Cuckoo

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Well, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Hell, Franny, one of the main reasons I was attracted to you was the fact that you made it so damned clear you weren’t available. You told me about your husband the very first instant I set eyes upon you, and you haven’t stopped embroidering on him, since. I’ve almost fallen in love with Charles myself, his brilliance and his business skills, his Ted Lapidus after-shave, his deodorant-impregnated socks. I knew I could never compete with a paragon like that. And, frankly, I don’t really want to try.’

  ‘What do you mean, Ned?’ She tried to sound cool and uninvolved, as if they were discussing sea conditions in the Channel.

  ‘We’re friends, Franny, lovers, good pals, but that’s all. I don’t want a wife or a housekeeper. I’ve had both and it didn’t work.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me, Ned?’ The baby in her womb was drowning, flailing.

  ‘Why should I? I didn’t want to launch into that messy, miserable business and dig the whole thing up again. It’s over – finished and done with. I should never have married in the first place. I’m a loner. You knew that, Franny. I never promised you anything or told you that I loved you. It’s safer that way. Neither of us has lost our heart or head. I always assumed you were Charles’ property – that was half the attraction. You were tied, tagged, accounted for, ringed like a homing pigeon. I don’t like girls when they’re single, or available. Oh, no doubt there’s some devious psychological explanation. My mother didn’t breast-feed me or my father wore a wig, but who cares? That’s how I am, and I’m happy with it. Look, we’re meant to be having dinner, aren’t we? Where’s this four-course feast you promised me?’

  She got up automatically, surprised her legs still worked.

  Someone had chopped them into pieces, floured them, and flung them in a casserole. She couldn’t even think. Her mind was a soup, mushy and diluted. Somehow, she’d never put Ned in any context, or let him have a life story. He was simply there, ready and waiting, to fit any of her fantasies – lover, confidant, playmate, Peter Pan. Father of her baby. It was partly his fault. He’d always played along with her, never answering any questions, treating life as a game. But she’d lost the game. She was pregnant by a man who didn’t even want to be a husband, let alone a father; who wanted to be free, untrammelled, single.

  She tried to fix her attention on the blue and white squiggles on the cheap Woolworth plates. If she counted them like sheep, perhaps she wouldn’t lose control. But even the squiggles were dazed and trembling, submerging under scalding chicken sauce.

  ‘D … did you have children, Ned?’

  If she lost the squiggles, at least she could still count peas. She knew there were more than thirty-five. One hundred and thirty-five. One thousand and thirty-five. Nine whole months of peas, stretching away to a fully-formed, deformed, unwanted baby. She continued spooning peas on to Ned’s plate, until they were overflowing in a relentless green volcano.

  ‘Hey, steady on! I know I said I was hungry, but …’

  ‘Did you, Ned?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Have children?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Did you ever want them?’ She removed a sprig of mint from the potatoes, added a sprinkling of salt, a twist from the pepper mill.

  ‘Can we stop this conversation? I find it tedious. I don’t want to talk about my wife, or my mother, or my Serbo-Croat fairy godmother. I’m quite happy to tell you the difference between a bull-huss and a tope, or discuss the spawning habits of salmon. Mother Nature’s very odd, you know. Salmon live in the sea, but break their bloody necks fighting back to the fresh water they were born in, in order to spawn themselves. Whereas silver eel live in fresh water all their lives, and then go bananas swimming three thousand miles back to the Sargasso Sea to lay their eggs. What a cock-up! All that unnecessary travelling. Now, if a broody eel could swap with a pregnant salmon …’

  Pregnant, broody – why did he have to use such cruel words? He was explaining, now, which fish spawned their young alive, and which laid eggs. She let him talk, through alternate mouthfuls of dab and chicken. Her face made roughly the right sort of responses, but she wasn’t listening. She was trying desperately to reassess the situation. She couldn’t live with Ned – that was clear – she couldn’t launch a baby on him, couldn’t even blame him. She’d lied to him, not only over the Pill, but in other, fundamental things. Even after Croft’s Club, she hadn’t said, ‘I’ve left my husband because he won’t accept your baby.’ She’d told him some fable about coming to stay, while Charles baled out a bank in Singapore. Just a few days; Charles wouldn’t know. She’d even played the poor abandoned wife. She was lonely on her own, with her husband always abroad.

