And in her bed he’d stroked her hair from her face and asked her if she was sure, because, he said, he wasn’t the type of man she needed. How infuriating he was, just as she’d suspected he would be. But infuriating was something she could cope with, she could be firm and straight with him and he would accept that she wouldn’t be patronised and be straight with her in turn. After all, he was a good, sensible man beneath his bluster and charm and silliness. And he’d been a soldier, like Peter; an army captain, like him. Perhaps not such a different breed, then. Perhaps Peter might even have understood.
Her GP had said, ‘My dear, I can only confirm what you already know, that you’re pregnant and that everything appears normal and healthy.’ The old man had looked at her over the rim of his spectacles just like her father used to. Not unkindly, he said, ‘You’re a little older than most girls in your position…most are girls…young, foolish…’ He’d sighed and taken off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose as though terribly weary of all the life that paraded through his door. ‘Joy,’ he’d said, ‘you’re the very last person I would have expected this of. Will the father stand by you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she’d said, and truly didn’t. Not that she expected Simon to stand by. Sitting in the doctor’s surgery, on the hard, wooden chair that seemed designed for the penitent, she had thought of Simon in her bed, asleep because lovemaking seemed to exhaust him. She’d thought that his exhaustion was justified now that he was to become a father: hard work, being a stud.
And on the train, as she lost her baby, her most beloved thing in the whole world, he had been calm and efficient and she could have taken this as coldness, and for a while, in hospital when the pain was unbearable, she had. She had hated him, a loathing that made her cringe away from his touch, the comfort he seemed so desperate to offer her as if to make up for his early detachment. In hospital he had sat by her bed for hours and hours and sometimes she didn’t have the strength to pull her hand away from his, but allowed him this small intimacy. Occasionally he would lift her hand to his mouth and she’d feel the dry brush of his lips. It took hours of his silent handholding for her to recognise the depth of his sadness, a leap of imagination not to treat his pain as nothing, although she still felt that it was nothing compared to her own.
Joy followed Simon into the hallway of their new house, a few steps behind him as he went into the kitchen and answered the timid knock on the back door. He said in his hearty voice, ‘Ah, Annette! My dear, come in. Joy – this is Annette, who has very kindly been helping me out this past fortnight or so.’
The girl smiled shyly, hardly able to meet her eye. She looked no more than eighteen or nineteen, her long dark hair loose around her shoulders, her complexion pale as ivory. Too thin, she could be one of the new type of waif-like models, all sharp angles and huge, startled eyes rimmed with kohl. The tartan skirt she wore was too short, her sweater cheap and garishly cheerful so that it seemed wrong on her because she looked so sad. Still too full of her own sadness, Joy stepped back from the girl. She heard Simon laugh to cover his embarrassment.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘why don’t we have a cup of tea?’
Unable to bear his fussing, Joy had sent Simon to buy a newspaper. Opposite her at the kitchen table, Annette Carter sipped her tea self-consciously; the girl’s hand shook so that each time she set her cup down it rattled against the saucer. Joy noticed the love-bite on her neck, an ugly purple bruise she had tried to cover with face powder. In Joy’s head she could hear her mother saying common! So common! The word and its disgusted intonation made her feel old.
Forcing herself to smile, Joy said, ‘My husband tells me you’ve been a great help, Annette. Now I’m home I wonder if we could formalise the arrangement? Would three mornings a week suit you?’
‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Walker.’
Her voice was little more than a whisper and she touched the bite on her neck as if to hide it. Joy saw that her nails were bitten to the quick and that her hands were cracked and angry-looking. Her wedding ring slid towards her knuckle and she pushed it back, twisting it round and round. Timidly she said, ‘I should get on. Where would you like me to make a start?’
Joy looked around helplessly. The house was worse than she had imagined; its dereliction made her want to weep in despair. She remembered Simon’s mother from their brief meeting early in her relationship with her son; the old woman had been imperious and haughty and she had imagined that her home would be tightly run, that she would have a cohort of bullied servants to keep the place in order. Simon had told her how grand the house was, how lovely its garden. In hospital it had helped to think of this garden. Seeing it so overgrown and choked with weeds had made her feel overcome with weariness. She would need a man to help her with the heavy work; she knew how difficult it was to find reliable men.
Aware that Annette was waiting for some direction, Joy said, ‘I don’t suppose your husband needs a little extra work, does he? The garden…’
Annette looked horrified. ‘Oh, no. No – he couldn’t –’
‘All right, just a thought.’ She smiled, wanting to reassure her even as she wondered at the vehemence of the girl’s response. Perhaps her husband was the kind of man who felt casual work was beneath his dignity, no matter how much his family needed the money. Such men were a waste of the air they breathed. She felt her anger rise, like bubbles in a shaken pop bottle, she could do nothing to stop its useless expansion. Too sharply she said, ‘But why not? I’d pay him good money –’
‘No, no, I don’t think so…really, it’s very kind of you.’
Joy’s anger had more to do with herself than this anxious girl, she knew that, she understood the shock her body had been through, its hormones raging as though desperate for a purpose now that her baby was lost. She tried to breathe steadily, as the understanding nurse had taught her. Her anger only seemed to increase and she got up, wanting to find something to fling at the wall. She paced to the window and back again. The girl watched her as though terrified.
