by Louise Welsh
“Dionne! What’s going on? Why are you bringing all that up? That was years ago,” Sam said. “Let’s go back to the house! I knew we shouldn’t have chosen that room! Even for me, there’s something creepy about an empty cot!”
“What do you mean, even for me, like you’re the reasonable one?”
“I mean, I’m not the one who wanted a baby. Don’t read something into everything! We’re on holiday! We’re supposed to be relaxing.” Sam took my arm again along the last of the path. We came to the bit where we had to climb over the wall. Sam went first, and then turned around to help me. I lifted my leg over and climbed down the wooden step.
“You were the one who chose the house!” I said to her and the thought startled me. “You were the one who looked at the rooms on the Internet. You knew what was in each room.”
Sam gave me a look that was half fear and half something I couldn’t name. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I just don’t know what to do.”
We walked back to the house. I’d taken my arm back. The sun was actually out and the sky was really blue with lowlying white clouds, sweet and innocent like a child’s drawing. “What kind of mother do you think you would have been?” Sam said and her voice was low, and she said the words very slowly with a space between each word: “What kind of mother do you think you would have been?” I said nothing. I walked behind her dragging my feet and she kept turning to stare. She looked unhappy; the optimism of the morning had already been knocked out of her. “Hurry up,” she said. “Why do you have to make everything miserable, even a walk in the sunshine?” When we got back to the cottage, Sam unlocked the door, got in a fluster about which key unlocked which bit of the door, finally got us in, and went to the bathroom and slammed the bathroom door shut. I think she cried in there, but when she’s like that it’s best to leave her alone.
I go and lie down in the bedroom. The more I look at the cot in the room, the more it disturbs me. I start to try and move it across the floor, to see if it will move out of the room altogether and into the other room. But it won’t move. It’s too solid. “What are you doing?” Sam says, coming into the room, red-eyed. “I was just trying to see if this would move!” “Why?” she says. “You were the one that picked this room. Do you want to move rooms?” she says. “We’ll change rooms if that will help?” Her voice sounds gentle now; she is trying to make things better. Maybe she regrets her question; I don’t know. “No, that would just be silly,” I say. “I’ll be fine when I feel rested. I’m just not sleeping; it doesn’t matter where I sleep with all these hot flushes in the night. I throw the covers off and then throw them back on.” “Tell me about it,” Sam says laughing. “I might have to go and sleep in the other room tonight. You were so restless last night; I hardly got any sleep either. I think we’re both a bit tetchy today. Shall we start again, darling?” Sam hugs me in a half-hearted sort of a way, as if she must make the best of things.
All day it has felt like I’ve been waiting for the night, even though the night and the thought of the night frighten me, I’ve waited for it just the same. When Sam said she would sleep in the other room, I felt a little hurt, then liberated. It is when I am just about to have that sensation of somebody coming and shutting my eyelids with their tiny fingers that I hear it, the sound of the cot rocking back and forth, back and forth. It’s a creaking sound. I don’t dare move because I want it to go on. I want to hear it. Then, ever so softly and quite far away, I hear a baby’s gurgle and the sound of chimes, wind chimes. And a strange little laugh, a merry little baby’s laugh, a frothy high chuckle, delighted and surprised. I get up and walk to the cot. There’s nothing there. There is nothing there, nothing there at all. I creep back to my bed and listen carefully as if my life depended on every single sound. Upstairs, I can hear Sam pad around. It is late for her to be up. I look at my phone, which suddenly lights up. It is two in the morning. A bit later, I don’t know the time, I’m sure I hear the front door open.
When I wake in the morning the cot is empty and the blue and pink blankets are folded neatly in a square. I’m grateful for the daylight because for a minute I assume that with it comes normalcy, sanity. I’ve upset myself thinking of the baby girl I longed for those years ago. I even had a name for her, Lottie, and a middle name, Daphne. Lottie Daphne Drake. I could picture her. I still can picture her: a head of floppy dark-brown curls, dark eyes, soft skin, tiny little feet; tiny hands. A sunny disposition, Lottie had, always gurgling and giggling, curious about everything. And she would have been very quick to learn to say Mama. I thought about her so deeply that I conceived her in my mind. It was a mistake for me to ever name her. I imagined my mornings and nights, my days and evenings, my life; I imagined my life lit up by her life, my daughter’s. I imagined how she, little Lottie, would have changed my life. I pictured her so vividly I almost feel that what I went through was like a miscarriage; something I can never get Sam to understand.
