by Helen Walsh
I run a deep, warm bath; slowly, slowly lower myself in. The heat strokes my calves and thighs, and the pain eases off a little, the sting of the water singeing then soothing my back. With a rolled up towel supporting my neck, I lie there, feeling balmy, feeling just fine, and all I can think of is Mum. She used to tell me that happiness is the gap between what we want and what we have. She used to make it sound like a warning, a yardstick – something to do with work and ambition and achievement. But now I realise it was no such thing; she was simply telling me not to look too hard. The good things are there in front of you.
It will be fifteen years on 3 December; a landmark most would observe – but not me. I’ve never cared much for the charade and ceremony of anniversaries; Dad neither, as far as I know. The first year we mutely, awkwardly made it clear to one another that we hadn’t forgotten – but we didn’t mention it, and we haven’t much mentioned it since. I don’t know why, exactly. It’s partly to do with us and the odd dynamic of our relationship, but it’s a lot to do with Mum, too. She would have found it false, I think. She hated Mother’s Day – hated any and all ‘newfangled’ celebration, which she’d write off as another conspiracy by the greetings card industry. Margaret Massey would definitely deem it ‘silly’ for Dad and I to bow our heads in her memory. When I remember Mum, it comes organically in the places that were special to us – the coffee shop at the Anglican; the riverfront. Oh, how she loved the river.
She once told me how she would wheel me down to the promenade when I was newborn, in the wee small hours, the slap and pull of the river the only thing that would lull me to sleep. And that scorching hot summer of 1990, we’d taken the ferry across to Seacombe and walked the length of the riverside pathway all the way to New Brighton, just the two of us. ‘You’ll be old enough for Moby Dick soon,’ she’d said, gazing out to the sudden blast of wide open space where the river met the Irish Sea. ‘Finest book in the English language,’ and she’d winked at me. ‘Course he was half a Scouse, though. You know, I was going to call you Ishmael if you’d been born a boy?’
Even then, as a young girl, it jarred to hear her talking that way. That one as cautious and pragmatic as Mum could find beauty in the lawless sea didn’t sit right somehow. Now, looking back on it, I wonder if she knew, even then?
Before she went into hospital to have her breast hacked off – so cruel, so pointless; she was gone six months later – we took the ferry one last time. ‘I need you to be very brave, darling,’ she said. ‘Mummy is very ill.’ There was no swashbuckling talk of slaying the beast or staying positive, neither was there any sadness or self-pity. She was over the shock by then; she was back into Mum mode, planning for her absence in the days and weeks ahead, cooking and stewing and stocking the freezer with Tupperware tubs of curries, casseroles, pies and puddings; re-ordering her filing system of bills, policies and documents in a way that would make sense to Dad; decking the corkboard out with notes and reminders about dental appointments, parents’ evening. And only when she was certain there was nothing for us to deal with but the naked terror of our grief, did she break the news; first to Dad, and then, as late as humanely possible, to me. Ruben and Mum in the space of a year. I wanted to die myself.
The sea was wild that morning as we headed down the gangway; the boarding platform swayed and creaked with the swell and suck of the tide, squashing down on the huge rubber tyres that formed a bulwark to the ferry terminal, and the sound and fury made my head spin. We sat on the top deck, and the wind flayed our faces and made light of our tears, and she held my hand tight, smiling, proud, as we took in the city skyline together one last time.
‘Will you promise to be brave for Mummy?’
I hadn’t called her Mummy in years.
* * *
She should be here now, sharing this with me. I’d have told her by now; told her it was Ruben and why I didn’t want him involved. Seeing me in pain, seeing me alone, she’d be cross, at first. Why did I have to make everything so difficult? But her disappointment in me would last an hour, a minute, no time at all; and nothing but nothing could encroach upon her love for her grandchild. Right now she would be busy nesting for me; bustling around, sweeping the floors, bleaching the toilet, washing, ironing, packing, unpacking and repacking my overnight bag, keeping a tight rein on her excitement, quietly timing the contractions. She’d wait until the final howling pangs of labour, till I was vulnerable and helpless, poleaxed by pain and battered with fatigue and then, only then, would she run me up to the hospital. Would they still have the Volvo? I like to think so. As we drove, Mum would quietly tell me she was moving in for these next few weeks – just while I got my bearings. Spent, I would acquiesce. Secretly, silently, I would be grateful. Oh, Mummy . . .
