by Anne Doughty
I found what I was looking for, a soft wool dress with mohair in it, lightly checked in dark brown over cinnamon. ‘The stroky dress’, Susie calls it. I knew a dress I’d chosen myself would never meet my mother’s criteria for ‘something nice’, but at least it wouldn’t raise issues.
‘I’m doing well, so far, Alan,’ I said softly as I finished my make-up. ‘Hair up, or down?’
‘Up.’
‘Jennifer, for goodness sake,’ I said, shocked by the speed of the response. ‘You’ll soon have as many voices as Joan of Arc. And you know what happened to her!’
As I began pinning up my hair, I saw why the answer had come so promptly. Lying in Alan’s arms before we made love, he had stroked my cheeks, kissed my hair and gathered it in handfuls around his face. With my hair down, he said, I looked so vulnerable. Any man would rush to my defence, even an old cynic like himself.
But today was no day for being vulnerable and no one would rush to my defence, I said to myself as I hurried downstairs, switched on the kettle and dropped a slice of bread in the toaster. Moments later, I heard the roar of Harvey’s Jaguar. Rather than rush to the door, as I once would have done, I went on quietly looking out of the kitchen window to where the pink and gold leaves were blowing into the garden from the chestnut trees on the main road. They fell on the newly-cut lawn, rested there briefly till they were stirred and whirled off once more by the next breezy gust. Huge clouds towered up out of the west, brilliant white snowcaps shaded with grey, set against the clear blue that holds the promise of winter ice.
The toaster popped just as a long shrill note vibrated down the hall. I pushed my toast into the rack and gathered my straying thoughts reluctantly. ‘Right then, Jennifer,’ I said briskly. ‘Let’s see what dear brother Harvey has come for.’
‘Hello, Sis, long time no see.’
I smiled dutifully at the immaculately groomed figure on the doorstep. Harvey has the knack of making his carefully chosen leisure clothes look just as formal as the expensive suits he dons for his consulting room.
‘Hello, Harvey, I was just about to make coffee,’ I said agreeably. As he stepped into the hall, he glanced at himself in the long mirror by the front door.
‘Oh, just the thing, I’d love a coffee.’ He followed me into the kitchen and settled himself at the table with practised ease.
‘Biscuit?’
‘Nothing for me, Sis, thanks. Just coffee. Black, please. Got to watch the old waistline,’ he said with a jolly laugh.
Yes, indeed. No middle-age spread for Harvey. If we can’t hold on to the ‘boyish good looks’ style, we’ll have to go for the distinguished senior physician demeanour. Unfortunately, his hair wasn’t going discreetly grey at the temples. It was just going. And mostly from the top.
I watched him sip his coffee appreciatively. For God’s sake, I thought, it’s only instant. You’re behaving like one of those idiots in a TV commercial whose life is transformed by a steaming container of hot liquid. I concentrated on buttering my toast and spreading it liberally with honey.
‘Late night, Jenny?’ he asked, settling back in his chair as if we were about to have a long, pleasant chat.
I munched enthusiastically. I really was hungry this morning and I had no intention of facing Rathmore Drive on an empty stomach.
‘Yes, it was rather,’ I agreed, licking my fingers. ‘Val had a party.’
‘Been having a lot of late nights, have you?’ He was smiling at me encouragingly. If he were playing a consultant gynaecologist who fancied his technique with women, I’d be telling him he was grossly overplaying it. But I wasn’t directing him, so I made myself another piece of toast and waited a moment before I replied.
‘No, actually. It’s ages since I’ve been to a party. I haven’t got time these days.’
He nodded sympathetically. ‘I expect the job is pretty damned hard work.’ His voice oozed with understanding.
‘No, I can’t say it is,’ I replied coolly. ‘It was to begin with. Like any new job. But now I have the experience, it’s fine. Time-consuming, of course. Like any profession.’
‘Yes, of course, it must be. I do agree. In fact, Jenny, I thought we ought to have a quiet word. I’ve become a little concerned about you and your job, you know.’ He paused as if he were considering judiciously just which aspects of me and my job concerned him most. ‘It’s never easy for a woman doing two jobs,’ he went on. ‘When I heard you hadn’t been looking too good, I did wonder if I might be able to help. Perhaps it is time you were thinking more about yourself and your future,’ he ended, underlining each pronoun heavily.
