'Bottom half off,' rapped the midwife.
Embarrassed, Frances wriggled about under the gown. She screwed her underpants into a ball. The midwife took them and handed them to me.
'Thanks!' I said.
Doctor and midwife exchanged a look. 'Here we go,' he said. He put on surgical gloves, took a small, bullet-shaped object from a packet and reached between Frances's legs. She shrank back. He murmured something, pursed his lips, looked up at the ceiling. Then he nodded, snapped off the glove and straightened up. 'All done.'
We looked at him blankly.
'I'll be back when you get started. In the meantime, get some sleep.'
He left. The midwife stood over us. 'Right. You can both go to bed. There's a mattress for you in the cupboard,' she said to me.
I got it out, dropped it on the floor and fell on top of it. Frances laughed. The midwife made a tsking sound. She said to Frances, 'Any trouble, ring the buzzer.' She went out, giving me a glare.
We lay down. The room was full of striped shadows. There were conversations, footsteps in the corridor outside. I heard her turning over, sighing. I drifted off, then woke. I wondered how much time had gone by. Minutes? Hours? As quietly as I could, I reached for my bag and eased out a can. The ring-pull gave the tiniest scrape. There was a long hiss.
She sat up. 'Are you opening a beer?'
I kept quiet. She coughed.
'Feel anything yet?' I said.
She poked her head over the side of the bed. 'I can't feel anything. It's not meant to start until morning. I can't sleep.'
'Me neither.'
'Shall we go out?'
'Out? Where?'
'Down the shop. Get some magazines.'
'Okay.' I was willing. I got up, sipping the beer. She was pulling on a top and a pair of jeans.
'Come on.' She went to the door and looked out. I hid the can under my jacket and we went to the lifts. 'Might bring it on, going for a walk,' she said, frowning, sensible.
I half expected to be challenged in the foyer, but no one seemed to notice me strolling out with one of the inmates. There were other pregnant women about, a group of them smoking outside, each in similar pose: one hand massaging the small of the back, the other holding the fag.
'Smoking when they're pregnant! I don't know. What's the world . . .'
Frances smiled and said, 'Shh.'
I hitched my shopping bag over my shoulder. There was a fine, drifting mist of rain. We walked slowly, close together. The night seemed to have gone on forever; it was an age since I'd talked antiques with Mark Venn. And yet the weariness and confusion I'd felt in the taxi had left me; I was braced by the last beer — by braced I suppose I mean freshly drunk. I held on to my bag of beers — I clutched it very tight. I dreaded the morning so, that I felt a swooning sort of love for the night: the rainy air, the spotlit gardens, the black shadows across the pavements. Walking on the quiet street, in the velvety dark, the wind sighing in the trees, it was possible to forget so many things . . .
We got to the main road. There wasn't much traffic but there was a roar that got louder and, as we waited at the intersection, a procession came slowly into view: jeeps emblazoned with warning signs, then an enormous truck lit up with revolving orange lights and, improbably, mounted on the back of the truck, a whole wooden bungalow. We watched it sail past, towards the south. Then we crossed to the petrol station.
Frances browsed along the shelves. She chose a couple of magazines. I bought two pies and a packet of crisps. The man behind the counter said, 'When's the baby due?'
'Tonight,' she said. She slapped a packet of mints on the counter.
He nodded, neutral.
On the way out we confronted the full-length reflection of ourselves — I in my wrinkled suit, loosened tie and crooked collar; she with her strangely distorted form, her back unnaturally swayed, walking her awkward waddle.
I carried the supplies. I offered her a pie. She shook her head. She'd gone silent. Back in the dark street that led to the main gate she wanted to rest on a wall. I opened a beer.
'Feel anything yet?'
'I'm not sure.'
There was something in her tone. I gathered up the bags. 'We'd better go back.'
I finished the beer in the foyer. As soon as we got out of the lift the woman in pink sprang out. 'Where have you been?' She sniffed. 'The pub?'
Frances said, 'Something's happening.'
'Already?' The woman bent over her, with a scandalised look at me.
