To the Sea

  John had to keep a close eye. He feared Eva would leave the babies to cry or forget to feed them. Or worse, forget to cuddle them, to kiss them, to cherish them. He didn’t know what she did when he was at work. God knows both babies were chubby little beauties developing as they should. But, still, he knew things were not right.

  When Carl was a precocious two year old, Cecile was born. John was worried when he saw their second daughter come into the world. He had prayed for a son. Eva was more likely to be the mother her children needed if she had sons. Eva had lost herself in her confusion after Sarah Deidra’s birth and she had not fully returned to what John had come to accept as her usual self. And there was no question that Sarah Deidra got less of her mother than Carl.

  Eva was still in hospital with three-day-old Cecile when she told John that Cecile was not the one. She sat in the white hospital bed surrounded by flowers, transcendentally beautiful. Her blonde hair was long and loose over her shoulders. She was wearing a pale yellow nightdress that looked more like a kaftan with its white embroidery and tassels. But her face broke John’s heart. She had no expression.

  John sat on the bed beside her, holding little Cecile in his arms and not knowing what to say. This time, Eva was certain from the first. Cecile was not the one. There was no confusion, merely grief. She looked over at the baby sleeping against John’s chest and tears fell down her still face. She turned from John. She turned from Cecile.

  They found a new housekeeper, a proper nanny, after Cecile’s birth and John tried to relax knowing Frau Hessen was competent and she genuinely cared for Eva and the children.

  In 1974, Edith Margaret was born and Eva slipped into a despair that lasted for years, though it was a quiet despair not seen or recognised by everyone. She was a good mother in the ways that counted to others. She breastfed all the babies, she never raised her voice or became short with them as they grew into boisterousness. They were well-mannered, noisy little children full of the exuberance expected of children in those hippy years. Eva was the beautiful young wife of a successful doctor with four gorgeous little children. She appeared to have it all. She fulfilled her role as she had been taught by the well-meaning women around her.

  But beneath the surface, Eva hardly played a role in her children’s lives. She could not anticipate their falls, or any of the other small and large dangers in the world that all children must be protected from. She watched them fall or choke on foods they shouldn’t be eating, shiver in their summer clothes on icy August mornings, cut themselves on too sharp scissors or gasp and choke in water too deep and too cold for them. It always seemed to come as a surprise to Eva. So unexpected. And of so little concern. She watched John or Frau Hessen manage these crises, confident that all would be well. Or indifferent to the outcome. John was less and less certain which.

  John knew her heart wasn’t in it. Worse, he suspected that she was losing her mind. She was overwhelmed. She was lost. She had waited so patiently for the daughter she’d always known she would have. The daughter like her. The daughter who she could talk to in her own language. The daughter who was her link, her only link, to her past. To who she was.

  And none of their children could fill that gap. All of their children combined weren’t enough.

  After Edith Margaret’s birth, John knew that they mustn’t have any more children. Four children in seven years was more than he had ever expected and it was more than Eva could cope with. Eva refused to go on the pill. The daughter she needed had not yet been born and she would not put anything in the way of her coming.

  But John was just as adamant that they could have no more children. He began using condoms. Eva was angry but he held firm. For a year after Edie’s birth, for the first time in their marriage, their bed became a battleground. Their one place of unrestrained joy was gone.

  The years following Edie’s birth were the hardest years of his marriage. John knew it was hard for all couples with small children and he and Eva had all those pressures. Always tired, children forever there, even in their bed at night and little time just for each other. But even when John did find the time and the energy to latch their bedroom door late at night when all the children were asleep in their own beds and rouse Eva, there was always the issue of the condom to fight over. As often as not, the fight killed off all desire and they both fell asleep.

  There were also the nights that Eva came to John. She could always seduce him. As she slid onto him and used her hands and her mouth to weaken him into submission, it took all of John’s stamina to insist on the condom. Sometimes she allowed it, times when she had aroused herself too far to stop, but mostly, she withdrew when he insisted.

