities. This man’s hair would grow, and he probably took his glasses off as soon as he got home. At least he was quite tall – not Michael’s six-foot-three, but a good head higher than herself. She couldn’t tell the colour of his eyes, but preferred to remain in ignorance. It was hard to accept too many aching differences.

  He was talking to a blonde, a flashy type in skin-tight jeans, who was jangling with cheap jewellery. Tessa felt her fists clench as she watched the girl make up to him – flirting, pouting, running puce-tipped fingers through her mane of brassy hair. She forced her eyes back to his coat; suddenly saw that winding Oxford lane again – her own sprawled and shaken body lying in the road, with a sheepskin standing over it. It was his coat she’d registered first: that snobby coat which had become a sort of partner in their affair. She could feel it soft against her back as she lay naked on its furry side, their last weekend away; Michael thrusting into her, his sperm and her wild wetness mingling on the fleece. She had even sewn the missing buttons back, not as an unliberated hausfrau, but because she wanted the coat perfect. She checked them now – all there – the sleeves, like Michael’s, a fraction short; the same odd stains and blotches.

  She tensed. The coat was moving, actually bearing down towards her, making for the door. She stood back to let it pass, then immediately dashed after it.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she called frantically, jogging to keep up. ‘Are you Dr Michael Edwards?’ She had to be completely sure. There might be other Dr Edwardses – not Michaels, not his surrogate.

  He stopped, whole stance impatient, brow creased in a frown. ‘Yes, I am, but I’m in a devil of a hurry.’

  She smiled with sheer relief, doubly reassured now. Of course he was hard-pressed – harassed, pressured, always fighting against the clock. ‘I’m sorry, I won’t keep you. I just wondered if you were on this evening.’

  ‘Yes, but fully booked.’ He turned on his heel, stalked towards his car.

  She had already stored his words away in the treasury of her head – tetchy and short-tempered words, like Michael’s. She tried to assimilate the rest of him – his faint smell of musky aftershave, the creases in his neck, the dark stripes on his sober tie, the way his hand had fidgeted. She felt worried by his eyes, which were blue, and very pale blue, not Michael’s Latin black. And his voice was vin du pays, not vintage claret. But at least the walk was right – a vigorous, determined stride, which declared he was a busy man who hadn’t time or words to waste. She already knew his car would be red, and was relieved when she confirmed it – a maroonish Citroën estate – not as bright or racy as a crimson open-top MG, but still unquestionably in the red range. She listened to the engine coughing into life, breathed in its exhaust-fumes, trying to cram them down her throat, so that they’d be absorbed into her bloodstream, become part of her whole system. Once he’d pulled away, the huge car-park seemed deserted, though there were other cars, insipid cars, boring beige and black. She plunged back to the surgery, stood queuing at the desk behind a windbag hypochondriac and an old man on two sticks. At last, it was her turn.

  ‘I want to make an appointment for this evening, with Dr Michael Edwards.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s fully booked.’

  ‘I know – he told me just a minute ago. But he said I was to go back to reception and ask if you could kindly squeeze me in.’

  ‘Overbooked, in fact.’ The receptionist was frowning as she scanned the list of names and times on the already crowded page. ‘You could see another doctor, though. Dr Barr is free.’

  ‘No.’ The word came out like a croak. If only she had the talents of a poet or a barrister, to overwhelm, compel. ‘It must be Dr Edwards,’ she said desperately.

  The woman still seemed hesitant, even slightly hostile, her plastic biro jabbing at the page. It was all Tessa could do not to snatch the pen herself, cross out every name on Dr Edwards’ list, and substitute her own.

  ‘Please,’ she entreated, fighting back her tears. ‘He said he didn’t mind. He knows it’s really urgent.’

  ‘Okay, come at ten to six.’ The woman’s tone was grudging, and she was shaking her head, as if she resented having granted the concession. ‘But you may have to wait – I warn you.’

  Tessa watched her write ‘Miss Reeves’ in a tiny squeeze of space, appraised each stunted letter before she backed away. Even then, she hung around to take in Dr Edwards’ world – the shiny walls, low ceiling, rigid polystyrene chairs. She knew them well, had seen them all before – at the John Radcliffe at Headington.

  She drifted out, glancing at her watch. Seven and a quarter hours to wait. But she was used to waiting for Dr Michael Edwards, and now she almost welcomed it. She had a goal, a purpose, something solid in her timetable.

