The Cactus

by Sarah Haywood

  “Anyway, like I told you, I came to my senses when I was in India. Alison’s the only one for me. She’s the one I should’ve been spending my life with. I’ve wasted too much time already. I’m going to find her and my son, see if he can ever forgive me, and if Alison’s not with anyone now, do my best to win her back. Make up for all the shit stuff I did when I was younger.”

  * * *

  On the train home to London I thought about Rob’s disclosure. I wondered if his intention had really been to make a heartfelt plea on behalf of excluded fathers, or if it had simply been to soften me up and make me better-disposed toward him. If so, it had almost worked; I’d almost felt sorry for him, momentarily. I reminded myself, however, that his problems were entirely of his own making. He’d behaved appallingly, and his girlfriend had undoubtedly suffered much more than he had, at least in the early days. I also reminded myself that, as Rob was Edward’s partner in crime, it was unlikely that any of it was actually true.

  With Billy’s constant presence for most of the day, and Rob’s “revelations” about his son, I’d had no opportunity to extract any further information concerning either Edward or my mother’s will. It was fortunate that I’d be seeing Rob again in a couple of weeks’ time. He was going to a gig in London with Edward, he said, so it would be easy enough for him to drop off the boxes I’d wanted to take back with me. Easy enough, too, for him to continue with his plan of getting me to lower my guard, he no doubt thought. Strangely, as I closed my eyes with the intention of having a short nap before Euston, I couldn’t help recalling what an unusually deep shade of blue Rob’s own eyes had been when he’d turned to face me in the van. It must have been a trick of the light.

  In bed that evening, propped up with pillows, I sat looking through the cardboard folders that I’d retrieved from my mother’s bureau. I’d hoped I might find some reference to her state of mind, or to her plans for her estate after she died, but the correspondence was, for the most part, too ancient to be of any relevance. There were thank-you notes from Uncle Harold, Aunt Julia and their sons for presents my mother had sent them over the years; letters from two old school friends who had moved to New Zealand and Canada, in which they reminisced about their shared childhood experiences; annual birthday cards from my father, which I noticed stopped the year I was ten; hand-made-at-school Christmas and Easter cards, mostly from Edward but a few from me; several barely legible letters from Aunt Sylvia, including one that had been torn into pieces then taped together, in which she expressed her deep gratitude for something unspecified; a typed letter of reference from my mother’s boss at the university faculty office, saying that she was a reliable and hardworking employee; some letters and cards of condolence for the death of my father; and more in the same vein. I dithered about whether to keep anything, but finally decided I would dump the lot in the recycling bin. None of it told me anything I didn’t already know, and anyway, I simply didn’t have the space.

  Next, I opened the hefty photograph album, which I’d also brought back with me from Birmingham. The album began with my parents’ wedding and ended just after I started school. The first photograph was a black-and-white formal, posed picture of the whole family outside the church after the ceremony. My mother looked shy, bashful—unaccustomed to being the center of attention. My father looked vacant, enduring what had to be endured in order to become a married man. I expect he’d had a stiff drink to help him through the ordeal. In contrast, Aunt Sylvia, standing next to my mother and wearing a long, lace-trimmed bridesmaid dress, was clearly having the time of her life. My mother was twenty-seven when she got married, which would put Aunt Sylvia at around twelve years old. At that young age, she’d already learned, from movie-star magazines, how to pose for the camera in a manner that displayed supreme (if misplaced) confidence in her own attractiveness. A skill that’s never left her.

  The rest of my mother’s family had enthusiastically but ineptly cobbled together the poshest outfits they could, to mark one of their clan moving up in the world. Notwithstanding their best efforts, they looked stiffly awkward and graceless. My father’s family, however, appeared quite at ease with the formal situation; wearing tailored three-piece suits and couture dresses and jackets, was nothing out of the ordinary for them. Despite their ease, the hints of suppressed frowns, pouts and smirks betrayed their various attitudes toward my father’s union with my mother. Only the expression of Uncle Harold, my father’s brother and best man, was as inscrutable as my father’s—in my uncle’s case the result of his army parade-ground training rather than self-administered anesthesia. It was odd to see my paternal grandparents in the photograph. I have no recollection of meeting them. I wonder if I ever did.

