by Voss, Louise
‘You’d have found out sooner or later.’ I reached into the box and handed him the final card: Andre Agassi.
‘I’M PREGNANT. IT’S ADAM’S.’
Ken sprang out of his chair with a howl of pain so intense that it was almost a scream, and started to rip up the postcard. I had never heard a noise like it, and I hoped I never did again. The blackbird flew off in a panic, and I saw the cat’s tail vanish over the fence.
I thought he was going to hit me, and at that moment I wanted him to, if it would have helped him. He was crying, finally, as he flung torn pieces of card at me, and swiped the cardboard box off the table onto the floor, scattering my pathetic little props. A chunk of Agassi’s hairy leg got caught on the sleeve of my t-shirt, and I brushed it off.
‘I’m sorry, Ken,’ I pleaded in panic. ‘I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t plan any of it, I promise. I just wanted to meet Max and it all got out of control.…
Ken finished tearing the card into bits. He stood directly opposite me, hands clenched into fists at his sides, his face dark with rage and grief, so incongruous in the hot sunlight. When he finally spoke, his voice was a controlled whisper:
‘Pack your bags and get out of this house, Anna, you evil slut. I never want to see you again. We’re finished.’
I arrived at Lil’s clutching Spesh in one hand and my overnight bag in the other and, no doubt, a haunted expression in my eyes - all I was missing for the complete evacuee impression was a cardboard box containing a gas mask slung round my neck, and a luggage tag on my lapel.
I’d already packed the bag earlier that day, in grim anticipation of Ken’s verdict: pyjamas and washbag, change of clothes. It had reminded me of packing a bag to go to the hospital to have Holly—even though I’d had a home birth, or tried to, I’d still been told to have a bag ready, in case I had to be whisked off in an emergency. Which I had been, although it was too late by then, Holly was already dead.
Still, at least I’d had my toothbrush.
She let me in without a word, sorrow on her face, and stood at the foot of the stairs while I ran straight past her and up to the spare room. The room was already made up for me, with a discreet box of tissues on the bedside table, and a little posy of flowers from her garden in a vase on the dresser. It felt too neat; white and floral-sprigged, for the emotion I was about to pour out in it, as if the worst thing that had ever happened in there was nobody dusting the skirting boards for a fortnight.
I sat on the candlewick bedspread and sobbed and sobbed until I felt desiccated and hollow, a receptacle emptied of everything, except my baby, it’s little peanut shaped body sprouting flappers of limbs and eyes like a tadpole’s in its big misshapen head. At that moment I really believed it was the only thing worth staying alive for.
Lil came up and sat with me, holding me, only breaking away to get me a fresh tissue or a cup of tea. We didn’t talk for a long, long time.
There was a small figurine on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, a shepherdess holding out her china white skirts in a swirling dance of happiness, a dreamy smile on her face and immaculate porcelain curls. I’d admired it since I was a child, and remembered how I used to pick it up when Lil wasn’t looking, holding its slim, cold body in my hand, reverentially stroking the flowing dress and the bumpy hair, feeling as if they ought to be warm to the touch. The shepherdess had the tiniest, reddest, Cupid’s bow lips, and spots of pink on her cheeks not much bigger than pinheads. I’d wanted her so badly. Hinted at Lil on countless occasions to let me keep her. Even, several times, going as far as to hide her about my person and smuggle her out of the house, where she would spend a dusty fortnight under my bed, brought out for furtive inspections at night. But my conscience would always prevail, and on the next visit to Lil and Norman’s, I’d smuggle her back again. She never looked the same away from their house, because I always felt too guilty.
What had happened to my conscience? I’d had such a strong sense of right and wrong when I was a child. I’d have expected that to increase with age, not dwindle away until I couldn’t even see how wrong it was to sleep with another man; to ruin lives with my selfish behaviour. When I was a kid, I’d been desperate to be an adult. Now that I was an adult, I wished for nothing more than the pleasure of that shepherdess’s smile, and black and white moral boundaries which could be stretched, but never broken.
When I could finally speak, I pointed to the shepherdess and said, thickly, ‘I used to steal that ornament from you on a regular basis.’
