by Will Dean
Chapter 8
It’s Easter weekend and he’s planting oilseed rape. He says it’s his most important crop of the year.
I’ve been helping Lenn with the farm paperwork, subsidy forms and reordering. I’m better with numbers than he is and this keeps him off my back. He expects me to scrub and clean and cook the same as I always do, but with my bump, and my back as bad as it is, and my ankle more swollen than ever, I need to sit down more. I use the desktop PC, him watching me.
Frank Trussock’s son is a firefighter. Lenn never told me what the fire engine was doing here, but I did overhear him on the phone that night. He was talking to Frank. He was asking about the new woman in the village, the woman with red hair.
The skies are at their most interesting at this time of year. The colours and also the depth. Swirls and wafers and false worlds. Layers of cloud like sedimentary rock strata built up over the ages. Earlier this morning everything above soil level was rose pink.
‘Get chips on,’ says Lenn as he walks in, the door frame behind him twilight grey. ‘And don’t dry them eggs too hard, keep them yellas runny.’
He sits down to review the day’s tapes as I get the oven chips out of the freezer.
‘You know you said about that woman,’ I say.
He grunts and keeps his watery eyes on the screen.
‘For the baby.’
‘What you talkin’ about?’
‘The woman. You said—’
‘Ain’t no woman needed, changed me mind. Ain’t nothing I can’t do myself.’ He looks over at me. ‘Get chips in stove and come here.’
I do it.
‘Get them films up.’
‘Which films?
He moves aside and I sit down at the PC.
‘All them you showed me. Short films. When I fixed washin’ machine that time. Them videos tellin’ you how to fix this thing and that.’
‘YouTube?’
‘That’s it.’
I google YouTube and because the Internet’s so slow the homepage take minutes to load. The smell of hot oil starts to fill the room.
‘When it coming out of you?’
I touch my stomach.
He looks down and says, ‘When’s he comin’ out, Jane?’
‘Soon.’
‘Get video up on how to do it. Me mother did it with me, mothers have been doin’ it for thousands of years, can’t be nowt to it. Find a good video and get on with them eggs.’
‘But you said you know a woman.’ He looks agitated. ‘Please, Lenn. We need proper help.’
‘You get video up or else we won’t know nothin’, will we? Find a gooden.’
I search for DIY home births and wait for the results.
‘That’s them,’ he says.
I select one and click on it.
‘That’s it,’ he says.
I vacate the chair and start to fry ham and eggs on the top of the Rayburn in his mother’s cast-iron skillet. The oil spits and burns my wrist and I watch it redden and I let it.
‘Film’s not workin’,’ he says. ‘Ah, it’s comin’ now.’
I can’t watch.
I stand at the stove, the heat from the fire warming my bump, and watch the egg whites bubble and shake.
Screams pour out of the computer.
Lenn’s entranced, he has his head close to the monitor, his hands gripping the table.
A large bubble develops on one of the egg whites so I pop it with his mother’s spatula and it deflates and sinks and sizzles in the oil. The screams change. It’s a baby screaming now and the mother is quiet. My shoulders ease. Lenn’s just watched a baby being born and that one seems to have turned out all right.
‘Bleedin’ hell,’ he says.
I flip the eggs gently and slide them from the pan onto the plates, three for him and two for me. Ham. I take the chips from the oven and shake them and arrange them the way he likes and place both plates down on the table and pour lime squash for us both.
‘It’s all right,’ he says, plunging his knife into a runny yolk. ‘I knew it’d be nothin’ much. I can do it.’
You can do it?
‘But if something goes wrong,’ I say. ‘If there’s a complication.’
He chews his ham and egg and there’s a sliver of oil shining from his clean-shaven chin.
‘If it mucks up we’ll see to it then. Play it by ear.’
I eat and the baby kicks. A protest.
I thought of a good name for him or her the other day, a good strong name, but now I can’t remember it.
‘You don’t remember nothin’, do you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Of early days, you don’t remember nothin’ what happened, do you?’
