Conor laughed. Chapman’s a professional, he said. He’s sick of the sight of women’s bums. He probably turns his back on his wife in bed at night with the words, “Sorry, darling, but if I see another one today . . .”
Emily, perversely, took umbrage. What was wrong with her bum anyway? No, no, she understood perfectly! It’s all very well to say that pregnant women are gloriously sexy, but when push comes to shove, it’s only lip-service!
Conor said that she sweated the small stuff. It had sounded like an insult. Emily opened the first of the three Aeros in a dignified silence. Conor enquired carefully whether they were having a row over knickers. The way he said it made her laugh. She dropped the subject. She hadn’t thought it was a row. She had thought it was a lively discussion. Still, no sense in letting it spoil the cot assembly. Conor had already studied the instructions for ages in anticipation.
Mr Chapman, of course, never once looked in the direction of her knickers. He just palpated, pressed and pinged her naked stomach, a detached smile on his face.
“The head’s starting to engage,” he announced.
Having maintained a respectful distance thus far, Conor now stepped up close to Emily’s belly proprietarily.
“Is that good?”
“It just means that the baby’s head is working down towards the birth canal.”
“So he’s in the vertex position?”
“Exactly!” Mr Chapman was delighted to be speaking to a man, having spent most of his life dealing with women. And a man with knowledge to boot. “He’s head-down which saves us a lot of bother when it comes time to get him out.”
Conor nodded vigorously. He had read The Pregnant Father. It’s a manual, he had patiently explained when Emily had roared laughing; you wouldn’t take a new computer out of its packaging without first reading the manual, would you? Emily would and had. Conor had persisted with his reading and could now fling around words like ‘haemolytic jaundice’ and ‘tainted meconium’ as though he were a chronic sufferer himself. He wasn’t so hot on the practical aspects; when the book had gone on about voice recognition, he had laid his head on Emily’s naked tummy that night and directed a rather stiff monologue at her belly-button, starting with “Um, this is your father here.” Emily had said that if the baby didn’t recognise his voice when it got out, at least it would know all about how the lawnmower was acting up. She had only been joking. But he hadn’t done it again after that.
“He’s lying side-on at the moment,” Mr Chapman said, digging his fingers into Emily’s pelvis. It hurt.
“Or she,” Emily said, as loudly as she dared. Mr Chapman could be very intimidating. He reminded her of Magnus Magnusson in his three-piece suit. His chosen subject was pregnancy, naturally. But today Emily felt brave with Conor beside her.
Mr Chapman smiled in a detached way. “Are you hoping for a girl?”
“We don’t mind so long as it’s healthy,” Conor said strongly.
“Sensible attitude,” Mr Chapman said just as strongly.
Any minute now Emily expected them to excuse themselves and go off for a round of golf together.
“Are we done here?” she asked, wondering how she had managed to become superfluous to the entire proceedings.
“Not quite.” Mr Chapman was indulgent now as he picked up a stethoscope. “Let’s listen to the heartbeat, shall we?”
It was the part of the visit that everybody liked best. Emily shivered a little as Mr Chapman applied cold gel to her belly. Then he laid the stethoscope gently on her skin, moving it around, his brow furrowed as he listened.
“Ah!” He reached over and dramatically flicked a switch over Emily’s head. Immediately, the baby’s muffled heartbeat filled the room. Mr Chapman stood back to watch Emily and Conor’s faces. This was his moment, the time when he modestly felt like the giver of life.
“It’s so fast!” Emily said, more because it was expected than anything else. She lived with this baby twenty-four hours a day, felt its every hiccup and kick. That was enough.
No, let Conor have this one, she magnanimously thought, peeking at him. His wonder was there for all the world to see – well, for Emily anyway, who over the years had learned to spot those subtle signs of emotion. He blinked more than usual, for example, and his chin would occasionally dip in a violent bob.
She knew that he would go into Mothercare that afternoon, arriving home with baby ski boots or a car-seat neck-support or some high-tech toy that would confound adults, never mind a newborn. Emily would put it away in the baby’s room along with all the other ridiculous stuff he’d bought. She never said anything. She could afford to indulge him. And it made her feel a bit superior in a way.
Back at his desk, Mr Chapman made cryptic notes on Emily’s chart. He caught Emily looking and shielded the notes with his hand; lest she discover something about her own condition.
“It’s a fine big baby,” he pronounced eventually, as though it were all his own doing.
Emily felt a nervous twinge in her nether regions. Conor sat a little taller.
“And doing quite well from what I can see,” Mr Chapman concluded.
“Great,” Emily said with feeling.
There didn’t seem to be a lot else to say. Emily decided that she would take the initiative and dismiss herself.
