The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  “You’re like a cat on hot bricks,” his mother said. “She’ll be back on Sunday.”

  “Who?”

  “Karen.”

  “Karen. She’ll be sorry she wasn’t here.”

  “The children are better out of the way.” She set the apple pie someone had brought on the table. “He loved them so, Oscar; he loved them so…” The tears, for the first time, began to flow.

  “He was always talking about Rosy and Daisy, watching them grow, told all the patients about them, showed them photographs and their letters, he was so proud of them…it wasn’t really fair…he could have had a little longer…not seventy yet, Oscar, not an old man…”

  He suddenly realized that at that reckoning he had little more than twenty odd years to go himself. Frightening. What was it all about, all this struggling and striving…?

  “Oh Oscar, I don’t know what I’m going to do without him.” It was the first time she had admitted it.

  He took her hand. “Friends…?”

  “At night; you talk about your day, silly things, stupid things…nobody else would know what you mean. You boost each other up when you’re down, strengthen the little weaknesses, talk out your ill temper and patch it up…”

  “Time…” he said.

  “Oh I shall survive; like all the other widows. I shall sit in the shelters along the seafront and remember.” She dried her eyes and blew her nose. “I don’t remember ever being alone.”

  “I’ll try to help.”

  “I know you will. I’ll be all right when I’m away from here; in the flat in Hove. Everyone will be kind but no one can help; no one. Have some apple pie.”

  The evening was filled with people coming and going. He grew weary running up and downstairs to the telephone; his finger sore from dialling Marie-Céleste’s number. At three in the morning, unable to sleep, he got up for a drink. His mother was in the kitchen cooking.

  “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Making a steak pie for your lunch. I couldn’t sleep. Did I disturb you?”

  “No. I wanted a drink.”

  “I’ll make you some hot milk.”

  He laughed. Then remembered it was a house of mourning. “It’s whisky I’m after.”

  “There’s a cupboard full. All those Christmasses! No one will drink it now.”

  “Go to bed. Leave the pie until morning.”

  “I’d rather be doing something.”

  He realized it was occupational therapy. Took his whisky and went to bed.

  There was no reply in the morning either. He was growing frantic. He waited until nine o’clock and rang the surgery number.

  “Mrs Wilson where is she?”

  “Oh it’s you, Mr John…”

  “I’ve been ringing and ringing…is something wrong?”

  “Wrong? Oh no! It’s wonderful, it’s the baby…”

  “Born?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “A boy?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “And she’s all right?”

  “Quite all right. Exciting, isn’t it? Oh, there’s my other line ringing…”

  “Look…”

  She’d rung off. He stared at the receiver. A boy. He’d had a son. He ran downstairs. His mother was in the big bedroom kneeling in front of the chest of drawers.

  “All these shirts!” she said. “Everything will have to go. Except this; I could never give this away.”

  ‘This’ was what Oscar had always known as the ‘night pullover’. Once knitted with love by the arthritic hands of a grateful patient, it had long ago deteriorated into a shapeless mass of gingery brown wool thick as a blanket. His father kept it by his bed and never went out in the night without it. He had a sudden urge to take it to the cemetery against the ‘keen wind’.

  His mother held the pullover to her cheek. “I suppose the Salvation Army…?”

  “Look,” Oscar said. “I’m sorry, but do you think you can manage without me today? I have to go to London. I’ll be as quick as I can. I don’t like to leave you but…”

  “What about the steak pie?”

  “Tomorrow. I’ll eat it tomorrow.”

  “Don’t worry about me, darling. You’ve been marvellous. There’ll be plenty of people and I want to get these things sorted. If I leave it I’ll never do it.”

  “I’ll help you tomorrow.”

  “If you want anything…?”

  He was horrified at the thought of wearing any of his father’s clothes. Besides, he was twice the size.

  His mother took something from the top of the chest. “Take this. There’ll be other things but take this for the moment.”

