The Child Inside

by Suzanne Bugler

  I do not think about Andrew when I am with Simon. Even Jono becomes oddly distant, temporarily stilled within my head. The house, the domestic, the endless silent ache . . . all of it just fades away. What we have, Simon and I, is an escape. We are clawing back something lost, reclaiming something precious. We do not talk about our day-to-day, our separate daily lives. We talk about Vanessa, and the old days. And Simon talks with the same passion and urgency with which he makes love to me. ‘You remember her,’ he says to me, over and over, touching my face, searching my eyes as if he cannot believe I am really there. ‘You knew her too.’

  And I can become the girl that Simon remembers – or thinks he remembers – from those golden, enchanted days. I can be the girl I always wanted to be.

  FIFTEEN

  I have something of Vanessa’s.

  It is an item of clothing; a soft blue cotton jacket, not denim exactly, but that sort of thing. In fact it’s more of a shirt than a jacket, but you’d wear it over things. Vanessa wore it over things. The strip of lining down the front behind the buttons, and just inside the cuffs, is pink-and-white-striped velvet. Vanessa wore it with the cuffs turned back, so that you could see that lining. She wore it open, with a little vest top underneath and her jeans. And on her feet her brown suede pixie boots with the tassels at the back, and looped through the waist of her jeans that brown leather belt with the blue mosaic clasp. I loved that belt, even though half the pieces were missing. She’d have her hair tied back, in a long French plait, if there was someone around to do it for her, or that side-of-the-head pony tail, like she has in that photograph with Tristram, the one that Simon showed me. Or else she’d just leave her hair down, and that’s how I loved it best, left to ripple and flow around her shoulders in a mass of Pre-Raphaelite waves.

  I acquired this jacket from Leanne. Vanessa had left it at Leanne’s house one day, and there it stayed, waiting to be collected. It hung from the back of the chair in Leanne’s room, along with a varied assortment of other clothes. And I’d see it there, when I came over on a Sunday afternoon and listened to Leanne’s tales of the night before. I’d see it there, and sometimes I’d try it on. It didn’t look half as good on me as it did on Vanessa, but I loved it anyway. And I remember it smelled of her, and it continued to smell of her, for years and years, long after she’d gone.

  I asked Leanne if I could borrow it. Do you think Vanessa would mind, I asked, if it’s just for a night?

  Oh, sure, Leanne said, barely even listening.

  I’ll bring it back tomorrow, I said, but I never did.

  I only wore it the once, to some party or other at college, and then it hung in my room, not from the back of a chair, but in my wardrobe, hidden. Leanne forgot all about it. As far as I know, Vanessa never knew I had it. Maybe she never even realized she’d mislaid it.

  I couldn’t wear it again, in case Leanne saw see me in it, and then she would remember and no doubt ask for it back. And so I hid it away, and took it out just to look at it and touch it, and to smell its precious smell. The longer I had it, the more I couldn’t bear to part with it again.

  And then Vanessa died.

  Now, one morning when Andrew is at work and Jono at school, I hunt for this jacket. It was relegated to storage long ago, when I left home. I packed my old books along with various other relics and keepsakes from childhood into two cardboard boxes, which are now in the loft, untouched for all these years. And the loft is not a place I would normally go.

  The entrance is via the landing ceiling. We have one of those hook-down ladders, and it takes me an age to work out how to hook it down. Then gingerly I climb up. I’ve been up the steps before once or twice; I’ve even gone as far as to stick my head through the hole while Andrew was in the loft, getting down the Christmas decorations. But I’ve never actually climbed the last bit, right into the roof.

  I reach the top of the ladder, put my arms inside the hatch and heave myself up, not thinking about how I will get down again.

