The Longing

by Jane Asher

  There we are, Mrs Evans, all done! Nothing to it. I’ll leave the nurse to look after you now, and I’ll see you in my office in a few minutes.’

  He was gently unhooking her legs from the stirrups as he spoke, and Juliet felt almost disappointed as he stood and pulled off his latex gloves. He looked about twenty-eight, still boyish, with a large nose and dark eyes and skin that reminded her of a waiter in their local Greek restaurant. He smiled across at her as he threw his gloves into the bin, then walked towards the doorway, where he turned to look back at her, one hand holding the side of the open door, the other pulling off the green hat he had been wearing over his dark hair. ‘Good luck,’ he said, and smiled again, then paused, still looking at her, as if waiting for her to say something. A strange but not unpleasant sensation rather like pins and needles crept upwards through Juliet’s body as she looked back at him, then he suddenly turned and was gone. She forced herself to concentrate on her inside again and imagined her three beautiful eggs finding their place in the lining of her womb. Was it to be their home, or just a tragically temporary shelter?

  ‘Good girl!’ whispered the nurse kindly in her ear.

  How it took her back, that reassuring deadly voice, that caring, vicious, cruel-to-be-kind tone that was always followed by some unbearable act of vandalism. She was there again, in that room: horrifying; clean; smelling of antiseptic and floor polish. They were stuffing her; the smelly brown rubber tube almost choking her as it was forced down her throat. Couldn’t they see how gross she was, how she had to be left alone to be thin, to be light, to be human again? Nobody understood; they were coming at her again with that tube; she couldn’t stand it; the pain, the fear.

  How old were they, these memories? Twenty years? More? It was all still so clear: the misery she had felt when her mother first began to make the stinging remarks that had set her on the strange course she had followed relentlessly for so many agonising years. ‘Puppy fat’, it had been at first, then ‘podgy’, then the undisguised nastiness of ‘ugly’, later maturing into the fullblown phrases that hurt most of all: ‘You’ll never find anyone to take you out while you’re carrying all that weight.’ Or, ‘There’s no point in buying you any decent clothes while you look like that.’ Hours spent inspecting herself in the mirror had only confirmed the eagle-eyed truth of these maternal observations, and once she discovered the magic that a couple of fingers down the back of her throat at night could achieve, inevitably she became addicted to the cycle of overeating and vomiting, interspersed with intense periods of starvation, that came to dominate her life.

  When her weight dipped so low as to be dangerous, her doctor had insisted on her being admitted to hospital, the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa (in the days before the concept of bulimia was generally recognised) necessitating positive action. It was there that, after weeks of being alternately threatened and cajoled to eat without success, she had finally been force-fed. It was the mid-seventies, and such treatment was already becoming rare – as she was told, several years and several doctors later – but she was unlucky enough to catch the last remnants of the barbaric and humiliating practice.

  ‘Come on now, Mrs Evans, just relax and lie there for a minute or two. It’s all over now. Nothing to worry about. We’ll get you dressed in a minute and I’ll get you a nice cup of tea.’

  Juliet squeezed her eyes tight shut and pulled herself back into the present. She was gripping the sides of the narrow bed as if hanging on for life, and the screwing-up of her eyes had released a tear which was now hovering around the top of her cheek. ‘I’m so sorry. I seem to have got a bit panicky.’

  ‘That’s quite understandable, dear. Everyone gets a bit emotional about it, it’s not easy, we all know that.’

  As Juliet opened her eyes and met the compassionate gaze of the nursing sister, she wondered how she could possibly have been reminded of the terrifying person who had monitored her treatment all those years ago. This one was kind, positive, on her side. Does this woman go home to a husband and children? she wondered. Does she tire of them, complain and shout at them? How pathetic she must think me, so anxious to produce what she takes for granted.

  The comforting smell of soap powder on the white gown that she wore, and the plastic wristband giving her a spurious sense of belonging, were enough to steady her for the moment. She would play along and force herself to believe in the reality of it all and drive away the feelings of hopelessness that hovered destructively at the edge of her mind. She had always known she walked on the very edge of a pit of despair, now she must look only upwards and not countenance the possibility of a fall.