'Feel how hard it is.' Frances put her hands on her stomach. Her face crumpled.
'Right. Let's get you back in the room. You,' she pointed at me, 'get in there and behave. And no drinking!'
I sat on the end of the bed. The midwife came in wheeling a contraption — a gas canister on wheels. There was a tube, and a mask connected to it.
'You're having strong contractions. Breathe into this,' she told Frances. Frances breathed in and out. Her eyes glazed over. She shook her head and pulled the mask off. 'No, it's terrible, it makes everything go blurred.' She ducked her head, clenched her teeth and made a grinding, growling sound. She opened her eyes. 'Oh, hell,' she said.
'Time to get the doctor,' the midwife said. She went out.
Frances was swearing softly. I sat near her. I had a strange sensation, as if alarm, fear even, were near me, wanting to get into my head.
'I get you anything?' I whispered. 'Pie? Beer?'
She laughed, wild-eyed, then she said in a high voice, 'Oh, it's coming again.' She clutched my hand, ducked her head, gritted her teeth and made the growling sound, digging her fingernails into my palm. She banged her forehead against my arm, swearing. After a time she looked up at me and said, 'This is unbelievable. You're not going to leave, are you?'
'No,' I said. I sat there while she cried and swore and mangled my hand. I don't know how long we sat there. Hours, maybe. My hand was raw.
The doctor arrived. 'Come on a bit sooner than we thought, eh?' There was a crease down the side of his face and his hair was rumpled. His eyes were swollen. He snapped on some gloves, then he and the midwife waited, casting looks at each other, while Frances went into another contraction, moaning and clenching her fists. When she came out of it he had a brisk look between her legs.
'Mmm, hmm.' He and the midwife conferred.
I sat looking out at the city, Mt Eden on the skyline. I felt so dazed, so incredulous, suddenly so put upon. I considered getting up and walking out of the room, out of the building. I resolved to do it. In half an hour I would be at home, hiding my face in the pillow. There was no point in explaining. I would just go.
Frances cried out. The doctor stepped back, a small instrument in his hand, like a crochet hook.
I started up. 'What are you doing?'
'I've broken the waters. Didn't you hear me saying?' He and the midwife looked at me doubtfully. They exchanged a glance. 'We're just helping Frances along.'
Frances was making small whimpering sounds and rocking back and forth.
'Are you all right?' I asked her.
The midwife snapped, 'Honestly. She's having a baby, for heaven's sake. Can't you make yourself useful?'
'Go to hell,' I muttered.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Now, let's concentrate on Frances,' the doctor said.
'Oh, God,' Frances moaned.
'Right,' the doctor said. 'I'll be back.'
'You're not leaving. Look at her!'
'It's perfectly normal; she's doing well. I have another patient to look in on.' There was a pause. 'Excuse me,' he said. I stepped out of his way. He looked at the midwife. She rolled her eyes.
Frances was making strange noises. Her eyes were bulging; tendons stood out on her neck. 'Good, good,' the midwife said. 'You're doing fine.'
I said, 'It's not good. She looks terrible. Can't you do something? She's in agony.'
The midwife whispered savagely, 'Will you please settle down. You're supposed to encourage her.'
'Then perhaps you'd better go outside.' Icy, she pointed at the door.
'Fine!'
I picked up my shopping bag and lurched out, crashing my shoulder against the door. Behind me Frances wailed something, imploring.
'Don't worry . . . do him good,' I heard the midwife say.
I walked down the stairs and out through the foyer. The rain was whirling around the streetlights. I opened a can and drank. The sky was just perceptibly lighter, the black turning to dark grey, and I could make out flying tatters of clouds. The wind had got up, roaring in the trees on the edge of One Tree Hill. I stood out there in the warm, dark, howling dawn, dipping my head to my drink, and I couldn't make out, in the deeps of my mind, what to do. I began to walk away. I reached the main road. I stood under the streetlight. Two possibilities: to cross to the petrol station and call a taxi, or turn and go back along the dark road. I couldn't remember now, drunk as I was, what she'd told me about free will. Was it that everything had been decided already, by my brain? That free will was an illusion? If that was the case, I could only wait to see what I would do.
