by Anna Hope
‘Nora Barnacle!’ says Cate. ‘Joyce.’ She has spoken before she has thought.
The woman looks up. ‘Yeah.’ She grins. ‘That’s right. She’s certainly growing into the Barnacle bit. Crusty and clinging. Here, poppet.’ She reaches down with her sleeve and swipes at her daughter’s nose. ‘My partner’s writing about Joyce,’ she says. ‘I’m Dea.’ The woman looks up, smiling. ‘So, what happens next?’
Lissa
Her head hurts and her tongue feels swollen. The pint glass beside her bed is empty – she must have woken and drunk it all at some point during the night. She didn’t eat after rehearsals, going straight to the pub with the other actors, and was three glasses of wine down before realizing how hungry she was. By then the pub kitchen was closed, so she had two packets of crisps for her dinner.
From her bed she can see through the window, out to where rain falls dully on to the sodden garden. There must have been a strong wind as the trees have lost many of their leaves. At least the park on the other side of the wall is quiet – you can usually hear the chatter from early on a Saturday, but today the weather has obviously kept the crowds at bay.
She hauls herself out of bed, pulls on her old dressing gown and pads through to the kitchen, filling the glass from the tap and drinking it straight down. She rummages in the cupboard for ibuprofen but finds only an empty packet. A further search turns up a couple of paracetamol, which she swallows gratefully. The fridge yields a lump of Cheddar, badly wrapped and hard, and a bit of butter, knife-gouged and jam-stained. She takes the cheese and nibbles on it, staring out at the rain.
When Declan used to visit, it would send him mad, this habit of hers, of not replacing things, not using things up properly, or putting lids back on empty jars. Once, during the last stint of his living here, she came home from work to find five almost-empty Marmite jars piled up on the little kitchen table with a note beside them: See what I mean?
It was a strange thing about Declan – how he came across as so easy when you met him, loose-limbed and wolf-grinned, happy to sink several Guinnesses in the pub with you, to sit up polishing off a wrap of cocaine, but it was always she somehow that was the messy one – always she that drank more than him and didn’t remember the night before. He would be up and out and running around the park, even on a few hours’ sleep. He liked discipline, did Declan. He liked a clean kitchen. He liked a hairless vagina. He had a streak of cruelty which cut through the craic and kept you in your place. She thinks of Michael, that conversation on the first day of rehearsal – If I could have anyone’s career, it would be his.
She’d lied. Of course she’d seen the film. She’s watched them all. Several times. Declan’s a brilliant actor. He makes clever choices. He works with who he wants. He’s such a good actor she can watch his films and forget who it is and forget that she hates him for a while.
She pulls up the hood on her dressing gown and rolls herself a cigarette, lights it at the table, takes two puffs and puts it out in disgust.
She wants to be touched. When was the last time anyone touched her? When was the last time she had sex? She doesn’t even want sex. She just wants to be touched. She might wither if she isn’t touched soon. She’s no good at being single. Good single people plan for the weekend – they know the wretchedness of this ambush and head it off at the pass with yoga and brunch dates and exhibitions and dinners – but she has nothing planned, only a hangover and her own company and the long day ahead.
She considers going back to bed and attempting sleep again, but that feels even more depressing, so she makes herself some tea and brings it into the living room. The blinds are drawn and she leaves them that way.
Her eye falls on the Bergman DVD and she remembers Nathan’s face in the library cafe, laughing at her as she scrawled on her hand with his pen.
Do they discuss her together – he and Hannah?
Lissa’s thinking of doing a PhD. Oh hahahahahahahaaa.
She takes out her phone and scrolls back to the brief text exchange.
Thanks for the Bergman. Loved it. Liss. X
I’m glad. Hope you got yourself a notebook. See you in the library sometime. Nx
Since then she has been back to the library a couple of times, got herself a reader’s card, ordered up some books on Russian history. She likes it there, likes putting her possessions in the locker, likes drinking good coffee in the cafe. She looks for him, often, but has not seen him there again.