  Juliet wanted a bath. Suddenly more than almost anything she could imagine she longed to sink back into warm, soapy water and let the dirt and hospital smells float off her.

  Chapter Eight

  Anna was looking at Harry’s vest. It was white terry towelling, with short sleeves and a piece that went down between the legs and joined with press studs. It had been getting a bit small for him lately, and she knew that, one way or another, he would never wear it again. She almost laughed out loud when she remembered how sad this had made her the last time she had looked at it, two days ago was it? No, it couldn’t be, could it? Was it really only two days ago that she had watched Harry, lying on his. yellow stretch cotton sheet, blowing raspberries at her, and seeming suddenly far too long in the torso to fit into the vest? She had tickled his tummy and blown a raspberry back at him, wondering if she should try to squeeze his chest, shoulders and chubby arms into the vest and then cut the rest of it off at the waist, but she’d had an immediate vision of the tight fabric stretched across his small body. Lifting him up and out of the cot, she had kissed him, and said, ‘Oh, to hell with it. You’ll be getting a new vest today, son, if I have anything to do with it.’ And she had tossed the scrap of material on to the floor.

  Now she sat on an upright chair next to the cot in the small bedroom that she shared with the baby and pressed the vest hard to her face, breathing in deeply to try and find his smell. She rubbed the fabric into her eyes and nose, as if she could become part of it, just to be where his flesh had been, press against what he had pressed against with his fat pink tummy and round shoulders. She kept her head buried there while she pictured the clothing stall in the market where she had intended to buy the new vest. If she had gone there first, instead of to the supermarket – she wouldn’t have lost Harry then, would she? She could still do that, surely? She saw herself walking along the street to the supermarket with the pram, saw herself nearing the entrance, beginning to turn towards it and slow down – Don’t stop! Don’t stop! She tried to force her own image past the glass doors and rows of steel trolleys, and on up the high street to the market. But the Anna of her imagination insisted on reproducing reality and stopped and pushed the pram through the doors; then as present-Anna followed her, pressed down on the old-fashioned brake with one foot and picked up the battered black knapsack by the feet of the sleeping Harry. Pick up the baby too! Pick him up too! Never mind the fucking bag, pick him up, you stupid thoughtless fucker!

  How could she see it so clearly? Where was she watching from now to be able to see in every detail her own inexorable walk towards disaster? OK, she couldn’t make her earlier self go on to the market, she couldn’t make her pick, up the baby, but at least she could force her to come back to the pram those few seconds sooner, surely? She didn’t need that bloody bottle of chocolate sauce, she didn’t even like chocolate sauce – she’d actually stood there looking at it for what must have been almost a minute, trying to decide whether to pop it into her trolley, pricing what she’d already chosen and vaguely working out what she had left. Don’t stop at the chocolate sauce, the wise Anna in the little bedroom screamed in her head to the innocent Anna in the supermarket – oh please God, don’t stop. But nothing she could do, no effort of will could prevent it. For the hundredth time she saw herself pushing the trolley down the aisle towards the till (Go on! Go on!), then pausing,
her eye caught by the tempting row of brown plastic bottles under the deadly sign ‘NEW!’ And she had stopped. At this point the Anna in the bedroom flew to the checkout just in time to catch a pair of hands lifting Harry from the pram. Why. couldn’t she grab those hands? Why couldn’t she stop the blonde bitch in the blazer she was now convinced had taken him? Why couldn’t she follow her to see where she had taken him, as she could follow the memory of herself? She mentally looked away then suddenly back, trying to surprise her own vision into revealing more of the stranger who was stealing her baby. But all she saw when she did so was the empty pram. She had reached this stage so many times in the replay of that terrible morning, and every time she thought she would surely be able to see just a little more, but she never did.

