Goodness, Grace and Me

by Julie Houston

  ‘For missen, Bill. Definitely for missen.’

  There was no way I dared send our already astronomical electricity bill soaring by bringing down the little electric fire we sometimes used on chilly summer evenings, but wrapped in Nick’s old ski jacket and with my Ugg boots keeping my feet cosy, I lay under the bright-green duvet cover, clasped my cup of coffee with gloved hands and closed my eyes on the world.

  How did one go about terminating an unwanted pregnancy? I supposed I’d have to throw myself on my doctor’s mercy and plead insanity. Wasn’t that what Nuala had done when, in the first year of university, she’d found herself pregnant after a one-night stand with the president of the Student Union on the last night of Rag Week?

  I tried to look at the problem calmly and logically. Could I have this baby, take maternity leave from school, and then be back earning our daily bread within a couple of months? I’d taken maternity leave after having Liberty, and returning to school after six months had almost killed me. I’d hated leaving her at the nursery, just down the road from my school at the time. I was still breastfeeding and I would dash to feed her in my lunch break, watching the clock in panic and then have to go through the misery of leaving her for the second time as I returned to the particularly large and unruly class I’d inherited from the old dear who had been brought out of mothballs to cover my maternity leave.

  Those six months I endured in a no man’s land of being neither a good teacher nor good mother shook my naïve belief that a woman was her own person and could have it all. Some women maybe, but I certainly couldn’t – and mine was a job, with its relatively short days and long holidays, that was geared to doing both. The one thing that I hadn’t realised was, that in having a baby, I was not my own person. I was the willing slave of this little bundle of humanity, and I resented every minute I was away from her.

  Luckily for me The Pennine Clothing Company had been going from strength to strength, and once Nick, at the age of just twenty-four, was able to get his head round the fact that he was responsible not just for himself but a wife, a baby and a rapidly expanding company, he was more than happy for me to quit work and be a stay-at-home mum. And how I loved it. Liberty went from being a fairly scratchy baby to being a smiley, contented one; the home-made flapjack tin overflowed and all was well with the world.

  I felt myself in danger of having a little snivel as I pulled the green duvet cover up to my chin and drained the last of my now cold coffee, and played the dangerous game of ‘if only’. If only Nick’s company hadn’t gone to the wall there would have been no problem in my having another baby. For heaven’s sake, a lot of women were just starting their family at my age. I allowed myself to think about the option that up until now I had denied myself – that of actually having this baby. My heart gave a little leap and I unconsciously moved my hand further down the duvet to my stomach and stroked it protectively. What would I want: another son like my beautiful boy or a third girl? I really didn’t have a preference.

  Having grown up with no brothers my own age – John, after all, was seven years older than me – I hadn’t known much about boys. Diana and I had done everything together: played hopscotch on the street, dressed up in Mum’s ancient 1950s dirndl skirts with their net underskirts, and designed and made clothes for our dolls. We’d sit for hours cutting out and stitching by hand tiny garments for our Barbie and Sindy dolls, always delighted to receive bagfuls of material from Dad’s two sisters who were both competent dressmakers. My Uncle Ted, the undertaker husband of Dad’s sister Audrey, once dropped off a load of beautiful satin offcuts for Diana and me and we pounced on them with joy, revelling in the sensual silkiness of the fabric as it slipped through our fingers. Granny Morgan wasn’t as impressed. We’d taken the satin with us when we were staying round at her house one night and she’d shrieked in horror at the sight of it.

  ‘That’s for lining coffins,’ she’d shuddered, as if having the stuff in her house meant she was next in line for one of her own. She made us leave it outside the porch at the back, refusing to have it in the house.

  My formative years, then, were necessarily girly and I dreamed of one day having a little girl of my own: she’d be called April and have two long, blonde plaits down her back just like the golden-haired doll I’d been given one Christmas and whose hair I was constantly plaiting and braiding.