  It was his watch. Worn and old. A bit of a joke but they could never make him buy a new one. He was not of the generation that had to have the latest toys; digital clocks, automatic watches.

  Oscar put it in his pocket. He touched his mother’s shoulder.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Drive carefully!” She was back in the drawer.

  The clinic was a private one. An air of opulent quiet pervaded, the floors were rubber.

  “Dr Burns?” he said to the girl at the reception desk.

  “Room 305.”

  “What floor?”

  “Third. Lift just there, sir.”

  He pressed the arrow which lit up. There was a ‘ping’ and the doors glided open. The lift was large enough to take a bed. A middle-aged woman with a chocolate box from Charbonnel and Walker got in. She got out at the second floor.

  At the third floor his heart was pounding. He hung around where the sign said ‘Enquiries’.

  “Dr Burns?” he asked a nurse.

  “Three-o-five.”

  He wandered down a corridor in the direction in which she had pointed. Three-o-one, three-o-two, three-o-three, three-o-four, three-o-five. There was a neatly typed label in the slot of the wide door. ‘Dr M-C. Burns’ and underneath, ‘Dr Boyd’.

  He tapped. No reply. He tapped more firmly.

  “Come in.”

  The door was heavy. The scent of flowers hit him. Someone was sitting in the armchair. His heart sank.

  “Marie-Claire!” He hadn’t recognized her for a moment.

  “Hallo, Oscar.” She got up and kissed him on both cheeks. He was relieved. He had not considered that there might be a room full of relatives.

  Marie-Céleste was wearing pale green satin and white lace. She looked serene, beautiful.

  He felt awkward.

  She held her arms out and he kissed her forehead.

  “I have to go,” Marie-Claire said.

  She looked at his black tie. “Marie-Céleste told me about your father. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. Look, please don’t rush off because of me.”

  “Why not?” Marie-Céleste said. “You are lucky it was not Tante Sybille. She would have sat for a week.”

  “I can come again tomorrow,” Marie-Claire said. “Au revoir, mes enfants.”

  She touched Oscar’s arm for a moment.

  “She has missed you. You look very handsome with a sun tan.”

  He held the door open for her.

  “She is a sweetie,” Marie-Céleste said. “She’d only just arrived.”

  From the door he looked at her. A great love and longing filled him.

  He sat on the bed and took her in his arms, kissing her like a thirsty man at a well. After the weeks of agitation he felt he had come home.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you too.”

  “I want to marry you.” It was the first time he had said it.

  She leaned back against the pillows straightening her bedjacket and smoothing her hair. He went to the window, looked out onto the square, tried to control the emotion he felt.

  “Don’t you want to see him?” Marie-Céleste said.

  “Who?”

  “Warnford Laurent Burns.�
��

  “Warnford?”

  “Ernest’s late father. Laurent for my grandfather.”

  “I shall call him Laurent.”

  “Me too.” She smiled.

  He hadn’t noticed the crib in the corner. He approached it gingerly. He’d forgotten they were so very tiny. He searched the little, crumpled face for resemblance to himself. He couldn’t honestly say…

  “He was full term,” Marie-Céleste said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There can be no question of him being yours.”

  “He is mine,” Oscar said. “Laurent. I like that.”

  He sat on the bed and took her hands. “Was it very terrible?”

  “Not terrible at all.”

  “You’re not telling me the truth.”

  “When have I lied to you?” She stroked his face. “My poor Oscar. I’m truly sorry about your father.”

  “We must get married.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s so little time.”

  “There’s Karen and Rosy and Daisy and Ernest and now Laurent. It isn’t just us.”

  “I was so unhappy away.”

  “Me too.”

  “I thought of you all the time. Laurent!” He put his hand on her flat belly. “I wanted to be with you. I couldn’t believe it when Mrs Wilson told me. Full term you said?”

  “I made a mistake with the dates. It happens.”

  He stroked her milk-laden breasts. His face was suffused.

