by Meg Mason
I had never been able to tell her about my terror of pregnancy at the time I acquired it or as I got older and, instead of diminishing, my teenage fear intensified until I was a woman not just afraid of being pregnant, a damaged foetus, a damaged baby, but of babies in general, mothers and the concept of motherhood itself – one person charged with creating and keeping safe an entire human being. Ingrid would declare my fear irrational, illegitimate as the basis of an adult decision. And now, I did not want her to know that, so afraid, I’d still let Jonathan’s assured way of being and his propulsive energy overwhelm me and make me think I wasn’t scared at all. So quickly and so easily, I’d let him convince me I was someone else or that I could be simply by choosing and that I wanted a baby.
But I couldn’t compel myself into becoming someone without tendencies. Circumstances had no bearing, time wasn’t progressing me towards any other way of being. I was already at my final state. I was childless. I didn’t want children. I said, ‘So that’s good’ aloud, to no one. The women in the café were still talking when the traffic suddenly dissipated and the bus drove on.
*
At home, Oliver and Patrick were in the living room with Nicholas, watching television. Although it had been their practice for months and I’d had enough incidental conversations with Patrick to no longer feel awkward, I still didn’t join them and hadn’t meant to then. But as I passed the open door on my way to the stairs and saw them, shoulder to shoulder on the too-small sofa, loneliness collected me with such force I felt like I had been winded. I just stood there with my bag on my shoulder and my papers still in my hand, feeling the fast up and down of my chest, the in and out of my ribcage, until Oliver noticed me and said that, as I could see, they were watching competition darts and since it was the penultimate round, I needed to come in and sit down properly or continue on my way.
I saw myself, in a minute, sitting on my bed scrolling through listings for share houses in suburbs of London I only recognised as terminating destinations of various Tube lines, pretending I was still on the cusp of moving out.
I let my bag slide off my shoulder and went in. Patrick acknowledged me with a silent wave and Nicholas with the observation that I looked like shit. He asked me where I had been.
‘Town.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Divorcing.’
He said, ‘Shame’ and turned back to watch a man with a stomach that hung over his trousers aiming a dart at a red circle and punching the air when it struck the centre. After that, Nicholas got up, stretched, and told me I could have his spot because he just remembered a girl he needed to make amends with because his final act before rehab was putting a nine iron through her windscreen after taking more than his recommended daily intake of methamphetamine. ‘Which I discover is none. Back shortly.’
Patrick made a gesture of moving along to make more room, although there was none. Sitting between Patrick and Oliver, my arms pressed against theirs, all I wanted to do was stay there and watch competition darts while my cold empty body absorbed their warmth. The only thing Patrick said, turning his head but avoiding my eye, was, ‘I hope you’re okay.’
I pretended not to hear him because there was no way to bear the kindness of it, and instead asked Oliver why the men needed to wear moisture-wicking polos and sporty trousers to play a game that fat men play in pubs. He said, ‘It’s a sport, not a game,’ and we were all silent until its protracted finish and the presentation of a trophy that was so modest, I had to look away when the winner lifted it above his head with both hands as if its weight demanded it.
Oliver said, ‘Right, let’s see what else your parents’ terrestrial channels have to offer us, Martha.’ I knew he wouldn’t leave until Nicholas came back and I hoped that it would be a long time before he did. I did not want to be alone. Part way into the movie that Oliver chose for its promise of coarse language and sexual references, I felt myself falling asleep and just before I did, someone shifting so that my heavy head could rest against their shoulder.
*
The television was off and the windows black when I woke up. Only Patrick was still in the room. I was lying on my side, curled around a cushion. My head was in his lap. As soon I moved, he shot up and went over to the bookcases on the other side of the room, as though he’d been waiting for his opportunity to retrieve the Encyclopaedia of Middle English from my father’s shelves, which he did, then opened at random and stood reading. I asked him what time it was and where my cousins were. It was midnight, Nicholas had gone to bed and, he said, Oliver left a while ago.
