This Little Dark Place

by A. S. Hatch

  I typed I THINK I’M LONELY into the search bar and was presented with lists of suggestions, things I could do. For hours I sat in the glow of my old laptop, scouring these lists, searching for something. Find a hobby. Buy a pet. Fall in love. None of them were the answer, but I was on the Google merry-go-round, which, once you’re on, is impossible to get off, and I kept searching into the wee hours, graduating to YouTube videos. And then finally, I found something.

  In black-and-white, a man lies on his bunk inside a prison cell. He looks depressed. The music is sad. Cello, soft piano. A trolley is pushed along a corridor. Its wheels squeak. The prisoner becomes excited at the sound. The music becomes more hopeful. A hint of percussion. The prisoner stands up, his face now a picture of anticipation. There’s a knock on the cell door and the hatch opens. Into the cell pours brilliant white light. The whole screen then fades to white. The sad cello is usurped by exultant strings and we see the prisoner, now in full colour, sat on his bed reading his letter. The voiceover says, ‘Prisoners are people too. Become an Inbox Inmate today and change a person’s life.’ There was a warning: Only begin writing to an inmate if you can commit. Abandoning your Inbox Inmate can have disastrous consequences for their mental wellbeing. I clicked the link.

  That night I dreamt I was in prison. Dark and silent with endless corridors of vacant cells. Victoria beckoned me to follow her and then turned and walked away from me. Each time I reached the cell into which she’d disappeared, she was gone. Dan! Dan! Victoria’s voice called to me from somewhere unseen. Dan! Dan!

  ‘Dan! It’s half-ten! Why are you in bed?’ Victoria was stood over me, shaking my body. I opened one eye. It took me a second to realise this was not part of the dream.

  ‘You’re back,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t tell me you forgot?’

  Half an hour later we were in the fertility specialist Dr Williams’ office. He began asking Victoria a series of questions. He looked intently at his computer screen and clicked his mouse with every answer.

  ‘Nausea?’

  ‘No.’ Click.

  ‘Have you been to the toilet more?’

  ‘No.’ Click.

  ‘Has there been any spotting?’

  ‘No.’ Click.

  ‘And your period is due …?’

  ‘Now. Today. And I’m like clockwork.’ Double click. Then silence. He typed something. Victoria’s leg bounced nervously. I wanted to reach out a hand, to touch her, calm her. But something stopped me.

  ‘OK, I’m going to order some bloods.’

  ‘You mean?’

  ***

  Usually, when I’m writing I can block everything out. But this afternoon my attention was distracted by a buzzing sound outside. I stood on my chair to peer out of the window and scan the wide expanse of grass that comes right up to my window. I leant as far forward as I could, trying to look skyward. A circular black object, a tiny UFO, swooped out over the grass from directly above my window. Replete with rotors and antennae, the thing flew at speed towards the woods. It got so far and then slowly, in a controlled manoeuvre, set itself down. After a few moments it took flight again, rising straight up into the air, and flew off. I sat back at my desk and picked up my pen but my rhythm had gone. I can’t force this thing. I mustn’t. I can’t write with a mixed-up head. All I could think of was the drone and the muggy heat in this room and the mirror frame Gordon has now asked me to make.

  ***

  We were pregnant. And suddenly it was all Moses baskets, pushchairs, breast pads, stretch-mark lotion, expandable pants, nappies and body pillows. After Dr Williams told us the news there was a moment of stunned quiet, a sharp intake of breath, a deep reddening of her face, a single tear. But if Victoria felt any elation she had contained it. Like Superman swallowing a bomb. On the drive back to Beryl Avenue I caught her smiling. But there was no great reconciliation. No magical rebinding. I still couldn’t touch her.

  And yet I craved her love. But there was no formula for producing it. Her love was bestowed on you or it wasn’t. Being with Victoria was like driving at night with no headlights. Occasionally, objects emerge from the dark and you steer away from them, you stay alive but you don’t know where you’re going. And if you stop to get out, where are you then? In the dark in the middle of God-knows-where. So your only option is to keep driving and hope the lights come on, all the while bracing yourself for a smash.