  She sighed from the pit of her soul, then she lifted her head up and was back in reality. She pulled her eyes into focus and saw a tiny hole in the fabric of the vest in front of her, and knew it reminded her of something. But the picture of the hole it conjured up wasn’t empty like this one, it had pink flesh showing through, and an echo of anxiety attached to it. She shook her head to clear the remnants of the supermarket, closed her eyes and tried to look again at the remembered hole. It had frayed grey material round it, and was low in her field of vision. Black; black leather next to it. A shoe! A black leather shoe and a grey sock with a tiny hole in it – yes she had it. The man who had come to see her yesterday – the husband of the cow who must have taken Harry. She remembered looking down for a second as he had leant towards her, but hadn’t realised till now that she had noticed anything at all about him. She tried to picture his face, but couldn’t, only aware that it had looked horribly sad and worn, too much like the way she herself had been feeling, and she had wanted it gone out of the flat. Why had he wanted to see her? She hadn’t been able to understand when the police had told her, and had felt wary and threatened, but now she suddenly understood. He was involved. However kind the rest of them were, however sympathetic, experienced and professional in dealing with her, they all went back to normality at the end of the day. She had assumed the unrelenting horror was hers alone, but perhaps, just perhaps, that sad-faced man bore a little of it too. She knew her own despair was blinding her to everything else, and she struggled to put him in perspective, to see him as another suffering human being rather than a part of the giant, crushing weight that seemed to be the rest of the world.

  Anna stood up and let the little vest fall back on to the bed. She was still wearing the long tee-shirt she had slept in, and her uncombed hair fell over her face in lank strands. She pushed it back with one hand and tucked it behind her ear as she moved to the sitting room, where the ever faithful WPC Calvert was half dozing on the sofa. Anna looked down at her for a moment, then turned away as the policewoman opened her eyes and lifted her head. ‘Oh, hello, Anna. You’re awake. How are you feeling? Can I get you anything?’

  ‘No, no thanks. But I’d like to get in touch with the guy who came here yesterday. I want to ask him something. Can you arrange that for me?’

  The policewoman looked taken aback for a moment. ‘Are you sure? You were very upset yesterday and—’

  ‘I know. I shouldn’t have been so – no, I’m sure. I’d like to see him. He might tell us something more. You know, something that – oh I don’t know – I just think I ought to see him.’

  WPC Calvert knew that the husband of the suspected abductor would have been questioned exhaustively for any possible clues that could help in the search, but as her priority was to give whatever help and comfort she could to the bereft mother, she was pleased to find there was something concrete to set in motion that might occupy Anna’s thoughts while the real search went on.

  She was well used to handling sensitive situations, and had often had to indulge emotional and irrational requests.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure that can be done. I’ll ring Detective Inspector Graham. He’ll sort it out for you.’

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Just the same. But the bloated feeling has gone down a bit more, I think. How do you feel?’

  ‘Paternal. I know I shouldn’t say it, I know I’m tempting fate, but I just can’t help it. I do. I feel paternal. Protective. And I love you.’

  Juliet smiled. ‘I love you too. Paternal, eh? Yes, that sounds good, doesn’t it? Mind you, I don’t really think I could say I feel maternal yet, or at least no more than usual. I don’t—’

  She stopped as a waiter arrived at the table to take their order. After a greeting as effusive as only the Italians know how, he reeled off the specials and stood back, glowing with apparent pride at the magnificent range of delights he had offered them, betraying only the merest hint of disappointment as they ignored his suggestions and ordered only a simple pasta for Juliet and a veal escalope for Michael.

  They felt secure in this small local restaurant, a bolt hole they always escaped to when neither of them felt like cooking, or when there was nothing much in the house and they had no energy to shop. The large blown-up photographs of the Amalfitana coastline, framed to give the impression of being views of the outside world from wooden-silled windows, had remained unchanged – if a little dustier – since they had first moved into the area. The red checked tablecloths and Chianti bottle candles had a reassuringly old-fashioned and timeless cosiness, and both Juliet and Michael felt an unspoken truce descend on them whenever they ate here, as if their differences were left at the entrance with their coats.

