The phone gave a single ring – Peggy calling down from upstairs. Since they’d had that big row after they’d told her about the baby, Peggy tended to ring first rather than just coming down like she used to. Things had been strained between them, but if she was honest, she wouldn’t be able to get through all this without Peggy.
‘Hello?’
‘Rita’s just phoned. They’re about to set off. She said Eleanor’s quiet and a bit tearful but she seems okay about coming.’
Marjorie didn’t say anything.
‘Rita’s driving her, and she said – Rita, that is – that she hopes you won’t mind but she’ll need to get straight back because she’s short-staffed. Ken’s going to run her back.’
According to Peggy, Eleanor could drive herself now, although not at the moment, obviously. Apparently, she had an old Volkswagen camper that someone at Greenham gave her, and Rita was bringing her over in that. A birth, a death, driving a big van; it was as though they were telling her about someone else’s daughter.
‘Fine.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you fancy popping down for coffee?’
‘Put the kettle on.’
*
She tried not to glance at the clock every two minutes, but her eyes were drawn to the damned thing. ‘Shouldn’t they be here by now?’
‘Sit down, Marjorie. You’re making yourself more agitated. They’ll be here when they get here.’
‘You don’t suppose she’s changed her mind, do you?’ She could hear the anxiety in her own voice. ‘It doesn’t take that long to get here from Chislehurst.’
‘It’s rush hour,’ Peggy said.
Even after she sat down her heart was beating so fast it was making her breathless, so she stood up again to distract herself. This was Eleanor, she kept telling herself. This was her own daughter. True, she hadn’t seen her for over a year; they hadn’t even spoken on the phone since the summer and even that had been a ridiculously brief conversation. Now she thought about it, Eleanor had sounded odd that day – vague, distracted – she’d assumed it was because of what was happening at Greenham. There was quite a lot about it in the papers, and she’d read somewhere that the women took it in turns to get arrested. For a moment she’d wondered if that was why Eleanor sounded so strange, but when she asked, Eleanor had said of course she wasn’t in trouble with the police, and then she said she had to go. She’d have been six months’ pregnant at that point. Marjorie felt another swell of sadness at the thought that her daughter had felt unable to tell her she was expecting, unable to tell her she’d given birth and, worst of all, unable to tell her when this terrible thing happened. She felt her eyes fill with tears, but she had to hold them in. Compared to what had happened to Eleanor, she had no right to cry.
She swallowed. ‘What am I going to say to her, Peg? What do you say when your child can’t even come to you—’
‘You need to trust your instincts,’ Peggy said. She was making tea again, even though they’d only had one half an hour ago.
‘After all, you know exactly what she’s going through. And even if you didn’t, you’re still her mum. It’s not too late to make things right, you know.’
Marjorie nodded. Peggy could be wise sometimes, but she had a tendency to approach life in a black-and-white way, and things were seldom that simple. For one thing, she wasn’t sure she even felt like Eleanor’s mother any more. She’d been thinking a lot lately about when Eleanor was little, and how she’d been so afraid of damaging her by saying the wrong thing after Peter died that she’d actually avoided being with her. What sort of mother did that make her? She remembered Ted telling her once that she seemed to have given up being a mother: It’s as though you’ve abdicated responsibility, he said. And even though she knew he was right, she hadn’t made any attempt to change things. Was it surprising Eleanor had pulled away from her?
‘This is them.’ Peggy lifted the corner of the net curtain.
Marjorie heard the engine judder to a stop, then a sliding door opening and closing, then another. After a few moments, the doorbell rang. She was frozen for a second. Why wasn’t she using her key? But then she went to the door.
She expected Eleanor to look different, but not quite this different. She was heavier, and she appeared slumped; she looked pale and tired, with brown circles around her eyes, and while her skin was still firm and unlined, there was something so careworn about her face you would have thought she was a woman of thirty or more, not a girl just coming up for twenty. Her wig looked awful, as though someone had mopped the floor with it. She made a mental note to buy her some new ones as soon as she felt up to trying them on.
