Michael, Michael

by Wendy Perriam

  Another complication was that no one had seemed certain just how serious the problems were. She’d had the second scan at nearly nineteen weeks, but that was still too early for any exact prediction of whether Michael junior would be brain-damaged, incontinent, or only slightly affected by the lesion on his spine. There were also operations which might put things right, offer him the chance of a fairly normal life. But everything was speculative, hedged around with maybes; couched in terms which were cruelly imprecise. Yet if she postponed the decision for even one more month, it would be too late to end the pregnancy, and she might be sentencing a helpless child to a gruelling round of operations.

  Dr Haines shifted uneasily on his chair. ‘And I understand from Mr Lawson-Scott that you talked the matter over with at least two counsellors before agreeing to come in.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I did.’ She might just as well have saved her breath. The counsellors were kind, but they couldn’t grasp the fact that she was trying to decide for Michael – the father of the child – as well as for herself and for the baby. Michael didn’t want a kid at all; would totally reject an imperfect second-rate one, let alone a simpleton. And since the child was part of Michael, she’d be inflicting pain on him as well. Both of them might blame her – Michael senior hating and resenting her for producing something defective, and baby Michael turning on her savagely after a life of deprivation. She’d been particularly distressed by a book she’d read on spina bifida children – how even as toddlers they could be in and out of hospital, or stuck in plaster casts; how they often grew up isolated, cut off from normal kids; obliged to cope with colostomy bags, or calipers, or frightening-looking things called shunts inserted right into their heads. If Michael landed up like that, or with stunted twisted helpless limbs on a body ridged with surgery scars, might he not be bitter about her blithe assumption that he would opt for life at any price?

  In the end, she’d decided she should suffer in his stead. By going through the pain and loss herself, she’d spare both Michaels, and also spare her mother, who might not have the strength to continue caring for a stump.

  She could hear the doctor’s velvet voice droning softly on, but she ignored his actual words. All doctors were the same, swathing murder in pretty lacy shawls, or making it less heinous by using medi-speak. At last, he groped up to his feet, offered her his hand once more, like some prize for good behaviour. She hadn’t screamed, or cried; had hardly even argued with him.

  Alone again, she lay staring at the wall. Too easy to blame doctors. It was time she faced the truth. If her child was dead, then she was the one who’d murdered him, or at least sentenced him to death. She hated that word death; had to keep denying it, though the effort was exhausting her. Life and death were wrestling in her head, each begging for acceptance, each refusing to give way. Three days ago, she had felt the baby move – the first time in her pregnancy – just a tiny flutter, but for her an avalanche; a desperate deafening roar of life, reminding her that the child was still developing, that she could save him if she chose. She hadn’t chosen; hadn’t even achieved her aim of sparing him from suffering. By twenty weeks, a foetus could feel pain, could even cry real tears. All through her labour, she had heard him weeping silently, flinching with the pain of each contraction – futile pains, since they were ejecting him to death. That nurse had claimed he hadn’t felt a thing, but that was just a lie, another hypocritical attempt to whitewash the whole process, save everyone embarrassment.

  Tears were running down her own cheeks, but she felt too crushed even to fumble for a Kleenex, simply let them fall. Only when she heard footsteps at the door again did she mop her face with the sheet; then immediately lay back once more; eyes shut, feigning sleep. She couldn’t bear more sessions with counsellors, consultants; more glib and empty words. There was no one in the world she could talk to in the way she craved; no one who could understand the subtleties, the cruelties. Her mother’s stance was far too cut and dried, and Michael didn’t even realize that his child was handicapped. She had sent him just the briefest note, saying she’d arranged to have the termination which he had advised in his own letter, though not explaining why. Her Oxford friends were also in the dark, but even if she told them the whole story, what possible help could they be? She felt decades older than them all; knew she’d left them miles behind, become a mother and a murderer while they were still carefree undergraduates.

