The Editor's Wife

by Clare Chambers

  Oh God, here we go, I thought. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee, Alex?’ I asked, to head off this line of discussion. ‘Or are you in a rush?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ Alex hesitated. ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind, if you’re making some. I didn’t get a chance to have anything at the theatre. I’ve just come from the Playhouse in Scarborough,’ she explained to Carol.

  Having achieved a change of topic I felt it safe to withdraw to the kitchen. Through the open door I could overhear their conversation.

  ‘Oh, that so-called comedy? I saw that last week. What a load of shite, didn’t you think so?’ Carol was saying.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been my normal choice, but my aunt was in it, so I felt obliged to . . .’

  ‘Was that your aunt?’ Carol said, with great interest and no apparent remorse. ‘She needs to choose her scripts better. What else has she been in?’

  Alex recited a short list of unfamiliar titles from the obscurer reaches of the TV schedules. ‘She does a lot of radio work,’ she finished, a shade defensively.

  ‘Her voice was very familiar,’ Carol conceded. ‘Did you say you hadn’t eaten anything? There’s some lovely leftover curry. Chris, whack a nan bread under the grill,’ she called out. ‘We’ve got falling blood sugar levels here.’

  ‘I’m all right, really,’ said Alex.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ Carol insisted, getting to her feet, suddenly energetic in the face of a mission. A moment later she was whisking about the kitchen, opening cupboards, banging the microwave door, and generally getting in my way. Shortly a bowl of reheated vegetable jalfrezi and a slightly charred nan was set before Alex, who was going to have to eat it, hungry or not.

  ‘It’s a pity you weren’t here earlier,’ Carol said as Alex took her first tentative mouthful. ‘We could have played solo. Or mah-jongg.’

  ‘I haven’t got a mah-jongg set any more,’ I reminded her. ‘You took it.’

  ‘So I did. Gerald, can we turn the TV off now? It’s a bit antisocial.’

  ‘I only wanted to see the weather forecast,’ he grumbled. ‘Apparently there’s a lot of flooding north of here. Twenty-six millimetres of rain fell in Penrith today.’

  ‘That’s hardly a forecast,’ said Carol.

  Gerald hit the switch and shambled out to the kitchen, returning a moment later with his third packet of jelly, which he unwrapped and offered round. There were no takers. I had a sense that I had lost all authority in my own home.

  ‘Christ, Gerald,’ said Carol, watching in fascination as he disposed of cube after cube. ‘I thought you were supposed to be vegetarian. That stuff’s just boiled-up hooves and trotters.’

  ‘I’m not “supposed to be” vegetarian,’ he replied, still chewing. ‘I just don’t much like flesh.’

  ‘Well, this curry is very nice,’ Alex said politely, blinking back tears. ‘Very warming.’

  I took the hint and fetched her a glass of water. The cottage suddenly seemed crowded, and it struck me that in all the years I’d lived there I’d never had this many people under my roof at one time. I’d never hosted Christmas, or thrown a party, never had a group of friends round for dinner. Richard and Sally might have popped over from the farm, and I’d brought individual women back now and then, but most of my socialising tended to be done elsewhere, and this was just the quiet place I came back to when it was all over. I wasn’t sure whether this invasion felt entirely benign.

  Alex, at least, now that she had managed a respectable proportion of the curry, was keen to be on her way. I fetched the folder of A4 pages from the desk where I’d stored them since their descent from the loft, and put them in a plastic bag.

  ‘No hurry,’ I said. ‘You can post it back any time.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s very kind of you.’ She vanished momentarily under the plastic poncho, before her head emerged, bristling with static.

  ‘Goodbye,’ she said to the room.

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Carol. ‘Good luck with the baby. Remember, Clem is yours if you want it.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll bear it in mind.’

  I stood in the doorway and watched the Red Tail lights bouncing down the track, through the gate and out of sight. The rain had eased off but the air felt heavy and saturated. There was a creeping pool of water in the corner of the conservatory, which would need investigating in daylight. In the meantime, I pulled the lawnmower and a couple of extension cables to the safety of higher ground on the sloping floor.