  Those nights were long and sleepless and angry. As usual, Eva didn’t talk about the matter and John couldn’t discuss it by himself. There were long months of silence and frustration.

  But sometime, years after Edie was born, Eva gave up. She didn’t say anything but John pieced together her rationale. Her daughter would be born to her or she would not. There was nothing Eva could do. And so she accepted the condoms.

  Eva tried harder with the children. She tried to be the mother she knew she should be. Frau Hessen loved the children and Eva followed her example and learned to treasure them, in her own way. She read them stories, she played games that made no sense to her, she taught the children to swim and to sail. She rarely remembered to kiss them goodnight and they were not to hear words of praise or love from their mother very often, but she tried.

  Her efforts brought John closer to her than ever. John loved his children but his heart and his thoughts were always with Eva. He struggled with the guilt of wanting so much of his wife and wishing his children out of the house for the day or early to bed. There was never enough time for just the two of them. He even seriously thought of sending them off to Ireland where they had been invited to spend time with their great-grandfather and Irish cousins at Kindea for a few months when Edie was only four.

  But John knew his duty. Like Eva, he tried to be the best parent he could be. It was easier for him. He loved his children without caveat. He wasn’t waiting for a different child.

  But his great love was Eva and he could never get enough of her. And somewhere deep within himself, John knew he blamed his children for the change in her.

  Eva

  EVA WAS AT ROSETTA IN THE SUMMER OF 1991 PREPARING FOR CHRISTMAS when she heard the phone ringing.

  The sea was solid and blue that day and there were several small sail boats tacking into the breeze along the channel. It had rained most of the night but the day was sunny and washed bright. Eva didn’t expect the call to be for her. She had very few calls. So she was surprised to find a rude young receptionist telling her that Doctor Spirano wanted to talk to her so please hold the line.

  She listened to the annoying tune of ‘Greensleeves’ and waited. In anticipation of the news she knew was coming, the world around Eva seemed to transform. The water of Driving Sound and the deep channel became bluer; the striped tablecloth Sadie and Cecile were flapping up and down between them glowed Mexico bright; the green lawn flashed sharp viridian; the sand dunes glared white and the yellow grass standing tall on top of the dunes was the deep burnt hue of prairie grass from that part of the US which Eva couldn’t remember by name but which she remembered from when she and John had travelled there years ago to a conference.

  She couldn’t hear any of the conversations going on out on the lawn but there was the broken sound of Sadie and Cecile laughing and squawking and Roger’s low voice overladen with Carl’s closer, deeper voice cheering something that was happening on the radio. Australia must have taken another wicket.

  The French doors out on to the side verandah were open and Eva felt the stuttering breeze on her cheek as it came in through the pine trees from the east. She could hear the soft irregular tinkling of the Japanese wind chime hanging from the eaves that only moved when the rare easterly was blowing. She could smell the fish and spicy meats cooking on the ba
rbeque and knew that lunch was not far away.

  John would be out there by himself, basking in the quiet peace of cooking in the fragrant shade of the peppermint gums, listening to the cricket, stoking the barbeque and enjoying his own thoughts as he watched the others.

  The phone call was just as she expected: she was pregnant. She was forty-eight years old. Dr Spirano was concerned. There were risks for a woman of her age. He needed to see her and John in the new year. He wanted to do a series of tests and she must prepare herself for the very real probability that this pregnancy wouldn’t go full term. And perhaps that might not be such a bad thing. Her eggs were old, John’s sperm was old and her body may not be able to cope with carrying a developing baby full term. Dr Spirano also felt the need to tell Eva that she and John, just like their eggs and sperm, were old. Too old to be going back to sleepless nights, nappies and the years of raising a child. Too old too, apparently, to deal with the horrors of a disabled child which Dr Spirano thought rather likely. Eva wondered what the right age was for that particular horror.

