by Julie Cohen
‘You love Claire,’ she whispered. ‘Claire.’
‘Yes. But look at what you’re doing for me. And then when Jarvis showed me how much you’ve given up for me … I can’t ignore that. I can’t just take the baby and leave you behind. He’s yours too.’ He raked his hair again. ‘It’s going through my head and through my head and it’s driving me mad. I don’t know what to do for the best. I don’t know how to make it better.’
The pain on his face was so naked that Romily had to hold tight to the sofa cushion she sat on, plant her feet hard on the floor.
‘I think I might have ruined everything with Claire. I don’t know if she can trust me any more. Last time I saw her, she was like a stranger. She looked as if she hated me. And I can’t blame her. But you – I can’t disappoint you, can I? I’ve already done the worst thing to you that I can do.’
‘No.’
‘She asked me to choose and I can’t. It has to be your choice, Romily. You’ve got the most at stake. You’ve got our son. He belongs to you. Do you want him?’ He gripped his hair, as if he were going to tear it out by the roots. ‘And if you want him … do you want me, too?’
41
Listening
THERE WERE NO seats left in the back rows, but Claire slipped into a lone chair against the back wall while everyone was chatting. The hall was decorated for Christmas; a large tree sparkled on the side of the stage. Paper chains made by Year Seven festooned the walls. Beside Claire’s seat, a long table covered with a green cloth and tinsel held rows of glasses waiting to be filled with wine and squash. It was tended by Octavia and Felicity, two of Claire’s former A-level students. When they spotted Claire their eyes widened in surprise but they recovered themselves quickly and smiled at her. She’d go and speak with them before she left, ask them about their lives, and never mind about the gossip in the sixth-form common room.
She had been to dozens of these, maybe hundreds. Usually she sat up at the front with the rest of the music department where she would be visible to the students in case they needed her. Over the heads of the audience, Claire could see a woman with short iron-grey hair sitting in the front row beside Lindsay. She was wearing a navy-blue jacket with visibly padded shoulders. Claire would speak with her, too; she wouldn’t want her replacement, Mrs Radcliffe, to think she was afraid of her.
Claire had changed three times before she left the house. She had scheduled an appointment for a trim and blow-dry at a salon in a Brickham department store where she had never been before. She had painted her nails carefully with transparent lacquer and she had spent a full forty-five minutes applying make-up, trying for a well-groomed effect that would mask the shadows of weariness on her face and yet still look natural and effortless. War paint, all of it. A necessary façade. Nevertheless, when she reached the St Dominick’s car park she still had to sit for five minutes before she got out of the car. She had to remind herself of Max’s latest email. I’d love it if you could come. I wouldn’t be doing this if not for you. PS I am scared shitless.
She didn’t see Mr and Mrs Gore-Thomas. That was good for her, and sad for Max. But there were quite a few members of staff, even apart from the music department and the housemothers, who went to almost every concert; it was compulsory for the Music A-level and GCSE students to attend, but there were more than she would have expected filling the rows of chairs, boys and girls wearing their slouchy home clothes, their hair waxed into messiness or pulled into sloppy ponytails. She wondered if Max had invited them, if he had started spending more time with his classmates. Or if they had come out of curiosity, to see what he’d been doing with that guitar, to see what all the fuss had been about in October.
The programme was a white A5 sheet, printed off the computer with no pretence of decoration. MAX GORE-THOMAS it said at the top, followed by a list of names: Mr Doughty, Angel, Max, Alan, Mrs Greasley. Most of them she recognized, and she had heard the pieces here in school, or he had sent her a recording. Her own name was at the bottom of the page, after Alan. Claire Lawrence. No Mrs. He hadn’t told her about that piece.
The curtains rustled and Max emerged from between them carrying his guitar. He didn’t make eye-contact with the audience, just sat down and arranged the guitar on his lap. His head hung down in that familiar posture. He began to play.
The music struck Claire, bright and clear and perfect. He had been practising. And he’d grown musically as well as physically. The mp3 files he’d sent hadn’t captured it. Claire closed her eyes and the people emerged from his music. With her eyes closed she could see them as well: the newsagent with his aggressive stare, the wandering dreamer, the skipping child. Max himself, sullen and angry, shot through with jagged shocks of clarity. When he played Mrs Greasley Claire heard the audience’s laughter of recognition, but she didn’t laugh. She listened. That was what Max needed of her, for her to listen with her entire mind and her entire heart.
Between pieces there was silence. Claire listened to that as well: to the wonder that this boy was creating in the audience. She listened to what she, his teacher, had done for him, not by teaching him, not by standing up for him. Merely by giving him his own space, letting him find his own way.
When the mother theme came at last, she recognized it: slow and soft, warm and sweet, hopeful and longing, full of the smell of a baby’s head, a cheek tilted against hers, the brush of eyelashes. The papery skin of her mother’s hand, which had once been the most beautiful hand she had known.
A tear fell on her lap.
The song finished, and in the still moment when it ended, Claire looked up at Max on the stage. He was gazing straight at her.
And then she realized: this was the last song. The mother song was her song. He’d named it for her.