I stare at the bathroom ceiling. Cobwebs. Not the magical, symmetrical gossamers of fable and fairy tale, just limp strings of dirt that I can no longer reach. Maybe that’s something I’ll let Dad and Jan take care of. I pull the plug, and immediately feel a spasm. Another lacerating contraction nails me to the emptying bath. For ten seconds that seem to last ten minutes I’m screaming for help as someone rams a knife deep inside me and drags it around my womb in broad, circular sweeps: out, then in, then out again. It passes, leaving only the faintest after-shiver. Time seems to have speeded up now. I find myself wondering if I should ring James Mac. I need to make sure, just one last time, that he’s nowhere near that wretched crackhead mother of his. I’m shivering all over as I haul myself out of the bath. In the mirror I catch my face unawares, older and harried, the pinch of my forehead snarled above my nose in fearful anticipation of what lies ahead; yet my eyes are dancing with excitement, goading the fireworks, counting me down to the Big Bang.
Not long now. Contractions are ten minutes apart. Stinging, scorching. Soaring. Impossible.
I go under, give in to the howling of my womb, clenching, unclenching, clenching, unclenching.
Taxi should be here any moment.
Happiness.
The distance between my own life and this tiny new life within is just a few small steps. Mum had it right. Finally, I’m anchored. I might have been blown away, once, lost chasing rainbows – or shadows. Not now; not any more. As I steady myself against the door jamb, breathing, blowing, riding out the rising tide of pain, I feel wonderful. It hits me, hard and beautiful. I’ve arrived somewhere – someplace safe and gorgeous. The distance between what I want and what I have is just the width of a tender thread, now. Finally, and for the first time since you went, Mum, I have a sense that my life is taking a deep breath, clearing its throat, preparing to start again. A blare of horn from below. I shuffle out and down to the taxi.
10
He didn’t even dump me; didn’t tell me it was over.
That first Sunday when he didn’t show I waited till mid-afternoon before I accepted Ruben wasn’t coming round. I thought it would just be something obvious; work had called him in or his Mum was ill and he’d been keeping house and home. Yet when I phoned to check, I had this horrible sump in my guts – the crushing sensation he was there in his front room, shaking his head to tell his sister not to put me through. I fought the paranoia back down; there’d be a simple explanation. We’d been looking forward to Bonfire Night in the park; we’d even started talking about what we’d be getting each other for Christmas. Ruben had put his arm round me, walking me back from town the other night and although he had not yet once referred to me as his girl in all the time we’d been seeing each other there was a sense that we were closer, somehow. We were a proper item. I carried on calling.
By the Wednesday, I’d become obsessed with the idea that he was seeing someone else. The thought consumed me so utterly that I found myself needing to be vindicated. I no longer cared how much it would hurt me. I wanted to trap him, make him squirm; let him know how little he now meant to me. I went to his work, but he hid in the kitchen. I went to his house, and nobody would answer. Three brothers, two sisters and his mother all at home, and not o
ne of them could hear the doorbell.
The last time I went to Ruben’s – the time I made up my mind I’d call no more – I had another strong sensation he was there, he was watching me. Yet when I jerked myself round, glaring up at every window in the house, nothing. There was no Ruben; there was nobody.
I was numb, then angry, then just plain sad to have been used like that. To have let myself be used so. I’d been asking for it. Playing Let’s Pretend in my big house, performing for him; bending myself to his will. I’d been asking for it, right from the start.
And if it hadn’t been for Mum, I would have grieved on and on. But she knew, my mum. She came and sat next to me on my bed and asked, in that way of hers, if everything was okay and the rapture of confession overpowered me. I sobbed and sobbed and out it all poured. And Mum just sat there and held me, stroked my hair, told me it would all be fine. But it wasn’t fine. Somewhere out there, Ruben was walking the streets with his new squeeze. His true love.