I concentrated on my toast. I had a horrible feeling that if I caught sight of his face switched into its professional sympathetic style, I might pour the rest of the honey over him to see if its actual sticky sweetness might have any effect on the phoney treacle in his voice.
‘Harvey, Mummy’s asked you to come and talk to me about starting a family, hasn’t she?’ I asked sweetly.
He looked startled and immediately uneasy. Harvey is a coward. If things don’t go exactly the way he’s planned them, he backs off rather than face up to what has happened. But this time there was a real problem. He knew as well as I did that he’d have my mother to deal with if he didn’t tackle me.
‘Well, yes, Jenny, you could say that in one way.’ His easy manner had quite gone. ‘She is very concerned about you, but naturally so am I. After all, you have been married over three years now and I wouldn’t want you to think I hadn’t offered you all the help I could. I know Mummy can be a bit sharp at times, but you do have to make allowances for menopausal women. She always has your best interests at heart, I’m sure.’
I watched him with growing disbelief. He was talking his way back into a very comfortable view of the way he was handling this little hitch in the programme. As I heard the professional unctuousness slowly creep back into the voice, I didn’t know whether to laugh or explode with fury. But his final words decided for me.
‘Best interests? Best interests?’ I burst out. ‘When have either of you ever let my best interests get in the way of your plans for me?’
‘What do you mean, Jennifer?’ he protested, the sympathetic look disappearing once more like snow from a ditch. ‘You’re surely not trying to suggest that I take the trouble to come and discuss your problems for my benefit?’
‘You can hardly claim you’ve come to discuss them for mine when you haven’t even asked me what I think my problems are,’ I replied sharply.
‘Oh, I think it’s fairly obvious—’
‘Yes, Harvey, of course you do. That’s just the point. It’s obvious to you and Mummy that my resistance to settling down and having a couple of children is what the problem is. I won’t play the game properly, will I? It’s a problem to her, and as she’s no doubt been going on about it ad nauseam, it’s become a problem to you. But it is not, Harvey, a problem to me.’ Given how furious I was actually feeling, I ended far more calmly than I could have imagined. But to my amazement a look of relief swept over his face, wiping away all trace of the irritation he had allowed to break through. He smiled forgivingly at me and spread his hands in an expansive gesture that reminded me of multilingual Popes giving the Easter Sunday blessing to the assembled crowds.
‘Well then, Jenny, if that’s what’s been the trouble, then it’s no wonder you’ve been off colour,’ he said warmly. ‘Early pregnancy can be a most trying time for a mother who is still at work. I suppose you and Colin wanted to keep this to yourselves until this new job was all settled.’ He sat there with a satisfied beam on his face, sure that all would be well and no ugly scenes would have to be coped with.
I stood up and took my time washing traces of honey from my fingertips. I couldn’t believe it. How on earth could he reach that conclusion from what I’d actually said? Could I really have been so ambiguous? Or was the man so obsessed with motherhood he saw signs of it everywhere?
‘Harvey,’ I said, taking a deep
breath, ‘I am not pregnant and I am not likely to be pregnant in the foreseeable future. You can report that to Mummy, as planned, or I’ll tell her myself. Take your pick.’
He swallowed hard, put down his coffee cup and rearranged his face muscles. ‘Now look, Jenny,’ he began quietly. ‘You really shouldn’t be so touchy when someone is trying to help you. I’ve known lots of mothers who felt just like you do,’ he went on quickly. ‘Now, a few years later, with a couple of lovely children, they feel really fulfilled. All it needed was a little professional help. I’m sure, Jenny, that would make it much easier.’
‘Easier for whom, Harvey?’ I asked politely.
‘Why, for you, Jenny. Obviously.’
