‘No.’
‘No, she hasn’t spoken to her, or, no, she didn’t say?’
‘No, she didn’t say, Ben.’ Maggie is beginning to sound tetchy. ‘She said she phoned to ask how we were. She didn’t say anything about Isobel.’
‘Alright.’
‘If you want to know what Isobel thinks, why don’t you call her yourself?’ Maggie confronts me.
‘I don’t give a fuck what she thinks,’ I say.
‘Obviously you do.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing,’ Maggie replies as Iris begins to wail.
It’s a horrible, high-pitched, off-key wail. It sounds like the cry of someone who can’t hear it. If they could, even though they were crying to attract the attention of their parents, to try to make them do whatever it is they want doing for them, they couldn’t possibly bear to listen to it themselves. I wince, and Maggie picks Iris up and heads towards the hall.
‘I’m going to take her for a walk,’ she says, pulling the buggy out from its corner by the coat rack and yanking Iris’s coat from it. ‘Do you want to come?’
‘OK.’
We can walk and talk. It might be easier that way.
‘It’s not that I don’t want to do anything,’ Maggie says as we stroll up the street. ‘I’m just as angry as you are. I’m just worried that taking legal action might not be easy for you. For us. We’ll get bogged down with solicitors and court action, when we need to concentrate on other things. And I’m worried that you might regret it, if you go ahead.’
‘What do you mean?’ I am pushing the buggy so I can’t hold Maggie’s hand and I wish I could. I want to feel that she is with me, even if she isn’t. ‘I want to shake them up, Maggie. I want to force some sort of response from them. I want them to realise that what they did was irresponsible and wrong.’
‘So do I,’ Maggie says, bending down to pull a blanket from the basket underneath the buggy and tucking it in around Iris.
‘I’m just not sure that this is the way.’
‘I can’t think of any other ways. Can you?’
Maggie is silent, preoccupied with tucking.
‘Can you?’ I ask her again.
‘They’re not my friends.’ Maggie looks at me, briefly, then away again. ‘It’s different for me.’
I’m not exactly sure what she means by this.
‘When Sally called today,’ she says, ‘it was nice of her and everything, but she’s not the person I would go to, if I needed someone to talk to. I’ve got my own friends. So it doesn’t really matter to me what your friends think – but it might matter to you. Does it matter to you what Sally would think if you told her we were going to sue?’
‘I didn’t want any of this,’ I say, my voice rising vehemently. ‘I didn’t want Iris to be deaf, obviously. I didn’t want to be put in a position where I’m even considering taking legal action against two of my oldest friends. I feel so powerless. But we are in this position.’
‘I know.’
‘I have to do something and I can’t think of anything else to do. Can you?’
Maggie says nothing.
We walk home in silence and I wonder if she does have another plan, something she’s not telling me.
‘It will be worse for you, Ben,’ she says, finally as we near our house. ‘They’re your friends and you could lose them. Not just Isobel and Eric: the others will take sides. Are you prepared for that?’
I nod. ‘It’s not just us – ’ I begin to say. I have a rant prepared, but I don’t need to go on.
‘OK.’ Maggie bends down to unbuckle Iris. ‘Tell Hedda to send the letter to start with. Let’s see how they react.’
Isobel, Friday morning
It’s like the aftershock from an earthquake, I imagine. You think it’s stopped, that the worst is over, and then there’s another quake and the ground beneath you shifts again.
I know that Eric is looking at me, but I don’t know what he’s thinking. Can he see that I’m freshly shocked and upset? Is he going to ask what’s wrong? If I tell him, will he try to reassure me? Or will he give me the silent, accusing look, the look that says this is my fault entirely and that everyone’s suffering because of it?
If I’m honest, I was beginning to get used to it – the fact that Iris is deaf, that I am partly to blame and that this was going to affect us all. For the first few days after the party, I thought about nothing else, but I actually woke up this morning and went through all the usual motions without doing so.
Then the post arrived.
