by Pat Rosier
It was nice among the shelves. She noticed for the first time how many rows of fiction there were, many more than the two stands she usually made a beeline for. She hadn’t read a proper novel for months. There were ‘P’s’ on one side of her and ‘T’s’ on the other. She spotted Doctor Zhivago and took it off the shelf: the name was familiar because she’d seen the film of it advertised.
When she got to the issues desk both twins were awake, more or less, and the librarian was leaning over them making coochey-coo noises. Isobel smiled through all the comments about how beautiful they were. She shocked herself by thinking, ‘If you think they’re so lovely, you could have them, then,’ and quickly hung her heavy bag over the pram handle, saying to her mother, ‘Do you want to get anything out?’
‘I’ve done it, dear.’ She gestured at her bag. ‘Winston Churchill, volume three, I should have started reading his history before he died. Such a loss!’ She looked at the librarian who was nodding agreement, and turned to say to Isobel, ‘She started on volume one the week after the funeral. Renewed it three times until she finished.’ Isobel’s mother had the pram and was heading for the door. ‘Now come on,’ she said, ‘these two are going to want feeding any minute.' Isobel smiled back over her shoulder at the librarian, hoping she hadn’t seemed rude.
By the time they were out of the library Neil was asleep again and Andrew had that pink-faced look. Her mother suggested they walk back to her place, it wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes and Isobel could feed them there and stay for lunch. Isobel was feeling unaccountably irritated by her library experience and really wanted to go home, on her own and … well, she didn’t know really, but she didn’t want to have to talk to anyone. But going to her mother’s was a sensible idea, and clearly at least Andrew was going to need a feed soon. What were the countries, in Europe perhaps, where women breast fed their babies anywhere? Isobel thought she would probably be too embarrassed to do it, but maybe not, if everyone else was. And it would be easy, she could sit on that bench over there, watching the water …
She had to run a few steps to catch up with her mother, who was clearly determined to get to her place before either baby was crying. At least she didn’t do that nonsense-talk stuff. Nana did, maybe that was what Andrew didn’t like about her. It was awful the way he wouldn’t go to her without crying, and arching his back, and getting more and more upset until Isobel took him.
‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘Oh, just that I think we’ll make it.’
‘Yes, sure.”
‘People are quick to judge mothers with crying babies, we need to get them home.’
Isobel hadn’t even thought of that and didn’t know whether she would care or not. She didn’t like to leave them to cry, it seemed unkind when she could usually go to them. The Plunket nurse had been keen on routines and regular feed times but, and perhaps it was because there were two of them, it was much easier to feed when either wanted it and that way she didn’t often have to feed them both at the same time.
When the day came for the twins’ four week check at the hospital, Isobel and her mother took them, on two buses each way. Her mother assumed they would and she was happy to go along rather than ask Bob to ask his father or her mother to ask her father, though he would be at work. That day, before Isobel had time to tell him everything was fine, as she had known it was, Bob came home and announced they had to get married, otherwise there were complications about registering the babies’ births. He’d arranged it for the next week, he said, at the registry office and would she ask her mother to come and babysit, she could tell her that they had to go to a lawyer, make wills, or something, he’d ask his mother, but given the way Andrew was with her …. He managed to make it sound as thought the way Andrew was with his mother was Isobel’s fault.
Isobel could use the new phone to ring and ask her mother. One of the two men who had come to install it had told her how he admired her father and made more than one reference to what a good boss he had been, ‘fair, took no nonsense, you knew where you stood.’
When her mother had agreed to come and take care of the boys while Isobel and Bob went into town to do some business — she seemed to assume they were making wills and Isobel let her — she put the phone down, as she always did, and left Isobel saying, ‘Thanks, Mum,’ and, ‘goodbye’ to the dial tone.
'Reader, I married him,' Isobel said to herself as they left the registry office. She’d loved Jane Eyre once, all that passionate love and the romantic ending. There was nothing Jane Eyre-ish about today, she thought. Two clerks witnessed their marriage. It took less than 10 minutes. As they went in Bob had stopped and held out his hand and she took the ring she’d bought when she started calling herself Mrs Johnson off her finger and gave it to him. Now she had it back, legally she supposed.
‘I suppose we could go for a drink.’ Bob’s suggestion was, at best, luke-warm. She shook her head and gestured at her breasts, she could feel the milk welling. So he walked her to the bus and went back to work, giving her a slightly embarrassed peck on the cheek before he strode off.
Pete came by the next day. Her mother was just leaving when he turned up, so she had to introduce them, and she could tell she was going to have to decide whether or not to offer any explanation of who Pete was at some later time. A friend, she supposed, even though she only saw him on occasions like this when he turned up unannounced, usually on a weekday. He was her only friend these days, actually. He was full of energy, as usual, and cheerful. She laughed at something he said and it felt good. And she said something back and he laughed, and that felt good too. Suddenly she was telling him about getting married the day before. She told it lightly, a good story, refusing to take notice of his lack of response to her joke about the wedding ring, and went quickly on to telling him about her reading, how she was trying novels as well as murder mysteries, and had he read Doctor Zhivago?. No, but he’d seen the film, it was pretty turgid but the scenery was fantastic. So she asked him to tell her the story, she could only read a little bit at a time because of the babies and it was complicated.