  Pregnant at twenty-three, very happily, I’d crossed my fingers constantly that the baby would be a girl. After all, what did I know of little boys, and the intricacies of Meccano and Lego? Now, fifteen years on and thinking back to those glory days, I closed my eyes, marvelling at the fact that my only worries then were about the child’s gender.

  I took my hand away from its resting place on my tummy where it had been making its first tentative contact with the baby and gave myself a shake, distancing myself from the life that was growing inside me. This would not do. I could not see this pregnancy through to its natural conclusion. Even if Nick hadn’t thrown in the towel at Wells Trading to set off on this hare-brained scheme of Henderson’s, I still didn’t see how we were in any position to have another child. If I were knackered now at the end of a day’s teaching, what would I be like after having been awake several times in the night with a fretful baby? I’d found it almost impossible to work and bring up a child fifteen years ago. How could I possibly do it now when I was pushing forty, flat broke, and with three other children to look after?

  The reality was that we had to have my salary to pay the bills, so maternity benefit, small as it was, just would not be enough to make ends meet. And how much did nurseries cost these days? Once back at work, a hefty portion of my salary would immediately be eaten up in child care – I couldn’t countenance this little innocent being left at home with Sylvia and Bertie, even if Sylvia agreed to it which, at the age of almost seventy, I’m sure she wouldn’t.

  ‘Look, India, it’s Rip Van Winkle, asleep for one hundred years and still counting.’ Grace and India, back from her birthday treat, were at the shed window, noses pressed against the glass, peering in to see what I was up to.

  I guiltily withdrew my hand away from my belly, terrified that Grace, her antennae constantly in tune to the subject of babies, might somehow know what was going on, and waved.

  ‘This is so wonderful, Mummy,’ India enthused opening the door and gazing round. ‘You’ll be able to play “Mummies and Daddies” down here.’

  ‘Except we’d need a Daddy,’ I muttered to Grace as India went back out into the garden ‘and they seem to be a bit thin on the ground at the moment.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Grace asked sharply. ‘Where is Nick?’

  ‘Oh he’s out drumming up business in counties far and near.’ My tone, I knew, was cross. In fact I was fast becoming one big crosspatch and I didn’t like it.

  ‘Harriet, you have got to start supporting Nick. He’s working really hard and he knows he has to succeed – he doesn’t have a choice in the matter; he has to succeed.’

  ‘Yeah, well, he’s succeeding a little too well with the lovely Amanda, if you ask me,’ I said sulkily. I wasn’t in any mood to be castigated by Grace.

  She sighed in what I supposed to be exasperation, and, as India returned, I rapidly changed the subject, questioning her about her day.

  ‘Why haven’t you got any heat on down here?’ Grace now asked, rubbing her hands together against the chill and looking round for a solution.

  ‘You’re wired for electricity I see.’

  ‘Can’t afford it,’ I said shortly, still annoyed at what I saw as her ganging up with Nick and Amanda against me.

  Grace didn’t tell me I was talking rubbish as I thought she might. Instead she said, ‘Listen, we’ve got that Calor gas heater thing that Dan brought home when we were putting in the new electrics and had no heat. I’ll bring it up for you. I certainly don’t need it so you may as well have it until Nick makes his fortune again and you can afford to heat this place for yourself. I can see that you rea
lly do need a place to escape to every now and again and there’s almost a full bottle of the gas left.’

  She looked at me with some degree of sympathy and, mood that I was in, I couldn’t decide which was more galling – Grace’s chastisement or her condolence.

  ‘Thanks, I’d appreciate that.’ I said, relenting.

  ‘I’m off,’ Grace now said. ‘I’ll call round tomorrow with the heater and you can play at being Greta Garbo to your heart’s content.’

  ‘Greta Garbo?’ I asked as I emerged from the duvet and gathered up my coffee things to take back up to the house.

  ‘Yeah, you know – “I just vant to be alone”. Never understood why anyone wants to be by themselves when they could be out socialising and having a ball.’

  ‘Try living with this lot for a couple of days and you’d soon know,’ I replied tartly, and then could have kicked myself. How could I be so insensitive when Grace not only didn’t have the children she longed for but whose husband had left her home alone?