  I flicked to a photograph in the middle of the album, which must have been taken a few years later. It was the day of my christening at the same church, a much smaller gathering. I was only a couple of months old. Unlike the wedding photograph, which was obviously taken by a professional photographer, this was a slightly skewed Kodachrome snap. The only member of my father’s family who attended the occasion was Uncle Harold, who looked as staunchly dutiful as ever. My mother’s family, also, was somewhat depleted; although my maternal grandmother was in attendance, my grandfather seems to have had better things to do that day. In the photograph my mother was holding me, looking ill at ease with the bundle in her arms. I suppose she’d only had a few weeks’ practice. My father, serious, frowning, had his arm around her shoulders reassuringly. Aunt Sylvia, now seventeen or eighteen years old, was looking away from the camera, as though something on the ground to her right had distracted her. She was wearing a peach-colored minidress with white knee-high boots, a stark contrast to my mother’s somber gray dress suit and matching pillbox hat. It’s the only photograph I’ve ever seen of my aunt in which she isn’t smiling.

  “Well, you could all have looked a bit happier at my arrival,” I said to the picture, before snapping shut the album, placing it on my bedside table and turning out the light.

  * * *

  A few days later I found myself trudging to the hospital maternity department in my lunch hour—another antenatal appointment, this one my twenty-week scan. I must say that I remain unable and unwilling to come to terms with the fact that, after forty-five years spent happily keeping myself to myself, both my body and my mind have now become public property. It’s quite unbelievable how many people need to poke, prod, test and interrogate you when you’re pregnant. Attending the various appointments seems to be a full-time job in itself, and my belly’s been the subject of more intense scrutiny than that of the most industrious Turkish dancer. It’s as if I’ve ceased to be a person in my own right, and have become merely a receptacle for another human being.

  “So, Miss Green, are we going to find out the sex of your wee babby?” asked today’s sonographer, a skinny middle-aged Scottish woman with cropped, tightly curled ginger hair. Since my encounter with Billy, I’d spent quite some time mulling over this question. Finding out seemed, to me, a little like opening your presents on Christmas Eve or flicking to the end of a novel when you have only read as far as the midpoint. It smacked of cheating, of a childish inability to exercise patience and self-restraint. I am, however, a very pragmatic person. I like to know exactly what’s going to be happening and precisely when it will happen. That way you can guard yourself against unwelcome surprises and ensure that everything proceeds satisfactorily. If I knew the sex of the baby I could purchase the appropriate clothes and equipment. Not, you understand, that I’m the sort of person to buy frilly pink things for a girl and plain blue things for a boy, but I expect there will be some slight differences between the items I’d select. On balance, I decided to allow the sonographer to inform me of the sex of the baby. She duly did so.

  Back at work Trudy beckoned me into her office, like a spy on a secret mission. She shut the door behind me with a suppressed giggle.

  “So, what is it, Susan? Boy or gi
rl?” She had a look of eager anticipation on her face.

  “Oh, they couldn’t tell. It was lying the wrong way round. I’ll just have to wait until it makes an appearance.”

  Trudy couldn’t have looked more dismayed if I’d told her it was all a mistake and I wasn’t pregnant, after all. She walked back to her desk and slumped into her chair.

  “Oh, what a terrible, terrible shame,” she said. “That’s so disappointing.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  Well, it’s one thing to have a quick flick to the last page of a book. It’s quite another to read it aloud to all and sundry.

