The Cactus

by Sarah Haywood

  What absolute rot. My mother wasn’t a stupid woman; she wouldn’t have given Edward the right to remain in the family home because of some perceived hereditary weakness. I concede that she often treated Edward like a tortured artistic genius who needed to be shielded from the harsh realities of existence, but in her heart she knew he was just a chancer who was after an easy life. We all have the ability to control our own destinies. It was apparent to anyone that Edward was a waste of space not because he was genetically preprogrammed to be, but because he’d decided to wallow in a mire of self-pity and self-indulgence rather than to clamber out, brush himself down and strive to become a hardworking, responsible citizen. And anyway, as my mother would have been fully aware, if Edward was biologically preprogrammed to have a weakness of character then so was I. After all, we have the same parents. My brother is nothing like my father, in any case. My father, on the occasions when he was sober, was intelligent, cultured and witty. Edward is none of these things. Further, and most crucially, my mother loved Edward and me equally.

  Aunt Sylvia’s theory was demonstrably wrong, and I intended to tell her so. Without listening to the other messages, I called her straight back in the hope of catching her prior to her departure for Spain. There was no reply.

  The second voice mail message was equally maddening.

  “Hi, Susan, Rob here. Ed asked me to call you. He thinks it’s best if you two communicate through a neutral third party. That’s me. Sorry to have to break this to you, ’cos I know you might not be too pleased, but Ed wants to change some of the rooms around in the house. He wants to convert your mum’s bedroom into a studio for his art, and your bedroom into a music room. And he wants to put a pool table in the dining room. So he says it’s time your mum’s stuff was cleared out—you know, her clothes, toiletries, knickknacks, personal bits and bobs. He wants you to deal with it. Says it’s too much for him, he hasn’t got the faintest idea where to start, that that kind of job’s right up your street. He wants to know when you’re coming up to do it so he can make sure he’s away. I’ll be around, though, if you need a hand. He’s told me what stuff he wants to keep. And I know you don’t drive, and I’ve got my van, so if you want any stuff moving I’m your man.” He gave his mobile phone number and asked me to give him a call.

  Even though I’d predicted that Edward would set about desecrating our family home, and had been steeling myself against it, it pained me to hear his plans laid out so starkly. Pained and incensed. However, revenge, as the saying goes, is a dish best served cold. After a few deep breaths, I listened to the message again. It was, of course, a stroke of luck that I would be spending some time with Rob. He was next on my list of people to interrogate in the preparation of my court case; I needed to establish how deeply involved he was in Edward’s scheme, and winkle out as much information as I could concerning my brother’s actions and motivations. Rob would need to be handled with care, seeing as he was a coconspirator, so sorting out my mother’s house would be the perfect cover story and distraction. I could introduce my questions casually, without arousing his suspicions and causing him to put up his guard. With a little guile, I was sure he’d be putty in my hands. I called Rob’s mobile number and left a message, saying I’d be up in Birmingham the weekend after next. I’d stay in my old bedroom for one last night, before it was vandalized by my brother.

  The third message was from Wendy, who I was surprised to discover had my phone number.

  “Hiya, Susan,” went the singsong voice. “Just phoning for a little catch-up. Don’t forget, me and Chrissie’re waiting to hear all about the baby. Give me a bell the moment you get this message. Bye.”

  I didn’t return her call.

  * * *

  I found myself in a cell-like examination room, marooned on my back, on what appeared to be a giant length of blue toilet paper covering a raised trolley bed. My belly, which had recently begun to resemble the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, had been slathered in the familiar glaucous jelly. It was the day of my amniocentesis test, and the medical profession had chosen to treat me with contempt. I’d been alone for what felt like hours; I was taut with boredom and frustration.

