by Weldon, Fay
Alison wept. Mum, astonished, made her a cup of tea. Mum had a touch of arthritis in her fingers. She lived, as she had always done, in a bungalow on the outskirts of Exeter. Dad had run a TV repair business, and had left his wife well provided for. His daughter, of course, could look after herself. She lived in London and did well enough; very well, in fact. She worked for a charity, raising funds for mentally handicapped children, and ran a small specialist agency besides, which provided research material on handicap for similar organisations. She was tall, energetic, good-looking, usually laughing; and now suddenly here she was in Mum’s small kitchen, laughing and crying at the same time.
‘Tea’s no answer,’ said Alison. ‘Oh, Mum, you never change.’
‘Tea never was an answer,’ said Mum, ‘but it was always something to do with your hands, while you got your act together.’ Do not suppose that because Mum was sixty-five, and had had little education, and no other lover (or so Alison supposed) than her husband, she was stupid or ill-informed. The television and the library make one knowledgeable nation of us all.
‘As for never changing,’ added Mum, ‘that may be so, but I don’t weep as much as you do. Now what’s happened?’
‘I don’t know what’s going on inside my head, that’s what’s happened. And when I press my breast it hurts. Do you think I’ve got cancer?’
‘You’re probably pregnant,’ said Mum, ‘and it’s affecting what’s going on in your head.’
‘I can’t possibly be pregnant,’ said Alison. ‘Bobby and I take precautions.’ On the telephone a week ago Alison had been all set to move in with Bobby: fortyish, good-looking, a crusader for the handicapped, famous up and down the country for his goodwill and good works. Marriage was spoken of. What a wonder! True love at last – and for a woman of thirty-nine with three children and two marriages behind her. ‘Precautions, schmecautions,’ said Mum. ‘Condoms, schmondoms. When did they ever not break? How do you think you began?’
‘You’re so frivolous,’ complained Alison (whoever liked to believe they sat thus accidentally in the world?) and asked Mum to come up for a week and babysit Caroline, aged nine, and Wendy and Wyndham the five-year-old twins; the twins’ father William being unexpectedly in hospital for his varicose veins and William’s new wife Annabel declining to look after them if William wasn’t in the house, and Alison having a conference and what with one thing and another –
‘Just cool it, Alison,’ said Mum, ‘will you? You’ll give yourself a heart attack. Okay, okay, I’ll come up for the week and childmind but you didn’t come all this way to ask me that. You could have done it on the phone.’
‘I wanted some peace on the train,’ said Alison. ‘I wanted my own space. Just a couple of hours.’
‘I suppose you travelled first class, or you wouldn’t be talking about space.’
‘Why not? I can afford it.’
‘And thousands starving in Africa!’ said Mum. ‘Sometimes I think you earn too much for your own good.’
‘You’d never say that to a man,’ said Alison, and wept again. It was true. Her head was all to pieces. She’d been all set to move in with Bobby, give up her own house, her independence, everything: all for love. But now she wasn’t sure she wanted to: supposing it all went wrong? She couldn’t bear it. Better not to try, than try and fail. This way and that, things went in her head. Yet wasn’t little Caroline happy with the idea: Bobby for a father! Wasn’t that reassuring? Of course William wasn’t happy about it one bit but nothing made William, the twins’ father, happy; Alison could never do anything right: it was the self-righteous Annabel whispering in his ear, no doubt. What difference could it make if the twins visited their mother alone every second weekend, or their-mother-with-Bobby: she, Alison, put up with Annabel not to mention Annabel’s hordes of mimsy little children when she visited the twins; why should William begrudge her Bobby? Or was it that she was begrudging him to herself? Alison wanted a whiff of home, in fact, where nothing ever happened, except in her mother’s head, and all was always the same, even the brand of tea. PG Tips.
‘Multiple marriages,’ said Mum. ‘All change, but all the same! Why didn’t you stay with Andrew?’ She’d liked Andrew, in the way mothers do seem to like their daughters’ first husbands. Or perhaps it was just the pattern of names from the beginning. Alison and Andrew, Andrew and Alison – they’d got used to it, that was all.
‘He was a mass murderer,’ said Alison, ‘that’s why.’ Andrew had worked as a designer for a firm which produced, amongst other things, leaflets for a cigarette company.
