Alice Hartley‘s Happiness

by Gregory, Philippa

  ‘What I suggest you do first is go upstairs and have a hot bath and borrow one of my gowns,’ Alice said. ‘Michael will show you where to go, while I talk with Mary and Suzanne here.’

  Michael poured the tea and put a mug for himself and Louise on the tray. Alice drew him to the far end of the kitchen.

  ‘Get in the bath with her,’ she said quietly.

  Michael jumped. ‘What? But she might not want me to!’ he said.

  ‘She will,’ Alice said wisely. ‘I shouldn’t think he’s laid a finger on her since he knocked her up. All Marxists are prudes. The only decent Marxists were wiped out with the Levellers. And don’t tell me Tony Benn because if the Labour Party doesn’t have the sense to pay any attention to him I don’t see why I should!’

  ‘No,’ Michael said. ‘I wasn’t going to mention Tony Benn actually.’

  Alice nodded. ‘Wash her hair, and get her into my white nightgown, and a warm shawl, and then massage her back and her belly.’

  Michael nodded obediently. ‘I’ve never seen a pregnant woman all bare before,’ he confided.

  ‘That’ll be nice for you, then,’ Alice said generously. ‘And Michael –’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘When she wants to move rhythmically, encourage her. She needs to get that baby started.’

  ‘Move? How should she move?’ Michael asked, slightly confused.

  ‘To a song, sing to her!’ Alice said, smiling.

  Michael had the tray in both hands, as Alice ushered him towards the stairs, Louise trailing, like an overloaded scow in his wake.

  ‘What song?’ he asked. ‘I never sing!’

  ‘Sing ten green bottles to her,’ Alice said significantly. ‘Ten green bottles, like you were singing to me, this morning.’ She smiled at Michael’s bewilderment and waved them off upstairs.

  Sunday Night

  They took longer than Alice had expected; it was not until supper-time that they came down the stairs, hand-in-hand. Louise was wearing Alice’s best nightgown, a long white Victorian gown with a high frilled neckline and exquisite pin-tucking in lines over her rounded breasts. Her hair was glossy and thick, waving down to her shoulders, framing her face which was round and pink-cheeked and glowing. Her eyes were very bright blue, and she was smiling.

  ‘Hello, Louise!’ Alice said warmly. ‘Come and sit down and have some supper!’

  Michael pulled out a chair for her, his hands rested on her shoulders as she sat.

  Alice’s clear swift scan took in Michael’s tired smile and the weary slouch of his walk. ‘Come here, darling,’ she said and sat him beside her and put a bowl of mushroom soup before him. ‘You shall have some steak,’ she said, nodding to Stephanie who was standing before the grill, an apron around her bare brown midriff. ‘You will need your yang restoring.’

  Michael nodded his thanks, Louise bent her head over the soup and ate hungrily. Alice watched her, smiling, and cut slices of home-made bread for them all. ‘There,’ she said with satisfaction. ‘More herbal tea, Aunty Sarah?’

  Aunty Sarah was resplendent in a gown of deep emerald green trimmed with peacock feathers sprouting from the neck, their patterns dancing like a thousand eyes. She was quite pissed.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘And a fruit extract chaser please, dear.’

  Alice nodded and poured a peach brandy for her into the half-pint breakfast cup which Aunty Sarah preferred.

  ‘How long have you lived here, Mrs Coulter?’ Louise asked politely. ‘It’s a lovely house.’

  Alice blinked. ‘My name is Alice Hartley,’ she said gently. ‘Michael is my lover, not my husband.’

  Louise’s lips drooped into a wide gormless ‘oo’. She put the back of her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh no!’ she said, dismayed. ‘I thought he was your son, Mrs Hartley.’

  Alice waved a small aura-strengthening gesture to ward off discomfort.

  ‘No,’ she said smoothly. ‘Michael is my lover. We have lived together here for ages now.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Four days,’ she said.

  Louise looked aghast. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Mrs Hartley,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know. We were knocking it off upstairs together. I thought it was all right.’

  There was silence at the supper table. Everyone was looking at Alice.

  She smiled with effort. ‘It was all right, Louise,’ she said kindly. ‘Your body needed that release, and Michael is a kind and generous lover. I expected him to make love with you. We do not have a mean and exclusive relationship. Michael and I share our love. We do not monopolize each other.’