  The now-absent doctor, Dr. Da Silva, whose serious brown eyes and soft, rounded features gave him the look of a Labrador puppy, had begun by explaining the procedure to me. First, he’d examine my belly with the ultrasound machine to establish the precise position of the baby, then clean a small area of skin, insert a thin tube through my abdomen into the womb and extract a small amount of amniotic fluid. This would be tested and in a few days’ time I’d be told whether the baby had Down syndrome or other chromosomal defects. He repeated what I’d already been told—that there was a risk of miscarriage. It was small, but nevertheless I needed to be aware of it. I could rest assured, the procedure wouldn’t hurt. I informed him that I wasn’t worried about the pain. I just wanted the damn thing over and done with. As he finished lubricating my belly there was a knock on the door and an anxious-looking nurse entered the room. She asked Dr. Da Silva, in an urgent stage whisper, whether he’d mind popping next door to give a second opinion on a little problem she had spotted.

  “I’m so sorry about this, Miss Green. I won’t be long. Just relax and make yourself comfortable,” he said, wiping the jelly off his hands and following the woman.

  In the distance, I could hear voices: some urgent, some chatty, some angry, some placatory. There was a low background hum, whether from the water pipes running along the skirting board or from the mass of electronic equipment next to me, I wasn’t quite sure. Above this was a steady tick. I craned my neck to locate the clock, which was on the wall behind me. Printed on its face was the word Niceday. Not for me. Underneath it were various exhortatory posters, Catch It, Bin it, Kill it; Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases: Stop Germs Spreading; We Value Your Opinion: Tell Us What You Think. I was more than happy to tell them what I thought. I thought it was completely unacceptable to direct a patient to lie down on a bed, raise it in the air with a foot pump, ask them to lift up their top and pull down their skirt, slather them with a mucoid substance, then leave them high and dry for hours on end.

  * * *

  I’d almost failed to make it to the amniocentesis appointment. I’d woken that morning with a splitting headache. After contemplating taking the exceptional step of spending the day in bed, I mustered my reserves of willpower, dragged myself to the bathroom, splashed my face with cold water and took a headache tablet. When I got to the Tube station, I discovered there were severe delays on the Northern Line due to an incident that morning. It would be very difficult to get to the appointment on time, and I pride myself on never being late for anything. There was no point even attempting the journey. I started walking back toward my flat, then changed my mind and headed for the bus stop. On the bus, I began to wonder whether I’d locked my French windows. I’d opened them at breakfast-time, and had no recollection of turning the key when I’d closed them. I pressed the bell and made my way to the front of the bus. As it drew to a standstill and the doors concertinaed open, I apologized to the driver, walked back down the aisle and regained my seat. It was unlikely that someone would break into my flat in the hour or two I’d be out.

  On my march from the bus stop to the hospital, I suddenly remembered an important piece of drafting that was sitting on my desk at work. I really should have discussed it with Trudy the previous afternoon prior to submitting it to my head of department. He might be waiting for it, and I didn’t want to appear unprofessional. I took my mobile phone out of my bag and dialed the number of the hospital to cancel the appointment. By this stage, however, it was five minutes to the allotted time and I was almost at my destination. I knew it was irrational to go to all the inconvenience of rearranging the appointment now that I’d come this far. I ended the call, put my phone back in my bag and walked through the doors of the hospital.

  * * *

  “Please excu
se that interruption, Miss Green,” said Dr. Da Silva, bounding back into the room. “Bit of an emergency. Where are we up to?”

  “We’re up to the part where I say I’ve got better things to do than lie around on a hospital trolley all day,” I said, sitting up. I tore off a piece of the blue toilet roll that was covering the bed and wiped the gunk from my belly. It was as slimy and difficult to remove as some other unsavory substances I’ve encountered, and it took several pieces of paper before I was finally clean.

  “But we were just about to get started,” Dr. Da Silva said. “It wouldn’t have taken long at all. It’s really not a lengthy procedure. I’m sorry for the delay, but I was only gone from the room for a few moments. These things do happen in a hospital.” His puppy eyes were moist with regret. “Or is it that you’ve changed your mind about having the amnio?”