‘Why didn’t you go with him?’
Patrick hesitated. ‘I didn’t want to wake you up.’
‘It would have been fine.’
‘Right, obviously. I just thought – no, don’t worry.’ He put the book under his arm and began patting his pockets. ‘Sorry, I should have –’
‘You’ve missed the last Tube. How are you going to get home?’
‘I’m going to walk.’
‘From Shepherd’s Bush to Bethnal Green.’
He said it wouldn’t take that long and he really felt like it – he’d been planning to walk. I glanced at his feet, sockless in canvas tennis shoes that were, for some reason, missing their laces.
‘Is this your first time with lying, Patrick? You’re not very good at it. Seriously, why didn’t you go with Oliver?’
Patrick cleared his throat. ‘I just thought it probably hasn’t been the best day and maybe you’d want company when you woke up. But you’re absolutely fine, so that’s great. I’ll get going.’
I asked if he was planning to borrow the book that was still under his arm.
He produced a laugh and said he’d forgotten it was there, extracting it and momentarily pretending to read the back. ‘I might leave it. I might put it back.’ I said I would get the door for him because only life-inhabitants of Goldhawk Road know the exact sequence of locks required to open it, and left him to reshelve the book.
The bulb in the hall light had been blown for some time. Trying to get around my father’s bicycle propped against the wall, my hip caught the handle bar and I unbalanced it. I stepped back to let it fall over. I didn’t know Patrick was already behind me, and I stumbled against him. He put his hands on my waist and because he did not take them away, even after I had righted myself, I said, ‘Do you love me Patrick?’ Instantly he let go and stepped back. In the dark, I couldn’t see his face.
He said no. ‘Or do you mean as a friend?’
I moved and switched on the outside light. It shone dimly through the glass above the door. I said, not as a friend.
‘Then no. I don’t.’ He said not like that and edged past me, then picked his way over the bike and began working the locks in any combination.
‘Oliver told me that you have been in love with me since we were teenagers.’
With his back to me, Patrick said, ‘Did he?’
‘On the night Jonathan proposed.’
‘Right, well I don’t know why he did that.’
I reached past him for a high bolt he hadn’t seen, skimming his arm. Patrick pressed himself against the wall and went out as soon as I had opened the door wide enough for him to get through it.
‘Patrick.’
He was taking the steps two at a time and didn’t turn around until he was on the footpath. I followed, then stopped half way.
‘Is it true?’
He said no, definitely not. ‘I really don’t know what Oliver was thinking.’ He said, ‘Sorry, I need to get going,’ already walking away.
*
The bell rang while I was still in the hallway, righting my father’s bicycle.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi.’
‘Sorry –’
‘What for?’
On the top step, hands in his pockets, Patrick said, ‘I just felt like I should say, I wasn’t a hundred per cent honest with you just then.’
I said okay.
He paused,
evidently unsure if he was required to elaborate or if, having confessed, he could rightfully leave. A second later, pushing his hands deeper into his pockets, he said, ‘No, it’s just at one stage –’
I scratched my arm, waiting. I thought I wanted to know, in the hallway I felt like I needed to know if Patrick loved me. I no longer did. I was embarrassed and wanted him to leave because I was convinced – irrationally but still convinced – it was obvious to him that the second his hands were on my waist and the half-second they’d remained there had been enough to make me believe that he did love me as Oliver said. And I had wanted him to say it because – now, in Patrick’s mind – I was in love with him.
‘– at one stage –’ he shifted his weight ‘– I did think I was – you know.’
‘When?’
‘One year, after I saw you at your aunt and uncle’s, at Christmas.’ He said I probably didn’t remember it. ‘We were teenagers. You were sick and I had to come in to –’
‘You told me about your mother.’
Patrick looked overly surprised, as though he did not think any conversation we’d ever had would be memorable to me.