‘Now who’s being frivolous?’ said Mum. Andrew had pronounced himself bisexual and Alison had left, running shrieking into the night, Caroline under her arm, straight into William’s waiting maternal arms. Had she been right, had she been wrong? What is intolerable, what is not? Andrew hadn’t kept in touch with Caroline, or Alison for that matter, though he rang Mum from time to time, feeling the need of a mother. Well, these days, who doesn’t?
‘How can you even speak to him?’ Alison would shriek, in the early days of their parting, when she was still flayed red and raw.
‘But you didn’t want him to keep in touch with Caroline,’ Mum would remind her. ‘He’s only doing what you wanted. And you’re right, he is a very sexually confused young man. But I am not going to condemn him for that. Surely you wouldn’t want me to? And it’s all turning out for the best, with William. Surely?’
Well, it didn’t quite. Alison’s next baby, by William, was Down’s Syndrome, and the hospital saved its life, and Alison rejected it, and said since the hospital had saved it, the hospital should look after it, a reaction which shocked the noble right thinking very much, and William was nothing if not a noble-thinker. But he bit back his thoughts, rather noticeably, for love of Alison, and supported her, and the baby died at three months, anyway, never well enough to come home. After that there was a lot of genetic testing and detailing of hereditary factors and the odds of William and Alison’s next baby being born similarly affected was declared at one in fifteen. But the couple could take advantage of a newish procedure called amniocentesis by which babies could be tested in the womb at four months and aborted if necessary. So you only had the worry for four months. Then if anything was wrong – terminate! Of course by that time it was like going into a proper labour – ‘At four months?’ Mum had asked, in horror. ‘Aborted at four months? It’s practically smiling by then.’
‘Especially if it’s Down’s Syndrome,’ said Alison. ‘You know what gutsy little smilers they are!’ (William raised his eyebrows when Alison said things like this; but she was still in shock, he let everyone know, and himself wonderfully patient.) But four months was the best the medical profession could do at the time. And not even the pro-lifers made much of a fuss at aborting imperfect babies, though Alison couldn’t quite understand their rationale. Life in itself being so important, according to them, not the quality of life. William wished she’d just shut up about it. And there Alison was, pregnant, somehow or other, in spite of her Dutch cap (the pill bloated her: the coil made her bleed and hurt) while they were still trying to make up their minds. William and Alison rejoiced – well, almost. You know what these things are. They’d rather have trusted their judgement than their luck. Who, well and properly informed, would not?
At seven weeks the doctors diagnosed a twin pregnancy, which meant that the odds of at least one baby being Down’s Syndrome went up to one in eight: and if the twins were identical, one in six. And Alison was being sick not just in the mornings but lunchtime, teatime, dinnertime and all night too, and Caroline, aged five, was coming out in sympathy and kept banging her mother’s tummy with her head and saying she hated the baby and no one had the heart to say ‘babies, actually’ and the temptation just to terminate now, and not later – whoosh, the good baby going out with the bad, should such there be – though the likelihood of them both being Down’s was now up to one in five, because Mum reminded her of a Down’s great-un
cle, never before discussed, plus identical twin great-aunts on William’s side – good Lord, those sessions at genetic counselling, William staring at Alison, Alison at William, each wondering whose the bad seed was, and the whole weight of society (not to mention William) blaming the mother, though it’s often enough old fathers, not old mothers, who produce Down’s Syndrome babies – as the specialist was at pains to point out. Not that maternal or paternal age affected their particular case. Though Mum wouldn’t have it.
‘The thing about William,’ Mum said later, ‘is that he was just plain born old’ – she’d just plain liked Andrew, sexual ambiguity and all, and that was the fact of it. Andrew had needed a mother and William was all the mother to himself he’d needed – just watch him bandage his own cut finger, cosseting and comforting! Anyway, William and Alison kept their courage going and Alison took time off work – ‘Caroline needs you at home,’ said William, ‘at a time like this’ – and got through to the amniocentesis at four months – only first Alison had flu and then the clinic had been closed because of some virus – and the twins had actually got to nineteen weeks before the test, and Alison pretty much bonded in spite of her efforts not to be: and in went the needle once, into the amniotic sac – ping! – one baby done – and in went the needle twice – second baby –
‘I say,’ said Alison, ‘when you got the first one it moved, you know. Didn’t like it one bit. You got the baby as well as the sac. I hope it wasn’t an eye!’