She stood airily. “Cheerio then! Same time next week I suppose?”
“Not so fast,” Mr Chapman said.
Emily sat down again clumsily. He peered at her over his bifocals.
“We need to talk about your blood pressure.”
“What about it?”
“It’s up a little.”
“How much?”
“Nothing to be too worried about,” Mr Chapman assured her. He hadn’t answered her question. “High blood pressure is a common complaint in late pregnancy. We just need to keep an eye on it.”
Emily’s eyes flew to Conor. He gave her a measured look that said ‘don’t panic’.
“I’m also a bit concerned about your weight gain,” Mr Chapman added.
Jesus Christ, why did everything come back to weight in this world?
“It’s due to water retention,” Mr Chapman clarified. “Surely you’ve noticed a bit of puffiness?”
“Yes,” she admitted. She had been hoping he would not mention it.
“Nothing to be too worried about,” Mr Chapman said again, tactlessly. “But I’d like to see you the day after tomorrow all the same. Sandra will fit you in.”
It rained all the way back from Cork. Conor was forced to drive in the end because Emily’s car had been towed. When they’d rescued it from the car pound, the battery went flat because she’d left the lights on and the jump leads had mysteriously gone missing from the boot of the car. They’d left it on the side of the road. Conor would have to get Billy Middlemiss to help out tonight.
She felt him looking at her from time to time. But mostly he kept his eyes on the road. At least he hadn’t given out about the car. That was some indication that he knew how upset she was. And his index finger was twitching for a cigarette, an indication of how upset he was. Any minute now he would say something momentous, something so sweet and comforting and insightful that all Emily’s worries would be blown away.
“Look at that joker! No brake lights! It’s a good thing I’m not a plain-clothes garda.”
Conor had missed his calling. Every single trip he wished he were a plain-clothes garda. And he would have been very good at it too, Emily often thought. She could just imagine him whipping out his notebook and leaning in a car window, stern yet compassionate. ‘Do you realise you’re doing forty in a thirty-mile zone, madam?’ And he would write a ticket in his clear, strong handwriting. If the driver were elderly or infirm, he would let them off with a caution.
Conor had a robust appetite for law and order in all areas of life. Which made it all the odder that he was, in fact, a professional pianist. But that too had its own order, Emily supposed, as she thought of him doing his
scales on the piano on Saturday mornings, his long brown fingers belting methodically up and down the keys, head cocked slightly towards the piano as though he suspected it were trying to catch him out. But then, when she had left the room, she would hear him launch into Chopin’s Revolutionary Study. Peeking in the door, she would see his head flying backwards, his body coiled with a peculiar, passionate energy. His eyes would squint up and become very far away. Emily would sometimes have the sensation that he was a total stranger. Which was ridiculous. When the piece was over, he would straighten up and he was just Conor again, and he would go and put the rubbish out.
Emily’s hands smoothed her belly. The baby hadn’t moved since they’d left the clinic. Typical. It would probably torture her all day with its stillness, and then break into a samba just when she was trying to go to sleep. But she wouldn’t mind, not this time.
The weight of this new worry settled down on her shoulders, adding to all the other worries Emily seemed to pick up so effortlessly. Please God, she prayed, let nothing go wrong. Oh, and sorry I haven’t been to Mass since 1996.
“Look, Emily, it’s a bit of high blood pressure, that’s all.” Finally, he said something.
“And water retention,” she pointed out.
“It’s a common complaint in late pregnancy. Chapman said so. There’s nothing to worry about.”
He roundly pipped the driver in front as they overtook.
“Conor?”
He knew what she was going to say and he swiftly headed her off at the pass. “Nothing is going to happen to this baby.”
“How do you know?”
“Nothing is going to happen.” He just didn’t want to hear it.
“Do you think I’m doing something wrong?” Emily asked. She knew this was ridiculous, but you had to be clever with Conor, you had to find little ways of drawing him out. Sometimes she thought a lot of their conversations only came about because of her increasingly imaginative ploys to get him to talk.
“Maybe,” he said, flooring her.
“What?” She twisted in her seat, hotly defensive. “What a stupid thing to say!”
“But you asked!” He was confused.
She hadn’t meant for him to agree. Didn’t he know anything?
“And what exactly am I doing wrong, Mr Expert?”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Don’t try and backtrack!”
He shrugged. “Maybe you’re working too hard.”
“Well!” It was difficult to argue with him. Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly, solicitors, demanded forty-eight hours a week of her time, plus the odd weekend. But everybody worked the same hours. It wasn’t just her!
“What am I supposed to do, take it a bit easier because I’m pregnant?”
“That would be an option,” he said mildly.
“I can’t do that! They’ve been very understanding so far,” she said loyally. “Letting me off for appointments and hospital visits and everything!”
