Something I'm Not

by Lucy Beresford

  I wonder whether to tell him what I did in the taxi. How I breathed a pool of condensation on to the window, and drew a tiny heart shape, and then parts of an arrow poking out the sides. How at one end of the arrow I used a fingernail to etch Matt’s initials, and at the other end my own. Yes, Matt was the kind of man whose name I would have scratched on my locker had I known him at school. He would have toyed with my teenage heart, tossing it aside like chewed gum, confirming my belief that love is finite. But now? Now he’s the man into whose hands my father transferred me for safekeeping, who holds my heart together – an undertaking of such importance, such delicacy, it renders me incapable of disturbing its equilibrium.

  And yet, and yet.

  Just lately I’ve been grappling (what with Dylan’s plan to adopt, and Harry’s wish for a son) with how Matt feels about eschewing parenthood. Or, more specifically, with whether he might ever change his mind. In my head I weigh each possibility. Sadness – arguments – divorce? It’s easy to remember the heady moment when he said he wanted to marry me, and to forget that just before that he’d referred to a different life, with a different woman and a whole rugby team of children. And it sometimes occurs to me that, while Matt might never have really thought about having children, this might also mean that he never gave much thought to not having children. And when I think about that, and about the sacrifice he made for me, the dreams he might have laid to one side, I break out into vicious cold sweats, and I find myself reaching increasingly often for the hair at my parting, to feel the small stabs of pain on my scalp.

  Through the French windows, the evening air hangs heavy and still, hinting at the forecast storm; Mother Nature is holding her breath. Maybe, I think, I should ask my question, to rid myself of its toxicity and relieve the pounding in my head.

  I met a woman today, I want to say, who hinted at knowing the meaning of life. Who mentioned it so matter-of-factly that it had to be true. I can be seduced by clarity, I want to remind my husband. I read fiction, and recipe books; I need music, I cannot play the piano by ear. I also like to earn the approval of others. If I thought the route suggested by this woman offered me universal approbation, I would embrace it wholeheartedly. But I am consumed with doubt. I mistrust the information.

  Am I brave enough, I wonder, to have a change of heart?

  The source of my conflict is a fear that Prue may be right. That in avoiding babies I’ve made an error of judgement. I’ve built my life on the foundation of not wanting babies. It was never my plan to equivocate. Yet now my confidence is shaken. Maybe a woman’s life without children is like a sporting event without competition: barren and pointless. Maybe there needs to be more at stake.

  So, if I ask you my question, dear husband, it’s not because I want you, in your masculine way, to fix things, or to reveal to me that you’ve changed your mind, or to dissect the choices I’ve made, but to have you sense the subtext in all of this, and simply stop the world imploding.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘SO, HOW WAS IT?’

  Nicole and I sit on benches overlooking the river, escaping a conference on corporate governance. We nibble sandwiches, and comment on the cloudy sky. The Thames flows as brown as milky coffee, foaming in the wash as if stirred with an invisible spoon.

  ‘Dull, yaar,’ answers Nicole, peeling back bread to inspect the filling. ‘But then I find film sequels usually are. Did Louisa resurface?’ I shake my head. ‘Weird how she left just as Serena and the kids arrived.’

  ‘And you, in her condition, would have stayed?’ I ask. ‘I think not.’

  ‘True, but then I’m not pregnant. I assumed Louisa liked children.’

  ‘Me, too. Why else go through pregnancy?’

  ‘Perhaps she felt she had no choice.’

  ‘C’mon. Women today are free to choose anything.’

  ‘Absolutely. But for some, freedom is slavery,’ says Nicole, pushing her greaseproof parcel of uneaten food to one side.

  ‘I reckon that was just Orwell being typically cryptic. As a misogynist, he refused to endorse the idea of liberating women.’

  ‘Orwell was a misogynist?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say, hurriedly, screwing up my sandwich wrapping into a tight ball. ‘He was firing a warning shot across the early feminists’ bows, saying, Don’t imagine you can ever be totally free, meaning free of men. You are familiar with the sentiment. Dominic tolerates your brain and ambition, but secretly he just wants to look after you. And you pander to his delusions by letting him pay for things like yesterday’s cinema tickets.’

