The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  On the other side of us sits another couple, a little older than us this time, and even more jaded. They barely speak to each other, but oh boy, do they drink, bottle after bottle. It strikes me as somewhat unfortunate that we three women should all be seated on the same side of our tables, with our backs to the walls, and thus be presented in a row as the various stages of disillusionment.

  The restaurant is popular, and the larger tables in the middle of the room are taken up by people out in groups, couples out with other couples, chatting, laughing, having fun. From my seat I can watch them, and see all that fun they are having. Andrew, as he has his back to the room, can only look at me, or the wall behind me, or that beautiful girl to my left. Or the other woman, to my right, of course. I smile, and do my best to engage him. I feel that we have entered a show, and that now we must play our parts.

  We make polite chat. We talk about Jono mostly, of course, and the house, and our plans for the summer. Or, rather, our lack of plans for the summer. We cannot afford much; our money is all being spent on Jono’s school. And the truth is I don’t much like summer holidays; to me, everything that is wrong with us is magnified when we are away, when we are stuck together for a week, the three of us, dependent and bound. I picture us, trudging around foreign streets in mutual silence, or saying, Look, Jono, look at the man over there with the bird on his shoulder; or Look, Jono, do you see how rickety that building is? And Jono, sullenly, painfully, snapping back, Yes, yes, I know, I can see, you don’t have to go on.

  Once, when Jono was younger, we went on a package holiday to a hotel with a children’s club. It was hell. Not for Jono so much, but for us. We had to deliver him to the club at 9.15 in the morning and we didn’t see him again until five. The hours in between were interminable. We pined for him. We counted the seconds. And when we got him back again, we fell upon him with our anxious questions: Did you have enough to drink, what did you have for lunch, did you put your sun cream on, stay in the shade, wear a hat? We smothered him with neurotic love, till the joy was squashed right out of him. Poor Jono. He doesn’t want to be with us, but we can’t bear to be without him.

  So when Andrew sits opposite me now, saying, ‘We could go to France, maybe, and stay in a caravan on one of those sites with the big swimming pools. I know it’s not very exciting, but it wouldn’t cost too much if we just had a week, and Jono would like the pools,’ I cannot raise much enthusiasm. I cannot think of anything worse than the three of us being holed up together in a caravan, surrounded by other noisier, happier families who are good at that sort of thing, spilling out their fun and their laughter and multiple children, along with their bicycles and their barbecues, and all the other families that they came with or just happen to meet up with while they are there . . . I cannot think of anything that would make me feel more alone. But Andrew is hardly enthusiastic either, really; he makes the suggestions okay, but it’s as if he feels that it’s what is expected of him. There is a huge shadow of negativity behind his voice. His tone reminds me of those old people you see waiting in pairs at bus stops, when one might comment on the good weather we’re having and the other will come back with an Ah, but we’ll pay for it later. When did Andrew start speaking like that, as if there’s a condition and a price to be paid for everything? ‘If we booked early we might get a good deal on the Channel tunnel,’ he’s saying, ‘or maybe we could look at the ferries.’

  Of course I am supposed to take his idea and run with it. It is my job to add the enthusiasm. Oh yes, that’ll be lovely, I’m supposed to say, all bright-eyed and eager. Jono will have a great time. It doesn’t have to cost a lot. We can do our own cooking; it’ll be fun, it’ll be cosy . . .

  And then he’ll do that thing of tilting his head to one side and drawing in his breath slightly, as if having second thoughts now. Oh, I don’t know, though, he’ll say in his bus-stop voice, it would have to be pretty cheap this year.

  I’ll look around, I’ll say. I’ll look on the Internet, get some brochures . . . I’ll wheedle and persuade. I’ll perform as if it was the best idea ever, and then he, Mr Purse-Strings, will concede. And won’t he feel like the big man then.

  Isn’t that the way it goes? Isn’t that what’s expected in the shunting and shifting that keeps a marriage going? Like we are an old train with rusty wheels in need of constant oiling. If I did perform like that, we would have a good evening. We would have something new to talk about, to share, to get excited over. We would lean closer across the table, my face would become animated and, therefore, attractive. He might even tell me that I look pretty when I smile. If I could bring myself to perform like that, we would have a chance.

