Sorrow and Bliss

by Meg Mason

  19

  I ARRIVED, IN Winsome’s clothes. Patrick opened the door, still dressed as Rowland. He asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. I said yes and while we were waiting for the water to boil, I told him that I loved him. Patrick turned around and leaned against the counter, folded his arms loosely and asked me to marry him.

  I said no. ‘I don’t mean it like that. I’m saying it because I don’t think we should spend as much time together as we were before you went away. I felt like your girlfriend and it’s not fair for me to be with you all of the time, because even if I was your girlfriend, it couldn’t go anywhere. Even though I do –’ I picked the edge of the table ‘– want to be with you, all the time.’

  Patrick remained exactly as he was. ‘I want you to be with me all the time.’

  The way he said it made me feel like my body was suddenly full of warm water.

  In which case, he went on, ‘it seems quite straightforward.’

  ‘It isn’t though because I’m saying, I can’t marry you.’

  He asked me why not. He did not seem perturbed, reaching around and tucking in the back of his shirt.

  ‘Because you want children and I don’t.’

  ‘How do you know I want children? We’ve never talked about it.’

  ‘You told me at the Tate that you always imagined yourself having children.’

  ‘That isn’t the same thing as actively wanting them.’

  ‘I just saw you deliver a baby, Patrick. It is obvious. You do, and I would be Sophie’s Choicing you because you can either marry me or be a father with someone else.’ I went on, so he would not say the thing I had been told so often by people who knew me and people who didn’t. ‘I won’t change my mind. I promise, I’m not going to and I don’t want to be the reason you don’t get to be a father.’

  Patrick said, ‘Interesting, okay’ and went back to making the tea. He brought mine over and put it in front of me. He had taken the bag out because he knew with it in, I would feel like I was trying to drink out of the Ganges without getting any semi-submerged rubbish in my mouth.

  I thanked him and he went back to where he was before. Leaning against the counter again, the folded arms. ‘The thing is, I will never change my mind about you.’ He said, he hadn’t read Sophie’s Choice but nevertheless, he understood the reference. ‘And this isn’t an impossible decision Martha. This is no decision. Whether or not I want children, I want you more.’

  I just said, ‘Okay, well’ and touched the rim of my mug. It was strange, to be wanted so much. I said well again. ‘There’s also the issue of my predisposition.’

  ‘What predisposition?’

  ‘Towards insanity.’

  He said, ‘Martha’ and for the first time sounded unhappy. I glanced up. ‘You’re not insane.’

  ‘Not presently. But you have seen me like that.’

  That day in summer: he came to pick me up from Goldhawk Road at lunchtime. I was still in bed because my dreams had been grotesque and they had lingered like a physical presence in the room after I woke up, making me too afraid to move. I knew it was the beginning of something.

  Patrick had knocked and asked if he could come in. I was crying and couldn’t get the air to say anything.

  He came over and felt my forehead, then said he was going to go and get me a glass of water. When he came back, he asked me if I wanted to watch a movie and – I remember – if I was okay with him sitting on the bed next to me, he said ‘with my legs up I mean.’ I moved over a little bit and while he was choosing something on my laptop, he said, ‘Sorry you’re not feeling great.’ I had known Patrick for so long. Most of the time – still sometimes then – my ordinary presence made him nervous. This way, he was so calm.

  He stayed with me all day, and that night he slept on the floor. In the morning I felt normal. It was already over. We went to a pool. Patrick swam laps and I watched, holding a book, feeling mesmerised by the continuous movement of his arms, the way he turned his head, his endless progress through the water. Afterwards, he drove me home and I apologised for being weird. He said, ‘Everyone has bad days.’

  I do not know if it was on purpose that he repeated it then, in the kitchen, everyone has bad days. ‘And I’d be fine with it, if you actually were. Insanity,’ he said, ‘is not a deal-breaker. If it’s you.’

  I looked down and picked the edge of the table again. ‘Can I please have a biscuit?’