  The door opened, but she made no move; lay impassive, with her head turned to the wall. She was used to people barging in and out – cleaners with their silly chat, nurses bringing trays or drugs, the registrar sparing her five seconds, but calling her ‘Annette’. She had wondered who Annette was – another girl who’d killed her child? One birth in five was now aborted, or so Tristram had remarked once. Did that make it better, make her guilt less sharp? She could see the pile of foetuses – tiny wrinkled bodies with half-formed limbs or dangling heads – thrown out with the offal, sharing the same waste-bin as infected kidneys, diseased appendices. Tristram carped about abortions, not on any moral grounds, but because he saw them as a waste of time.

  ‘They’re a bore, an utter pain,’ he’d groused. ‘You could assist on ten a morning, and not learn a bloody thing.’ She loathed his callous attitude; had come to loathe hospitals in general – Tristram’s world and Michael’s – though the way they talked of hospital life you’d have assumed it was a glamorous round of parachuting, wind-surfing, OBEs and knighthoods, not a constant daily battle with disease and death and handicap.

  ‘Ah, you are awake! I wasn’t sure. I’m sorry to disturb you, dear, but I thought you’d like to see these flowers. They’re really something, aren’t they? I mean, such a huge great box! And they’ve come all the way from abroad.’

  ‘Abroad?’ Tessa rolled over to scrutinize the cardboard box, which was three feet long, at least, and weighing down the woman’s arms.

  ‘Yes, Madeira, so it says. And there’s a great long word above it which I can’t make head or tail of. I think it must be Spanish. Got a friend there, have you?’

  ‘No,’ said Tessa, frowning. ‘And how d’you know they’re flowers?’

  ‘It says so seven times, and in ever so many languages – flowers, fleurs, flores, Blumen, and a few more I can’t pronounce. Whoever sent them must have a bob or two. And just look at all those stamps! They must have cost a pretty penny too. There’s half a dozen largish ones, and a whopper with a peacock on. In fact, I’d love those for my grandson, if you’re not wanting them yourself.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Tessa listlessly, still wondering who had sent the box. Only two people who knew she was in hospital – Michael and her mother. Could Michael be abroad? Had he gone away deliberately? That would get him off the hook, provide him with a good excuse for not being by her side. He’d know full well he ought to come, but he’d detest the very thought of it, and do anything he could to avoid the inconvenience. Madeira would be perfect at this time of year, with all the tourists gone, but the sun still strong and generous. A romantic place to take his almost-wife. They could swim and sunbathe – naked – feed each other in candlelit tavernas, then return to their hotel and …

  ‘Now, if you sit up, I’ll put it on the bed.’ The woman was still gushing over the box – its size, its weight, and how her Kevin would be thrilled to bits with the fancy foreign stamps. ‘And I’d better help you open it, though I think we’re going to need a pair of pliers, or at least some decent scissors. I’ll see if Sister’s got some, and while I’m gone I’ll fetch a vase – or three. They’ve sent a whole flower-bed by the looks of it.’

  Tessa watched her waddle through the door, praying that she’d stay away. She didn’t want anyone to help her open Michael’s flowers, least of all this prattling nosy parker – a voluntary worker called Winnie, who had breezed in twice before and asked a string of prying questions. She wormed up out of bed, found her own scissors and a nailfile, levered up the staples on the box, then slit through tape and string.
She wrenched the cardboard lid off, caught her breath as she stared down at a dozen showy orchids, each separate stem encased in moistened cotton wool, then double-wrapped in polythene and foil. She had never seen such flowers – fabulous, exquisite, and far too flauntingly extravagant for her small and shabby room. There were several different kinds – some pinky-purple ones with sensual petals and a sweetish fondant scent; a few smaller yellow-green ones, which looked too stiff and waxen to be real, and some which had a fever – their open mouths a livid red, their petals flushed, their furred tongues blotched and swollen.

  She reached her hand out, but drew it back uncertainly; somehow couldn’t bring herself to touch them. They seemed threatening, almost hostile, as if they resented their surroundings; were more at home in luxury hotels, or prima donnas’ dressing-rooms – prima donnas themselves, pampered and voluptuous. The pink ones had deep pouting lips – female lips, flirtatious lips, mouthing to the bees that they were desirable and fertile, oozing luscious nectar.