  Louise nodded, visibly unconvinced, stunned into silence.

  Alice glanced down the table. ‘We need more black pepper,’ she said casually and went towards the large walk-in larder. She was gone for some minutes.

  ‘And some more salt,’ Michael said suddenly. He followed her into the larder.

  She was leaning her forehead against the damp plaster of the outside wall.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked inadequately.

  Alice opened her eyes. ‘She’s very young and very beautiful,’ she said sadly. ‘Very young.’

  Michael shook his head vehemently. ‘She’s not!’ he said.

  Alice smiled sadly. ‘I know she is,’ she said. ‘She’s twenty years younger than me. She’s the same age as you. Youth calls to youth I suppose.’

  Michael shook his head again, fervently.

  ‘It’s you I want, Alice,’ he said. ‘It’s you who is my lover. The rest is just growth.’

  Alice looked at him with dawning hope in her face. ‘Really?’ she asked.

  Michael struggled to find words which would tell Alice what she meant to him. ‘Anyone can have a girlfriend,’ he said. ‘But you, Alice, you are a woman in your prime.’

  The shadow lifted from Alice’s face. She smiled. ‘Yes,’ she said. She moved forward, easily, into Michael’s arms. He held her, kissed her lips, her closed eyelids, the soft surplus skin at the corner of her eyes. The lines at the corner of her mouth, tracks of her years of disappointment.

  ‘I have been foolish,’ Alice said. She nuzzled his warm firm neck. ‘Forgive me, Michael.’

  Michael patted her back. He felt magnanimous, in control. ‘Silly girl,’ he said lovingly. Alice let out a delighted giggle. ‘Silly girl,’ he said again. Arm in arm they returned to the supper table as Stephanie placed Michael’s steak at his place.

  Alice smiled all around and sliced more bread into generous, thick, inedible wodges.

  ‘I say,’ Louise said suddenly. ‘I feel a bit funny.’

  Alice looked at her sharply. ‘Tell me how,’ she commanded.

  ‘I feel kind of faint,’ Louise said. Suddenly she went pale and pitched forward on the table. ‘Ooooh,’ she said incredulously. ‘Something moved.’

  Alice nodded to Michael with a pleased smile.

  Stephanie’s eyes were as wide as saucers in her white face. ‘Is she having it, Mrs Hartley?’ she asked.

  Gary, Jonafon and Timofy huddled together a little closer on the bench, two of the other aerobo-gardeners openly stared. Mary and Suzanne nodded wisely, like old hands.

  ‘I should think so,’ Alice said calmly.

  Louise wailed. ‘I’ve wet myself!’ she said despairingly.

  ‘That’s your waters breaking,’ Alice said. ‘Just sit still, Louise, and let it happen. Your baby is coming.’

  Jonafon went green, Timofy went white. Michael, who now knew more about pregnant women than many men ever know, calmly finished his steak with the air of a man who can see when a good job has been well done.

  ‘Now where would you like your baby to be born?’ Alice Hartley asked Louise, as if there were any option open to them but to telephone her husband and take her at once to the hospital.

  Louise looked at Mrs Hartley with eyes suddenly widened by opportunity. ‘Could I have it here?’ she asked.

  Mrs Hartley nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘In the b
ath?’ Louise asked wildly.

  ‘A very good idea.’

  Michael leaned towards Alice. ‘Have you ever delivered a baby before?’ he asked in an undertone.

  ‘No,’ Alice said. ‘But I’ve seen it on television loads of times. And I know two obstetricians and they are thick as short planks. There can’t be anything very complicated about it, you know, Michael.’

  ‘No …’ Michael said, unconvinced.

  Alice smiled and patted his hand. ‘Trust to Nature, Michael,’ she said. ‘Louise needs to get in touch with deep elemental forces.’ She paused thoughtfully. ‘I don’t think the bathroom is quite elemental enough,’ she said. ‘What we really want is the sea! And a school of dolphins!’

  ‘There’s the dolphinarium, down at the sea-front,’ Stephanie offered. ‘If you want dolphins, Mrs Hartley, they’ve got four there. They’re called Bilbo and Bibby and Peety and Tutu.’

  ‘Dolphins?’ Alice exclaimed. She turned quickly to Louise. ‘Dear Louise, wouldn’t you like to give birth in touch with the deepest elemental forces? Wouldn’t you like to give birth to your baby with dolphins playing all around you?’