The answer came to me, and relief with it: I would get in a taxi, I would go home and in the morning the dream would splinter and fade . . . The rain surprised me, sweeping up the road like a silver curtain; I stopped on the kerb, the spiky, sudden drops drumming on my head. Paper blew along the street, tumbling over and over; cold rain streamed down my neck. A dartboard, spilled vodka, rain falling on a winter sea; the wind blew the door against the veranda wall; if you go home now you'll drown . . .
In the foyer I chucked away the empty can, took a breath and swung up the stairs two at a time. I opened the door; the doctor and midwife looked up. Frances turned her white, sweat-streaked face to me, her mouth open in a soundless howl. The doctor stood up; I thought he was going to bar me from coming close. I was ready to push him, to stand my ground: I can hold my own in a fight! Instead he put his hand on my arm.
'The head,' he said, pulling me towards the bed.
I advanced, quivering. I looked between Frances's legs. I saw a rubbery circle; within it, a round, grey ball. And then the midwife said something sharp and the doctor pushed me out of the way and angled in with both hands. Frances let out a stream of sobbing swear words, straining with all her might. For a long stalled moment the doctor seemed to wrestle, almost to wrench, then suddenly he stepped back and he was holding the blue-grey, blood-streaked rubbery doll, its arms lolling free. I wanted to cry out, 'Why is it blue? Oh, it's dead, isn't it?' and Frances held up her head to look and let it drop, as if she, too, saw that the worst had happened. I closed my eyes. And then I heard the small cries, and the midwife announcing, 'There you are, madam. A healthy boy,' as she placed the hot, slippery, flailing soul on his mother's chest.
'Congratulations,' the doctor said. 'Time of birth, 5 a.m.'
The baby panted up at me, his eyes swollen and his face streaked with blood. His skin was changing from that terrible blue-grey, turning pale. His eyes were slate, the colour of a kingfisher's wing. He had small strings of hair, wrinkled hands that were too large for him, a watchful look. He regarded me. What did he see? What first impression was I printing on his brain? The midwife picked him up. She inspected him, weighed him, wiped him and wrapped him in a cloth. The parcelled child was returned to Frances, who had propped herself up on pillows. She sat there, holding the oblong bundle. We all three looked at one another: Frances, I, and the strangely calm child.
'Shouldn't he be crying?'
The doctor murmured, writing on a form, 'They're often nice and quiet after an easy birth.'
Easy? Easy? A bloodbath!
The midwife snapped, 'If you want to hold him you'd better sit down.'
I looked at her. I sat down. She put him in my arms. 'You've got quite a responsibility now,' she said. 'Haven't you.'
I looked down at the child's face.
'Less of the drinking . . .'
'Oh, shut up, you dragon.'
'What did you say?'
'Get out of my face,' I said. 'Bugger off.' But I spoke quietly, looking at the baby.
'Right. That's it. I'm calling security!' She took the baby, gave him to Frances and marched out. The doctor kept on filling in his form. He looked at his watch. There was a silence.
Frances said dreamily from the bed, 'Is she really calling security?' She had her head close to the baby's; now she looked up, a glazed, blissful expression on her face.
'I'd say so,' the doctor said. He came close and touched the baby's head.
'Isn't he lovely?' Frances said.
'He is. He's very nice,' he said.
'Thank you,' I said.
'You're welcome.' He smiled.
'Will you get me some things from home?' Frances asked me. 'Some stuff I forgot to bring?'
There was the crackle of a radio. A uniformed security guard stood at the door. He made me come out into the corridor. He listed my crimes. Drunkenness. Abusiveness. Foul language. Strict alcohol ban . . .
I steadied myself against the wall. 'I had to get through it,' I said.
I heard Frances say, 'They can't throw him out now.'
'Any more trouble and you're out of here,' the guard finished. He confiscated my last cans of beer.
'Yes, yes,' I said.
