Ordinary People

by Diana Evans

  ‘Because I’m more comfortable there. Oh please, just get this thing off me!’

  Melissa tugged at the wires, almost knocking the machine over. Another sensation came and she leaned forward, groaning. That was when Pamela got tough with her. She was no more sweet. She came down on her with a frowning, matronly authority.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘let me explain something to you, right? The reason why it’s dangerous for you to go home is that you could rupture and bleed to death. Do you understand what I’m saying? We couldn’t save you if there was an emergency. We had a woman in here last week who ruptured in the waiting area. If she’d been at home, she would probably have died. Another woman ruptured while she was at home, and the baby died. Yes, it did. But if you really want to go home, I can sign you out now and discharge you – if that’s what you really want. I would strongly advise you to stay here, but it’s up to you.’

  In the dawn of this new reason, Melissa acquiesced. She let go of the dream of slow dilation in the little crooked house. The night was spent in the dim pool of a curtained antenatal bed, in long pulls on a cylinder of gas and air, in wretched holdings on to Michael’s neck. How she needed him then. How she loved him. He was all strength, all rescue, his warm chest and his sturdy length. Over and over again inhaling the medicine mist she told him that she loved him, drunkenly, insisting, the clearest thing she felt. By 4 a.m. she had said goodbye to VBAC altogether. She wanted to be cut. The summit was no longer of interest to her, and later that morning she was wheeled to the operating theatre on a stretcher.

  Michael walked beside her in blue hospital overalls, a sea of attendants surrounding. They wore green hats.

  In the theatre they erected a makeshift tent between the almost-mother and her stomach so that she couldn’t see. She only saw the snipping tops of the utensils.

  The sound of knives, scissors. Silver blades flashed in the light and cut across.

  Then a child, like a wet bag being lifted by a sudden hand, rose.

  ‘He’s a big boy,’ someone said.

  Michael brought him over so that Melissa could look at him. A tiny face wrapped in white. Luscious and beige. Beneath the blanket he was hot-pink and jaundiced, pinkest in the cove of his shoulder blades, yellowest on the soles of his feet, which were long, long-toed, one of them turned inwards from compression in the final months. A bow leg. A club foot. Long arms also, slithering, dancing arms, as if intended first as wings. He had shiny black hair with a patch of gold at the back above the neck. Sliding navy eyes that went from side to side like water collected in marbles. A worried stare. A hexagon mouth when he cried. He was her offshoot, her extension. She looked at him, and everything went but love.

  They took him home on a Sunday morning, the grey day stretched low and mute over Camberwell. There were shreds of clouds leaning towards the west. The air was silk to the cheeks, and Melissa cried then on the wide steps of the hospital, because she understood that this was the life she would live now, this man, this boy, this girl, it was no more subject to fundamental change, and because she was bringing this new breath, this small heart, into this large unsafety. They took him back to the skinny house on Paradise Row. In the master court she placed a small red wooden heart on the wall above the Moses basket and that was where he lay. Two weeks followed containing the singular magic that surrounds the newborn. Two otherworldly weeks, in which the air sings lullabies, and you stare and stare into the crevices and the movements of the little face, fall asleep together around your sleeping cub, like curlicues, like a treble clef. ‘I feel as if I’ve entered another stage of my life,’ Melissa said to Michael, standing by the window. ‘Yes, I know,’ Michael said. Then the following week, like a crucial protagonist extracted from a play, he went back to work.

  *

  Now it was a few hours before dawn. They entered through the front gate and went inside. After the opulence of the party, the house seemed smaller and narrower than usual. Melissa went in first, along the hallway that was not wide enough for two people to walk side by side, and took off her lime-green shoes. She wanted to sleep. She did not want to continue the music in the soft silence of the sheets with the light rising and the calling of the birds outside. But she could feel Michael’s wanting, his earnestness. He drifted after her as she went to the kitchen to make tea. Chamomile, for sleeping. ‘Do you want some?’ she said.

