Expectation

by Anna Hope

  She could leave, leave this house, pull on her jeans and boots and walk away from here, away from this wailing creature that she cannot satisfy, from this husband wrapped in the interstellar blankness of his sleep. From herself. She would not be the first woman to do so. In the bedroom her son’s cries grow louder – a small animal, afraid.

  She hurries to the toilet and pisses quickly, then stumbles back to the bedroom, where Tom is howling. She lies beside him, pulls him back on to her breast. Of course she will not leave – it is the last – the very last – thing she would do – but her heart is beating strangely and her breath is ragged and perhaps she will have no choice, perhaps she will die – die like her mother before her, and leave her son to be brought up by his father and his family in this sterile house in the far reaches of Kent.

  Tom flutters finally on her breast, slackens and sleeps. But she is wide awake now. She sits up in bed and pulls back the curtains. Through the window she can see the car park, where the cars sit in their neat, obedient rows, then the dark shape of the river, and beyond that the orange lights from the ring-road, where the traffic is already thickening; lorries moving out to the coast, or returning from the Channel ports, cars on their way to London, the great greased machine of it lumbering towards the light. She feels her heart, the adrenaline swill of her blood. The moon comes out from behind clouds, illuminating the room, the rucked duvet, her tiny son beside her, abandoned now to sleep, his arms flung wide. She wants to protect him. How can she protect him from all the things that might fall upon his unguarded head? She reaches out and touches his hair, and as she does so sees the picture tattooed on her wrist, silver in the moonlight. She brings back her hand, traces the image slowly with her opposite fingertip – a filigree spider, a filigree web – a relic, now, from a different life.

  She wants to see someone. To speak to someone. Someone from another lifetime. Someone who made her feel safe.

  She is sitting on her bench, facing the river, where a low mist is rising from the water and a tangle of nettles clogs the bank. There is movement on the towpath now, a thin stream of humanity; joggers, early-morning workers, heads down, heading towards town. Tom is calm at least, a warm weight on her chest, face framed by a little bear hat. He woke again at five or so this morning and would not be placated, so they came out here. Her phone tells her it is almost seven o’clock, which means the supermarket will be open soon, which means there is somewhere warm to go, at least, and so she stands and follows the banks of the little tributary, over the humped bridge, under the underpass and out by the car park. By the time she joins the small crowd outside the supermarket doors, it has begun to drizzle.

  Tom grinches in the sling and Cate shushes him as a uniformed woman comes out and casts a look to the sky, then goes back inside, and the doors slide open. The people bestir themselves and follow, funnelled through the bakery aisle, where the heated air circulates the smell of sugar and yeast and dough. She makes for the baby section, filling her basket with several little foil packets. She bought these packets in ones or twos at first – always sure the next meal would be the one she prepared properly – now she buys them in bulk. Nappies too; at first she was sure she would use washables, but after the trauma of the birth she started on disposables and then came the move, and now here she is lifting huge packets of nappies into her basket, the sort guaranteed to take half a millennium to decompose.

  It is a two-minute walk back home, past the trees encased in concrete and wire cages, the bin store with its padlocks, the car park with its barriers, the signs alerting you to the anti-climb paint on the walls. She reaches her front door and lets herself into the narrow kitchen, puts down the bag and lifts Tom from the sling and into his high chair. She selects one of the little foil packages – banana and blueberry – and Tom holds out his hands for it as she untwists the seal and holds the plastic teat to his lips. He sucks away happily, like a little astronaut with space food.

  ‘Morning.’ Sam wanders in, hair mussed from sleep. He looks as though he slept in the clothes he was wearing last night – a faded band T-shirt and boxers. Straight to the kettle he goes, without looking up; hand out to test the temperature, switch flicked, used grounds dumped into the sink, the cafetière barely rinsed before the fresh grounds are shaken in. The swaddled luxury of the morning trance – no point in speaking till the caffeine has entered the blood.

  ‘Morning,’ she says.

  Sam looks to her, eyes with an underwater glaze. ‘Hey.’ He raises a hand.

