A Special Relationship

by Douglas Kennedy

Still, I clinked my glass against his and downed the French fizz in one long gulp. Tony immediately refilled it.

  ‘You’re thirsty,’ he said.

  ‘I think it’s called: needing a drink.’

  ‘And so say all of us.’

  I drained my glass again.

  ‘I’m glad I bought two bottles,’ Tony said, topping me up once more. ‘You okay?’

  I didn’t feel that question needed answering. Just as I decided to sidestep my usual over-explanation of how I was feeling – because it was so damn obvious what was wrong here: I had come home from hospital after having a baby, but without the baby … even though I knew that Jack was better off without me.

  ‘Nice bit of domestic news today’ Tony said. ‘The builders were in—’

  ‘You could have fooled me.’

  ‘Anyway, the foreman – what’s his name? … Northern Irish guy … Collins, right? … he was asking for you. And when I mentioned you’d had the baby, but he was in intensive care … well, Jesus, you should have seen the Catholic guilt kick in. Said he’d get a full crew in the next few days, and try to have all the work done within a fortnight.’

  ‘It’s good to know that a potentially brain damaged baby can finally get a builder to …’

  ‘Stop it,’ Tony said quietly, pouring me yet another glass.

  ‘Have I already drunk the last one?’

  ‘Looks that way. Shall I get dinner on?’

  ‘Let me guess. Curry vindaloo?’

  ‘Close. Chicken Tikka Masala.’

  ‘Even though you know I can’t stand Indian.’

  ‘If you can’t stand Indian, you’ve come to the wrong country.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have done just that.’

  Tony got one of those uncomfortable looks on his face again.

  ‘I’ll get things underway in the kitchen.’

  ‘And I’ll go unblock a milk duct.’

  Oh, God, we were off to a great start. To make things even merrier, both my breasts were now feeling like reinforced concrete again. So I retreated to the bathroom, and stared at the half-finished cabinets and untiled floors as I powered up the torture pump and screamed only three times until the right nipple finally spouted milk. However, the left breast seemed more pliable now. After five minutes of electrically induced suction, it burst forth. Then I staggered up off the toilet seat, dumped the pump in the sink, walked into the nursery, sat down in the wicker chair, and found myself staring blankly at the empty crib. That’s when I felt myself reverting back into sinking mode, the same feeling that hit me right after the birth, and had now decided to pay me a second call. It was as if this brightly coloured room had become a cube, in which I was trapped as it headed on a downward trajectory. And the cube was simultaneously diminishing in size – to the point where all I could do was brace both legs and both feet against all four walls, in an attempt to stop it from crushing me.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  Tony’s voice stopped my free-fall – and also yanked me back to the here and now. The cube had become a room again. I was no longer plummeting, but I was certainly in an awkward and damnably embarrassing position, crouched against a wall, with my hands gripping the floorboards.

  ‘Sally, are you all right?’

  I didn’t know how to answer that question – because I still wasn’t certain where I was. So I said nothing, and let Tony help me back to my feet, and into the chair. He looked at me with that unspoken mixture of anxiety and contempt which seemed to characterize his reaction to my now-frequent moments of distress.

  Only this time, the distress was short lived. As soon as he had me seated back in the chair, it vanished – and I felt functioning again.

  ‘Dinner ready?’ I asked.

  ‘Sally, what were you doing on the floor?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. Little fainting spell, I think.’

  ‘But you looked like you were trying to claw your way out of the room.’

  ‘That’s what I get for drinking three glasses of champagne on an empty womb.’

  I found this witticism hugely funny – and suddenly couldn’t stop laughing. Once again, Tony just stared at me and said nothing.

  ‘Oh, come on, Tony’ I said. ‘You’ve got to give me an A+ for bad taste.’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t drink anything more tonight.’

  ‘With bloody Indian food? You must be joking.’

