When Greg rang, I’d just taken the ice tray out of the freezer and was about to fill a bowl with cubes ready to munch my way through. It was a peculiar craving, which Abe was doing his best to tolerate. ‘The baby’s going to be freezing when it comes out,’ he’d say, but I knew he meant, ‘The noise of you crunching is giving me the shivers.’
By this time Minnie was ten days overdue and Pam seemed unable to stop herself calling to ask if there was any news, although she tried to pretend otherwise. ‘I’m not calling about the baby. I just wanted to ask if you’ve enough Babygros. They’ve got some on special offer up here,’ she would say breezily, but I knew she was desperate for news so that she could book her flight down and help.
This was not her first grandchild. Alan, Abe’s eldest brother, already had children but his wife’s mother was nearby. Pam said she felt like the interfering mother-in-law when she offered to help. With no mother of my own, I would welcome her.
So, when I heard Greg’s voice on the phone, I thought Pam had told him to call in her place: ‘Oh, they must be sick of me calling. You phone them for a change.’
‘Why would I ring them?’
I imagined some such exchange. ‘I’m afraid we’re still waiting. Not a twinge to report,’ I said to him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Greg replied. ‘You must have had enough of the waiting. And I’m sorry too, because that wasn’t actually why I called.’
‘Oh?’
‘Just something I’ve been meaning to mention to Abe,’ he said. ‘Is he with you?’
‘Yes. He’s in the garden. I’ll get him.’
‘Your dad’s on the phone,’ I called to Abe, who was raking early autumn leaves. He’d taken time off work, in case the baby came, and had done just about everything he could think of around the house we’d rushed to buy.
‘Is he as fed up with waiting as you are?’ he asked, touching my arm briefly as he passed me to go into the house.
I didn’t reply. I waited in the garden, my attention transfixed by an apple, which fell from the tree at the edge of our tiny patch of garden and rolled a short distance across the lawn. ‘Not far from the tree,’ I said to myself, and the thought made me smile.
I didn’t know if I was having a boy or a girl. I hadn’t wanted to be told. Whichever it was, it was a part of me and a part of Abe, a greater amalgamation of us than we could ever be. The baby kicked, as if aware of my thoughts, and I turned, registering Abe’s presence in the doorway. ‘Is all well?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ He smiled. ‘Want a cup of tea?’
‘I’ve got ice inside!’
Abe grimaced. ‘Well, I’m going to have one. Come and talk to me while I make it.’
I went inside, curious now, and pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, wincing slightly with the effort of everything.
‘You okay?’ Abe asked, and I nodded, doing my best to ignore the twinge spreading across my stomach.
‘What did your dad say?’
‘You know my aunt Katrina?’ he asked, and I nodded as I felt the baby squirm again, then another twinge, a bigger one this time.
I’d never met Katrina but Abe had talked about her a lot, his mother’s older sister, who had lived near them in Scotland. She didn’t have children of her own and had therefore been more involved with Abe’s family than she might otherwise have been. She’d died several years ago, long before I met Abe, but he spoke of her with a fondness that made me wish I had met her.
He had his back to me now, as he put the kettle on.
‘What about her?’ I asked, as another twinge began to take hold.
‘Apparently she left us some money.’ He took a teacup off a hook and put it down next to the kettle.
‘Really?’ I was surprised he hadn’t discovered this nearer the time of her death. Another twinge stopped me saying more.
‘Yes.’ Abe carried on talking, as he poured water into the cup. ‘I didn’t know this but apparently she left each of us ten thousand pounds, but we’d only get it after the birth of our first child.’
He turned to me now, and I shifted in my seat, trying to mask my discomfort.
‘Wow, that’s incredible. And you didn’t know?’
‘No.’ He picked up the cup and sat opposite me. ‘She left us all the same amount but she didn’t want us to squander it when we were younger. Apparently she thought if we came into the money at the same time as a baby was born we’d use it wisely!’
