Did The Earth Move?

by Carmen Reid

  The two sisters looked at each other and burst into fresh giggles.

  'And I seriously think you need new hair and new pants,' Eve added.

  'What!' Janie shrieked.

  'Well, I'd like to drag you out kicking and screaming for a whole new wardrobe. But I think it would be too much hard work, trying to drown out the voice of your inner barrister. But new hair and new pants would be a start, get you out of this sort of boring, middle-aged, frump thing going on here.'

  She reached over and twanged at the top of Janie's elasticated trousers revealing, as expected, greying briefs encased in American tan tights.

  'Yuck,' Eve said, pulling a face. "This is all very practical, but . . . yuck. What we want is you sitting in your boring, barrister suits and thinking, "Yes, I know I look dull, but I'm wearing very racy pink pants ..."'

  'And better hair, darlink, better hair.' Eve couldn't help lapsing into Harry speak now. 'Harry must take a look at this bob, darlink, and work his magic.'

  And so it was that at about 3p.m. the next day the two sisters pulled up chairs in one of those expensive, marble-topped-table cafes where everything comes with quadruple whipped cream, still in a whirl of breathless 'do you like it? Are you sures?' about their new hair. Sneaking peaks in the mirrors, in shop windows, still not quite recognizing their reflections.

  Eve's blond tresses had been streaked with bright girlie pink.

  'I'm not too old for pink hair, I promise I'm not – and no, I don't want washable, I want permanent pink ... for the wedding,' she'd assured Harry, who had expressed reservations as he'd gowned her up and listened to her request. But when the striped candyfloss head had emerged, he'd had to agree. No she wasn't too old for pink hair. She looked ... hmmm ... a lovely mixture of rosy, flushed and groovy.

  Eve's courage had forced Janie to be bold too.

  She now had sleek, short hair tucked in around her small ears and round the nape of her neck in a dark, conker brown.

  'We're looking good, honey, I promise,' Eve told her as they sipped at the ludicrous mountains of cream.

  Scrunched up between their feet on the floor were plastic and paper bags full of pants, bras, hipster knickers . . . G-strings! After the initial shock, Janie had decided to go for it – green, pink, orange, turquoise, even glitzy silver smalls were in the bags.

  'Promise me you'll wear them in court,' Eve had said loudly in the changing room.

  'For goodness sake!' Janie had shooshed her.

  But Eve had rather been looking forward to the intrigued look on the face of the saleswoman as they came out.

  'I'm sure she thinks we're lesbians,' Janie, flustered, had whispered as they made their way out of the shop.

  'I know.' Eve threaded her arm through her sister's. 'Be a shame to disappoint her.' She'd licked Janie on the ear.

  'Get off! Are you insane?'

  'Just a London girl, you uptight, Home Counties mum.'

  'Please can I be just a little bit more like you?'

  'Yes. But can I remind you once, way back, when I wanted to be like you too?'

  'D'you think you'll actually wear any of them?' Eve was asking her now.

  'Of course! You don't think I'd waste money on knickers for the back of my drawer!'

  'Will David get to see them?'

  'Well... ummm...' Janie picked up her spoon and began twiddling with it again. 'You know, I think David and I need to be apart for a while.' She looked up at Eve. 'And I've only just decided that today.'

  'Hairstyle changes,' Eve couldn't help saying. 'They're scary.'

  Janie just smiled at her. Then after a long thoughtful pause, she added: 'I've been married for sixteen years, Eve. That's a very long time. A very long time to be half of a couple, to be a wife, a parent, to be constantly compromising what I want with "What would David want? What would the children want?" I hope I don't sound like the most selfish woman on the planet, but I feel like I've forgotten myself, I've forgotten who I am and what I want or like, God, even what I like to eat or drink. Prawns for example—' she was almost laughing now. 'I don't think I've had prawns, hot, fried with garlic, all juicy in their shells with a little squeeze of lemon . . .' She broke off and tilted her head thoughtfully. 'You know, I've probably eaten them three times since I got married, even though I love them, because David is allergic to them.'

  She shook her head.

  'We're so up close, together all the time, I can't see him. I haven't the slightest idea what it was about him that I fell in love with and if it's still there. And I no longer think there's any hope of finding out until I get away for a while. Have a holiday ... leave them all to it.'

  With another almost laugh, she added: 'God knows how they'll react to that.'

  'Try not to care,' Eve said.

  'Yes. One long compromise – that's what my home life has become,' Janie said. 'No-one is doing what they want any more. We're all doing what we think we should ... what someone else wants. I know you can't please all of the people all of the time, but at the moment one of us is always miserable and all four of us have forgotten how to be happy.'

