After Before

by Jemma Wayne

  Fourteen

  It had been months since Vera had heard from Charlie. Last time, when she’d told him over the phone that she’d started reading the bible, he’d laughed hysterically, predicted it would never last and been sarcastic about Luke, who he nicknamed ‘The Messiah’. But when Vera arrived at her desk the morning after St George’s, amidst the straight lines of yellow Post-its (the whimsical spirals having abruptly stopped), Vera found a small, white, handwritten envelope. Inside was a black and white postcard of Grace Kelly wearing a white dress and gazing seductively into the camera. On the back, over the lines for an address, Charlie had scrawled: I hear you’re getting hitched. Congratulations V. “Today’s a very special day.”

  Vera had spent almost 20 minutes at her desk gazing at the card. At lunch, she’d taken the folded piece of paper from her wallet and held it with the card, staring at them both over a cappuccino that eventually turned cold. An hour later the paper was returned, still folded, to its usual pocket, and Charlie’s card was tucked carefully inside the back cover of her bible. But it has taken Vera almost four weeks since then to call him. It is a first step, and she is taking it gingerly.

  The Alpha Course takes place at St George’s every Wednesday and so far she has been to three. There is a great vine that caresses the wall outside the church and each week she has stood next to it, hovering, her progress feeling infinitesimally slow next to nature’s showy changes. First green, then yellow, now a deep, confident red. But her encounter with what – without wishing to sound melodramatic or plain ridiculous – she can describe only as Jesus, or truth, has left her unarmed, and although she knows she has to see Charlie, has to tell him, she must take this time, she must restock her arsenal. Differently. The old bible story of the prodigal son keeps running through her mind, especially the moment in the pigsty when the son lifts his head and remembers that he has a home. It feels like a homecoming. But Vera has been totally unprepared for the cataclysmic shift inside her. It has enveloped her without restraint, and left her not with the sensation of peace, certainty and quiet contentment that she had supposed, but with a fire burning within. An inferno. The papering over she was so diligently doing at Luke’s church, now smoulders at her core.

  She wishes she could talk to Luke about it. On the surface they have reconciled, but lately, whenever she tries to demand his time he reminds her of the dying African children counting on his dedication. He doesn’t remind her of his dying mother, or the fact that a stranger and not Vera is with her, but she knows this is the real occupant of his mind. Just as the dweller of hers is not in fact Luke, but Charlie.

  She knows she must see him. She knows she must tell him. If anything has become clear since St George’s then it is this. Of course there are her parents to tell too, and there is Luke. But it must begin with him. Like it or not, the truth is bubbling to the surface like hot blood, and she cannot quell it. Still, it is a question of when, and how, and what she will say. The Alpha classes are like defence missiles. She is stockpiling as many as she can.

  They meet at a tapas bar in Soho. It is a Thursday evening. She does not tell Luke.

  Charlie wears a crisp white shirt open at the neck and dangles an unlit cigarette from his mouth. Vera is in the simple trouser suit she wore to work and is without make-up. The lack of adornment was a conscious decision. She is there for confession, not complication. When she walks in, Charlie stands up to plant a soft kiss on either side of her face. He smells of something strong and sharp.

  “My god, the virginal look suits you. You look sexy as hell V,” he says.

  Charlie remembers her favourite wine – a full-bodied Spanish Rioja Alavesa – and orders them a bottle, but before they sit down Vera excuses herself for the bathroom and winds her way through the close, share-friendly tables into the lone cubicle. For a long time she stares at her reflection in the mirror. She doesn’t pull faces, she doesn’t fixate on moles or hairs – she has not, it occurs to her, done either of these things since St George’s – but she instructs herself. Warns herself. Forces herself to recall all the times that Charlie has dumped her, or dismissed her, how he makes her feel confused and uncertain, how he introduced her to coke and one night slipped something stronger into her drink without asking. But that was the night they’d had the best sex ever. And since the, clinic, three years ago, they have not been alone together without ending up in bed. Their meetings are sporadic but conversation is furious still, they are good at small talk, at jokes and flirtations, and there are sparks, or perhaps embers. It is not a stretch for either of them to convince themselves into bed. Besides, she has never been able to refuse him. Sometimes, in recent years, Vera feels that she satisfies him as a payment, an attempt to fulfil a debt. But in any case the real collusion is not their bodies, it is their silence. Silence about the one topic they never touch. Silence about the topic Vera is here to lay straight.