  “Oscar!”

  “How soon can we…?”

  “Six weeks.”

  “I need you so much.”

  “It’s not going to be easy. There will be the nurse; and Ernest. Ernest is going to supervise everything. You’d think no one had ever had a child before.”

  “F— Ernest!”

  She laughed. “In front of the baby!”

  “We’ll find a way. If you still want me?”

  “More than my life.”

  He met Karen and the girls at the airport. He had installed his mother in the flat at Hove where she seemed not to rattle so much, helped her sort out his father’s possessions and put the big house in the hands of the estate agents. He had the odd feeling that for the first time in his life, at the age of forty-five, he had grown up.

  Karen clung to him. “Sorry I wasn’t there when Father…” She was crying.

  “It’s all right.”

  “But I wanted to be with you.”

  “I know.”

  The girls were embarrassed. He recalled his own feelings about death as a child. He remembered the stories he had been told when his grandparents died about ‘going to heaven’ and ‘in a happier place’.

  He hugged them both. “Grandfather wasn’t in any pain,” he said. “And he was very sick. You must see Grandma as much as you can, she’s going to be a bit lonely now. When you go to Brighton I’ll show you the place where Grandfather is buried. You can take some flowers. He loved you very much.”

  Daisy was weeping down her sun tan. He picked her up.

  “Everybody has to die. It’s like being born.”

  “How do you know?”

  They asked too many damned awkward questions.

  “Nobody ever complains, the ones who are dying, I mean. So it can’t be too bad.”

  “You won’t die, Daddy, will you?”

  “Not just yet, I hope! Tell me about the holiday. What happened after I left?”

  In the car Rosy and Daisy spoke of how they’d both learned to dive although Rosy said Daisy was a liar she just jumped in and Karen told him how Monsieur Durand had tried to pad the bills with extras they hadn’t had.

  In the midst of the saga he said casually: “Marie-Céleste had her baby.”

  “Marie-Céleste? How fabulous. I didn’t think it was due until September. Must have been a prem. Is she all right? Was it a boy or a girl? Who told you?”

  He sifted the questions in his mind. Tricky.

  “I bumped into Ernest…”

  “In Brighton?”

  “No. I went to town for the day… Father’s solicitors… I popped along to see Marie-Céleste.” He kept his eyes on the road. “She wants us to go to the christening. It’s in three weeks because Ernest’s going to America on business.”

  “I love christenings,” Karen said. “You haven’t said if it’s a boy or a girl.”

  “A boy. Warnford Laurent.”

  “Warnford?” Both girls laughed. “That’s not a name.”

  “It is, you know.”

  “Warnford Burns!” Rosy said.

  “Warnford Laurent.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he look like?”

  He thought. “Like a baby.”

  “Has he got red hair?”

  “Yes.”

  At the house the garden was overgrown. Rosy and Daisy dashed straight out to see if Araminta had been feeding the rabbit. While Karen unpacked he shut himself in his study, ostensibly to sort the post. For the first time, consciously, he thought about divorcing Karen. It had to do with his father dying. Before, he knew his father would have been angry, one simply did not do that sort of thing. Responsibilities, family…plenty of people did, and survived. Most of the people he knew, in fact. Well, not most, perhaps, but many of them. He remembered one dinner party they had been to not so long ago. Most of the guests were in show business and he and Karen had been the only ‘original’ husband-and-wife team there. The men were his age or older and the wives, young for the most part and beautiful, spoke of ‘his children’ at boarding school or ‘two of his and two of mine, and one of ours’.

  They had laughed together, he and Karen, when they’d got home. The men seemed involved in a struggle to preserve their youth; hairpieces, and clothes that were slightly too young and too much activity in an effort to keep up with their young wives. They spoke of Burke’s and Annabel’s and you felt they tried too hard and would have been happier at home with the television or newspapers.