  “No, not at all. I’m not a person who changes her mind.” It was true, I wasn’t. I never have been. Once I’ve decided on something, that’s it. I hesitated, thinking back to the events of the morning. I realized it might appear to someone who didn’t know me that I’d been frantically scrabbling around for excuses not to attend the appointment or, having attended it, not to go through with the test. They’d be wrong, of course. I’d tried to do the logical thing, but circumstances had conspired against me from the moment I woke up. That said, I don’t like to be a victim of circumstance. It was important, I told myself, that I was not weak-willed or fickle; I had to be true to the person I was and always had been.

  “Alright,” I said, leaning back on the trolley bed. “Let’s do it.”

  “Are you sure, Miss Green? You can take a few moments...”

  “I don’t want to discuss it, just get on with it.”

  He did so. I turned my face to the wall and gritted my teeth. It wasn’t that painful, physically, just a sharp stinging sensation. Something strange began happening to time as soon as I’d made my decision, though; the ten minutes the procedure took felt like an hour; the seventy-two hours during which miscarriage was most likely to happen felt like seven hundred and twenty; and the subsequent two weeks, when the miscarriage risk was still raised, felt like two months. When that time had passed, I felt strangely elated. The results, when I received them, were little more than the icing on the cake.

  November

  11

  This month I finally commenced the process of sorting through my mother’s belongings. It was a task toward which I had mixed feelings. I was keen to safeguard items of personal or monetary value in case Edward should take it into his head to dispose of them, but I didn’t relish the prospect of the innumerable small decisions I’d have to make concerning each and every one of my mother’s possessions. Neither, in my current state, was I looking forward to the physical effort involved. For those reasons, I hadn’t been pressing Edward on the matter, and would probably have continued to let it lie, had it not been for the fact that my brother’s unforgivable plans required the clearing of certain rooms.

  I arrived at the former family home with my nerves jangling. Kate, who was delighted to have adult company on her journey north to see her parents, had picked me up after work in her wheezing Fiat. The offspring were in the back, already in their nightwear. She assured me they had been fed and watered, and would simply nod off en route. It’s true, they did fall asleep, but not until they had spent the two hours during which we were stuck on the M25 variously whimpering, sobbing and howling. The lullaby CD, which was on a loop—Kate having rejected the rousing 1812 Overture that I thought would be beneficial on a tiring journey—was by that point on the fourth or fifth time of playing. After an all-too-brief interlude of calm, the baby woke again just before Oxford services, necessitating a stop to change his nappy and breastfeed him. Another full hour was thereby wasted. The experience was as horrendous as traveling by public transport.

  I’d confidently expected to encounter Rob on my arrival, but there was a note on the kitchen table saying he was out, and would be back around midnight. “Catch you later,” his message concluded. Did he really imagine I’d have any desire to stay up for him? The next day, opening my bedroom curtains (volcanic swirls, seemingly designed with the sole purpose of intensifying infantile fevers), I contemplated the view that had presented itself to me every morning of my childhood. Nothing had changed over the decades: rows of boxy hedges dividing the modest gardens that disappeared into the distance to left and right; sharp-edged lawns that had had their final cut before winter; neat sheds tucked away in corners, liberally coated in creosote against the increasing sogginess of the weather; the occasional ornamental fish pond or Alpine rockery adorned with concrete fauna. The leaves, which were billowing from the trees as the wind blew, would no doubt be raked into neat piles by the end of the day. If I was a less disciplined person I might have allowed myself to feel melancholy at the thought that I’d never again wake to this view. Such an emotion would be nonsensical, though. I was rarely happy here.

  There was no sign of Rob when I entered the kitchen, but the empty beer bottle and toast-crumb-covered plate showed that he had, indeed, come home. I opened the cupboard where I knew my mother kept her cereal. The usual bran-based selection was still there, every packet, on inspection, way past its “best before” date. What do these men eat for breakfast? I was pondering, as Rob wandered into the kitchen in pajama bottoms and a bathrobe.

