Sorrow and Bliss

by Meg Mason

  She came home while he was making me a bacon sandwich, wandered into the kitchen and went up behind him, picking a burned bit out of the pan he was holding. She ate it like it was a delicious little sweet, then wafted over to a cupboard and got something out like she knew where everything was and had agency in it being there in the first place. I felt like I had never hated another woman so much.

  Once we had eaten, I watched him do the dishes. Patrick dried things. I told him if he just left them on the board, physics or whatever would dry them so he didn’t have to.

  He said he wasn’t sure it was physics. ‘I don’t mind doing it. I have a bit of a completist mentality. I’ll be finished in a minute. Do you know how to play backgammon?’

  I said no and conceded to being taught. We went into the living room and while he was setting up the suitcase thing, Patrick said, ‘I meant to tell you, I’m going to Uganda.’

  I frowned and asked him why.

  ‘For work, a placement. I told you I was applying. A while ago I guess.’

  ‘I remember. I just didn’t think that you would still –’ I wasn’t sure what I meant, then I was and couldn’t say it.

  ‘Still what?’

  I meant, I didn’t think you would still want to go because of me. I said, ‘I just didn’t realise it was still happening, that’s all.’

  Patrick asked me if I minded. He was joking but I felt exposed and said no. ‘Why would I mind? That would be weird.’ I picked up one of the counters and turned it over. ‘When are you leaving?’

  He said in three weeks. ‘The tenth. Back at Christmas. I think, the day before.’

  ‘That is five months.’

  Patrick said, ‘Five and a half’ and finished setting up the board. I tried to focus on his explanation of the rules but I was preoccupied with the idea of him being away for so long and said, when he kept reminding me whose turn it was, ‘You just roll for me and I’ll watch.’

  17

  HOW LONG THE man had been standing there I don’t know but when I raised my head because I had heard somebody say, ‘Hello there,’ it sounded like it wasn’t the first time he had said it. It was October and cold. I was at Hampstead Heath sitting in an area of tall dead grass between the gravel path and a narrow stream with my arms around my shins and my forehead on my knees. I had cried enough that the skin on my cheeks felt sore and tight like it had been soaped and over-scrubbed.

  The man, in his oilskin jacket and tweed hat, was smiling cautiously. He had a dog on a leash, a large Labrador that was standing obediently beside him, beating its tail against his leg. I smiled back, involuntarily, like someone who has just been tapped on the shoulder at a party and is turning around in happy anticipation of seeing who it is and hearing whatever wonderful thing it is they’ve come over to say.

  He said, ‘I couldn’t help but notice you here.’ His tone was very fatherly. ‘I didn’t want to invade your privacy but I said to myself, if she is still there on my way back –’ he did a single nod to indicate that I was, indeed, still there and asked me if I was alright.

  I was sorry and wanted to apologise for becoming a factor in his afternoon, for complicating his walk and demanding to be thought about. The dog put its nose down and sniffed towards me, as near as it could get on the leash. I reached out and the man gave out more so it could put its nose in my hand. He said, ‘Ah there, she likes you. She’s rather old and doesn’t like many people.’

  I squinted up at him. I wanted to tell him that my mother had just died to justify why I had been crying so hard in public. But it would be a burden beyond this nice man’s solving. I went to say that I had dropped my phone in the stream but I did not want him to think I was stupid or offer to retrieve it.

  I said, ‘I’m lonely.’ It was the truth. Followed by some lies, told to absolve him of concern. ‘I’m just lonely today. Not in general. Generally I’m completely fine.’

  ‘Well, they say London is a city of eight million lonely people, don’t they.’ The man gently tugged the dog back to his side. ‘But this too shall pass. They also say that.’

  He nodded goodbye and moved off along the path.

  *

  As a child, watching the news or listening to it on the radio with my father I thought, when they said ‘the body was discovered by a man walking his dog’, that it was always the same man. I still imagine him, putting his walking shoes on at the door, finding the leash, the familiar dread as he clips it onto the dog’s collar, but still setting out, regardless, in the hope that, today, there won’t be a body. But twenty minutes later, God, there it is.

