by Dawn French
‘So we started trying, and every month … nothing. Suddenly, you’re checking mucus, weeing on sticks and obsessing over every blip in your cycle. It’s like being told your legs are going to fall off soon; it makes you desperately want to go for a walk. And sex becomes sex. Making love is out the window. Doctors, tests, then we realize we’re broken. It’s not going to happen naturally, so it’s IVF time. We have a timetable, instead of a relationship. Inject this, donate that, watch the follicles, scan the egg. So difficult to organize around his shifts. And then, just as your hope is at its thinnest, the docs say “stop”. No more. It’s over. They assign you a counsellor. So you can talk about letting go,’ her voice fades a bit.
Iva asks, ‘So you let go?’
‘Yea. Let go of it all. Of everything. Everything. I … couldn’t go back to it being just me and him. Too … hurts … too much. So I put the Absence Switch on, and scarpered …’
‘What is “Absence Switch”?’ says Iva.
‘Oh, it’s what he does at work if he has to leave the signal box. You’d think it would all be electronic wouldn’t you? Not in the rural stations, like lots in Cornwall, they still have an actual bloke. If he has to leave, and no-one else comes, that’s what they do, put the Absence Switch on, then no train traffic can pass through. Shuts it down. Goes dead. For safety.’
Iva picks up the test and looks at it. She picks up the first test in the other hand and turns them both to show Rosie. They match, both positive. Rosie sits motionless as Iva puts her arms around her, and pulls Rosie into the most necessary hug she has ever had.
‘What am I going to do?’ Rosie says.
Iva pulls her stool up closer to Rosie. ‘Zofia,’ whispers Iva.
‘Eh?’ says Rosie.
‘My daughter’s name. You trust me. So I trust you.’
‘Oh, Iva.’ Rosie’s voice is trembly, ‘thanks.’
‘S’OK. Just telling you that even though you have the important choice, you will never regret a child. Is where your real heart will beat. I wonder if I make right choice to leave. I wonder every day, I miss her so much. I don’t see her ready for first date, or help with school exam, or grow garden. BUT, I grow her future. Not long now.’
‘That’s right. Time, you see, ticks away so quickly,’ says Rosie.
‘Make no mistake. Under this uniform, is mother. More important than anything else …’ Iva continues, ‘So, which one is the father?’
Rosie attempts to look puzzled. She has no idea what to do with her face.
Iva says, ‘You have sleep with all the men in this family, yes?’
Rosie almost chokes on her water. How does she know? She considers continuing the pretence, but Iva has trusted her. She can’t lie. She doesn’t want to.
‘Somehow … yes,’ says Rosie in a small voice, hardly able to look at Iva.
‘If you touch the little boys, I go to police.’
Rosie splutters a laugh.
Mercifully, Iva joins in, before she continues the cross examinations, ‘So which one did this?’
‘How the cock should I know? Your minkie doesn’t light up when you conceive …’
Unheard and unbeknown by Iva and Rosie, Glenn pads down the darkened hallway. She hears voices coming from the kitchen. She stops to listen, and hears Iva say, ‘Please say you will keep it’ and Rosie say, ‘Look, I’ve wanted to be pregnant so very much, of course I will keep it. No question.’
Iva – ‘You got eighteen years of sick stains, worry, guilt, anger. And biggest best love you ever had. You gonna go home?’
A pause for thinking.
Rosie – ‘I walked away from all that. Ran rather … not sure … if I can go back.’
Glenn leans into the crack in the door to closer watch the two women in the kitchen.
Iva says, ‘So, maybe you do it here, on your own?’
Rosie says, ‘I suppose I will. You have.’
They look at each other, there’s nothing to say, and everything to think.
Then, suddenly, Rosie laughs long and loud,
‘Oh my actual God. I’m having a baby!’
The two women fall together and wrap their loving arms around each other.
The Big Breakfast
However formal and sometimes stilted they can be, Sunday breakfast is still the favourite meal in the Wilder-Bingham household for everyone who lives there, even Glenn, who was up very early this morning, itching to get breakfast started.
Today is a banquet where bagels are the featured delicacy, and every imaginable accompaniment is in evidence in great abundance. The side table is heaving with platters of smoked salmon gravadlax, chopped liver, bacon, cream cheese and lots of curious pickles. Iva has made a huge fresh fruit salad at Glenn’s insistence. Glenn is the only one eating it, of course.