I laughed as I dried my hands and stood leaning against the sink looking across at him. He really thought he had all the answers, didn’t he. Well, it was time someone put a dint in his well-polished amour-propre and I felt just in the mood for doing it: ‘Come off it, Harvey. When have you ever showed the slightest interest in me? The only thing you’ve ever been interested in is you, followed by the practice and then by a quiet life. And life hasn’t been quiet, has it? Mummy’s been a pain in the neck. Maisie McKinstry keeps dropping hints that I’m not doing my wifely duty, so she starts on you. And what do you do? Not having laid eyes on me for months, you do the brotherly advice bit and expect me to get you off the hook by doing what Mummy wants. Well, I’m sorry I can’t oblige. I only have one life to live and I don’t intend to live it for the benefit of the McKinistrys, or Mummy, or you.’
Harvey opened his mouth to protest, but having got launched, I found that I hadn’t nearly finished.
‘And the next time you’re busy advocating motherhood to some hapless woman who comes to you with premenstrual tension, or advanced marital breakdown, or just a pain in her lower back, you might think of the women in your colleagues’ surgeries queuing up for their Valium. And after you’ve looked at the figures for depression among women, you could take a look at the figures for child abuse and then teenage suicide statistics. It might just give you a less cosy picture of family life than the one you’re so happy to peddle.’
‘Cosy?’ he threw back, when I had to pause for breath. ‘If anybody round here’s managed to make a cosy life, it’s you, Jennifer,’ he retorted. ‘We don’t all expect to have the benefits of marriage and a house like this without doing something to fulfil our obligations. We don’t all manage to do exactly what we want without any regard for the wishes of our partner. I must say if your concern for Colin figured as largely in your conversation as your anxiety for various problem pupils then your comments on how other people fulfil their obligations might not seem so inappropriate.’
‘As inappropriate, perhaps, as your suggesting that a wife is supposed to pay for her board and lodging by bearing children. Or that my role is to have children so that you and others like you can go on enjoying your own comfortable view of how you want the world to be.’
He stood up. ‘I think, Jennifer,’ he said in measured tones, ‘that this conversation has gone far enough. I came here to offer you help and advice and you’ve used the opportunity to make an entirely ridiculous personal attack on me. I see no point in trying to discuss the problem in a rational manner. I can only put down your outburst to the inadequacy you have so often revealed in the past.’ He drew himself up to his full height, adjusted his tie, which had not suffered at all in the dialogue, and moved towards the kitchen door.
I smiled at him. ‘Inadequacy, Harvey? I would have thought that a man so obviously threatened by his sister’s reluctance to become a mother, impelled to challenge her on the orders of his own mother, and apparently unable to relate to any woman except as a potential mother was in no position to talk about inadequacy.’
He dropped his eyes and walked out, banging the front door behind him. I heard the engine and waited for it to zoom off. But it didn’t. It just went on revving.
‘You’ve done it this time, Jenny,’ I said to myself, as I picked up my coat and handbag from the cloakroom. ‘You’ve really cooked your goose.’
Chapter 13
The journey to Rathmore Drive was mercifully brief and so precipitous, conversation was quite impossible. I was so grateful to arrive in one piece that I set aside all my worries and headed for the sitting room with a smile on my face, leaving Harvey to stride down the hall to the kitchen to give his report.
‘Hello, Daddy. How’s things?’ I said and bent over to kiss his cheek.
His skin was rough against my lips and had a yellowish hue beneath his weather-worn complexion. I thought back to Friday night. I could have missed a change in his colour in the dim gloom of the dining room or later in the firelight.
‘So far so good. Mavis has been summoned to the inner sanctum,’ he said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Janet looks set to join the second oldest profession. George Best has scored two direct hits on the azaleas.’
The light, bantering tone reassured me. It was always a sign that he felt well in himself and was in good spirits.
‘And Susie,’ he went on, pausing for breath and looking up at me with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Susie, with her usual seriousness of purpose, has extracted a solemn promise from her grandad that he will tell her the moment her Aunty Jenny arrives. Cross his heart and hope to die.’
He folded his newspaper and turned towards the French windows with a broad grin. I followed his gaze and saw a small figure in a red dress and white lacy tights walking backwards along the path looking up at the huge blooms of his prize chrysanthemums which arched high above her blonde head.
‘In that case, I’d better go straight out, hadn’t I?’