Her bag is on the sofa beside her, contents spilling out: script, scarf, tobacco, phone. She pulls the script towards her. It is folded open at the scene they were working on yesterday, she and Johnny, the scene where Yelena berates Vanya on behalf of all men: You recklessly destroy forests, all of you, and soon there won’t be anything left standing on the face of the earth.
It is only the end of the first week and yet there is already an atmosphere in the rehearsal room. Klara is prone to outbursts, flying off the handle at the slightest provocation. Greg, the actor playing Astrov, was half an hour late on Thursday, a doctor’s appointment for his son having overrun. He was screamed at and told he would be sacked if it happened again.
Usually, by this stage, at the end of the first week, there is a sense of how things are going, but this time she cannot tell – yesterday, for instance, when she was working through Yelena’s monologue, the director’s expression was one of barely contained disdain, ultimately erupting in her banging the table. ‘Stop this microwaved emotion!’
Microwaved emotion, it is rapidly becoming clear, is Klara’s favourite phrase. They went on to try the monologue several different ways but each time Klara shook her head, muttering under her breath. Yet when it came to Johnny’s turn, Vanya’s speech to Yelena – You’re my happiness, my life, you’re my youth … let me look at you, let me listen to your voice – Klara sat back, nodding, murmuring her assent. If she were a cat, she would have purred.
There is no denying that Johnny is a superb actor. Last night she heard Greg raving to Michael in the pub about a performance he’d seen Johnny give twenty years ago in Liverpool – Best Hamlet of his generation. Made me want to be an actor. Total fucking tragedy he’s not a star.
Despite the fact that most of the men and most of the women in the cast seem to seek his approval in some unspoken way, Johnny keeps himself to himself. He didn’t stay long at the pub last night, just the one pint, which he drank at the bar in the company of Richard, the older actor playing Serebryakov. He is careful with his energies, unlike the others, who spill over already into easy intimacies, into kisses and hugs and the swapping of tales. As he left she overheard him telling Richard that he had his kids this weekend. They always want to go to soft play – it’s hell on earth with a hangover.
She has no idea what Johnny thinks of her. His expression is unreadable. Yesterday, when she was rehearsing alone with Klara, she saw Johnny slip quietly into the room. He stayed at the back silently watching her – those blue eyes, the calm intensity of his gaze.
A thought comes to her, and as it does she slides down further on the sofa, opens her dressing gown, reaches into her knickers and puts her hand to her crotch. She closes her eyes and thinks of herself standing there, alone on the stage, and of Johnny watching her, of taking off her clothes for him, one slow layer at a time. And his face, his blue eyes, the way he watches, the way he wants her – and then it is not Johnny, it is Nathan, Nathan sitting in Johnny’s place, at the back of the room, watching her, wanting her, and her standing naked now, and she is coming, coming into her hand.
She lies there, gathering her breath, staring up at the ceiling.
Then she curls over herself, groans and pushes her head into the cushion with shame.
Hannah
‘Shall we do something this weekend?’
Nathan is standing in the shower. It is the second day after the transfer. The door to the terrace is open, and autumn sunshine streams into the flat.
‘Like what?’ he calls over the water.
‘Like – I don’t know – get out of London? Go to the countryside. The sea.’
‘Yeah, why not? Oh, wait …’ He turns off the shower and reaches for a towel. ‘I’ve got that paper to turn around for publication.’
She watches him towel himself dry, stretch in a shaft of sun. He comes towards her. ‘You look well,’ he says.
‘I feel it.’
He tastes of coffee and toothpaste and soap.
‘But you should,’ he calls behind him, as he goes into the bedroom and pulls out a pair of boxers and jeans from the chest of drawers. ‘Get out, I mean. Why don’t you go and see someone? See Cate? Go to Canterbury? Or – what’s that place by the sea? Nearby? The one with the oysters?’
‘Whitstable.’
‘Yeah, that’s it.’ He comes back over towards her, buttoning up his jeans. ‘Why not go there?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Wait. Can you eat oysters? If you’re—?’
‘Oh. No,’ she says, closing her eyes, warmth inside, warmth without. ‘No, I don’t think you can.’
