Needlemouse

by Jane O'Connor

  Watching her turn the corner, tottering on the platform boots that nobody else I knew would even attempt to wear, I felt a surge of love and protection for the woman who would, to me, always be my kooky, free-spirited, wonderful little sister. I would have happily ceased to exist or passed my life over to somebody else to deal with as I faced the enormity of the impact my news would have on her. I had no interest at all in continuing in a life that didn’t include Millie. I had contemplated carrying on with the pregnancy and pretending the father was somebody else, some random one-night stand, but I couldn’t face the prospect of a whole life of lying to her, having to live with a constant reminder of my betrayal, bringing up the unwanted child of a man who detested me. My nausea was a constant reminder of the decision I had to make and somehow, in that moment, it became very simple. I wanted Millie to still love me. I wanted Kamal to not be angry with me. I wanted to just be me again.

  Now, nearly twenty years later, after I had composed myself and thrown the empty chocolate box into the bin beside the bench, I got up unsteadily, my head rushing with an unfamiliar sugar high and started towards the bus stop. One of the plastic seats was free and I squeezed myself into it, between a hugely fat young woman with a toddler in a buggy next to her and an immaculately dressed elderly lady with matching hat, shoes and bag. The toddler was eating a packet of crisps. He had crumbs all over his face and in his hair and his mother ignored him as she played with her phone. He had kicked off one of his trainers, displaying a grubby grey sock with a faded superhero motif on it, which made me feel sad for him in a way I can’t explain. I forced myself to look away and began replaying the scene that had just occurred with Kamal, shifting my understanding of the situation and the position of us all in it, according to the new light that the horrible spat had shed.

  I was brought out of my reverie by the bus pulling up and the woman next to me swearing and springing into action, yanking her child out of his straps and struggling to collapse the buggy. He howled when she took his crisps off him and looked at me in despair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mouthed to him. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He was startled by my response and started to giggle. His mother glared at me as she swung the buggy onto the lowered platform of the bus and he tottered after her, hanging onto the hem of her voluminous dress.

  I found myself getting off the bus a few stops early and heading towards Hartland Road for the first time in months, drawn by some instinctive need for the safety and protection of the sanctuary. I stumbled over a bag of feed as I darted in out of the rain, pulling my hood down and taking in the familiar warm, musty smell of the garage. Jonas had his back to me and didn’t look up. He was engrossed in cleaning the spines of a filthy old hog, the radio on quietly beside him.

  I went to speak and then stopped, my attention caught by the poster on the wall beside him. It was for an eons-old amateur production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the school where Jonas used to teach. It was part of the sanctuary scenery and I must have glanced at it a thousand times, but I had never really registered it before and it certainly had never resonated with me as it did today. It was a picture of a radiant Titania in a sky-blue gown, her blonde hair, threaded with flowers, tumbling down her back. She was dancing in a forest glade, hand in hand with her woodland sprites. In the tangled undergrowth around them dark, spikey shadows lurked, waiting in the wings for the chance to spoil her joy. Along the bottom of the image ran a quote from the play; ‘Thorny hedgehogs be not seen … Come not near our fairy queen.’ The words jolted through me. Was this me? Was this what I had become through my actions towards Lola in Rome and in relation to my beloved Millie – a reviled creature, hell-bent on destroying beauty?

  I forced myself to calm down by closing my eyes and pressing my palm against my forehead as I took some deep breaths. Then I went to stand beside Jonas, placing my hand tentatively on his shoulder.

  ‘He looks like he’s on his last legs,’ I said, taking in the hedgehog’s half-closed eyes and flea-bitten face.

  ‘He might perk up, he’s just been rudely disturbed out of his hibernation,’ Jonas replied, as he methodically worked up and down the spines with a cotton bud, turning the hedgehog round every now and then to a more helpful angle. I stood staring at them in a sort of morbid fascination for several minutes – Jonas being so careful and kind, and the hog in such a dreadful state.

  ‘Where have you been all this time?’ he asked, when he finally looked up at me. Then, taking in my bedraggled appearance and tear-stained face he said gently, ‘What’s the matter, Sylvia?’

  I shook my head and bit my lip, staring at the dusty floor.

  He put the hog gently back in its cage and washed his hands methodically at the sink.

  ‘If it would help you can tell me about it,’ he said with his back still to me.

  ‘I couldn’t … I’m so ashamed. I c-can’t …’ I stuttered, my eyes drawn again to the poster, incredulous at its prescience.

  ‘You can if you want to, lass. I’m pretty good with secrets – just ask my girls. I’ve heard a fair few of theirs over the years, I can tell you.’ He turned towards me as he dried his hands, oblivious to the impact the poster was having on me, his earnest offer hanging in the air. I made myself look away from Titania in all her loveliness and nodded my head slowly at Jonas. He had thrown me a lifeline and I didn’t know what else to do but take it.

