‘We're leaving,’ he said, the moment they were in the corridor. ‘We're leaving now.’
‘Not before we've seen the baby.’
‘You're getting sucked in, I can feel it – I knew you would.’
‘I'm not getting sucked in. I want to see the baby. She might die, Charlie. She's Ed's daughter and she might die.’
‘Stop it,’ he rasped. ‘Stop it this instant.’
‘We will ask to see the baby and then we will go. I promise. I just want to see her.’
Charlie dropped his face into his hands. ‘How can you? This hospital – how can you?’
‘How can I what?’
‘Be so fucking calm.’ He groaned.
Serena was so amazed that she almost laughed. She tried to reach for his arm but he stumbled away from her against the corridor wall, knocking into a large print of Monet's water-lilies. They both watched, too shocked at their own conversation to move, as the picture swung violently from side to side before steadying.
‘I don't want to be here,’ he gasped. ‘This hospital – any hospital. Babies – I can't do it, I tell you, I fucking can't do it. I wasn't – I'm not – prepared. I need to get some air!’ Catching sight of the pretty Indian midwife gliding down the corridor towards them, he made a monumental effort to compose himself, swiping his damp cheeks and clearing his throat.
‘You can see the baby now,’ she announced, ‘just a peek, and you'll need to scrub up. If you'd like to come with me?’ She set off at a brisk walk towards the lifts.
Dazed, not knowing what else to do, Charlie and Serena followed. ‘Darling, I'm so sorry. I had no idea,’ Serena murmured. ‘I thought you were still just angry with me. Look, don't come… You don't have to come.’
Charlie had his head down and was placing his feet carefully between the swirls on the carpet. ‘I was angry – I am angry. I still think we have no business being here, but then, arriving here, it all came back to me – Christ, just the smell of the place…’ He choked on the words. ‘It was like I was living it all again… like losing her again…’
Serena squeezed his hand. ‘I felt it too. But then I reminded myself that this was the hospital where Tina was born, not where she died. And it was a lovely birth – do you remember? She came out like a little slippery fish, so sweet and easy, no fuss. Nothing will ever take the joy of that away. If anything, coming here tonight has made me see it more clearly. She was ours and we couldn't have loved her more. All this is so utterly different, so much harder and uglier. I feel for this child – for Jessica. I desperately want her and the baby to be okay, of course I do. The baby is our flesh and blood, whether we get to know her or not, so of course I want the best for her. I'm going to tell the nurses I'm worried about Jessica's state of mind – make sure she gets help. But that's all, the full extent of the getting sucked in. Okay?’ Serena squeezed his hand more tightly. ‘Can you manage that, Charlie?’
He nodded, and a few minutes later they had washed their hands in soap, then alcohol and were being led, in comical plastic aprons and gloves, into a room full of humming machines and screens, each connected to what looked at first glance like see-through plastic boxes.
‘Here she is.’ One of the neonatal nurses indicated the nearest box. Serena had to look twice to register that what lay in the middle, beneath the transparent lid, was a baby. She looked scrawnier even than she had in the little photograph, more like a premature puppy than a baby girl. Tubes protruded from every possible part of her body – nose, mouth, arms, legs. Even the too-big hat – twice the size of her head – was keeping a tube in place. Round each of her miniature ankles and wrists was an ID tag saying ‘Blake', followed by a series of numbers and her date of birth. Serena had been coping well until she saw the tags.
‘We should tell them she has a name,’ she whispered, biting her lip, groping for Charlie's hand.
Charlie couldn't speak. The machines were thrumming in his ears, full of quiet beeps and buzzes, like mesmerizing music. Through the maze of wires and tubes he watched the fierce, fast rise and fall of the tiny chest. The beat of life. He couldn't stop watching, couldn't stop willing it to go on. Such a small being, such a mighty fight. There were no words for it, only the humbling recognition that all the issues which for months had seemed so huge – money, paternal responsibility, even the ache for their darling Tina – had to give way for the infinitely more important battle going on in the cot in front of them.
‘I didn't know they made nappies that small,’ he gasped. ‘Her hands and feet, they're like…’
‘Little flowers,’ murmured Serena, ‘little bunched-up flowers. I wish we could touch.’
‘Christ, I don't – I'd be too scared I'd drop or squash her, poor little mite.’
