Between the Regions of Kindness

by Alice Jolly

  So, he says. Congratulations.

  Lara opens and shuts her mouth in the hope that the right words might appear. How can Liam have been such a fool? But she doesn’t find it hard to imagine how he told Rufus, in some London pub after the show. An Inspector Calls. Liam – nervous, impetuous, dangerously trusting. That rubbery, weak lower lip wobbling as he blabs out the news. From above, Mollie’s shoes clatter on the stairs. The stage is set for her, every prop in place. Lara imagines her in floating pink, her hair piled on her head, a feather boa twirling. In fact, Mollie wears a plain black wool dress but that doesn’t erase the previous image.

  Darling, she says. We’re thrilled, absolutely thrilled.

  No, Lara says. No.

  Mollie steers her towards a chair.

  It’s a shock, of course, Mollie says. But how lovely, absolutely lovely. A baby. Your father and I are thrilled, absolutely thrilled.

  Rufus laughs as he tears the foil from the champagne. Liam? That naughty boy. Oh my dear, do stop crying. It really isn’t the end of the world. It would have happened sometime anyway and Liam loves you to death. He’ll see that everything is all right.

  Lara stares at her father. Isn’t he meant to threaten to shoot Liam?

  Liam has got a big career ahead of him, Rufus says.

  Perhaps you should get married at the Grand Hotel? Mollie says. A baby, how lovely, just imagine. I always hoped to be a grandmother.

  Mollie gets glasses out of the cupboard, wipes dust from them, talks about how much she loves weddings – particularly white weddings. There’s always the church next door. Perhaps they could even have the reception at the Guest House if they get the place mucked out.

  Lara wipes her eyes, slumps exhausted at the kitchen table. She’d been determined that Mollie and Rufus would never know but, now that they do, she feels a certain relief. If nothing else, the problem belongs to someone else, just for this moment. She thinks of Liam, blabbering in the pub, Liam as he was when she first met him.

  The Easter holidays and she was back from school. And there he was sitting at the kitchen table with Rufus. Liam Langton – who had been on the front page of The Sunday Times supplement only a few weeks ago. Liam Langton who’d won an award for Henry V at the Whitehall. She’d known that Rufus would be working with him, had boasted about that at school, but she hadn’t expected to meet him.

  But there he was – younger than he looked in the photographs, only two years older than her, and less interesting in the flesh than he had appeared on the magazine cover. A head shot only – it’s apparent why. And even his face is not a particularly fine face, but still. What was it? He seemed to gather the room to him, to fill the air with a discreet sparkle. Mollie and Rufus have already fallen for him so entirely that it’s hard for her not to like him too. Rufus always loved the Irish and now his voice started to take on Liam’s lilt. He often pretended to be Irish, when he wasn’t pretending to be Italian. One of the first things Liam had told her, in his heather-and-peat Irish brogue, was that he was an orphan. Lara had been flushed with envy, found herself barely able to imagine such luxury.

  But Mollie had said, Oh what a tragedy. But, of course, we will adopt you.

  Now Rufus places a glass of champagne on the table. The bubbles race upwards, gasping for air. Lara looks over at her suitcase. Is it really too late just to get up and leave? But what point would there be? She would only have to come back later.

  It’s the shock, of course, Mollie says. It’s all come sooner than you really wanted. But Liam and you seem so happy together. Perhaps the wedding will be in the papers?

  Quite an opportunity – going to America. I always fancied that, Rufus says.

  He wants her to be married so that he can silence her, as he has silenced Mollie.

  Oh yes, Los Angeles, Mollie says. You know, I was going to go once. Just before I met your father. Had an audition with MGM, could have been in The Night of the Iguana. You know, the Tennessee Williams play with Richard Burton.

  I’m going to university, Lara says. I’m going to be a lawyer.

  Mollie and Rufus know about Exeter University but they’ve never believed in it. They feel a contempt for the stupid people who don’t work in the theatre, who go to offices in suits and have four weeks’ holiday a year. People who have been conned out of their lives, fooled. Close to death, pale and shadowy, with the blood drained out of them as they make their weary little journeys on the train with their thermos flasks, type their memos and letters, die quietly of too much comfort.