  I hung up my coat and we sat down at the table. I started to talk, falteringly at first, muddling things up. I tried to put into words what had happened and how all the bad things seemed to be connected somehow and how my world was falling to pieces and I didn’t know how to make it stop. I told him about Prof, about how I had loved him with all my being and how I had thought he was a noble, decent man, but how he is, in reality, selfish and cold. I told him how my heart had been broken when I thought he loved Lola and how I had tried to ruin her life and had, in fact, ruined my own instead. Then I told him how I had made another terrible mistake, many years ago, with Kamal and had kept it secret from Millie for such a long time because I couldn’t bear to lose her or be responsible for ruining her happiness.

  I explained that Millie and Kamal had only recently set up home together in London then and that she had been away for the weekend, visiting our friend Annabel in Eastbourne. I told him I was having a new television delivered on that Saturday, but the men who delivered it had just left it in the downstairs hall and had refused point-blank to carry it up to my flat. I was worried it would get stolen if I didn’t get it upstairs straight away, so I called the only young, fit male I knew at the time, and that was Kamal. He was in the deli as usual, plastering the walls I think, and he laughed and said he would pop round and give me a hand. I remember thinking how lovely it was going to be, having such a wonderful brother-in-law, and how Kamal was like a breath of fresh air in our little family, which was all female since Dad had died. I told Jonas that he turned up just after one and we somehow managed to haul the blessed thing up two flights of stairs, stagger down the corridor to my flat, and dump the box in the middle of the lounge. I remember Kamal’s face when I commented that it would have been easier to go up in the lift and how we both laughed when he realised I was joking, because there isn’t really a lift in my building. I explained to Jonas that it was then, while we were catching our breath in the aftermath of the joke, that we caught each other’s gaze and didn’t, couldn’t, break it. He moved towards me and I went to step back, but I found myself actually moving forwards, towards him. He put his hands on my shoulders and raised his eyes as if for permission before he kissed me and I didn’t say no.

  I stared at the wall to avoid looking at Jonas as I recalled how Kamal and I had made love on the sofa and that it was fast, and passionate, and exciting. And then it was over and he was gone.

  I told Jonas how I had been mortified and panicked to find out I was pregnant several weeks later and how having a termination was the only possible option I could see.


  I told him how my ache for a baby of my own has never gone away. That I have felt guilt and shame and remorse about what I did with Kamal, and about the abortion, every single day since, and how I can see now that it somehow deadened me inside and made me defensive and spiteful towards the world.

  I explained how Kamal and I both knew we would never speak of it again.

  And we wouldn’t have; my darling Millie would never have found out, not about the sex or the pregnancy or any of it, if I hadn’t blurted it all out in front of his damn aunties when I was so upset about what had happened with Prof.

  I met Jonas’s eye at this point to see if he was aghast, but he just nodded and patted my shoulder.

  ‘Tea?’ he said, unperturbed as if we had been discussing the weather.

  Jonas turned the electric heater up to maximum and returned with the tray several minutes later, Igor at his heels. We sat quietly together for a long time, listening to the rain pound on the tin roof, sipping slowly from the chipped white mugs that we never seemed to get around to replacing.

  ‘And now she knows, Jonas. She has found out in the worst possible way and she won’t forgive me.’ My voice broke on those last four words and I watched my tears hit the surface of the tea and get swallowed up as if they had never existed at all.

  Jonas stared at the electric fire deep in thought as he stroked Igor’s head. At last he turned to me and said kindly, ‘The way I see it, lass, the most important thing is for you to find a way to forgive yourself.’

  Tuesday 22 March

  I dreamed about Kamal last night. It was a muddled half-erotic, half-panicky dream where he was running his hands all over me and kissing my neck as we were rushing through an airport to catch a plane. I remember thinking, Not now, not here, for God’s sake, but he wouldn’t stop and I didn’t really want him to either. Then I was standing alone as my bag went through the security machine and the X-ray picture came up, not of my luggage, but of a scan of a baby. Then all the airport staff came running over and started pointing and shouting at me in a foreign language and wouldn’t give me my bag back, no matter what I said or how hard I tried to pull it from them. I woke up shaking, soaked through with sweat, pinned to the bed with the weight of loss.

  It’s the backs of babies’ heads that devastates me every time. I can cope with their chubby fingers and toothless smiles and bright new eyes. But if I catch sight of the back of the head, where their hair meets the neck and there’s that little roll of fat and the whole area is the softest place in creation, that’s when I completely unravel inside and have to stop myself from howling aloud like a madwoman. I managed to avoid Millie quite a lot when Crystal was very small and found I could tolerate her better when she was past the baby stage and her hair had curled down to her shoulders. I used to dread it when women on maternity leave brought their babies into the office at the university, especially if they just turned up unannounced. If I knew they were coming at least I could disappear for an hour and feign regret I had missed them on my return. But the unexpected baby visit was a living nightmare for me, involving a clenched stomach, rictus smile and a silent plea for them not to turn the baby with its back to me. At least I don’t have to face those situations in my daily life any more.