  There’s a mass of stuff up here. This is Andrew territory. I stand on the boards that he’s put down across the beams; I see the shelves that he’s rigged up for the various things that he deems to be useful. I see things divided into sections, evidence of his constant project-making. Here are the old broken appliances that he thinks to fix one day, though anyone in their right mind would throw them out: the old radio; an old cine-camera that belonged to his dad; our ancient record player for which you can no longer get a needle. And here are the records that can no longer be played on that record player, all stacked up and gathering dust. There’s the old TV, and a mini drinks fridge that was won in a raffle and will never be used. There are bags and bags of Jono’s old clothes, and his baby toys; I spy his box of Duplo and his pull-along dog. Pushed back under the eaves is Jono’s white-painted changing stand, his high chair and baby-bouncer. And the cot. I cannot bring myself to look at the cot.

  I focus on the task in hand.

  I find my old boxes tucked down behind a crate of Andrew’s own college books. His books, I notice, show signs of recent disturbance, whereas the lids on both of my old boxes are covered in dust. I have not touched them since the day we moved into this house, and then merely to move them. I have not looked inside. I am not even 100 per cent sure that the jacket will be there; it is very possible that I didn’t pack it up with my stuff after all, but maybe left it at my parents’ house. Maybe it has even been thrown away. This last thought twists in me, and fills me with dread. When I moved my things out of my parents’ home I didn’t want to cling to my past. I’d moved on. Leanne and I had grown apart. I’d been through college and just come back from a year in Paris; I was with Andrew, I had a future to look forward to. I thought about Vanessa still, but as a memory, more distant then than she is to me now, somehow. But in my twenties I was too busy looking forward, whereas now I have become entrenched in looking back.

  I reach down to lift the lid off the first box. I am incredibly nervous; afraid that I won’t find this jacket, but just as afraid that I will. I don’t know how I will feel when I see it again. But this first box is full of old school books and valentine cards and exam certificates, all stuffed in, never to be looked at again. I have no desire to look at them now.

  What if the jacket isn’t here? What if it did get thrown away? But I pull the lid off the other box and there it is. I find it straight away, wrapped up in a paper bag. And suddenly I remember putting it in that paper bag and tucking it away, as though to rest. The bag is crisp and brittle to the touch now, and I’m afraid that the jacket will be rotten, or full of moths. I lift it out carefully and peel the paper away. And I unfold the jacket. The blue has faded to a dirty white along the creases, and the velvet of the lining is rough now under my fingertips. And it smells musty and stale. I’m disappointed by the smell. I feel robbed by it. I thought that if I were to find this jacket I would fall upon it, holding it to my face and breathing in the scent of Vanessa, filling my head with the memory of her. Instead I find myself recoiling slightly. I wish I had left it hidden and untouched, instead of finding it like this. It is a reminder of what is gone, that is all; of what is vanished and turned to dust. I wish I’d let it stay as it was in my memory, the first time I tried it on, so soft, so new, so still of her. Now it is the stuff of jumble sales; it is dead man’s clothes.

  It seems incredible that this jacket, and those three photos that Simon showed me, can really be all that is left of Vanessa. A whole life, reduced to this. Suddenly I think of Mrs Reiber, that day she came into the cafe in Kew; I think of her with her fur coat and her cut-glass accent and her stockings all worn to shreds. She is Vanessa’s mother. She held her in her arms. How – how – can she wipe out her own daughter like that? How can she pretend that she never lived at all?

  And yet what can you ever do? How can you move on?

  All of Vanessa’s things would be like this jacket now; turning rancid through purposelessness and decay. How unbearable would it have been to see t
hat? To have tried to keep her alive through things?

  I ought to give the jacket to Simon. I think of him, showing me those photos. They are all that I have of her, he said. They are all that is left. I know I ought to give it to him, but I don’t know that I can.

  I sit there on the attic floor and there is a fist in my heart, pressing, pressing hard. I hold that jacket in my hands, fragile and useless as a dead baby. And then, as if it was a dead baby, I put it away again; I wrap it back up in that paper and put it back in that box and I close the lid. I wish I had never got it out.