  Ned had pressed her, ‘Are you sure it’s safe? Charles won’t be suspicious?’ And she’d lulled him with false assurances. She hadn’t allowed Ned a life and a history of his own. Because he stressed the present, she’d abolished his past and kidnapped his future, taken him over and used him for her own purposes. Yet, all the time, she’d been using Charles as well. Even this Tesco’s chicken had been bought with Charles’ money, and all Ned’s deficiencies patched and supplemented, courtesy of Charles. She had never really accepted that her precious infant would go to Acton Primary, or that she’d have the baby in a crowded, noisy ward on the NHS. If Ned had been her basic cake, then Charles was always the icing on the top. But neither man would go along with her. Why should they? She’d chosen a game they didn’t want to play, and bent the rules to suit her.

  She’d deceived herself, as well as them. Made up her own myth of Ned and swallowed it whole, assigning him the role of willing father, and expecting him to rewrite his entire life script, to fit her own needs. Or tried to believe that Charles would accept a child which wasn’t his, when she’d failed to do the same, with Magda. There was something really repellent about having to face the truth about herself, seeing Frances Parry Jones as an insensitive manipulator, instead of a misused martyr.

  Ned was making patterns of peas, laying them out in the shape of a name, her name – Franny – with three broccoli kisses underneath.

  ‘Cheer up, love. You haven’t eaten a thing. Here – just eat the ‘‘F’’. F for my fabulous, fascinating, fantastic femme fatale.’

  He picked up two tiny peas which formed the crossbar of the F, and trickled them between her lips. The twins. She almost choked.

  ‘You’re still my favourite, Fran. Don’t be upset by what I said. Just let things be. Don’t tidy cupboards or dig up wives. Remember the moment, comrade.’

  She remembered it – the baby swelling, out on the summer grass. She still had the baby, but now it was doubly and permanently fatherless. Should she tell him, none the less? There was just a chance he might feel differently, when faced with a fait accompli. Even though she’d just admitted she was a manipulator, blind to other people’s needs, she still craved the baby like a drug. Her mind could analyse and censure, point out just how selfishly and stupidly she’d acted, but her body didn’t care. It was still murmuring ‘I’m pregnant, pregnant, pregnant’, lush and blossoming, back in the September afternoon.

  Ned had abandoned the peas and was larding custard on to hot gooseberry crumble. ‘Let’s eat our pudding in bed.’

  ‘No.’ She struggled to her feet. The sick black night heaved against the dark uncurtained windows.

  ‘Please, Fran. I’ll have a bath, I promise. You won’t smell a trace of plaice. That’s a poem! D’you know, I’m the only living poet who …’

  ‘Ned, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Go? Where? Why?’

  It was suddenly so cold. Perhaps there had never been a summer afternoon. ‘Oh, I don’t know …’ Where, indeed? Where could a pregnant woman go? There was always Viv – she would understand. But relations with Viv had been strained since Magda had been sent away to boarding school. Viv had swept round to see them, begged that the child should live with her, instead. And all Charles had done was repeat, �
��Magda will be better with the nuns.’ He hadn’t even looked up from correcting the typescript of his latest new tax report. Viv had lost her cool, shouted at them both and rushed away. Frances had tried to mend the rift with a bread-and-butter letter, and a bunch of flowers. And then ignored her. It was the same with all her friends. She’d been so absorbed in herself and her predicament, she’d neglected and avoided them. She sometimes wondered if they really were her friends. She and Charles were always so busy, they treated friends like holidays – something you bothered with, if and when you could spare the time. Ned had taught her what true friendship was. He might be a loner, but he knew about caring and affection. Just-good-friends was everything with Ned. And she’d abused it. She couldn’t walk away without repaying him, without some tangible farewell, one last crazy romp in his crumpled, fishy bed.

  She lay in it, naked, waiting while he ran his bath. She remembered all the times they’d clowned together in the bathroom, when he’d scrubbed her back and soaped between her toes, drawn patterns on her breasts with shaving soap, conducted with the loofah while he thundered out Salvation Army hymns. He was singing now, out of tune, murdering the time. Charles would wince. But why was she still destroying Ned with Charles? She was no longer in the luxurious position of having two contradictory but complementary men, one to atone for the other. There was no man now – she was alone, with only a half-formed baby in a sparsely furnished womb.