  *

  I stayed sitting by the stream after he walked on, but kept my head up so as not to attract any more concerned persons. I hadn’t been alright from the time Patrick went away. Sitting there, I thought about other times that I had felt like this – the months I was with Jonathan, on and off in Paris, the past few weeks – the lowest points of my adult life were related by the factor of his absence. It was so clear. And there had been that day in the summer – I stood up and brushed the back of my jeans. That is when I began to think of Patrick as the cure. By the end of our marriage, I saw him as the cause.

  18

  I WENT TO the airport to meet Patrick, early in the morning, the day before Christmas. We hugged each other like two people who had no practical experience of embracing, had only taught themselves the theory from a poorly worded manual.

  He did not smell amazing. He had a very saddening beard. But, I said, aside from that I was so happy to see him. I did not say, beyond description, beyond what I had imagined.

  Patrick said you too. And my name. ‘You too Martha.’

  In front of the ticket machine, he asked if I wanted to come home with him. It felt like a stone dropping – the disappointment – when he said ‘not in that sense obviously’ and laughed. I told him I did, not in that sense either.

  The flat was quiet, with the air of a long absence, and neat although Heather was supposedly still in residence. Patrick opened windows and asked me what I wanted to do. I said let’s shave that beard off and I sat on the closed lid of the toilet while he did it, in humorous increments – Charles Darwin to suspected attacker via Mr Bennet, BBC adaptation.

  I went out afterwards so he could have a shower and sat in the living room, reading a book I found under his coffee table, trying not to think about the sound of running water and the steam and soap smell that was either carrying from the bathroom or being produced by my imagination. I wondered what he was doing. I wondered what he was doing, too exactly, and left the house to buy breakfast and food for his fridge, staying out until I was sure he would have finished.

  We talked until it was too late for me to go home; Patrick gave me his bed and slept on the sofa.

  *

  In the morning, we walked all the way to Belgravia, along Battersea Park, over Chelsea Bridge. Winsome opened the door and looked surprised to see us together. While we took off our coats, she seemed on the cusp of saying something, not that my hair looked very nice as it ended up being.

  Before lunch I went into the dining room and found her rearranging the place cards because, she said, having now seen Ingrid, she thought it would be better to have her on the end, to make it easier for her to get in and out. My sister was thirty-six weeks pregnant by then and had put on a significant amount of Toblerone weight.

  Now, Winsome went on, she was wondering if Ingrid might also be more comfortable on a sturdier alternative to the formal dining chairs which, she pointed out, had such silly thin legs.

  Perhaps I could suggest it to her. My aunt said, ‘She wouldn’t be offended would she?’ and touched her pearls.

  Ingrid was offended and refused to take the sturdier alternative, despite the additional inducement of a cushion. Once we were sitting down, she told us she was going to try and force out her mucus plug in the hope of ruining the upholstered seat of the thin-legged one she had made Hamish give up. He was next to Patrick, and glanced at him for r
eassurance after suggesting to my sister that perhaps all the pretend bearing-down wasn’t the best idea, as funny as we were obviously all finding it.

  She started laughing. ‘A woman can’t dislodge her mucus plug by pretending to.’

  He looked back to Patrick and asked if that was true.

  Ingrid said, ‘He’s been a doctor for ten minutes Hamish. I doubt he knows. No offence Patrick.’

  ‘He’s actually a registrar, darling.’

  ‘Okay well I don’t know the difference but fine, I will leave my mucus plug in situ.’

  Jessamine, next to her, said, ‘I am so excited for when we all stop staying mucus plug,’ and got up.

  A moment later, Rowland appeared and took her seat. He had just acquired a sibling pair of whippets to replace Wagner who had been kept alive for much longer than God intended through many rounds of chemotherapy, dog dialysis and multiple cutting-edge surgeries at a cost that he did not by his own inconsistent metric consider obscene.

