Expecting Emily

by Clare Dowling

  “I will,” Emily said.

  “Mr Chapman will be here this afternoon,” Vera said.

  “Oh, right.” Emily was unfazed. Mr Chapman came up every week, sometimes twice, to see her.

  “He wants to do a scan, Emily. What with the pains and the bit of blood you had yesterday, he needs to check the condition of the placenta.”

  “It was only a little bit of blood,” Emily said.

  “All the same.”

  “And what if he finds something?”

  “Look, I can’t really say. I’m not a doctor.”

  “Ah come on, Vera. You know more than most of them.”

  “I don’t want to go pre-empting Mr Chapman,” Vera insisted primly.

  “He’ll do a section, won’t he? If my placenta is malfunctioning.”

  “That might be a course of action he would consider.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Now don’t go upsetting yourself,” Vera said sternly. “You’re into your thirty-eighth week. All that baby is doing now is putting on fat, and it can do that just as well on the outside.” She stood. “And it’ll be lovely to see the baby on the scan. You should be looking forward to it.”

  Vera left. Emily had to fight the urge to scuttle down in the bed and pull the covers up high over her head. She deeply resented her little bubble being so rudely burst with talk of caesareans and scans and placentas. Could she not be left in peace until she reached her fortieth week, or even longer if the baby decided it was happy where it was?

  It had been funny, these past few weeks. They reminded Emily of the retreat she’d been dragged to by her mother years ago, to some holy house in the West. It was a proper retreat, with loads of suffering and praying and starvation, not one of those namby-pamby ones where everyone took it in turns to cook gourmet dinners before massaging each other’s inner child. No, this was the genuine article, involving bare-foot hikes up Croagh Patrick on nothing more than a cup of tea and a slice of Brennan’s bread. Talking was forbidden, the better to help you focus on what a sinner you really were. Then four hours’ sleep before a dawn Mass and a couple of rounds of Hail Marys. Emily had thought it a total waste of time, except for the fact that she lost two pounds. But then she had looked at the faces of the other survivors. Past the paleness and exhaustion, there was a kind of hard-won peace and she was almost sorry that she hadn’t made more of an effort.

  Martha’s had been a retreat of sorts too. There were rashers and sausages in Martha’s, of course, and talking was not forbidden. But there was plenty of suffering and lots of time for contemplation. At the end of the day, Emily hadn’t climbed any mountains, literal or metaphorical, and come down the other side shouting, “I’ve solved it all, yippee!”. She hadn’t solved much at all. There had been no epiphany, worse luck, just endless grappling and searching and questioning, with the occasional foray into steam-filled classrooms for a little light relief.

  The truth was that Emily did not know where she was going. But she had seen very clearly where she was coming from, and that was something. And it wasn’t good enough any more. It had never been good enough to begin with, but she had nobody to blame for that except herself. For accepting, endlessly accepting.

  Conor had been restrained. He seemed to sense that if he pushed things any further with her, it would backfire badly. He had left her alone, only to ring up once and anxiously ask whether Gary had been on to her in any legal capacity. Emily, mystified, assured him that he hadn’t. Conor had seemed very relieved. Emily had always thought Conor despised Gary and was surprised to learn that they were obviously pally. Another side to Conor that she had never seen before.

  She had phoned him a few times herself, to keep him in the picture about her health. And she had asked him to come in twice. This was out of necessity. She’d needed clean underwear and pyjamas, and the charger for her mobile. They’d managed by talking about the baby and her medication and the dogs. He had stayed less than twenty minutes both times and she had been grateful.

  She rang him now and told him about the scan. He said he would come in.

  She got out of bed and went to take her morning shower. Today, she found that her anger was less. Today she would talk to him.

  Creepy Crawley came up behind Neasa in his usual stealthy way. God, that hair. She had it in a French plait today, which showed off her very fine, long white neck. Creepy imagined himself taking off that little bow at the bottom and unravelling the plait, twist by twist, inch by inch, and he was nearly undone.

  Rumour had reached his ears last week that Neasa Martin and Gary O’Reilly had something going. Apparently it was common knowledge. The depth of his upset had surprised Creepy. Gary, who always reminded Creepy of a side of beef. Neasa had gravely disappointed him. Surely she deserved a man of intelligence and culture, a man whose knowledge of wine extended beyond red and white? It must be a momentary lapse, Creepy decided. Gary had just not taken no for an answer. The partners had already discovered that Gary did not understand the meaning of a lot of words, including ‘paperwork’, ‘desk-bound’ and ‘middle-management’. He still thought he could drop everything to go off and close an exciting sale, not realising that it was now his job to select the person who would close the exciting sale. Still, he would learn. There was plenty of time yet before he started getting a slice of the profits. A rather small slice.

  Neasa would most probably be at the partners’ dinner on Friday. Creepy would see to it that she was sitting by his side, and at the far end of the table to Gary. A woman of her taste would quite easily spot the difference.

  “Neasa?”