  Louise’s blue eyes widened. ‘Could we do that?’ she asked.

  Alice threw her arms wide and her blue sleeves billowed. ‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘All things are possible for people who are prepared to take risks to seek their heart’s desire. Is it your heart’s desire to give birth with dolphins?’

  Louise gave a little squeak of agreement and then a louder squeak as a contraction gripped her.

  ‘Come then!’ Alice said grandly. ‘Come! We shall need some helpers. Aunty Sarah, you stay here and look after the babies. Suzanne and Mary, you come with us. Gary and Timothy and Jonathon and Stephanie, you follow in your car. Michael, you help Louise into our car and then bring some towels and blankets.’

  She paused for thought for a moment. ‘And rainbow trout,’ she said. ‘I’ve got some in the freezer. Better bring them too!’ Alice was hazy as to whether dolphins were total abstainers from meat, but in the dark, in a pool with a new-born baby, she thought they would be wise to take no chances.

  The Sargent Oceanside Marine Park was a grim little acreage set at the west end of the promenade where the handsome Regency buildings deteriorated into Victorian copies and then into Edwardian tat. Alice had never been near it, regarding such places as blots on the face of the Great Earth Mother. With Michael directing her, she drove carefully up to the main gate which was chained and padlocked. In the watchman’s hut the flickering blue of a small portable television screen indicated that security was lax. The booming voice of the television quiz-master – unchallenged by any shouted guess at the questions from the watchman – indicated that he was stupid as well as deaf.

  Alice left the car purring in neutral and she and Michael approached the gate armed with wire cutters. Ignoring the padlock and chain altogether, they cut a car-shaped outline from the wire mesh and carefully bent it back. Alice drove the car softly through the hole, Gary, Timofy, Jonafon and Stephanie followed in Gary’s Mini, and then Michael peeled the wire mesh back into place.

  ‘The dolphins are straight ahead,’ Suzanne said from the back seat, where she and Mary were cradling Louise’s contented bulk in their arms.

  Alice clicked the car into gear and, lit only by pale starlight, moved forward to the pool where the dolphins performed their tricks at hourly intervals during the season. There was a ramp at the rear of the pool to aid the delivery of fresh dolphins when the veterans had died of heartbreak and boredom, and Alice turned Professor Hartley’s Jaguar and backed it up the ramp to the very rim of the pool.

  Louise stood at the water’s edge, shivering slightly in the evening air. Every now and then she would grunt as a contraction clamped on her stomach. Alice noticed the grunts were getting closer together and more urgent. Michael draped a blanket around Louise’s shoulders and Mary and Suzanne held both her hands and walked her around the perimeter of the pool.

  ‘Dolphins!’ Alice called out over the dark lapping waters. ‘Dolphins, where are you?’

  There was no answer.

  ‘P’raps they sleep in a different pool?’ Stephanie suggested.

  ‘I didn’t think they did sleep,’ Michael said.

  ‘Everyone sleeps sometime, man,’ Gary offered.

  ‘Ssh,’ Alice said. ‘I am communicating with them.’

  They all fell obediently silent. Louise, walking on the rim of the pool in her white nightgown, every now and then stopping and saying ‘unnhh’, was like an initiate in some ancient rite. Alice, with her arms outstretched, her blue gown billowing in the night air, and the star and moon embroidery sparkling in the starlight, was chief priestess.

  ‘Dolphins!’ she called again.

  ‘Bilbo!’ Stephanie called. ‘Bibby! Peety! Tutu!’

  ‘Dolphins!’ Alice called.

  There was a wonderful crackle of noise, and three, and then four smooth snouts appeared from nowhere, and lay on the rim of the pool at Alice’s bare feet.

  ‘Oh Dolphins!’ she said in delight. ‘Here – have a libation.’

  She reached out a hand to Michael who solemnly handed her the rainbow trout bag. She gave each dolphin a rainbow trout and they each snapped it up and then walked backwards on their tails, waving their flippers and singing in their grunting crackling noises, then they all simultaneously somersaulted and raced around the pool to end up, nose-by-nose, at Alice’s feet again.

  ‘No, no,’ said Alice, rather disapproving. ‘That’s not the kind of thing that’s wanted at all.’