  Dr Spirano was strongly of the opinion that Eva and John were past it even if their bodies didn’t know it yet. Perhaps they should consider a termination, on medical grounds.

  Eva was sure that everything he said was medically correct. But she was just as sure that this baby girl would be born and that she and John would raise this daughter to adulthood.

  After the call from Dr Spirano, Eva could think of nothing else. She was going to have a baby. She’d known for weeks that she was pregnant but that didn’t mean she wasn’t surprised that it had happened in the first place. All the children were grown. Sadie was twenty-five – or was it twenty-six? – and she and Roger had a baby of their own. Carl and Helen were expecting their first baby in just a few weeks. Eva’s unborn baby was going to be an aunty to children older than her. Was that even possible?

  She knew that Sadie would be put out by the news. She would say all the right things, her social work training had taught her the right words for every occasion, but she’d strain to say them and they wouldn’t be true. Eva wondered whether Sadie had learned that in her social work training too or if that had always been Sadie’s way.

  It was hard to know how the others would respond. They probably wouldn’t have strong feelings on the matter. Edie might take it a bit hard as she’d always been the baby of the family but she was finished school now, sailing most evenings and weekends and moving to Melbourne in February to begin her studies at the conservatorium. Her parents were not a big part of her life these days.

  No, with the exception of Sadie, Eva was sure that her children would initially be surprised but then indifferently accepting of this development in their parents’ lives. This little baby would be like a distant relative to them, but Eva found this comforting rather than sad. This baby she could have to herself.

  She knew John would be disappointed. He loved this new stage in their lives with the children grown and gone and more time for painting. And more time for just the two of them to be together as they used to be in the beginning before all the babies came. This baby was here because of this new time together, in fact. Eva remembered the afternoon this baby had been conceived on the old couch in John’s studio here at Rosetta. Like her, John wanted lots more of those afternoons, and a child would get in the way of that. But Eva knew that he’d come round. Her happiness would bring him round.

  John had been talking for a few years now about retiring. He was fifty-six but ready to spend his time doing the things he loved and being a suburban GP was no longer one of those things. Eva understood. She hoped she could quickly convince him that their wonderful lives could only be happier with this baby. One baby would not be like four. She hoped that John would still feel as he did now and make the changes she knew he’d been planning. She hoped he did leave the practice and that they could spend more time at Rosetta. He would sail and paint and they could be a new little family.

  John accepted the news of her pregnancy more readily than Eva had anticipated. He said all the right things and she believed him. He would stay in the practice for a few more years. Yes, he was restless, but not overly so. He would get fitter and prepare himself for the demands of a little one. But he hugged her and whispered into her ear that he couldn’t be happier. While he held her, he’d also asked her the hard question.

  ‘What if this is not the daughter you think it is, Eva?’

  ‘It is,’ she had replied.

  ‘But?’

  ‘It’s her, John.’

  Sadie

  SADIE REMEMBERED BEING SHOCKED BY HER FATHER’S WORDS. EVA WAS in labour.

  Sadie had observed her mother through the pregnancy. She was the most delighted Sadie had ever seen her that Easter down at Rosetta. She smiled and hummed to herself when she thought no one was watching her. That pure happy smile wasn’t one Sadie could remember previously seeing on her mother’s beautiful face. She found herself watching her mother a lot just for the joy of witnessing her pleasure. Eva would lie on the old couch on the front verandah for hours with her hands resting on her bulging stomach talking in her quiet unfamiliar words to the baby inside her. Sadie wondered if she had been like this when she was pregnant with each of the others. Did the sense of obvious delight and joy in her unborn babies disappear with the reality of them? Sadie knew it disappeared early. She remembered her mother bringing Edie home from the hospital. Their father walked in the front door carrying the cane bassinette that Frau Hessen and the children had decorated with pink ribbons and lace after their father had called home to tell them all they had a baby sister. A shadow, who Sadie recognised as their mother, slipped into the house behind their father.

