Putting Out the Stars

by Roisin Meaney

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hi, it’s me.’

  She paused, then answered lightly, ‘Hello there; what’s up?’

  He sounded tense – not a bit like the last time they’d spoken. ‘Can we meet? I – I need to talk to you.’

  ‘This sounds very mysterious – what about?’ She was careful to keep her tone light, although her heart had begun a gentle trot.

  She heard him take a breath. ‘I really want to meet you: can we? Wherever you want. I – there’s something we need to discuss.’

  She counted to three slowly. ‘Look . . . I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ Her fingers curled more tightly around the phone.

  A long pause at his end. Then, when she was beginning to wonder if he was still there, a long exhalation. ‘Right. Sorry, you’re right. Let’s forget this conversation happened.’

  ‘Of course.’

  As she hung up, she realised that her palms were damp. She ran them down along her jeans, then went into the kitchen and sat down heavily and put her head into her hands, heart thumping.

  He held the receiver long after she’d hung up. Finally he replaced it slowly, making hardly a sound. Right: that was it. He’d just have to forget her. Or try to forget her.

  Fat chance. He turned abruptly and walked away.

  ‘Laura?’ Ruth put down her fork and looked closely at her. ‘Are you all right?’

  Laura turned quickly towards Ruth with a too-bright smile. ‘Sorry – I was miles away; a few jobs on my mind . . .’ She shook her head. ‘And too many late nights – I’m a telly addict in the winter, can’t tear myself away to go to bed.’

  Ruth picked up her fork again and twisted it in her tagliatelle. ‘You do look a bit tired; maybe you should take a few days off work, just stay in bed.’

  Laura laughed, raked a hand through her curls. ‘I wish I could. But that’s the trouble when you’re working for yourself; you have to take the jobs when they come – and at the moment I’m fairly swamped.’ She pushed her chilli around the bowl – she’d had only a few mouthfuls since it had arrived.

  ‘I’m not surprised you’re busy; you’re very good.’ Ruth lifted a forkful of creamy pasta. ‘I told you how many people raved about the wedding invitations, didn’t I?’

  Laura smiled again. ‘Thanks, Ruth; yeah, I’m well used to doing wedding stuff – it’s how I started out.’ Then she put down her fork, picked up her glass of water. ‘Enough about me; what about this house of yours? Have you got a date yet?’

  Ruth dabbed at her mouth and made a face. ‘The last date they gave us was the end of November; they promised. But Andrew called round the day before yesterday and he was told that it’ll take a good bit longer than two weeks; at least another month, they said. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be lucky if we’re in by Christmas.’

  Ruth and Andrew had bought a house in Farranshone, six weeks before the wedding. It had belonged to an old man who’d spent the last few years of his life in a nursing home, and it was in serious need of refurbishment. They were getting small rooms knocked together to make bigger ones, and units pulled out, and new floors laid, and a small extension to the kitchen at the back. Some walls had to be dry lined, and the attic had no insulation, and the roof was in serious need of retiling. And what was originally supposed to have been finished in what Ruth realised now was a very optimistic two months had already dragged on for over four.

  She loved the location – Farranshone was old and friendly, and just a short walk into town – and she knew the wait would be worth it. The house had a big jungly back garden with a gnarly tree in one corner that would be perfect for sitting under with her book when summer came round again. And perfect for children to climb. But she wished it wasn’t taking so long . . . the strain of sharing another woman’s house, even someone as generous as Cecily, was beginning to keep her awake at night. If they could only have one or two evenings on their own, cooking dinner together, sitting in front of the telly, watching whatever they wanted . . .

  And she could see that Andrew was feeling it too – he’d been distracted lately, not his usual cheery self. Even snapped at her last week, when all she’d asked him was whether he thought they should take Cecily out to dinner sometime.

  ‘Easily known you’ve nothing better to do than sit at home and plan nights out. Did it occur to you that I mightn’t fancy turning around after a hard day’s work to go off out to a restaurant?’ He wasn’t cross exactly, more like mildly irritated, but Ruth was stung by the unfairness of it.