  India, bored of adult conversation, had already made her way up to the house where she had no doubt joined Kit and Liberty in front of the TV, arguing over who was watching what. We’d cancelled our Sky subscription several months ago after yet another cost-cutting exercise, so at least there was less choice for the kids to fall out over.

  ‘Any news on Dan?’ I now asked in an attempt to soften the blow I’d just delivered.

  ‘On holiday, presumably with Camilla,’ Grace said shortly. ‘I had to ring him at the office this morning. There’s a problem with the outside guttering again and I don’t have the number of the guy who fixed it last time. His secretary just said he was away on holiday.’

  ‘How do you feel about that?’ I asked, wanting to hug her and make it all go away.

  ‘Bad, if you must know. It really does make it all seem a bit final.’

  ‘Has he mentioned divorce?’

  ‘No, but I think I will when he gets back. It’s all so messy like this. A bit like living in no man’s land. I’m neither married nor a gay divorcee – gay in the original sense of the word of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ I smiled and moved to give her the hug. She felt brittle, tense. ‘You know, he’s only been gone a month. It probably feels like forever, but maybe you shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Grace obviously wasn’t in the mood for opening up. ‘By the way, I’ve got an interview for the deputy headship of Kings Mede Primary. The letter came this morning.’

  My heart sank. I felt like a kid whose best friend has just told her she’s moving away to another town and won’t be going to school with her any more.

  I forced a smile. ‘Hey that’s great. Well done. When’s the interview?’

  ‘Not for a couple of weeks. It’s what I need, Hat. I can’t carry on without some sort of challenge in my life.’

  ‘Maybe you should stick with what you know for a bit while you’re going through this thing with Dan,’ I said hopefully. ‘Too many changes can be very stressful, you know.’

  ‘I’m fed up with what I know,’ Grace said fiercely. ‘What I know hasn’t got me anywhere.’

  ‘Ok, ok. You’re a big girl now. Do what you think’s best.’ I suddenly felt very tired. And, unfortunately, very sick. Throwing up all over Grace’s new tan-coloured Jimmy Choo boots would not, I could guarantee, put her in a better mood. ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ I said, fighting the nausea that was threatening to overwhelm me.

  ‘Um, you look a bit pale. I should go and catch up with some sleep as well if I were you. I’ll pop over tomorrow with that heater.’

  Funny state to be in, pregnancy. One minute you’re leaning your head against the bathroom mirror trying to find a cool place to put your sweating brow while your stomach makes up its mind whether to put you through yet another bout of heaving. The next you’re ravenously hungry and only marmite on toast smothered in peanut butter and Brie will suffice. Or, my other favourite: Hobnobs, with lemon curd and Stilton.

  I sat at the kitchen table, licking the peanut butter from my fingers like Nigella Lawson, while keeping an eye on the lane from the window. I’d no idea what time Nick was going to be home, but if he caught sight of the concoction on which I was feasting he would immediately know why. This particular combination – and it had to be smooth peanut butter and Brie cheese – had been the mainstay of all my previous pregnancies. There was no way I could tell Nick I was pregnant. This really would be putting the boot in. And I did have to take a certain responsibility for getting myself in this situation. I know, I know – one doesn’t get oneself pregnant. It takes two to tango and all that. But this was going to have to be one bit of information I would keep to myself. I was going to have to be mature and sensible and sort out the whole sorry mess myself. I was, by my reckoning, less than five weeks pregnant. The sooner I worked out how not to be pregnant the better. And no one, but no one, must ever, ever know I had been.

  Chapter 18

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘What?’ Diana turned her head to look at me in amazement, seriously jeopardising not only our lives but also those in the car in front of us.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ I repeated, my voice a monotone.

  ‘That’s what I thought you said. But how?’

  ‘Well, last night the Angel Gabriel appeared in our front room telling me I was with child. What the fuck do you mean “how?” The usual fucking way.’ I began to giggle, although tears were welling up simultaneously. ‘That’s quite funny – getting pregnant the fucking way. Is there any other?’