  “Morning, Susan,” he muttered, a dazed expression on his face. “I heard you moving around. What time is it? Fuck, six thirty?” he added, glancing over at the clock on the oven.

  “I’ve got a very busy day ahead of me.”

  “But it’s the weekend.” He ran his hands down the sides of his face and yawned. “Well, I suppose I’m up now. Here’s the deal—you make us a brew and I’ll crack on with breakfast. I can always go back to bed afterward.”

  Over oleaginous heaps of vegetarian sausages, eggs, beans and mushrooms, which I tackled nobly but ineffectually, he proceeded to prattle on about his business, as if I might care what he did to earn a crust. I was mindful, though, of my plan to be as amenable—friendly, even—as possible this weekend, so that Rob wouldn’t be on his guard when I interrogated him. He told me that, after he graduated from art school, he’d drifted from job to job for a few years, mostly doing unskilled horticulture-related work. By his early thirties, he’d decided to get his act together, had completed a garden design course and had started his own landscape gardening company.

  “So where does the traveling fit in?” I asked, with interest that was, of course, entirely feigned.

  It was prompted by his divorce, he said. Incredibly, one of his clients had taken such delight in having the grounds of her house landscaped by Rob that she’d left her partner to live in penury with him. They married quickly, immediately after which it dawned on them that they didn’t actually like each other very much. This ill-advised relationship somehow managed to limp along for a couple of years. His wife eventually jettisoned him for the owner of a pawnbroker’s shop that she’d attended with the aim of pledging Rob’s late mother’s engagement ring. The marital home was sold and the equity divided equally between the once-again-very-comfortably-off former wife and the far-from-comfortably-off Rob. What a chump. He decided to spend some time traveling around India in order to “get his head back together.” While he was away, it had dawned on him that the person with whom he should have been spending his life was a girlfriend from his university days, called Alison. He was going to set about tracking her down and wooing her back when work was a bit quieter.

  “Business has been booming recently,” he said. “I’m having to juggle two or three projects at the same time, so I’ve taken on another assistant. Plus, I completed on a house last week—bit of a wreck, needs totally gutting, but it’s got potential.”

  “I’m delighted to hear things are working out for you,” I said, dabbing my lips with my napkin and rising from the table.
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br />   I instructed Rob to wash up the breakfast things and tidy the kitchen while I made a start on my tasks for the day.

  “Yeah, no problem, I’ll do all that a bit later. Just going back to bed for an hour or so,” he said, disappearing up the stairs.

  * * *

  I equipped myself with the necessary receptacles, took a deep breath and entered my mother’s bedroom. It was unchanged from the weekend of my visit for the funeral, other than that the net curtains had been taken down from the window and were lying in a colorless heap on the floor. Everything was shrouded in gloom; the day was overcast, and the smutty bay windows admitted little of what sunlight there was. After switching on the ceiling light and the two fringed bedside lamps, I sat on the low stool in front of my mother’s dressing table. I looked at my multiple reflections: one direct, face-on likeness in the large central mirror; and two more enigmatic, oblique versions in the narrow side mirrors. I was quite comfortable with the face-on image; it was the one I saw when I put on my makeup in the morning, or caught a glimpse of myself in a shop window. The side views, though, were unfamiliar, could almost be someone else. My hair didn’t look as well-groomed as I’d expected it to; my profile wasn’t quite as strong as I’d imagined; there was a sagging under the jawline that I didn’t remember. It was unsettling to think that others could see aspects of me that I couldn’t easily see myself. I imagined my mother sitting in front of this same mirror. I wondered whether she was at ease with her multiple likenesses, whether she felt confident that the different facets added up to a coherent, harmonious whole. And what about my father—had he ever sat here, contemplating his appearance, as I was doing now? Probably not. He wouldn’t have wanted to see the person reflected back at him.