“Morning,” I say to Sam, and she looks at me a little warily. “Sleep well?” “The minute my head hit the pillow,” Sam says. “Out like a light.” I wonder if this is really the truth, but I don’t ask her. I don’t dare say, “Is that really the truth?”
“I’d quite like to catch up with my old school friend I was telling you about. She’s not far from here.” I say.
“I don’t think you’re up to seeing friends,” Sam says. “You’re acting weird with me, what do you think you’ll be like with people you hardly see?” “I’m making an effort,” I say. “You told me I should make an effort.” “Not that kind of effort!” Sam says and laughs to herself, incredulously, a little snort of a laugh.
That day, Sam took me for a drive in the country and I stared out the window. It might yet be all right between us; I might just be going through this change which friends have told me has made them depressed or anxious, paranoid even. “If only I’d had a baby,” I said to Sam in the car, “then it would feel worthwhile. I wouldn’t mind the hot flushes or the depression if I had a daughter now, a twenty year old daughter or a twenty year old son. Was it that you were jealous of Paul? Is that what it was?” Sam ignored me as if I hadn’t spoken and we drove through the beautiful Somerset countryside in silence.
In the cottage that night, Sam made us dinner, spaghetti Bolognese, and opened a bottle of Chianti. She lit a candle. She said, “Look Dionne, darling, the past is past. We can’t do anything about it. I would have loved it if we had had a child together, you know that.”
“A child together is what you wanted! You would have liked to have been able to make me pregnant!”
“I would have. Is that a terrible thing?”
“But you couldn’t!”
“Thanks for that! Is that my fault?”
“You wouldn’t agree to me getting pregnant twenty years ago when there was still time!”
“That is not true and you know it is not true,” Sam said, “I was happy for you to try with Paul. It was you who didn’t want Paul coming between us, not me. Why do you go over the past and distort things?”
“It’s not what I remember. You didn’t want him coming between us!”
“Well, he’s come between us and he isn’t even here,” Sam said.
*
That night Sam looked over at me sitting in the armchair. “Dee?” she said. “Come and have a cuddle.” And I went to her and all the things in my head went quiet for a bit.
“Shall I come in and sleep with you tonight?”
I said yes. I said yes because I wanted her to hear it, to feel it. Sam got into bed with her book and read for a bit and then put the light off. I lay very still waiting for the sounds to start, the wind chimes; the far away baby’s gurgle, the sound of the empty cot rocking back and forth, back and forth. I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the sound of a car in the drive, and then I drifted off again. It was some way into the night before I heard it. I got up and looked in the cot and there was nothing there except the blue blanket had been unwrapped and was
not now folded into a square. I shook Sam awake. “Sam, there is somebody else here,” I said. “Sam!” She woke up and rubbed her eyes. “What now?” she said. “What is it?” She got up and looked in the cot. “I’ve seen it all now,” she said. “You moved that earlier today, didn’t you, and now you’re pretending somebody else has done it?”
“I didn’t touch it,” I said. “I swear I didn’t touch it. I swear on my own life.”
“Well, I bloody well didn’t touch it,” Sam said. But there was something in her voice, a belligerence, something a little odd. “Only you know what you are capable of,” I said and climbed back into bed, and put out my bedside light. I squeezed my eyes shut and lay still waiting to see what she would do next when she thought I had fallen asleep. I had terrible pains in my stomach. After years of being regular as clockwork, it was now difficult to predict.