  He said, ‘Yes, in a second. Could you look up, Martha?’ I did. We had the same conversation again. I told him we shouldn’t see each other and he asked me to marry him. That time, with his hands in his pockets, the same as always and I started laughing because it was just him. It was just Patrick.

  I said, ‘If you are serious, why aren’t you kneeling down?’

  ‘Because you would hate it.’

  I would hate it.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine what?’

  ‘Fine I will marry you.’

  Patrick said, ‘Right, okay,’ surprised and not immediately coming over. I had to get up before he moved and then, standing in front of me, he asked how I felt about – he said ‘you know’ and meant, being kissed.

  I said incredibly uncomfortable.

  ‘Good. So do I. Let’s just ah –’

  ‘Get it over with.’ I kissed him. It was peculiar and extraordinary and of some duration.

  Separating, Patrick said, ‘I was going to say, shake hands.’

  It is hard to look into someone’s eyes. Even when you love them, it is difficult to sustain it, for the sense of being seen through. In some way, found out. But, for as long as the kiss had lasted, I didn’t feel guilty for saying yes and being so happy when I had just taken something away from Patrick so that I could have what I wanted.

  He asked me if I still wanted a biscuit. I said no.

  ‘Come with me then. I have something for you.’ He said he had been waiting to give it to me for a long time and now that I had made him the happiest man alive by saying fine, he was going to go and get it.

  I let him lead me by the hand into his bedroom. I knew it would be his mother’s wedding ring. I stood and waited while he looked for it in his drawer with a gathering sense of not wanting it.

  He said, ‘It might not be in very good condition. I haven’t got it out for ages. It might not even fit.’ I was holding my hands together and wasted the final seconds of being able to tell him to please keep it – something so precious, which had belonged to a woman he loved who we could only assume would have hated me – by silently rubbing the back of my left hand as though the ring was already on it and I could somehow rub it off.

  He found the box and took the band out. He held it out, between two fingers. It was amazing. Patrick said, ‘As it turns out Martha, despite what I may have said at different times, I have been in love with you for fifteen years. Since the moment you spat this onto my arm.’ It was the rubber band from my braces.

  He took my hand and tried to slide, and ultimately, stretched it over my finger. I looked at my hand and told him I would never take it off, although it was already cutting off the blood supply. He kissed me again. Then, I said, ‘So just to confirm. When I asked you, that time, if you were in love with me –’

  ‘Utterly,’ he said. ‘I loved you utterly.’

  *

  I told Patrick I couldn’t sleep with him that night because Heather was shortly due home, and I needed her to not be in the next room. He said he didn’t want to anyway because he was saving himself for the right person and offered to take me back to Goldhawk Road.

  In the car, doing up his seatbelt, Patrick said, ‘It is going to be rubbish the first time. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Because I’ve had a decade or so to overthink it.’

  I told him I hated that term, because people were constantly accusing me of it. ‘I think they are underthinking everything. But I don’t say so because it would be rude.’

  Patrick
said yes, okay. ‘That’s the most important thing to establish in this conversation, not how to negotiate our sex life’ and started the car.

  ‘I also hate that term.’

  He said so do I. ‘I don’t know why I used it.’

  *

  One day, years later, my mother would tell me that no marriage makes sense to the outside world because, she would say, a marriage is its own world. And I would dismiss her because by then ours had come to its end. But that was what it felt like, for the minute before we said goodbye outside my parents’ house, Patrick’s arms around me and my face turned into his neck. I hadn’t said I loved him, properly in the way he just had, but it is what I meant when I said, ‘Thank you Patrick,’ and went inside.

  20

  WE WENT TO the hospital the next day to see Ingrid. My parents, and Winsome and Rowland, were already there with Hamish, crowded into a room that was small and overly supplied with chairs.

  As we were getting ready to go, Patrick said, ‘Just quickly, everyone, I asked Martha to marry me last night and she said fine.’