‘Mum will get to touch her soon,’ remarked the nurse. ‘She's not quite as fragile as she looks and a little cuddle does wonders.’
Twenty minutes later, when they were back in the car, Charlie said, ‘I'm glad we came. Thank you for making me.’ He turned on the ignition but made no move to start driving. ‘They said they'd call, didn't they, if there was any… change?’
‘Yes.’
He put the car into gear, then shifted it back to neutral and reached for Serena. They hugged awkwardly across the gear-stick and handbrake, but with an intensity that required no words. It was an embrace as threaded with pain as it was with love. Stroking his cheek afterwards, as he drove, Serena wondered that she could ever have been naive enough to imagine the two emotions as separate. Death and love could not be separated either, she thought; a sense of loss was what death left behind, what gave life its treasure trove of meaning.
That night she dreamt of Tina, not fleetingly, or with pain, but vividly with a sense of endless joy. It was precisely the sort of dream she had longed to have in the months after her daughter's death, when she had ransacked every memory for images of what she had lost, feeding off them like a beast sucking at a shrinking water-hole, not slaking her thirst so much as stoking it. And here, suddenly, when she had stopped waiting for it, stopped looking for it, was her darling child, in her green dungarees and corduroy slip-on booties, one half off as usual, tottering towards her, her dimpled arms outstretched, her baby teeth paraded proudly in her smile. Lost as she was in the depths of her subconscious, Serena had tensed, preparing for the disappointment, the non-arrival that was the hallmark of any dream of longing. But instead Tina arrived in her arms, warm, moving and loving, wanting to touch and be touched, the smell of her baby skin as fresh and satiating as oxygen. Heady with the pleasure of it, Serena groaned in her sleep, moving closer to Charlie, who nuzzled and kissed her head. And when Tina left her arms, she was ready for it, as relaxed as any mother releasing a child in the certain knowledge that he or she would return, that they were not lost but merely out of sight, ready always to be held again.
She woke early, suffused with elation and a sense of blessing so strong that when a call to St George's revealed that both Jessica and Gemma were going from strength to strength she was somehow unsurprised. It seemed perfectly normal, too, to open the front door a few hours later and find Keith hovering on the doorstep, clutching an envelope addressed to her and Charlie and saying – as he thrust it into her hands – that if the post was still vacant and they still wanted him after they'd read it, he'd like his job back. ‘Of course we want you,’ she called, laughing as he bolted back up the steps, then taking the letter inside to enjoy over a cup of coffee.
January
The dawn light seeped out slowly that New Year's morning, as if reluctant to illuminate the jewelled beauty of the night frost, sparkling like fairy dust along the tops of fence posts and roofs. Zigzagging across the lawns of Ashley House, dainty trails of animal prints told a story that its sleeping occupants would never know. Only Genevieve, who had a bad cold and had been put to bed long before the chimes of Big Ben heralded the end of the year, woke early enough to see the patterns etched in the frosted grass from her bedroom window. At five yea
rs old, it was the crisp white ground that interested her more. Certain it was snow, she knelt on her bed and rubbed eagerly at the steam of her hot breath on the glass to get a better look. If more fell she would build a snowman, she decided. All by herself, not letting Chloe help even if she asked. It would be a beautiful lady snowman, like the one in the book Aunt Cassie had given her for Christmas, with long straw hair and blue stone eyes and a ruby mouth that came to life when it was kissed.
Except Chloë wasn't here, Genevieve remembered. She was at home with Mum. They were there and she was here, alone and with a horrible cold and a sore on her lip that she wasn't supposed to touch even when it itched. For a moment Genevieve thought she might cry. Her father had said she was to be good and quiet in the morning and wait for him or Theo to fetch her for breakfast. He had warned that it might be later than usual because they were all staying up for a grown-up party, the sort of party she could stay up for when she was a little bit older and wasn't taking medicine. As her lip trembled the bedroom door – propped open, at her insistence, with a heavy metal elephant that Granny had said Great-uncle Eric had brought all the way from India – swung a little wider and Samson appeared, mewing softly and curling his tail round the elephant, as if it was an old friend. Forgetting to be sad, Genevieve squatted on the floor to make some mewing noises of her own, which Samson liked so much that he butted his head against her nose and made her sneeze. A little startled, he trotted back to the door, then glanced at her as if he was expecting to be followed.