It must have been sometime later; perhaps two or even three hours later, when I saw Sam tiptoe to the cot. She stood looking over it for quite a while. Then she left the room. Not long after that I heard the sound of the wind chimes and the baby gurgling and I sat bolt upright. I was clammy with fear. Not just a hot flush but the sweat of sheer terror. I got out of bed and crept across the floor as quietly as I could. I peered into the cot. The pink blanket was now unfolded and lying on top of the blue one and the cot was rocking, back and forth, back and forth, with some momentum, and Sam was nowhere in the room. I put my hand to the side of the cot to still it, to stop the rocking and when I looked inside again I saw that the blankets had rolled up into the shape of a small baby and I touched the back and said, there, there. Sam came down the stairs and stood beside me in the semi-dark. She touched my back. She whispered, “Back to your bed, darling, it’s very late.”
The next day, Sam drove me into Bath and we had a bowl of soup in a delicatessen and bought some things for supper, some cheeses, some olives, some salami and bread. “You look pale,” Sam said over lunch, sipping her strong coffee. “I so wanted this break to do you good.”
“It is doing me good,” I said and I meant it. I couldn’t wait for the night. I’d started not to dread it but to anticipate it, to look forward to it. There was nothing to be frightened of. In the evening we watched a film; a favourite of ours, An Imitation of Life. We both wept, as usual, at the end. And again Sam said, “If you don’t mind, my love, I’m going to have to sleep in the other room again. I find all your night-time restlessness a bit exhausting. I’ll be back to work soon and I won’t feel rested at all.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “More room for me to stretch out.” That night I didn’t lie down. I lay sitting up in bed. I felt a loose feeling and then a letting go. When I got up, the bed sheets were soaked in blood. So much blood, I stared at it appalled as if it was the scene a crime I had committed and couldn’t remember. I pulled the sheet off and padded into the bathroom in the dark. I put the sodden sheet in the sink and rinsed it over and over again with cold water. The blood stain wouldn’t budge. I found some bleach under the sink and put some of that in. Then I took the whole dripping sheet into the kitchen and put it in the washing machine. I went about the house quietly looking for the airing cupboard trying to remember where I’d seen spare sheets. Finally, I found a fresh one in the bathroom cupboard upstairs. I could hear voices in the other bedroom. I could hear laughing and giggling.
*
I went downstairs to my bedroom again, and switched on the bedside lamp. I couldn’t stop crying. I’d lost so much blood, I felt weak. I tried to put the fresh sheet on. It seemed the most difficult task; every time I got it on one corner, it popped off the other. I stared at the cot. The folded blankets were not folded and the little pillow was curled up under them in the shape of a baby. Up the stairs the wind chimes started and the faint sound of the baby’s gurgle, then the giggle, then the cot started rocking again, back and forth, and back and forth. I got up and pulled the rocking horse against the door. I pulled two chairs into the room and put them against the door too. I lifted her out of the cot and rocked her in my arms. I started singing softly at first, Summer time and the living is easy, fish are jumping and the cotton is high. Your daddy’s rich and your momma’s good-looking, so hush little baby, don’t you cry. There was a pounding on the door. “Dionne! Open the door! Open the door now!” “I can’t, darling,” I whispered. “I’m needed here.” Sam pushed against the door and knocked over the horse and the chairs. She stared at me. She said, “What on earth are you playing at?” “What are you playing at?” I said. “Well, it’s all out now. And I’m getting out. We’re going to live on our own, aren’t we?” I said to the baby. Sam stared at me and looked as if she was going to faint. “You’re looking very pale,” I said to Sam.
BELONGING
Ben Okri
Ben Okri (b.1959) was born in Minna, northern Nigeria not long before the official end of British colonial rule. After a short spell in London where his father studied law, Okri and his family returned to Nigeria in 1968, where he grew up in the shadow of the Nigeria-Biafra War. He left school at fourteen and published his first book at the age of nineteen. Okri’s publications include eight novels and several collections of poetry, short stories and essays. His work has been translated into over twenty languages.