  After my visit to Kamal all those years ago, I was so focussed on convincing not one doctor, but two, that having the baby would destroy my life, and my sister’s life, that I begged them to allow me to make it stop, to make it all go away. No, I didn’t want any counselling, no, I didn’t want more time to think it over, no, I didn’t want to consider other options, no, I didn’t want to read this or that leaflet. They gave in and signed the form in the end, as I knew they would. What was I to them? One more woman who had made a mistake that they had the power to rectify. At the clinic, I was required to have a pre-op scan, despite my protestations. They explained that it was compulsory, that they have to check exactly how many weeks along you are in the pregnancy before they can do the procedure, so I had to acquiesce. I sat in the waiting room with half a dozen other women and girls, trying not to catch anyone’s eye, flicking through a travel magazine until the nondescript receptionist called out my name and I walked through the door and into the medical side of the clinic. The gel was cold on my stomach and I felt a light pressure as they did the sonogram. They asked if I wanted to look, but I refused, and so they turned the screen away as I counted the number of cracks in the ceiling tile above my head and pretended I was somewhere else, far, far away. If I could turn back time to that moment and force myself to look I wouldn’t have gone through with it, I know that now. I couldn’t have.

  ‘Are you sure?’ the nurse said to me. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

  I know it was a boy, my baby. The only useful piece of information Mother ever shared with Millie was when she was eight months pregnant with Crystal and wondering aloud, for the thousandth time, whether she would be having a boy or a girl.

  ‘It’s certainly a girl, Camilla,’ Mother said, putting down her knitting and enjoying her moment of rapt attention from us both.

  ‘How can you be so sure about that?’ Millie asked. ‘Just because you had girls, doesn’t mean I will.’

  ‘No, it’s not that,’ Mother continued. ‘The women in our family only ever get morning sickness when they are having boys and you’ve had none of that, have you? That means it’s a girl. You mark my words.’

  Satisfied that her point had been made with maximum impact, Mother picked up her knitting again and continued clack-clacking as a tiny white bootie began to take shape. Millie didn’t say anything but I knew she was annoyed that Mother had spoiled the surprise for her because she was right, Millie had never had a moment’s nausea with her pregnancy. I, on the other hand, was silently elated. At last I had a tiny bit of information about the child I had been carrying, about what might have been. A boy. My son who never was.

  Two days after the termination it was Millie’s birthday and we went out for dinner at one of those novelty places, done up to be like a Hawaiian beach party, that were all the rage for a while. I sat at that table with a plastic garland round my neck, listening to the Beach Boys singing about good vibrations, watching her and Kamal kissing and giggling together and I felt like I was the punchline to a sick joke. My abdomen ached as a constant reminder of what had happened and I longed to go home.

  Kamal barely even acknowledged me. When Millie went to the loo, he made stilted conversation with Mother, asking her about her new glasses of all things, rather than speak to me. He didn’t even ask me how I was. Something changed in me that evening, something tender closed over and an intense panic swept over me, making it seem as if I were watching the world from a great distance with no idea how to find my way back. I sensed myself curl up inside like a frightened hedgehog, waiting to feel safe again – but I never did.

  As well as Mother and I, Emma was there and Shona and their other halves and a couple of women from Millie’s life-drawing class. Tig had dropped by for a drink early in the evening and then rushed off to meet a new man for a dinner date, a hunk, she had described him as, bringing to mind an image of her sitting in a cosy bistro opposite a great boulder of rock. Emma’s screeching, open-mouthed laugh, made her look grotesque to me and I gazed at her husband, wondering how he could bear to wake up to her every morning. Shona talked and talked about her latest project and how important she was at work and how they were going to go to Tunisia on holiday, and I watched her lips move as if they were separate from her body, a part she couldn’t control.

  Everyone seemed odd and unreal that evening, except Mother, strangely enough, who should have looked the most out of place in that gaudy restaurant. I watched her go through her familiar rituals, rituals that didn’t change whether she was eating in a burger bar or the Ritz. Napkin spread on lap, mouth dabbed after every second mouthful, salt and pepper automatically shaken on each savoury dish as soon as it arrived, a little food left on the plate to indicate that she had had enough and was
no longer hungry. What I wanted was to go and sit on her lap and have her hug me and smell her lily-of-the-valley scent and feel her soft cardigan against my cheek and have her hand me one of her white cotton handkerchiefs to dry my tears … and for her to tell me it was all going to be all right. I ached for that love and comfort, although she had never in my life provided me with such affection. I hadn’t realised, before then, that it was possible to feel nostalgia for something that had never happened.

  Emma had been trying to get the waiter’s attention for several minutes, he studiously ignoring her desperate waves every time he passed the table. ‘Oh, it does annoy me when they do that,’ she said in exasperation. ‘They are paid to wait on the tables, for heaven’s sake. They pretend they can’t see you but you know they can. It’s their little bit of power in a rubbish job’

  ‘He probably fancies himself as a musician or something and this is all rather beneath him,’ Shona added, and they both laughed in agreement.

  I saw Millie bristle at this. Kamal had been a waiter when she met him in Kerala, and, for someone who so embraces a non-materialistic life philosophy, she was disproportionately defensive of his humble beginnings.

  ‘You two can be such snobs,’ she tutted. ‘There’s nothing wrong with being a waiter.’