  Now he was hoping Patrick could advise him on their problem of nervous urination, he said, ‘In your capacity as a medic.’ Ingrid said he’s actually a registrar and got up, announcing to the table that she was going upstairs to lie down because she felt sick. I went with her and stayed until she was asleep. By the time I came down, everyone had left on the walk. I was sitting at Winsome’s piano, trying to play something, when she texted me. ‘Fck pls come up here and ring Hamish.’

  I found her in Jessamine’s bathroom, kneeling in front of the basin and pulling down on the edge like she was trying to rip it out of the wall. The floor around her was wet and she was crying. She saw me and said, ‘Please don’t be angry. I was joking. I was joking.’

  I went over and knelt beside her. She let go of the basin and lay on her side, curled up with her head in my lap. I rang Hamish. He said okay, okay, okay, okay, okay until I told him I had to go. A contraction was coming. My sister’s body went rigid, like she was being electrocuted. With her jaw clenched she said, ‘Martha, make it stop. I’m not ready. The baby will be too small.’ As soon as the contraction had passed, she asked me to go please Google how to keep a baby in. ‘Its birthday is going to be fucked, Martha.’ Laughing, or crying, she said, ‘Please. It’s going to get a combined present.’

  There was nothing on Wikipedia. I asked her if she wanted me to distract her by reading aloud from the Daily Mail celebrity sidebar. She batted the phone out of my hand and told me to die in a hole, then screamed at me to get it again because another one was coming and I was supposed to be timing them or something.

  For however long, we stayed like that. I told her it was going to be completely fine, desperate for it to be true, desperate that nothing happen to my sister and her baby. The contractions got closer, then joined together until Ingrid was racked by sobs and saying she was going to die. Hamish walked in as she was pushing herself up onto her hands and knees, screaming that something was coming out of her.

  It had not occurred to me that Patrick would be with him, but he entered first. I moved out of his way and went and stood by Hamish who had stopped just inside the door because, as soon as she saw him, Ingrid said she didn’t want him there any more.

  Patrick told her he needed to check what was happening. Ingrid said, ‘Fuck off, Patrick. Sorry, I am not having a family friend look between my legs.’

  Probably, Hamish said, she did need to let someone have a quick squiz, particularly as he’d just realised he hadn’t thought to ring an ambulance.

  Patrick had, but told my sister then that if she could feel something, it wasn’t going to arrive in time.

  ‘She can do it then,’ Ingrid said. ‘Martha can. You can just tell her what to do.’

  I looked at him hoping he would shake his head because I was desperate not to have to assess a cervix but his expression was so commanding, I found myself already moving towards him.

  Patrick told Hamish to go and get some scissors, reassuring my sister that it wasn’t, as she instantly thought, so he could do a floor Caesarean with no fucking anaesthetic.

  Something was definitely coming out of her. I started to describe what it looked like until she told me, between breaths, that Patrick didn’t need me to paint a fucking word picture and ordered me to move.

  It was the last thing Ingrid said before she pushed up off her hands and released a long animal groan. Hamish was back to see her deliver an impossibly small, angry baby into her own hands. He went pale and listed towards the wall, not immediately responding to Patrick’s request for the scissors he was holding. He apologised, saying they were the only ones he could find. ‘Winsome’s sewing room.’

  Ingrid, slumped, holding her baby, said, ‘Oh my God, no Hamish. They’re pinking shears. Patrick?’

  He said they would be fine.

  She looked at me, pleadingly. I told her they would give a lovely effect and went to turn away, overwhelmed by the quantity of blood on the floor but then Patrick reached out, and took the baby, cut the cord and returned it to my sister’s arms in a series of movements so swift and silent, it seemed like a routine they had been practising. I was so transfixed, it was only the echo of Patrick’s voice in my head, asking me to go and find more towels, that prompted me to go out and get as many as I could find.

