Magpie

by Elizabeth Day

  ‘I don’t know how you can watch that stuff!’ Kate says one morning. She says it jokingly, but Marisa hears the judgement underlying it. Kate watches Newsnight and listens to Radio 4. Kate eats a single piece of toasted rye bread spread thinly with Marmite before heading to the office each morning. Marisa can’t face anything other than croissants for breakfast. She worries, stupidly, about putting on weight.

  She works for a bit every day but her paintings lack energy. She can’t seem to wield the paintbrush in a way that brings children to life and she gets frustrated, ripping up more than she keeps and tossing fistfuls of paper into the wastebasket.

  Jake can’t understand her listlessness. He goes to work as usual and when he comes home in the evenings, he brings her treats: a perfectly ripe nectarine one day that she doesn’t want, so he eats it instead and she watches the juice trickle down his chin and feels rage that he is so clueless and so entitled in his cluelessness. Imagine just being able to eat a nectarine and not even wipe the juice away! An American classmate of hers at school once described an overweight uncle as ‘lummoxy’ and this is the word that comes to Marisa’s mind as she watches Jake move solidly around the house, leaving a trail of unwashed mugs on coffee tables and counter-tops, safe in the knowledge that she will be the one to put them in the dishwasher. He is used to people doing things for him, she realises. He belongs to that cadre of Englishmen who have never had to worry about learning the rules because they are the ones who make them.

  At night, in bed, she is filled with self-loathing and remorse about her unkind thoughts. Jake is lovely, she reminds herself. He is kind. He is good. She can trust him. He is supportive and excited and wants to have this baby with her. She catches him sometimes looking at her from across the room, his face suffused with pleasure.

  ‘I think your tummy’s poking out a bit,’ he says as they drink coffee in the garden one morning. She allows herself only one coffee a day now, and sips it as slowly as she can to make it last. The late-summer sunshine is eking out the last of its pale light and the patio stones are the yellow-white of a once-clean flannel.

  Marisa looks down at her stomach. She sees no difference, and it adds to her feeling of unreality. How can she possibly be building a person inside when there is no external evidence? She glances at Jake and can see he is willing a pregnancy bump into existence. He is so desperate for it to be happening. He has never been good at waiting. Impatience, he had once told her, was his most obvious flaw. On the bench, she smiles, places her coffee cup on the ground and then rearranges herself, subtly jutting out her stomach slightly.

  ‘Yes,’ she lies. ‘I think it is.’

  Jake leans forward, putting his lips close to her belly button.

  ‘Hello my little darling,’ he whispers. ‘I can’t wait to meet you.’

  She looks down at Jake’s head, tracing the feathery point where his hair meets neatly in a V at the nape of his neck and she can smell his soapy freshness and she feels a cresting of love for him.

  ‘I love you,’ Jake tells her tummy.

  ‘Love you too,’ she whispers.

  So then everything is all right again, and when he leaves for the office, Marisa has a spurt of motivation and completes the twin princesses’ fairytale by lunchtime, forgetting for five straight hours that she is pregnant at all. Part of her is worried that things will change when they have a baby, and that Jake won’t have enough bandwidth to love her as much as he does now. She is anxious, she realises, that in giving him the thing he most desires, he will have no use for her.

  ‘You’re being silly,’ she says out loud, into the empty room, and the certainty of her own voice is comforting.

  Downstairs, she hears the front door slam shut. And then, unmistakably, she hears Kate’s voice.

  ‘Hello?’

  Marisa walks onto the landing, her paintbrush still in hand.

  ‘Kate,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t expecting you.’

  In the hallway, Kate stands silhouetted against the tiles. From her vantage point one floor up, Marisa sees the other woman in foreshortened perspective, her head fractionally too large for her body. Kate is wearing a polka-dot jumpsuit, the sleeves rolled up to reveal her thin wrists. A leather belt with an oversized gold buckle sits tightly around her slender waist. Marisa has never been able to wear belts. She doesn’t understand them. They look strange and self-conscious on her, as if she is trying too hard to be someone she isn’t. She would never wear polka-dots either, being wary of patterns and the way they accentuate her curves, making her feel lumpen and oafish when she wants to be girlish and light, attending casually thrown-together picnics in fields of wildflowers. Like Kate, in fact. Kate would look just right at a picnic. A fashionable one, of course, in an East London park with salted almonds and craft beer.