  “What! I mean, can I help you, Mr Crawley?”

  Neasa was working on a particularly difficult sales contract for a farm, and was bogged down in meaningless phrases such as ‘heretofore assign’ and ‘decree unto the vendor’. She had a huge urge to draw a red line through the whole lot and write at the bottom, ‘I’ll give you my land if you give me your money’. They shouldn’t have opened that second bottle of wine last night.

  Gary had noticed her discontent of late, especially when she went around the house shouting, “It’s all a load of bollocks.” Sweetly, he had bought her a box of chocolates and some new silky underwear, and told her that her feelings would pass. At least he’d noticed, she reassured herself.

  Creepy Crawley held out a letter as though it contaminated him. “This arrived this morning. I was wondering whether you knew anything about it?”

  Neasa saw that it was addressed to Emily.

  “I didn’t realise we were opening her post,” Neasa said. The letter had Private & Confidential written on the top. The envelope would have had the same.

  “Well, we have to, now that she’s gone.”

  “She is coming back,” Neasa pointed out mildly.

  “Of course she is,” Creepy said quickly. “How is she, by the way?”

  “As well as anybody can be after three weeks in hospital.”

  “Yes, yes,” Creepy said quickly. He didn’t want to get into any talk about babies or labour. He was about to have his lunch.

  The letter was from the Health Board. It was regarding the petition Emily had sent in.

  “I have no idea what they’re on about,” Neasa said primly. This was perfectly true.

  “We don’t want to get involved in that kind of thing,” Creepy said dismissively. He had private health insurance and a very good car to take him to Dublin should anything ever go wrong.

  “Of course we don’t,” Neasa soothed. “To be honest, I think that hospital is getting to Emily. All that time on her hands. Anyone would go a bit cracked and start up petitions. Why don’t you leave it with me?”

  “All right,” he said reluctantly. “And maybe you’d tell her that she can’t be using our headed notepaper and name to back this petition thing.”

  “I’m sure she didn’t mean it like that,” Neasa assured him.

  He went off. Neasa scrutinised the letter. How Emily had sent the thing off
to them in the first place was a mystery. It wasn’t as though there was a post office on the ground floor of the hospital, or indeed any typing facilities.

  Emily was running away, Neasa knew. She didn’t want to deal with the real issues and so she had latched onto this petition thing as a distraction. Hadn’t Neasa’s grandmother got very obsessive about her pension book as death stared her in face? It was pure escapism, as clear to Neasa as the spots on Gary’s chin. Oops. Where had that come from?

  On cue, the door to Emily’s office opened and Gary came out. His tie was loosened and his shirtsleeves rolled up. This was purely for effect, of course, to give the impression that he was working so hard that he was actually letting off steam. He came over.

  “I’m going out for a sandwich – want to get one and go back to Emily’s office?”

  Gary was annoyed that he’d said ‘Emily’s office’. It was his now. But everybody else persisted in calling it Emily’s office too. It was most irritating.

  “I’ll pass,” Neasa said regretfully. “I’m taking a late lunch – I want to pop over and see Emily this afternoon.”

  Gary was secretly relieved. He’d been working like a dog all morning and was totally knackered.

  “Why don’t you go to Milo’s with the lads?” Neasa suggested.

  Gary didn’t really want to go to the pub. It was impossible to do any work after three pints of Smithwicks. The bottles of red wine every night were killing him too. But Neasa never seemed affected at all, and he just looked wimpish in comparison. He felt that any attempt to cut down on his consumption would be noted and chalked up against him as some kind of black mark.

  “I don’t think any of them are going,” he hedged.

  “They are. Annabel told me.”

  “I don’t think I could be bothered,” he said quickly. He didn’t want her thinking that he would be flirting with Annabel, the new temp in the secretarial division. He had looked at her once. Just once, when she had handed over a file. It seemed the polite thing to do. But Neasa had noticed, and he had never looked at Annabel since, to the point of directing any enquiry to a point two feet above her head. He seemed to be watching his Ps and Qs all the time recently.

  “Go and have a few pints. I’m busy here,” Neasa said in a voice that brooked no argument. She wanted to read the letter from the Health Board.

  “What’s that?” Gary enquired.

  “Oh, nothing,” Neasa said quickly. For some reason, she didn’t want to tell him about the letter. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him. She was just afraid that he might, well, sneer. Unless letters contained very large cheques Gary didn’t have an awful lot of interest. She had a suspicion that he might find Emily’s petition funny.

  There she went again, Gary thought, holding things back on him! Oh, she could talk for Ireland over those bloody bottles of red wine, leaving no stone unturned when it came to stories of her childhood, her adolescence, her whole bloody life. When she was drunk she tended to repeat herself, which became terribly tedious, but he had still listened! But he had noticed that she didn’t discuss things like Conor’s affair with him any more, and had been very unenthusiastic when he’d told her about his idea to secure Conor visitation rights to his unborn child. Had nipped it in the bud, actually. And he only trying to help!