He laughed, as if at the memory of her, and I smiled too, though partly to disguise a further tightening across my belly.
Abe and his siblings had always said Katrina was resolutely practical. There was a story they told about her killing a deer when she swerved while driving to avoid a hay bale in the road. The car had been badly damaged and she must have been shaken, but she’d pulled into the verge, opened the boot, somehow dragged the body of the deer into it and taken it to the local butcher: it would have been a waste just to leave it there, she’d told them.
‘That’s wonderful –’ I abandoned my sentence to a sharp intake of breath.
‘Has it started?’ Abe asked, looking at me keenly.
‘I think so,’ I said, standing up as the contraction subsided.
‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, turning and putting my hands on the table, pushing against it as hard as I could, allowing the wood to absorb some of the force that was taking over my body.
‘Ivy.’ Abe was at my side now, hovering, clearly unsure what to do.
I laughed in the brief lull before the next contraction.
‘I can’t believe it, Ivy,’ Abe said. ‘Our baby is on its way.’
Nine hours later Abe was sitting on a chair next to my hospital bed, holding Minnie in his arms, while the midwife checked me for tears.
‘You’re fine,’ she said, familiar with the indignity and emotion of the occasion. ‘You did really well.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, more grateful than I could articulate for her role in the delivery.
Abe had cried when she handed our baby to him. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said. ‘She’s perfect. She’s so perfect I can’t quite believe it.’
‘I’ll leave you together for a while now.’ The midwife finished what she was doing. ‘Do you want a cup of tea and some toast?’
‘I suppose so.’ I was oblivious to everything but the baby.
‘I’ll get you some.’ She smiled at us and left the room.
Everything felt surreal. What I had just been through was already fading, as the presence of our daughter loomed large in the room. The pain and the effort were forgotten as soon as I saw her face.
‘It’s going to sound odd,’ Abe said later, ‘but when Minnie came out, there was a moment when the midwife picked her up, before the cord was cut, and she looked at me, and she seemed so knowing and so like Auntie Katrina, it was almost as if, just in that moment …’
I reached for his hand and squeezed it.
‘Does that sound weird?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It makes sense. She looks like Mum too.’
‘Of course she does,’ he said, and smiled, but it didn’t mask the shadow.
I shouldn’t have said she looked like Mum, not then.
I could see fear on Abe’s face as soon as I said it. I could see him recomposing his features, trying to be all optimism when he kissed the top of Minnie’s head. ‘Look at you,’ he murmured to her. ‘You’ve no idea how wonderful it is to have you here.’
Charlie’s entry to the world couldn’t have been more different.
He was conceived deliberately, after we’d spent months talking over whether we should have another child or not. I wanted one for myself and for Minnie, before the age gap was too wide for her to make the most of a younger sibling. Abe was hesitant, wondering if it was responsible to bring another child into the world, knowing the risk.
In the end, it was the risk that swayed him. ‘I suppose it makes sense to have another,
a kind of insurance policy.’
Put like that, it sounded a little grim, but Abe was happy when I got pregnant, excited in a way that I loved him for all the more – I knew how he felt, deep down.
Charlie burst upon us three weeks before he was due, shattering my belief that he, too, would be late. I’d just dropped Minnie off at nursery and Abe was due to fly to a meeting in Copenhagen later that day.
I was walking up the hill from the nursery when the first twinge came. By the time I reached the top there was another, but they were gentle and far apart. I suspected it was the start of a slow build, but when I got home, the contractions were coming more regularly, often enough for me to think that this wasn’t a false alarm.
Abe was making coffee in the kitchen, his overnight bag sitting in the hall, ready for him to leave.
‘I seem to be having quite regular contractions.’ I paced around the kitchen, the desire to keep moving more distracting than the contractions themselves.
‘Already?’ He stopped what he was doing and came over to me.
‘Don’t touch me.’ I didn’t mean to snap but a huge restlessness had come over me. I had to keep pacing and didn’t want to be touched.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘What should I do?’