‘Nonsense!’ they said. What a mother! Pity the poor father, with a woman who could joke at such times.
‘Joke?’ said Alison. ‘I wasn’t joking.’ They put her on tranquillisers until the results came through. She was very thin, what with the vomiting and the flu, and Caroline’s little arms curling round her legs whenever she tried to leave the room. But the test results came through in ten days or so – two boys, both okay – no Down’s, no spina bifida. (‘Any tests for blindness in one eye?’ asked Alison.)
‘Isn’t that wonderful!’ said the doctors. ‘Aren’t you relieved? We certainly are! You were taking quite a chance.’ Ah, the wonder of modern science.
‘Wonderful,’ said Alison, but one or other of the babies was pressing on the sciatic nerve, or they were taking it in turns, those two healthy, crowded boys, and the pain was terrible.
Well, Alison was worrying. That never helps, does it? The trauma of the previous baby’s birth was still with her, of course, but more than that: she was troubled by the nature of the universe. In hospitals other than the one she’d attended, she’d been told, efforts to save severely handicapped babies were not nearly so strenuous. Luck of the draw, all luck of the draw. This hospital, that. Her birth, Andrew’s dual sexuality (genetically determined, he maintained, no matter how she shrieked ‘you’re doing it on purpose!’), Caroline’s wilting nature, her imperfect baby’s survival, the twin pregnancy, William just being there waiting with reassuring arms: luck, luck! Work wasn’t luck. Cause and effect operated in offices. Effort was rewarded by money. She pulled herself together and dragged herself to work every morning.
Her father died. A stroke – luck again. The blood clot was incapacitating or not, fatal or not, depending on where in the brain it happened to stick. It stuck in a bad place. That was that. She watched her mother carefully. Mum wept, mourned, recovered properly. It had been a good marriage. Death was, they said, more easily survived in such circumstances. Consciences were clear. Luck again. When you married, who you married, staying married: luck, all luck. The genetic counselling clinic denied luck and claimed probability, but Alison thought she’d rather just hang a lucky charm around her neck.
Mum came up to be with her before the twins were born. A long and painful affair, but at least relieving the pain in the sciatic nerve. The first twin was a boy, the second a girl. ‘Ooops!’ said the hospital.
‘You tested the same baby twice,’ said Alison. ‘Told you so. See, two puncture marks. One on his chin, one on his ear. Lucky you missed the eye. Just test the girl for Down’s, will you.’ She went back to sleep. Ungrateful and difficult, they decided. The girl had the right number of chromosomes, so all was well. (Better luck than she deserved, one or two muttered.) Of course, amniocentesis was in its infancy. It is more sophisticated today. Don’t worry.
Well, twins! Something in Alison’s attitude upset William. It wasn’t that she hadn’t bonded. (‘Have you bonded yet, mother?’ Sister actually asked Alison. ‘Both twins, you’re sure?’ ‘Quite sure, thank you, Sister,’ said Alison, primly.) She longed to be up and active now the sheer physical weight of the pregnancy, not to mention the pain and the anxiety, was gone, and William had his two perfect children, the pigeon pair, and even Caroline seemed to find the reality of the twins quite tolerable, and her little white face had become pink again, and she’d been to stay with Mum down in Exeter for a whole week without howling for home – in fact Alison’s spirits had been so high, back in the world of cause and effect, not just luck, that the twins had been three before the marriage broke up. Alison wouldn’t stay home, that was the trouble: she would go out to work. William took her absence as an insult. He’d lost his job (he worked as an accountant with a small firm which unexpectedly merged with a large firm. ‘Luck!’ cried William. ‘No,’ said Alison, ’cause and effect. You could have seen it coming. If you’d looked, which you didn’t.’) and wouldn’t even try to get another, having gone off figures anyway and wanting to be a writer, and Alison argued that someone had to bring the money in, but he’d argued that it was better for them all to live off Social Security, and how could he look after twins and write, and so on and so forth, and it had all ended up as musical chairs, with him in one household, sometimes with the twins, sometimes not, and Alison and Caroline and an au pair in another and Alison going out to work – unsatisfactory, said William, but I suppose it’s what Alison wants and what Alison wants she gets (a lot of aggro and acrimony there) and somehow or other within a month or so William was living with this Annabel, about whom Alison had never known – but perhaps she should have seen it coming – who had a little money of her own and could stay home with William so he could find the time to write – and Alison, who was earning good money, found herself legally obliged to support both households (and morally obliged, of course. Hadn’t her unreasonable attitudes been the cause of the marital break-up?).