‘Come in,’ she said. ‘The kettle’s just boiled.’ How ridiculous, she thought, as if she gives a damn whether the kettle has boiled. ‘Go and sit yourself down, darling,’ she added, aware that Eleanor wasn’t meeting her eye.
‘How are you, Marjorie?’ Rita’s smile looked uncertain.
Marjorie tried to smile back as Eleanor walked past, head lowered, and as she tried to focus on Rita, she sensed that behind her Eleanor was almost certainly being enfolded in Peggy’s arms before going into the living room. Why had she not embraced her distraught daughter?
‘Rita, I want to thank you for what . . . for taking care . . .’ It stuck in her throat. She had to thank this woman for doing what she should have been doing.
Rita waved away her words. ‘Only too glad I could help. And I’m sorry it’s been so . . . and, you know, the way things turned out.’
Marjorie nodded. There was an awkward silence, and she wondered if she should invite Rita to stay for tea, but then Ken appeared in the hallway jangling his car keys, and Rita said she was sorry she had to dash off but there were new guests arriving soon. Most of Eleanor’s things were in the camper, she said, but Peggy was going to pick up anything that was left, and there was no hurry.
Marjorie thanked her again, and stood by the front door with Ken while Rita went to say goodbye to Eleanor.
‘How are you bearing up?’ Ken said.
‘Okay, I think. Just about.’
Rita came back out, Peggy following, and when they’d said their goodbyes, Peggy put her hand on Marjorie’s arm. ‘I’ll leave you to it.’
Marjorie went back into the living room. Eleanor sat hunched on the sofa, a battered canvas bag at her feet. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was hanging onto her own shoulders as though she was trying to hold herself together.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Eleanor shook her head without looking up.
Marjorie sat tentatively on the sofa next to her. She’d thought about this moment a thousand times over the last few days, but now that it was here, she was dumbstruck. Why did everyone but her know what to say to Eleanor, how to be with her? A memory dropped into her mind of a similar feeling she’d had years ago when she’d not long been out of hospital and was still having very bad days. Eleanor would have been about six because she’d been staying at Peggy’s for a couple of days before they moved in upstairs. Peggy had persuaded Marjorie to let her perm her hair with a Toni home perm – it would perk her up, she said. She brought Eleanor home at lunchtime and settled her with some colouring at the dining room table while she did Marjorie’s hair, and at the end of the afternoon when she was ready to go, she called through to the dining room, ‘I’m off now, Ellie. Be a good girl for your mum.’
There was a clatter and the sound of a chair being scraped back, and then Eleanor came tearing out into the hall and threw her arms around Peggy, who lifted her off her feet in a tight hug.
Marjorie watched her daughter’s face, her eyes closed and a blissful smile on her face as Peggy hugged her. The smile turned to resignation as Peggy set her back down, dropping a kiss on the top of her head, and opened the front door.
When she’d gone, Eleanor sighed, then turned away and trudged back along the hall. Marjorie took a step towards her. She wanted to say something, something about having missed her while she was a
t Peggy’s. As she opened her mouth, she felt as though the words were all there, gathering in her chest, trying to push their way up and out into the open, but she was still standing with her hand on the door frame when Eleanor settled herself at the table and became engrossed in her colouring once more.
She’d felt inadequate then, but that was nothing compared to how she felt now as she sat watching her grown-up, newly bereaved daughter pull aimlessly at loose threads in her jumper.
‘I’ve made a shepherd’s pie for dinner. I only need to heat it up, and I thought—’
‘Thanks, Mum, but I’m not hungry. In fact, do you mind if I go down to bed in a minute? I can hardly keep my eyes open.’
‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Should she offer to go down with her? Would that be intrusive? She’d risk it. ‘I’ll come down and get you settled, shall I?’
To her surprise, Eleanor murmured, ‘That would be nice.’