  Maybe you could go to university in America? Mollie says.

  I’m not going to marry Liam.

  Silence descends loudly. The clock ticks. The cats have decided to withhold judgement and have retired to the sides of the room. Perhaps they feel the storm coming. Now that she’s started, she must go on.

  Actually, Liam and I have split up.

  Oh darling. Don’t be silly. It’ll be lovely, Mollie says. He’s a wonderful man and he’ll make a great father. Don’t you think so?

  It had certainly seemed like that – obvious, inevitable. And who could deny that there was much to like about Liam? Tall, nearly as tall as her father. Kind and considerate. Not at all like an actor, no drinking or smoking, his rented flat so clean that you could see the lines where the hoover has recently gone across the shag-pile carpet. And everyone had been terribly impressed. On her birthday he’d sent a vast vulgar bouquet of flowers to the school and Lara had walked back from the school office, past crowds of girls heading to lunch, trying to look as though this happened every day. And just for a while the skiing holidays and Range Rovers didn’t count for so much.

  And Rufus had been thrilled, of course. When Liam had asked her to go to a film premiere with him, Rufus had taken her out and spent more than one hundred pounds on a dark green dress, covered in sequins and high-heeled shoes with tiny straps, which later proved to be too tight. And for a brief moment she had been the girl caught in the flash of a camera, teeth gleaming, eyes emphasised by rings of mascara. A star in orbit around Liam’s planet. She might not be an actor herself but she could be the girlfriend of a famous actor.

  You know this Broadway contract is only the beginning of things for him? Rufus says. He’s on his way now. Already been offered a film audition.

  I don’t want to marry him, Lara says.

  But darling, why not?

  I just—

  How can she begin to explain when she doesn’t know herself? The eczema on his face, the bow legs, the unfortunate cowboy boots, the leather jacket which is too short, the narrow squinty eyes. All of that does matter, of course, but not enough to damn him. Because she likes Liam and many people marry for less than that. There are leagues in love and Lara knows she isn’t due anyone better than Liam. So then what’s the problem? Hard to say. It isn’t even the fact that he’s Rufus’s man, even though the need to defy Rufus is always there, an inch below the surface.

  Ridiculous, Rufus said. Of course you should marry him.

  Lara, darling, really.

  But her mind will not bend.

  I don’t want to marry him.

  She thinks back to her conversation with him two nights ago, late at night in a smoky pub. Something sticky had been spilt over the side of the table and she didn’t see it soaking into her jacket. It was then that she’d decided, that she’d told him that he must go to America without her. And he’d pleaded with her, but only, she was sure, because that was the decent thing to do. And perhaps that was the problem, finally. His decency. The fact that when she’d got pregnant he had – with his awful Irish Catholic forbearance – offered to marry her. The pain of that, the fact that he was prepared to lay down so much of his life for her. She’d liked him more than ever then, and known with greater certainty that she mustn’t marry him. She herself could never be free but he could. One of them might walk out of this whole. It couldn’t be her and so it must be him. That’s what she’d thought – watching him through the smoke of t
he pub. Dear God preserve him – naïve, hopeful, ignorant, concerned about her stained jacket. Even that bad skin must be preserved in all its touching, raw longing.

  Why did you sleep with him if you don’t want to get married? Rufus shouts.

  Lara wants to say, How many women have you slept with and not married? But that wouldn’t be fair on Mollie.

  I only went out with him because you wanted me to.

  Lara is amazed at her own courage but she has to say that because it’s true. When Liam had first asked her out, Rufus had insisted she must go. He’d bought her the train ticket to London, walked with her to the station, something he’d never done before.

  Oh it was all my fault, was it? If that’s the case then how come you’re pregnant?

