The Longing

by Jane Asher

  ‘He’s all I have, you see. AU I have. I shouldn’t have left him, even for that minute – I know what people think of me. I don’t care. I know how they look at me. But I’m not a bad mother to him – I’m not what they think. Now they’ll take him away; they’ll say they were right. They are right. I left him. But it was only a minute you see, I just can’t think how I – I’ve never done anything like that before, I haven’t really. I loathe myself.’

  As she whispered on and on, Michael looked at her young, ravaged face and wondered how anyone could survive such an onslaught of unhappiness. He felt strangely close to her, almost as if he had known her before somewhere, and he sensed that he was probably the only person in the world that she could talk to in this way. He knew he could never tell her the whole truth about what had been going on during the last few months, but he wanted to try a little more to explain the instinctive empathy he felt with her.

  He leant forward and placed a hand gently over one of hers. ‘I told you that Juliet and I have been trying for a baby for years now,’ he said earnestly, ‘and we’ve been through some very bad times over the last twelve months or so. It doesn’t in any way excuse the terrible thing she’s done, of course, but I suppose what I’m trying to tell you is that I feel in some way that I have lost a child, too. Because of some of the things that have happened to us, I know now I shall never have the son I always thought I would – and I don’t say that because of self-pity, Miss Watkins—’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, call me Anna, this is—’

  ‘All right, Anna, of course, and you will call me Michael won’t you? You see, Anna, I only say it because the loss of Harry – and I know it’s only for a very short while, I do believe that very strongly, you must believe that too, Anna – the loss of Harry somehow means much much more to me than seems rational. When I said yesterday about knowing him – and I can’t think now how I could have been so thoughtless . . .’

  ‘Oh, don’t, it was nothing, I was just—’

  ‘No, it was a ridiculous thing to say. But – I can’t explain it – I feel I’ve lost him too. I’m sorry, I’m not explaining this very well, it’s hard to put into words. I feel the most extraordinary sense of loss, not only because of Julie – that’s frightening, of course, and very distressing, but because of Harry. I like to think I may be one of the few people who understands what you’re going through. And, Anna, I know it’s going to be all right.’

  She looked straight at him for a moment, then suddenly buried her head in her arms and burst into loud, heaving, heart-rending sobs.

  ‘Do you never drink, Juliet?’

  Mr Pulford was accepting another glass of Puligny Montrachet as he spoke. Juliet lifted her own glass of water with a wry smile: ‘Oh, yes, indeed I do. I’m very fond of wine, in fact, and I do miss my evening glass or two very much.’

  There was a small pause, with the implied question hanging in the air for a moment.

  ‘I’m trying to get pregnant, you see.’

  Juliet’s mother gave a small, nervous laugh, which Juliet ignored as she continued: ‘Some people think it may be a good thing not to drink alcohol even before you conceive, you see, Mr Pulford, or in the early stages of pregnancy; and as Michael and I want to give this every possible chance I thought it better to lay off altogether for a bit.’

  ‘Ah, yes, indeed. Still, you’re having jolly good fun while you’re trying anyway I daresay; keep practising, and you’re bound to get it right eventually!’ Mr Pulford had used this very phrase only the other day when talking to his nephew and recently acquired wife when hearing of their plans to start a family, and it had gone down extremely well, producing a roguish wink of understanding from his nephew and a satisfying fit of giggling from the young lady. He couldn’t understand why it now met with such an unappreciative and humourless reception.

  ‘Hah!’ volunteered Mrs Palmer, as if in triumph.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Mummy?’

  ‘Nothing dear. I was only thinking what a funny business it all is, in my opinion.’

  Mr Pulford suddenly had the feeling he had stumbled on something rather more than he had bargained for, and attempted diversionary tactics by beating a hasty verbal retreat.

  ‘My nephew and his—’

  ‘What do you mean, funny business, Mummy?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, dear, I’m sure it’s all perfectly marvellous, but it just does seem a bit – well, unnatural, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘My nephew has recently—’

  ‘Mr Pulford, I must explain, as my mother is obviously rather embarrassed about it all. Michael and I can’t conceive naturally, so we’ve been on the I VF programme for a few weeks.’