  ‘No thanks.’ He would rather have a brandy, a late, sweet celebration – the empty house, no toss or turn of little limb, no early requests for Cheerios. He poured himself one from the drinks rack that only he ever used and offered her one in return. She shook her head, yawning, and he leaned against the butler sink disliking her for it. The paprika floor was warm beneath their feet. The Obamas were on the fridge, in magnet, taunting them with their outrageous perfection and success, Michelle’s long arms across her girls, Barack smiling victoriously. Around this magnet there were other, lowlier magnets, such as Ria’s lunchtime star award, a handmade silver Santa, and a lighthearted complaint in capitals, YESTERDAY WAS HELL, AND IT’S ALREADY TODAY!, which Michael agreed with every morning before going to work. He had a firm, recession-proof job as a corporate responsibility coordinator for a management company, having intended originally to be a radio presenter. He had been talented, meant for it, with his good wit and smooth tone. He had got as far as the pirate stations, but then there had come the need for money. Sometimes he was envious of Melissa for being freelance, doing something creative (she wrote for a fashion magazine). He took a wonderful, warm swig of the brandy and offered her a massage instead.

  ‘Um, maybe,’ she said. But Melissa wasn’t much of a massage person, he knew. That and reflexology and jacuzzis, they did nothing for her. She was a doer; a runner, a swimmer, a yogi. Her physical strength was clandestine beneath the narrow shoulders and thin neck. Underneath she was all power, in sinew and in spirit, whereas Michael was quintessentially laid back and sloping. He was a sitter, a receiver. He liked jacuzzis. It was one of the fundamental differences between them.

  When the tea was made she went through the failed double doors into the bathroom. It was freezing in there, even with the paprika heating, and there was a loud extractor fan that gave the feeling of being inside a generator. The panel along the side of the bath was loose and beginning to sag. As Melissa was drying her face, just as she opened her eyes and took the towel away, she saw something crawling along this panel, up the vertical edge against the wall. A wriggling, a strange brown lightening, moving and then disappearing into a crack at the top of the panel. It was a mouse, a big mouse. ‘Shit!’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a mouse under the bath.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m serious, I saw it. It went in there.’ She pointed.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Michael said.

  She was stepping from one foot to the other, having retreated to the dining area. ‘That woman said there were no mice.’ She was referring to Brigitte. ‘I asked her. She said there were no mice.’

  ‘We’ll have to call someone.’ Michael felt irritated by the timing of this intrusion and also deeply disturbed, but was determined not to show it. He hated vermin of any kind. They were dirty. ‘Anyway, I thought women weren’t supposed to be scared of mice any more,’ he joked as she scuttled to the stairs. ‘Call yourself a feminist.’

  ‘I’m not a feminist. I’m a woman.’

  ‘I know you are.’ And he looked at her with a shy, private questioning, forlorn and determined at once. ‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Wait for me.’

  But she went, with her tea, all furry and jumpy inside, and once upstairs proceeded to change into the long-sleeved white cotton nightdress that her mother Alice had given her for her thirty-eighth birthday. It was comfortable. She liked the feel of the cool cotton against her skin. Meanwhile Michael remained downstairs for as little time as possible as it took to perform his nightly checks. This involved staring at the cooker for exactly ten seconds to make sur
e it was off, turning the bathroom taps to absolute infallible closure to obliterate any chances of flood, pulling the window handles to ensure that they too were closed, and finally re-chaining and latching the front door. Only then could he mount the stairs to bed, often with a heavy, celibacy-weary tread but tonight a sprightly pace in which he hoped she would detect his virility and, waiting for him, perhaps in the cappuccino slip he had once given her, be excited by it. He was thoroughly disappointed, passing beneath the skylight and turning towards the bedroom, to catch a glimpse of her nakedness, a flash of sweet brown thigh, disappearing beneath the stiff, long nightdress.

  ‘Please don’t wear that,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  Don’t you know why? he wanted to shout. Don’t you understand that we have something important and pressing to do? Aren’t you with me on this?

  ‘Because it hides your beauty.’

  ‘No it doesn’t.’ She put on her doo-rag and tied the strings. It would be her, she knew, who would end up being the one to do something about the mouse, to call someone. It was always her who called the people. When Michael left the house in the mornings he forgot all about the workings and the health of this kingdom and she became its lone minister. ‘It hides your version of my beauty,’ she added, a little spitefully, ‘which is basic compared to my version of it. You don’t like me how I like me.’

  This was followed by a silence.

  ‘Will you definitely call someone?’

  ‘Yes, OK.’