Being driven all the way here in the back of Frank Trussock’s van. Not being told anything. Not being allowed a glass of water. No idea where my sister had been taken. Seeing this endless featureless farmland for the first time. Seeing Lenn for the first time. Being handed over to him at the locked halfway gate like some package.
‘I do,’ I say.
‘You don’t. Where did I take you out on honeymoon?’
I look down at my dinner.
‘You remember it?’
I look at him.
‘Was Skeggie, you remember? Two nights. You loved it.’
‘Honeymoon?’
‘You don’t remember much from good old days, do you, that head of yours.’
‘Good old days?’
It’s not the drugs causing me to misremember. There weren’t any good old days, not with you, not ever, not one single good old day.
I remember the day he installed the cameras and the day he told me about his first wife. Up until that moment I assumed he’d had no other marriages. I remember hearing the phone ring for the first time. How startled I was.
He stands up and pushes his chair back, and the legs squeak on the floor.
I don’t like this. Because he’s not finished his dinner and he’s breaking his routines. He never does this.
I hear him unbolt the door to the half-cellar, the door immediately facing his front door. I’ve never been down there because that was a rule from day one. Also, because it smells awful, or it did the first year I was here, rotten meat and old bins, decay, and because it’s half-height, you can’t stand up straight, not even close, and because there are no stairs leading down, just a steep ladder. He unbolts the upper bolt and then he unbolts the lower bolt. He switches the light on down there. I can see a dim glow between my feet from between the floorboards. He comes back up.
‘Found it.’
He hands me a piece of cardboard. I take it from him and flip it over and it’s a bent cardboard frame with a photo in the centre. Me and him. Mould spores on the edges of the frame. Me in a white wedding dress and a veil. Spots of damp on the image. I’m smiling. The remnants of a cobweb on the cardboard. Him in a shirt and tie. He’s not smiling.
‘Remember it now, do you?’
I say nothing.
What is this?
‘I’ll find honeymoon snaps one day and all, some goodens of you on Skeggie beach. Right windy it was. Gusty.’
I start to ask a question and then swallow the word.
‘We gonna be a family after this, Jane. Three of us here in me mother’s old cottage. I ain’t gonna let nothing bad happen to youngen when he comes out, you don’t need to worry yourself on that front.’
‘Can I see a doctor?’
He takes the photo back from me.
‘We’ll see, that’s all I’m saying. Watched a video just now, a gooden. I think I can do it, bring youngen out of you with no bother. You’re strong, you’ll be fine. Me mother was all right here with nobody about. I’ll give you full pill when it starts to come out, full pain pill if you need it.’
This is the most we’ve spoken in years. I point to the photo.
‘Are you saying that I wanted to marry you?’
He points to my smiling face on the photo.
&n
bsp; ‘I want to be with my sister when the baby comes, Lenn,’ I say. ‘I want to be with her.’
‘Wait there.’
He goes back down to the half-cellar and I can sense his bulk moving underneath me. I can hear him rummage, he must be bent double, and I can see the light from down there through the gaps in the rough timber floorboards. He comes back up.
‘Found it.’
He hands me a wedding veil. It’s grey and the edges have been gnawed at by mice, but it’s lace and it’s beautiful and I can’t recall ever seeing it before apart from ten minutes ago in that photograph.
I look up at the camera in the corner of the room.
He follows my gaze.
‘Filming’s for your own good, see, and it’ll be safer having the cameras now with youngen coming. What with your bad leg, needed to see you were all right, you weren’t having no bother. Having cameras is same as that YouTube you showed me on computer, same thing.’
‘Lenn, I want to be with Kim-Ly for the birth. I’ll come back, I promise you. Can you let me be with her just for the birth?’
‘Ain’t nothing she can do for you that I can’t.’
Tears prickle somewhere in my eyes but nothing comes to the surface. I lost all hope years ago and this is just fresh misery.
‘I’ll put these back in cellar and go feed pigs, why don’t you run yourself a good full bath while stove’s hot?’