  I built a rosewood cot and carved my name into one of the slats. I didn’t tell Victoria about this. It would be my secret, my way of feeling closer to the baby. I made a chest of drawers with a little gulley on top for nappy changes. I made a rocking chair for nursing. I made a mobile from offcuts; trains, elephants, stars, the moon. I was trying.

  One Saturday morning in July Victoria appeared in the workshop wielding two mugs of tea. I stopped working and looked at her. She was finally showing. In profile her belly was the shape of a teardrop of sap rolling down a tree. It finally hit me. I could see it. Touch it. Victoria offered me a mug. I stopped working and looked into her eyes and for the first time since this whole thing began, saw them looking back with warmth into mine. My hand went to her belly but stopped short of touching it. She grabbed it and pressed it onto the broad flank of the bump. It was taut and warm. We stood there for a while, not talking but occasionally looking up at each other and laughing.

  Over the next few weeks, as we neared the end of the first trimester, things improved. We kissed one another goodnight again and occasionally reached out a hand to touch the other’s arm. It was like we were a pair of nervous teenagers playing at being a real couple. Love recovers, it seemed. At least then.

  July turned to August. One Tuesday night, while Victoria was at Yoganatal class, I moved all the new furniture into the nursery to surprise her. As I looked at the wooden slat with DANIEL carved into it, I realised the scope of my feelings had expanded now to encompass this other, this third. It had happened without my noticing. And it didn’t feel as though my love had halved. It rather felt as though it had replicated and doubled, like cells dividing through mitosis.

  Once all the furniture was in place I switched the light off and backed out of the nursery onto the landing. I heard a sound outside: an engine. Deep and thunderous and menacing. I went to the nursery window to look out onto the street. Victoria was approaching the house, her yoga mat under her arm. She was early. Then a black sports car – a souped-up coupé – rolled up alongside her. She waved to it. A friendly wave. A thank-you-for-the-ride wave. The coupé then screamed off down the street. Victoria was almost at the house now.

  ‘You’re back early,’ I said descending the stairs. I followed her through to the kitchen. I decided not to ask about the coupé, I would give her the opportunity to bring it up herself. She retrieved one of her pre-prepared dinners from the fridge and put it in the microwave. Then she grabbed a plate and fork and filled a glass with water. She was saying nothing. If I wanted to know, I’d have to ask, she said silently. ‘Did you get a lift?’ I asked finally, I couldn’t hold it back any longer.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, too casually.

  ‘From who?’

  ‘Oh, just my PT. He was going this way anyway.’ She downed half the water.

  ‘You know if you don’t want to walk home any more I can get you.’

  ‘No, it’s fine, I like the walk.’

  ‘Just not tonight?’

  ‘People are kind of insistent when you’re pregnant. If you saw me get dropped off why are you even asking if I got a lift?’

  ‘I didn’t see you get dropped off. I saw you walking up the street and then wave to that car. At first I thought it was just someone you knew driving by. But since you told me you did get a lift I assume it was in that car?’

  ‘Yes. What’s going on here? I’m home ten seconds and you start grilling me?’

  ‘So why did you get out halfway down Beryl Avenue?’ I continued pushing. I could sense a lie. ‘Why didn’t you just get dropped off at the house?’
DING. The microwave went off. She guided the steaming dish onto a tray and immediately filled her mouth with too-hot food, blowing to cool it even while she chewed. Buying herself some thinking time, I suspected.

  ‘He says it’s better to finish every journey on your own steam. Scott is really into wellness …’

  ‘Scott?’

  ‘… he thinks of the body and the mind not simply as being connected to one another, but as one entity.’ This she said with an ecstatic grin on her face. ‘His sessions aren’t just about physical strength. We meditate. Focus on mindfulness. He’s very intuitive. He can sense when his clients are imbalanced. There’s a WhatsApp group. He sends us inspirational quotes every morning.’

  ‘Wait. He has your number?’

  ‘He has all his clients’ numbers. When he heard I was struggling to conceive – ’

  ‘You told your trainer about that?’

  ‘I tell Scott everything. It’s part of his philosophy. Clear mind, healthy body.’