  ‘I pander to Dominic, yaar,’ says Nicole with a smile, ‘because it suits my purpose to have my traditional, Rajput family think I’m about to marry and have kids. You can’t imagine the shame my grandmother inflicts on my papa for having an unmarried daughter. Why do you think I haven’t been back to Delhi in, what, three years?’

  Pigeons approach the crumbs at our feet, sense the lethal kick waiting in my shoe, and think better of it. ‘But women like us have all the choices. We’ve drunk from the cup of emancipation. We’ve chosen not to become parents. It’s the women having babies who’ve limited their options.’ An image of Prue pops into my mind, and I try to block her out.

  ‘Absolutely,’ says Nicole, sipping mineral water. ‘Some women have babies when they’ve run out of things to do. Take that girl I had temping for me recently. She’d been to university, bright, capable. No ambition. Spoke of having a baby as if she was choosing a holiday.’

  ‘Which proves it’s still about choice. To insist I have no choice is to say I choose not to take responsibility.’

  Nicole sighs. ‘What about the ones who can’t choose? Couples who are infertile? There’s a big difference between choosing not to have children and being told you can’t.’

  I pick at the filling of Nicole’s abandoned sandwich. ‘Mother Nature is a law unto herself.’

  ‘So, by choosing not to become pregnant, we’re winning the battle for our lives.’

  ‘Ah, but who do we imagine we are fighting?’

  A woman and her two daughters, their hair in tight cornrows, join the queue for the London Eye. The girls are singing playground songs, about the important things in life, like kissing and boys’ names. With a spasm in my stomach I recall the familiar rhymes, and the constant dread of being the one frozen out of playtime games.

  My mother said I never should play with the gypsies in the wood

  If I did, she would say, ‘naughty little girl to disobey …’

  Have the choices I’ve made, I wonder as I lick my fingers, been defined by this impulse to escape the snare, and revolt? To disobey?

  *

  ‘Have you, or has anyone you know, ever been affected by premature births?’

  Unable to endure further lectures (or rather to escape the Churchill Conference Suite, which has the kind of arctic air-conditioning system that paralyses your eyeballs), we are queuing for the London Eye. A young woman with a clipboard has been working her way down the line. We watch two men ahead of us dismiss her with a wave of the hand.

  She is conducting research for a local neonatal unit. Do we realise that around ten per cent of the babies born in Britain need some kind of special care at birth? Are we aware of the various medical conditions contributing to early labour? Could we look at these pictures of premature babies wired up to machines? I peer over Nicole’s shoulder, and see that their fists are no bigger than coins. My whole face tingles as tears spring to my eyes.

  And I have a sudden memory of my mother and me, watching an item on Nationwide about premature babies. When they showed one in an incubator, my mother leaped to the screen with a shriek, switched off the set and sent me straight to bed.

  Afterwards, the girl with the clipboard thanks us for our time, before moving on.

  ‘I think I’ve just had my maternal moment, yaah,’ says Nicole, placing the folded Gift Aid form in her handbag, before retrieving a hairbrush.

  ‘You know that girl wa
s hoping to appeal to our maternal side.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  By now we are snaking up the ramp towards the Ferris wheel. I can’t wait to be inside our warm pod – equal ovals, rotating in an endless, graceful circle, which I find rather soothing.

  But questions continue to buzz round my head. ‘Why do you think a woman choosing not to have a baby is still such a taboo?’

  ‘Because it shows she’s inherently evil and deserves to be burned at the stake.’

  ‘I’m serious, Nics. Nobody bats an eyelid when children are sent to boarding school at seven, or spend their childhood being cared for by a succession of nannies and au pairs.’

  ‘Ayaah!’ she laughs. ‘That’s the acceptable face of not wanting kids. There are women out there who wish they’d never had them. Not that they want to kill their own children, no one is suggesting infanticide here. It’s just that they suspect their lives would be less stressful if their children belonged to someone else, someone they could visit on a regular basis. Or not. But the taboo’s so powerful, we can’t even acknowledge that it exists as a taboo.’

  ‘So, why’s that?’