‘Have you seen Jean?’ She was startled at his question. That life seemed aeons ago. ‘I think I could track her down …,’ he was saying.
‘No! No, please don’t.' She struggled to hide her panic at the thought of anyone from that life seeing her — even knowing about her — in this life. Pete was staring, she had to think of something to say. ‘I’ll do it,’ she tried for a light tone, ‘when I’m settled in … this …, but until then I’d rather you didn’t say anything.' To anyone, she thought, please Pete, don’t say anything to anyone.
‘Okay, it’s your life. I just thought ….’
Then the twins woke and there was the muddle of feeding and changing and he held and bounced and burped but drew the line at changing, saying he was terrified o the bottom end of babies and clowning around making fart noises and pulling faces and they both laughed some more. While she breastfed he went on talking, glancing occasionally at her, but talking to her and not making her feel at all self-conscious about what she was doing
Once the twins were dealt with he told her he had finally won a proper university job and it was in the United States. In California. ‘You can come and visit,’ he said at the look on her face. ‘And y’know I’ll be back every year to see my old Dad. I’ll bring you a new novel each time, something just out.’ She tried desperately hard to be pleased for him and sincere in her congratulations. After all, it wouldn’t make that much difference, she’d only see him occasionally even if he was here. When he left she cried, a little and quietly, and felt desolate. He’d left her a list of the names of novelists whose books she might find interesting. Salinger, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky (‘If you like Pasternak, the grand tragic stuff, you’ll like these,’ he’d said of the last two.) ‘And everyone should read Catcher in the Rye,’ he’d insisted, ‘it’s the novel of today.’ Kerouac was the last person on Pete’s list. Isobel read the names again and thou
ght, why not? It’s as good a way as any to choose books.
~~~
Chapter 11
Isobel remained uninterested in other mothers when she saw them in the street or the shops. Occasionally someone would catch her eye and say ‘Twins?’ but she would nod and smile and continue on her way without the return question that would have started a conversation. Her one visit to the home of a woman she had got to know a little at the pre-natal class came after they had bumped into each other walking with their prams and Heather had asked her in for a cup of tea. The twins were asleep but Heather’s girl Deidre wasn’t and Heather got her up and showed off her dress, pointing out the hand-stitched smocking. Isobel didn’t like the way Heather talked about Deidre as though she wasn’t there and when she did talk to her it was to give instructions. ‘Don’t put dirty fingermarks on that, darling, Mummy has just cleaned it.’ ‘Sit still, dear, Mummy’s talking to her friend.’ Then she gave the child a wooden doll to play with and wouldn’t let her chew it. It was today’s toy. Isobel didn’t want to ask about that and anyway she was being taken around to look at the house. Heather and her husband bought it a year ago, she told Isobel at least twice. She was particularly proud of the new carpet that ran through the living room, the dining room the hall and the main bedroom. Isobel thought it was ghastly, with pink rose-like flowers and green leaves in a muddle all over a grey background. And then she had to listen while Heather told her about how carefully she vacuumed it. ‘You can double the life of a carpet, you know, if you go over every area seven times and in different directions,’ intoned in a voice so earnest Isobel wanted to laugh. Drinking her tea too hot so she could escape, she determined not to do that again and pretended she didn’t hear Heather saying something about having a cuppa at her (Isobel’s) place next time. She was glad she hadn’t followed her initial impulse to give Heather her phone number.
Isobel knew Bob didn’t like it that her father had paid for the phone. The owners at the front had demurred when they raised the idea but her father had gone around and had a chat with them. ‘They were worried about what would happen when you left,’ he told Bob, ‘and once I explained the connection would be cut off and it would be up to the next people whether they had it on and that whatever happened it wasn’t in their name and they couldn’t be held responsible for any bills, then they were fine.'
And her father had spoken to some-one at his work whose brother worked for the Post Office and found out who was in charge and told them about the twins . He didn’t know who the workman was who had had him as a boss, he told her, that was just a coincidence, it was going to the top that got them the phone so fast, and she shouldn’t feel bad about the people still on the waiting list, they didn’t have twin babies. It was a lot of talking at once for her father and Isobel did find it reassuring to have the phone there, and sometimes she picked it up just to hear the dial tone. Occasionally she rang her mother, and very occasionally, her mother or nana rang her.
Bob was doing all right as a father, when he was there; he’d started ironing his own work shirts, too. He’d play with the boys for a while, sometimes brought home toys for them, a rattle or a musical ball, and would hold one while Isobel fed the other in the evening when they had television on. Bob turned the set on when he came in and it stayed on until he went to bed. Isobel avoided the news each night by doing the dishes, but made sure she was back for Town & Around. Other programmes she didn’t want to watch, like The Main Chance. she’d avoid by taking a long time to get the babies settled, when she sat on the bed and read.