I had gone into a house by accident or maybe not. Originally I was searching for Margaret House, a mansion block. Anyway I went into this flat and the man of the house took me for his in-law, whom he had never met, or had met once before, a long time ago. He began saying things to me confidentially, telling me how he disapproved of some acquaintance, and how we should do this that or other, and how my wife did or didn’t do what she was supposed to do, and he bared his heart and said many intimate things.
I watched him. When the misunderstanding began I tried to correct his error, but he seemed so keen to believe who I was and he was so absentminded and yet single-minded in his rattling on that I didn’t get a moment to correct his mistaking me for someone else.
Besides, I found I rather began to enjoy it. I enjoyed being someone else. It was fascinating. It was quite a delight suddenly finding myself part of a ready-made family, finding myself belonging. The thrill of belonging was wonderful.
The flat was cluttered with items of a rich family life. It was obviously a large extended family. The man who was addressing me was making food for a feast, adding ingredients for a cake, mixing condiments for a sauce, and it all smelt good. The enveloping party and family mood quite intoxicated me.
I began to think that maybe I was the man he took me for. And that if he saw me as another then maybe I was that other. Maybe I’d just woken from a dream into a reality in which I was who he thought I was, and that my old identity belonged to the dream. But as I toyed with this notion there was a growing sense in me that any minute the real person that was expected would turn up. Or, if not, that the wife of the real person would turn up, and would not recognise me.
The fear increased in me. Any minute now I would be unmasked. What would I do then? I felt awful. I dreaded it. I hadn’t got myself into this deliberately. I hadn’t even spoken a word during the whole time I was in that room, being mistaken for someone else. I wanted to belong. I wanted to belong there. A sentence of unmasking, like death, hung over me. I waited, and listened to the man of the house talking, as time ticked away, bringing closer my inevitable disgrace.
Before I had strayed into that flat I had been going to meet a relation, my last living relation. It was, it seemed, the last stop for me in the world. I had nowhere else to go. Now I had this family, with food and a festival atmosphere promised. And yet…
And then, as I stood there, the door behind me opened. A black, Arabic, pockmarked, elderly gentleman came into the room, and I knew instantly that this was the man I had been mistaken for. He had the quiet and unmistakable authority of being who he was, the real in-law. And my first shock was that I looked nothing like him at all. I was younger, fresher, better-looking. I had vigour and freedom. I wasn’t tr
apped by tradition. I was lithe. I could go any which way. I had many futures open to me. This man seemed weighed down. There was an air about him of one whose roads were closed, whose future was determined, whose roles were fixed. He was, in the worst sense of the word, middle-aged; with no freedom, even to think independent thoughts. All this I sensed in a flash, but realised fully only afterwards. But I was profoundly shocked to have been mistaken for this man.
At the very moment the in-law entered the flat, the man of the house, who’d mistaken me in the first place, looked up, saw the real in-law, and knew him to be the one. I think he recognised him. How unobservant can people be! Anyway, at that instant he turned to me and, in outrage, said:
“And who are you?”
I think events swam before my eyes after that. My unmasking was very public. Suddenly people appeared from thin air, and were told in loud voices about my impersonation of the in-law. There were vigorous comments and curses and stares of amazement. People glared at me as though I were a monstrous criminal. Women regarded me darkly from behind veils. I feared for my life. Soon I was out in the street, surrounded by a crowd, by the community of an extended family. I was holding out a map and was saying:
“It was a mistake. I was looking for Margaret House, or Margaret Court.”
During the whole commotion I saw the name of the place I’d been looking for on the next building. I bore their outrage and their loud comments silently. Then after a while I set off for the building next door, my original destination. But the man of the house, who’d mistaken me for the in-law, said:
“Don’t go there. You don’t want to go there.”
Then I looked towards Margaret House. I looked at the grounds. I saw people milling about, in aimless circles. They twitched, moved listlessly, or erratically. They were dark forms, in dark overcoats, and their bodies were all shadows, as if they were in Hades. They moved as if they had invisible lead weights on their feet. They seemed to have no sense of anything. The courtyard was of concrete, but their collective presence made it look dark and sinister and touched with unpredictable danger. There was the merest hint that they were mad…