  ‘Shove over, love. I’m clean except for my middle upper back. Since you wouldn’t come and scrub it, I can’t guarantee it’s free from barnacles.’

  He was so puerile sometimes, so stupid, it would be almost a relief to be alone. His constant bantering was beginning to annoy her, so that she almost longed for Charles’ high seriousness. Then, when she was back with Charles, she taunted him for being humourless. She wanted both of them, and neither. She moved over, almost to the wall.

  He had brought his pudding with him, congealing gooseberry crumble in a dish which said ‘PUSSY‘. He daubed a blob of custard across the dark thatch of her pubic hair, then straddled her to lick it off. She felt his rough, familiar tongue spooning into her, licking her lips, going back for second helpings. Her mind shut off and she was only a sweetmeat now, a flesh-pot – milk and honey, gooseberries and cream. There was still the moment, even if it was the last crowning moment she would ever have with him. No one could take it from her. She knew now what it was like to feel and respond through every cell and pore. And, somehow, the baby was part of it. If she hadn’t wanted a child, she would never have known another man, never moved out of her haven, into the highway. She would have the baby on her own, and at least bequeath to it, from its absent and unwitting father, the importance of the moment. There was nothing else – only Ned devouring her as she shouted underneath him, only the flinging, furious now, slamming and soaring until it took over her whole body, her whole life.

  She sank back, down, under, as Ned emerged, his face damp, his hair tangled.

  ‘You taste different, darling, strange.’ He dipped his fingers between her thighs, brought them out, dark and shining. ‘Look, Fran!’

  She didn’t look. She had closed her eyes, still savouring the feelings, letting her body slowly spiral down.

  He kissed her softly on the pubic hair. His lips were wet and scarlet. ‘You’re bleeding, darling. Your period must have started. Why didn’t you tell me you were due?’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Frances had stuffed a double wad of Kleenex up her pants. She could feel the blood seeping through it, trickling on to the driving seat. She drove fast, watching the needle soar up to seventy and stay there. She was going home. Home was where her husband was, where she had her periods. Twenty years of periods. She had never, ever missed one, not even now. There was no traffic on the roads. It was too late (or too early) for fellow motorists. She was a migrating bird, flying back where she belonged, where nature and her instincts dictated, following her biology. Or was she merely running away from Acton? Where in hell could she go but home, at three o’ clock in the morning? She could hardly wander the streets all night. Anyway, she needed Tampax.

  She hadn’t planned beyond the Tampax. There was too much else exploding in her mind. She’d already stayed far too long at Ned’s. She should have left as soon as she’d realized her period had started, instead of lingering like that, and blurting out the whole stupid story. She shuddered as she played the scene again – Ned sprawling naked on the lino, with a cat on either side of him, and she upside down on the pillows, sobbing with …

  No, she mustn’t think of it. All she wanted was to mop up the wreckage of the night, return to base, start again. Perhaps she wouldn’t stay at home, just camp in the house till morning, steal in, lie low, and be gone again by dawn. She needn’t even go upstairs, just stretch out on the sofa like an uninvited guest. She blinkered herself, so that she could think of nothing but the sofa, a velvet-covered Mecca, with soft cushions and supporting arms. She didn’t put the car away, nor dab at the dark stain on the driving seat. The house was hushed and dark, as she crept towards the front door and was engulfed by the familiar smell of wax polish and high principles. Her shadow groped along the hall, shifting and trembling towards velvet-sofa sleep. Suddenly, another, taller shadow intercepted it.

  ‘Frances!’ murmured Charles.

  She froze. She had never even considered that her husband might be still awake. His voice was home, salvation. Their two shadows fused.

  Her face was jammed against his shoulder. She didn’t know if she should tell him, or even how. She couldn’t just announce, ‘My period’s begun.’ Yet she never used the more colloquial terms like ‘the curse’ or ‘coming on’. Charles liked even menstruation to be grammatical, precise. Though this time, she knew he wouldn’t care. The fact itself spelled Mafeking for him, victory, reprieve.