  Neasa saw that Gary looked a bit down. Probably because she hadn’t agreed to sex and a sandwich in Emily’s office. But it just wasn’t that exciting any more now that it was actually Gary’s office.

  “Creepy wants to know whether I’m bringing someone on Friday night,” Gary said.

  They were having a sort of official swearing-in dinner for Gary and all the partners and their other halves would attend.

  “Oh, Gary, I don’t know.” The thoughts of it made her ill. She would have to get very drunk.

  “Something better to do?” he asked lightly, but there was an underlying edge.

  “Sweetness! Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just that it’ll be full of stuffed shirts.” She hurried on, “Except for you, of course. Let me think about it.”

  Gary wasn’t happy, she saw. She smiled brightly. “Tell you what. Why don’t we have a big romantic dinner tonight? With loads of wine and candles and I’ll fill a big bubble bath for us later and we’ll use that new thing you bought in that sex shop?”

  “Great,” Gary said.

  “Great,” Neasa echoed.

  Mr Gerald Chapman set off from Cork at twenty past one. He would have to drive hard and fast if he were to make his two o’clock appointment in Martha’s. The traffic was terrible out of Cork, which only added to his black mood.

  Killian, his seventeen-year-old son, had arrived home last night sober. This had immediately made Mr Chapman suspicious. The boy had stood in the living room, head hanging, and told them that his girlfriend was pregnant.

  “Oh my God,” Hannah had moaned. “How could you do that to poor Deirdre?”

  It wasn’t Deirdre. It was a new one, apparently. Andrea. She was sixteen.

  “I’m very sorry,” the little sod had said to Mr Chapman beseechingly. Because somehow, his father would sort it out. He always did.

  “Don’t sorry, son,” Mr Chapman said calmly. “I’ll deliver it for you.”

  The boy was aghast. “But we can’t have it. I mean . . .”

  “You mean you don’t want it,” Mr Chapman said. “Why didn’t you think of that before you went sticking your little willy into a schoolgirl?”

  “Gerry!” Hannah was horrified.

  “No, Hannah.” Mr Chapman had never been angrier. “You make a mistake and so you think you can have an abortion just like that? Like you were buying a fucking CD in a record shop?”

  “Gerry, stop it now!”

  He didn’t even want to think of the irony of it. An obstetrician who couldn’t teach his own son the basics of birth control! And now a young girl’s whole life ruined. Children, bearing and rearing children. It was obscene. Mr Chapman felt as responsible as if he’d impregnated the girl himself.

  Killian was looking at the floor, as though waiting for Mr Chapman to tell him that he was going to indefinitely suspend his pocket money. What was the point in talking to him about courage and responsibility and the value of human life?

  “This is your mess, Killian,” was all he said. “I wash my hands of it.”

  It wasn’t that easy. Andrea, it transpired, was the daughter of Cork Councillor Henry Maher. Councillor Maher rang Mr Chapman later that night and left him in no doubt about his feelings on the matter. Andrea was sitting her Leaving Certificate next year, and she hoped to go on to veterinary college, and what was Mr Chapman going to do about that?

  “It isn’t a decision for us to make,” Mr Chapman said strongly.

  “Bollocks it isn’t,” Henry Maher said. “She only turned sixteen a week ago. You are aware of the law on statutory rape?”

  There was a meeting of the clans scheduled for Thursday evening. The outcome was inevitable.

  And now there were more problems with Cork. They had just taken receipt of an extremely expensive piece of equipment for the paediatric intensive care unit, afforded by the cost-cutting measures of closing Martha’s. Wonderful, except that nobody was trained in the use of the damned thing. It was sitting there in its packaging while staff they couldn’t afford to lose went off to find out how it worked. It looked like his fault, of course.

  The pickets were out in force outside Martha’s, forcing him to slow to five miles an hour. Not that anybody dared to stick a placard against his front window. They contented themselves with stony glances, as though the hospital closure had been entirely his decision.

  And there was Emily Collins going around gathering signatures for a petition. His one and only patient in Martha’s. That had raised a few sniggers in the staff canteen.

  Let them keep Martha’s. He didn’t bloody want it.

  Full of self-pity, he marched from his car and inside.

  Emily had her scan at five past two
.

  “Oh, look! A hand!” she said. She couldn’t help herself counting the fingers, and was grateful that her baby had the correct number, plus the requisite thumb.

  Mr Chapman saw her doing this. “Obviously the baby is so big now that you’ll only see bits and pieces of it on the scan,” he murmured, lest she accuse him of mislaying most of her baby. He had gone over her file and discovered she was a solicitor. Of all things.

  “And the nose!” Emily marvelled. It was very cute and button-like, as least as far as she could tell. The picture was fuzzy and close-up.

  She turned her head. “Conor – why don’t you come over and have a look?”

  But Conor was no longer hanging back there by the wall. He was right behind Emily, looking at the scan. Emily found herself a bit taken aback that he had not waited for her permission.