  She bent down to them and stroked their smooth snouts and felt their wet sides. ‘Don’t,’ she said gently. ‘Don’t do any of that stupid stuff now. This is serious. I want you to act like dolphins, not performing seals.’

  One dolphin whistled softly through his blow-hole. ‘A bit of dignity!’ Alice urged. ‘A bit of dignity and get in touch with your real selves!’

  The dolphins were silent, perhaps they felt reproved.

  Alice straightened up.

  ‘I think it’s coming!’ Mary called urgently from the other side of the pool.

  Alice stepped forward, the moon escaped from a net of clouds and shone dimly as Alice took the hem of her blue gown in both hands and drew it up over her head. Beneath her gown she was completely naked. Her large white body gleamed in the half-light like some heroic statue mythically aroused.

  ‘Come,’ she commanded. ‘All of you! Naked into the pool!’

  ‘Gosh,’ said Michael. Then he and Gary and Timofy and Jonafon, Mary, Suzanne and Louise stripped off their clothes and slid into the dolphins’ soupy water.

  To the dolphins, this was something of a novelty. Their trainer – a dour Mancunian by the name of George Mells – usually commanded them with a referee’s whistle from the side and preferred not to get wet. He had had trouble with his adenoids until the age of eighteen and never learned to swim. For the grand finale of the act his current girlfriend was persuaded to come out in a skimpy bikini, get into the water, and be towed around the pool by one of the dolphins. She did this with such reluctance and with such a bad grace that the dolphins sensed her sulkiness and tried again and again to cheer her by dipping her under water, or playfully wriggling out of her grip leaving her sinking in the deep end. They were always hurt and a little disappointed that she never seemed to be cheered at all.

  So it was rather a surprise and a delight to them to feel the quivers in the water as happy naked young people kicked and splashed. The dolphins cruised cautiously among the swimmers, and then one (possibly Peety), a little more daring than the rest, slid between Alice Hartley’s white thighs and gave her a ride around the pool.

  Alice screamed with surprise, and the joy of exploring yet another sensation which Professor Hartley had been temperamentally and physically incapable of providing. Then Michael grabbed a strong fin as it went past him and was dragged through the water too. Soon they were all rollicking and splashing
and playing and the undiscriminating moonlight showed a shadowed curve of buttock and smooth grey back of equal beauty.

  ‘Alice!’ Louise called. ‘I think something’s happening!’

  Alice, recalled to her principal role, swam over to Louise and held her around the shoulders.

  ‘Breathe deeply,’ she said. ‘Your baby is embarking on his or her first great journey and adventure. She or he is full of wonder and joy. She or he is going to come from the warm waters of your body into the warm waters of the pool and be greeted with elemental forces, water, moonlight, dolphins, your new friends, and your smile.’

  Louise nodded. Her face was sweating and every now and then she made a deep satisfying groan. Michael held one of her hands, Suzanne the other. Stephanie, like a little dolphin herself, trod water at Louise’s feet and eyed her pubic hair – swaying in the water like a clump of seaweed – with deep suspicion and reserve.

  ‘Gently,’ Alice Hartley crooned. A dolphin swam speedily underneath them and the whole group bobbed with the passing wave. ‘Give birth,’ Alice Hartley murmured. ‘You don’t force birth, or take birth. You give birth. Be gentle with yourself, Louise.’

  Louise started breathing more quickly. Alice looked around. Gary, Timofy and Jonafon were clinging to the side of the pool behind her with their arms around each other’s thin necks. Mary and Stephanie were each holding Louise’s feet.

  ‘Gary, Timothy and Jonathon, come closer,’ Alice said lovingly. ‘Come and be ready to greet your little brother or sister. Gary, hold Louise’s thigh. You too, Timothy. Jonathon, be ready to help the dolphins raise the baby up to the air.’

  Alice had every trust in the elemental forces of nature but she could not help but have doubts about animals who answered to names such as Peety, Bilbo, Tutu and Bibby. And she had been disappointed by their readiness to perform foolish and undignified stunts.

  Louise gave a convulsive heave and a shriek.

  ‘What can you see, Jonathon?’ Alice asked.

  Jonafon was goggle-eyed. He had never seen a cunt before in his life. Now he was expected to stare at one – and as he looked it opened up like some terrifying flower and, clearly, he could see the dark mat of a tiny head.