  She dawdled down the path, which was bordered by a narrow strip of flowe
r-bed, planted with low shrubs. She hadn’t even noticed it before, despite the vibrant colour of the berries and the leaves – sunshine-yellow, tawny gold, crimson lake, vermilion. She plucked a spray of fiery leaves, stuck it in her buttonhole. Her mother was right – it wasn’t deadly winter yet, but still blazing vital autumn.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tessa lingered by the board again, the doctors’ names now swallowed up in bonfire-scented darkness. She savoured autumn’s smells – ripe conkers, rotting leaves, smoke and mist, decay – let her hand run slowly across the centre of the board where Michael’s name was written. He and all the other doctors had taken the Hippocratic Oath. She’d looked it up in the library, just three days ago, when she’d been mooning round the reference section with nothing much to do. The words had disconcerted her. ‘I will give no deadly drug to any, though it be requested of me, nor will I counsel such, and especially I will not aid a woman to procure abortion.’

  Strange, how many broke it.

  She meandered slowly down the path, still trying to kill time. It was only half past five, so she was twenty minutes early. But she’d deliberately set out before her mother was expected back; had no wish to be delayed, or enmeshed in awkward questions. April had left Connie and the Horse and Groom for Val and Hair Affair. Another little irony. She was doing what she’d planned to do as official working grandma, but instead of caring for a new-born baby boy she was looking after her strapping full-grown daughter. She had also started a new system of ‘family meals’, which meant Frank and Eric sat down with them, four evenings out of seven, and shared their chicken pie or Irish stew.

  ‘It’ll be much more fun for all of us,’ her mother had declared, though what she really meant was, ‘It’ll bump up the housekeeping, now Tessa’s lost her grant.’ She was also clearly hoping that it would provide some life and company for a dejected daughter too much on her own.

  ‘You can help me with the cooking, Toots. It’ll do you good, give you a new interest.’

  Everyone was determined to do her good – suggest hobbies, interests, ways of filling voids. Well, she’d made the pudding for tonight, peeled the potatoes for Frank’s chips (which he regarded as the staple of any dinner worth the name, including curry or spaghetti bolognese), and laid the too-small kitchen table. She’d disguised it with a lacy cloth, added paper napkins twisted into swans, then set about her own disguise. She’d washed her hair, sponged and ironed the outfit she’d been wearing on May Morning – the day she first met Michael – and spent two hours on her face. She examined her reflection now in the heavy plate-glass doors. Her eyes looked bright, intense; made more dramatic by their clever stagy make-up, which concealed the dark circles underneath them. She had swept her hair on top, sprayed herself with scent, chosen a gold pendant which hung low between her breasts and so emphasized their curve.

  She did her best to calm herself as she walked up to the desk, feeling very much the same as when she’d ventured into Balliol the first day of her first term – keyed up, elated, petrified. She gave her name to the receptionist, though it sounded odd, as if she and ‘Tessa Reeves’ were no longer quite connected. She had lost contact with a lot of things, including some parts of her body.

  She was told to take a seat, chose one in the corner by the fish-tank, so she could re-appraise her appearance in its glass. She opened her book, but made no pretence of reading; observed instead the slumped or sniffling patients in the waiting-room. How many of that blank-faced mob were on Dr Edwards’ list? None, she hoped, shuddering at the thought of him touching them, or intimately concerned with them, knowing all the details of their bodies and their lives. She must dismiss such thoughts; think only about him; keep trying to convince herself that all the niggling differences didn’t need to matter – the straight Hovis-coloured hair, which had none of Michael’s bouncy dark exuberance; the pale eyelashes, thin lips.

  Suddenly she tensed. A mother with a baby was making for her corner, about to take the adjoining seat.

  ‘No!’ Tessa mouthed, too late. The woman had sat down, the baby now so close she could smell its smell; hear its fractious chunterings as it fidgeted on its mother’s lap. It turned its head to look at her, becoming unnervingly and unnaturally still as its piercing gaze transfixed her. There was no affection in the scrutiny, no suggestion of a smile. The baby was accusing her.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘I killed him.’

  She shrank away, trying to break the contact, but the blue-stone stare still penetrated – paralysing, chilling, shrivelling everything inside her to a parched and barren waste. She was terrified that other eyes would turn on her as well; every patient in the room aware of what she’d done. She fixed her whole attention on the goldfish, longed to be that simple – an ounce of freckled fin and tail swimming round and round. If only the weed-caressing water would close above her head; drown her thoughts, regrets.

  ‘Miss Reeves?’

