by Jane Bailey
We were told it was normal for some mothers to feel a bit low shortly after childbirth, but Pippa just seemed vindictive. ‘Look at my belly! Look at it! No, don’t! Don’t look at me! It’s disgusting. See what you’ve done? I’ll never look good in a dress again. Never.’
She already looked good in a dress. In fact, within a few weeks she was out shopping for new dresses. Len had warned me to expect a wife who was not herself for a few weeks, who went about the house in a dressing gown and with unwashed hair. Not Pippa. After a few days of no make-up and endless whinging, she started to take care of herself again. She wore a red silk kimono. Before breakfast she did sit-ups while I fed Felicity from a bottle, and then, after a few weeks, she would put the baby in the pram for the rest of the morning and leave her at home while she whittled her allowance down to zero. I had no idea she had been leaving the baby on her own for hours at a time until, having stupidly left some important documents at home, I came back while she was still out one lunchtime.
I could hear Felicity crying before I opened the front door. Inside the house, the noise was heart-rending. She was lying in the pram, hot and red-faced and distraught. Her nappy had leaked, and there was some mess in her hair and on the covers. I took her to the bathroom and lay her awkwardly on the floor while I ran a shallow bath. Then I took off her things and dunked her in, talking gently to her until she stopped crying. There is something especially moving about a calm baby still with tears on its cheeks from previous distress.
‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’
I emptied the muck out of the bath and rinsed her in lukewarm water. I wrapped her in a towel and held her close, savouring her warmth and her calm. There were no clean nappies anywhere for her, so I did the best I could with a folded hand towel and a nappy pin. I stood at the front door, holding her. There was no sign of Pippa, so I scribbled a note and went round the corner to Len’s house, where his wife agreed to look after her. I handed Felicity over in her gigantic pink-striped nappy. Len’s wife was cheerful, but I could tell she was concealing a certain shock at the circumstances. I didn’t go into any detail, just said that Pippa had had to go out and would be round later.
When I eventually came home from work, Pippa was sitting reading a magazine with Felicity lying on the sofa beside her.
‘Where were you?’ I tried not to sound accusing.
‘We’d run out of baby milk and washing powder.’
‘There’s a shop on the corner.’
‘I had to go into town for the bank. I’ve no money.’
‘What about the ten pounds I gave you yesterday?’
‘I had to buy some new outfits. You can’t possibly expect me to wear those old sacks when I’ve nearly got my figure back to what it was.’
‘What about the clothes you used to wear?’
‘They don’t fit me, no thanks to you!’
‘I told you, I’ve put more money into your account, and I gave you ten pounds. Where’s it all gone?’
‘I need to buy more nappies!’
‘We bought a dozen. Why don’t you wash any of them?’
‘What am I now, a skivvy? I didn’t marry you to wash excrement out of nappies!’
‘Well, someone has to do it.’
‘I want some help. We should hire someone.’
I phoned my parents from work. Two days later my mother arrived with a little suitcase. She cooked lunch for us both and propped Pippa’s feet up on the sofa. She soaked and washed nappies, sterilized bottles, prepared the baby’s milk and fed her. She showed Pippa how to do these things too, but Pippa looked bored as she explained things. ‘You’re just a little down, dear,’ she explained. ‘It’s perfectly normal. It’ll all get easier and you’ll feel on top of the world soon.’
My mother’s intention was to stay a few days or a week, just long enough to give my wife a break, but Pippa showed no signs of wanting to take over from her. If my mother handed her the baby – all washed and fed – she would look up from her magazine and say, ‘Oh, not now, Elsie,’ and if my mother offered to show Pippa how to sterilize a bottle, or suggested she help with a feed, Pippa would say, ‘Yes, of course,’ and then ten minutes later would add, ‘Actually, do you mind awfully doing it yourself this time? There’s something I want to watch on the television.’