Kemble is helping Red to cut and toast his bagel with the very sharp knife. Thomas removes the cartoon section of his fat Sunday paper, and hands it over to Three. Then he leans towards Teddy, and whispers in his ear something that elicits from Teddy, ‘No way! Granpops, you old dog!’
‘Shhh, keep it down, folks will get jealous …’ says Thomas, twinkling away like a naughty boy hiding a catapult in his trousers.
‘What is it, Pop?’ asks Kemble.
Rosie looks up from her plate, she is working out how to make it look like she’s eating, when in truth, she feels pretty grim. She’s curious to know what this mystery is that Thomas is teasing with, and in a tiny way, she has a distant alarm bell ringing. Something about him hiding secrets and laughing makes her uneasy. Might he be careless?
As soon as he speaks though, she relaxes, although his announcement is pretty surprising,
‘Well, OK, don’t cry, guys. It’s looking very likely that I am … in the fall … when it fits her schedule … thanks to a friend of a friend of her agent who I happen to know … going to have a drink with … hold yer fire, Granma … with … Nicole Kidman.’
There is a stunned silence.
Teddy splutters his cappuccino, ‘Whaaat?! Really? No!’
‘Who’s Nicole Kidman?’ ask the twins.
‘Norma Jean in Happy Feet’ Teddy quickly tags her for them, in their own sphere of reference.
‘Seriously Pop?’ says Kemble.
‘Yep. It’s gonna happen. So, deal with it, suckers …!’ Thomas throws an extra knowing chuckle Rosie’s way. She smiles. Yes, this was on his wish list, she remembers.
Glenn looks over to see Thomas’s beaming face. It’s a face she no longer feels she knows. He smiles back at her.
‘What in the world is happening to you lately?’ she says.
Thomas takes a pause, looks to the ceiling, and thinks. ‘Wait a minute,’ he says, ‘Yep. I think … I’m pretty sure … Yes … I’m happy!’
Somehow that very word affects Glenn as if she has started an internal bleed, a slow drip of sadness. She can’t even quite understand why it should make her feel like this. After all, this is Thomas, her beloved. Why should she take his happiness so badly and so personally? It could be that the one thing she knows for sure is that his happiness has absolutely nothing to do with her.
Everyone else is silently delighted by Thomas’s cheeky comment, and Rosie is still grinning when Glenn glances at her, and identifies a suitable target for her frustration.
‘Do you have something to say to us Miss Kitto?’ she asks in a cut-glass tone. She is staring relentlessly at Rosie.
For a millisecond, Rosie is startled. How does she know? Then, as she gradually feels rumbled, Rosie’s smile fades and she shakes her head.
Everyone around the table watches with great interest.
Glenn pushes her, ‘I think you have. How long do you seriously intend to keep this secret?’
Even Red and Three stop munching and turn to watch this heated moment unfold. What’s going on? Why is there such tension at bagel time?
Rosie sees Glenn is not going to back down. She is in the jaws of the Rottweiler. There will be no easy outc
ome here. Rosie looks in the faces of each of her darling fellows around the table, especially the littlest ones, and she lets out a huge sigh.
Without even pausing between mouthfuls of her fruit salad, Glenn casually announces, ‘She’s pregnant.’
Rosie slowly closes her eyes just to shut off the finality and starkness of those two words coming out of Glenn’s mouth, where frankly, they don’t belong. Strangely, she feels a whisper of relief in the shadow of her closed eyes.
Until she opens them again, and immediately sees that this information isn’t going down well.
Thomas reaches out with one hand to steady his coffee cup. Teddy is blushing from his neck up, a bright red flush. Kemble’s eyes are wide open with shock.
Only Red and Three jump up from their seats and race to her, very excited. They fling their arms around her neck, and kiss her cheeks and shriek, and their fuss only serves to emphasize everyone else’s stillness.
Red – ‘It’s a baby! It’s a baby!’
Three – ‘Can I hold it when it’s here?’
Red – ‘Call it after me.’
Three – ‘What if it’s a girl?’
Red – ‘If it’s a girl, it’s GOTTA be Hermione!’
Glenn slices through the celebration with her joy hatchet. ‘I presume you will be leaving us?’