  Help me.

  “So a bunch of evangelicals chanted their drivel over you, and now you’re a born-again Christian?” Charlie declares with glee when they are midway through their second glass of Rioja. “My god V, you’ve been brainwashed!”

  “Charlie, I’m serious,” she cautions him. “You can’t understand ‘til you’ve experienced it yourself. You should go to church. You should try it.”

  Wine shoots out of his mouth. “Do you really see me at church?”

  She studies him. He is as handsome as ever. More so. Confidence spills out of him like cologne he can apply at his whim. A banker now, he looks respected, successful, but there remains a glint in his eye that she recognises from nights of raucous partying, hedonistic weekends in bed, whole days spent high.

  “No, but a few years ago I wouldn’t have seen me at church either,” she answers finally, tucking her hair behind her ear and taking another sip of wine.

  “Me neither V.” He reaches across the booth and pats her on the knee, his fingertips brushing just a few inches higher before he removes them and takes out another cigarette. “So come on then, tell me about Luka. What’s he done to warrant this transformation? Good in the sack is he?”

  “First of all it’s Luke, if you don’t mind Charles, not Luka. And I’m sure he’s wonderful in the sack but I wouldn’t know. We haven’t slept together yet. We’re waiting.” As soon as the words slip out of her mouth she wishes she hasn’t said them.

  “He’s a virgin?!”

  “He’s a Christian,” she back-pedals.

  “Oh my God. This is too hilarious.”

  “And I’m a Christian now too.”

  Charlie covers his eyes and tries to calm himself.

  “I’ve had an amazing experience Charlie,” she urges earnestly. “I felt it. I felt Jesus. I met him. It’s a totally transforming thing - ” It bothers her that she is finding it so difficult to articulate her coming to faith. Charlie is the first person she has really told, but his cynicism seems to taint it. Before it is strong enough to take assault. She stops. Slowly, Charlie dares a glance at her over his hands.

  “So I can’t tempt you anymore then V?”

  “Charlie, I’m engaged.”

  “I know, I know, but what if you weren’t?” He gazes straight into her eyes and before she can stop herself she imagines the two of them falling into a hotel room and ripping off each other’s clothes. His chest will be slightly tanned as usual - the remnants of the South of France, or the Amalfi Coast, or somewhere further afield. She will start with his shirt. “Come on V, don’t you miss the old rumpy pumpy?” He blows another cloud and winks at her. “You must. You were very good at it. How long has it been?”

  “Actually, since we last… ” she guiltily hears herself confessing. But this is not the confession she is here for.

  “My God. You poor thing.” He pauses. “Well, if you’d like me to oblige... ”

  She smiles. The smoothness in his voice seems somehow to sanction everything. Charlie slithers in between her strengths and weaknesses and mixes them up. She gulps at her win
e.

  Help me.

  This is what he does. This is what he always has done. Not force her into anything, but make her forget, welcome forgetfulness, or distort, but she would like life to be distorted, or not know what she will live to regret…

  No. It wasn’t his fault. He knew about the ‘abortion’, he didn’t know what came next. That was her. That was her sin. The worst of them all. Just the thought of it chokes her. She splutters on her wine. Charlie pats her back exaggeratedly. But the truth is not something that can be exaggerated into comedy.

  “Thanks for the offer Charlie, but I love Luke,” she manages to say finally. “And Jesus.”

  Now Charlie coughs on his wine again. “Fucking hell, you’re an absolute riot tonight, V.”

  “And that’s why I have to tell you something,” she continues quickly, while she can.

  Charlie takes a while but eventually stops laughing. He takes a slow sip of his wine and replaces it on the coaster. Finally he looks at her, bracing himself, and now he notices her nerves. “Shoot, V,” he says calmly.

  She takes a breath. “Do you remember ‘Singing in the Rain’?”