‘Why did that make you think you were in love with me?’
‘I think, just because you asked me about her. No one else had or has really, if you don’t count Rowland wanting to know how she died, the first time I came.’
I shivered and folded my arms, although the air coming from outside wasn’t cold. ‘We are awful, Patrick.’
He said, ‘You weren’t. You’re not. Anyway the point is, I did think I was in love with you then and apparently told Oliver, which is a shame.’ Patrick scratched the back of his head very briskly. ‘But I obviously wasn’t and figured it out eventually. So please don’t worry, I have never loved you.’ He heard himself and said, ‘Sorry, that sounds –’
‘It’s fine.’ I told him I shouldn’t have asked him in the first place. ‘You can go.’
‘Are you alright though?’
I said yes, sharply. ‘I’m fine Patrick. It’s just been a full day of men who loved me once then stopped or thought they were in love with me, then realised they were just hungry or something.’ I stepped back into the house, telling Patrick that I would see him later.
*
Instead of sleeping, I lay awake until morning, my mind shifting between the memory of Jonathan behind his desk, his smirk as he told me I shouldn’t be a mother, and Patrick on the footpath and returning to the door. Jonathan was savage but at least in breaking my heart he’d kept it quick and dirty. In explaining that he’d never loved me – not actually, only in a moment of youthful confusion – Patrick had been so concerned not to hurt me, it was like having the dressing removed from a wound, peeled away from the corner too slowly, with such excessive care that before the wet flesh is halfway exposed you want to rip it off yourself.
It was during those hours, when I had thought about both of them, that Jonathan and Patrick became connected in my mind. And it was because they had both rejected me, on the same day, that afterwards, whenever I thought about Jonathan and my failed marriage, I thought about Patrick as well. That is what I decided in the following days and that is what I believed for a while.
12
NICHOLAS CAME INTO the kitchen the next morning while my father and I were sitting at the table reading newspapers. He wanted to know if there were any spare boxes in the house because he had decided to move in with Oliver. He wanted to be nearer the city. He wanted to try and get a proper job. He said his brother was coming to get him that afternoon.
My father got up and said he’d see what he could rustle up. Nicholas made toast and brought it over, sitting in an opposite chair. He began to talk about his plans. I brought my elbow onto the table and continued reading with my hand across my forehead, holding the weight of my head and shielding my face at the same time.
I did not respond to anything he said. I felt like a school child trying to hide the fact they are crying at their desk because the worksheet in front of them is too hard. I was trying not to cry because the prospect in front of me, of Nicholas leaving and it all of a sudden becoming just me and my parents in the house, was too hard. As he continued, I tried to concentrate solely on the fact that his going meant Patrick would stop coming over.
After a few minutes, he gave up and dragged my father’s paper towards him, turning each page without pausing to read anything. I sat motionless in front of mine, reading everything on the spread open in front of me until there was nothing left except the Court Circular. The previous day Princess Anne had opened a customer service centre at the Selby District Council and attended a reception afterwards. I felt sorry for her and worse for myself, especially once Nicholas stood up, put his plate in the sink and said he should probably crack on.
Eventually, I left the house and went for a walk. As I was trying to find my way out of Holland Park, my phone rang. It was Peregrine. My apology letter and his reply had been our only contact. I was not brave enough to initiate a lunch, in spite of my missing him, more than seemed reasonable.
Now, he said, he was in a car heading generally westward and wanted to know exactly where I was. He had just found out – he said never mind from whom – that my marriage had flopped and while he did not need to ask who was at fault, he felt desperate that I hadn’t rung him up when it happened.
I told him I was in Holland Park, and Peregrine said how convenient. He would divert his driver. ‘You can scurry up and meet me at the Orangery in quarter of an hour.’
I told him I was wearing jeans. He disapproved of denim in any incarnation, on any occasion, and I hoped the fact would get me out of going. I wanted to see him but not as I was.