He wanted his breakfast too, of course, Genevieve thought, feeling important as she slid her feet into her slippers and put on her dressing-gown. To feed the cat would be fun. It would also be useful. The night before, helping pour a saucer of milk and chopping up the soggy lumps of catfood, her aunt Serena had said over and over again what a good and useful little girl she was and how Samson was very old and needed lots of food and love.
Downstairs the house felt a lot colder and emptier, and when she poured the milk too much came out and spilt all over the table. Finding a tin of catfood in the larder but unable to reach the opener – which was stuck high up on the wall next to the fridge – Genevieve put a handful of Frosties into a bowl for the cat instead. But Samson seemed to prefer the milk, lapping it off the table and the saucer, then even licking the top of the milk bottle to show he wanted more. Genevieve poured out another dollop for him, put some into the cereal for herself, then carefully carried the bowl into the television room, which, with the fat sofa cushions and the curtains still closed, felt as snug as the den at home.
When he found her some twenty minutes later, curled up next to the old ginger cat in front of the television, Peter chuckled with pleasure. ‘I wondered where you were.’
‘I gave Samson breakfast and I've had mine, too, and I've been nice and quiet like you said.’
‘Good girl.’ Peter, who had already shaved and dressed, perched on the arm of the sofa and stroked her bouncy red hair, always at its wildest and loveliest after a night's sleep.
‘There was some snow but now it's melted,’ she babbled, ‘and I put the telly on.’
‘hat are you watching, then?’ Peter murmured, narrowing his eyes to bring the screen into focus, then laughing because – almost certainly by accident rather than design – his daughter had activated the DVD-player, which still contained Theo's film.
‘That's Clemmy, said Genevieve, pointing. ‘And she likes him a lot,’ she added, with some distaste, shifting her finger to indicate the actor called Ben.
Peter smiled. ‘That is your cousin, yes, but they're only acting – pretending to like each other. It's a story – made up and filmed by your brother, who is extremely talented and who, if this is anything to go by, should make a lot more films just like it.’
‘Theo!’ squealed Genevieve, spotting her brother hovering in the doorway and leaping off the sofa to hug his legs.
Theo patted his little sister's back, grateful for the diversion as he pondered the oddity of longing for compliments and not knowing what to do with them when they arrived. His father, smiling in the new sheepish way he had, as if being sorry had become an integral part of his features, looked equally perplexed. ‘I was just saying –’
‘I know. I heard. Thanks.’
‘It was hard last night, with everybody else there… you know.’
‘I know.’ Theo tried an encouraging smile, at the same time experiencing a fresh wave of sadness at how all their roles had been changed, as if the entire family had been shuffled like a pack of cards ready for a new game that no one yet knew how to play. There wasn't really any anger now: there had been too much suffering for that. Nor was he sure yet how to respond to this new, humble, eager-to-please version of his father. Sometimes he even caught himself longing for the blinkered, authoritarian figure, who had prevailed over the first nineteen years of his life. At least he had known exactly where he stood then, how to be. Unable to express any of these confusions, Theo ventured instead that he was thinking of making pancakes.
‘Pancakes? Splendid. So long as Gen and I are away by mid-morning. I promised Mum I'd have her back in good time for lunch.’ Peter pulled his daughter on to his lap so that she was facing him and began a gentle version of ride-a-cock-horse, wiggling his legs to make her lose her balance. ‘Since when could you cook pancakes?’ he called, as Theo headed off towards the kitchen. ‘Theo?’ When there was still no reply Peter stopped bouncing his knees and pulled a face at his daughter.
‘He said a friend taught him,’ explained Genevieve, breathless and happy from the game. ‘He made them last time he came home. Chloë had jam on hers and I had Golden Syrup and sugar.’
‘And what did Mum have?’ asked Peter, gently, keeping his legs very still now, glad that his daughter could have no inkling of the ache in his heart.
Except that she seemed to know, because instead of answering the question she put one finger on each side of his mouth as if to tug it into a smile and said, ‘I wish you still lived with us.’
‘So do I, Genny.’
‘Well, why don't you?’ She punched his chest.