She was glad she’d put the heating on this morning, because the bedrooms had a tendency to damp and could be chilly this time of year. Eleanor sat down heavily on the bed and bent over to unlace her boots. She seemed to be struggling, and Marjorie was about to offer to help when Eleanor muttered something and managed to pull both boots off without undoing the laces. She pulled back the covers and lay down, fully clothed.
Surely she’d be more comfortable if she undressed? Instead of mentioning it, Marjorie took the folded spare blanket from the bottom of the bed, shook it out and laid it over her daughter.
‘Thanks, and thanks for not asking loads of questions. I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.’
‘We don’t need to talk about that now. You just try and get some sleep.’
Eleanor, February 1984
It was the same almost every morning; she’d wake with her face wet with tears and the front of her nightdress soaked. At least it tended to happen only at night, now, usually when she’d been dreaming about Sarah, but that was most nights. She pushed away the covers and put her hand up to her breasts. The wet fabric still felt warm, but it would cool quickly now it had made contact with the air. She levered herself up slowly and sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about Sarah. On the one hand, she wanted the milk to dry up completely, because every drop that leaked from her nipples was a reminder that her baby was no longer there to receive it. But on the other hand, this was her last connection with Sarah, the living proof that she had existed.
Tears were trickling slowly down her face, but she didn’t bother to wipe them away because it wasn’t as though she was actively crying. Weeping was a better word, but even that didn’t describe this feeling of . . . of seepage; that was probably the nearest she could get. It was as if she was so full up with grief and sadness that some of it was seeping out along with the tears and the wasted, useless breast milk.
With a clean nightdress on, she got back into bed and lay down. It was 5.02 a.m., so all that dreaming had only lasted a few hours at the most. It felt like weeks. She dreamed about being pregnant, the hugeness of her swollen belly, the strange intimacy of Sarah shifting position inside her; she dreamed about being in labour, the intensity of the pain and the smell of the rubber mask; she dreamed about the birth, the feeling that she couldn’t take any more and then that searing sensation as her skin tore and Sarah finally pushed her way out.
A tear ran across her cheek, down past her ear and into the hollow of her neck. She would take the pain of childbirth again every day of her life if it meant she could have Sarah back. During the day she tried to push these thoughts to the back of her mind, but her dreams were so real that while she was here, alone and safe in her bed, she allowed herself to think it all through repeatedly, to relive those moments of motherhood that she would never experience again. She turned over, wiping her face on the pillow, and revisited the memory she cherished the most: Sarah is less than one minute old and she is lying with her feet on Eleanor’s stomach, head resting against her breast. She doesn’t cry. Eleanor says, ‘Hello, baby,’ and her daughter opens her eyes and looks right back at her; the connection is made. They stare at each other for a few moments, soaking up all they can, then Sarah blinks, looks away and begins to root.
All this, she thought now, all this was her mother’s experience, too. Did she lie in bed in the mornings reliving Peter’s birth, or was she still too haunted by his death? What had his funeral been like, she wondered? She wished she could remember Sarah’s more clearly, but the main thing that stuck in her mind was the floral tribute she’d ordered, a two-foot-high teddy bear made entirely of yellow chrysanthemums. It sat with the other flowers outside Rita’s, and as she walked from the house to the funeral car, a young mother walked past with her child in a pushchair. ‘Look!’ the little boy pointed excitedly. ‘Look at the big teddy!’ The mother, crippled with embarrassment, hushed the child and wheeled him quickly away.
There were no photographs of the flowers, but now she wished she’d asked Ken to take some, then perhaps, at some point, when the time was right, she could show her mum. She hadn’t even mentioned Sarah so far. Everyone else – Peggy, Rita, the policemen that came that day, even the doctor – they all kept telling her it wasn’t her fault, that cot death can happen to any baby, any mother; she even found herself starting to believe them. But her own mum hadn’t said that.