  ‘What time did you get in?’

  ‘Late,’ he says with a shrug. ‘Two-ish. We had some beers after the shift.’

  ‘Sleep well?’

  ‘Oh. OK.’ He sighs, cricking his neck. ‘Not great, but OK.’

  How many hours straight through? Even a late night gives him, what? Six, maybe seven hours of uninterrupted sleep – the thought of it, of seven straight hours, of how it would feel. Despite this, he still looks tired, with heavy shadows beneath his eyes – the indoor pallor of the professional chef. He sleeps in the spare room, which is no longer, it seems, spare: it is his room now, just as the room that should be theirs is hers – hers and their son’s, Tom’s cot unused, a dumping ground for clothes, while Tom sleeps with Cate. Easier that way, for the many, many times Tom wakes.

  He turns back to the coffee, plunges, pours. ‘You want one?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He makes his way over to the fridge for milk. ‘On an early one today,’ he says. ‘Doing lunch.’

  He works as a sous in a restaurant in the centre of town. Ten years behind London, was what she heard him say on the phone to a friend back in Hackney the other night, but OK, you know, OK. Getting some input already.

  He was on the verge of opening a place in Hackney Wick, before the rents went crazy. Before she got pregnant. Before they moved out here.

  He hands her her coffee, takes a sip of his own. ‘Did you wash my whites?’

  She looks around, sees the pile in the corner, three days’ worth. ‘Sorry, no.’

  ‘Really? I left them in your way, so you wouldn’t forget.’ Sam goes over to the pile, lifts the least stained overall to the light, starts scrubbing it viciously with the scourer at the sink. Outside the drizzle is thickening into rain.

  ‘What are you two up to today?’ he says.

  ‘Washing, I suppose. Unpacking.’

  ‘What about that playgroup? The one Mum mentioned?’ He nods to the brightly coloured flyer stuck up on the fridge, the flyer Alice brought around the other day. Alice, Sam’s mother, with her concerned face, mouth pursed somewhere between a grimace and a smile. It’s a lovely little group, it really is. You might make some friends. Alice, the mastermind of the plan to buy a little house for you all. In Canterbury. Alice, their saviour. Alice, who has a key to the lovely little house and likes to pop round unannounced.

  ‘Yeah,’ Cate says. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘And we’ve got that thing tonight,’ Sam says, giving up on the scouring, hanging his overall on a chair to dry, ‘don’t forget. At Mark and Tamsin’s.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘I’ll pick you up, shall I?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘But Cate?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Try and get out today, won’t you? Take Tom out?’

  ‘I was out while you were still asleep. Buying nappies and food.’

  ‘I mean out-out.’

  ‘Define out,’ she says under her breath.

  Sam looks at the kitchen. ‘You know,’ he says, taking a tea towel and wiping down the counter. ‘It’s really easy to clean at the end of the day. You just do what chefs do and put the day’s tea towel into the wash. Along with my whites.’ He holds up the damp dirty cloth. ‘Where’s the washing basket?’

  She looks up at him. ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘You just need a system,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘A system is all you need.’ He puts the cloth on the side, then leans in and scoops Tom
out of the high chair, lifting him up above his head, and their baby squeals with delight, kicking his heels. The moment plays out, passes, and then Sam gives him back, dropping a hand on Cate’s shoulder. ‘Knackered,’ he says, to no one in particular.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Me too.’

  Lissa

  It’s at the Green Room, Wardour Street. Scene of too many castings to count. The receptionist is young and glossy and hardly looks up as Lissa gives her name.

  ‘Lissa Dane. Sorry, I’m a bit—’

  ‘It’s fine. They’re running late anyway.’ Her name is ticked off a long list, and a clipboard and biro are handed over the counter. ‘Take a seat. Fill in your details.’