She expected that Bob would suggest moving back into the bedroom with her some time soon. She didn’t think she could suggest that they kept the present arrangement, well, indefinitely; there was certainly disapproval from all quarters at the babies continuing to sleep in her room, often in the bed with her, though no-one knew how often this happened. Nothing was said, by her or Bob, and as usual she let it be, and they stayed sleeping in separate rooms.
He was staying longer at work. There was a promotion in the offing, he said, and he was making sure it had his name on it. All kinds of perks went with the new job he told her, and she didn’t notice his disappointment when she didn’t ask what they were. He was proud of his reputation as a quality controller at Cherwin’s Cash Registers — motto, ‘Quality & Service” — and talked a lot about the coming changeover to decimal currency, because it is coming, for sure, he would say, and how that would provide a lot of work for the firm.
If Isobel had a supply of books — at least two more than the one she was currently reading — none of this bothered her any more than the changeable pre-Christmas weather. She had worked out a number of ways of getting nappies dry, though outside on the revolving clothes line was her first preference because it was quickest. When Bob came home to the clothes airer with its wooden rods draped with white squares in the bathroom, or in a patch of afternoon sun in the living room, he would wrinkle his nose in a way Isobel knew meant he found it distasteful. While she liked the way he handled the babies and talked to them, she knew he preferred not to be aware of the cleaning and washing and drying — the housekeeping bits, she thought, should be out of his sight and consciousness. Those were what Isobel liked best, they were uncomplicated and undemanding as long as she kept to the essentials. She didn’t even mind soiled, urine-soaked nappies. They were so constant she washed every day and gave up folding them into the two-pin shape prescribed for boys until she needed one, stuffing them on top of each other into the hot water cupboard. Whenever her mother brought in washing, the nappies would be folded into a neat pile. When Isobel demurred, her mother said she liked to finish a job, but she never commented on the unfolded cupboard-full.
After some heavy sighs at her desultory ironing of his white shirts for work, Bob said he would do them himself. The ironing board was brought out and put away behind the bathroom door each time, which Isobel thought was daft, there was plenty of room in the bathroom to leave it out. Minimise, was her approach; do what you had to with as little fuss and effort as possible.
When they had first started living together Bob had announced himself as a meat, veg and potato man, so that was what she cooked. Big stews and casseroles in the style of her mother that would do two days, chops, sausages, steak occasionally, with mushrooms which she liked, mince in various forms, roast lamb or beef, she soon developed a repertoire of meals that didn’t require much thought.
Her last conversation with Pete had left her anxious when she went out that she would see someone she had worked with. She was certain she didn’t want people to know she had babies, was married to Bob, felt panicked at the thought of them finding out and hadn’t told Jean her address when she found the flat; Jean had moved back to her parents’. It’s a different life, she told herself, they wouldn’t be interested and she didn’t have the time or energy for them anyway. This place was far removed in every sense from the city environs of work and flatting with Jean and going to the pub after work and lying on the floor in Pete’s Grafton flat listening to music and the Goon Show.
Andrew was the first of the boys to smile at her, with a real smile of recognition and, apparently, pleasure. Her stomach lurched, then Neil smiled, but more at Andrew than at her, and she was sure they were taking notice of each other. She was thinking of asking Pete to come over and do the funny faces he had promised, when she got a post-card from him. The picture was of a Californian beach, the message simply, ‘Caio,’ and a long address, and the postage stamp was American. She left the card on the table to show Bob when he got home from work, but he rang and said he’d be very late, ‘a work thing,’ and not to get him dinner or wait up.
‘You can’t be expected to put on anything, not this year.' Isobel was at her mother’s having lunch. Not any year, she was thinking, not any year would she be putting on Christmas Day. There was no way to get out of going to her parents, and probably Bob’s as well, not with the boys. Her mother was having both families over, Daniel’s and her
s, for lunch, that would be at one o’clock and no doubt involve roast lamb and trimmings. It would be a fraught morning at her mother’s house, she knew, and her father would be staying out of the way.
‘You could ask Sally … or Daniel …,’ she began.
‘Two people in the kitchen is one too many.’ Her mother was at her most brisk. ‘I’ve made the cake already.’ As though that would make any difference to producing a full roast dinner in the heat of the middle of the day. Isobel knew her mother hated cooking for a lot of people, and took a breath to suggest something simple, a picnic even, and then gave up before she started.
‘There must be something wrong with me.’ She had taken to talking to the boys as she pushed the pram. ‘I don’t see any point. Dad, Daniel and Bob making conversation with each other, Sally and Mum pretending they get on, me, well, never mind about me.’ She smiled back at Neil. Andrew was asleep. ‘And then there’s Bob’s parents.’ She came to a halt as she realised that they were probably expecting their son and his family at their place for Christmas Day lunch. Andrew opened his eyes. ‘Well, I’ll just get in first, say Mum’s invited us and I’ve accepted, he hasn’t even mentioned Christmas yet, nor has Nana,’ she said to him. He smiled at her, waving his hands, then Neil was smiling and waving his hands and their hands knocked together and they noticed each other. There was something about them noticing each other that she liked, she felt good when she saw it.