‘I don’t know.’ I felt irritable. ‘Maybe they’ll stop. It’s too early and they’re not very strong but …’
‘Was Minnie okay at nursery?’
‘Fine.’ I grabbed hold of the work surface edge, as a stronger contraction took hold. And I heard myself letting out a noise that was familiar to me, a deep primeval howl that shocked us both.
‘Is it getting worse?’
I didn’t reply because it happened again. The sudden intensity of what my body was doing was overwhelming. I howled again, scared.
I was unprepared. The pain was different from what I’d experienced with Minnie, more intense and less manageable. It happened again, too soon. There was no time for me to recover.
‘Do you want to lean on me?’ Abe asked.
I shook my head, bearing down on the work surface.
‘Can you call Caroline?’ I said, when it had receded. ‘Let her know.’
One of my nursery-mum friends had agreed to have Minnie when I went into labour. She wouldn’t be expecting a call just yet.
‘Should I call the midwife?’ Abe asked. ‘Or is it too soon?’
‘I don’t know,’ I gasped, in the brief lull between increasingly intense contractions.
Minnie’s birth had been so easy, so textbook, that we’d planned to have this baby at home. But now that it had begun I wasn’t sure I wanted to stay there.
I heard myself screaming. It was the sound of someone being tortured.
‘I’m going to call her,’ Abe said.
‘No. I think we should go to hospital.’
‘But I thought –’
‘It doesn’t feel right. It’s too –’ I had to stop again. This time my waters broke and already I felt the urge to push.
‘Jesus,’ Abe said, ‘what do we do now?’
‘Can you take my knickers off?’ I was desperate to push although it worried me.
‘Shoes first,’ he said, bending down and trying to pick my foot up, as if I was a horse being shod.
I think I may have kicked him when the next contraction began. ‘It’s coming now,’ I screamed.
‘I need to call someone!’ He was panicking when I needed him to be calm.
‘An ambulance!’ I was shocked by my own insistence.
This wasn’t what we’d planned. This was not how I wanted it to be. The pain was like nothing I’d experienced before and I was terrified that there was a reason for it.
The ambulance operator must have heard my screams when Abe called. It arrived quickly and the paramedic confirmed my fears. The baby was breech and the wrong way round, its spine wedged against mine. ‘That’s why the pain is so intense.’ The paramedic gave me gas and air, while his colleague examined me. ‘Try not to push,’ she said.
‘It’s coming.’
‘The baby’s in the wrong position,’ she said. I heard the note of panic in her voice. ‘I’m going to have to try to push it back inside you. You must try not to push.’
I tried but I couldn’t. The urge was too strong to resist. But the pushing had no effect. This baby appeared to be going nowhere.
‘The baby’s stuck,’ I heard the paramedic say. ‘We’re going to have to get them to hospital. ‘
‘But I can’t move.’
How could they possibly transfer me to hospital? They had to do something here. Now.
‘You’ll both be all right.’
If she was trying to sound reassuring she was failing.
‘We’re going to put you on a stretcher, get you into the ambulance and take you to hospital.’
Somehow they managed.
Afterwards was a blur. When I came round from the general anaesthetic, I felt sick, woozy and detached.
‘Where’s Abe?’ I asked the doctor who was with me. ‘What happened to the baby?’
‘The baby’s been taken to intensive care,’ he told me. ‘It’s a boy.’
I knew I should have asked if he was all right but I was too shocked.
‘Is Abe okay?’
‘Yes, of course. He’s with the baby. ‘
‘Can I see him?’
‘You can see the baby in a little bit,’ the doctor said kindly. ‘I just need to check you over.’
‘Can I see Abe?’ I started to cry.
I felt completely alone in the world. That I had a husband and two children didn’t alleviate the feeling. I felt lonelier than I’d ever felt before. I’d brushed too close to something I wasn’t ready to encounter.
When Abe came in, he looked different: exhausted and upset.
And distant. That was the worst of it.