  Lara doesn’t want to think about that question. She knows, deep down, that this is her fault, that it can’t really be anybody else’s fault. To begin with she had insisted that Liam used condoms but after a while he’d said, Darlin, I don’t want to suck a sweet with the wrapper still on. And he’d convinced her that he’d pull out, that all they had to do was count the days. S-sure darlin. Everything will be just fine, you’ll see. And Lara had known that she was falling for the oldest lie in the book but still she agreed, certain that somehow the general laws of nature would not apply to her.

  Lara, darling, I really think you should think this over, Mollie says. Because it isn’t fair on Liam, is it? A man wants to be with his child, doesn’t he? And it won’t be any fun for you on your own.

  I’m not going to marry him.

  Do you have any idea what it means to be a single mother? Do you realise what hard work it is, and how lonely? There’ll be no point in you going to law school. You’ll be tied hand and foot.

  I’m not going to marry him.

  Then there’s only one other choice, Rufus says.

  Lara knows her father is right. She’s known that all along and she’s even booked the appointment. She has the piece of paper in her pocket. Thick and white, the lettering of the address green and looping. No name or organisation, just an address.

  It isn’t really a baby, after all, only a few cells. At least her father understands this.

  Yes, she says. That’s what I’ll have to do.

  Mollie turns away.

  Yes, Rufus says. If you’re really not going to get married then you’re a fool. But if you aren’t then you need to put a stop to all this.

  Lara nods, feels her blood settle heavy in her veins.

  I’ll even organise it for you if that’s what you want.

  Mollie starts to weep loudly. Lara keeps her eyes fixed on her father. Although she hates him, he’s the one who can pull her through. Lara tries not to listen to Mollie’s weeping, not to think about Tupperware boxes filled with bleeding rags.

  Rufus, I won’t have that kind of talk in this house, Mollie says.

  You leave her alone.

  And so Mollie and Rufus start to argue, back and forwards, finding their rhythm, swords crossed, a jab, a thrust. Lara stares at the tablecloth, realises that she has already become mere scenery. If she picked up her suitcase, slid out of the room, they wouldn’t even notice. Act Two. The great kitchen-sink drama. Mollie grips her hand to her chest, sobs. Rufus rages. Together they are magnificent. Lara provides their audience, bleakly aware that the pregnancy is not a drama that will be resolved by the end of the third act. She wonders how it can be that her parents know, in theory, so much about life. And yet when real life arrives at their doorstep they have no way of coping with it. They can organise life into grand scenes – a wedding, an abortion, a row. But the long days of pregnancy and motherhood, this is a pain they will not bear.

  Mollie stretches out her hands to Lara, clings to her, paws at her. Abortion is the same as murder. I won’t let you do it. I won’t. I won’t.

  Lara tries to disentangle herself from Mollie’s clinging hands. Her parents have always been victims of too much vocabulary. At the Guest House, words are a smokescreen rather than a means of communication. Cliché is used as a defence against meaning.

  Shut up, shut up, Rufus shouts.

  I won’t have it. I won’t.

  Mollie wails about the miscarriages, about how much she longed for another child. The life of a child should never be taken.

  Briefly Lara imagines blood, cold pieces of metal poked up inside her, a formless bloody lump lying in a white kidney-shaped dish. No box to be buried in a field under the spreading branches of an oak tree by the banks of a river – or even in a lay-by with a concrete toilet block and an overflowing rubbish bin. Mollie and Rufus, through the shouting, have made the baby real so that Lara lays a hand, fingers spread, on the flat of her belly. She and the baby are real. They aren’t an intellectual discussion about timing and cadence.

  Don’t listen to her, Rufus says. If you’re not going to marry Liam then you know what you need to do.

  No, Mollie says.

  Well, it’s your choice, Rufus says to Lara. It depends whether you want to ruin your life or not. Make your decision. But let me be clear – I’m not having some unmarried slut living in this house.