  Charlie takes an uncomfortable drag of his cigarette and doesn’t answer.

  “Do you remember humming it to me? At the clinic?”

  He takes another sip of his wine, draining the glass. Then looks at her hard. “Of course I remember. Why are we talking about this?”

  Vera reaches for her own glass but there is nothing in it. She takes another breath: long, deep. “I didn’t have it.”

  “I know, V. Wasn’t that the point of the thing?”

  Vera shakes her head. She wants to look away from him but forces herself to hold his stare. “No. Charlie, I didn’t have the abortion.”

  “What?”

  There is nothing else for him to say.

  Vera inhales once more. There is no going back. Vera can feel invisible hands again upon her shoulders. “I didn’t have the abortion,” she repeats slowly. “I didn’t take the pills. I didn’t have the procedure. I had the baby.”

  Charlie cannot speak. He tips his head to one side. Vera waits. There is no disguising the searching in his eyes. Searching for the inevitable question that Vera has been dreading. Eventually he gathers himself enough to ask it: “I -I have a child?”

  There are other questions of course: where and when and how and what, and these will come, but this, Vera knows, is what it comes down to. She begins.

  “He was a boy.”

  Charlie opens his mouth to speak, but Vera doesn’t know if she will be able to keep going if she stops now, and she holds up her hand.

  “He was born on the 19th of January at UCH. I stayed in with him for two days. I called him Charlie. I - ” Her voice is shaking. Tears are close. They seem always to be close now. “I left him on the steps of St Andrew’s Children’s Home in Euston. I - ” She cannot breathe. She cannot say it. Gentle sobs are choking her. She reaches into her bag and takes out her wallet. “Thank you for humming,” she gulps between breaths. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Slipping the folded newspaper cutting from her wallet, she unfolds it and hands it to him. Then without looking back, she turns for the door.

  “Help me,” she whispers into the fresh, night air.

  II

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  In spite of a determination not to, Lynn had begun to look forward to Emily’s visits. Aside from the brief debacle with Vera, it had been many years since there’d been another person in the house. Visitors of course - though it had been months since she’d agreed to see any of her friends, with their highlighted hair and Blackberries and reasons to keep up. There were her sons, but even they sat with her formally, being entertained. Emily was different. She might disappear upstairs for hours to change the bed and dust and vacuum, while Lynn watched television or if she had the energy selected a favourite book to read a chapter or two from, and they sometimes didn’t see each other at all; but she could hear the vacuum going, or the quick shuffling of Emily’s feet, and it was company, a witness to her existence.

  She and Philip had spent whole days this way: he in the study turning pages that created a tranquil rustle, or tending young plants in the garden shed, while she was in the kitchen baking, or pottering about the house tidying the details of their lives. No words but reassurance. No dialogue but a promise of eternity… It was nice to hear a second pair of footsteps cross the wooden floors again and hands other than hers open cupboards, and exert a presence in her life.

  Emily had been coming now for a month, three times a week. She knew where all the cleaning products were kept and exactly how Lynn liked the house to be ordered. She had learned the times and doses of Lynn’s medication. She pretended not to notice when Lynn was feeling sick, but silently placed an empty bin near her chair. And she no longer had to be asked to bring the tea in at a quarter to eleven, but carried it on a tray with a slice of lemon on the side and two digestive biscuits for each of them. And sat in the chair that used to be Philip’s.

  “Don’t you get bored of the same biscuits?” Emily asked one Wednesday.

  They had been sipping their respective teas with the radio on, a countdown of all-time great jazz tracks. Emily didn’t know any of them, but nodded solemnly each time Lynn pronounced the title during the opening bars. This question was the first time she had spoken all morning, and Lynn had the sense that she’d been working up to it. Despite the fleeting boldness of her first day, she was quiet this one, not like Vera with her excessive chatter. But John called her ‘the angel’: “The angel’s cleaned that ghastly vase”; “The angel’s made a delicious soup”; “Will you take some brandy in your tea, Angel?” And Emily seemed slowly to be warming to his mischief, unable sometimes to hide a smile. And just beginning to ask questions of her own.