‘I thought I was going to lose you.’ He sat next to my bed, blunt and to the point. ‘I thought you and the baby were both going to die.’
‘Is the baby okay?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But he’s got a collapsed lung.’
‘What?’
‘It happens sometimes apparently.’ He sounded utterly detached.
‘It’s not uncommon after a stressful birth,’ the doctor reassured us. ‘A needle has been inserted to let out some of the air. He should recover quickly.’
‘But can he breathe?’
‘Yes. We just need to monitor him. He needs to stay in intensive care.’
‘When can I see him?’
‘It won’t be long now, I promise.’
Afterwards, in the early weeks, Abe did all the right things. He spent a lot of time with Minnie so that I could be with Charlie. He cooked and washed and nursed me, while the Caesarean scar healed. But he didn’t bond with the baby.
And he seemed to be detaching himself slowly from me.
I didn’t say anything. I thought it would pass.
I knew women often felt depressed after giving birth. Even if they didn’t suffer full-blown postnatal depression, I knew they could have ‘baby blues’. But I’d never heard of men being similarly afflicted.
A few months after Charlie’s birth, it dawned on me that something was missing in the sitting room. It was my photograph of Mum holding me as a baby, framed, and usually on the mantelpiece. Dad had the same picture by his bed at home. He’d had it copied and given it to me after Minnie was born.
Abe must have moved it when he’d tidied the house.
‘Have you put the picture of me and Mum somewhere?’ I asked, expecting him to say, ‘Oh, yes, it’s on the bookcase. I’ll put it back.’
But he didn’t. ‘I can’t bear it, Ivy,’ he said, turning round so fast that it startled Charlie, who was in a sling around my neck. The baby started to cry and I jiggled to try to soothe him.
‘What?’
‘All of this,’ he said, gesturing towards me and the children. ‘And the picture of your mother, looking at us all the time as
if she was a part of it, which she’s not. She’s gone.’
‘But we’ve got a picture of your auntie Katrina there too.’ I was genuinely perplexed.
‘It’s not because your mother’s not here. It’s because of why she’s not here,’ he said. ‘When you were in the hospital after having Charlie I really thought I might lose you both and I didn’t know if I could bear it.’
‘But you didn’t.’ I stepped towards him to try to say something reassuring.
‘But I might. The chances are that I will. It’s too hard sometimes.’
‘But it won’t just come from nowhere.’ I wondered why he was saying all of this now. ‘If I get ill, there’ll be signs. We’ll have time to get used to it. It won’t be for years. There might even be a cure by then.’
We’d discussed all this before, of course, the risks and the possibilities, but it had clearly seemed more abstract for Abe than it was now.
‘I wish there was a way of knowing for certain whether you carry the gene,’ he said.
‘Do you? Would it help?’
‘Of course it would.’
‘Why?’
‘Because then we’d know for sure.’
‘Well, there isn’t,’ I told him, and bent down to undo the straps of the sling Charlie was in, lifting him out and handing him to his father. I didn’t tell him that, even if there was, I wasn’t sure I’d want to know. I thought he wouldn’t understand.
He didn’t, a few years later, when Jon invited us to lunch with Dad and Cathy. Cathy was working for a health organization, helping people with Aids. She was thinking about doing VSO. There was talk of Malawi. Perhaps that was why Jon had brought us all together – soon Cathy might be out of the country.
It was a beautiful spring day and hot, too hot for the time of year. The kids were toddling around Jon’s garden in T-shirts. Anne, his girlfriend, was cooking. ‘Roast lamb,’ she said. ‘But it’ll be a while yet. Do the children need anything to keep them going?’
‘They’re fine.’
I liked Anne. She was younger than Jon, younger than me too, so much younger that I’d been slightly suspicious of her at first, perhaps because she might not stick around for long with someone ten years her senior and with our family history. She was a legal secretary at the practice where Jon worked. ‘Can I do anything?’ I asked.
Ivy and Abe Page 18