He leaves. As I collect the plates and glasses and cutlery from the table I see lights up the track. There’s a small car up by the locked halfway gate. I set down the plates and stagger to the front door. Can’t fall now, not like this, not with the bump so big, can’t hurt it.
There’s a figure walking towards the house.
Lenn’s gone to the barn, he’s feeding the pigs. He’ll be gone a while, he might not have seen the car.
It’s her, the woman with the red hair and horsey jodhpur trousers. What was her name?
I step to the door so the camera can’t see me, but I keep my right foot out of sight.
‘Hope you don’t mind me dropping in again,’ she says. ‘You’re not in the middle of dinner or anything are you?’
I shake my head and I want to tell her everything.
‘Look at you,’ she says, a broad smile on her lips, new shade of lipstick, dark pink, she’s pointing to my belly. ‘Congratulations, Jane. How many months are you?’
My name is not Jane.
‘About seven,’ I say.
Her smile broadens and her eyes crinkle at the corners.
‘Do you know the sex?’
She’s not nosey, just naturally friendly, her face says she’s delighted for me, she sees me as some sort of friend, some sort of neighbour.
I shake my head. ‘We didn’t want to know.’
My throat closes up with this lie. This cover-up.
‘So exciting!’
She wears a cross on a necklace.
‘Could you post a letter for me?’ I ask.
She frowns and then laughs, her red hair moving in front of her eyes.
‘I can if you like, but you shouldn’t stop going out you know, my sister had awful back trouble, bad morning sickness at the start, really tough final trimester, but she got out and about as much as she could. Shopping and walking in the fields. Of course, we’re all different. But the first few days after you get back from the hospital, you’ll be locked away in here, so make the most of the freedom while you have it.’
The freedom while I have it.
‘Are you a midwife?’ I ask. ‘A nurse?’
She laughs.
‘I’m just a photographer,’ she says, zipping up her fleece jacket. ‘Portraits, headshots, that kind of thing. Although I’ve started doing landscapes since moving here. These skies!’
I want to tell her.
I want for her to call the police. She’ll have a mobile phone with her, everyone does.
I want for her to put me in her car and take me straight to Manchester to see Kim-Ly.
‘Anyway, I just wondered if your husband was around? Or maybe you’ve spoken with him? About the field. I’ll be buying a horse this summer so really keen to rent something, and your land would be perfect, just an acre or two.’
I want to tell her but I can’t. My insides are screaming ‘Let her help you, do not let go of this lifeline, be smart.’
But what would he do to the baby if he caught me?
‘He’s busy with the pigs,’ I say. ‘Could you come back next month and then he’ll have finalised his plans and he’ll be able to decide then.’
I want her to come back. I want to save Kim-Ly. But I really want her to come back one day when I’ve worked out how to do this. How to save us both and the baby.
She looks down at my left foot. I’m wearing Lenn’s old sandals, size eleven. She looks into the house.
‘Is everything all right, Jane?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Cynthia,’ she says. ‘Call me Cynth, everyone does.’
And then I realise she’s looking at my right foot, she’s looking at its reflection in the entrance mirror.
I close the door a fraction.
‘I asked after you in the shop,’ she says. ‘The man told me “Jane passed away” so I had to set him straight.’
‘I’ll tell Lenn you stopped by,’ I say, closing the door more. ‘Come back next month and we’ll see what we can do.’
Chapter 9
Two weeks ago he withheld my medication.
He found out about Cynthia. Cynth. I must remember her name. I must cling to it and carve it into my memory. He could see Cynth on the tapes and although I told him I didn’t say anything, although he could most likely see that for himself, see that I closed the door on her, he locked the horse pills down in the half-cellar for three whole days.
The pain almost ended me.
The pain of my ankle under all this new weight, but even more, the pain of not having the horse pills when I expected them, when my body expected them. The lack of that surge, that assistance, that sweet, essential numbness.