  ‘Stop it, this minute, or I’ll have to slap you. You’re getting hysterical.’ Diana pulled into the almost deserted car park of the Laughing Cavalier, the only place I’d been able to think of when Diana had called in on her way to a client, suggesting we went somewhere nearby to grab a coffee and discuss her appointment with Mum’s GP the previous evening. Sylvia had been hovering and we hadn’t wanted to talk about Mum in front of her.

  Neither of us uttered another word, waiting in what amounted to a constrained silence at the counter until the attendant deigned to leave his copy of The Daily Express. Sighing heavily and removing his little finger from its exploratory resting place in his right ear, he wandered over, obviously put out at actually having to attend to us.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Black coffee and an Earl Grey tea please.’

  ‘We don’t do black coffee.’

  ‘Oh.’ Momentarily nonplussed, Diana was silent as she scanned the menu written in ‘Ye Olde English’ on the plastic beam above our heads.

  ‘We do “Americano”,’ the guy said, folding his arms over his ample girth and leaning against the counter.

  ‘What’s that?’ Diana asked irritably.

  ‘Black coffee.’

  ‘Fine.’ Diana raised both her eyebrows and hands in acquiescence before looking at her watch. ‘I really don’t have much time,’ she said, turning to look at me. ‘God, you look awful. Go and grab a table and I’ll bring these over.’

  I found seats down at the far end of the coffee bar, away from the couple of tables that were already occupied. An elderly couple, false teeth mumbling enthusiastically on flaky vanilla slices, and a couple of mothers with their offspring were the only others in there, testament to the sheer awfulness of the place. The fluorescent lighting, necessary even in the height of summer, but doubly so on a gloomy November day such as this, cast an unearthly shadow on the moulded plastic statue of the cavalier whose mouth appeared set in a tight grimace rather than laughter.

  ‘Not sure this is Earl Grey,’ Diana said, sniffing suspiciously at the orange liquid before setting it down before me.

  I took a tentative sip and immediately wanted to heave. It was my previous pregnancies that had given me a lasting horror of any tea stronger than gnat’s pee.

  ‘That is disgusting,’ I shuddered, slopping the over-stewed brew onto the saucer.

  ‘Good God, this is ridiculous,’
Diana snapped, her stress level obviously gone into overdrive by her probable lateness for her next appointment and the bombshell I’d dropped without warning in the car. She grabbed my cup, sloshing even more of the noxious stuff over her hand.

  ‘Don’t.’ I protested. ‘I’m really not bothered about a drink.’ But she was off, on a mission.

  ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘This tea is disgusting.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s cold, stewed and patently not Earl Grey.’

  Heads turned, craning towards the counter in anticipation of a confrontation.

  ‘This isn’t any old shite, you know.’ The guy paused dramatically. ‘It’s PG Tips.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is. It is not Earl Grey. Now, I’d like a refund and a glass of water for my pregnant sister.’

  Oh Jesus. What was the matter with her? I looked round nervously, terrified there might be children or staff from school lurking in Ye Olde Shadows.

  I glared at Diana as she sat down. ‘Was that really necessary?’ I hissed.

  ‘Probably not, but very cathartic all the same. Now, who’s going first – you or me?’

  ‘You,’ I sighed, taking a sip of the lukewarm water in an attempt to remove the tannin taste of the tea that, compounded with the metallic taste of early pregnancy, was adding to my nausea.

  ‘There’s not really much to tell. Dad told Mum he was off for an early drink at the British Legion and then met up with me at the surgery. Apparently she’s still muttering about Patricia, and had had another session shouting at Granny Morgan only that morning.’

  ‘What did Dr Armstrong say?’ Edward Armstrong, now nearing retirement age, had been our family doctor for what seemed like forever.

  ‘He was great. Got Dad to explain everything, but said there wasn’t really much he could do without Mum actually going to see him and admitting there was a problem.’