  Lissa nods, she knows the drill. A quick glance at the room: four men, two women, the women both in their thirties, one dark, one red-haired. The redhead is speaking on her phone, low and stressed and apologetic: ‘No, no, I know I said half past, but they’re running late. Not sure. Half an hour maybe. Maybe more. Do you mind? I can come round and fetch him from yours. Oh God, thank God, thanks, I owe you one, thanks, thanks.’ The woman flicks off the phone and catches Lissa’s eye. ‘Forty fucking minutes,’ she whispers furiously.

  Lissa pulls a sympathetic face. Not great, but not so bad. She’s had worse – has waited for almost two hours to be seen. But then, she doesn’t have kids at the school gate. She glances at the casting brief in her hands.

  A PTA meeting, a teacher and two parents, both concerned about their son.

  At the top of the page she recognizes the name of a well-known brand of chocolate cookie. Across from her a man is diligently marking and highlighting his piece of paper. She flicks to the second sheet and begins filling out her details.

  Height. 5’7.

  Weight. She pauses, can’t remember the last time she was weighed. Sixty? She usually puts sixty. She scribbles it down.

  Waist. 30.

  Hips. 38.

  She tries to tell the truth nowadays; it’s not worth stretching it on these things. For a long time she put any old thing down, not lying, just being … inexact. But then she was caught out at that shoot in Berlin; that old flat with the hundreds of Japanese paper lanterns, the assistant bringing out outfit after outfit, none of which fitted the measurements she had scribbled down in the London casting a month before, as the little designer fussed around her, tutting his disapproval.

  But you look so fet. So fet in these.

  In the end, she had to borrow the costume assistant’s trousers. In the end, she was cut out of the ad.

  As she scrawls across the pages, Hannah’s comment from last night comes back to her: a one-woman show. Directors I Have Known and Been Rejected By. It was funny, of course it was, but it had stung. She wouldn’t make a comment like that about Hannah.

  Hey! Han! What about All the Times I’ve Tried IVF and It’s Failed. What about that? Wouldn’t that be hilarious?

  But of course the comparison doesn’t stand. Because nothing beats Hannah’s pain.

  The casting director puts in an appearance, and the atmosphere lifts and sharpens. ‘All right, folks. Running a bit late.’

  He is tanned, meaty, running to fat. His face the face of a self-satisfied baby. But he gets her seen for these things often, and so Lissa smiles and laughs and flirts with him despite herself.

  The red-haired woman is up. Lissa watches her seal away her fury and paint on a smile.

  She gives a quick, reflexive glance to her phone. Still no news on the recall. The Chekhov. That in itself doesn’t mean anything – you can wait weeks for these things and then be surprised, but she can feel hope begin its long, tidal ebb. By tomorrow, if she has still not heard anything, she will be twitchy; by the weekend, fractured and emotional; by the beginning of next week, defensive, patched up. She has become more, not less, thin-skinned as time has gone on.

  She ignores the hat and glove measurements – sometimes it seems as though these forms haven’t changed since the 1950s – puts down her shoe size, then stands and hands the paper back to the young woman behind the desk.

  The young woman rises. She is tall and skinny and wearing black. She picks up the Polaroid camera before her and waves it languidly towards the blank wall.

  Lissa sees the other women look up as she takes her place against the exposed brick, their quick assessment of her figure, her clothes. Looking for the shadows, the wrinkles, the greys.

  She arranges her face.

  She used not to go up for these things at all.

  When she left drama school, her new agent, who met her sitting on a yoga block and ran briskly through her impressive client list, said she wouldn’t put her up for commercials unless she really wanted her to.

  And if you do, said her new agent, then they’ll only be for Europe. We wouldn’t want you to be seen over here.

  They both laughed at that. Hahaha. That was when she used to go up for three movies a week. When the casting directors made sure you never crossed paths with anyone else up for the same part. When you waited in hushed anterooms clutching your script, a racehorse, primed and ready. When the director leaped up as you entered the room, holding out his hand (always his, never hers). Thanks so much for coming in.

  The Polaroid clicks and whirrs.

  ‘Thanks,’ the young woman says, wafting the photograph dry. ‘Take a seat.’