Joy turned on her. ‘What does your husband do?’
Annette bowed her head. ‘He’s a bin man.’
‘And that takes up all his time, does it? He doesn’t care to earn a little extra money?’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘Why? Why are you sorry? Honestly – what good is it?’ Anger swelled inside her, so animating she could imagine jumping and spitting with rage; but she pictured how mad she would look, how scary, and the girl already seemed terrified, like a child unjustly reprimanded, the kind of child who couldn’t say boo to a goose. All at once Joy felt deflated and foolish. She sat down again. Grudgingly, the anger still retaining a little of its grip, she said, ‘I’m sorry. Of course it’s up to him what your husband does and does not do.’ She attempted a smile, to make a joke of herself. ‘I tend to become rather over-wrought, at the moment. You must bear with me.’
The girl nodded. ‘It’s all right.’
‘Is it?’ Joy sighed.
‘I should get on, Mrs Walker, if you tell me where…’
‘Oh I don’t know! Where do you usually start? You know this house better than I do. Don’t you have any initiative?’
Annette stood up. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Walker. I’m sorry if you’re angry with me.’
She was so pale, her hair hanging in greasy rat-tails around her face, her cheap clothes looking as though she had slept in them. Earlier, Joy had caught the unwashed smell of her. It was difficult to believe that she could do anything as efficiently as Simon insisted she could. Joy thought of this girl’s children and imagined them ragged and snotty. It was unfair that God had given children to her to neglect when her own child would have been so loved. Unable to help herself, she said, ‘You have two little boys, I hear?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you’re very blessed. I hope you realise how blessed you are.’
‘I do.’ She bowed her head and tears fell down her face. She swiped them away with her fingerti
ps. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Joy stepped towards her, only to hesitate, at a loss to know what to say or do. She knew that other women would take the girl in their arms to comfort her, their voices soft with there-theres. She thought of the nurse that had held her so tenderly when she had wept, and the soft stream of sounds she made, sweet and sad as a lullaby. She had held on to that nurse and had not felt ashamed of crying as she usually did. She remembered how she had stained her blue uniform with snot and tears, a dark, wet patch above her breast. ‘You’re all right,’ the nurse said. ‘You’re going to be all right.’ She had almost believed her. At least she had held on to her words as if she had thrown her a lifeline.
Now she stood before this girl and could say nothing, offer nothing. Her heart was too hard. How often her mother had told her that – her heart was hard with practicalities, she was cold and unfeeling. Joy clenched her fists at her sides, trying to dispel her mother’s voice from her head. She stepped forward.
‘Annette…’ Joy held out her hand and touched the girl’s arm. ‘Don’t cry.’
Annette pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and quickly wiped her eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘And don’t keep saying you’re sorry!’ Joy laughed awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry! I was abrupt…’
The girl gazed at her. Suddenly she said, ‘He’s going to kill my baby.’ Her hand went to her mouth as if to recapture her words and force them back where they came from. She closed her eyes and Joy was catching her in her arms as she fell.
Chapter 23
Mark sat at Simon’s hospital bedside. A few moments ago the hospital chaplain had left, smiles and handshakes all round. As soon as the door swung closed behind the man’s back, Simon had closed his eyes and his mouth became a thin, angry line. ‘I’m a stinking hypocrite,’ he said. ‘I should have told him what I really think.’
‘What do you really think?’
He had opened his eyes and looked at him as though he was appraising his ability to understand. At last he said, ‘I think that it’s all make-believe and stories. But then, why should I offend the man? And if he finds comfort in his make-believe, who am I to question it? I know it gave your mother comfort – when I meet men like him that’s what I keep reminding myself of – their stories helped your mother at the end.’
Simon closed his eyes again and at once Mark said, ‘Would you like me go?’
‘No. Stay. Stay a while, bide with me.’ He opened one eye to smile at him.
Simon slept and Mark picked up the newspaper he’d brought only to put it down again after a quick scan of the headlines. He got up and went to the window, but the rain that had been falling all morning made the view grey and even bleaker than usual. In the distance the church spire was shiny-black with rain, the cross at its pinnacle stark against the leaden sky. This was the chaplain’s church, St John’s. Mark had found himself asking him about the size of his congregation. It seemed an impertinent question now, and he wondered what had come over him to ask. But the man had seemed pleased at his interest, and had proudly told him that the church had a lively, active membership. Membership. From the corner of his eye he had seen Simon’s lip curl in contempt as the chaplain described how he saw the church’s role in such a challenging community as Rosehill. Only able to bear this kind of talk for so long, Simon had said briskly, ‘Reverend, you know my son’s a novelist, don’t you? I’d be careful of his interest.’
The man had looked alarmed.
Mark remembered the day his first novel was published. At the launch party he had watched his parents move around the room, practised, gracious guests. ‘Our other son Ben is an orthopaedic surgeon,’ he’d heard his father say to his agent, and Joy had cut in, ‘We’re very proud of both of them,’ as if to dispel any doubt.