Lil smiled and stroked my hair. ‘I know, darling. Norm and I used to joke about it. We half hoped you’d start sending us postcards from her, the way that people who steal garden gnomes sometimes do. We’d say, “I wonder where she’s gone this time?”, and imagine her like Julie Andrews up the mountains in Switzerland, or in a meadow somewhere, singing.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘She was always just under my bed.’
‘You always brought her back with never so much as a chip out of her, so I didn’t mind.’
‘Do you still miss Uncle Norman?’
She nodded, gazing at the shepherdess. ‘Every day.’
‘Was he your soulmate?’
I used to think that Ken was my soulmate. But then I met Adam, and wondered if he was. Now I wasn’t sure whether such a thing existed.
‘I don’t know about that. He was my friend, my companion, my…rotector, I suppose. I loved him very much. There’s not much else I can say, really.’
I got the strangest feeling that there was a lot more that Lil wasn’t saying.
‘Do you believe that there’s one ideal person for everyone?’
She looked me in the eyes. ‘Yes, I think I do. But I also think that you have to be incredibly blessed to find them. I—well—I did find mine, but he was married to someone else.’
I held my breath. ‘Is he still alive?’
‘Oh no. He died in the Sixties. His wife later became a friend of mine, actually. You might even remember her - Doreen? Of course she never knew about me and Lawrence. It would have killed her.’
‘You had an affair while you were married to Uncle Norman?’ I couldn’t believe it.
She nodded again, and in her eyes I saw the young woman she once was, frustrated in love, grieving for what she couldn’t have.
‘Nothing physical, of course, not like it all is these days,’ she said. ‘I believe we only kissed half a dozen times. But we saw each other infrequently for years and years, until he died. He was the one for me. I used to dream that Norman, or Doreen, would run off with somebody else so that we could be together. But neither of them ever did, and neither Lawrence nor I wanted to hurt them that badly.’
I put my hand on her arm. ‘That’s so sad.’
She smoothed her skirt over her knees in her characteristic gesture. ‘Goodness, no, not really,’ she said more briskly. ‘Norman was so kind to me. I had a happy life, apart from… that. It’s all ancient history now.’
‘But he never knew?’
‘No.’
‘Ken knows about me and Adam now… I’ve ruined everything.’
Lil took my face in her hands and squeezed my cheeks gently. ‘You don’t know that yet. Just because he’s reacted very badly, it doesn’t mean that he won’t have a change of heart later. Whether that will be weeks later, or months, or even years, nobody knows—just don’t give up on him, if you feel that you and he should stay together.’
‘But I don’t feel that we should stay together,’ I said miserably. ‘I want Adam, but he doesn’t want me. I can’t settle for Ken just because Adam won’t have me—that’s not fair on Ken.’
‘Even if he agrees to try and forgive you? You’ve told him the truth, now you have to give him space to come to terms with it, and then you will both need to decide how to go ahead with your lives, together or not together…
I yawned, suddenly overwhelmed with a massive, bone-crushing exhaustion.
I felt wrung out, empty, and all I wanted was to sleep.
Lil stroked the hair back from my face. ‘Have a nap, darling, you look worn out. You’re going to need all the rest you can get now, aren’t you?’
She stood up, picked up our empty cups and saucers and left the room, closing the door softly behind her. The shepherdess and I were alone. Her painted eyes remained wide open, gazing at me indulgently as if to say, ‘well, you’ve really done it this time, Anna,’ but mine closed within seconds. Lil’s words, ‘have a nap’ echoed in my head; and I badly wanted to see Max draw one his ‘naps’- the one which showed ‘Really Really Actually Heaven’; ‘The Airport’; and ‘The Place Where Stories Were Made’.
Then I fell asleep. I dreamed about my baby: he was a little blond boy; Max’s little brother. He looked like Max. He was peering through a low picket fence at me, gurgling and chortling, pointing skywards at an aeroplane crossing the wide blue sky which I realized we knew contained Ken, jetting off on a business trip - or more likely just out of my life for good. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him again, but ‘sorry’ didn’t quite seem to cover it. The plane was represented on Max’s ‘nap’ with a moving dotted line, like they sometimes used in films to denote a flightpath. It flew over ‘The Big Bad Wolf’s House’, and on, past ‘Our House’, and towards ‘Where the People Die’.