I walked back into the room. Out the window the sky was a jumble of black cloud, thin beams of early morning light shining on the slopes of the hill. The baby was making sounds. Frances leaned down, whispering to him.
'What do you want me to get for you?' I said.
She told me, while the midwife and doctor looked on.
I went close to her. 'See you soon.' I touched the baby's head. I went out. Halfway along the corridor I stopped. I ran back.
'But what's your address?' I said.
She laughed. 'Oh, I forgot . . .' She told me. She said, 'The key's under the orange pot on the deck.'
The midwife stood by, hands on hips, shaking her head. I thanked Dr Lampton and left.
It was all misty outside, sun breaking through the wisps and ribbons of cloud, the wet trees and grass glittering with silver drops. When I looked up at the dawn sky I had the strangest feeling, a great welling pressure in my chest — for a moment I thought I would fall over . . .
Then I walked across the car park, looking for a taxi. What address to give the driver, Frances's or mine? She would know that I simply waited for my brain to decide, and so, have no regrets.
going back to the end
When I was twenty-two and working for a newspaper, my boss, a married man of thirty-four, was the hero of the piece of fiction I worked on obsessively, day and night. This fiction never made it onto paper: it was my life.
I fell in love with him when I saw him spying on me with binoculars from the building in which we worked. I lived on the top floor of the flat across the street. In the early mornings I would go out onto the roof terrace to drink a cup of coffee. One day the sun penetrated the mirror glass of his office and there he was, staring out, holding the binoculars to his face. I had no doubt he was looking at me. My 'novel', at least the novel about him, began that day. I was already a fantasist — my life was one long, continuous fiction. That day a new project began, page one opened, and my hapless boss was trapped within it. From then on, nothing he did would be free of significance. Every move he made was scrutinised, analysed and noted by the obsessive junior down the hall. Was he aware that he had become the hero of that common phenomenon, the autobiographical first work? He might have noticed that the atmosphere had changed, changed utterly. He might have begun to suspect that his previously ordinary junior had gone completely mad.
Why did he become the 'hero' so suddenly that day? I hadn't paid much attention to him before. It was the binoculars. They were an irresistible fictional hook. There he was, taking a secret interest. At the very least wondering why I was lounging on that dingy roof terrace, instead of hurrying in to work. With a s
ingle expression of curiosity he had made the leap and entered the fiction. And this was no detached, third-person narrative I was cooking up. The other central character, the heroine, of course, was me.
I worked in a small internal office. I laboured over my assignments. I never wrote a word of fiction. Rather, I lived it. Every element of my life, every conversation and event, played its part in my fantasy. I couldn't go into my boss's office without being keyed up to the highest pitch of anticipation. What would happen today? What turn would the story take? I believed there would be a happy ending. But there were setbacks and difficulties along the way. The fact that he wanted to get work done was a constant problem. What baffled, impatient looks he gave me! And the fact that he would get in his car every evening and drive home to his wife. I got discouraged sometimes, when my plotlines didn't produce the expected effect, when dialogue faltered and scenes fell flat. I sat in the office or the lunchroom, stewing over my secret drama, editing and re-editing the day's projected scenes, while around me people worked and chatted and lived their ordinary lives. I made complex calculations: if I make this happen, then his reaction will be this. If I contrive x, then y will be the result. Friday night drinks were always interesting, because when tipsy I am prone to be inventive . . .
As I got deeper into the work I became more intense and solitary, more engaged in the fictional world. How did it end? Well, I can say this now quite coolly: I failed in art and love. The project spun away from me. I couldn't control my hero. I failed to win my man.
Was I mad?
There are descriptions for my behaviour: unrequited love, erotomania. But my madness was quite particular, and one thing was required for me to lose it. I needed to begin to write novels. When I started to write fiction, I stopped living it, and I became entirely sane. All my fantasies poured onto the page; all my scheming went into getting my characters from one place to another. I met my husband and had a baby, and from that point on my feelings became secondary to the child's. I ceased to take notice of myself. I lost myself. I did not want myself back.
I became a writer. I had some successes. I lived as much of a literary life as you could in this small city. I worked hard.
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