  Mr Pulford looked a little nonplussed.

  ‘Test tubes and all that.’

  ‘Ah. I see!’

  ‘Test tubes,’ muttered Mrs Palmer darkly, ‘quite extraordinary. There certainly wasn’t anything like that in my day.’

  ‘My mother doesn’t really approve, Mr Pulford,’ said Juliet quietly. ‘I don’t want to embarrass you, but there’s no point in pretending otherwise; she thinks it was somehow meant that we shouldn’t have children and—’

  ‘Juliet, that’s complete nonsense,’ interrupted her mother. ‘It isn’t that at all. I just don’t think this test-tube business can be quite right somehow; it doesn’t seem natural, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘Yes, I know, Mummy, that’s what you keep saying. I don’t know what you mean by it. I don’t know at what point your God, or your molecules, or your genes or whatever else it is that you think is planning your life draws the line and decides it’s “not natural”. And I don’t know exactly how you are privy to that knowledge and what makes you so certain of it. Or how you can be sure that your personal index of what is and isn’t “natural” should also apply to my life. Who gives you the guidelines’. How do you put together your list of natural events?’

  ‘There’s no need to be rude, Juliet. After all, I’ve supported you through this extraordinary business. And with your medical history I’d have thought you’d be the first one to know about being sensible, and not mucking about with your body. Remember I was there, through all those ghastly years; just remember who looked after you. I think I’ve every right to say how I feel. It’s not just me, you know, I’m not the only one who thinks you should let Nature take its course, I’ve read many artic—’

  ‘Is it natural for you to dye your hair?’ Juliet was leaning forward intensely, raising her voice. ‘Was your hysterectomy natural? Was it natural for you and Daddy to have separate rooms after I was born? Was it—’

  ‘Julie, really, that’s enough.’ Michael put a hand on her arm as he spoke. ‘Don’t, darling, just don’t.’

  ‘Was it natural the way they fed me in the hospital? You allowed that. It was you! Yes, you were there, all right, you bet you were. Who was it always told me how overweight I was? Who kept telling me how ugly I was? Oh yes, Mummy, you certainly were there. Don’t forget, I’ve been through all those therapists, counsellors, I’ve been told only too clearly where the root of my anorexia lies. Just be careful, Mummy, just be careful . . .’

  ‘Look, I really think I should make a move.’

  Mr Pulford began to rise awkwardly from his chair, but Michael put out a restraining hand and encouraged him to sit down again. ‘Don’t worry. It’s all right. I’m sorry about all this.’

  ‘Yes, I’m so sorry,’ added Mrs Palmer, ‘I’m afraid my daughter gets a bit over-sensitive. It’s a difficult time for her at the moment. She doesn’t mean most of the things she says in this mood. Please don’t go, Henry, I do apologise.’

  Juliet turned towards him, and her eyes softened and lost their intensity for a moment, ‘Yes, I’m sorry too. I don’t mean to be rude – I’m sorry, Mummy, I’m sorry. I just want you to understand so badly. What came so naturally, as you put it, to you and Daddy, and to millions of people all over the world, didn’t happen to me and Michael. If we let
Nature take its course we would never have children; I know that now. Is that natural? Is there some natural law that says I should never feel a baby growing inside me? That I should never let a baby suck milk from my breast, cry in my arms, smile as I rock it to sleep? Should Michael never watch his son play football, go fishing with him, kiss him goodnight? Yes, you can smile, Mummy; they may be clichés, but it’s what we want. We want a little girl in pink ballet shoes who plays with dolls; we want a little boy with a train set; we want babies in pink, babies in blue, a son at university, a daughter getting married in white. I can’t help it, I can’t help what I want. I don’t ask for anything special, I just want what you’ve all got. I won’t complain if my children aren’t clever, or beautiful or successful; just let them be, oh dear God, please, please, just give them a chance to be. Is it Nature’s plan that Michael and I should be alone for the rest of our lives?’