I’m trying not to react visibly, not in front of the children. I’m standing by the work surface in the kitchen, away from the breakfast table, the opened letter in my hand, its contents hammering away at my mind, nudging my body to still, quiet nausea.
It’s noisy in the kitchen; too noisy to think properly.
The radio is on but no one is listening to it. Vincent is playing the piano, tucked into the alcove behind the breakfast table. He’s singing too, an Adele song. His unbroken nine-year-old voice hits the high notes with such an innocent clarity, it makes me want to cry.
The song is about being scarred by love. Vinnie gives it his all, oblivious to the rest of us, imbuing the word ‘despair’ with meaning, even though this is not an emotion he can have known in his brief life.
I am the one who feels it now.
‘Nice tune, Vinnie, aka Liberace.’ Harvey pushes his shopping trolley chair back from the table, gets up, and brushes against Vincent as he walks past. It could have been accidental, the body contact, but Vincent’s hand abandons the chord he was playing and slaps Harvey.
‘Get off!’
‘Ow, that hurt!’ Harvey’s voice is exaggeratedly camp, clearly implying it didn’t.
‘Stop acting like twats,’ Gabriella says, annoyed that their spat is disturbing her toast consumption.
‘Harvey,’ I say, and he looks at me, expecting further admonishment, but I haven’t the energy or the will.
If Eric had brought the post in, he would probably have put the letter straight in the recycling. Apart from the odd bank or credit card statement, he never gets letters. Neither do I, really. Everything important is communicated by email and the rest is junk but I still open that, just in case.
The letter I am holding now gave nothing away. A DL envelope revealed my typed name and address through its cellophane window but nothing more. I’d never have guessed it was from a solicitor, nor what it contained. It took me a while to work it out. The wording is not clear. Eric would have a field day with the language, if he was minded to. But I imagine he also will be too stunned by the contents to start going on about grammar and use of words. I feel as if I’ve been punched in the stomach.
At last Eric reacts.
‘Right, you lot.’ He raises his voice so he can be heard above Vincent, who’s back, rolling in the deep. ‘You need to leave in five minutes. Go and get your stuff.’
Harvey goes. He was on his way anyway. Gabriella’s finished her toast and is stacking her plate in the dishwasher. She looks at Eric, questioningly; wanting to know if she too has to make herself scarce or is exempt, on the grounds of being older.
‘Gabs…’ Eric says.
She shrugs, resigned to leaving the room, but Vinnie’s still singing.
‘Vinnie,’ Eric says.
‘Mmm hmmmm?’ Vince doesn’t look up, but he stops playing long enough to let his dad know he’s open to an instruction.
‘Scoot!’ Eric gives it and Vincent obligingly swivels round on the piano stool and runs upstairs to clean his teeth, still singing about his scars leaving him breathless.
‘What is it?’ Eric asks. ‘Who’s the letter from?’
‘A solicitor,’ I say.
‘Why? Has someone died?’
I feel like saying ‘a part of me’, but instead I hand it over with the words, ‘Your best friend’s solicitor.’
I say this because this is Eric’s prob
lem too now, even if he tried to make out it wasn’t before.
I also say it to test Eric’s loyalties.
‘You mean Ben?’ Eric asks.
‘Of course I do,’ I say, and watch as he screws up his eyes, trying to focus without his reading glasses.
His emotions are barely perceptible as he lets the information sink in, but something about him changes. It’s like watching a sand-timer, as each grain of sand slowly filters from one side to the other, hardly appearing to change, yet nevertheless effecting a complete reversal.
The sand in the timer appears to have all filtered through now, allowing other emotions to occupy the space inside Eric’s head.
‘Fuck,’ he says, and I want to hit him because that doesn’t tell me anything.
‘What a fucking mess,’ he says.
I already know that.
‘Fuck, Isobel,’ he repeats. ‘It just gets worse.’
‘I know,’ I say, angry that he is still angry and still seemingly determined to point the finger at me. ‘Why’s he doing this?’ I say, trying to deflect it. ‘Why would Ben do this to us?’