11
I have been up for almost twenty-four hours now. I am tetchy and anxious. Twice I have been to the hospital, twice they have sent me home – the latest, just now, dismissed with no little irritation by the matron herself.
‘What you’re getting isn’t much worse than period pain,’ she said, smiling as if to make me feel foolish. I wanted to slap her, but through gritted teeth told her that, with all due respect, this was several degrees worse than the Curse. I splayed my arms out on the reception desk to support my unwieldy mass. Matron nodded over to a woman being rushed through in a wheelchair, a projectile of foul language spewing across the room: ‘Now that’s labour pain, Mummy!’ she exclaimed, gleeful almost. ‘That’s when you really know!’
‘But I am in labour,’ I protested. ‘My waters broke sixteen hours ago.’
She simpered through her exasperation, arched an eyebrow and took me through to a room.
‘Here. Lie down.’ She examined me briefly, and a little roughly. ‘Your waters are still intact, Rachel. You must have had a little accident. And your contractions are still irregular. You haven’t had one now for, what, forty minutes?’
‘No . . . but they were five minutes apart when I checked in before.’
‘This happens, dear! You’ve still got a way to go. I’m sorry.’ I didn’t move. She eyed me intently, her tiny blue eyes piercing through me. For a beat, I think she’s relenting – but then the firm set of the jaw, and the eye contact is over. ‘There isn’t a bed for you, just now. This one is needed. You can sit in the waiting area if you are really refusing to go back home.’
She met my gaze, no room for negotiation. I sighed hard, pushed myself up.
‘Of course I’m not refusing.’ Another big sigh. ‘It’s just . . .’
Matron looked concerned, now.
‘Is there no one who can help you with this?’ she asked – and the fury, the nagging, needling, sleep-starved fury bit deep into my reeling head.
‘Who? The daddy, you mean?’ I said.
‘I didn’t say that.’
You did though. You did.
I staggered back out and took a taxi home, seething all the way at the injustices and obstacles I’d encountered, right from my first scan. A woman who won’t do as she’s told, a woman with opinions, it seems, is a woman they’ll make no concessions for. It’s straight to the back of the queue for you, Miss Uppity. And Mummy, by the way! This is the Women’s Hospital and they’re conspiring to dumb us all down into one woozy hub of fecundity. But there’s the rub: I’m not a Mummy, am I? Not yet. I’m not Rachel, not Ms Massey, not even Dearie or Love. To the hospital I exist only in relation to my unborn baby, and until it is born I don’t exist at all.
So I’m back here in the flat, marooned, breathing it out, fighting through a conflict where the pain rolls through me and I’m elated because this might finally be The One, then pleading and pleading for it to stop, so violent is the kill. The folly of a ‘natural’ birth dies with each agonising spasm. First thing I’ll do is inform the midwife about the change of birth plan; gas and air, epidural – I’ll be taking whatever’s on offer, thank you very much. I crouch in the corner of my living room, breathing, breathing, exhaling that almost silent, self-conscious whistle of controlled pain. The very nearness of the walls is making me swoon and sweat. The bucking and tearing in my womb is shocking, but between contractions – and the space between them shows no sign of diminishing – the pain of being kept awake is much, much worse. My head is jittery and reeling, I feel vacant and blunt and I am so, so weary now. The space between my skull and my eyes wells up with the feeling you get after drinking too much coffee, or being trapped in a crowded lift, of drugs gone wrong. I have to get out of the flat.
*
Outside the night is fading out into dawn, but the moon still looms, full and fat behind a scrim of cloud. The air is cold and slimy, though there’s a wind coming up from the river. It feels good in my lungs and for a moment it pares back that strung-out feeling in my head and I’m excited all over again by what lies ahead. Next time I pass through here, I’ll have a baby with me. My heart soars at the thought.