In the end she does nothing – finding that she does not want to stray far from home after all. But as she goes about her weekend, she thinks of the embryos inside her. Often, she takes out the photograph and stares at it, tracing them with her finger, those two points of light, surrounded by an immensity of dark.
On Monday, the fourth day, they call. She is in a meeting, and feels her phone buzz in her bag. She excuses herself, goes out into the corridor and answers.
‘I’m sorry,’ the nurse says. ‘Nothing has been frozen. The other embryos were not doing well.’
‘Oh,’ says Hannah. ‘Thank you.’
The pulse, the flicker of life. Gone out.
‘What happens?’ she says softly. ‘To the other embryos? Can you tell me?’
‘I …’ The nurse falters. She sounds very young. ‘They’re … disposed of, I imagine. I’m sorry, no one’s ever—’
‘It’s OK,’ says Hannah. ‘Thanks.’
On the sixth day, a Wednesday, she goes to meet Lissa at the theatre. She gets out of the Tube at Embankment and walks slowly over Hungerford Bridge, where dusk is falling and the lights are jaunty in the river.
The clear days have continued and the nights are crisp. She pulls her coat tighter around her, weaving around the buskers, finding a pound for a young girl who sits at the top of the stairs. She tries to remember what play they are going to see. A family drama. Lissa’s choice. Theatre rather than cinema this time. In truth, she does not want to go inside. She would like to keep walking, this clear autumn evening, carefully, carefully along the river – a pilgrim, carrying her lights inside her. How long would it take to reach the sea?
The Long Bar is thronged. A jazz band plays in the corner. Hannah scans the space for Lissa, and finds her eventually, tucked away on a leather bench by the picture window, the remains of an espresso on the table in front of her. Her head is bent over a script, her pencil poised, her mouth moving soundlessly. Hannah touches her shoulder and she jumps. ‘Oh, hey.’ Lissa rises and kisses her cheek. She is wearing a little more make-up than usual; her long hair is pinned on top of her head with Japanese combs. She looks extraordinarily like her mother. Hannah perches beside her on the bench.
‘Did you have the thingy?’ says Lissa.
‘The transfer. Yes.’
‘And how did it go?’
‘Good, I think. I hope. Is this your script? How’s it going?’
‘Oh, OK,’ says Lissa, frowning, folding the script in half and putting it in her bag. ‘She’s tough. The director. I mean, I knew she was going to be, but she really is. I’m not sure she thinks I’m any good.’
Hannah looks past Lissa, to the wide river outside, the winking lights.
‘It’s just so … gladiatorial,’ Lissa is saying. ‘Having to prove yourself every minute, every day. There’s nowhere to hide. And the guy playing Vanya. He’s brilliant – but I just don’t know where I am with him.’
Oh Lissa, she wants to say. You chose this. Are actors never happy?
What she says is, ‘Sure, I understand.’
The bell rings for the performance. Lissa lifts the tickets from her bag and Hannah follows her into the dark mouth of the theatre.
The play is long, the cast large, the tickets cheap and the seats far from the stage. Hannah can’t keep track of who is who, and the action seems to be happening in a little box very far away.
In the interval they go outside and wander without speaking over to the river wall.
Lissa takes out her pouch of tobacco. ‘Do you mind?’
Hannah shakes her head. Lissa rolls and lights up and blows the smoke away from them both. They fall silent, watching the water. Beneath them the small beach has appeared, its sand and rocks glistening in the half-light. Hannah breathes in the tang of mud and salt and dirt.
‘I’m thinking of studying,’ Lissa says, ‘thinking of making some changes in my life.’
‘Oh?’ Hannah brings herself back. She remembers then. ‘Didn’t you see Nath at the library? A few weeks ago? I’m sure he mentioned something about it.’
Lissa nods as a thin stream of smoke leaves her mouth.
‘Something about a PhD?’
‘Yeah. Maybe.’
‘What would you want to do with it?’
Lissa shrugs. ‘I’m not sure. I’ve been doing some reading.’