  Ingrid said oh my gosh, finally. ‘It’s been a real will they, will they situation.’ My father did a triumphant movement with both fists, like someone who has just discovered they’re the winner of something, then tried to make his way over to us, pushing through the surfeit of chairs. ‘I’m parked in, Rowland – move, I need to shake my son-in-law’s hand.’ Patrick went over instead and I was, for a second, by myself.

  Ingrid said, ‘Hamish, hug Martha. I can’t get up.’ While I was being hugged stiffly by my sister’s husband, I heard my mother say, ‘I thought they were engaged already. Why did I think that?’

  Hamish released me and my father said, ‘It doesn’t matter. They are now. What do you think, Winsome?’

  My aunt said it was lovely because it made everything so tidy. And we were welcome, she said, to have it at Belgravia, should we so wish. Rowland, beside her, said, ‘I hope you’ve got £50,000 to hand, do you Patrick? Bloody expensive business, weddings.’

  When my father finally reached me, he pulled me into a crushing hug and kept me there until Ingrid said, ‘Can you all leave now please?’ and Hamish showed us out.

  *

  Patrick and I went back to his flat. There was a note on the table from Heather, reminding him that she had gone away and wouldn’t be back until the weekend. I read it over his shoulder. He said, ‘I promise I didn’t arrange that. Do you need a cup of tea first or anything?’

  I said we should have it afterwards, as a reward, and pulled my T-shirt off.

  *

  Patrick wondered if it was the worst sex that had been had by two people in the UK since records began. For the few minutes it lasted, he had the set expression of someone trying to endure a minor medical procedure without anaesthetic. I could not stop making small talk. We had got out of bed straight away and dressed with our backs to each other.

  In the kitchen, drinking tea, I told Patrick that it was like a terrible party.

  He asked me if I meant highly anticipated but then disappointing.

  I said no. ‘Because only one person came.’

  The second time, we agreed, was motive to continue.

  The third time, it felt like we had been melted down and made into another thing. We lay for so long afterwards, facing each other in the dark, not talking, our breath in the same pattern, our stomachs touching. We went to sleep that way and woke up that way. It was the happiest I have ever felt.

  *

  In the morning, after he gets out of the shower, Patrick puts his watch on first. He dries himself in the bathroom and leaves the towel behind. It is more efficient, he says, not having to make a return trip just to hang it up. I was still in his bed, the first time he performed the routine in front of me, coming into the room, wandering from his drawers to his wardrobe. Naked except for the watch. I observed him for as long as I could before he noticed and asked me what was funny.

  I said, ‘Do you have the time, Patrick?’

  He said yes I do and went back to his drawers.

  Men describe themselves as real leg men. A tits man. With Patrick, I found out I am a real shoulders man. I love a good set of delts.

  The fourth time, the fifth time …

  *

  Ingrid wanted to know what it had been like, sleeping with Patrick. We were walking to a park close to her house. It was intensely cold but she had not been out of the house since she was discharged from hospital and had begun to feel delirious, she told me, presumably for lack of oxygen. She was pushing the pram. I was carrying a heavy seat cushion from her sofa because she needed to feed the baby and the only way it didn’t hurt was with the cushion – only this cushion – underneath him. We found somewhere to sit down and while she was getting ready she said, ‘Just tell me one thing about it. Please.’

  I refused, then relented because she kept asking. ‘I didn’t know it could be like that.’ I said I hadn’t known that was what it was for. ‘How you were meant to feel afterwards. That the afterwards is why sex exists.’

  She said, that’s nice. ‘But I meant an actual detail.’

  On the way back to the house Ingrid said, ‘Do you know what annoys me so much? If I got hit by a car while we’re crossing and died, in the newspaper it would say a mother of a something-dayold baby was killed at a notorious intersection. Why can’t it say a human who incidentally has a baby was killed at a notorious intersection?’

  ‘It makes it sadder,’ I said. ‘If it’s a mother.’