  It would not be like that with him and Marie-Céleste. She wasn’t some dolly he had played around with in the office. She was a woman and he loved her. He loved Karen too; that was the odd part. But in a different way. He would never hurt her but was sure she would understand, had plenty of resistance, that one. Rosy and Daisy? He would see them. Karen wasn’t one to be nasty. It would all be very amicable and he would have Laurent. They would live quietly somewhere, in the country where no one knew them, away from the rat-race. Marie-Céleste would wear blue jeans. Karen and the children would come to visit them. They’d walk in the fields together…one big, happy family.

  Because they were still on holiday from school they took Rosy and Daisy to the christening. Excitedly they presented themselves; Rosy in a long, sprigged pinafore dress and white blouse complete with parasol, Daisy in a black velvet dress with a lace collar, in which Rosy assured her she would ‘swelter’, and a straw hat with trailing ribbons. They did him credit. He changed his tie five times while Karen watched in amusement.

  In church he wished he could wipe the unctuous smile from Ernest’s face as the baby was christened Warnford Laurent Burns. Marie-Céleste looked pale but happy in pale yellow chiffon, the baby in her arms. As the vicar named the baby her eyes caught his at the name ‘Laurent’, although actually he pronounced it ‘Lurrent’ to rhyme with current. The church was filled with men in city clothes and women in floating dresses and hats.

  Back at the flat Searcy’s were doing the catering. There was champagne, held stiffly on silver salvers by men in morning coats, tiny sandwiches, petit-fours, tea. Warnford Laurent in his blue-trimmed crib (the White House) lay in state, fussed over, when they weren’t eating, by Rosy and Daisy and cooed over by the hat ladies.

  Ernest said patronizingly: “Of course you’ve only got daughters! Better luck next time, old man.” Oscar had to clench his fists in his pockets. He introduced Karen to Marie-Claire who said: “What a charming wife y
ou have. And your children! Pure Alice in Wonderland. You can be very proud.”

  Karen asked how he knew her and accepted Oscar’s explanation that he had met her when he went to see Marie-Céleste in hospital. He caught Laura Beaumont in a grey, cobwebby hat looking at him quizzically.

  Because they were lucky with the weather the party overflowed on to the balcony and the chattering and cooing drowned the sound of the traffic below.

  Gradually the family and friends drifted off and Oscar told Karen it was time they went. Rosy said that Dr Burns had promised they could watch the baby being bathed. Oscar looked at Karen and Karen said all right just for a little while if Marie-Céleste doesn’t mind. The flat was almost emptied of guests and the men from Searcy’s were clearing away the champagne glasses and the ashtrays and the crumbs. Marie-Céleste and Karen and the two girls were round the crib. Oscar, a little unsteady from the champagne, watched them.

  “May I pick him up?” Karen said. “It’s ages since I held a baby.”

  “Of course.”

  Karen leaned over and lifted him. She cradled him in her arms expertly and looked across the crib at Marie-Céleste.

  The last of the sun flooded into the room. A photo for the family album, Oscar thought. Karen, the baby held close, smiling across at Marie-Céleste, the proud mother; the two girls looking up at them. Portrait of contentment, peace and tranquillity. Oscar couldn’t remember when he had felt so happy. His family, he thought, and drank a silent toast to them in the last of the champagne that remained in his glass.

  Rosy and Daisy each had a turn of holding the baby, then the maternity nurse, who must have been a hundred if she was a day, came in with her bandy legs and her flowing white cap to take Warnford Laurent for his bath.

  Daisy, worried, took Karen’s hand and asked her to come with them. They followed the dragon into the newly decorated nursery.

  Marie-Céleste went in to the bedroom. Oscar followed her, closed the door and turned the key in the lock. She was unzipping the yellow dress.

  “No bump,” he said as she stepped out of it. “I shall have to get used to you all over again. Like old times.”

  “Except for these.” She cupped the full breasts in her hands.

  He went to her and kissed them tenderly. “Milk,” he said, “one hot, one cold.”