Resting his forehead against the cold window, Mark looked down on the car park several stories below. He should be at home, writing; already one deadline had passed, although his publisher had understood. He should be at home, writing, but it seemed impossible to imagine himself at his desk, summoning the concentration needed to work. He had begun to imagine how he might not write. He had made calculations in a notebook, a list of expenditures balanced against a list of savings and pension funds and the equity in his London flat. Added to these calculations was the money he knew he would receive following Simon’s death. Writing down an estimated figure, he had felt only a little mercenary. Lately, his heart seemed absent.
A young family walked across the car park: mother, father, a toddler dragged by the hand, a baby in a fashionable three-wheel buggy. The father wore a baseball cap in Burberry tartan and white jog-pants. He was smoking. Mark watched him stride across the tarmac, the child trailing behind him until he jerked its arm to hurry it. Thinking of Steven, Mark turned to the mother. Her head was bowed, her dark hair streaked with blonde and tied in a high ponytail. The father looked up and seemed to stare right at him. Instinctively, Mark stepped back from the window.
Last night Ben had phoned and told him that he was thinking of inviting Steven to Sunday tea. Sunday tea had made him think of tinned salmon sandwiches and cocktail sausage rolls, fairy cakes and jelly and ice-cream, the kind of tea Joy would prepare so diligently when they were children. They would be allowed to invite a friend or two and often Ben did and Michael or David or Geoff would join them and eat more than their fair share. Mark never invited anyone, although in the early days Joy had encouraged him to, even inviting little boys on his behalf. These boys became Ben’s friends for the afternoon, just as he knew Steven would because it was easy to like Ben, to imagine that he liked you.
Mark sat down again. Simon’s hand was closed in a loose fist on the hospital blankets, its blue veins raised so that he imagined they would yield to his touch like water in a plastic bag. But he knew he would only feel bones beneath the papery flesh, hard and uncompromising.
Simon had said, ‘I am so disgusted with you, Mark. So disgusted I can hardly bear to look at you.’
This was days after Simon had discovered his adultery, days for his father to become so angry he couldn’t speak Susan’s name. From that day she was always Ben’s wife or your brother’s wife. This last was said with hard-edged stress. ‘Have you no scruples,’ Simon asked, ‘no moral sense?’ and he had sounded like the tyrant father in a Victorian morality play. He always was an old-fashioned man.
And Susan had asked, ‘So why did you agree to discuss it with him?’
Although she knew why, and had even laughed at him. It had never occurred to her that Simon might tell Ben.
He had finished their relationship and he had felt that his life was over so that when he went back to her he knew he would rather sacrifice Simon’s respect than lose even a moment with Susan. He treated those desolate weeks as a lesson he had learnt. Susan treated them as nothing at all.
Mark hunched forward on the hard, hospital chair and buried his face in his hands. ‘Oh Christ,’ he said softly. ‘Sweet Jesus Christ.’
‘Mark?’ Simon’s voice was tender. He reached out and touched Mark’s shoulder. ‘My boy.’
‘I woke you…’
‘No.’ Gently he said, ‘You looked so like your mother for a moment.’
‘Annette?’
‘Of course Annette. The first time I saw her…’ He sighed.
‘The first time you saw her…?’
‘She was lovely.’
Annette knelt by the bed. She reached out to touch his wrist where the cord bound him, but drew away as though scolded. He tried to find his voice but fear smothered it and besides, she seemed too far away, like someone in a dream. Perhaps he was dreaming. He heard her breathing, sharp, quick breaths.
‘Mark?’ Anxiously Simon said, ‘Mark, are you all right?’
Annette clambered to her feet. She hesitated, only to turn away. She closed the door softly behind her as though afraid to wake him.
Mark stood up. He crouched in front of the bedside locker and began packing
Simon’s laundry into a carrier bag to take home.
Simon said, ‘Leave that, Mark. Sit down. You’re upset…’
‘No, no I’m not. Ridiculous, anyway, after all these years.’ He thrust a pair of pyjamas into the bag. ‘I’m fine.’
‘For God’s sake boy!’
Mark straightened up. He knotted the handles of the carrier bag together. He said, ‘I should go.’
‘Sit down, Mark.’ More carefully he said, ‘Sit down.’
Mark sunk down onto the chair. He wrapped the bag’s handles round and round his fingers tightly, welcoming the pain. At last he said, ‘Ben’s found Danny.’
Simon nodded. ‘I’d guessed that he had.’
‘I keep thinking I shouldn’t care so much.’
‘It’s bound to be unsettling for you.’
‘I feel five years old again.’
‘Oh, Mark –’
‘I know – pathetic, isn’t it? It feels like I’ve failed, that no matter what I do I’ll always be…I don’t know – Danny’s…’
He could feel Simon’s gaze on him. Expecting him to speak, instead his silence went on, so that Mark forced himself to look up.
‘You’re my son, Mark,’ Simon said. ‘Danny was just…’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing. He was nothing, just a deranged boy. You’re not his, no more than Ben is his. You’re my sons. I brought you up. What is Danny compared to that? How can you believe he has any influence on the kind of man you’ve become?’
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