  Back in the sitting room, Gerald had plucked an old newspaper from the log basket and was doing the crossword, and Carol was buffing her nails with a little sanding block. She had found a bottle of Grand Marnier I didn’t even know I had – it must have hailed from the same era as Arthur Scargill and the Baader–Meinhof – and she had helped herself, undeterred by the crust of crystals around the neck.

  ‘I think I’ll go up if no one objects,’ said Gerald, defeated by the crossword. I didn’t have that luxury, as Carol was comfortably installed on what would have to serve as my bed, and showed no sign of retiring.

  His plan was thwarted seconds later by a rapping at the door. It was Alex, in a state of some agitation. ‘I can’t get across the ford,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t too deep on the way up, but it’s a torrent now. Is there another road out of here?’

  This was an interesting problem I hadn’t encountered before. ‘Not by car,’ I said. ‘There’s a footpath to Lastingham, but Hartslip is a dead end.’

  ‘There must be some way round it,’ she said, with the city dweller’s refusal to bow to the hazards of rural life. ‘What do you normally do?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s never flooded before. How high was it?’

  ‘Between two and three feet.’

  ‘Oh my God, that is high. When it’s been a foot or so I just take a run at it and hope for the best. The stream must have got dammed lower down and the water’s backing up.’

  ‘It looked pretty fast-moving to me.’

  ‘Well, you’re certainly not going to get a car through it.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Alex, Carol and Gerald were all looking at me expectantly for a solution. ‘The only thing I can suggest is for you to leave your car on this side, and then get your husband to drive up to the other side and . . .’

  ‘He’s in Minneapolis.’

  ‘Oh. Well I hate to say it, but I think you might be stuck here for the night. I mean, you’re very welcome. You can have my room. Gerald and I can sleep down here.’

  ‘No, I really couldn’t impose,’ said Alex faintly.

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ I reassured her. ‘Gerald and Carol certainly didn’t.’

  Carol shot me a sour look, but brightened as she turned back to Alex who, after all, represented fresh territory to organise and conquer. ‘It’s incredible, isn’t it, being stranded, in this day and age, because of a drop of rain. I hope I can get home tomorrow. Jeremy’ll be frantic,’ she tittered. Privately I doubted this last point. Perhaps I was over-identifying, but I imagined him relishing the solitude and silence.

  ‘By morning the water level will probably have subsided, if there’s no more rain,’ I said, with all the authority of someone who a moment before has declared conditions to be entirely beyond his experience. ‘Or if not, we could take a leisurely limp across country to Lastingham and call a cab from the pub to take you to the station. Pick your car up some other time.’

  ‘Such a lot of inconvenience for you,’ said Alex, shaking her head.

  ‘Not at all. I can even do everyone a full English breakfast in the morning. How do you like your eggs?’

  ‘Fertilised please,’ said Carol.

  It’s a serious flaw of couch design that they can seldom accommodate the fully extended human form. As I vacillated between cricking my neck at one end or my feet at the other, it occurred to me that the last time I’d slept like this was during that turbulent pre-divorce period. Now here I was again, relegated to the couch, playing doormat to Caro
l’s boot, because her new marriage was no happier than the old. When considered in that light, my behaviour began to look altogether too obliging, but I couldn’t seem to work up the proper indignation. Not being married to her was such a pleasure it made all manner of sacrifice bearable.

  There had been an odd moment earlier, when she had helped me to change my sheets for Alex. We had faced each other across the bed, stuffing corners of my duvet into a fresh cover, and flapping the whole thing up and down to distribute the lumps, and we had both started to laugh at the weirdness of finding ourselves sharing this mundane and yet intimate task again after so many years.

  And here was another sign of the cyclical nature of things: Gerald, beside me on the floor, snoring gently in his green caterpillar sleeping bag.