  ‘It can’t be sadder,’ Ingrid said. ‘I’m dead. That is the saddest it can be. But apparently I just exist in terms of my relationship to other people now and Hamish still gets to be a person. Thanks. Amazing.’

  I helped her get the pram inside, re-established the sofa and went to make her tea. The baby was feeding again when I came back from the kitchen. She kissed his head and looked up. I saw her hesitate before she said, ‘I think you and Patrick should have babies. I’m sorry. I know you’re anti-motherhood but I do. He isn’t Jonathan. Don’t you think, with him –’

  ‘Ingrid.’

  ‘I’m just saying. He would be such a good –’

  ‘Ingrid.’

  ‘And you could do it. I promise. It’s not even that hard. I mean look at me.’ She directed my attention to her unclean clothes, her swollen chest, damp spots on the cushions and looked about to laugh, then like she was going to cry, then merely exhausted.

  I asked her what she wanted for her birthday.

  Ingrid said, ‘When is it?’

  I told her it was tomorrow.

  ‘In that case, a bag of salty liquorice. The kind from Ikea.’

  The baby squirmed and pulled off. Ingrid let out a little cry and covered her breast. I helped her turn the cushion around and once he was on again, I asked if I could get her a kind of liquorice that didn’t require a journey to Croydon. She did cry then, telling me through tears that if I understood what it was like, being woken up fifty times a night and having to feed a baby every two hours when it takes an hour and fifty-nine minutes and feels like being stabbed in the nipple with four hundred knives, then I would be like, do you know what? I think I will just get my sister the liquorice she specifically likes.

  I drove directly from her house to Croydon and left on her step the next day £95 worth of salty liquorice in the blue bag and a card. It said ‘Happy birthday to the world’s best mother, daughter, wife of a mid-ranking civil servant, neighbour, shop customer, employee, council-tax payer, crosser of roads, recent NHS admission, her sister’s entire universe.’

  Days later, Ingrid texted me to say that after the third packet, she’d really gone off it. Then she sent a photo of her hand, holding a Starbucks cup. Instead of asking her name, the person who took her order had just written LADY WITH PRAM.

  21

  WE GOT MARRIED in March. At our wedding, the first thing the minister said when I got to the altar and stopped next to Patrick was, ‘If anyone needs t
he toilets, they are through the vestry and to the right.’ He made the gesture of a cabin steward pointing out the exit on one side. Patrick tilted his head towards me and whispered, ‘I think I’ll try and hang on.’

  The second thing the minister said was, ‘I believe this day has been rather a long time coming.’

  *

  I wore a dress with sleeves and a high neck. It was made of lace and looked vintage and came from Topshop. Ingrid helped me get ready and said I looked like Miss Havisham, pre her big day turning to absolute shit. She gave me a card that said ‘Patrick Loves Martha’. It was attached to the present, Hot Tracks ’93.

  *

  When my cousins were teenagers, Winsome could correct their posture at the table by silently getting their attention and, once they were looking at her, reaching up her arm and taking hold of an imaginary string attached to the crown of her head. Then as they watched, she would tug it upwards, lengthening her neck and drawing her shoulders down at the same time in a way they could not help imitating. If they were sitting slack-mouthed, Winsome would touch the underside of her chin with the back of her hand, and if they were not smiling while they were being spoken to, she would smile at them in the hard, artificial manner of a school choir mistress reminding her performers that this is their happy number.

  At the reception, my mother stood up in the middle of my father’s speech and said, ‘Fergie, I will take it from here.’ She was holding a brandy balloon containing a countless number of standard drinks and every time she raised it to toast one of her own remarks, the contents spilt over the rim. When, at one point, she raised her glass to the height of her forehead so she could lick brandy off the inside of her wrist, I looked away and saw Winsome, beside her, flash her eyes at me. As I watched, my aunt’s hand went to her crown, then she pinched the invisible string and I felt myself rise, in unison, as she pulled it upwards. She was smiling at me but not as the choir mistress, as my aunt telling me that we were going to be brave.