On the first night I slept on the floor with my ankle held against the cold wall and my back arched like some dark folkloric creature hiding in the forest. I wailed without noise.
When he brought the glass bottle back up from the half-cellar, from his half-cellar, he offered me a whole pill and told me I’d learnt my lesson and I looked into his eyes and through gritted teeth I told him I’d just take half. Those three days of agony were the price I paid for lucidity. I will need my mind clear for the months ahead. To protect my baby and myself and to watch out for him and also so I’ll remember. Most of my life here I want to forget, that’s what I am looking for, to create some space between the core me and this so-called life. But the birth. My first. Probably also my last. I need to be clear-headed. I’ll take medication to dull the pain, I’m no hero, no superwoman. But I want to see my baby’s face, to really see it.
So now I’m on half a pill each day and I can tolerate the pain just about. Mostly. Every time the bone shards in my ankle joint – if you can call it a joint, there’s nothing much joined-up inside there – scrape together and the darts and needles stab up my back, up my neck, each time the pain drags the breath from my lungs, I touch my belly. I started out hating this living thing, hating it growing inside me, because it’s his and because I had no conscious or willing role in its creation. But then, over time, with it moving and kicking and me being able to tell which way around it’s lying inside me, I have grown to love it as if I’ve known it for a hundred lifetimes. I speak to it. We talk without words. We make plans together, but my child will never be the George to my Lennie or the Lennie to my George. I speak and try to whisper Vietnamese nursery rhymes and Steinbeck’s words and I try to sound strong and able and reassuring. Like a mother.
Right now I’m painting the bathroom. The spores have spread across the ceiling and they’re making the room smell worse tha
n ever and I worry for this baby. It hasn’t breathed its first breath yet, and I worry for its olive-sized lungs and its future here with Lenn as its father.
But Lenn is not its father, not since the moment after conception, because I have claimed this baby as my own. I will be mother and father. I will be extended family, aunts and uncles, I will be my own mother and father, the good teachers I had, the wise friends. I pledge to be these people to this child because all it has is me.
The chemical paint smell makes me retch. He bought it from the town past the bridge. When he left he said he’d be about an hour and he was back within ten minutes looking at me through the window, his rough hands cupped to the glass. Checking on me. Now I’m a month away, maybe six weeks, he’s paranoid I’ll leave. He’s more paranoid than ever. How could I leave? Even if I decided to effectively send Kim-Ly back, to ruin her life, to make her years of secret labour count for nothing, even if I did make that heartless decision, how could I leave? I can’t even walk out of here when I’m not pregnant, I’d surely lie down and perish by the halfway gate if I tried it now.
I dab his brush into his tin of paint and cover his mould stains. It takes two thick coats of rubbery white paint and it will still grow back, somehow. It says it’s guaranteed not to, I read it on the tin, I read any text I can get my hands on, I used to read the Argos catalogue every day until he found out and burnt it in the Rayburn.
In years gone by I would paint and clean and cook for him, but now I do it for my child. I used to sleep and wash and comb my hair for him, but now I do it all for my child. My child.
Cynth has not come back.
I apply the paint, and hairs from the old brush fall out and lay entombed in the thick white liquid, and I dream of Cynth arriving with the police, offering some kind of unheard-of immigration immunity for Kim-Ly, a team of kind, decent people swooping in, all because she gleaned from the reflection of my right ankle in the hallway mirror all that I have been through and am still going through.
I visualise my baby’s nursery every night before falling asleep. Not the actual nursery, which is one rattle I found in the store cupboard, his mother’s rattle bought for Lenn, but my dream nursery. From the 2004 Argos catalogue. A pine cot and a black car seat with secure belt. A soft blanket that no other being has used before. And a big pack of disposable nappies, wet wipes, bottles, a sterilisation machine. I remember the machines vividly: four different makes and models to choose from. The baby would have a range of Babygro outfits, some hats and mittens, a bouncing chair, perhaps a dummy. But in reality it just has me and Lenn’s old rattle. I will have to be all of those other things. I will have to be its nursery.