  But I can’t.

  I find myself comparing him to Simon. Or, rather, comparing this situation to my lunch with Simon. I think of Simon’s long, slender fingers scrunching up that piece of card, or tapping at his wine glass. And clutching my hand. It’s so good to see you, he said. And, You look amazing.

  And here is Andrew, going on about caravans. He eats as he talks. I see the food moving around inside his mouth. I see the dark speckles on his chin and his jaw where he shaved this morning, but could have done with shaving again, tonight. I wish that he would look at me the way Simon looked at me, and I hate him because he doesn’t.

  ‘I do not want to stay in a caravan,’ I say, and he shuts up now. His face colours a little, and irritation tightens his jaw. ‘I mean, why would I want to stay in a caravan? I’d end up cooking, and cleaning, and mopping the floor, just like I do at home. Only in a caravan.’

  ‘I thought it would be fun for Jono,’ Andrew says in a hurt voice.

  And I say, ‘When does Jono ever have fun with us?’

  We carry on eating in silence. I become even more aware of the loving couple to the left of me, and the not-so-loving couple to the right. Andrew is driving, so I drink most of the wine, but it doesn’t make me feel good; it makes me feel prickly and on edge, and even more on my own.

  Eventually Andrew says, ‘Well, do you have any better suggestions?’

  ‘We could just not go on holiday,’ I say flippantly. And spare ourselves the misery.’

  ‘I’m sorry that you feel like that,’ Andrew says and his face stills and shuts down. What I want, what I really want, is for him to grab my hand across the table and say, Come on, we’ll have a good time, or to tell me that he loves me, or even just that we’ll be okay. That would do; if he would just tell me that we’ll be okay. But he says none of these things, and so I goad him further, I dig myself into a hole.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ I say. ‘But it’s true. When do we ever have any fun?’

  My voice is too loud, and I see him glance to the sides. Shame and loathing twist inside me. I hate myself. He makes me hate myself.

  ‘I’m sorry that you find me so boring,’ he says coldly. And then he turns away from me, to signal for the bill. The evening is over, ruined – as ever – by me, and my need for more than this. My need for more than just politeness, and parenthood, and just getting by. I feel my face hot, from the wine, from frustration. We cannot talk. We can never talk. But neither can we even argue.

  In the car I say, ‘I do not find you boring. But I do want to have some fun. And I do not want it always to be about Jono.’

  After a moment he says very quietly, ‘You know, you can be incredibly cruel sometimes, Rachel.’

  And quick as a flash I say straight back, ‘So can you, Andrew, so can you.’

  We do not speak again, all the way home. I stare ahead to avoid looking at his stony face, and the tears burn fierce and useless in my eyes.

  I lie on our bed, naked apart from my underwear, but it’s my best underwear. Black lace, optimistically bought, not so very long ago. In a different frame of mind, I would just put on my nightie and clean my teeth and curl myself into the loneliness of the dark, but tonight I am determined. I am teetering in a dangerous place, and if Andrew had any feeling for me at all he would know it, he would see it, and he would do
his damnedest to bring me back. That he might not see it or, even worse, might see it but still not care, is too terrifying for words. So I lie here, and I wait.

  He is a long time downstairs. I hear him in the kitchen getting a glass of water. I hear him go into the living room and turn on the TV. My heart bats against my ribs like a trapped bird.

  ‘Are you coming up?’ I asked when we got back from the restaurant.

  And he said, ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’

  He says I am cruel, but how cruel is he? I lie here with my teeth gritted and my entire being a boiling, hurting mass of rejection. I resist calling to him, though that is what I used to do. I used to go to the top of the stairs and call down, Andrew, what are you doing? Andrew, will you come up to bed? Like a nag, or worse still, as if I was begging. Begging, for my husband to come and be my lover, to love me.

  I will not beg.