‘You don’t think he has reason?’ Eric asks, looking at me, accusing again.
‘I know he must be furious and upset. But he knows none of this was deliberate. What good will come of getting solicitors involved?’
‘But he doesn’t know, does he?’ Eric says. ‘He doesn’t know that you didn’t mean to harm his child, because you haven’t spoken to him. He doesn’t know you’re sorry, because you haven’t told him.’
‘Jesus Christ, Eric!’ I snap. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this again.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Turning it all on me. Making it all my fault. Not being able to find one reassuring thing to say to me. Not even offering any practical advice?’
Eric looks at me. ‘You haven’t done anything, Isobel. For the last week, since you found out that Iris was deaf, you haven’t done anything to let Ben know that you’re sorry. You haven’t asked if there is anything we can do.’
‘I texted him. He didn’t reply. I didn’t know what more to do and you’ve not exactly helped.’
‘What did you want from me?’
‘You stand there accusing me of not doing anything, of not asking if there’s anything we can do, of not letting him know we’re sorry, but you haven’t done any of that for me,’ I retort. ‘Have you got any real idea how terrible I feel? Have you got any idea how much I wish things were otherwise? You come and go, behaving as if I’m wholly in the wrong, when you know full well that if you felt so strongly about the kids not being vaccinated at the time you could have insisted. And you haven’t done anything yourself since we found out about Iris, either.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ Eric says. ‘I have to get the bloody train up to London and work all day in a shit job before getting it home again, while you do whatever it is that you do.’
‘Is that what this is about?’ I ask him. Is Eric angry with me because I never went back to work? Does he think I sit around all day at home doing nothing?
‘It’s about taking action, Isobel. You used to do things, but you just keep letting stuff happen. It’s not about what you’ve done, it’s about what you’ve not done.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Eric. Why don’t you just drop the “everything is your fault” stance and do something yourself?’
‘And what might that something be, exactly?’ he asks. ‘Go and see Ben myself and tell him how sorry we are that we never got round to having Gabriella vaccinated because you were worried at the time and then when all the fuss had died down you just forgot? Tell him that you’re sorry Iris is deaf but during the past week you never got round to telling him that?’
‘If doing nothing is the worst thing to do then, yes, you should have taken action. You can’t just say it’s all my fault for doing nothing, when you’ve done nothing yourself.’
‘You put me in an impossible position,’ he says, highly agitated now. ‘Ben is my best friend. You are my wife. I feel for you both.’
‘Do you?’ I snap back. ‘You haven’t given any impression that you’ve thought about what I’m going through right now.’
‘I’ve thought about virtually nothing else,’ Eric says, slightly calmer. ‘I’ve thought about how you must feel, and I’ve thought about how Ben and Maggie must feel.’
‘And you think I haven’t?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if you really have. But if I’d been Ben and there’d been nothing from us, no real gesture, then I think I’d have been driven to do something like this.’
‘Seriously?’ I can’t quite believe Eric is saying all of this. ‘Sometimes, Eric, I don’t think I know you any more.’
‘Well, maybe that’s because you’ve changed!’ he says angrily. ‘You used to be a fighter.’
I’m stunned by this outburst. I don’t know quite how to counter it. I know I’ve changed, of course I do, but things are different. We have a family.
‘I’ve changed because we have three children, Eric. I’ve changed because I opted to look after them myself. I don’t go up to London every day and talk politics and current affairs with other like-minded people. I’m here at home with the kids, combing nits out of their hair and making sure they’ve done their homework. Of course I’ve changed, but that doesn’t make me a bad person.’
‘I never said that, Isobel. I’m…’
He pauses and, for a moment, I think he’s about to say that’s he’s sorry. Instead he says, ‘I’m going to be late for work. I’ll talk to you later.’
‘Should I call Ben today, then?’ I ask, as he picks up his jacket. I’m not going to be accused of failing to take action again.
‘Not yet,’ Eric says. We may need to get a solicitor ourselves. We’ll talk later.’