  She sank down on the bed, unable to tear her eyes away from these rare outlandish flowers, which seemed to hypnotize her, affect her mind and body like a drug. She remembered Charlotte’s father telling her a story about some extraordinary species he’d seen in the Bahamas, which burst into exotic flower just one night in the year, conducted its whole sex-life between midnight and dawn, then withered by the morning. Hundreds of white sphinx-moths had rushed from bloom to bloom, he said, reeling from the heady scent of foot-wide flowerheads, weighted down with pollen; their whirring wings only silenced as the sun came up, and the flowers vanished like a mirage. Her sex-life with Michael had been very much the same – passionate, dramatic, but confined to one brief spell, and leaving her shrivelled and condemned.

  She poked her finger into a soft pink lip, surprised how gaping-deep it was, how it seemed to close around her flesh, even throb and grip. She shut her eyes, saw Michael’s woman opening, opening; a rare outlandish species oozing precious nectar, with Michael as her tiger-moth. She stroked a fleshy sepal, felt it moisten and respond. The slut was more than ready for him, exposing everything she had – secret curves and hollows, distended inner lips. She was probably just as greedy at table as in bed – slurping, scrunching, using teeth and tongue.

  All the flowers had tongues, some of them protruding, some inflamed and mottled. She seized a purple one, its gaudy petals pockmarked, its stem naked, tacky-smooth. She crushed the centre to a pulp; her fingers sticky from the festering yellow discharge. Sex could make you ill – bloat you and infect you; seed new malignant growths which had to be cut out. She ripped the whole flower off its stalk, mangled it between her palms. How dare they send her flowers – the rutting randy pair of them; cancelling out their guilt with some sweetener from a hothouse. Flowers were for achievement, for birth and celebration, not for pain and death. If they felt a need to pay her off, then they should have sent a wreath.

  She picked up a greenish orchid which already looked defunct – ominous, anaemic, and with no trace of any scent. She snapped its stem in half, plucked off its jaundiced petals, one by furious one; then flung the debris back into the box and rammed the lid on top. She plunged towards the door, the box across her shoulder like a baby; one hand cradling it securely at the bottom. Emerging from her room, she cannoned into Winnie, who was just returning with two vases and a shrill lasso of questions. She struggled free, ran on along the passage, not daring to pause for breath till she was safely in the toilet with the door locked. She laid the box down on the floor, removed each flower in turn and tore it into pieces. She stuffed the wreckage in the toilet-bowl, pulled the plug between each one, impatient with the slow protesting cistern. She really needed an incinerator or waste disposal unit. There must be one around – scores of them, most probably. That’s what hospitals were for – destroying living breathing things before they’d had a chance to bloom.

  At last the box was empty, save for some crumpled tissue paper. She tossed that in the sanitary-bin, with the bloody smelly towels, then limped back to her room. There was no sign of either Winnie or the vases. Thank God, she thought, as she fumbled for a pen, found a scrap of paper.

  ‘NO FLOWERS,’ she wrote in capitals. She should have thought of that before, had it printed in the obituary column of the Telegraph or Times. It was what you often said for death, and Michael read The Times.

  ‘Toots, how are you, darling? I’ve been sweating blood about you – didn’t shut my eyes all night, wondering if …’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘But you look so pale and drawn. And what a dreadful poky room! You’d think they could afford some decent curtains after all we pay in taxes.’ April inspected the thin fabric, then plumped down in a chair, drew it up beside the bed and squeezed her daughter’s hand. ‘Oh, Tootsie …’

  ‘Mm?’

  ‘I just don’t know what to say.’

  Tessa chewed her thumb. The silence seemed to close above their heads, leaving them both foundering. Her mother was never lost for words, carried sacks of them around with her, as if she’d bought a job-lot at a special price, always at the ready to fill a silence or forestall a deathly hush. But today she’d left her words at home, or mislaid them on the bus.

  ‘How’s work, Mum?’ Tessa asked, at length, trying to plug the hole herself, a hole expanding dangerously after three – three hundred – minutes.