  ‘Charles,’ she stuttered. Her voice was muffled by his dressing-gown. ‘I’m … er … not pregnant after all.’

  He was too well-mannered to gloat, or jubilate. He just held her, tighter, so that she could feel his heart hammering into hers, his motor and machinery still powering her frail life.

  ‘Happy anniversary!’ he whispered. And, suddenly, he was undoing her zip, dragging her dress down over her hips, pushing her to the floor. She had left Ned’s bed barely half an hour ago, still sticky with his sperm and her blood, and now Charles was repeating the performance, with no preliminaries, without even washing. He never made love to her when she was menstruating, found it far too messy and distasteful. Even if she wanted it herself, she never asked. It would stain the sheets, embarrass both of them. Ned’s sheets were already stained and so was Ned. He hadn’t been embarrassed in the slightest. And here was Charles, equally uninhibited, even more impetuous.

  He hadn’t spread a towel on the precious Persian rug. There was an urgency about him, a pleading, grabbing violence. It was a relief to feel him back in her again, large and inexhaustible. Ned had always been too small, too playful, a Peter Pan, U-certificate. But Charles was double X – slamming into her with wild, tearing strokes, crushing her body with his own, clawing her back with the pressure of his nails. And he was no longer silent, but making sounds she had never heard before, battle-cries of triumph and relief. She realized, suddenly, even while her body worshipped him, that he was competing with Ned, re-establishing his sexual rights, his ownership. He did not come at once – just went on stampeding her with pleasure, proving his superiority, his staying power, offering her everything he had and was.

  Afterwards, they lay together on the rug, sprawled on top of panting Persian dragons, their feet jammed against Charles’ mother’s priceless cellaret, Frances bleeding into him, shattered and sleepless. Charles fell fast asleep. She could hardly believe it, a man who found even hotel beds uncomfortable and who wore pinstriped pyjamas buttoned to the neck, reclining on the floor, clothed only in his own sweat. He was using sleep as a drug, a palisade, to block out all the facts he couldn’t face,
including his own messy, bloody, bellowing, unprecedented sexual act.

  Morning was a long time coming. It crept up on them sullenly, with rain. Charles’ eyes groped open, and for one brief, unacknowledged second, she saw terror and embarrassment flick over them, like secret pictures on a broken screen. Then he quickly slipped away from her, and she heard him run the taps, full blast, upstairs; soaping her away in a penitential cleansing rite, washing off her body, her blood, in an anniversary bath.

  She stumbled to her feet and retrieved the stained wad of Kleenex, stuffing it back between her legs. She had still not fetched her Tampax, nor even glimpsed the sofa. So, what had she returned for? To be fucked by Charles? She slumped back down again. True, it had been wonderful, burst through all the rules and leapt new barriers, but Charles had already locked away the night like a dangerous aphrodisiac, to be swallowed only in life-and-death emergencies, and with the key in his safe keeping.

  The drawing-room looked alien, like somebody else’s house. It seemed to have swelled and stiffened in her absence, all its contents rigid and exalted, lowering down at her, as if she were a scratch upon their stern perfection. She stared around the room – everything so permanent and solid – furniture which had survived the centuries and increased its value at the same time. Stiff-spined chairs glared back at her, brass-footed bureaux pursed their lips, gaunt-eyed ancestors shrugged and turned away. There was no sign of welcome, or even recognition, no joy in her return. The house was always tidy, but at least when she was there, she added little touches to soften it or brighten it, ephemeral, insubstantial things which perished in a day – a bowl of cherries, a vase of fragrant pinks … But flowers and fruit had all been swept away. Now there was only highly-polished emptiness.

  The doorbell cut across the vacuum. She started. Ned? No, Ned never wished to set eyes on her again, not after the things he’d said last night. Postman, gasman, Harrods delivery van? She jumped up guiltily. You couldn’t deal with Harrods, sprawled on the floor wearing nothing but a nappy. She pulled on an old raincoat hanging in the passage and sidled towards the door, trying to stop the Kleenex slipping. Mrs Eady was standing on the step, gawping in disbelief at her employer’s bare feet and tangled hair.