  Only we weren’t eating Chicken Tikka Masala (that was Tony’s idea of a joke); rather, a wonderfully high carbohydrate Spaghetti alla Carbonara, with lots of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and a big green salad, and a loaf of buttery garlic bread, and a decent bottle of Chianti Classico, all courtesy of Marks and Spencer.

  It was pure comfort food. Days of hospital muck had left me suddenly ravenous. I ate like a hostage on his first full night of freedom. Only I didn’t feel free of anything. Rather, the food was simply acting as a momentary diversion against …

  What? I thought I’d rid myself of all the furies that had seized hold of me. But now … what the hell was that bad piece of surrealism in Jack’s room? Maybe Tony was right: throwing back copious amounts of champagne after a long stretch of sobriety probably wreaked havoc with my equilibrium. And the sight of Jack’s empty crib simply sent me over the edge.

  ‘You seem to be nursing that glass of wine,’ Tony said.

  ‘After that performance on the floor, I thought I’d better turn Mormon for the night. I’m sorry.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Not to worry,’ he said in a flat tone of voice that wasn’t reassuring.

  ‘Thank you for this beautiful dinner,’ I said.

  ‘Ready-made food isn’t exactly beautiful.’

  ‘Still, it was very thoughtful of you.’

  Another of his shrugs. We fell silent. Then, ‘I’m scared, Tony.’

  ‘That’s not surprising. You’ve been through a lot.’

  ‘It’s not just that. It’s whether Jack will turn out …’

  He cut me off.

  ‘You heard what the nurse said yesterday. All vital signs are good. The MRI showed nothing. His brain waves are registering as normal. So, in fact, there’s little to worry about.’

  ‘But Dr Reynolds wasn’t definitive about that …’

  ‘Sally …’

  ‘And I’m absolutely certain that Reynolds is trying to cushion us from the possibility that Jack has brain damage. I mean, he’s a very straightforward, decent man, Reynolds – especially after that uppity prick, Hughes – but he’s also like every damn doctor. As far as he’s concerned, we’re his problem … but only up until that point when Jack is discharged from the Mattingly. So, naturally, he’ll keep as much from us as he can.’

  ‘Please stop sounding like one of those batty conspiracy theorists …’

  ‘This is not some fucking conspiracy theory, Tony. This is our son, who is now entering his second week in intensive care …’

  ‘And whom everyone says will be just fine. Do I have to keep repeating that over and over? Have you lost all reason?’

  ‘You’re saying I’m crazy?’

  ‘I’m saying, you’re being irrational …’

  ‘I have a right to be irrational. Because …’

  But then, out of nowhere, I applied the emotional brakes. I was shouting. Suddenly, like somebody changing rooms, I found myself back in far more sensible surroundings, truly appalled (yet again) by such a temperamental overload, let alone the way it had just abruptly ended. This wasn’t like anger’s normal aftermath – where, once the exchange of words was over, I’d fume for a bit and then, when it was clear that Tony wasn’t going to apologize (something he seemed genetically incapable of doing), I’d take it upon myself to sue for peace. No, this was … well, strange was the only word to describe it. Especially as the anger just fell off me. One moment, I was in full throttle fury. The next …

  ‘I think I need to lie down.’

  Tony gave me another of his long,
nonplussed looks.

  ‘Right,’ he finally said. ‘Want me to help you back to bed?’

  I haven’t been in bloody bed since I’ve come back home, Tony … or hadn’t you noticed?

  ‘No, I’ll manage,’ I said.

  I got up, and left the kitchen, and went to the bedroom, and changed into my pyjamas, and fell into bed, and pulled the blankets up over my head, and waited for sleep to come.

  But it didn’t arrive. On the contrary, I was shockingly wide awake, despite a deep, painful fatigue. But my mind was in high-octane overdrive – ricocheting from thought-to-thought, worry-to-worry. Entire horrendous scenarios played themselves out in my head – the last of which involved Jack, aged three, curled up, ball-like in an armchair, unable to focus on me, or his general surroundings, or the world at large, while some hyper-rational, hyper-calm social worker said in a hyper-rational tone of voice, ‘I really do think that you and your husband must consider some sort of “managed care” environment for your son. A place where his needs can be attended to twenty-four hours a day.’