  ‘It wouldn’t have to be during the week – we could wait till the weekend. I just thought, with your mother cooking for us every night –’ She wanted to add And I don’t sit at home planning nights out – I try to keep busy, in a house where I’m not allowed to cook, and where I’m afraid to clean in case I do it wrong, or I go out and look into the same shop windows I looked into yesterday, and drink coffee I don’t want, just to get in out of the rain, but of course she didn’t.

  She knew it couldn’t be easy for Andrew, trying to cope at work and then deal with the house too; he’d been calling over there quite a lot lately. She’d offered to go with him, but he didn’t want the builders to feel they were putting pressure on them – he was afraid it might make them even slower. Ruth was sure he knew best, so she stayed away.

  ‘Don’t worry – I’m sure the house will be gorgeous when it’s done. I love those white oak floors you’re putting in.’ Laura picked up her fork again and prodded at her rice. ‘You’ll have to have a big house-warming.’

  Ruth smiled. ‘Yes, hopefully it won’t be too long more. And once we’re moved in, and have some kind of shape on the house, I can look for a job.’ That’d help settle her, she was sure of it; a job would give her something to fill her days with.

  Laura glanced at her watch and put down her fork. ‘I think I’d better get back; I don’t want to be working too late tonight.’ She stood and picked up the bill. ‘My turn.’

  Ruth watched as Laura went to the cash desk; she was definitely not herself today. And she looked a bit pale. Hopefully it was nothing major – probably overwork, like she said.

  Ruth turned her head to look out the window at the rain. Might as well go home; it wasn’t a day for wandering around the shops. She could finish her book for the next club meeting.

  It was going to be a lot worse than Laura had imagined.

  Reading the leaflets that she’d got from Doctor Goode, she began to realise that it wouldn’t be the straightforward process she’d hoped for. After a few pages, her head was buzzing with Fallopian tube blockage, laparoscopy, endometriosis, chlamydia, fibroids – she had no idea there could be so many different possible reasons for infertility, or so many procedures that both she and Donal might have to go through to find the cause of their problem.

  She read with dread about male tests for infertility – semen analysis, blood and urine samples, biopsy of the testes. She was well aware that Donal would be happy to let nature take its course: the notion that they might never have children didn’t seem to worry him unduly. Would he be prepared to go through the humiliation of such intimate procedures, just to keep her happy?

  Because with each month that went by, with each discovery that she still wasn’t pregnant, Laura knew that she wouldn’t be happy until they’d done everything possible to find the cause – and hopefully, the solution.

  What really terrified her, what kept her lying sleepless beside Donal at night, was the notion that maybe there wasn’t a cause – or not one that could be discovered. She read with dismay that in around fifteen per cent of cases – fifteen per cent of the one in six couples who had problems – no physical cause could be found. How would she cope if they were given that news – that there was nothing that they could fix, because nothing broken had been found?

  She wished there was someone she could talk to, maybe someone who’d been in the same position as herself once. Surely there was a support group for women trying to get pregnant?
But no, that wasn’t what she wanted – not a group of strangers, more concerned with their own problem than with hers.

  Her heart clenched as she remembered Breffni’s joke at dinner the other night, about Ruth and Andrew not waiting as long as Laura and Donal to have children. When she said it, when the others had laughed, Laura had felt such a wave of despair that she’d had to get up and leave the room before they noticed. It had taken her a good five minutes, cheeks pressed in turn to the cool bathroom tiles, breathing in slow, steady breaths, before she could face them again. Listening to Cian singing Polly back to sleep in the room next door. Wondering if she’d ever have someone to sing to sleep.

  Laura wished again that she could talk about this whole thing with Breffni, but she just couldn’t. And the notion of looking for comfort and reassurance from Cecily was so ridiculous that it would make Laura laugh – if she felt remotely like laughing.