  I’d been awake for an hour when I heard Alex get up. It was three a.m., the graveyard hour, and my toe and most of the rest of me was aching, racked by the unfamiliar contours of the couch. I couldn’t put a light on and read without disturbing Gerald, who had a scant 10mm of foam bedroll between his spine and the flagstones, and yet was sleeping peacefully. Overhead came the creak of floorboards, then a crash. Light spilled down the stairs and under the door. I could hear urgent whispered voices descending, and then Carol appeared, in my dressing gown, her face shiny with cream, her eyes smoky craters of crushed mascara. She smelled of sour booze, as if she’d been sweating wine.

  ‘Alex’s waters have broken.’

  ‘Oh shit. What does that mean? She’s not going to have the baby right now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not an obstetrician, am I? I think it can take all day sometimes. We just need to ring the hospital and ask what she should do.’

  Without even waiting for the number I snatched up the phone. The silence of disconnection filled the room. Carol and I, having forgotten this inconvenient detail in the excitement, exchanged horrified looks.

  The commotion had roused Gerald, who sat up, instantly awake and alert, needing no period of coming to.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘Alex has gone into labour,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh.’ For a second he looked hunted.

  ‘And the phone’s dead,’ added Carol.

  ‘And we can’t get a mobile signal up here.’

  Deep furrows of anxiety appeared between Gerald’s bushy eyebrows.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Carol asked, folding her arms inside the dressing gown’s wide sleeves. They both looked at me expectantly.

  ‘If only the ford was crossable. One of us could drive her straight to hospital.’

  ‘Well you couldn’t, with your foot. You wouldn’t be able to brake.’

  ‘Neither could you – you’re about six times over the limit.’

  ‘It’s a pity you can’t drive, Gerald,’ Carol sighed.

  ‘It’s a pity you’re drunk,’ he retorted.

  ‘This is all academic if we can’t get across the ford,’ I reminded them. ‘If we could only call an ambulance, it could stop on the other side, and we could take Alex down to meet it and carry her across the stream.’

  Gerald was already pulling on trousers, socks, boots.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I can’t drive, but I can run. Give me your phone. Where’s the nearest place I can get a signal?’

  ‘The main road, on the brow of the hill. You’ll have to take the footpath to Lastingham to avoid the ford, and go the long way round.’

  ‘There’s surely a house you could knock at between here and there?’ said Carol.

  ‘No there isn’t. But that’s a brilliant idea, Gerald. Brilliant.’

  ‘Take my phone as well, just in case,’ said Carol.

  ‘What’s Alex doing now?’

  ‘Looking for the number for the hospital.’

  I found her sitting on my bed, shivering beside an upturned handbag, riffling through pieces of paper. She was wearing a T-shirt and socks and the blanket from the spare bed, and looked about fourteen. I tried not to look at the dark patch on the pale blue rug.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ she said, noting my efforts. ‘I’ll buy you a new one.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  Suddenly she winced and closed her eyes and her fingers tightened on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Are you all right? Is something happening? Can I do anything?’ I blethered, until she flapped her hand at me to shut me up. A minute later she relaxed and opened her eyes and smiled with relief.

  ‘Was that a . . .?’ For some reason I couldn’t bring myself to utter the word. It was part of the dark mystery of childbirth, and unsayable.

  ‘Contraction. I suppose so,’ said Alex. ‘It’s not like I expected. I thought it would be a clenching feeling. But it’s more like being kicked in the fanny.’

  ‘Don’t worry about anything. We’re going to get you an ambulance. We can’t phone from here, but Gerald’s going to run down to the main road to get a signal. I know he doesn’t look like an athlete, but he does half marathons and stuff, and he’s as fit as a butcher’s dog. Everything will be fine.’

  She plucked a folded card from the heap. ‘That’s the number of the maternity unit. And could you ask him to ring my mum as well,’ she added, scribbling a number on the back. ‘Then she’ll be able to get hold of Craig in America.’

  ‘Of course.’ Poor woman, I thought. Wrenched from sleep by a stranger’s voice. I couldn’t imagine Gerald being the most soothing messenger.

  Downstairs Carol was giving him a tutorial in basic mobile-phone usage. ‘It’s already switched on. When you’ve got a decent signal a row of arrows appears up here. The more arrows the stronger the signal. Then you just punch in the number and press this little button here. My one’s slightly different.’