  This went on and on. With every word I grew more convinced of her delusion. I had begun to feel like she’d come back to me. But the truth was only her body had returned. Her mind remained out there, lost in some impenetrable pseudo-spiritual fog. We went to bed still talking about Scott’s ‘philosophy’, about the women on the forums and their beliefs. As we lay there in the pitch darkness, birdsong in the air, we could’ve been two campers on the jungle floor. And as she explained the effects of ‘pure cognitive energy’ on the body, which involved ‘willing your best self into being’, I could think only of how surreal my life was and how great the distance between us had truly grown during those bleakest months. But the baby in her belly was mine. We were chained together now, for life. Whether or not she liked it.

  I woke up in the middle of the night and was alone.

  I got to my feet and left the bedroom. On the landing I heard a soft noise in the nursery. In all the Scott talk I’d forgotten the surprise I’d prepared for her. She must have woken in the night and found it herself. I approached the nursery door and knocked softly. She did not respond. I opened the door. She was sat in the rocking chair but did not turn to look at me as I entered. The light was off. I paused in the doorway, anxious not to encroach on what seemed a poignant moment, and simply watched. An image of my father doing this same thing came to me. He had built my first cot, my first bed, everything I owned. Jesus was a carpenter, Victoria had said to me all those years ago. Yes, as was his father, I thought now, and Jesus was his apprentice. It was Joseph who crafted the things of Jesus’ life, not God, Joseph who had given him chairs to sit on and tables to eat at. Had my father found Ivy in the middle of the night like this too? Had Ivy sat in a chair he made and pretended to hold me in her arms, as Victoria did now? Had Ivy cried and cried with the sheer power of this new feeling expanding like a balloon inside her heart, as Victoria did now? I went to her. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to put my hand on her belly and feel the warmth of the blood pulsing through it. I wanted to feel the rhythm of her heart, and the jazz percussion of our baby’s erratic movements. I looked down over her shoulder and saw that she was not pretending, that she held something in her hands. I whispered to her:

  ‘What are you doing?’ Incredible heat radiated from her. She was burning up. Her body shook violently beneath me as she suppressed convulsions. ‘What’s wrong?’ I moved round to see her from the front. ‘Vic?’ I tried to soothe her, tried to get her to look at me but she would not look up from her lap. I followed her gaze.

  I thought it was a doll. A doll made out of clay. Tenderly, she cradled it in her lap, which was soaked with blood. I knelt at her feet to look more closely at it, at the thing in her hands.

  ***

  From the gravel path I can see my window. In the opposite direction lie the woods. The drone came down on the grass between the woods and my window. Sometimes I stare at the black wall of trees. I wonder: what’s in there? What lies beyond the woods? I do it because I can’t get the image of Victoria in the rocking chair out of my head. Sometimes at night I go to my window and focus all my cognitive energy on one spot at the wood’s edge, a gap between two trees perhaps, and will her to emerge from them, to walk across the grass, place her palm on the reinforced window, smile.

  Today on my walk I saw someone out on the grass. I have never seen anybody out there. I don’t even know how to access it, it’s blocked off by a tall fence. He was looking for something, with a long stick in his hand. It was hot and the man removed his hat and ran a tissue across his forehead. He started walking towards the path. When he saw me he waved.

  ‘Dan the man!’ he shouted. It was Gordon. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine. What’re you looking for?’

  ‘Oh, someone mentioned something about another drone. You never saw anything flying around yesterday by any chance?’

  ‘Actually I did. It came down there,’ I pointed roughly to where he’d been swiping his stick, ‘and then flew off.’

  ‘Which direction?’

  ‘Woods.’

  ‘You haven’t seen anyone out there?’

  ‘On the grass? Of course not.’ Gordon looked towards the woods.

  ‘How’s that mirror frame coming along?’

  ***

  It didn’t hit me until weeks later that we’d lost a son. Conceived without us ever touching. An immaculate conception.

  Victoria was never the same. The shock left her hollow, like the socket of a pulled tooth. Listening to Dr Williams’ explanation-cum-theory of the reason for the miscarriage she did not react. She sat and played with her hands. And she did not share her grief with me. I barely saw her. I felt even my appearance was painful to her. When she came home she ate standing up in the kitchen then went straight to bed.