  The visit to Dr Goode’s surgery hadn’t been too bad. Thank goodness he hadn’t looked for a sample from Donal – she’d been dreading that. He asked them lots of questions – their ages and occupations, what contraception they’d been using, Laura’s menstrual cycle, their sexual histories, any previous pregnancies, how often they made love, whether they smoked, took drugs – and Laura did most of the talking for both of them. Conscious of Donal sitting beside her. Listening to her discussing the most intimate details of their life together with a man Donal had just met for the first time.

  Laura had known Dr Goode for over twenty years, since he’d taken over when their old family doctor had retired – but Donal had a different doctor, had never had occasion to meet Dr Goode till today. He’d been perfectly polite, in a detached kind of way, when Laura had introduced them; and Dr Goode couldn’t have been more sensitive, directing most of his questions at Laura, as though he sensed Donal’s silent unease.

  They came away with an appointment to see a gynaecologist in a week’s time for the first of the tests. Dr Goode prepared them gently for a long wait – some tests, like the semen analysis, would probably have to be done more than once, at intervals of one month – and Laura would be asked to keep a temperature chart for a few months, to make sure she was ovulating. Any more complicated procedures would wait till after that.

  Thank goodness he didn’t talk about nature taking its course, or everything happening in its own good time. He stuck to practicalities – and he took his time with them; they must have been in with him for nearly three quarters of an hour, even though Laura had counted five people in the waiting room before they went in. When they were leaving, Dr Goode shook hands with both of them.

  ‘Good luck; I hope it works out for you both.’

  Laura had wanted to hug him, but that would have been silly. You didn’t hug your doctor – even if he was the one you were pinning all your hopes on.

  On the way home, she stopped the car outside their local and turned to Donal.

  ‘Is the sun over the yardarm yet?’

  He looked over at her. ‘Good idea.’

  She drank a hot port – it was the first really chilly day, with a promise of winter in the wind that whipped around them – and Donal had a pint. Their conversation was oddly stilted.

  ‘How’s that wardrobe job coming on?’

  ‘Finished a few days ago, thank goodness. I started the Carr stuff yesterday.’ A cleaning contractor wanted to update his company image; he’d asked Laura to work with a writer and put together a range of new brochures and leaflets.

  ‘Right.’ Donal nodded into his pint, and Laura suspected that if she asked him what she’d just said, he wouldn’t have been able to tell her. She cast around for something to talk about; they couldn’t sit there in silence.

  ‘Andrew rang this morning, some computer virus that they got in all the machines at work. He said I wasn’t to open any e-mails from some crowd.’

  Donal smiled briefly. ‘It’s well for him – sitting reading e-mails all day.’

  She made a face at him. ‘Don’t start. It was good of him to warn me. I’d open any old thing that came, just in case it was interesting.’

  And they managed to pass the next fifteen minutes not talking about babies and infertility and what might happen when they went to the gynaecologist.

  ‘Post for you.’

  The receptionist handed him a plain white envelope with his name and work address handwritten on it.

  His stomach flipped. ‘Thanks, Frances.’ He hoped to God he looked normal as he slipped it into his jacket pocket. As if it wasn’t something that needed his immediate attention.

  It was her. He knew it was her. He walked casually to the nearest toilet and locked himself in, and pulled out the envelope and tore it open.

  It was a single folded sheet; the writing was hasty. No greeting, no signature, just three short sentences:

  It’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that it would be a disaster. You must see that.

  His eyes scanned it rapidly, then he read it carefully again, twice.

  It’s not that I don’t want to.

  His heart soared: It’s not that I don’t want to. He folded the sheet carefully and replaced it in between the ragged edges of the envelope, and put it back into his pocket.

  She felt the same as he did: It’s not that I don’t want to. All that day his mind refused to concentrate; but somehow he managed to get through the work he needed to do.

  It’s not that I don’t want to. Really, exactly the same as I want to.