I heard him give some instruction to his driver and then, coming back, Peregrine said he would overlook it since sartorial standards were always the first thing to go after heartbreak.
*
In lieu of hello, Peregrine said, ‘I have never understood why people think of champagne as celebratory rather than medicinal.’ A waitress was pouring it, clearly to his mind the wrong way and as she moved to fill the second glass, he thanked her and said that we could manage things from here. I sat down and he put a glass in my hand. ‘Surely the only time one needs one’s blood effervesced is when life is utterly flat.’
He watched as I sipped it, then said that although it pained him to say, I looked terminally ill. ‘Anyhow –’ he leaned back and steepled his fingers ‘– what are we doing next? Do you have a plan?’
I began to tell him that I was living with my parents and working at an organic supermarket but he shook his head. ‘That’s simply what you’re doing. It isn’t a plan and I would say you’re very unlikely to strike upon one, languishing in darkest W8.’
I touched the side of my glass. It sent a ribbon of condensation down the stem. I did not know what to say.
Peregrine put his palms on the table. He said Paris, Martha. ‘Please go to Paris.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when suffering is unavoidable, the only thing one gets to choose is the backdrop. Crying one’s eyes out beside the Seine is a different thing to crying one’s eyes out while traipsing around Hammersmith.’
I laughed and Peregrine looked unhappy. ‘I am not being whimsical, Martha. Short another, beauty is a reason to live.’
I told him that it was a lovely idea but I didn’t think I had the energy or money to go abroad.
He said first of all Paris is hardly abroad. ‘And secondly, I have a little pied-à-terre, purchased many years ago for the girls. I’d imagined them Zelda Fitzgeralding their way around Montparnasse or at the very least Jean Rhysing the time away in a darkened room, but the Beautiful and the Damned preferred the suburbs of Woking and so it sits, furnished and vacant.’
He told me that while it wasn’t in disrepair, the décor could only be described as character-building. ‘Still, it is yours, Martha. A home, for however long it is needed.’
I said it was so kind of
him and I would absolutely think about it.
‘That is precisely what you shouldn’t do.’ Peregrine looked at the time. ‘I must get back to the factory but I will have the key bicycled over this afternoon.’ It was, he said, decided. Separating at the corner of the park, Peregrine kissed me on both cheeks and said, ‘The Germans have a word for heartbreak, Martha. Liebeskummer. Isn’t it awful?’
*
At home, I Googled my bank and proceeded through the Forgot Password? process until I was looking at how much money I had. As soon as we got engaged, Jonathan had started making weekly transfers into my account, which I had saved only because each amount was so ludicrous, I couldn’t spend it before the next one came. Somehow, while he was on his work trip, he’d spirited it all out again and when I came back to Goldhawk Road, my assets were held in wedding rings and a wardrobe I divested to the Hospice Shop. At the organic supermarket, I earned an hourly rate equivalent to a wheatgrass smoothie, small, with no additions. But I bought nothing – for months only ham sandwiches and sports drinks for my walks with Nicholas.
The key arrived mid-afternoon. The address was on a monogrammed card and written above it, ‘A Bride, Cruelly Dismissed, Experiences Felicity, Going Husbandless, In Jeans … etc. etc. and ring me up as soon as you arrive.’ I had enough money, so I went.
13
I LIVED IN Paris for four years and worked the whole time at an English language bookshop near the Notre Dame, selling Lonely Planets and paperback Hemingways to tourists who only wanted to take photographs of themselves inside the shop.
My boss was an American who lived in its converted attic. He was trying to be a playwright. On my first day he showed me where everything was, his tour culminating at the shelves nearest the door. He said, ‘And all the reputable authors are here.’ I asked him where the disreputable authors were and he clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and said, ‘We’ve got ourselves a live one’ to a doleful Danish girl who was serving out her last day. I slept with him for three and a half years and never loved him.