Around my mother I was still childishly jealous of Philip. Every time I saw her, I felt guilt like a wound, and an inadequacy compared to my dead brother. It was so good to see her, and so gratifying to have her help us out, but I knew that Philip’s wife, had he lived to have one, would never have been this much trouble. Nor would my wife have been any trouble if I’d married Dora. I was a constant source of disappointment to my mother, for certain. I would sit in the evenings sometimes, cocooned in the privacy afforded by watching a television programme, and imagine what might have been. Dora and my mother discussing children, swapping recipes, shopping together, laughing at the same jokes. I could see Dora hugging her as they said hello or goodbye; I saw my parents’ faces light up when we arrived for visits or when they came to see us, welcomed by all sorts of treats and baking smells and cheerful gossipy news. The daughter they never had, helping to make up for the son they had lost.
‘You think I’m a bad mother, don’t you?’ Pippa challenged her one day.
My mother looked as if she’d been ticked off. ‘Oh, no, dear, not at all. Not at all.’
‘It’s okay. I know I’m not cut out for this sort of thing, and that’s that.’
My mother’s deeply furrowed brow softened, and she put a comforting hand on Pippa’s knee. ‘Actually, it’s very hard to be a bad mother. All you need is to love your baby, and the rest takes care of itself.’
‘How can a baby understand love? All it wants is to eat and to cry!’
Elsie folded her lips together, holding back while she found the right words to come out of them. ‘A baby understands being fed as being looked after, and it understands being paid attention when it cries as being looked after. Lots of cuddling will do the trick. That’s the sort of attention a baby needs most. That’s how a baby learns that she’s loved: food and attention.’
She said these things very gently – anxious, I suppose, not to seem to be a know-it-all. ‘It’s hard for first-time mothers.’ Then she added something generous and surely untrue: ‘I think you’re doing really well.’
I was sorry to see her go. It had been ten days, and she had to get back to Dad, who phoned her every night from the telephone box on the corner of their street. My father found it hard without her. And it wasn’t just the diet of corned beef and condensed milk. It was the first time they’d spent more than one night apart in thirty years. When she stood at the doorway with me, all packed with what I now saw was just a zipped-up shopping bag, Pippa was slouching on the sofa, reading a copy of The Tatler. I wished I had a car so that I could drive my mum to the station, but she said she would catch the bus. The taxi I’d ordered arrived bang on time, and she chided me for wasting my money.
‘Now, I’ve made you a fruit cake, and it’s cooling next to the cooker. That should last you a few days. And there’s a bacon-and-egg pie I’ve made all ready to go in the oven. It’s in the fridge. Pippa will know what to do.’ She made this last comment without much conviction. Then she put a reddened hand on my arm and squeezed it, looking me in the eye with a kindly gaze. ‘Don’t worry, Arthur. You’re doing so well. Me and your father are so proud of you.’ She placed her hand on my cheek and gave me a quick peck. ‘But remember, we’re just a train ride away if you need us.’
I saw her into the taxi and watched her disappear around the corner at the end of the road with a pain in my throat. She had abandoned her beloved Bill for ten long days, all for me: food and attention.
40
DORA
He was so sorry. I could see him trying to get me alone all day, and as soon as he did he came up behind me and kissed my neck softly, promising it would never happen again. ‘
I was jealous, that’s all. You can’t blame me. I love you so much.’ He had that way of twisting everything to make you feel it was a compliment. I should be grateful that he’d lashed out. It was proof of his love for me. And it worked. I was lulled into a sense of intense security. Strong arms. Thankfulness. Relief.
I did the predictable thing and pretended I’d had a fall. The weeks and months passed in a flurry of busyness. The wine was going to be accepted by the local co-operative since it had the right balance of Grenache and Syrah grapes, and if all went well, it would be bottled as Côtes du Rhône-Villages. The profit, after paying the grape pickers, would be minimal, but the note of promise by the co-operative was a cause for much merriment and bottle opening. ‘Next year, we’ll double it, and the year after that we’ll double it again and bottle it ourselves: Mis en bouteille aux Amandiers!’