‘You had indeed,’ he agreed warmly. ‘I’m given to understand the children will lunch in the kitchen before we have our meal.’
We exchanged glances that said all we needed to say. I opened the doors and stepped into the garden. Before I had time to close them behind me, the small red figure spotted me. She raced back up the path and tripped on the edge of the terrace just as I managed to get there.
‘Hello, Susie,’ I said as she fell into my arms. ‘Were you waiting for me?’ As I picked her up and felt her small arms close round me in an energetic hug, Janet marched down the path to stand squarely in front of us.
‘Hello, Janet,’ I said pleasantly. ‘No favouritism’ was my rule, both in school and with my nephew and nieces.
Janet, at eight, had no such rule and had other things on her mind. She stared at us coldly. ‘Mummy says you’re not to run like that, Susie, and you’re not to climb up on people either. Look what you’ve done to Aunty Jenny’s hair. Mummy’ll be so cross when I tell her.’
Susie’s large brown eyes filled with tears.
‘It’s all right, Susie. It’s all right,’ I whispered to her as I returned her hug and made no move to put her down.
‘Susie didn’t climb up, Janet. I picked her up. Didn’t you notice that?’ I said easily. ‘And my hair’s always falling down. Long hair often does, especially when it’s freshly washed. I’m sure you’ll notice that when you grow up.’
‘I shall have short hair when I grow up,’ was her immediate reply. ‘Like Mummy’s. She says it’s much more practical.’ She turned her back on us and walked primly down the garden to where she had arranged two dolls and a teddy bear on a garden seat and set up a blackboard and easel in front of them.
Peter was kicking his football disconsolately round the rose beds and pretended he hadn’t seen us. Like his father at the same age, he sulked when he had no admiring audience, and he had worked out long ago that I wasn’t in the admiring audience business.
‘Will you tell me the flowers again, Aunty Jenny?’ Susie’s eyelashes were still wet with tears but she was smiling now, her eyes bright with excitement. They looked at me steadily, so confident I wouldn’t refuse her.
I carried her round the garden, intensely aware of the warmth and softness of her small body. No, I did not have Val’s problem. I was not revolted by th
e thought of a small creature growing in my body, then clinging to me, needing my love for its growth and wellbeing. Since the first moment of holding Susie, still red and wizened like a very old lady, I had been entranced by her personality, her sheer passion for life, even when life involved only feeding and sleeping.
I remembered standing by Mavis’s bed in the private nursing home, with Colin watching me, as I took her gingerly from Mavis’s hands. One day, I thought. One day, I shall hold Colin’s and my child. As I looked down at those shining eyes, I wondered if I would ever have any child to love other than Susie. What was certain was that it would never now be Colin’s.
‘Chrifanthemum,’ repeated Susie, solemnly.
‘Very nearly. Try again. Chrysanthemum.’
‘Chrifanthemum.’
I smiled and moved a little further on. In the summer, while the Antrim house was being extended to provide more bedrooms and a new suite of consulting rooms, Susie had come to stay with me. Her vocabulary had expanded by leaps and bounds. Each day she demanded new words, rehearsed them and tried them out on me till she got them right. Susie never let a word defeat her.
‘Begonia,’ she said firmly.
‘That’s right. I thought you’d have forgotten begonias.’
She shook her head. ‘That’s a nother chrysanthemum.’
‘Say again, Susie.’
‘Nother chrysanthemum.’
‘Good girl, well done. You’ve got it. Say it again for Grandad.’
‘Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum. Chrysanthemum.’
She beamed with delight when I hugged her, but I had to turn my head away as we walked on. Tears had jumped into my eyes at the sight of that small, vulnerable face. So easily hurt. A pretty child. Along with the Jaguar, the new extension and the flourishing practice, I wondered if Susie was really only a delightful object to her father, just one more marker of his success. What was going to happen when she grew old enough to use her sharp little mind for herself and was no longer Daddy’s little baby was a very nice question. I wasn’t sure at all how Mavis would react to a Susie with a mind of her own, and there certainly wouldn’t be much support for her from either of her grandmothers. Mavis’s father had died some years ago. That left only Daddy and me.