  ‘No,’ Kate is saying, ruffling her hair so that her fringe shakes itself out at an angle across her left eyebrow. ‘I had a meeting and wanted to pop back to change. These’ – Kate points at the shiny black shoes – ‘are not conducive to walking quickly. Not conducive to walking full stop, to be honest.’

  On Kate’s feet are strappy heels with pointed toes. She doesn’t normally wear smart shoes and Marisa is struck again by how chic she looks.

  ‘Cool,’ Marisa says, immediately regretting the choice of word. ‘I’m just in the middle of something, so …’

  ‘Fancy a coffee?’

  Kate looks up at her, a pleading quality to her face.

  ‘Oh. Well.’ The worst part of working from home is that you can never come up with a suitable excuse. ‘I’ve already had my one coffee of the day, so …’

  ‘A herbal tea then?’

  There is a tiny pause.

  ‘I’d love a chat,’ Kate continues. ‘But I totally understand if you’re busy. Sorry.’

  She starts taking her shoes off with abrupt movements, one hand on the wall to keep her balance, and Marisa can see that she has upset her.

  ‘No, that would be nice. A herbal tea it is. I’ll just put this away.’ She gestures at the paintbrush, which is now dripping a trail of greenish water into the palm of her hand.

  Kate grins.

  ‘Oh good! I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Back in her study, Marisa places the brush back in the water jar, unties her painting apron and hangs it on the hook on the back of the door. Best get this stupid cup of tea over with. Pretend to have some girly bonding time and smile and nod and then hope Kate leaves more quickly than she would have done otherwise.

  Downstairs, Kate is sitting on the bar stool by the kitchen island. She’s made herself a cafetiere and is slouched across the marbled surface flicking through a Sunday newspaper supplement. Her raincoat is over the back of the sofa, arms thrown out like a police corpse outline. She is humming.

  Make yourself at home, why don’t you, Marisa thinks. Her irritation has become more marked since her pregnancy, the heat of it rising like sap at the most trivial thing. Yesterday, she had been furious at a pedestrian crossing when the traffic light took too long to turn to red.

  ‘Oh hi,’ Kate says, sitting up straighter and sliding the magazine away. ‘I didn’t know what tea you’d want.’

  ‘Camomile is fine. I’ll get it.’

  ‘No, no, let me.’

  Before Marisa can stop her, before she can protest that this is her house and she’s perfectly capable of making herself a cup of tea, Kate is bustling around the kitchen, taking a teabag out of the jar, removing a mug from the cupboard and waiting for the kettle to steam and click. Marisa hauls herself onto a bar stool, her limbs woollen. She observes Kate as she pours the water into the mug, noting the economy of each action, the litheness of each movement. She has a dip between her shoulder and the top of her bicep, Marisa has noticed. You can’t see it today because she’s wearing long sleeves, but Marisa knows it is there: the tidy compactness of her muscle, the sel
f-assuredness of it. When Kate claps, there is no swinging loose flesh under each arm. There is no excess flesh to her. She looks as if she has been moulded from light brown clay.

  ‘Here you go.’

  Kate presents her with a mug of tea and a small saucer with a teaspoon on which, Marisa supposes, she is meant to put the teabag. She would never have thought of that. She deliberately leaves the teabag in, until the camomile is stewed and dark yellow.

  ‘Do you want any honey?’ Kate asks.

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘So,’ Kate says, leaning forwards and looking at her straight on. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Fine.’ She sips the tea which burns her tongue.

  ‘I mean, with the pregnancy and everything. How’s it going? I want to know everything.’

  Marisa laughs.

  ‘Really?’