  ‘Busy, busy, busy.’ April undid her shiny mac, to reveal a tight ribbed sweater in a hectic shade of pink. ‘But never mind all that. How’s you is more important.’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘But what happened? Did you …? I mean, the doctor said …’

  ‘D’you mind if we don’t talk about it?’

  ‘But I must know how the …’ Her mother’s voice stumbled to a halt, sounded hoarse and out of practice.

  ‘Tell me all your news, Mum. That’ll cheer me up.’

  ‘News? I haven’t any. It’s only been a day since I last saw you.’

  ‘A day?’

  ‘Well, a day and a half. In fact, I was worried sick I’d never get away.’

  Tessa stared down at her hands. A day and a half was totally impossible. She might have lost all track of time, but she was very well aware that a lot of it had passed – heavy, creaking, hurting time, deliberately sadistic as it trampled with slow feet. Anyway, mirrors didn’t lie, and the glass above her basin showed her she had aged – her face thinner and more haggard, her hair straggly, with no shine. She tugged a limp strand from its clasp, wound it round and round her finger. She must keep busy, not sit twitching like her mother. April’s hands were restless, denied their usual cigarette; empty hands, fiddling with her handbag, plucking at the squiggles on her skirt.

  ‘How … how’s Connie?’ Tessa tried again.

  ‘Off sick.’

  Another clotted silence. April must be ill herself, Tessa thought uneasily, as she wound the strand still tighter, pulled it till it hurt. If somebody was sick, her mother always recounted the symptoms in duplicate or triplicate, along with the diagnosis, prognosis, and her own unorthodox but vigorous views on remedies and causes. But instead she was sitting tongue-tied on her stiff-backed wooden chair; the only sound the choked gasp of her handbag as she snapped it open and shut. Outside the window dusk was falling, and the murky waning twilight seemed to have seeped into the room, made it damp and chilly, bleached the once-bright colours. Even her mother’s fuchsia top was fading and unravelling.

  Suddenly, she seemed to snap to attention, as she looked searchingly around the room, eyes and face alert now. ‘Didn’t they send the flowers?’

  ‘What flowers?’

  ‘The orchids. I told the bloke to make sure they were delivered today, so they’d be here to cheer you up. The postage cost me double, but I said blow the cost, just so long as they arrive on time. They even put me through to Mr Big. Well, his real name’s Geoff, and he’s only five foot five, but I’m going off the point. He’s Ken’s big brother – big moneywise, at
any rate. He runs this huge great nursery in Madeira – a really swanky joint it is, or so everybody says. I met him at that party on Ken’s boat, when he was over for a week or so, and he was rabbiting on about his plants, while all the others were talking bows and sterns. None of your boring old chrysanths, he said, but exotic things like canna lilies or birds of paradise. I thought orchids would be best, though. He told me they had class. ‘‘Yes,’’ I said. ‘‘Like my Tessa. And mind you get her name right.’’ I spent an age spelling out the hospital address, and, would you believe, they’ve still botched the whole thing up.’ April jerked her head so crossly her earrings twirled and jangled – fake gold-and-diamond teardrops which twitched again protestingly as she released her hips from the groaning wooden chair. ‘I’d better have a word with Sister – find out if they’ve come.’

  ‘No, don’t, Mum, please. She’s … she’s busy.’

  ‘Yes, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Too damned busy to unpack a box of flowers. If I don’t get her off her butt, those orchids will be dead before you’ve even seen them.’

  ‘They’re … dead already.’

  ‘Dead? They can’t be! They cost me an arm and a leg.’ April’s elaborately pencilled eyebrows were drawn down in a frown. ‘I bet he’s diddled me, that Geoff! He must have heard I’d broken up with Ken, and decided to get his own back by sending you duff flowers. What a rip-off, Tessa, when I told him you were ill and all. ‘‘Geoff,’’ I said, ‘‘she’s really going through it, poor kid, so can you pick her out something extra special.’’ I’ll give him special! I’ve a good mind to phone him here and now – tell him what I think of him, and his rotten orchids.’