  13

  In the days since returning from my room-clearing trip to Birmingham I’d been revisiting my decision not to allow Richard to play a part in the life of my baby. I’d come to the conclusion, extremely reluctantly, that Rob might have a point. I had no reason to believe that Richard would cause any harm to the child, either emotionally or physically. Indeed, from his keenness to be involved in its upbringing, it might well turn out that he’d be a loving and attentive father, and a positive influence in its life. Bearing in mind my own early experiences, could I justify denying my child that? If I decided I could deny it, was it possible that the child would grow up to resent what I’d done, despite my explanation that I’d wished to preserve my independence? Further, was it right to overlook the effect that my refusal of contact would have on Richard? Judging from the years of regret Rob (truthfully or not) said he’d suffered as a result of his estrangement from his son, it occurred to me that to do the same to Richard could cast a shadow on his life. I’m not someone who backtracks from a decision that’s already been made, but it takes a strong and secure person to admit they’ve been a little hasty.

  * * *

  St. James’s Park had reached the climax of its autumnal display; the trees were still in almost-full leaf, but the foliage had turned copper, russet and ochre. The mid-November sun was bright and there was no evidence of the heavy mist of that morning. It wasn’t a park with which I was familiar; Richard had been the one to suggest it, as a relatively quiet and pleasant place for an uninterrupted lunchtime rendezvous. Trudging along the path from The Mall (I was five minutes late, due to Trudy attempting futilely to initiate a conversation on the subject of how I was “feeling about things”), I spotted Richard sitting on the lakeside bench where he’d told me I’d find him. He was dressed in his usual immaculate way, as though he’d stopped to gather his thoughts before meeting the queen. His attire wasn’t the first thing I noticed, though. My attention couldn’t fail to be drawn to the fact that standing next to him on the wooden bench, and holding its head at an angle of haughty self-importance, was a large snowy pelican. Neither bird nor man was paying the other the slightest attention. Richard, himself, was engrossed in a paperback book, which I saw, as I neared, was Madame Bovary. Contrary to what you would expect from his rather reserved disposition, he’s always been attracted to tragic heroines whose passions conquer their reason. I should have thought I was quite a surprise to him.

  I was almost at the bench by the time he looked up from his book and gave me one of his most charming, fresh-faced smiles. I sensed that he still had hopes of winning me over.

  “The lovely Susan,” he said, carefully folding over the corner of a page, an uncharacteristic act that made me wince. After stowing the book in a pocket of his overcoat, he stood. I allowed him to peck me lightly on each cheek.

  “You look blooming today.”

  I was already tiring of that adjective.

  “Why is there a pelican next to you on the bench?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s very friendly, this one. I come here to escape the hurly-burly, and I often find him next to me when I look up from my book. He seems to have taken a bit of a shine to me.”

  “But what’s a pelican doing in a central London park at all?”

  “Don’t you know? There’s a flock of them. Or is it a gaggle? No, actually I think it might be a pod. They’ve been here for over four hundred years—a gift from a Russian ambassador, originally. Peculiar creatures. I feel a strange affinity with them.”

  The pelican regarded me disdainfully, then raised its wings, jumped down onto the path and swaggered lake-ward. It was hard to believe that something could manage simultaneously to look so imperious and so absurd.

  “Will you join me on the bench?” asked Richard. He took a neatly pressed handkerchief from the inside pocket of his overcoat, shook it out and swished at the seat with delicate sweeps of his arm. He then laid the handkerchief out flat next to him and patted it. We sat in silence for a few moments, watching the pelican nibbling, with his impractically long orange beak, at what must have been an itch on its puffed-up chest. Richard coughed.

  “May I apologize for my inexcusable behavior the last time we met? I hadn’t been sleeping well, and the situation regarding the child had been building up in my mind. I shouldn’t have accosted you outside your office like that, and I certainly shouldn’t have issued threats. I’d like us to forget everything that’s passed between us in recent weeks and start again from a basis of mutual respect and harmony.”