  She jumped. It was only five past six. She had hardly waited any time at all; didn’t feel prepared; her mind confused – a ferment of uncertainty and doubt. She was directed to the corridor, made her way along it as slowly as she could, passing other doctors’ rooms; seeing Dr Edwards’ name with an arrow pointing to the right, and then – again – stencilled on his door. She knocked.

  ‘Come in.’

  The voice was different – pleasant, not cantankerous. She kept her eyes on the brown carpet, walked the hundred miles to the chair, only then daring to look up. Dr Edwards was smiling.

  ‘Ah, you’re the new patient. I don’t think we’ve met yet, have we?’

  Yes, she wanted to shout, we have, of course we have. But she merely shook her head. He hadn’t recognized her, but was it any wonder? When she’d dashed after him this morning, she’d been wearing an old tracksuit, with her greasy hair scraped back in a rubber band.

  ‘Do sit down.’

  She sat, relieved to have a chair-seat underneath her. There was too much to take in – the smile, the teeth, the patterned navy socks, the rough tweed of his jacket, the fact he looked much older than he had done just this morning. And then the room itself: carpet, curtains, desk – photo on the desk – photo of a woman on the desk, a woman and a baby. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. He was too old to have a baby; must be nearly forty, and the woman, too, was in her lateish thirties, yet holding an infant of only a few months. She was nothing like she’d imagined Michael’s wife – not glamorous or statuesque – but her rival, none the less.

  ‘So what can we do for you?’ Dr Edwards was asking.

  Tessa clasped her hands together, locked the fingers tight. We. He’d said we. Which must mean him and Michael. Write to me, she answered. Make love to me. Come back.

  Her eyes were glued to the photograph. The woman’s hair was short, neither straight nor curly, but with a slight apologetic kink to it, and a shade darker than her husband’s. The baby had no hair at all, just like her own baby.

  ‘How can I help?’ Dr Edwards shifted on his chair. The impatient note had crept into his voice again. He crossed his legs, the trousers straining slightly, pulling at the thigh; one foot jiggling restlessly.

  Tessa cleared her throat, switched her gaze from the baby’s head to the doctor’s polished brogue. The patterned holes in the toecap were watching her with their tiny lashless eyes. ‘I … read this piece in … the Observer,’ she began. The words were beginning to come – words she didn’t know were there – but crippled, stumbling, forced to limp and creep. ‘About … drinking when you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Are you pregnant?’

  ‘No.’ She dragged her hands apart, sat on them to keep them still. Interruptions made it very difficult. ‘They … said it could cause birth-defects, things like spina bifida.’

  He shook his head, about to contradict her.

  She raised her voice. ‘It can,’ she insisted. ‘I know that. You see, it happened in my own case.’ All the drinks she’d swallowed so unthinkingly were reeling in her head:
the Harvey-Taylors’ gin – Dutch courage for the abortion – the champagne she’d swilled with Michael their last weekend together; the wine she’d ordered at Yum Sing’s, when she and April were toasting a baby already damaged by her carelessness.

  ‘They’re stricter in America,’ she said, breaking off as she recalled the chilling facts. She knew those facts by heart now, since she’d read the piece a dozen times, at least. When she’d finally put the paper down, her hands were blackened from the newsprint, the whole of her unclean. She struggled to control her voice, to convey the gist of the article as dispassionately as possible, as if she were taking part in a Balliol debate.

  ‘If you drink when you’re pregnant in the States, you can actually be prosecuted, or even land in gaol. They call it child abuse. One woman had to go through labour handcuffed in a cell. And another girl, who was only eighteen and a half …’ The sentence petered out as she watched the tears slide slowly off her chin. They’d be ruining her make-up, her disguise. He’d see her for what she really was – a murderer, destroyer.

  Abruptly, she flinched back. He was leaning forward across the desk, reaching out to strike her, punish her for her crime. No. His hand was making contact with her own; warm fingers closing round it. She was dreaming this, hallucinating. It was utterly impossible that Michael should be touching her. She stared down at the hand – its broad and fleshy fingers, well-groomed oval nails, the knuckles slightly reddened, a faint scar on the thumb. She shut her eyes, so that she could relish its firm grip; the confidence it gave her; the incredible sensation of bare skin against bare skin. She could see his naked body now – hair-whorled, thrusting, hot – feel it pressed against her thighs, wet with sweat and sperm. He was asking questions – questions about her pregnancy – but they completely failed to register. All she was aware of was this overwhelming miracle: she was joined and merged with Michael once again.