  Ruth picked up a scarf and stroked it thoughtfully. It was deep red and very soft, and terribly expensive – nothing in Brown Thomas was exactly cheap – but they needed to get Cecily something really special for Christmas, to thank her for letting them stay with her for so long; almost four months at this stage.

  Two months the builder had promised them in July – Halloween at the very latest – and in their innocence, they’d believed him. Ruth had imagined them unpacking and settling in, with plenty of time for her to get fixed up with a job by Christmas. And now here they were, Christmas just around the corner, and no guarantee that they wouldn’t still be living with Cecily at the end of the year.

  Ruth’s heart sank as she imagined Christmas dinner in her mother-in-law’s elegant house – because how could they possibly leave her alone and go to Ruth’s family for the holiday? And Laura wouldn’t even be there; she’d told Ruth that she and Donal always did their own thing on Christmas Day, apart from a brief visit to Cecily in the morning ‘– brief by mutual consent, believe me –’ so it would be just the three of them sitting down to dinner. Ruth, Andrew and Cecily. Perfectly cooked turkey, all the appropriate trimmings, the right wines with every course, beautifully wrapped gifts – and no fun at all.

  No giggling charades, no tins of Quality Street and boxes of Black Magic passed around until everyone felt sick. No slouching in front of the telly in your dressing gown, drinking Buck’s Fizz made with Jacob’s Creek sparkling wine and watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and It’s a Wonderful Life, or playing a very noisy game of Trivial Pursuit. Thinking of all the Christmases with her family in Dublin, Ruth felt a physical stab of homesickness.

  She put the scarf back on the shelf; she’d need to check with Andrew before she bought it, in case he had something else in mind. Or maybe Cecily didn’t like red; Ruth couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen it on her. As she turned towards the door, she caught sight of a familiar face from the other night.

  She walked over, beaming; he was just the tonic she needed right now.

  ‘Hello, Frank. Doing some Christmas shopping?’

  His face lit up as he put his wallet back into his pocket and took the carrier bag from the assistant. ‘Ruth, how lovely. Yes, I’ve just got some gloves for Dorothy; she and Liam have been so good to me since I moved here. And you?’ He glanced down at her empty hands. ‘Just looking?’

  ‘Yes, I’m terrible at making decisions. I’ll have to enlist Andrew’s help.’

  ‘Well, I�
��m free for the next hour or two, if I’m any good to you.’

  She shook her head, smiling. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t subject you to that . . . but –’ suddenly the last thing she wanted to do was go home ‘– would you like to go and get a coffee somewhere?’ It would pass an hour if they drew it out, and Frank would be nice easy company.

  He beamed again. ‘Lovely. There’s a place just around the corner.’

  When they were seated, he planted his palms on the table in front of him. ‘Well . . . how’s everything with you, my dear?’

  And Ruth took one look at his kind, open face and burst into tears.

  She couldn’t believe it, but there it was, sitting on the doormat. Brazen as you like. She knew it was from him, had to be from him. How dared he? She had a good mind to put it straight into the bin: what if the wrong person had picked it up? She stood looking down at the envelope for a few seconds, frowning.

  But what if he was just apologising for the whole business? Maybe he’d come to his senses, and realised what madness it would be, even to think of doing anything . . . She’d never know if she just threw it away. And really, it was her own fault, for sending him that ridiculous note. As soon as it was posted, she’d instantly regretted it. What on earth had possessed her? She should have just done nothing, let it go away quietly. She slid her finger under the flap and lifted it open.

  Just a single sheet, like the one she’d sent him. Her eyes darted rapidly over the words:

  It doesn’t have to be a disaster. Who would know except us? Who would we hurt if no one knew? I long for you. Please let this happen.

  He’d underlined ‘long’. She put a hand to her mouth. I long for you. She closed her eyes and saw his face, imagined his mouth – no. She opened her eyes and quickly tore the letter in half, then screwed it into a ball and shoved it deep into the pocket of her jeans. She’d throw it into the first litter-bin she passed when she went out.