Claire stood up and she smiled at him. With the rest of the room, she applauded this gifted, determined, lonely boy. Her lonely boy. She wiped her eyes with her arm as the audience clapped and clapped and clapped and Max stood up, bowed slightly, and went through the curtains again.
The applause lasted quite a long time, far past the time when Claire realized that Max wouldn’t be coming back out to take another bow. She wanted to rush backstage to congratulate him, but with something like this, there would be a crush back there. He’d have enough to be thinking about. She’d have a glass of the school’s half-warm white wine and wait for him. She remembered how it had used to be at her own school concerts: afterwards she wanted to talk with her friends, go through it point-by-point. But she always wanted her mother to be there too, waiting.
Being where she was, she was one of the first to take a glass, and she could exchange no more than a few enthusiastic words of praise with Felicity before the rush for drinks began. She stepped back, half in the corner. It was a good place to observe. She sipped her wine and listened to what people were saying about the concert.
Amazing. So talented. I could see Mrs Greasley when he was playing! I thought he was a bit of a freak, you know – but now I understand.
‘I had no idea,’ said a man not far from her, a tall man with dark hair. From the back, she could make out that he was greying at the temples; she recognized the voice. She stepped a little bit further back into the corner, in case Mr Gore-Thomas turned around. He was talking to Max’s head of house, Ernest Doughty. ‘No bloody idea he could play like that. I don’t know music, but I know what I like. Astounding. Truly astounding.’
‘I’m so glad you could come for drinks tonight,’ said Ernest. ‘I know how busy this time of year is for you.’
‘No, no, think nothing of it. Had to be done, as you say.’
Ernest caught Claire’s eye over Gore-Thomas’s shoulder. He nodded and Claire thought she saw him wink.
‘Dad?’
Max’s voice rang out over the chatter. He was still holding his guitar and he was staring at his father. Mr Gore-Thomas went straight to him through the crowd. He put his arm around Max’s shoulders. ‘Proud of you, son,’ Claire heard him say, as Max flushed
a deep red.
She put her drink quietly on the table and made her way out of the Hall.
Veronica was coming the other way up the corridor, holding two more bottles of wine. ‘Claire!’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that extraordinary?’
‘Yes, it was.’
‘I’m so glad you came to see it. Hasn’t it all turned out so well? Listen, you must come in very soon so we can talk about when you’ll be returning to us.’ She smiled broadly.
‘Actually,’ said Claire, ‘I don’t think I will be returning to St Dominick’s.’
‘You’re going to be a full-time mum?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll be applying elsewhere. I’d really appreciate a good reference from you, if you feel you can write one.’
Veronica frowned. ‘When did you decide this?’
‘Just now. Have a lovely evening.’ She nodded cordially at Veronica and left the school.
She felt strangely calm as she drove back to Sonning, calmer than she had felt in weeks, months – maybe even years. When she got to the house, she first put Bach on the stereo, as loud as she liked, and then she opened the kitchen drawer and found a screwdriver and an Allen key. She went upstairs, where the music filtered through the floorboards and the walls of the old house and became muted and mellow.
Max had needed her. And that had been truly wondrous, a small miracle of giving and listening. He had thought of her, at least for a little while, as something like a mother. But now he had come into his own. His father, at last, had heard him. Max didn’t need her any more. She would still be his friend, still be his former teacher, but the mother theme wasn’t really hers. She had only borrowed it.
And that was all right, too. It was the natural order of things. There were many ways for her to be needed again. There were other lives than the one she had imagined for herself.
It took her until nearly three o’clock in the morning to dismantle the cot, the chest of drawers, the changing table. To take down the curtains, the mobile; to fold up the blankets and the clothes and to roll up the rug. In the dark, with all the front lights on and the door open so that she could still hear the Brandenburg Concertos, she fitted each piece carefully into her car. It filled every space aside from the driver’s seat, but packed away like this, it didn’t seem like so much after all.
And then she went to her bed, lay down, and went to sleep to wait until the sun came up.
42
The Answer
HE ASKED HER if she wanted him. And then he looked at her, straight on, right into her eyes.
In her dreams, they hadn’t been here in the front room of her poky flat with its listing Christmas tree. They’d been in a field, maybe. Or on top of a mountain. It was always in an alternative universe where Claire didn’t exist, or where he’d never met her. Where they’d hung out together as friends until one day he had turned to her, in a field or on the mountain or maybe just in the student union, and looked at her just like this. Straight on, right into her eyes.
She could taste his kiss. She’d tasted it thousands of times in her imagination, always with guilt. She knew what he would feel like in her arms, the large strong length of him. She knew him for a good father, for a loyal friend, for a dreamer and an optimist, for a man whose smile and force of will could make anything happen. For the man her daughter wanted as a parent.
Eleven years she had loved him. Eleven years that had to be worth something more than yearning and missed chances. And now he had asked her if she wanted him.
And now he was holding his breath waiting for her answer. Waiting to hear how she felt.
Why do everyone’s feelings matter except for yours, Rom? he had asked.
In her dreams, he had always chosen her.
‘No,’ she said.
He let his breath out. She knew she was not imagining that it was in relief.