And, with that, he heads for the front door.
‘Fuck them both,’ I say to myself, meaning Eric and Ben. ‘This is getting ridiculous.’
Ben, Friday morning
‘See you later, beautiful,’ I whisper, as I bend over her cot and kiss my sleeping daughter before I leave for work.
I don’t need to whisper in order not to wake her but my brain is hard-wired to. It’s what you do around the sleeping: lower your voice so as not to disturb them.
Iris is so peaceful when she’s asleep. The contrast between sleeping and waking is greater now. Her deafness makes her fractious during her waking hours. When she’s asleep, I can almost forget. I inhale her baby scent as I hover after my kiss, hoping to breathe in some of her peacefulness, because I am feeling agitated this morning as I get ready to head off to school. I keep thinking, I wonder if the letter has arrived yet. I wonder if they’ve read it.
And it makes me feel a bit sick, if I’m honest, that the shit is about to hit the fan. I know it’s what I wanted but, still, I can imagine how I’d feel if that letter landed on my doormat. My heart would sink, my stomach would churn, I’d be fucking angry at whoever asked a solicitor to send it. I want Isobel to feel all of that. I had to go ahead and send it. I don’t want her to forget.
‘I’ll do it today,’ Hedda had replied yesterday when I saw her again. ‘They should receive it first thing tomorrow morning.’
But now that it is tomorrow morning, well, my feelings are mixed.
So, although I really ought to go to work, I stare at Iris for a bit longer – to remind myself why I’m doing what I’m doing, I suppose, or just to remind myself that I do love her, despite the deafness.
‘Did you always want to have children?’ Hedda had asked me in that meeting on Monday, and I’d toyed with telling her the real answer or one which might give more weight to the ‘case’. I wondered if a judge would be more sympathetic if I said that I’d always wanted to have children. It would add an extra layer of pathos to our plight, if I was a man who had always wanted children but had never met the right woman and, when I finally did, the only child we were ever likely to have was damaged in a terrible w
ay.
But I didn’t always want to have children.
‘Not really,’ I’d told her, truthfully.
People often assume that, as I work with them, I must like children in general. But I don’t. I didn’t go into teaching because I always wanted to work with children; I went into teaching because I had desperately wanted to be an actor but failed in that ambition. Teaching drama, showing off in front of bunch of eleven-to-sixteen-year-olds, was a substitute. A poor substitute.
I like some of the kids, but not many of them, and I don’t like children per se. They have to earn my grudging respect or admiration. Damian O’Flaherty, a boy in my GCSE year group – I like him because he’s bright and a good actor and a bit off the wall.
‘What’s your English set text?’ I asked him last week. I knew it was one of two books, Of Mice and Men or To Kill a Mockingbird.
‘How to Kill a Mockingbird,’ he’d replied, ‘and the sequel, How to Cook a Mockingbird. It’s a best-selling cookery book.’
‘And what recipes does it include?’
It was a throwaway remark, but he took out his phone and showed me a document: ‘Our list’. It was inventive. ‘Owl’s Liver Twist (Dickens)’, I read. ‘Sautéed Wings of a Dove (Henry James)’, ‘Pan to Fry Quails (Chaucer)?’
I laughed. ‘Very funny.’
‘You haven’t seen the best one yet, sir,’ he said, scrolling down the page and showing me ‘Robins in Le Creuset’.
It took me a few moments to see what it was.
‘That is brilliant. Is this what you do in your spare time?’
‘Me and Emma Johnson have been working on it,’ he said, shrugging as if all teenagers whiled away their hours playing literary word games.
So I liked Damian and a few others, but most of them were just grist that passed through the educational mill, teens I had to try to teach who were generally not particularly interested in what I was trying to show them.
And at the moment I’m finding the bright, engaging ones problematic too, because they embody a young adult life my daughter seems unlikely to lead. I resent them for that.
‘I never really thought about it seriously, until I met Maggie,’ I told Hedda on Monday.
Living With It Page 13