  A group of four teenage girls, who looked like Japanese students (over-the-knee socks, quirky clothes, cartoony handbags), had stopped in front of our bench to admire the pelican, which was now shaking out his wings. One of the party began taking photographs of the others, who were making victory signs behind the bird’s head.

  “I have no objection to that,” I said to Richard. “As I told you when I called, I’ve been giving more thought to your possible involvement in the life of the child. I may have been slightly premature in dismissing you before I’d examined the question thoroughly. It was important, though, to make it crystal clear from the start that I have no intention of adopting the role of pathetic, needy woman.”

  “Susan, I can’t imagine anyone possibly thinking of you as pathetic and needy.”

  “Good. Now, what I want to say is that I’ve come to the conclusion, after weighing up all the various considerations, that it wouldn’t be correct for me to exclude you entirely from the baby’s life. So I’ve decided...”

  I was interrupted midflow by one of the Japanese students—a smiley girl with her hair in beribboned bunches—approaching our bench, apologizing humbly for interrupting us and asking if we would take a photograph of their party with the pelican. Richard agreed to do so.

  “You were saying?” he inquired, as he rejoined me on the bench.

  “I was saying I’ve decided that some participation, on your part, in the baby’s life wouldn’t be unacceptable. Your involvement will have to be clearly defined and agreed between us before the birth, but I don’t see why that couldn’t be done amicably.”

  “Wonderful. You don’t know what a huge relief that is to me. I know we can make this work for all parties concerned. I’ll pop into Foyles this afternoon and pick up some books about fatherhood.”

  “I was going to suggest that,” I said. “It’s always best to read up on a subject well in advance.”

  A family, who had been talking in excited, Scottish-accented voices about the proximity of a rare Pokémon, stopped to look at the preening pelican. While the mother restrained her two young sons from prodding the real flesh-and-blood creature, the father approached Richard and me, again with a request that we take a group photograph. Richard agreed, begrudgingly this time. Rejoining me on the bench once more, he cleared his throat.

  “So one matter’s on the way to being settled—the extent of my postnatal involvement. There is, of course, another matter. Things have been said in the heat of the moment that neither you nor I really meant. We both needed time to come to terms with our changed situation before we could look again at our relationship. The fact that we’re now singing from the same hymn sheet regarding the child indicates we’ve done that.”

  “Yes, I suppose we have.” />
  “You know, of course, that I’ve never been keen on entering into a conventional committed relationship. But circumstances have now changed.”

  “Richard, I really don’t think...”

  “Let me finish, please.”

  Another group of tourists—this time Australian, by the sound of them—had gathered by the pelican. A middle-aged peroxide-blonde woman turned toward us.

  “No, madam. No pictures,” said Richard, a little too loudly. The bird, used only to murmurs of admiration, was startled by the unexpected noise and launched himself into the water. The Australians marched away, throwing resentful looks over their shoulders.

  “Susan, we’re both people who like things to be done by the book. I suppose it’s traditional to go down on one knee at this point, but the pelicans have been busy and you’re sitting on my handkerchief. Susan, our evenings together have meant the world to me. I think you might well be my soul mate. You’re me in female form. Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  “Your wife?” I asked, astounded. “Do you mean entering into a marital contract with you, or actually sharing a home?”

  “One generally leads to the other.”

  I don’t like to be caught off guard. The sole purpose of meeting Richard had been to bestow my munificence; to magnanimously confer on him what I’d decided it was morally right to confer. It had not been to negotiate any more personal sort of arrangement. My initial impulse was to tell him he could forget it. I stopped myself, however, and took a moment to think. Was it really so far beyond the realms of possibility? It couldn’t be denied, the practicalities of looking after a baby would be even simpler to manage with two adults sharing the same household; and wouldn’t it be even better, in terms of emotional security, for a child to live with both its parents, so long as those parents were able to get along amicably? Significantly, until the recent state of affairs, Richard and I had always seen eye to eye.