Rosie quietly answers, ‘Yes,’ lowering her head and hoping all of this can pass with as little pain as possible. At least Glenn only seems to know that one rudimentary fact. Thank God.
Thomas puts down his coffee cup and takes a deep breath, but before he can speak the twins barrel in, shouting over each other, ‘You can’t go. What about the garden? Don’t say that. Don’t go Rosie. Please! Please! Please!’ They are starting to get genuinely upset, and so Iva scoots them off to the kitchen, and safely out of earshot. As she passes Rosie, she gives her a quick flicker of solidarity.
When the twins are gone and the room is still, Thomas looks to be on the verge of speaking.
Rosie is shooting him as many ‘shut up and stay schtum’ vibes as she can, when she feels a hand on her arm. She turns to see it’s Teddy, being supportive. She reaches her hand towards his, but he is already leaning forwards to stand up.
He starts to speak as he rises, ‘If you want to stay … Rosie …’ and although he is about to willingly do the most noble thing he’s ever done in his young life, he is thwarted by the fact that his napkin is caught between his trousers and the tabletop, so he has to pause and interrupt himself while he fumbles free of it.
Rosie seizes the moment and also stands, as does Thomas, but it is Rosie who rushes to speak. ‘OK, listen, no more of this. I am leaving the table now, because I have to sort this out … myself …’ and she goes to leave.
Glenn looks at Teddy and Thomas standing, and she is puzzled.
Teddy throws the offending napkin down, and blurts out, ‘It’s mine! The baby … is mine.’
Rosie stops in her tracks and sees the words Thomas was clearly about to speak die on his lips. Glenn, unblinking, lets this awful news sink in. So too, do Thomas and Kemble. Thomas sinks down, back into his chair, whilst Kemble’s eyes could not be wider.
Rosie wishes she could rip her skin off in shame.
Glenn regains her composure, and calmly folds her napkin, ‘Edward, I want you to sit down.’
Teddy obeys, then immediately springs up again, ‘No! It’s my baby!’
Glenn turns her eyes ever so slowly to look right at him, ‘You stupid boy. Has it not occurred to you that she has probably also slept with half the men in Manhattan?’
Rosie cringes, the cat is most certainly out of the bag. It seems to have turned on her and is scratching her eyes out. She puts her hands to her head in distress.
Thomas looks, and sees Rosie crumpling. He can’t bear it. He takes a deep breath and joins the conversation, ‘Well. I do indeed know of at least one other person …’
The tectonic plates that form the edifice of Glenn’s hardened heart shift and crack. The fault line was always there, but this is a seismic shift. It breaks her. This can’t be true. Can’t be. She calmly, coldly turns her gaze to her husband, her face betraying nothing of the shock wave pulsing through every atom of her. Thomas stares back at her for a moment, to own his confession, but then, unusually, his gaze falters.
Teddy’s jaw is slack with shock.
Then, very quietly at first, but growing slowly louder, Kemble starts to laugh. He can’t help himself, he chuckles and then, as if surrendering, slowly raises his hand, in confession. He is also to be counted.
Thomas, Teddy and Glenn all gaze at Kemble’s hand. He can’t help it, he laughs again. He’s nervous and this is crazy.
Teddy finally sits down as if he’s been punched in the gut.
Glenn now turns her terrifying glower full beam on to Rosie, who is, as far as she is concerned, sent from Satan himself. Thomas, Kemble and Teddy all stare at her as well, as the magnitude of the situation sinks in. There is absolutely no sound in the room whatsoever. The world has stopped spinning and all life has frozen in time.
Rosie looks around the table from face to face, as they all process the shock. To Rosie, every single one of them is stark naked, including Glenn. Including herself. She has lobbed a grenade into the middle of the family, and exploded them all, revealing everyone to each other, raw as the day they were born.
Nobody can think what is right to say, and what is right to do.
As if on God’s perfect cue, a shaft of sunlight bursts into the room as a cloud clears outside, and lands directly, beautifully, on Rosie. It’s blinding, and she has to lift her hand to shield her eyes.
Then the door opens, and Iva breezes in to find herself slap bang in the middle of the Annunciation.
The scrape of chairs, and Rosie heads out to her room, Glenn heads to hers, Thomas to his office, Kemble to his bedroom and Teddy to his. Like ants they disperse, and like teenagers, all of them slam their doors tight shut.