  But then, this catatonic child sprang up from the chair, and abruptly commenced the most extreme temper-tantrum imaginable – screaming non-syllabic sounds, upturning a side table, and knocking out of his way everything that strayed into his path as he charged across the living room, before falling into the bathroom and smashing the mirror with his fist. As I struggled to calm him down – and get a towel wrapped around his now haem-orrhaging hand – I caught brief sight of myself in the shattered glass: aged beyond recognition in the three short years since Jack’s birth; the perma-crescent-moons beneath my eyes and the cleaved lines giving a clear indication of my so-called ‘quality of life’ since my poor brain-damaged boy had been born.

  However, my moment of exhausted self-pity was quickly over – as he began to slam his head against the sink. And—

  ‘Tony!’

  No answer. But, then again, why would there be – as I was in bed and the door was shut. I glanced at the clock: 2.05. How did that happen? I hadn’t been asleep, had I? I turned over. Tony wasn’t next to me in bed. All the lights in the room were still on. Immediately I was out of bed and in the corridor. But before I headed downstairs to see if he was up, watching a late night movie, I saw the light on the still uncarpeted stairs leading up to his office.

  The attic conversion had been finished while I had been in hospital, and Tony had evidently expended considerable effort on putting it together. His fitted bookshelves were now stacked with his extensive library. Another wall was filled with CDs. He had a small stereo system and a short-wave radio in easy reach of the large stylish desk that he chose with me at the Conran Shop. There was a new Dell computer centre-stage on the desk, and a new orthopaedic Herman Miller chair, upon which Tony was now sitting, staring intently at a word-filled screen.

  ‘This is impressive,’ I said, looking around.

  ‘Glad you like it.’

  I wanted to mention something about how it might have been nice if he’d concentrated his energies on unpacking the more shared corners of the house … but thought it wise to hold my tongue. It had been getting me into enough trouble recently.

  ‘What time is it?’ he asked absently.

  ‘Just a little after two.’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

  ‘Something like that. You too?’

  ‘Been working since you went off to bed.’

  ‘On what? Something for the paper?’

  ‘The novel, actually.’

  ‘Really?’ I said, sounding pleased. Because Tony had been threatening to start his first foray into fiction when I met him in Cairo. At the time he intimated that if he ever got transferred back to dreaded, prosaic London, he was finally going to try to write the Graham Greeneesque novel that had been rattling around his head for the past few years.

  There was a part of me that always wondered if Tony had the long-term discipline that was required for this prolonged task. Like so many journos who’d done time in the field, he loved the manic hunt for a story, and the hurried, frenetic rush to file copy by the necessary deadline. But could he actually retreat to a little room, day in, day out, to incrementally push a narrative along – as he once bragged to me that two hours was about the longest time he’d ever spent writing a story?

  Yet here he was, in the middle of the night, working. I was both impressed and pleasantly surprised.

  ‘That’s great news,’ I said.

  Tony shrugged. ‘It might turn out to be crap.’

  ‘It might turn out to be good.’

  Another shrug.

  ‘How far are you into it?’ I asked.

  ‘Just a few thousand words.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘Like I said, I haven’t a clue if it’s up to anything.’

  ‘But you will keep writing it?’

  ‘Yeah – until my nerve fails me. Or when I decide it’s beyond useless.’

  I came over to him and put my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I won’t let you stop.’

  ‘That a promise?’ he asked, finally looking up at me.

  ‘Yes. It is. And listen …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry about before.’

  He turned back to the screen.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning … if you can stop worrying.’

  But when I woke at seven that morning, Tony wasn’t next to me in bed. Rather, I found him asleep on the new pull-out sofa in his study, a small pile of printed pages stacked up by the computer. When I brought him a cup of tea a few hours later, my first question was, ‘How late did you work?’