  There is one photo of him. He is laid on a woolly blanket, swaddled in white cloth. His skin is red. His eyes are closed. His half-formed mouth is open as though in a stifled scream. He is about the size of an onion.

  Inside the clinic’s on-site chapel we were invited to name him by the female chaplain. Victoria refused. The chaplain turned to me. I could think of nothing. I said I was sorry. The chaplain said it was OK, God would name him. As we watched the tiny box move along the conveyor strip towards the open hatch, I felt my throat constricting. I squeezed but no tears would come. Victoria stood with her arms crossed. As the curtain came down I was suddenly seized by panic. I whispered my own name: ‘Daniel’.

  I wasn’t about to leave the naming of my son to Him.

  Victoria never spoke of him. I did however see that his photo had become the wallpaper for her iPad and her smartphone. Some nights, while I lay on the couch unable to sleep, I heard her crying in the bedroom above me.

  As the sun set earlier and the afternoons became darker until eventually there was no afternoon, only morning and evening, Victoria’s body went through another evolution. The goal before had been to create a healthy vessel: a body ripe for creation. Now, seemingly, the goal was to create a battering ram: a body capable of destruction. She was battling with everything. With her body, with the world, with God, even the seasons. As winter deepened, she made her appearance summery. She got spray-tanned and dyed her already blonde hair even lighter. She went running in the cold in crop tops and hot pants and when she got back her skin would be pink and numb.

  One Sunday as I was leaving the house to visit my mother, Victoria suddenly appeared and slipped her jacket on. I watched her zip it up.

  ‘Don’t look so shocked,’ she said.

  When we got to Jerusalem, the car park was fuller than usual, as it was in the run-up to every Christmas. Inside, the nurse at the front desk signed us in.

  ‘Where is she?’ Victoria said. I pointed to my mother in the bay window, looking skyward. Victoria darted off in her direction. I grabbed her by the arm.

  ‘Wait. She hasn’t seen you for a long time. Let me go and tell her you’re here and then I’ll wave you over.’ I walked around to the front of Ivy’s chair and l
ooked her in the eye. She smiled. Relief. Always relief when she recognised me. I kissed her head.

  ‘Daniel,’ she said.

  ‘Hello Mum. I’ve brought someone to see you today.’ I signalled to Victoria.

  ‘Hello Ivy,’ she said, kneeling before her.

  ‘Victoria?’ Ivy said. Victoria nodded and I could see she was beginning to cry. ‘Victoria,’ she said with more conviction. ‘You’re so thin.’

  Victoria didn’t respond to the comment. She began rummaging in her jacket pocket.

  ‘I want to show you something,’ she said. She produced a small square of glossy paper. It had been folded twice and she had to work it over repeatedly with the butt of her wrist to flatten it out. ‘Look.’ She placed it into Ivy’s hands. Ivy held it up to her nose and squinted.

  ‘That’s your grandson.’ Ivy looked up at me. Her eyes betrayed profound confusion.

  ‘I have a grandson?’

  ‘Yes Ivy. You have a grandson.’ Ivy stared hard at the photograph of little Daniel’s tiny swaddled body.

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said. ‘What’s his name?’ Silence fell upon us. We had never discussed names.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Daniel,’ I said.

  ‘Daniel,’ Ivy repeated, ‘of course.’ Victoria looked sheepishly up at me and smiled as if to say thank you. ‘So, where is he?’ Ivy said, her eyes widening.

  ‘He’s sleeping,’ said Victoria. This seemed to satisfy my mother and she went back to staring intently at the photograph. Perhaps in Victoria’s mind this was her only chance to ‘be’ a mother, to pretend, even if just for an afternoon. Perhaps it was her gift to a dying old woman. Perhaps it was her way of exorcising pain.

  ‘Does your father know he’s a grandfather?’ Ivy said, as though to confirm the cruelty of the world.

  ‘No Mum. We haven’t told him yet.’

  ‘He’ll be so happy. Can I keep this?’ she said, pressing the photograph to her chest.

  ‘Yes of course. It’s for you,’ Victoria said.