  And so Rufus makes his exit. Lara hears the front door slam, listens to the strangled sound of her mother weeping. Move stage left, comfort mother, as she has done so many times before. But she doesn’t want to do that. She wants to go to that appointment and walk out of this situation in one piece. Go to Exeter to study law, move to London, buy her own flat and guard it like a castle. But the stain will never come off the jacket. She has already scrubbed it several times. What is she to do with her mother? With that poor broken life, wasted talent, hands raw, roots of her hair grey where she hasn’t had them tinted.

  Don’t worry, Mum. I’m not going to have an abortion.

  The words taste bitter.

  I knew you’d never do such a terrible, terrible thing.

  But I’m not going to marry Liam, she says.

  Whatever you decide I’ll support you, Mollie says. I’ll be with you – whatever.

  Lara knows how she’s been trapped, knows that she’ll never be free of her mother now. No one ever betrays us as thoroughly as we betray ourselves. Already she can feel the years unfolding and she knows how it will be. This baby will be her and Mollie’s plot against Rufus, their cheap little shred of defiance. And Mollie will be needed, she will be a grandmother.

  Lara considers herself to have run a good race, to have come close. After all, she won the boarding school battle. And she’d managed to impress those shiny girls – just about – with her theatre boasting and her bouquet of flowers. And she’d won her place at university without even trying. And the road had been ahead of her, smooth and straight. The way out. But in the marrow of her bones she’d always known that she’d never escape. That the Guest House would pull her back into its smeary embrace, its crowded, dusty grasp.

  41

  NOW

  Jay – Baghdad, April 2003

  Hi Mum, Granmollie, Grandad, peace protesters etc.

  I just have to write to you because I’m so angry. I mean, I’m so so so so so angry. Because some of the Western people in this country are so appallingly stupid and arrogant and they turn up here with their textbooks about development or the economy and they start telling everyone how this should be done when there clearly isn’t any right or wrong and all anyone is doing is staying alive from one moment to the next.

  This woman came up to me – she works for some aid agency which has turned up here with shiny new computers which don’t even work in this country, and jeeps and plenty of survival equipment – for themselves, of course. And she came to talk to me and she told me not to give Iraqi people money. She’s sure my intentions are good but I need to understand that there’s no point in just giving money. But the point is that I was here in this country right through the whole fucking invasion and I’ve spent every day since I’ve been here talking to people and seeing what’s happening and she arrives out of nowhere and lectures
me.

  If you just give people money, she tells me, then it encourages dependency. Have you ever heard such a pile of total shit? Have you ever heard anything so fucking patronising in your life? This Iraqi woman has got five children, and her husband has been killed, and his family have refused to help her due to some row about an inheritance or some shit like that, and she’s got nothing to eat so what the fuck is she meant to be except dependent?

  And I say this to this aid woman – I mean, not in these exact words you’ll be glad to know – but I explain to her what this looks like from where I’m sitting. And this stupid woman with her survival equipment and her notepads and her computer which doesn’t even work here, says that money is better spent on helping people to look after themselves. Like, for example, this woman with the five hungry children would do better to go to college and get herself some qualifications because that would be more sustainable and enable her to look after herself in the long run.

  And this aid woman says – It’s very important to have an overall strategy and draw up a plan. You must make a Needs Fucking Assessment and then estimate what the costs will be and what the exit strategy is and check that the assistance you give is going to be sustainable.

  And I say – what fucking college? They’ve all been blown up and looted and closed down because no one can get to them and there’s no electricity in any of these places which makes it a bit complicated for anyone to teach any classes there. And this shitty woman from the aid agency tells me that obviously I’m harbouring a lot of anger and that maybe I need to take more rest and look after myself.

  And then I tell her that if this woman with the five children waits until she’s got a college qualification then her children will be dead. And then the final card – I turn to this Iraqi woman with the five children and ask her if she has any qualifications and it turns out that she’s got a fucking PhD. And by this time even this brain-dead aid agency woman is beginning to realise that the particular example that she picked here is a really bad one – but that’s part of the problem with these people. Everyone is a case study, or a statistic, or an example of a particular problem. Well, actually, they are none of those things. They are people and they should be listened to as people.