  ‘And we need to fix that window, it’s so cold in here.’

  The window furthest to the left in this court was prone to a piercing winter’s draught – its frame was dislodged. The rich red walls, the soft light coming from the lampshades, the moon leaking through the raffia on to the mocha bedspread, all of it called for a warmer atmosphere, so the room seemed not quite settled in itself. Beneath their feet the hundred-year-old floorboards creaked as they moved from bed to wardrobe, making an ugly accompaniment to the cold. And the absence of Blake, the cub, on this his first night away, exacerbated Melissa’s discomfort. She missed him, his tiny presence, his small brief breathing.

  ‘I hope he’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who d’you think? Blake.’

  Fuck Blake, thought Michael’s penis. Fuck the window. Fuck the mouse.

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Melissa had not told Michael about the time she had been woken in the night by the sound of shuffling, three months ago, when Blake was six weeks old. A muffled moving had fractured her sleep. She had opened her eyes, looked over at the Moses basket, and Blake’s feet and knees were thrashing against his blanket, which had ridden up over his face. She had sprung out of bed in a panic and ripped the blanket away. She’d taken it as a bad omen.

  Michael said, ‘You worry too much. Chill out, man. Don’t you think this is nice, just us? Can’t we just forget about the kids for tonight? This is our time. Let’s enjoy it.’

  He had taken off his shirt and she watched him, discreetly. He had wide, basketball-player shoulders and thin arms. Inside him next to his heart was a light the shape of a boomerang that made the skin a touch yellower there, he glowed from within; and then, across the small of his back, were lines of a similar paler tone against the dark background, as though perhaps, in a former life, he had been whipped. Michael’s beauty was a question. It was secretive. It posed itself to her like dappled light through trees, in sudden moments, the lamplight in the pool of his collarbones as he unbuckled his belt by the wardrobe, his arms braced, head down, just there. The brilliant whiteness of his matching boomerang smile when she had met him. And the thick eyebrows, those still young eyes, only a little hurt by life. It continued to surprise her, this eventual beauty, which was extreme and hid behind his boyishness. It was there now as he leaned forward on to the bed folding his jeans, his shoulders ready to clutch, to crush around her. She felt a snatch of old feeling, a visceral pull towards him. A hot bolt of love went through her.

  ‘It’s Sunday tomorrow,’ he smiled. ‘We can sleep all day if we want to.’

  He took a hanger out of the wardrobe and flipped the jeans on to it, encouraged by the softening in Melissa’s face, that look in her eyes just now. She lay back, half waiting. He put the hanger on the rail. It was a weak rail, something else that needed fixing. Twice already it had collapsed, bringing all his clothes to a pile on the floor, and as he turned back to his fine, supine woman now ready to ravish her, it chose to do so again, with tactless and unkind calamity, his trousers, shirts, jackets and jeans came toppling out on to the floor, making him swear.

  ‘Why now?’ he said. ‘Why fucking now?’

  ‘It needs fixing.’

  ‘I can’t fix it now!’

  ‘I don’t mean now, I mean just some time.’

  Melissa felt sorry for him as he came towards the big bed annoyed with the floorboards groaning beneath him. He hated the mess of clothes there, the disorderly heap waiting for the morning, but distracted and pissed off as he was, he was not going to let a wardrobe, an alleged mouse or a draught spoil his chances. Naked except for his underwear, which had been carefully chosen earlier that evening for tightness and flattery, he lifted the covers on his side of the bed and got in next to her. The moment was ruined, they both sensed, it would take a lot to get it back, and it was so late now, the birds were actually singing, but the last thing that dies in mankind is hope.

  ‘Just come here,’ he said, and smelt her neck. Her neck had stopped smelling of chicken around seven years ago. Now it just smelt of her shea butter. Still he searched for it, sniffing at her, his stubble making her itch. She scratched. He tried to ignore that she was scratching. She wrenched her neck away from him cat-like and he moved downwards to the vicinity of her milk-designated chest, which he could not really suck with any degree of self-respect but what the hell.

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t do that,’ she said.

  She felt his hardness against her leg and resented the obligation that she should do something for it. She just didn’t feel like it now. And it bothered her not just that he had proposed to lap at her shore of milk, but that he had started on the left. He always started on the left. The monotony and the lazy lack of adventure in it distressed her.