  Lissa does not sit. Instead she makes her way down the line to the small bathroom to check her face. In the mirror she sees that her mascara has run and little black dots mark her under-eye. Fuck. She rubs at them with her thumb. No matter how good you feel. No matter how well you think you have pulled together an outfit, put your game face on, something always occurs to prick it.

  You’ve just got to play the game, Lissa, her first agent’s assistant had sighed down the phone to her once, when she had refused to buy a Wonderbra for an audition. You know that. They said they wanted someone with bigger boobs. The Wonderbra had been cited in the phone call in which the agent dropped her.

  She makes her way back out to the waiting room, threads past the legs of the waiting actors, takes a seat and closes her eyes.

  She has tried.

  As time has passed, as her twenties have given way to her thirties with little to show for them, she has really tried to play the game. Has bumped down through three agents, each further down the food chain than the last. Has gone from never having commercial castings to having nothing else. From being protected from the scent of desperation to being sure that she gives it off, sweating from her pores, at castings, at parties, in the street.

  Please. Give me a job. Any job. Please, please, please.

  Like that programme her mother used to watch in the eighties. Gis a job. Gis a job.

  ‘Lissa. Rod. Daniel.’

  She snaps open her eyes. The casting director is back. It is her turn. She makes her way into the darkened box where two men sit on a sofa, scrolling idly through their phones. The air is stale, the table before them littered with coffee cups and half-eaten sushi and e-cigarettes. Neither of the men looks up from their screens.

  She takes her spot on the X on the floor. The camera pans up and down her body. She says her name, says the name of her agent. Turns to the left. Turns to the right. Shows her hands to the camera.

  When the men have done the same, the casting director claps his hands.

  ‘OK, so, Lissa, you’re the mum, Rod, you’re the father. Dan, you’re playing the teacher.’

  Dan nods wildly. Lissa can see he read the brief last night, since he has come dressed for the part in a jacket with patches on the elbows, and a tie.

  ‘So, Lissa, Rod, you sit here.’ The casting director gestures to a couple of chairs behind a table. ‘And Dan, you here on the other side. And here’s the cookies.’

  Lissa looks at where a plate of cookies sits on a stool, anaemic-looking in the fetid air.

  ‘So yeah, why not just do a bit of improvising then?’

  One of the men on the sofa glances briefl
y up at the monitor, then back down at his phone, as Dan leans forward, eager to begin.

  ‘So – erm, Mrs … Lacey. Mr … Lacey, I’m a little, um, worried about … Josh.’ He sits back, obviously pleased with this first sally.

  ‘Oh?’ The actor beside Lissa leans forward now. He is handsome in a bland sort of way. She can see his muscles tensed beneath the cotton of his shirt. ‘That’s very … concerning.’

  ‘Look at me.’

  Lissa looks up, startled, to where the casting director is reading from a script in a gruff baritone.

  ‘The cookies,’ the casting director says to her, waving her gaze away, ‘I’m the voice of the cookies. Look at the cookies, not at me.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Right.’

  ‘Look at me,’ he says again.

  She looks down at the cookies.

  ‘You know you want to. Yeah. That’s right. Come a little closer.’

  Lissa leans tentatively towards the plate.

  ‘Yeah.’ His voice drops another half an octave. Is he moving into an American accent? He sounds like Barry White.

  The men on the sofa have both looked up now. She can see the monitor – a tight close-up of her face, her cheeks red, her expression confused.

  ‘Yeah,’ the casting director murmurs. He too is looking up at the monitor now, waiting.

  Silence.

  ‘Go on,’ he says, in his normal voice.

  ‘Sorry?’ She can feel sweat spreading over her back. ‘I’m a bit lost here.’

  Dan leans forward, eager as ever. ‘You’re supposed to pick them up,’ he says. ‘It said in the brief. To shove them in your mouth.’ He points to the paper. ‘It says you can’t concentrate on the teacher. On what the teacher’s saying. Because of the cookies. You just can’t help yourself.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’

  The men look at her: the two actors, the casting director, the cameraman, the men on the sofa. One of the sofa men marks something on a piece of paper. The other reads it, nods, looks back down at his phone.