The shepherdess was still smiling at me when I woke up, five hours later.
‘Please stay,’ I said out loud to my baby, my hands on my belly.
Chapter 41
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
George Valentine was born by elective Caesarian section. My obstetrician suggested it, and I agreed without hesitation; it wasn’t that I was ‘too posh to push’, as common parlance had it, I just liked the idea of knowing the exact date and time when he’d come into the world. It somehow made me feel that there was less margin for error.
I couldn’t stop marvelling at how quick it was, either; so sterile and painless. I felt the blunt unzipping of my abdomen, and the weirdness of gloved hands reaching into me, but I didn’t look at their green-gowned bodies bent over my stomach behind the curtained off area which bisected my body. I looked instead at the people holding my own hands: Vicky, on one side of me, Lil on the other, their anxious masked faces peering into mine until I felt like a lab rat pinned out on a slab. Nonetheless, if I kept eye contact with them at all times, it helped keep the waves of terror under control.
I’d secretly worried that having Lil there would remind me of when Holly was born, but it hadn’t, not really. It was so different. And I couldn’t have done it without her; without the lifeline of her cool, thin hand. She didn’t say much, other than the odd muttered word of encouragement, preferring to leave the talking to Vicky.
Vicky, in contrast, hardly stopped talking, her mask wobbling up and down until I became transfixed by the movement. She and her four-month old baby Chloe had accompanied me on all my ante-natal visits, whilst Shock-Headed Peter had minded the other two children—remarkably uncomplainingly, it seemed. He’d really pulled his finger out since Chloe was born, and had cut his working week down to four days, to allow Vicky a whole day to herself. I wasn’t sure whether the salutary tale of me and Ken had had any impact on them, but they seemed much happier together.
‘Wish I’d known how easy Caesarians are, I’d have done it for all of them. Nobody staring at your parts. No stirrups. No midwives having to strain your poo out of the birthing pool with a sieve—that was sooo humiliating, even with the contractions coming every thirty seconds, I still had time to be mortified…And after three of ‘em, my pelvic floor’s like the stage trapdoor now. I always thought that your stomach muscles would never recover after a Caesarian but they do if you work at it, don’t they, I mean, look at Victoria Beckham, her tummy’s like an ironing board…
Tummy. That word always reminded me of Adam. Adam was never far from my thoughts—how could he be, when they were taking his child out of me? I still missed him and Max badly, but for the past few months all my energies had been focussed on growing George.
Vicky was still wittering on: ‘…My stomach’s terrible at the moment—when I lie down on my side, it lies next to me, like a puppy or something. We’ll do millions of sit-ups together after your six weeks is up, you wait, it’ll be torture…The babbas can play together while we sweat—Chloe needs a mate. She’s already growing out of her baby gym. It’s funny how four months will seem like a big age gap between them for the first year, and then there’ll be no difference, will there? Besides, poor little Chloe’s going to need an ally of her own age, what with Crystal and Pat torturing her whenever I take my eyes off them…’
At first I’d felt like telling her to put a sock in it, but after a while I found it oddly comforting, and focussing on her words helped take my mind off the whole scale rummaging occurring in my stomach. I also realised that she hadn’t talked about her previous labours to me before, nor about the future relationship between her new baby and mine, for fear of upsetting me, or in case it all went wrong again. It was a good sign, I thought.
Then Vicky finally did shut up, because the doctors were tugging out my baby, and then they were holding him aloft and cutting the cord, and I saw him for the first time, purple and bloody just as Holly had been, but outraged and squawking at the rude interruption to his peace and quiet, his tiny arms punching and flailing in the air. I knew then that he was going to be fine. His mother’s son, I thought; I bet he’ll love his sleep. They put him on my chest and he quietened down immediately, gazing into my eyes as if to say ‘well, and wasn’t I just worth waiting for?’