  Once, I accused him of being gay. Oh yes, he’s right, I can be cruel. I lay beside him, desperate to be loved, to be held, to be wanted. But all I got was his eternal coldness, the frigid politeness of an indifferent arm around my shoulders. I wriggled against him. I prodded his ribs. He lay on his back – that arm around me as still and unyielding as a dead man’s.

  I sighed. I wriggled some more. His breathing deepened as he started drifting to sleep, and I dug my finger hard into his side.

  ‘Ow!’ he yelped, and turned to me at last. ‘What did you do that for?’

  I wanted an effect. I wanted to hit home. ‘Tell me something,’ I said in a voice that scratched out hard and hateful. ‘Are you gay?’

  He looked at me, his eyes cloudy with tiredness. ‘I am not gay,’ he said slowly and precisely. And he turned over, and went to sleep.

  I wait, and I wait.

  I can’t stop the tears, creeping into my eyes. They are the mean, redundant tears of a forty-one-year-old woman, messing up my mascara. I reach over the side of the bed and grab my hand-mirror, and a tissue, and then I lie back down again, on my back, and blot at my eyes. I hold the mirror above me and look at my face, and as I look, more tears slide out. How did I come to be like this? I am still young enough, pretty enough; it should not be over for me. I feel that I am being slowly killed; that the price I am paying for this motherhood and this marriage is the draining away of myself.

  And what kind of price is that?

  The night sinks on. He will be asleep, in front of the TV. I am too raw to move, too full of fear now. I drag the duvet over my body and close my eyes. It is over. I know it, as I have known it for a long time. It’s over, yet what can I do?

  What can I ever do, when there is Jono?

  I wake with a jolt. My eyes are sticky, glued up with mascara tears. I think that I am still alone, but I stick out a foot and there is Andrew beside me. That he managed to slink in somehow once I’d fallen asleep fills me with a deep, slow rage. It is like having a stranger in my bed. He sleeps beside me, but he is not with me. His very presence simply reinforces my aloneness.

  I turn over and prop myself up on my elbow. He is sleeping on his side, curled away from me. I listen to the steady rhythm of his breathing, and I wonder how it is that he can sleep so easily when I am wide awake now. I pull back the duvet and look at him, this man that I have loved, this father of my son. I study him, the planes of his back, the curve of his spine, and my heart is a tight, hard knot. I cannot remember the last time we had sex, but when we did that’s all that it was – sex. A pushing and a shoving and a grunting, until it was done. I lay underneath Andrew and I looked at his eyes, and I saw how hard it was for him to hold my gaze, as if he was embarrassed somehow by what he was doing. I saw how he held himself back; his lower half did the work, but his head – it wasn’t with me. We didn’t connect. It was just an act, like animals might do in the park, a bodily need and therefore slightly shameful, as if it was something that mummies and daddies shouldn’t do. As if it was something that people who had given birth to dead babies shouldn’t do. I felt as if I was the source of shame. Me. It is my body that produced the dead baby, after all. Why would he want to make love to that?

  So I look at him now, and anger and frustration and self-loathing wash through me in waves. I want to touch him. I long to touch him. I move closer, till my face is almost against his back. The tiny hairs on his skin rise as though to a magnet and tickle my nose. His skin is so warm, the scent of it so familiar, and yet so out of bounds. I want to curl into him and press my body against his, but how can I? How can I, when he has rejected me so?

  Andrew is up before me. He has things to do: the fence to fix at the end of the garden, and the area behind the shed to clear. Such things will take him a good many weekends. I wake up and I am alone. For a while I lie there and I imagine what it would be like always to wake alone. Would it be so bad? Would it really be any worse than this?

  I picture Andrew sneaking quietly out of bed so as not to disturb me, and then doing his best to avoid me by occupying himself outside. Did we row? Is that how he sees it? To my mind, it would be better if we did row, instead of this constant simmering tension.

  I get up and put on my bathrobe. I am still wearing last night’s underwear, like an unwanted whore. I glance in the mirror and see my messy hair and my streaky, mascara-blackened eyes. What a sight my face must have made upon the pillow. What a sorry, pathetic sight.