  But Kate’s face is open and expectant. It was odd, Marisa thought, how invested she seemed to be in their pregnancy. They’d had to tell her on the evening they found out because Kate had been waiting downstairs with her macaroni cheese and the table laid for her special dinner and she had heard the screaming and wanted to know what was up. When they told her, Kate was almost as thrilled as Jake. At one point, her eyes had filmed over and Marisa had thought she was going to cry.

  There is the same sense of emotion now, in the kitchen, over their cooling mugs.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Kate asks. ‘Being pregnant, I mean.’

  Marisa feels sorry for her then. Her annoyance recedes. How sad it must be to watch a younger woman get pregnant and to be in love, she thinks, when Kate’s own life seems so dominated by work.

  ‘It’s amazing,’ Marisa lies. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted. I suppose I feel, in some way, that it’s the reason I’m here. As a woman, I mean.’

  Kate blinks.

  ‘Not that you can’t be a real woman without being pregnant,’ she adds hurriedly. ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I know.’

  Kate smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

  ‘It’s weird feeling that there’s something growing in your body that you have no control over. I feel a bit out of sorts.’

  ‘Like you’re detached from yourself?’

  Kate plunges the cafetiere.

  ‘Yes, exactly that,’ Marisa says, surprised at the perspicacity of the question. Jake hasn’t been able to grasp this concept at all.

  ‘It must be a bit scary. It’s you doing it but at the same time … I suppose … it’s not you? Sorry, that was so badly expressed—’

  ‘No, I mean don’t get me wrong, I love it,’ Marisa interrupts. ‘I love knowing I’m bringing new life into the world and seeing how happy Jake is.’

  ‘I am too!’ Kate says and she leans over and squeezes Marisa’s hand. ‘It’s so special.’

  This is it, Marisa thinks, this is why Kate is so uncomfortable to be around. It’s because she has no boundaries. She is constantly trying to insert herself into situations that have nothing to do with her, to assert an intimacy that doesn’t exist and needs to be earned. There’s a desperation to her closeness. Marisa does not want to be her friend.

  She withdraws her hand.

  ‘Thank you for the tea,’ she says. ‘I’d best be getting back …’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. And I need to get to work. I’ll tidy up down here – you go up.’

  Kate gathers the mugs, taking them to the dishwasher. And Marisa might have imagined it, but she could swear that she saw Kate’s eyes fill with tears that went unacknowledged. I can’t take this on as well, Marisa thinks as she goes back upstairs. Kate’s emotions are her own business. She sits at her desk, picks up the paintbrush and instructs her thoughts to settle. She takes a deep breath and regulates her exhalation to the count of four. But for the rest of the afternoon, there is a shadowy disquiet crouching like a cat in the corner of the room and she cannot ignore it, no matter how hard she tries.

  9

  Later, when Jake is back from work, she talks to him about it.

  ‘So Kate turned up in the middle of the day while I was in the study,’ she says, as he’s unpacking his briefcase – one of those black, fabric expandable ones that contains his laptop and multiple chargers and, sometimes, dampened gym clothes scrunched up in a separate pocket.

  ‘Oh that’s nice.’

  He is distracted and she has to talk to his back as he moves around the room, taking off his jacket and loosening his tie before dropping down onto the sofa. Almost instantly, he starts scrolling through his phone.

  ‘Yeah, it was a bit unexpected, actually. It totally messed up my concentration.’

  He looks at her, surprised.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, his phone still in his hands but lowered now, its screen black.

  She waits, her silence pointed. Jake shifts in his seat.

  ‘That shouldn’t happen,’ he says. ‘This is your home. You need to be able to work undisturbed. I’ll have a word with her.’

  ‘No, don’t,’ Marisa says. She doesn’t want Kate to know they have discussed her. ‘I’m probably making too big a deal of it. I guess, what with the hormones and stuff … well, maybe I’m losing perspective.’

  ‘Yes. How are you feeling, Marisa?’

  ‘I’m fine. All going well down there.’