Iva is left to clatter about in the kitchen, clearing up the detritus, as always.
The only room with the door open is the den, where the twins are on the PlayStation, loudly killing stuff. They want to stay out of the way of all the stressy adults.
The apartment is dark and closed off.
No buzzin’ in the beehive today.
Sad Beehive
In each of their individual cells, the family are reeling.
Thomas is sitting on his sofa in his office, imagining that this is very possibly where he is going to sleep tonight. He pours himself a whisky. This is a fine mess. Exactly what he most feared has happened. Glenn is terribly hurt. He would do anything to change that right now, but it’s all too late. He is in shock about Rosie, he thought he alone was significant to her. This changes all that. His ego is mighty bruised. Christ, the baby might be his …
Kemble sits at the desk in his room, drinking from a half bottle of vermouth he keeps in his briefcase. He was going to dump it after his conversation with Rosie, but he now feels that he might as well drink it to help him unpick the messy news he’s just had. Why does he want to laugh? Something in the heart of him really doesn’t mind finding out that his perfect father might not be quite so perfect after all. And that his mother might have to face some tricky truths at last. He recalls her face from a few minutes back. Oh the schadenfreude. It’s kind of delicious. He would be able to properly appreciate it, if only he weren’t so involved. Christ, the baby might be his …
Teddy is sitting on his bed in a room Glenn has resolutely kept like a twelve-year-old’s with all of his childhood stuff from a lifetime visiting this apartment. She has even kept the furry dog-on-wheels Teddy learnt to walk with, and a clown jack-in-the-box they gave him for Christmas one year. He is pegged out two ways, pinned backwards to his childhood by all this stuff and the way Granma thinks of him, and pinned forwards into his future where he could very possibly soon be a father himself. Christ, the baby might be his …
In the de
n, the twins are playing on their PlayStation while they nurse low-level anxieties about Rosie leaving. Their worries are offset by the fact that absolutely nobody seems to be stopping them playing for hours. Goodies versus baddies, shooting and killing, and points for rewards.
Red asks Three, ‘Why is Granma so angry with Rosie?’
Three answers, ‘Coz she kissed a boy and got a baby.’
Red, ‘She can kiss who she likes.’
Three, ‘Yeah. It’s not like she killed anyone.’
Red, ‘Yeah,’ as he murders Three’s baddie character, ‘Gotcha douchebag! Suck my balls!’
Three, ‘Asswipe!’
Red, suddenly worried, ‘Hey, I kissed Rosie last week, just here, on her face, I didn’t give her that baby, did I?’
Three, ‘No, you dickbrain. It has to be lips.’
Behind the tightly shut door of her bedroom, Glenn sits and gazes at her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table, just as she did on the day the wretched Kitto woman arrived. She looks at her reflection and wonders how a person with an intelligent face like this can so easily miss seeing signs of imminent trouble on a woman like Rosie? Maybe it was her sheer Englishness that duped Glenn into a false sense of propriety. Maybe she mistook her for Mary Poppins. Since when was Mary Poppins such a whore? Glenn lets her overriding fury about Rosie’s predicament mask her outrage over who might be responsible. She just can’t allow herself to really think about it since she can feel every ounce of her shaking with shock. Any tenuous last vestige of control over this family has just been right royally annihilated by the wrecking ball that is the truth. Glenn isn’t ready to entirely confront that yet, and she’s not sure she ever will be.
Look at her face. Not a sign of the devastation. Except, perhaps, in the eyes. Yes, she is blinking too much and when she looks right at them, she can see fear. DAMN. Stop that straight away, come on Glenn Wilder-Bingham, get a grip.
Even Rosie’s door is unusually shut. She needs privacy for packing. The minute she left the breakfast table she started to frantically throw her stuff into suitcases, but now, deflated, she sits down on the bed, letting it all sink in. Everything has spiralled so quickly, all she can think of to do is to leave. Yet again, she needs to slam that Absence Switch on and flee. Yet again, it is all her fault. Where will she go this time though? Where do you go when you’re already hugely apart from everything and everyone you really know. She realizes that although New York was her adventure, her new chance to reinvent herself, she has steadily started to belong here. Both in this city and in this family. Just for a moment there, she began to nest in and shape her life differently. And now … look what she’s done. She has never felt such a fool, and she has never felt so untethered. She has stranded herself in a fast river of uncertainty.