  Ingrid tried to wrap the baby up in one of them and started crying. She said to Patrick, ‘Do you think I’m hurting him? He’s too small, he shouldn’t be here yet.’ She said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ looking from him to me then Hamish, as if she’d sinned against each of us individually. I felt tears in my eyes when she looked down and apologised to the baby.

  Patrick said, ‘Ingrid, he was going to come anyway. It was nothing you did.’

  She nodded but wouldn’t look at him.

  Patrick said, ‘Ingrid?’

  ‘Yes.’ She raised her head.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good.’ Patrick took the rest of the towels I was holding and put them around her shoulders and over her legs. My sister – I had never loved her more intensely than I did then – wiped one of her cheeks dry and tried to smile and said, ‘Martha, I hope these are Winsome’s good towels.’ She was still crying, but in a different way then, as though everything was suddenly alright.

  *

  Patrick and I stayed with her while Hamish went to meet the ambulance. I said no but she made me hold the baby and I let myself be obliterated by the intensity of my love for this almost weightless thing. In front of Patrick, she said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want one?’

  ‘I want this one. But you got him so I will have to go without.’

  Patrick said, ‘He’s lovely, Ingrid,’ looking at the baby in my arms.

  *

  Hamish came back accompanied by a man and a woman in dark green uniforms jointly carrying a stretcher. He described the situation downstairs now that everyone had returned from the walk as controlled mayhem but nothing compared to the state of up here which, he said, really struck you afresh once you’d gone out and come back in.

  He came over, and gently touched his son’s forehead, then said to Ingrid already on the stretcher, ‘I expect we ought to call him Patrick.’

  Ingrid turned her head on the pillow and looked at Patrick, who was moving a towel back and forth with his foot, smearing blood more widely across the tiles. Then, to Hamish, she said she would have, if she was more of a fan of Patrick as a name, but unfortunately she wasn’t. The ambulance people started wheeling her towards the door. As she passed him, Ingrid reached out and got Patrick’s forearm. For a second she just held it, as if searching for words, then said, ‘You are doing an amazing job of the floor.’

  *

  He and I were alone then. I sat on the side of the bath and told him to give up – it still looked like there had been a machinery accident and Winsome was probably going to have the tiles ripped up anyway.

  Patrick came and sat down. I asked him if he’d been terrified, delivering a baby i
n circumstances like that.

  He said it wasn’t the circumstances. ‘It was just because, I’ve seen a lot of births, obviously, but never,’ he said, you know, ‘done one.’

  While we were talking, Winsome tapped the open door and, putting her head in, said it looked like the battlefield of a particularly bloody civil war. She told us there was a change of clothes waiting for each of us in different bathrooms, ‘and towels et cetera’ then said she needed to go and get rubber gloves and, with a sad look at the floor, ‘a rubbish bag for those ones,’ so recently her best.

  *

  I spent a long time in the shower and a long time changing into the clothes I found folded on a bathroom chair and a long time texting Ingrid, expecting no reply, before I finally went downstairs. Everyone was in the kitchen. The controlled mayhem Hamish had described was now absolute. My father and Rowland were having a conversation from opposite sides of the room, the subject of which I couldn’t grasp. It was clear that my father was upset and my uncle was irritated. The dogs were yelping and running in circles around Rowland’s ankles. Winsome was washing pots and Jessamine was putting plates into the dishwasher without being especially close to it, forcing them both to raise their voices further over the irregular clatter of china against china. Nicholas and Oliver were outside in the garden smoking. Periodically, Jessamine shouted at them to come and help. Each time, she tried to get the window above the sink open with her wet hands, then banged on it with her fist when she couldn’t. My mother was sitting Liza Minnelli direction on a kitchen chair, doing some sort of performance, regardless of the fact that no one except me was looking at her.

  Patrick wasn’t there. I went up to Winsome, who told me I looked very fresh, and asked if she knew where he was. She said he had left; whither, she could not say.

  I went in a taxi to his flat, not knowing if he would be there and not knowing what I would say if he was, but he was the only person I wanted to be with.