I drag my massive, cumbersome frame down Belvidere Road, past the school, past rows of Georgian mansions that are still handsome in their ruin. There are lights on here and there, students cramming or crackheads cooking – either is just as likely down here. After Mum died, Dad used to come here often, just to walk and wander wherever the roads took him. He’d drink in rough pubs, and somehow they’d suss it out; they’d leave him alone. His friends saw it as self-destructive, some kind of penance. I saw it differently. He came here to heal, to fall in love with living again. This was his stomping ground when he first met Mum, and it was where he first came alive. In coming back, he was trying to recapture those feelings; to retrace his steps back to when he was on fire with the lust for life and all its possibilities.
And it worked, for Dad. It worked. Jan used to see him wandering around. She’d see him as she drove home when she’d been working late at night; she’d see him early in the morning, walking, always walking. But instead of dismissing him as a crank or pitying him like their colleagues did, Jan fell for him. Her curiosity turned to fascination, and from there they became conspirators, friends, lovers. There’s witchcraft in these streets.
A wind breezes through me and I feel it again, that awesome star blaze in my loins I used to feel as I hurried up this road the other way, off to meet Ruben. To yield to him. I’ve liked almost every man I have ever slept with better than I liked Ruben. But no one since has ever made me feel that way again.
My contractions stop – just like that. I park myself on a bench midway along the Boulevard, a stone’s throw from my door, and I wait. Forty minutes go by; not even a cramp or a tingle or a tremor. Nothing. But this time, rather than succumb to the waves of fatigue and frustration rolling through me, I elect to see it as fate. Out of nowhere, I have this burning need to take my Bean to the lake, feel its magic, dip our toes in its icy fathoms. I can press on through the park and lap back home that way. A warning buzz sounds in my head but not quite loud enough to break my stride. I take in the slowly stirring city, pausing to watch a couple of skinny foxes slink across the school playground. It’s a rare thrill to see them paired up like that, partners in crime. I once saw a vixen and her cubs foraging for mice in South Lodge’s garden, but never two foxes out on the skank together. They sense my presence, break into a trot and, with their snouts dropped low, disappear round the back of the school. I smile, suddenly aware of my solitude in this scene. Gazing out across the empty schoolyard, a lovely image takes hold: a little girl loping towards me across the playground, baring her tiny teeth in a radiant smile: ‘Mummy!’ Maybe the Bean is a girl, after all.
I don’t get a hundred yards down Ullet Road before the contractions start up again. A milk float is whirring up behind me as one strikes and I clench my fists, try to stave off the seizure till it passes. I focus on the moon, barely there now, a burnt out
disc behind the black grasp of trees, and I breathe deep and hard. The float wheezes past, the milkman unaware of me. And then without warning I’m down on my knees seeing stars; I’ve fallen so hard, so suddenly the tarmac has stripped the skin off my hands, studded the balls of my thumbs with grit. I’m rocking and writhing, bucking against the shock of the pain, groping out for something to grip on to, to steel against the agony. The blur of the milk float fades away; it is the last thing I see as black, blind pain rips through me and sends me reeling.
I don’t know how long I lie in the road before I’m able to sit up again. No cars, no traffic passes. It is deadly still. I scoop water from a puddle, splash it into my face and drag myself up for the next round. The pain is shifting now, up through my back and my buttocks, each blow more fatal than the last. I turn and slowly, slowly scuffle back. My Bean doesn’t see the lake.
Back in the flat the contractions subside and my heart starts to sink. How much longer can I withstand this? How will I survive without sleep? I try to relax but then all my frustration is blasted to nothing by another contraction, the wildest yet. It punches me to the floor, lams me hard in the womb and nausea whips down from my head through my guts, sending me weak and spinning.
A noise snaps me back to the room, the dismal whine of a creature, trapped. It’s like a balloon deflating, but baleful, sickly. I fear for the foxes. Perhaps they’re trapped out there, or starving, or both. And it’s only when the wailing fades out, followed by the onrush of a gust of air bursting into my lungs that I realise the noise has emanated not from outside but from within me.