  SIXTEEN

  Two weeks after Jono’s birthday I meet Janice for lunch in Covent Garden. Naturally, she was too busy to come and see Jono, what with her work and her boyfriend, though she did send him something in the post. Janice hates family gatherings and avoids them at all costs. Being single, and childless – or child-free, as she would put it – she can do that. She can make that choice.

  And so we arrange to meet on this Saturday, as though by seeing me she is also somehow discharging her duty to Jono, her nephew and, let me add at this point, her godson. To be honest, I wouldn’t normally mind this, in fact it’s a logic I have happily gone along with for years. It’s a big day for you, too, she said to me once, so you and I should go out for lunch. A present for Jono and lunch with me, and we’re all happy, aren’t we? Especially as it I means I don’t have to put on the stilted, uncomfortable display of happy families that a visit to my house would entail.

  But today, taking the train up to Waterloo, I am too aware of the usual purpose of my trips into town these days, and too aware also of the fact that today, being a Saturday, Simon wouldn’t even be there. I picture his flat, silent and empty, and then I correct myself and picture that strange unknown woman in there, changing the bed sheets on which we have lain, cleaning the bathroom, replenishing the fridge. It wouldn’t be so bad if I had a key, if I could let myself in there, just to be close to him. And I did suggest this. One day, just a week or so ago; it was raining and we’d arranged to meet, but he was late and for twenty minutes or more I was left standing in the foyer like a hooker, waiting, waiting. ‘Perhaps if I had a key . . .’ I said on the way up in the lift, trying not to sound annoyed.

  But he laughed. ‘You’re sounding like a wife,’ he said, and my insides, my heart, my soul, every part of me turned to ice. ‘Come on,’ he continued, putting his hands on my hips and shoving up my skirt, kissing me, driving me out of the lift and into his flat and his bed, ‘you don’t need a key.’

  And now I sit on the train to Waterloo, and I think of him leaving London last night, rushing back to Kingham, to be with his wife. I picture him waking in bed with her this morning, the country sunlight streaming through the window. I picture a vast table in the kitchen, laden with fresh bread from the Aga, eggs from the hens, and butter and jam; I picture the children rushing in, golden-haired and beautiful, calling, Daddy! Daddy! And I mind. Believe me, I mind.

  I get off the train and walk towards the river, just as I would if I was going to Simon’s flat, but instead of carrying on along the South Bank I take the steps up to Waterloo Bridge and start crossing over. It is a calm, still day and London is bathed in soft, pale-grey light as the weak sunshine reflects off the concrete. It is mild, too, for March, and the tourists and day-trippers are out in their droves. I have always loved this walk across the bridge; the view of the Houses of Parliament to the left and the City to the right, but today in my heart I feel a hollow, dragging ache. If I look to my right I can see the Oxo Tower, and I find that I can’t stop looking. I want to see Simon’s flat. I want to know if I can see it from here, if I can make it out and identify it. Because if I can, I will have it then, marked forever in my head. Every time I cross this bridge, every time, I will see it.

  I run over onto the other side, dodging through the traffic. I can’t help myself. Like the tourists looking at the view, I am there, one hand shielding my eyes, peering as far as I can.

  I can’t see it, though, no matter how hard I try. The Oxo Tower stands out as a landmark, but the buildings around it merge into each other, a jigsaw puzzle of grey. It annoys me that I can’t see it. I feel as if I am being denied, as if Simon’s flat and all the buildings around it are closing together and shutting me out. And so I carry on walking now, though I can’t stop myself from turning and turning again, looking back, to see if from a different angle I might get a better view.

  By the time I cross the Strand and start walking up Wellington Street I am all out of sorts, angry with myself, angry with Simon. I think of him wandering down the lane into his village with wife, kids and dogs in tow, meandering at leisure, comfortable in his world. I picture them, stamping the mud off their boots at the village pub; I smell the wood-smoke from the chimneys, hear the crackle of wood upon an open fire. I picture this idyllic world that I will never be part of, and I am shot through with a bolt of envy. And I wonder how it is that he can lead such a double life, moving from London to the country and from the country back to London again with such apparent ease, picking up and putting down his family as he goes, and picking up and putting me down, too.