‘Really, Liss?’ Hannah pulls her coat close around her. ‘If I had a fiver for every overqualified person with a PhD who applies for an internship …’
Lissa gives a brief laugh. ‘You’d be rich. I know.’ She turns to where the interval crowds are making their way back inside. ‘We should go back.’
‘Would you mind …?’ says Hannah. ‘I’m really tired. Do you mind if I don’t?’ She wants to go home, to keep herself close, she doesn’t want to spill a drop.
Lissa takes a quick last drag, then chucks her cigarette over the wall. ‘Sure,’ she says. She leans in, a quick hug. ‘You look after yourself, Han.’
Hannah walks towards the steps, up to Waterloo Bridge. She waits for her bus. Thinks of the river beneath her, fast-flowing, thinks of its course – out through Wapping, out beyond the Thames Barrier, out, out, salt and sweet water swirling as its wide mouth meets the sea.
As the days go on she can feel it, she is sure of it. Traction. A catching. The points of light have buried themselves inside her and taken root. Her breasts are heavier. There is a fullness inside her that was not there before.
‘It’s happening,’ she says to Nathan over breakfast, on the morning of the eighth day.
He reaches over and takes her hand. He is smiling, but it does not reach his eyes.
‘What?’ says Hannah. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong, I just – don’t want to get my hopes up.’
‘Really? Why?’
‘Hannah, please.’
‘I’m telling you.’ She grips his hand. ‘I can feel it. It’s happening. I know.’
On the afternoon of the eleventh day, when she goes to the toilet at work, there is a trace of blood in her knickers, tiny, but there.
She looks away. Looks back again. She wants to scream but she tries to breathe.
It is nothing. It is normal. She goes back to her desk and googles ‘blood post IVF’. Her search leads her to the message boards, where she reads the blood could be a good thing – implantation bleeding. Meaning she is right, and they are burying themselves inside her, those twin points of light.
She does not visit the toilet again. She holds on for the rest of the day. She works on a report. She takes a conference call with the States during which she smiles and nods and takes diligent, copious notes. There will be no more blood. It is nothing, it is normal, it has worked. Everything is fine. Itisnothingitisnormalithasworkedeverythingisfine.
On the Tube journey home every bump of the carriage makes her wince, and there is pain now, deep in her abdomen, a claw
tracing its way along her womb. By the time she reaches home she can hold off no longer. Her knickers are soaked with blood. It is over. It is done.
She is curled up on their bed when Nathan returns from work.
‘Hey.’ He kisses her.
‘I’m bleeding,’ she says to him.
‘What? Oh God. Oh Han, I’m sorry.’ He does not sound surprised.
‘You’re sorry?’ Her voice is dull. ‘Who for? For me? For you? For our child? Who doesn’t exist?’
‘All of it. You, mostly, Han.’ He lies on the bed behind her, fits himself to her back, laces his arm around her waist. ‘Are you OK? How long have you been here?’
‘An hour. Or two.’
‘You’re cold,’ he says, holding her closer.
And she is aware of her body suddenly, of how he is right – how cold she is, how it has grown cold.
‘Oh, Hannah.’ He puts his cheek on her shoulder. ‘Oh Han, my love.’
The next morning she is hunched at her computer before Nathan wakes.
‘What’s going on?’ he says, coming into the room, dropping a kiss on her head.
‘I’ve found a clinic. Harley Street.’
She feels his fingers grip her shoulders. ‘Hannah—’
‘Please,’ she says. ‘Just look.’ She gestures to the pictures of babies on the screen.
‘No.’ He moves away, over to the window.
‘Nathan—’
‘No, Hannah. You promised. You promised this would be the last time.’
‘This man is the best. He’s—’
‘Hannah. I’m not listening to this.’
‘Why?’ She is standing, fists clenched. ‘Why?’
‘Hannah? Can’t you just … Just let me … Can I hug you? Please?’
‘Why? Why do you want to hug me?’
‘Hannah. God, Han. Why do you think?’
‘I’m going,’ she says. ‘I’ve made an appointment. I’ll pay for it. Come with me. Please. Just – come.’
True North