  'Well . . . group living is tricky,' Eve said. 'Needs of the individual versus the group... I'm sure Anna could direct us to whole bookshelves about that.'

  'She is a little bit scary, isn't she?'

  'Occasionally, but she's quite a normal nine-year-old most of the time,' Eve said, never wanting Anna to be labelled with any hyper-intelligent tags that she might struggle to live up to later.

  Something was occurring to Eve for the very first time.

  'Now that I think about it,' she confided to Janie, 'I compromised totally for Dennis. I did everything the way he wanted and tried to be everything he wanted me to be. And with Joseph, it was the opposite. I fought every hint of a compromise all the way. I tried to make him do everything the way I wanted it – even changed his diet, made him give up coffee, cycle to college, recycle everything . . . Oh God! No bloody surprise he turned out the way he is. He rebelled!'

  'Scary,' Janie said. 'And you know, I think when people live together for a long time, it's the trickle of water on a stone effect: gradually you change, you get worn down. David's little comments about my clothes: too expensive this, too revealing that, too tight, too bright... they've gradually, over the years turned me into a frump. Me!! Eve! The girl who used to spend half her wages on the very best Italian clothes Winchester had to offer.'

  Eve considered this carefully then said: 'This is obviously why people getting divorced in their mid-forties go on these crazed "I'm an individual" benders. Buy sports cars, groovy gear and pop music.'

  'Does it have to be this way? Do I have to get divorced to be me again?' Janie asked her now.

  'I don't know.' Eve licked cream from the back of her spoon. 'Only you and David, and maybe the children, can help you with that one.'

  Her sister looked down at her cup and began to stir again, over and over. How hard she was to read, Eve thought, her practised, inscrutable barrister's face.

  Finally Janie looked up and said with a little smile: 'I'll have to wear the nice pants for myself for a while ... Get comfortable in them.'

  'That's my girl,' Eve smiled back.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Eve had allowed the whole work thing to somehow get away from her. Lester had urged her to go ahead and apply for the promotion anyway, because she could always change her mind. And now here she was brushing down her best suit, ironing her shirt and polishing shoes for a day of meetings with the selection panel tomorrow because she was being interviewed for the job along with Lester's deputy and two outside candidates.

  All this concentrating on whether or not she wanted it, she'd let slip the fact that maybe she wouldn't get it and suddenly that seemed to be whetting her appetite. Looking down at her note-scribbled diary, she saw the big red ring round 7 August, interview. She had the vaguest feeling that there was another reason she should remember the date, but shrugged it off. Thoughts of the interview were
crowding in now ... maybe she did want to head the department, get things done the way she wanted, take the rap, make the changes .. . Her only reservation was family life and how it would be affected by taking on more work.

  But wasn't that the hardest thing to get right? The balance between work and family. It was an art to be in the middle of the push and pull and not be torn apart, to find a way to give more attention to one side when it was needed then move quickly back and redraw the lines. She saw Janie and Jen struggle with it week in, week out and she knew Deepa and Tom would have to play the game too when the baby arrived.

  After a long bath, Eve went to check on the children. Like every parent, she loved to watch them sleep – the long lashes, the flushed pink cheeks, the steady rise and fall of the little chests. Asleep, they were always perfect: Anna, an angel, Robbie, a little pyjama-clad Cupid.

  Back in her bedroom, she worked through all the most complicated calming poses, then curled herself up small, tiny, tiny into child's pose on the floor and tried to relax.

  That night, very soon after she had finally managed to fall asleep, she was woken by the scary sound of stumbling and choking in her room.

  When she managed to get the sidelight on, she saw her little son, pale and sweaty, looking up at her with trails of vomit down his chin and pyjama top.

  'It's OK, Robbie,' she'd said, going from asleep to fully awake and coping in twenty seconds. She gathered him up into her arms and put him in her bed. 'You get comfy, I'll go and get a cloth.'

  She sponged him down, along with the floor, the rug and her work shoes – which had somehow got embroiled in the vomit scenario.

  He was hot and listless in the bed. But not too hot, she thought, feeling his forehead, his neck and his tummy, so she gave him a few sips of water, then cuddled up with him and they both fell back to sleep.

  In the morning, he woke well before seven and seemed warm but not too bad. He could still go to the childminder's, but for a quiet day in.

  Eve had hardly sat down at her desk when the call came from Arlene. Robbie was burning up and wouldn't stop crying for her. Eve didn't need to hear the symptoms to know that he was really unwell, she could hear the horrible high-pitched wailing in the background.

  'OK, I'll be right over, as fast as I can. Tell him I'm coming . . . There isn't any rash, is there?' Because it was impossible not to fast-forward to that.