  She glances at her stomach, which still lies flat against the waistband of her tracksuit bottoms.

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he says, returning to his phone. She is losing his attention. He starts tap-tapping at the screen, fingers moving with smooth fury against the glass.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’

  ‘Mmm,’ Jake says, not lifting his head.

  ‘Is it just me or is Kate a bit …’ she searches for the right word – one that will be accurate and yet not too critical because she knows that Jake hates bitchiness and that she has to pitch her sentence carefully. ‘Needy?’

  At this, he drops the phone onto the sofa cushions, stares at her and crosses his arms. A crinkle appears just above the bridge of his nose. He pauses before answering.

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  His voice is cool and Marisa immediately knows she has misjudged it. Once, she had asked him what he most disliked about his work and he had replied, without having to think about it, ‘Office gossip.’ She had taken a mental note at the time, reminding herself not to say anything to him that could be construed in the same vein.

  ‘Something she said earlier,’ Marisa says, trying to sound non-judgemental and calm. ‘It was like she was trying to get in my head – asking me all this stuff about how it felt being pregnant, and it was just …’

  ‘Yes?’ He is sharp, now.

  ‘Maybe I misread it.’

  She backs down wordlessly.

  ‘You probably did,’ he says now. ‘Like you said, hormones do crazy things.’

  That wasn’t quite what I said, Marisa thinks to herself, but to Jake she simply nods. His mouth is a flat line.

  ‘If you gave her a chance, I’m sure you’d find that Kate is a really lovely person. She’s concerned for you, that’s all. We both are.’

  The casual ‘we’ slices through her.

  ‘What do you mean “we”?’

  Anger fizzes around her solar plexus.

  ‘It hasn’t escaped our notice,’ he starts. Jake’s language becomes more formal when he is upset or angry. ‘That you’re behaving a little …’ He stops and looks at her. His shoulders soften. He walks over and pats her shoulder.

  ‘Irrationally?’ she asks.

  ‘Not irrationally, I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘You just did.’

  He laughs then takes a step back.

  ‘No, you did. I said not irrationally,’ he repeats, with the emphasis on the negative, ‘but maybe a bit
… erratically. And we’re worried, that’s all. For you and for the baby.’

  She stiffens. ‘I’m perfectly fine.’

  ‘Yesterday,’ he continues, seeming not to have heard her, ‘I came downstairs and a pan of milk on the stove was boiling over.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A pan of milk—’

  ‘No, I heard you, I just don’t drink milk so why would I be boiling it?’

  It’s true. She uses almond milk for her muesli because she prefers the taste. It’s Kate who buys semi-skimmed from the supermarket.

  ‘OK, well, neither Kate nor I were boiling milk either, so …’

  ‘So it must have been me?’ Her voice is shrill.

  ‘I don’t want to upset you,’ Jake says, holding out his hand, fingers splayed as if he were trying to calm a wild animal. ‘But it’s not the only thing that’s happened, is it?’

  He looks at her. ‘Remember all that unpleasantness with the music?’

  The weekend before, Marisa had been trying to paint. She had been unable to concentrate because of loud music playing from downstairs. She had shut the door and closed the window and, eventually, twisted pieces of newspaper and put them into her ears like makeshift plugs but still the music was shatteringly loud. There was a screeching guitar and a thumping beat and the floor seemed to be reverberating beneath her sandals. When she could take it no longer, she went downstairs and found Kate and Jake in the sitting room. Jake was leaning against the mantelpiece, laughing at something Kate had just said, and Kate was standing too close to him, so close that their heads were almost touching.

  ‘Do you remember this one?’ Kate was shouting over the music. ‘Such a fucking classic.’

  Jake was nodding in time with the beat.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Love it.’

  Marisa was taken aback. Jake almost never listened to music. He always preferred podcasts and Five Live for sport. She got the impression he was trying to be cool and ingratiate himself with Kate, which was pathetic really. But most of her ire was reserved for Kate, who was now bopping around the room, arms flailing as if she were at a gig.