“They’re obliged to by law. Being solicitors, I’m sure they’re well clued up on their obligations.”
She detected that familiar faint note of contempt in his voice and was insulted on Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly’s behalf. They had given Emily her first big break! They gave her a pay rise without fail on June 1st of every year, and regular bonuses too. Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly knew how to reward their workers. And now Conor expected her to turn around and admit that she couldn’t hack it just because she was pregnant? Five other women in the office had had babies in the past two years, and not a single one of them had taken so much as a day off before their official leave. So what if Emily didn’t feel so hot some mornings? There were standards to be upheld, expectations to be met. She was well aware of them.
“I don’t know what you have against them,” she said stoutly. “They pay our mortgage.”
“I contribute too.”
“Yes, yes, of course you do, I didn’t mean . . .” She moved on swiftly. “And then there’s the partnership.”
He looked at her blankly – as if she hadn’t been talking about it for weeks now!
“Oh yes,” he eventually said. Doubtfully?
“The meeting’s today.” She checked her watch. “In five minutes to be exact. I was hoping to make it back to talk to Mr Crawley.”
They were only in Fermoy. Another eleven miles to go.
“What difference would it make?” Conor enquired carefully. “They’re either going to give it to you or they’re not.”
“Well, yes, but there’s no harm in stating my case.”
He impatiently slowed at a roundabout. “Surely you’ve proved your case, Emily? After giving those guys six years of your life? I’d think the bloody least they could do is give you a partnership.”
“Yes, well, it’ll happen today,” she said, sitting back.
He had taken the good out of it somehow. She had put a bottle of champagne and everything in the fridge for a little celebration later. One glass only, mind. But not now. And especially not after Mr Chapman’s news.
Emily suddenly wondered how they had ended up talking about work, instead of her worries. Conor had that knack, though. Last week she had been putting baby things into a box that would go in the attic. Conor had come upstairs and somehow or other they had ended up discussing Mrs Conlon-next-door’s application for planning permission to extend her kitchen. Right into Emily and Conor’s back garden, as it transpired. They had hurried to the back window to assess the potential damage, the box forgotten.
He surprised her now by reaching over and squeezing her hand.
“This baby is thirty-four weeks old. Fully formed. If it were born this minute it’d have a good chance. Look at the statistics.”
He was in his plain-clothes garda mode again, breaking her down with facts and figures. And it was working because she wanted it to.
“You’re right, I suppose.”
“Of course I am.”
They drove in silence for a while, Emily looking out the window. The landscape grew more and more familiar. And here now was Paulstown, population two thousand.
Conor checked his watch. “That meeting will have started. Why don’t we just go home?”
She thought of the stack of work waiting for her in the office. They might cheerfully let her off for her appointments but it was sort of on the understanding that she caught up in her own time. She should delegate, really, but those law-student ninnies on work experience never got it right, which meant more work for her in the end. Besides, she wanted to have her desk cleared before she went on maternity leave in two weeks’ time. That too was sort of expected of her.
But this business of the high blood pressure was bothering her. If she took it easy today, then that might sort things out. She owed it to the baby. Anyway, she could always work at home.
“You know, I think I’ll take the rest of the day off,” she said loudly. “They can ring me if they want me.”
Conor’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Good God, are you sure about this, Emily? Let’s not do anything rash here.”
“Shut up,” she snapped. It was easy for him to laugh, with no commitments all day long except for three hours’ work tonight.
He was repentant now. “I’ll make you a cup of my special cappuccino.”
Emily was pleased. Conor hardly ever made cappuccinos these days. It seemed to take too long. When they married six years ago, making cappuccinos was an altogether quicker business and they had drunk it morning, noon and night.
Still, there were other compensations, Emily was sure, for the froth of cappuccinos.
She looked over at Conor now, fondly. He reminded her of that Beamish ad – consistency in a world gone mad. And there was a lot to be said for that, wasn’t there?
Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly was the biggest solicitors’ firm in Paulstown. In fact, it was the only one. It did a brisk trade in farm auctions, period house sales and occasionally drew up wills for the more well-heeled locals. Busin
ess was so good that they had recently refurbished the entire reception area in glass and chrome. This deterred some of the more undesirable elements in the town who took their minor legal worries elsewhere, leaving Crawley Dunne & O’Reilly to the business of selling vast tracts of farmland for a hefty two percent of the sale price. The last time they had set foot in an actual court of law was to defend Mr Crawley’s nephew who had been up on drunk-and-disorderly charges two years ago. It had been a distasteful and unprofitable experience for everyone concerned and they had gratefully returned to selling land. They were auctioneers by any other name but would have been highly insulted at the accusation.
Expecting Emily Page 2