  ‘I’m tired, Michael.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be tired,’ he said.

  She lay back, her arm flailed limply around his neck. He kissed her stomach. But he could feel her retreating from him. She was not with him. He tried for a little longer to see if he could call her to him, then unwilling to make love alone, he also retreated. No, there would be no love tonight. He stilled his hands and sadly drifted. A helicopter was circling in the skies over Bell Green. A lone siren went by. From the wide stretch of land at the top of Westwood Hill, the Crystal tower loomed and shone red.

  The palace was no longer standing. It had burnt to the ground in 1936, after a long and steady decline.

  2

  DAMIAN

  ‘Damian?’ Stephanie called from the landing. ‘Do you know where the purple fitted sheet is?’

  Damian was in the kitchen, wearing his pyjamas and dressing-gown, in the pocket of which was a single decrepit Marlboro Light that he had found with an un-non-smokerly joy at the very back of the vase cupboard above the fridge about fifteen minutes ago. He was on the verge of smoking it, having persuaded himself that after eleven months of abstinence it would be OK. His one regret about giving up smoking was that he had not consciously enjoyed, that New Year’s Eve night out, his LAST ONE EVER. He had been too drunk. The only and proper way to refrain from this filthy luxurious habit was to smoke a tonne of them to the point of nausea, which he had, and then smoke the last one with ceremony, with grave and grieving concentration, gathering strength and determination, so that the final puff was a full stop, which he hadn’t. There had been no goodbye, no bow, no final nicotine curtain, and this was what was holding h
im back in his life as a non-smoker. So he was going to allow himself to have that last one now. It was meant to be. It had been waiting for him all this time behind the vases, for a morning like this when he woke up desperate and needing and weak and depressed. The only problem was that he couldn’t find a light. After much hungry and irritated searching he had resolved to use the cooker (risky), and had just opened the back door in preparation for his flight out into the garden when this was done. It was raining outside but he was undeterred.

  ‘Damian?’

  With great reluctance, he went in the opposite direction towards the hall, returning the Marlboro to his pocket and continuing to fondle it. Why did she have to pick this moment to ask about a sheet? Why did he marry her? Why did he live on the outskirts of Dorking?

  ‘What?’ he snapped.

  Stephanie was standing at the top of the stairs wearing Saturday-morning cleaning clothes – tracksuit bottoms, an I LOVE MADRID T-shirt with no bra underneath, a navy-blue and white bandana from which splayed wispy chestnut hairs, moccasins, and no make-up. It often struck him in moments like these how willingly she was colluding in her fading, and it briefly crossed his mind, for some freakish unknown reason, taking him by surprise, in fact, that when Melissa cleaned her house she probably wore lip gloss and perhaps some nice earrings or a nice top, and that should Michael come across her in this way he probably experienced a mild and enduring satisfaction.

  ‘I bought a purple sheet last week from BHS and put it in the trunk and now it’s gone,’ she said. ‘It was fitted. It moulds around the corners of the mattress through a clever elasticated system so that I don’t have to break my back folding the flaps under.’ The tone of peevishness in her voice was down to a few things. First of all, she did not like his tone, and it annoyed her that she was being made to feel like a pest in going about the general and necessary maintenance of their domestic existence. Second of all, this tone was becoming indicative of his behaviour towards her as a whole – irritability, indifference, neglect, even – which she admitted to herself must be linked to the recent death of his father. The funeral was only a month ago. She was trying to be patient and understanding but it was getting to be a strain, his moping around the house and practically ignoring the children and going to bed deliberately much later than she did and getting up earlier, like last night and this morning, for instance, so that they wouldn’t have to actually communicate with each other, and when asked what was wrong and whether he wanted to talk about it just saying that he was fine, when clearly he wasn’t. And third of all, she hated it when people moved things around without telling her. And fourth of all she really did hate folding sheet flaps, especially under their ridiculously heavy mattress that Damian had insisted on buying because it was cheaper than the memory foam that she had wanted. She was in the process of conducting a gradual sheet overhaul, soon every mattress in the house would wear fitted only, and if she was going to be snapped at in trying to achieve this small utopia then, well, fatherless or not, she had no sympathy for him.