‘Because… because…’ Because, oh, God, he had fallen in love or lust, or something, and got caught, because he had forgotten to cherish all that he should have held dear, because he was weak and foolish. ‘Because grown-ups sometimes can't love each other like they're supposed to…’
‘Well, I love you,’ she declared, ‘and so does Chloe, and Theo.’ She bunched her left hand into a fist and uncurled one chubby finger with each name. ‘And Mummy –’ She faltered, the third finger wagging uncertainly. ‘Mummy cries now and she never used to.’
‘Mummy cries?’ echoed Peter, feebly. Helen never sounded remotely tearful to him, on their doorstep hand-overs, on the phone, she was like a businesswoman with her eye on a target – going through things, ticking them off, as if life was an agenda of points to be addressed. She was still working on the summary of her finances – outgoings and incomings – taking so long about it that his lawyer had warned Peter to expect the worst. ‘Mummy cries?’ he prompted again, sickened by his own shameless need, but too much at its mercy to care. But Genevieve, out of her depth or, perhaps, merely responding to the rich smell of frying butter wafting from the kitchen, had already slipped off his lap and skipped away.
Upstairs, Serena was pulling clothes out of the wardrobe and laying them across the bed while Charlie pretended to sleep.
‘Cassie and Elizabeth are going to the sales. The question is, should I go with them? This blue dress is nice – and warm too, which will be important, I suppose, and somewhere –’ She flung another couple of items, still wrapped in plastic from the dry-cleaner's, on to the duvet ‘– there's a jacket that would go really well with it. A sort of tweed, dark blue flecked with white – do you remember it? Or did I throw it out? I wouldn't have, would I? It was so pretty, with velvet collar and cuffs. Charlie, have you seen it?’
Charlie opened one eye, peered at the pile
of clothes spread across the bed, then closed it again.
‘Charlie? You're not remotely asleep – you haven't been for hours. You woke at six o'clock and drank about a gallon of water because you had a headache from last night and you've been tossing and turning ever since.’ Serena returned to the wardrobe, riffling noisily through the remaining hangers. ‘I know they said it will only be a register office but one still has to look the part, doesn't one? And anything half decent in the sales goes on the first day…’
In acknowledgement of defeat, Charlie had raised himself during this last outburst into a sitting position and discovered that his hangover wasn't as bad as he had feared. He waggled his feet, making the heap of clothes and polythene heave and rustle like something coming alive. ‘You'd look lovely in a bin-liner.’
Serena cocked her head at him and tapped her foot. ‘Which is a very sweet thing to say, but not entirely helpful.’ Then smiling, sighing, giving in to her real mood, which was close to blissful, she cleared a space on the bed and sat down. ‘It's overcast, look, but still beautiful.’ She cast a dreamy glance out of the window. The downs were draped in mist, as fine spun as white gauze against the mottled grey of the sky. ‘A January wedding, after all. Who would have thought it? Dear Keith, dear Lizzy, I'm so pleased for them.’
Charlie humphed. ‘We'll lose him again, you know, when it all goes pear-shaped.’
‘Oh, you gloom-merchant, have a little faith. They're fantastic together, like shy teenagers but with heaps of heartache and self-knowledge thrown in. And all those months of wanting to be together, but staying apart because of…’ Serena caught her breath, awestruck still at the courage behind Keith's revelation, then his and Elizabeth's concern for the effect it would have on her and Charlie. Reading Keith's letter that December morning, the afterglow of her extraordinary dream still upon her, she had felt as if she were floating above the webbed complplexity of the world, seeing the grand design clearly at last. Keith's confession – for that was what it amounted to – had made her weep, not so much for the death of the little girl, tragic and terrible though it was, but for how the accident had blighted his life. So punished, so burdened, so remorseful… It had induced something bordering on gratitude for the simplicity of her and Charlie's loss, unhampered as it had been by any equivalent burdensome certainty of wrongdoing. It had made Serena wonder, too, for the first time in ages, about the man on the motorbike that had hit their daughter, about whatever darkness he carried in his own heart. But even as she summoned the familiar phantom of the leather-clad figure to mind – the haunting screech of his fat wheels, the throaty roar of his engine – the images slipped away, floating free of her, releasing her, just as her darling Tina had done during the night.
The Simple Rules of Love Page 56