  ‘Because women who don’t want a baby are, by definition, empty specimens. Nature abhors a vacuum.’

  I snort. ‘And all people with children are by definition kind and unconditionally loving? I must remember that when I next bump into Ed.’

  Our pod glides into position. Nicole turns to me. ‘Well, by fathering a child, Ed is deemed by society to have given something back. Reimbursement for his very existence. Now he’ll have permission to carry on living.’

  We step inside. I stand gazing out over the river with my hands in my pockets. ‘I think that not enough women today believe they have permission not to have them.’

  *

  Our pod hovers near the top of the wheel. The afternoon sun casts its rays over London, which appear as shimmering fishing rods from behind a bank of dark rain clouds.

  ‘So, you think women are still trapped by their fertility?’ says Nicole, who sits down on the central bench to counter an unexpected lurch of vertigo.

  ‘I’m saying that many imagine themselves to be, yes.’ I turn to her. ‘We make excuses for not going it alone, we say we lack the opportunity. We are the generation which has read A Room of One’s Own, which now has access to one, and yet still finds the world wanting.’

  Nicole nods. ‘We lack a vision of our potential.’

  ‘Some see it,’ I say, brightly. ‘A woman co-designed this wheel. I know nothing more about her, but her imagination was audacious. I admire her for that.’

  ‘So, what did you mean back there, when you said that some women feel trapped?’

  ‘I mean that women are expected to have babies, and that, for some, that expectation is too mighty, too ingrained to oppose. We’ve come so far, yet we must conform; must turn ourselves into something we’re not. Or reject the role allotted to us, and be punished.’

  ‘Or pitied.’

  ‘Or envied.’ I pause, remembering my mother, the time I won my place at university, asking me what was wrong with taking up a permanent job with Marks and Spencer.

  *

  My steps have slowed. ‘Have you ever thought that you and I might be wrong about all this?’ I ask, as we walk towards Westminster Bridge to find a cab.

  ‘Achha, no!’ cries Nicole. ‘What on earth makes you say that?’

  ‘Just something Louisa’s mother said.’

  ‘She wanted to know why we haven’t had kids?’

  ‘Not us. Me.’

  ‘Ye-gods! I hope you put her straight.’

  I did try, I want to say, blinking into the glare that Nicole’s statement has shone on my deficiencies.

  Pillowy clouds race across the sky, late for an appointment. Tourists jostle us, pointing their phones with outstretched arms towards the Houses of Parliament. I marvel, mildly, at their sense of purpose. And in that instant I know that I can’t put off a meeting with my mother any longer. The orange beacon of an empty taxi appears over the brow of Westminster Bridge. I raise my arm; it feels unbelievably heavy.

  As we hurtle round the one-way system of Vauxhall Cross, we pass a crowd of people aiming for the station. In the blur of faces and bodies I am stabbed by the sense that I have just glimpsed my mother. Hair, build, posture: in that second, they are the random pieces of some absurdly perfect Photofit. Each fragment has the potential to be what I want this person to be: Mum, confidante, friend; someone to stop the cab for, and rush over to embrace. The words crackle in my head, creating jump-lead sparks to my heart. And then we are gone – the cab has turned the corner, and the woman, this construct, has disappeared from view.

  I can still see her.

  I always see her.

  Chapter Thirteen

  MY NECK is stiff from gazing up at the statues around the gallery courtyard balustrade. I’ve come for stimulation, to absorb from these masters something of the creative impulse. The business pitch is three days away, and I’ve yet to complete a shortlist of candidates. I need to concentrate. For two years running I’ve billed the highest number of revenues worldwide. Now I’m distracted, my days consumed by the single thought that I must meet my mother.

  When I dare to imagine this visit, my mind lacks focus. It’s not that I am unable to recall where my mother now lives, or how she might look. A woman who has had the same Joan of Arc bob for forty years is unlikely to have embraced change since I last saw her, at my wedding three years ago. Rather, my mind is paralysed by dread. And when stray memories do penetrate the blur, all scrupulous attempts at self-preservation disintegrate, and I become weary, and snappy, and tearful.