  She stopped for a moment and looked round the table at each of the others in turn. Her mother made as if to speak, but appeared to have second thoughts and raised her napkin to her mouth instead and wiped it delicately.

  Juliet leant towards her and went on, in a voice taut with the effort of genuine communication. ‘Mummy, listen to me. I need to have a baby so badly I sometimes think I shall go mad with it; I dream I have a baby in my arms, that I’m kissing his sweet face, that I can smell him, see his smile, taste his tears, dress him, wake him in his cot, change his nappy – just hold him. I can feel his round arms, I can feel his cheek as I bury my face in his neck.

  ‘Do you know what it’s like to wake from such dreams? I once read that for a person who’s lost the use of their arms and legs in an accident the worst thing is the dreams. You dream you’re running, or walking, or making love; then wake to find you can’t move. I feel like that. You can tell me I’m selfish and ungrateful, that I shouldn’t dare to put myself even for a moment in the same position as a person who can never walk again, but that’s how I feel when I wake from my dreams. As if I’ve lost something so important, so vital, that I’m incomplete, that there’s no point in my going on, that something has been torn from me and killed, hurt, finished. I don’t expect you ever to understand, but I wish – oh God, how I wish – that you’d try. Don’t you think I hate myself enough for having to try and conceive in this horrible, humiliating, sordid way? I don’t need you to despise it, Mummy, I can do that for myself.’

  There was complete silence.

  Michael was watching Juliet, aware that much of what she had said was in him too, that she had, more than she knew, spoken for both of them.

  Mrs Palmer sat up, took a little rehabilitating breath, then turned brightly to Henry Pulford, who appeared to be concentrating intently on following the pattern round the edge of his wine coaster with one fingernail.

  ‘Now, how about some more casserole?’

  ‘Hi, is that Chris? Chris, it’s Michael. Look, it’s about Lucy, sorry to let you know so late but I don’t think she’s well enough to go. No, she’s in the hall. I’m sure she’s waiting for you, she always knows the time, doesn’t she?’

  As Michael talked to the friend who minded Lucy for them, he lifted the phone and moved to the kitchen doorway where he could see her still, quiet body lying on the carpet by the front door. ‘I took her to the vet last night and he thinks she’s had a minor stroke. Let’s leave it for today and I’ll pop back every now and then from work.’

  He apologised to Chris again, put down the phone, walked into the hall and called up the staircase: ‘Julie? Jules, where are you?’

  ‘I’m up here. In the bedroom.’

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  The wait over the last twelve days had been interminable. Now that the time for a result had almost arrived, Michael found himself constantly checking on Juliet’s wellbeing and condition, almost unable to hold himself back from demanding hourly bulletins.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, why? I’m just coming down. What did you decide about Lucy?’

  ‘I don’t think she’s well enough to go. She’s looking very odd. I’ve rung Chris and put him off.’

  ‘Well, I can’t stay here, I’ve got a couple of meetings later and I’ve promised to be in the office most of the day.’

  ‘No, it’s all right, I’ll be able to keep an eye on her. Do you think I ought to take her round to the clinic again?’

  ‘No, I should – look, hang on, I can’t keep shouting, I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Michael heard Lucy give a breathy grunt, and walked quickly over to kneel down beside her. The dog was breathing steadily, but her eyes were half closed, and the pupils tilted upwards into her head so that only the whites were showing. As Juliet came down the stairs, Michael told her, ‘She really doesn’t look good, I think we ought to take her over there again.’

  Juliet also knelt down, and tilted her head sideways to look into Lucy’s face. ‘No, she doesn’t, does she? I don’t think we should move her, though. What time is it? I really must go in a minute. I’ll just give them a ring first.’

  As she stood up and moved towards the kitchen, Michael kept muttering, ‘Poor old girl, poor old girl.’

  Something in the way he said it made Juliet glance at him, and she was startled by the tenderness on his face.

  He’d always been so brisk with Lucy, so conventionally masterful and controlled that it was quite unnerving to see this exposed emotion. Juliet found it oddly disturbing. The air of mortality, sadness and sentimentality that clung round man and dog stirred up twinges of dread in her. But she knew that if she indulged herself in wallowing in this sad scene on the hall carpet there was no telling what unfaced horrors would be conjured up; and she had to float above it with her usual mixture of efficiency and practicality or be doomed.