  She hadn’t been entirely open in her description of how she felt. She didn’t feel just the same. There was a change, slight but unmistakable, but it was too tiny and too precious to be shared just yet. She withheld it not because of any coldness towards her husband: on the contrary, she was feeling extremely benign and warm towards him, but the minuscule flutter of fullness that she sensed at the base of her belly was so subtle that to betray its existence by putting it into words might just allow it to escape in a tiny puff of smoke, leaving her empty again. She would leave it a few days, then attempt to voice her secret conviction that she was – oh, how could she even dare to think the word – that she was – no, she wouldn’t say it, even in her head.

  ‘What were you going to say?’ asked Michael, as he reached for a packet of breadsticks and tore the paper off one end.

  ‘Oh, only that I don’t suppose I should expect to feel anything yet. Not quite as desperate as I did perhaps, but I know that’s just because we’re actually doing something, if you know what I mean. It’s – oh Michael, do look!’ She lowered her voice on the last few words and gestured with her head to a table a few feet away, where a large Italian family was halfway through a meal, noisily and cheerfully tucking in to huge plates of pasta, gesticulating and laughing.

  ‘Yes, they’re very jolly, aren’t they?’ Michael smiled at her.

  ‘No, no, look – I meant the little one.’

  Michael looked back in the direction of Juliet’s gaze and saw then what had caught her eye. An older woman at one end of the table was holding a tiny, black-haired baby over her shoulder, rubbing its back and rocking her body slightly as she chatted to the young girl next to her. The baby’s eyes were open, dark in its little pale face like two currants pushed into an uncooked bun, and it seemed to stare at Juliet, unblinking and serious, as if by looking hard enough it could begin to understand some of what it saw.

  ‘Isn’t it sweet?’ she whispered. ‘So little!’

  ‘Yes, isn’t it,’ answered Michael. He reached out and took Juliet’s hand across the red checks and gave it a fond squeeze. He had left unasked so much about the day, not liking to break the mood of content and calm in which he had found her on his return from the office, but now he felt able to ask some of the questions he’d been holding back. He gently lifted his hand from hers as the drinks arrived and were put in front of them, tactfully not commenting on the fact that, unusually, Juliet had ordered orange juice instead of Campari. He leant forward again. ‘How did it go today, darling? I mean,
was it all as good as they hoped? Did they put all three—’

  ‘Yes, oh yes it went well. Much easier than I thought actually.’

  Juliet was looking almost beatific in the candlelight, Michael thought. When the edge of bitterness and unhappiness left her face, it softened into that of the girl he had married. She was wearing a blue sleeveless linen dress that scooped just below her collarbone and fitted gently over her breasts and waist, following the slender contours of her frame without hugging it, giving her the classy yet irresistible sensuality that he loved in her. A fine gold chain that he had bought for her when they were on holiday in Greece two summers before twinkled at her throat, and she had brushed her blonde hair over to one side so that it swung in a yellow shiny cascade over one eye as she, too, leant forward, hiding one of the pair of gold-framed pearl studs that she wore in her ears.

  ‘You look gorgeous,’ he said, and kissed her cheek.

  She smiled and went on, ‘I didn’t have any kind of anaesthetic this time. It was more like the scans they keep giving me. Quite simple really, all over very quickly.’

  ‘Not the plastic thing looking up you again?’

  ‘Yes, but I’m getting used to that. I hardly mind it at all now.’

  Michael acknowledged within himself a tiny stab of jealousy and at the same time a burst of astonishment that he could be so childish. ‘Oh really?’ he said, raising one eyebrow in mocking roguishness, ‘Enjoy that do we?’

  ‘Oh Michael, don’t be ridiculous! You should just see how unsexy it all is. For heaven’s sake, you’re as bad as Harriet – if I was after that sort of thing I could do a bit better than a plastic probe. Here am I, going through all that and you think I’m enjoying it! Mind out, your tie’s in the butter—’

  But they were both laughing at it all, luxuriating in the teasing and the relief of the moment.