  “If I had money like you, I would buy all different ones,” Emily ventured again.

  “What biscuits did you have in Rwanda?” Lynn asked. She’d been trying to get Emily to talk about Rwanda for days. Perhaps because of a not-yet-dead academic curiosity. Perhaps because the girl’s existence somehow latched Lynn to the present. Perhaps because she had noticed that her tiny silver elephant was missing. Each time however, Emily found something to tidy away, or a light to turn off, or else she switched on the vacuum. Now, cornered by tea and jazz tunes, she touched her hand to her fringe and smoothed it down, but said nothing. “You shouldn’t cover it,” Lynn told her.

  Emily said nothing, but glanced up in surprise.

  “It makes you unusual.” Beautiful, she had meant to say. To Lynn, Emily resembled an African princess, or how she imagined one, full of exotic mystery. Her youth didn’t grate on her as she’d thought it would, as Vera’s did. Her otherness was more salient than ghostly taunts of girlhood. And aside from the scar her dark skin was flawless, her neck long and slender, her lips curled backwards as if in a state of perpetual restraint. Admittedly there was a small gap between her front teeth, and the fact of her constant fidgeting, but on the rare occasions that Emily sat still and smiled, the deep scar over her left brow extended the almond shape of her eye into a pool that rippled outwards. “Beautiful,” Lynn conceded.

  Emily blushed and lowered her head. “We had ones like these. And Afterwards, they gave us special protein biscuits.”

  “Afterwards?”

  Emily stood up. “Do you need something else Mrs Hunter?”

  “I used to bake biscuits,” Lynn told her.

  “My mother made muffins,” said Emily.

  There was a short pause. “We would need ingredients.”

  Emily hovered by the door. The radio presenter’s smooth voice cued in another jazz tune. Lynn shifted in her seat to test her side. It hurt, but not as badly as some days.

  “It’s not raining,” she considered.

  *****************

  As they rounded the corner of St Ann’s Terrace and into St John’s Wood High Street, Emily offered her arm to Lynn, who agai
n refused it. The rain had stayed away, but the pavement was smattered with fallen leaves, trodden down by wet shoes and conspiring to form a thin, slippery coat of brown. Emily walked slowly and purposefully, unaware of passers-by who might be watching, heavy with the responsibility of Lynn. If the woman fell, she would be blamed for it. Even if Lynn had refused her help. Even if Emily had no way of accounting for uncleared paths. Even though Emily too felt unsteady and short of breath. In a court of fowls the cockroach never wins his case. Emily offered Lynn her arm, and was again flapped away.

  Before they left the house, Lynn had made a fuss of Emily fetching the particular pair of shoes that matched her outfit. Under her wool coat she was wearing a simple navy dress with black tights, but she would not accept the brown flats that Emily first selected, nor the black loafers, which she laughed at, but demanded the navy heels with the rounded toe. They were sensible heels, well made, only an inch and not stilettos, but Emily wished that Lynn had not increased the distance from which it was possible for her to fall. “One never knows who one might bump into,” Lynn had said with a glittering smile while buttoning her coat and checking her make-up in the hall mirror as though off to a party, and it had amused Emily, these ageless quirks; but now, even without supporting the weight of her, Emily could feel the effort the walk had become. She did not tell Lynn, but inside her bag were the loafers.

  “Here we are,” Lynn announced, relief rubbing not quite imperceptibly at the boldness of her declaration, and frustration mingling with it as she felt the heaviness of the convenience store door. Just then, a young mother pushed out of it, a pram and nanny in tow, forcing Lynn to sidestep to the left. Emily noticed her wince as she did so and unexpectedly she felt a pang of protectiveness. She took a step closer, but then Lynn gathered herself and tutted at the mother loudly. “I never had help with my two,” she told Emily.

  They bought flour, vanilla extract, eggs and crushed almonds. There was butter and sugar already in the cupboard and neither of them were eager to increase the weight of the shopping bag with unnecessary goods. Emily’s hands had been hurting that week, burning, perhaps from the cold. At the last minute, Lynn slipped in a bar of chocolate, a dark Green & Black’s in navy wrapping.