All this time, Ralph was very tender towards me. The bruise completely disappeared, and it became our secret, as secret as the caresses we exchanged at night. I was surprised every time by the lust he inspired in me. Sometimes at the kitchen sink or peeling potatoes I would be overcome with a sudden ache for him, and I would close my eyes and think of a touch or a look from the night before. I would happily have sprawled in the potato peelings for him or crawled on all fours for him in the cold pantry or wrapped my feet around his neck in the shed or stood, knees trembling, against the metal of the wine vat behind the outhouses. I pictured our wedding in the spring, the guests arriving at his father’s house in Gloucestershire (I knew he wouldn’t want a church). I dismissed the objections of Our Mam and Dad, who would be bowled over by the gardens and the marquees. Would there be marquees? Yes, and there’d be a band, and the French crowd would come over too, with little Claudine all dressed in silk and Patsy so happy for us both, and me dressed in . . . ? White silk. Did I have the right? Ivory, then. Something ambiguous. And then at some stage, some far-off stage, we’d move into the house ourselves, and our children would play in the grounds, safe and free. And Arthur would hear about it, of course, and then he and Pippa would be almost neighbours. But we wouldn’t invite them. I wouldn’t have Pippa in my house. Arthur would catch glimpses of me from time to time, perhaps in Gloucestershire at a local fete, and he would wonder if he hadn’t perhaps married the wrong woman; he would imagine what it would be like to lie with me, in a four-poster bed or on the side of a mountain, and take me, willing and ready and all for himself.
Always I came back to Arthur. I hadn’t got over him. I hadn’t allowed myself the time to grieve, and sometimes he would just pop up, unannounced like that, in the middle of another thought that had nothing to do with him. I would not go near enough to explore, because my feelings about him were an unexploded bomb. My reluctance, of course, didn’t stop its timer ticking. I couldn’t comprehend his motives. That was as close as I could get: a series of questions. Why didn’t he . . . ? When he could so easily have . . . ? What did he intend by . . . ? Why did he . . . ? Why? Why? Had I got him so wrong? Was I such a fool? Yes, of course I was. A fool. A gullible fool, not pretty enough, not clever enough, not sophisticated enough, not . . . enough. Enough, and I could go no further. The stealthy creeping up to it ceased, and I would scuttle back to Ralph and the safety of his erotic power over me.
And then one day just before Christmas, Ralph said something astonishing. We were alone in the kitchen one evening because everyone else was at a choir concert in the nearby village of Dieulefit. The radio was on, and he took me in his arms and swayed me gently on the tiled floor by the stove. His one hand caressed my buttock, and after a while it crept under my skirt and between my legs.
‘Did he do this to you?’
I was on the alert straight away. There had been no students in the house for months. I felt myself go rigid. ‘Who?’
He didn’t stop his gentle movements, but I began to tremble. ‘Did your dear Arthur do this to you?’
I pulled away.
‘What?’
He held on to my shoulders. ‘The man you were engaged to before me.’ He looked me gravely in the eye, as though I had committed a sin.
I took in a breath. I couldn’t get enough air. A wave slapped over me. I tried to surface.
‘Come on, Dora, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘How did you . . . ? I was never engaged to him. He asked someone else instead.’
‘Why was that, do you think?’
I could feel my jaw wobbling. I had to clench my teeth to stop them chattering. My eyes were swimming, and I felt the wetness and soreness of tears spilling down my cheeks.
‘Ooh, I see I’m right. He did, didn’t he? Mmm?’ He clutched my shoulders tightly, pinching the skin hard. ‘Did he touch you like me?’
I wept and gasped for air. Still he squeezed – even harder.
‘Mmm? Mmm? Like this? Did he touch you like this?’
He reached for my intimate parts again, and I put my hand up to slap him, but before I managed it he defended himself by grabbing my wrists and hurling me against the stove. I hit my head as I fell down, and I found myself sitting at his feet on the cold red tiles. He turned and left.
Before everyone returned that night, he came back to the kitchen to find me sitting at the table with my head in my arms. He went to the sink and wetted a clean dishcloth, and then he gently bathed the back of my head. When he had finished he patted my hair dry and pulled up a chair to sit beside me, putting an arm around me. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sobbing. ‘I just can’t bear the thought . . . I can’t bear the thought of another man touching you.’