  'No, no rash,' Arlene told her. 'But he doesn't look good.'

  Eve scrambled her belongings into her bag and went to find Lester.

  He couldn't believe what he was hearing.

  'I have to go,' she told him.

  'For God's sake, Eve, this is really important,' he stormed. 'I don't know if it can be rearranged, and anyway what for? Your son has a temperature! You know what kids are like, he'll probably be much better by the time you get there and you'll wonder what you were so worried about. Isn't there anyone else who can look after him? Just to give you a few hours. We'll try and do your interview first.'

  'No,' she'd told him. 'No, Lester. I don't know how unwell he is, I'm not a doctor. All I know is he's hot, miserable and he wants his mummy. I don't have the luxury of being able to send my wife – or Robbie's dad – so I have to go.'

  And then for good measure she threw in: 'My family comes first. I want a world where that's not seen as a strike against me... that's why I do this job, for God's sake.' Flushed up with anger, she added: 'You bloody know I could head this department really well, because I am the kind of person who drops everything for a child who needs me.'

  Lester's gaze fell to his folded hands and he gave a deep sigh. 'OK, OK ... off you go. Keep in touch and come back as soon as you can.'

  'Thanks, I know you'll man the fort for me,' she said, her usual farewell to him when she was leaving early.

  'But not for much longer, Eve,' he called after her as she hurried out of the door to the minicab she'd ordered. 'Not for much longer.'

  * * *

  As she ran up the path to Arlene's house, she was shocked to hear her son's piercing cries.

  She rapped impatiently on the door and Arlene let her in almost immediately. She rushed to the sitting room, to see her little boy red and sobbing inconsolably on the sofa.

  'Oh Robbie, Robbie.' She cuddled him up and he buried his head in her chest. 'I'm really sorry.' This was directed at both her son and the anxious childminder.

  'What do you think it is?' Arlene asked.

  'I don't know, probably one of those nasty kiddie bugs, you know the ones that go on for 24 hours of hell and then disappear. I'll get him home and see how he goes. We'll phone the doctor for some advice.'

  Back at home, Eve washed Robbie down with lukewarm water, changed him into his pyjamas and let him doze on the sofa. He didn't want to let her out of his sight, cried whenever she went out of the room.

  He was hot, 39 degrees, when she checked with the thermometer. She stood in front of the bathroom medicine cabinet and swithered – baby paracetamol or homoeopathic belladonna? Reduce the fever or stoke it up? Calpol or belladonna? Calpol or belladonna?

  She decided to use belladonna but switch to Calpol if the fever went any higher. So Robbie was dosed, then sponged down with water every half an hour to keep him cool. He was vomiting back even the tiniest sips of water she was spooning into him and didn't perk up at all at the sight of Anna. By the evening, Eve decided it was time to consult the doctor again.

  'Sounds like just a virus,' the tired foreign voice at the other end of the line told her. Because this was on-call time and the best you could hope for in this part of London now was a locum who at least knew what he was talking about, even if you couldn't understand him.

  'Just a virus? Just a virus??!' she couldn't help snapping back. 'Isn't meningitis just a virus? AIDS ... Ebola?'

  'There's no need to over-react.'

  'No,' she agreed, trying to calm herself. 'I'm very tired, my son is ill and I want to know if he's going to be OK.'

  'Well, it sounds like gastric flu. You'll have to keep a close eye on him. If his temperature goes up higher, if he gets too dehydrated, or if any sort of rash develops, call us straight back. Give him Calpol and tiny sips of water.'

  Here we go with the Calpol thing again. Was this the only medicine available for children under ten?

  'Calpol is just paracetamol. It's not a wonder drug,' she heard herself snapping again.

  'It will make him feel a bit better, Mzzzz Gardiner. You might both be able to get some sleep.'

  * * *

  Mzzz Gardiner put the receiver down when the conversation was over, feeling mightily hacked off. At times like this it was very hard to be on her own. She needed another opinion, she needed somebody calm to look at Robbie, lying in a hot, dry, restless sleep in her bed, to say 'He's going to be fine', to put an arm round her and tell her to get some sleep on the sofa, he would stay with Robbie for a bit.

  She thought, with tears welling up behind her eyes, that she needed Joseph. And before she could stop herself, her head was in her hands and she was remembering him covered in projectile vomit from a teething baby Anna, managing to smile and coo at her 'There, there, feeling better now?' while baby sick dripped off his cheeks and pyjamas.

  Remembering him nurse her through flus and colds with soup brought to her bedside. He'd once set up the TV and video in her room and forced her to watch Laurel and Hardy films when she was too blue and unwell to make it out of bed.