  I walk down the hall to Jono’s room. I push open the door and I can smell my child, both his presence and his absence. His bed is still rumpled from yesterday, his pyjamas flung upon the floor. Even though he is not here, he fills this room. It will always be his room. I cannot imagine ever leaving this house, when Jono has grown up; I cannot imagine there not being this room for him, into which I can go just to be close to him. Suddenly I remember Vanessa’s room, with its white furniture and blue walls and the little silver moons dangling from her light shade; I think of her clothes all squashed into her wardrobe and her shoes piled up underneath, their heels sticking out in random spikes, and of all the half-used bottles of lotions and potions on her dressing table, her make-up and her hair brushes, clogged with their catch of hairs. I think of the dirty pair of knickers kicked under her bed one night when we were there – Oh my God, don’t look at those! – and of her old teddy bears lined up like an audience on the top of her bunk beds, to be sat upon, and squashed or shoved out the way, by us. I think of the old travel sweet-tin that she used as an ashtray, with its little graveyard of lipstick-tipped cigarette butts, pressed down into the ash. And I think of the smell of her room, the smell of her perfume and her clothes, the smell of teenager and stale cigarettes, and just of her.

  What did her mother do with all that stuff? What would I do, if it was me? I would keep it, all of it, I couldn’t bear not to. But how long does it take for a person to fade from a room, till the scent of them is gone, even from their pillow and their clothes? I think of Mrs Reiber making the decision to leave that house in Oakley, and I cannot imagine it. I cannot bear to imagine it.

  I pick up Jono’s pyjamas and tuck them under his pillow. I straighten his duvet. I walk to the window, collecting up discarded, dirty clothes along the way, and look out. Andrew is out there, down the end of the garden, banging nails into the fence. As I watch he drops his hammer, puts his hands on the backs of his hips and stretches out his back. Then he stands there for a few moments, staring at his work. I wonder what he is thinking. He cannot be thinking about the fence. He picks up the hammer again and whacks it hard against the wood.

  ‘Oh, Andrew.’ I whisper his name and my breath clouds the glass. He turns his head for a second as if he can sense me watching him, but then he’s back to his task, banging out his anger. What will become of us? What will become of me? The familiar prickles of dread start creeping their way through my body, leaving me open and numb. What will Andrew and I do when Jono has grown up and left us? What will I do with myself then?

  I turn away from the window and look around the room at Jono’s things, at his bookcase crammed
with old Beano annuals and sticker books, with picture books from toddlerhood that he still won’t part with, and puzzle books that he’s been through again and again, in different-coloured pens; the books that he actually reads are piled up beside his bed. I look at all his Lego models in their various states of collapse and at his marble run, bending over and snapped in half like a wrecked fairground ride, the marbles like tiny bodies, fallen out from underneath. There’s his old collection of football cards scattered about on the floor beside his drawers; the old lunch box I gave him, in which to keep them, is discarded next to them and now contains a large stone, three Lego wheels and the remains of a dead spider. And everywhere his toys – so many toys – stuffed onto, beneath and beside his shelves. I spy a lone sock dangling out from his Scrabble box and retrieve it. I pick up the worn old bear that my mother gave him when he was two, and prop it up on his pillow.

  What will I do when Jono is gone?

  I sit on his bed, with my clutch of dirty clothes held tight in my arms.

  I should get a job, I know. I should never have quit work in the first place, but what is the point in admitting that now? At the time it seemed the right thing to do. It seemed the only thing to do. Jono was all that mattered. He still is. But what will happen to me when he no longer wants me?

  Andrew has never said, Why don’t you go back to work? Even now that money is tight, even last night when I sat there complaining that I didn’t want to stay in a caravan, he didn’t say, Well, perhaps if you got a job we could afford something else. No, he didn’t say that, though he must think it at times, surely, as I do. But we made our pact together, we made it in shock and fear, and we stuck to it. We did what we thought was best for Jono – never mind what it meant for ourselves.