Alison grieved for the twins in their absence, of course she did, but she had her sanity to think about (well, didn’t she?) not to mention Caroline, who wasn’t even William’s child (as he kept saying both in public and private, once the arguments started) and both households to support and fortunately Annabel turned out to be both kind and competent (though financially more than canny) and the twins liked her and she had the knack of somehow turning William’s motherliness into fatherliness, but anyway all that was in the past. Alison had met Bobby, and she was happy, and her future was in her own hands, whatever she did with it, and seeing her mother had cleared her head, and she thought she’d just move in with Bobby but put off marrying him for a few months until she was absolutely sure it was all going to work – then she would be acting responsibly and not trusting to luck – and she and her mother travelled back to London first class.
‘I’m perfectly happy going second,’ said Mum. ‘Why don’t you save your money for more important things?’ Well, she was like that. It made Alison feel safe. Except on the journey up she was sick, twice.
‘Pregnant,’ said Mum.
‘Travel sick,’ said Alison, but she felt her breasts and they were sore.
She went to her conference, and it was wonderful coming home to Caroline and the twins and Mum and Bobby visiting, and Mum liked Bobby, and he liked her and it all felt like home and she wondered why she was still hesitating, and forgot to wonder why she’d suddenly gone right off wine and coffee. And when William came out of hospital – his varicose veins stripped – (‘Isn’t he rather young for varicose veins?’ asked Mum. ‘But I suppose as he was just b
orn old, it’s got to his legs first’) the twins went regretfully but happily enough to their other home, and she felt that even though they liked and appreciated Annabel, who kept their socks so clean and organised, it was she, their real mother they loved, and what’s more now they were older, less babies, more people, she was beginning to come to terms with them and the trauma and anxiety they had caused, not to mention the months on her sciatic nerve. She blamed the hospital for making what was blind and instinctive somehow rational and required, so the mind cut in and observed the body, just when it shouldn’t. Really, she thought, the way things were going in the gynaecological world, new human beings should just be grown in petri dishes, sperm joined to egg, forget love between man and woman, let alone parent and child, the once dark, once secret act of procreation now so brilliantly, clinically lit.
‘Love you, Mummy,’ said first Wendy, then Wyndham.
‘I love you too,’ said Alison.
‘So do I,’ said Caroline. ‘And William a little bit. But Bobby more.’
‘Isn’t that all nice,’ said Mum, who had quite come round to the modern habit of expressing love through words, she who had never in her youth or middle age been demonstrative could now see the pleasure of so doing.
‘Come along, little ones,’ said Annabel, briskly. ‘Daddy’s waiting in the car with Saul and Rachel and Dodie. Daddy’s got to walk two miles every single day for a whole month. Think of that!’ They thought of that.
‘Oooh!’ they said. And William, pale and brave, framed in the car window, spoke kindly to Caroline, who beamed and blossomed, and indeed to Alison too. So everything was just fine except there was no denying now that Alison, somehow or other, was pregnant. She did a home test and sat and through a slanting mirror watched the little orange ring forming out of yellow dust and wondered whether the new baby would increase the sum of the world’s good, or do the opposite, and shatter what had been so precariously achieved? No twins in Bobby’s family, let alone Down’s Syndrome (or as far as she knew) which helped: but once you had one set of twins the likelihood of another multiple pregnancy leapt up and with it the dramatic halving of the odds against a perfect baby, and of course every year that passed, even with a single baby, put up the odds of it being Down’s, having already had one, and how old was she now – thirty-nine – there was a kind of compound interest going on here: some cosmic penalty for happiness.