  Sitting on a courtyard step, I recall the grey of a deserted pebble beach. My family, that holy trinity, has come to a remote scar of coastline, eschewing the penny arcades and greasy chip papers of Bognor Regis that Mother finds so repugnant. The wind blows, as it always does. Cue Mother berating Dad for failing yet again to pack the windbreak. I am now properly out of nappies. Which is a shame, as their extra padding might have made the shingle more comfortable.

  Dad is finding all the funny-looking stones, turning them over in his hands. I sit beside him, listening to the stories he tells. He shows me what he can see in the pebbles. This one’s the shoe that housed so many children; this round one is the apple eaten by Snow White. It’s just like when he lets me help him make things out of clay. Or when he reads me Winnie-the-Pooh at bedtime. I know all the Winnie-the-Pooh stories off by heart. I always know when my mother is missing out bits.

  My favourite stones are the ones as large as Dad’s fist. These are elephants, he says, or well-fed mice. He invites me to stroke their backs. These I place in a pile to one side, to be taken home and stroked in secret. Did I know, he asks, that this particular elephant swam to Sussex all the way from India? India, he tells me, is very far away. The elephant was so hot he needed to cool down, and so he dived into the water in Bombay. Once he was in, he splashed around and sprayed water over his back with his trunk. He splashed, and splashed, and was enjoying himself so much he didn’t realise he’d swum halfway round the world. But that was how he ended up on this beach. And this mouse thought the sea was made of blue cheese, and came down to the water to eat it all up! Silly old mouse. My dad is really funny.

  Mother interrupts to say that Dad might go for his swim now before luncheon is served. Lunches on the beach are always egg sandwiches, without salad cream. Egg sandwiches without salad cream smell of poo.

  I watch as Dad hops across the stones in his bare feet, turning round to wave at me, and pulling funny faces because of the stones and the cold water. The sea reaches up to his knees, and now the bottom of his baggy shorts. Then he pushes off, and he doesn’t turn to wave any more. I stare at him as he gets smaller. The wind blows my hair across my face, and makes my eyes sting.

  The sound of the tide over shingle roars in my ears. There is no sand on this beach – the reason my mother gives for not buy
ing me a bucket and spade. Seagulls cry out overhead. Yark, I repeat. Yark.

  ‘That was your first word,’ says my mother, and not for the first time. She means ‘bird’, not the seagull’s screech. So, my first word was something that flies away.

  Dad likes his swims, so my mother and I both know that it’ll be a while before he returns for lunch. She and I are now utterly alone, sitting side by side, on the knobbly beach. In the huge silence, the sound of the wind is very loud in my ears.

  ‘I know,’ announces my mother. ‘Let’s play ducks’ tails.’

  I’ve never heard of the game.

  ‘We throw stones into the water so that they bounce on the waves, and we count how many bounces the stone makes before sinking. That will tell us how many ducks’ tails there are.’

  This doesn’t quite make sense to me, and I feel bad that I haven’t understood.

  Picking up some stones, Mother places them in her sunhat and strides off towards the water’s edge. I follow, staring at my feet in their scuffed red sandals, unsteady on the pebbles. Once, I nearly fall over, so I stop and look up in case my mother wants to help me. Instead, I see that she’s already at the water’s edge, leaning back into a throw, her right arm extended on a level with her hip. Then, with a twist of her elbow and a whip of her wrist, she sends the stone flying out across the sea. Even before I reach her, I know what’s wrong. The grey stones being thrown are too smooth, too beautiful to be tossed away.

  Mother turns. ‘That one made four bounces. How many do you think this one will make?’ In her powerful grip she holds up the elephant that swam all the way from India.

  ‘No,’ I blurt out.

  Mother hesitates, looking down at me with that scary stare of hers. ‘What on earth do you mean, “No”?’

  ‘No,’ I say again, quietly, more like a whimper, for my mother’s stares are often enough to make even my dad leave a room. I start to cry, my hot tears splashing on to my sandals.

  ‘You’, snaps my mother, ‘are an unspeakably selfish little girl, and I wish I’d never had you! Just because you’re not big enough to throw stones, there’s no need to throw a tantrum instead.’