  ‘Only ’til three,’ he said, sounding half awake.

  ‘You could have come down and shared the bed.’

  ‘Didn’t want to wake you.’

  But the next night, he did the same thing. I’d just come back from the hospital – my second visit of the day to Jack. It was nine o’clock – and I was slightly aggrieved to find Tony already at work in his office, as he had told me he couldn’t make it to the hospital this evening, because of yet another international crisis (something in Mozambique, I think) that was keeping him.

  ‘Anyway, it’s not as if Jack will be missing me,’ he said when he phoned me that afternoon at home.

  ‘But I’d like it if you were with me.’

  ‘And I’d like it too. But …’

  ‘I know, I know – work is work. And who cares if your son …’

  ‘Let’s not start that,’ he said sharply.

  ‘Fine, fine,’ I said, sounding truly tetchy now. ‘Have it your way. I’ll see you at home.’

  So finding him in his office that evening really did peeve me.

  ‘I thought you said you’d be working late at the paper.’

  ‘We got the pages to bed earlier than expected.’

  ‘Well, thanks a lot for rushing over to the Mattingly to see your son.’

  ‘I only got in fifteen minutes ago.’

  ‘And went straight to work on your novel?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You really expect me to believe that?’

  ‘I was inspired,’ he said, without the faintest trace of irony.

  ‘I suppose you’ll now want dinner?’

  ‘No – I grabbed something at the office. Anyway, what I really want to do is work on, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know how Jack is?’

  ‘I do know that. I called the hospital around six, and got a full update from the ICU sister. But, I suppose, you know that already.’

  I wanted to scream. Instead, I just turned on my heel and left. After throwing something together in the kitchen, and washing it back with a single glass of wine (I wasn’t risking another descent into weirdness), I poured Tony a glass and brought it back up to his office.

  ‘Oh, ta,’ he said, looking up from the screen.

  ‘How’s it going?’ I asked.

  ‘Good, good,’ he said i
n a tone which indicated that I was interrupting his flow.

  ‘Want to watch the Ten O’Clock News?’

  ‘Better keep on with this.’

  Two hours later, I stuck my head back in his office.

  ‘I’m going to bed now,’ I said.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘You coming?’

  ‘Be down in a moment.’

  But when I turned the bedside light off fifteen minutes later, he hadn’t joined me. And when I came to at eight the next morning, the space next to me was empty.

  So, once again, I climbed the stairs to his office – only to find him under the duvet on his sofa bed.

  This time, however, I didn’t bring him a cup of tea. Nor did I wake him. But when he staggered downstairs around ten, looking harassed, the first thing he said to me was, ‘Why the hell did you let me sleep in?’

  ‘Well, since we now seem to be living separate lives, I don’t have to be your alarm clock.’

  ‘I spend two nights on the sofa, and you’re already talking about separate lives.’

  ‘I’m just wondering if you’re trying to tell me something. Or if this is some passive-aggressive—’

  ‘Passive-aggressive. For fuck’s sake, I was just working late. On the novel – which you so want me to write. So what’s the problem?’

  ‘I’m just …’

  ‘Insanely insecure.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Except, ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t be. And I will be at the hospital tonight. And I will share our bed. All right?’

  True to his word, Tony did show up at the Mattingly around eight that evening. He was half an hour late, but I decided not to make a big deal of it. I had already spent the better part of an hour making eye contact with my son. He seemed to be watching me watching him – and for the first time in weeks, I actually found myself smiling.

  ‘Look at this,’ I said as Tony walked down the ward towards us. He crouched down beside us and looked at his son.

  ‘I told you he would be all right,’ he said.

  Yes, you did. But why do you have to remind me of that now?

  ‘He really sees us,’ I said, deciding it was not the moment to respond to Tony’s comment.

  ‘I suppose he does.’ He waved briefly in his direction. ‘Hello there. We are your parents, you poor bugger.’