  ‘Get them to send an ambulance as far as the ford,’ I told him, when Carol was satisfied that he had mastered the technology. ‘Will you be OK to give directions?’

  He took the phones from her between finger and thumb, and stowed them in the inner pocket of his waterproof. ‘I’ve got an OS map. I’ll tell them the grid reference,’ he said.

  I handed him the phone numbers. ‘That’s Alex’s mum,’ I explained.

  Gerald took the card with extreme reluctance. I could almost hear his brain whirring in panic. ‘I’ll see if there’s time . . .’ he muttered. ‘I don’t know if I really . . .’

  ‘Gerald, please just ring her and tell her what’s happening. In a reassuring sort of way. She can get a message to Alex’s husband in America.’ I hadn’t intended to menace him with that allusion to an international call, but he yielded before the threat of it.

  ‘Well done, Gerald, you’re a hero,’ said Carol, as he strapped an elasticated miner’s lamp to his forehead, let himself out and took off across the farmyard at a run. We stood together at the window, watching the single point of his headlamp bobbing and winking until it was swallowed up in the blackness. I felt a trace of envy and resentment that my ridiculous injury should have prevented me from taking an active part in this drama, and condemned me to a passive, female role: waiting. Although I had every confidence in Gerald’s stamina – he would run all the way to York if necessary – his tendency to be flummoxed by even the simplest exchange over the telephone represented a serious flaw in the plan. I had grave doubts that he would be able to hold his own against an automated answering service, but I kept these worries to myself, as Alex came downstairs, dressed in her outdoor clothes, and sat in the chair nearest the window, handbag on knees, awaiting rescue.

  ‘Craig didn’t want to go to Minneapolis,’ she burst out suddenly. ‘He said it was too close to my due date, but I said no, three weeks is ages, and first babies are always late. You go.’ Her chest heaved. ‘And now he’s going to miss the birth and it’s all my fault.’

  ‘He might not miss it,’ said Carol. ‘You might have one of those twenty-four-hour labours.’

  Alex laughed weakly. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘On the other hand, it
might be really fast and painless,’ Carol recanted, ignoring my mouth-zipping gestures.

  An hour crept past, measured out by the scratchy ticking of the clock. Carol and I got dressed, and I relit the fire, for something to do, and Carol made mugs of tea which sat on the table untasted. All the while Alex would be looking from the window to her watch and back again, giving little sighs of impatience and anxiety, jumping up to greet phantom ambulances and then subsiding again. Every so often she would berate herself for having left home without her medical notes, and forced her husband to go to America, and taken the turning to Hartslip instead of staying on the main road, and all manner of other failings. Then she would go silent and tense and suck in her breath, with her eyes shut and a pinched expression on her face, and Carol and I would exchange helpless grimaces.

  ‘What can we do to make you more comfortable?’ Carol pleaded, as we watched her shift in her seat, stand up, wince, sit down, wince again, lean forward, sit back.

  Alex shook her head. ‘I don’t know. They get you doing all these breathing exercises, but they don’t work. The pain just takes your breath away.’ After more adjustments she found a new position, leaning forward on the back of the couch, her head resting on her arms.

  ‘I could rub your back for you,’ Carol offered. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any massage oil, Chris?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘Only vegetable oil. Or lard.’

  She raised her eyebrows to heaven. ‘I’ve got some body lotion in my bag. That might do. What do you think, Alex?’

  Alex made a muffled murmur of refusal, without raising her head. Across her bent back Carol and I traded agonised signals. Where’s Gerald got to? What’s taking them so long? What are we going to do? went the silent conversation.

  Then, at last, the sweep of headlights, far away in the darkness but approaching. ‘That must be the ambulance,’ said Carol.

  ‘I’ll go down to the ford to intercept them in case Gerald hasn’t explained. Then we’ll come back and get you, Alex,’ I promised, picking up Gerald’s walking stick and my coat and torch. She didn’t reply.