She turned over and looked towards the window. It was beginning to get light outside, thank God. The nights seemed endless sometimes, and even when she tried to comfort herself by recalling the feel of Sarah in her arms, it never lasted because her thoughts would soon become darker and heavier. It’ll get better, the doctor told her. It may not feel like it now, but I promise you, you will find a purpose in life again. And then he’d said, And you’re young – you’ll have more children. She wouldn’t, of course. And a purpose? What was the point of a purpose?
She must have drifted off to sleep again, because it was some time later when she became aware of a soft knocking on the door.
‘Eleanor?’ Her mother’s voice was quiet.
‘Come in, I’m awake.’
‘I’ve got to go to work in a minute, so I thought I’d bring you breakfast in bed.’
Her mum set the breakfast tray down on the bedside cabinet. There was a boiled egg, bread and butter cut into soldiers, a slice of toast with marmalade and a cup of tea.
‘How did you sleep?’
She hesitated. I relived my pregnancy and my baby’s birth and my breasts still ache and leak and I felt as though I was crying all night long in my sleep. ‘Not too bad, thank you.’
Her mum opened the curtains. ‘Jolly good. Now, as I say, I’m working today but Peggy’s home so she’s going to look in on you later. She says to phone up if you need anything before that.’ She paused. ‘You’re getting your colour back, at least; you don’t look quite so peaky.’
Yesterday, her mum said she looked as though she was on the mend. Please don’t say that again, she thought. It’s not a broken bone that’s going to knit together.
‘Okay, thanks,’ she said, sitting up. ‘Mum,’ she said after a moment. ‘I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to feel better.’ She felt her courage waver. ‘I mean, it’s not as though I’m actually ill, is it? I was wondering if we could maybe talk about—’
‘There’s plenty of time for that, darling.’ Her mum turned towards the door. ‘You just concentrate on getting better for now.’
‘But—’
‘Sorry, darling, I . . . I don’t want to be late.’
Marjorie, June 1984
Marjorie put two slices of bread under the grill. Eleanor’s cup and plate were on the draining board, so she’d obviously been up and had breakfast quite early. That was a good sign. The first few weeks, she rarely came up before ten, and even then she looked as though she still needed more sleep; perhaps she was picking up a bit now. Marjorie had been the same herself after she lost Peter. The doctor said it was the brain’s way of coping, the idea being that you couldn’t feel the pain o
f grief while you were asleep. It wasn’t true, of course; the grief that came to her while she slept was even more painful. While she was awake, she had a certain amount of control over her thoughts, even if some of it was on a subconscious level, whereas when she was asleep, her unconscious threw up images that demolished her.
The Times was still on the doormat, and when she picked it up, the date jumped out at her. How could she not have realised? Usually, she was prepared a few days before, but today it just popped up and slapped her unexpectedly in the face. Would Eleanor remember the date? She hoped not. Where was she, anyway?
The phone rang – the single tone that indicated Peggy’s extension. Peggy always remembered. She picked up the receiver. ‘Morning, Peg.’
‘Just thought I’d see if you were feeling all right.’
‘I’d forgotten what day it is.’
‘Not surprising,’ Peggy said, ‘what with Ellie and everything. Does she—’
‘I haven’t seen her yet. She’s been up but I think she’s gone back to bed.’
‘Shall I pop down?’
‘You not at work today?’
‘Not until two. Put the kettle on.’
Peggy was there within a couple of minutes. She pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘Still no sign of Eleanor?’
‘No,’ Marjorie placed two mugs of coffee on the table. ‘I thought I’d let her sleep. She must need it.’
Peggy nodded. ‘Are you going to the cemetery today?’
‘I’m not sure. I want to, but I don’t know if it’ll upset Eleanor.’
‘Marjorie,’ Peggy’s voice was hesitant, ‘I know it’s not really any of my business, but I was thinking maybe you should ask Eleanor if she’d like to come along with you.’
‘Come with me? Don’t you think—’
Untitled Book 3 Page 24