‘Oh,’ sobbed Vicky, tears running over her mask. ‘A boy! Boys always look at their mums that way. He adores you already…Oh Anna, I can’t believe it! Oh, congratulations. He’s just perfect.’
George just stared and stared at me. There was a patch of my blood on his cheek, and it made me smile to think of all the other patches of blood to come in future, his own blood, not mine, a boy’s grazes and scrapes and cuts. Tree falls and playground skirmishes, bike accidents and possibly worse. I stopped smiling at the thought, never far from the surface of my mind, that maybe, God forbid, he would have a serious fall or a terrible illness—but then seeing him in my arms, so real and solid and human, made me think, well, maybe he wouldn’t. And if he did, I’d get him through it, like Adam had got Max through his. We’d get through anything together. Whatever happened, he was his own person, on his own path, and nothing I could do would affect that. All I had to do was to be there for him, and I knew I always would be.
‘Hello my darling boy,’ I said to him. ‘Meet your great-great-aunt.’ I passed him over to Lil and she cradled him to her chest, his skinny little legs dangling comfortably over her forearms. I tore my gaze away from his ankles, smaller than marbles, and still-pliant shins—I’d grown those inside of me! - and watched the tears falling unrestrained down Lil’s face, as she pressed her lined parchment skin gently against his soft red cheeks.
My darling son. He had Adam’s eyes.
––––––––––––––––––––-
Anna Valentine
C/o Rosemead
21 Seymour Road
Hampton TW11
Adam Ferris
43 Hardcourt Road
Gillingsbury
Wilts.
October 31st 2003
Dear Adam,
I hope you won’t be upset to hear from me, and that everything is going well for you and Max and Marilyn. Please tell Max that I miss him, and I miss his emails. I know I haven’t written many to him over the past few months either, but—well—the reason for that is also the reason for this letter…hich I’ll come on to later. Anyway, I’m dying to hear what his latest pinball score is, and how many teeth he’s lost now. Tell him Spesh is fine. He sleeps with me at night and guards my bed every day.
I’m living with my great-aunt, Lil, and have been since I last saw you. My husband and I split up, and are just waiting for the decree absolute to come through. Seven mont
hs ago I told him about you and Max, and his reaction was not dissimilar to yours, when I told you about him. But it’s OK. Lil has been amazing to me, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my best friend Vicky and her children. I’m not working, but Vicky and I are planning to set up some kids’ theatre workshop groups—Wigwam Drama - in a few months’ time.
Ken, my soon-to-be ex-husband, has found a new girlfriend. Her name is Nadine, and she’s twenty-seven, a County tennis player (he’s mad about his tennis. Did I ever tell you that I can’t stand tennis?!), fit and tanned and gorgeous - Ken is over the moon. And I’m surprised at how happy I am for him. After me treating him so appallingly, he deserves it. He was so angry with me when I told him, but since he and Nadine got together, he’s being more friendly. We have to talk regularly, about finances and selling the house and stuff, and it’s a lot more pleasant now that he can be civil to me again. Like you, he won’t ever forgive me completely though.
I miss you, Adam. I think about everything we did together, and, unless I’m looking at it through rose-coloured glasses—which I don’t think is the case—I realize how perfect we were for each other. I know I shouldn’t say this, but I miss everything about you: waking up with you, making love with you, playing with Max. Being part of your family, which was all I ever wanted. Every day I hear your words in my head: ‘I can’t believe how spectacularly you’ve blown it, Anna’—and you were right. I did blow it, didn’t I? I was such a colossal idiot, not to be honest with you from the start. Oh well. I won’t say any more—this is probably making you feel really uncomfortable, and I don’t want that. However much I miss you, I do genuinely wish you happiness too, and I know that I was always the cuckoo in your nest. Regardless of the bone marrow donation, I had no right to try and take Marilyn’s place. I’m sorry.
There’s something else I have to tell you now… remember that letter you wrote to me, telling me that I’d saved Max’s life. You said you were crying as you wrote it, and how could you not. Well, I’m crying too now, over what I’m about to say. I’m crying because I have to tell you in a letter, and I’m crying because I messed everything up; because ‘I blew it’.