  The three kids rushed up to the bassinette to see their new sister. Eva floated past them and upstairs to her room. Sadie remembered her not smiling at them or hugging them. She didn’t even say hello. She looked so sad. Too sad for Sadie to approach her. Sadie looked into the bassinette thinking there must be something wrong with the baby. She knew things could go wrong. Her friend Samantha’s little brother was born with spina bifida and he died. Sadie didn’t know what spina bifida looked like and she couldn’t tell if her red-faced little sister, Edith Margaret, was all that she was supposed to be but she felt the weight of their mother’s grief lying in the bassinette smothering the tiny baby in there. Something was terribly wrong and spina bifida was the worst Sadie could imagine.

  John lifted the baby out and let them all have a hold. Sadie held the baby and it looked at her with blue eyes she recognised and a little frown that would become as familiar to her as breakfast. Sadie knew this little baby was her sister.

  Sadie remembered asking her father, ‘Is Edith Margaret all right?’

  He knelt down in front of her and wrapped his arms around her and Edith Margaret.

  ‘She is perfect, Sadie. Just like you.’

  Sadie could hear the sadness in his voice. Whatever was wrong that day stayed wrong. They all just learned to live around it.

  Eva

  IT WAS ALL DIFFERENT WITH ZOE. SHE WAS JUST AS BLONDE AND BLUE-EYED as the others but she was Zoe, all by herself. She wasn’t part of the crowd of the older children. They were all grown up and away when Zoe arrived so quietly urgent on that frosty winter morning and Eva knew that here was the baby she’d been waiting for all her life. The quiet one, the one who looked at Eva and saw her; the baby who waited and sighed and smiled at Eva even when they were just sitting together on the old cane chair on the side verandah at Rosetta or lying on the bed on a warm still afternoon. Zoe didn’t need to be entertained. She didn’t need constant mothering like the others did. Zoe didn’t care if her nappy wasn’t changed on time or if Eva only remembered to feed her when her breasts were swollen and sore and dripping with the milk Zoe had needed hours ago.

  They understood each other and this time around mothering was easy for Eva. She and Zoe moved to a rhythm she’d never been able to find with the others. Mother and daughter woke and
slept in the same unpredictable time lapses. Zoe rarely cried. She waited in her bassinette or cot for Eva to come to her. She was endlessly patient and always delighted to see Eva. She fed and slept and did all those things that babies must. All without fuss. She was happy to finally be here.

  John had been worried. He kept a vigilant eye on Eva and was always reminding her about the baby, just as he had with the others. He would often bring Zoe to Eva and place her in Eva’s arms to be fed or held. There was no need for him to take on this role but Eva understood his fussing. She knew she hadn’t been a good mother to her older children. They didn’t know who she was and when she tried to show herself to them, they saw someone else. They wanted her hands, her touch, her eyes, her loving words but they didn’t want her. She’d tried to give herself to each of them and they’d ignored her offerings. They wanted something else from her. Something she didn’t have. It was a million misfires between them for all their lives.

  But Eva and Zoe were in perfect communion. Eva spoke to her daughter only in Irish. She took her into the sea when she was only weeks old. And even on that freezing July evening when the water was at its coldest, Zoe had smiled and slipped effortlessly from Eva’s hands and into her element. Eva witnessed the transformation of her earthly child as she became one with the sea and Eva sang with delight. She sang the oldest songs of all. The songs Branna remembered from Issland.

  Later that same night as Eva sat in her old armchair in front of the fire feeding Zoe, Eva felt the unbreakable connection with her daughter that she’d missed with her other children. This was the bond that Ornice could not break. She could not give up Wynne. Even for Connery. As Eva felt Zoe tugging deeply on her breast and feeding hungrily, and she smelled her warm milkiness, Eva wondered if she could give up her daughter for John. For the first time, Eva understood the terrible decision that Ornice had been faced with.