43
Now
NOW THAT SHE’D made her decision, Claire wanted to get it over with as soon as possible, but Romily’s flat was in the middle of town, around the corner from Berkshire’s biggest shopping centre, and it was the last weekend before Christmas. She’d meant to get up at the crack of dawn, but she’d slept too late and now the traffic queues began on the outskirts of town and snarled up every road leading in the direction of the car parks. She sat in her car, which was filled to the brim, and tapped her fingers against the steering wheel. With Brickham’s one-way system she couldn’t even change her mind and turn around. It was raining a grey icy rain, and though the town Christmas lights blazed from every building, they seemed dim and flimsy.
She crawled past the building where Ben was staying. The traffic was slow enough that she had time to look at all of the windows and wonder which flat was his. She couldn’t picture herself going there to visit him. But they’d have to talk at some point. Perhaps a neutral location would be best.
Were there any neutral locations in the world? Everywhere, in her mind, would from now on be defined as a place she had been before she split up with Ben, or afterwards. She had thought of herself as Ben’s beloved, as half of their partnership, for so many years that it was going to take a very long time to find her own identity as someone separate. If she ever did.
It took forty-five minutes to travel three miles. By the time she pulled into Romily’s road it was mid-morning. Distantly, she noticed that her stomach was grumbling. She hadn’t had any breakfast, and only a light snack before the concert last night. Funny to think that even though she didn’t know how to define herself any more – the wife without a husband, the teacher without any students, the mother without a child – her body kept on going, kept on demanding the same things it always had. Perhaps she should define herself by her body, her faulty body that was able to play music and bake cakes and assemble and disassemble an entire room of furniture but wasn’t able to create life.
Miraculously, a car pulled away from the parking space in front of Romily’s flat as she drove up. Claire manoeuvred into it with difficulty, since she couldn’t see very well out of her back or side windows. It was only when she’d stopped the car that she realized that Romily, at thirty-seven weeks pregnant, wasn’t going to be able to carry any of the nursery things into her flat.
Well, she’d do it herself. Claire opened the back door and took out the first thing she came across, which was a wicker basket of baby clothes. She balanced it on one hip, went down the slippery steps to Romily’s flat, and rapped on the door.
It was several minutes before Romily answered it. She was dressed in a big T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, her hair was rumpled, and she looked bleary, as if she’d just woken up from a not very satisfying sleep. ‘Claire?’ she said. Claire did not miss the expression of guilty surprise that crossed her face.
‘You should put some sand or something on these steps,’ Claire said. ‘I’m amazed that you and Posie don’t fall down them on a daily basis.’
‘What are you— I mean, it’s good to see you. Come in.’ She stepped back, and winced and rubbed at her back.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Backache. It’s worse than last night. My mattress is awful.’
The front room of the flat looked even smaller because of an artificial Christmas tree taking up a whole corner, leaning slightly to one side. Claire caught sight of Posie’s school shoes lying on the mat. She had forgotten all about Posie. The little girl must be confused. She’d had one night of fun with Claire and then all of a sudden: nothing.
But surely she’d seen Ben since then. He would have explained it to her, somehow. Claire’s heart squeezed at the thought.
‘Posie isn’t here,’ Romily said. ‘Jarvis took her for the day to meet his brother and his kids. We thought it would be good for her to spend some time with children her own age. And I needed a rest.’ She winced again. ‘Ouch.’
‘I brought you some things,’ said Claire. ‘I won’t disturb you. I’ll drop them off and go.’
Romily looked at the basket and frowned. ‘Those
are the baby clothes you bought.’
‘Yes.’ Claire put the basket down on the sofa. ‘I’ll just get the other things.’
‘Why would I need baby clothes?’ Romily said, following her to the door and up the steps.
‘Be careful. It’s icy. You’ll fall.’
Romily put her hand on the railing. ‘Why are you bringing me baby clothes?’
‘I bought a few other clothes that you haven’t seen. And friends gave me some, too. They’re mostly white. There are some nappies in there, too.’ She went to the car and pulled out a canvas shopping bag full of bottles and sterilizing equipment. When she turned around, Romily was standing on the pavement, both hands in the small of her back, staring.
‘That’s— Why have you brought all that furniture?’
‘It’s all of the nursery furniture.’ Claire walked past Romily and into the flat. She put the bag on the sofa next to the basket and went back up to the car.
‘Claire,’ said Romily, ‘I don’t need nursery furniture.’
‘You’re going to need somewhere for the baby to sleep, right? And something for the baby to wear? Unless you’ve bought all of this already yourself.’
‘Of course I haven’t. I’m not keeping the baby. It’s yours.’
Claire slid out the cot sides. She could just about carry two at once. ‘No it’s not,’ she said. ‘The baby is yours. It’s your egg. Your body. You created him. And you love him.’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘I’ve been to see a lawyer. I’m sure you know this already, but I have no legal rights to this baby at all unless you voluntarily sign them over to me. Even though I’m the wife of his father – for the moment, at least – I have no connection with this child. You don’t have to give him up, Romily. There’s nothing making you. If you love him, he’s yours.’