I must’ve lifted a very blotchy, tear-stained face to him, because I had been crying for ages. ‘He didn’t. We didn’t.’ I remembered the times by the bilberry bushes when Arthur’s touch had made me melt against him, but I told myself that that was not really what Ralph was interested in. He wanted to be the one to take my maidenhead, and he had. ‘I bled. Can’t you remember? I bled.’
He drew me into him, contrite as it was possible to be. ‘I’m sorry, Dora. I’m so sorry. I just can’t bear to think of any man . . . I just love you so much. I needed to know.’ And then later: ‘You promise he didn’t even . . . ?’
I promised.
When the others came back, and when we were in bed, I ventured to ask why he thought I’d been engaged to Arthur, and how he knew his name. He turned to face me and stroked my hair, holding my gaze very carefully. ‘I went to see Pippa when I was back in England. She’s married to him.’ That gaze, ready to pounce on a mere morsel.
‘I know.’ Steady as she goes.
‘They have a baby on the way.’ Any sign, any sign at all.
‘I heard.’
‘Well, anyway, she seemed to think you’d been engaged to him before her.’
‘No. That’s not the case.’
‘I see.’ He continued to stroke my hair, still paying attention. ‘So, anyway, she seemed to think he was as dull as ditchwater and you’re well out of it.’ He was pushing so hard, no doubt certain that this would produce something, surely. Some flicker, if I was lying.
‘Well, maybe I am.’ I smiled as warmly as I could and kissed him to stop him from seeing any strain on my face.
How dare she. How dare she seduce him and ruin my life and then dismiss him as dull. Was a little part of me relieved? No, not at all. All right then, yes. Yes, it probably was.
I suppose it was the coffee that first alerted me. I’d made the coffee at breakfast time and was pouring it for Patsy, and I realized that I didn’t want any myself. The smell of it made me nauseous, and I told her.
‘Ça y est! You’re expecting!’ she whispered, even though we were the only two in the kitchen at the time. ‘I wondered when that was going to happen.’
I looked at her in dismay. Of course, it shouldn’t really have been a surprise, but I was ridiculously shocked. Ralph had told me there was no chance of a baby because he had a special way of doing things, and that he was keeping me safe. It had oc
casionally come to my notice that his special way may not have quite worked, but I knew nothing much about these things and trusted his methods.
A letter arrived from Wales telling me that my father was very ill. Our Mam was not a manipulative person. She would not have said it if it hadn’t been true.
We knew it was his lungs, but now they say it’s his heart. He’s home from the hospital in Cardiff now but he is not well, Dora. Try to come home. Show your young man this letter. However busy he is he’ll understand about family. Please try to come home and see him.
I did show it to Ralph, and he said he’d think about it. He’d said that before, of course, and nothing had happened. I wanted to go home and see Our Dad and make him proud of me again.
There was still time. We could go to Wales, get married swiftly somewhere, and then organize a big party at Ralph’s father’s later on in the summer . . . in the spring . . . no, we would have to forget sunny garden parties. But there was still time to make them proud and happy to see me married.
I thought of Ralph on a little tour of the neighbourhood: Ralph at number 17, eating Our Mam’s bara brith in the parlour. Our Dad sitting in the only armchair. Mrs Price popping her head round the door for a good nosey and saying, ‘There’s lovely. I da like a young man with a healthy appetite, I do. Where’d you find him then, Dora?’ Mrs Pritchard at the Co-op giving him the once over, telling him the spam is on offer: ‘Gwon, take it! Two for the price of one, it is. They don’t have it in France, do they? Better than all that foreign muck, it is. You have it, love, as a treat on me.’ Big Bryn showing us his new van and patting it: ‘They don’t make engines like this very often. She’s a beauty. Ralph, is it? You can try her out if you like, since you’re a friend of Dora’s, like. I’ll show you how to work the gears. Driving’s like riding a bicycle. Gwon – have a go!’