  ‘There’s nothing more we can do here at the moment,’ she said. ‘Michael, do get up, I’m sure she’d like a bit of breathing space.’

  But Michael didn’t want to leave her. As Juliet briskly picked up the phone, he stayed squatting down next to Lucy and stroked one silky ear carefully, feeling the warmth of her skin and a slight sluggish pulsing underneath. ‘Poor old girl,’ he repeated, and thought of all the times she had leapt up at his homecoming in this hall, the undeserved total devotion she had shown him ever since they had taken her over.

  He could hear Julie now, using her customary tone of patient bossiness with the young receptionist at the veterinary clinic.

  ‘No, I’m afraid we can’t bring her over. I’ve already explained she’s extremely unwell and any more lugging about would be out of the question. Couldn’t you—’ she broke off to listen, then gave an exaggerated sigh of quiet exasperation, ‘Yes, yes all right. Yes, I see. Thank you.’

  She raised her voice as she put down the phone and crossed over to fill the kettle. ‘She says the vet’ll ring us in a minute and try to come round. He’s in the middle of an operation apparently. I guess I can wait a few more minutes anyway. Do you want a cup of coffee? Michael? Michael, I said do you want a coffee?’

  Juliet frowned and walked back towards the hall, but stopped abruptly in the doorway of the kitchen. Michael still sat on the carpet, his head buried in the thick coat of the dog’s back, his arm protectively cradling her head.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Mike, do get up. Give the poor animal some air – you’re not doing her any good lying all over her like that.’

  ‘She’s gone.’ Michael’s voice was muffled and indistinct. ‘She’s dead, Julie.’

  As he lifted his head and looked up at her, she could see Lucy’s tongue lolling sideways out of her mouth. She didn’t know what to say. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. She gave a few sort of shudders and tried to get up – then she just . . . stopped.’

  ‘I’d better go and tell the vet – put him off coming.’

  But as Juliet made for the phone, she was suddenly hit by the most desperate sadness. It was like a blow to the throat, and without warning she let out a loud and violent sob that w
renched itself so unexpectedly from her body that she grabbed the frame of the door to steady herself.

  ‘Julie, are you all right?’

  ‘It’s just so sad, that’s all. It’s so sad.’

  ‘I know, darling. But she didn’t suffer, did she’. She had a good life. Poor old girl.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’d better stop the vet coming, though, like you said. Do you want me to ring him?’

  ‘No, I’ll do it. I’m OK, I’ll do it.’

  Juliet dialled the vet’s number and got the same receptionist as before. ‘Hello, this is Mrs Evans, I spoke to you a moment ago. I’m afraid everything’s changed, we won’t need Mr Archer any more . . . No, she’s dead . . . Yes – the dog. Well, of course the dog, who else do you think I’m talking about? Sorry . . . so, really I need to know what we do now . . . What, Yellow Pages, you mean? Right, thanks for your help. Yes, thanks . . . goodbye.’

  She bent down and picked up the large London Central Yellow Pages from the shelf below the telephone and carried it out into the hall. ‘Apparently usually they’d come over and collect her, but they haven’t got anyone available. There should be a service that can come round though. What do you think I look it up under? Dogs – Dead? Animal bodies – Disposal? Animal Funerals, or what?’

  ‘God knows.’ Michael was smiling at his wife, aware just how much pain her cool cynicism was hiding. ‘Try Cremations – Canine.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly, Michael,’ she laughed back at him. ‘Here we are, Animal Services . . . I’ll try this lot. Hold on.’

  Michael could hear the faint digital tones as she dialled a number, then the slam of the receiver back down on its cradle. ‘Oh, this is ridiculous,’ he heard her mutter, then she reappeared. ‘Look, let’s take her round to Archer’s ourselves. That’s the best thing. We can’t stay here all day sitting with a dead dog, for heaven’s sake. And I’m sure those people charge a fortune.’