  But of course what Simon and I have is not of the real world. It is a fantasy, born out of loss and longing, a fabricated illusion of a life. I am not real to him. How can I be?

  I shove my way through the crowds now and feel as I have always felt: like the outsider, the one on the edge of other people’s lives, seeing, stealing what I can. By the time I meet Janice at the cafe on the corner of the Piazza I am sunk in the grip of self-loathing.

  She doesn’t make it any better.

  I am there first, and I get us a table under the awning so that we are half-indoors, half-out, with a view of the crowds gathering around the street performers across the square. I sit there with my drink, watching all this fun and activity while I wait for her, a good fifteen minutes. When she does at last arrive she swoops in, pushing past the other tables, knocking people with her bag.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says as she collapses down into the chair opposite me. ‘Had to speak to Paul. His bloody wife’s giving him hell.’

  She does nothing to keep her voice down, and around us people glance over their shoulders, take a good look.

  Bitterness, and some dark sense of irony, has me quoting, ‘They always go back to their wives in the end, you know.’

  ‘Not always,’ she snaps back. ‘Ian didn’t.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘But if there are children involved.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Rachel, children are not the be-all and end-all.’

  I am struck by her vehemence and feel a rush of heat to my face. It is not a good start. We look at our menus in silence.

  And then, as if it is a natural follow-on, she says, ‘How is Jono?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Thank you for his present.’

  ‘I take it he enjoyed his birthday?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  Why do I feel so patronized by these questions? So put-in-my-box as the good little wife and mother, as if she knows everything about the world and I know nothing – nothing – beyond the limits of my own domestic walls? Her questions are an end to conversation, not a start. They distance me from her. And yet she is my sister. We are both screwing other women’s husbands. We have so much more in common than she thinks.

  ‘Do you remember my baby? My other baby?’ I do not know where these words come from; they are out of my mouth before I even know I want to say them. And now that they are out, I stare at her, just as shocked as she is.

  ‘Yes, of course I do,’ she says.

  ‘Good.’ I nod my head. ‘Good.’ My heart is thumping and I am perilously close to tears.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ she says, but then the waitress appears beside us, butting in with her oblivious cheer. ‘Salad,’ Janice snaps at her.

  And I say, ‘Same,’ and take a deep breath, and try to get a grip.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ Janice demands again when the waitress has
gone. She is leaning closer to me over the table now and watching me with narrowed eyes. I am reminded of how things were when we were children; of how she’d demand and intimidate me till she got her own way, so that we always had to watch her programmes on TV and play her games, games that she would always win. And of how she’d sneer if she ever caught me crying. This, perhaps, is why I don’t tell her things now.

  And yet I need to. I need to tell someone.

  ‘It’s something we’ve never talked about, that’s all,’ I manage to say. To avoid her eyes I look out across the Piazza. Some guy on stilts is balancing a tray of glasses on his head; the crowd whoop and sway as he staggers among them. ‘No one ever talks about it. About her’

  I can feel her staring at me. ‘It was a long time ago, wasn’t it, Rachel?’ she says at last, though her voice is gentler now, I will give her that. ‘Why bring it up now?’

  I don’t answer. I can’t. I watch that clown, weaving around. Suddenly one of the glasses topples and slides off the tray. It smashes on the ground and the crowd jumps back, squealing. The clown loses his balance for a second and another glass falls, and another. The show is in chaos.

  The waitress comes back and slaps down our salads.

  ‘Rachel,’ Janice says quietly, ‘what’s this all about?’

  I turn and face her. Nothing, I could say. I was just thinking, that’s all. And I could change the subject. We could talk about her work, her boyfriend, the complexities of a hectic, single life. I could ask her about her holiday plans, her progress in painting her flat. And my life could stay where it always stays, skirted over briefly in a series of mundane surface issues, and then we would part, as we always part, done until next time.

  Or I could tell her.