‘Of course I’d worry, and then I’d have done something and she might not have been poisoned.’ His voice cracked. ‘And for all we know Barney might still be here.’
This time, he allowed her to clasp his hands, and after a moment he pulled them free and wrapped his arms around her. Neil was a broad man, with thick sinewy arms and big gardener’s hands. She’d never stopped feeling like a child in his embrace. She’d never been more glad of it than now.
‘What do you mean, about your wife being poisoned?’ Veena asked, gently, her watchful eyes on them every moment.
Helen told her everything: her stilted conversations with Barbara, the awful night in the hospital and the move to St Aeltha’s, then her tiny, clumsy steps to try to investigate her mother’s past. Veena’s lips grew thin when she described what Amy had done, though Helen refused to say who’d given her the information, or even what force she belonged to.
‘Worrying about my friend can’t help you find Barney,’ she pointed out.
‘No,’ Veena admitted. ‘But we can check who’s run searches, you know.’ Helen wondered if she was bluffing.
Neil had been silent through most of this, still trying to get his head around it, Helen supposed. But he was the one who asked the key question.
‘Do you think there’s a link? Could whoever wrote these things have taken Barney to get at Barbara?’
‘We’ll follow all leads, Mr Marsden,’ Veena replied, suddenly all brittle professionalism. ‘But what we really need to do right now, Mrs Harrison, is get hold of your husband.’
June 1973
Barbara
Throughout the spring, the child grew like a knot of fear in Barbara’s belly.
In the garden, Neil’s flower beds were coming to life, their blooms blossoming in strict order: first the tiny snowdrops, then the crocuses, the narcissi, the tulips and finally the swollen heads of the peonies, their petals bunched tight as a punch before the extravagant frills burst out. By that time she’d left work and become too fat to move, so those blousy pink pompoms bobbing in the borders marked the limits of her world. Like the flowers, the child inside had grown steadily larger, more showy, more confident of its place in the world.
Neil had become a gardener almost from the moment they had first moved in to the little terrace, immediately beginning to fiddle around with seeds and compost and buying enough bamboo canes to build another Kon-Tiki. Perhaps she should have realised then that he was a nurturer and that the baby question was not going to be something she could simply ignore.
The sun beat down and the baby kicked in protest and she felt her body might melt into the cushioning of the new patterned sunbed that Neil had bought home in triumph two weekends ago. Neil’s happiness, the bright optimism of the sunbed, even the intensity of the summer weather – to Barbara it felt as if it was all there to mock her. She couldn’t do this, she couldn’t be a mother, she couldn’t be responsible for a child, and the crazy folly of it would soon come crashing in on them like a slamming cell door; she knew it.
The air was filled with the smell of her own anxious sweat, mixed with the suntan lotion she’d smoothed on earlier in the morning and the faint, grassy perfume of the garden. Tired though she was, sleep was elusive. These last few weeks, as the mercury crept higher each day, Barbara had lived her life through a haze, a gauzy wrapping that made the outside world alien and difficult and turned her in so that she became a world within herself, with the terror of the child at its heart.
The child. She thought of it as a girl; that was her instinct, although her terror about the whole thing was such that a part of her was sure she must be wrong. It would come out as a boy just to spite her.
If it was a boy, they had decided they would call him Steven, a girl would be Victoria. Nice names. Popular, and modern-sounding, but not burdensome. Neil had made a stilted little speech about not wanting to do family names, about how it was an outdated tradition that only served to cause trouble. He had tiptoed around the fact she’d never told him any of the family names on her side. She could have come from a whole clan of Stevens and Alisons.
She’d been thinking lately that she wasn’t so sure about Victoria. That maybe it was a bit fusty, a little too… Victorian.. She was wondering about Helen instead; but then it would probably be a boy anyway. Her mind drifted to the last time she’d had to pick a name. There hadn’t been nine months to think about it then, closer to nine minutes, although maybe that had made it easier. She picked up her library book and put it down again. Half-heartedly, she tried to fan herself with it instead.
They’d gone out to the Bridge Café at Moreton Chase the previous night. The two of them, plus Brian and Alison, Dave and Moira, and Alan Crookshank, who remained the eternal bachelor. The others had organised it and Neil had persuaded her they ought to go.
Barbara had been too hot and tired to talk much, besides which she had nothing to say, having spent the best part of the week marooned on the new sunbed whilst failing to read her forgettable novel. She felt brazen going for an evening out with her belly the size it was, notwithstanding the ring on her finger and Neil’s arm on her waist. They’d have called it bold, when she was growing up; some things were not for public consumption. Now it was 1973 and they had free contraception and the Equal Pay Act and Germaine Greer, but sometimes it was easy to forget that.
They were Neil’s friends anyway, Barbara thought to herself, stroking her belly. She had plenty of acquaintances; it was just that where Alison and Moira were intertwined, curling and twisting around each other’s lives and holding each other up like a pair of Neil’s pea plants, she preferred to keep a little separate. And she made that space, distinct but unobtrusive, in all of her relationships. In each case it assumed a different shape – with Alison and Moira she separated herself by choosing to work, not going shopping with them, not inviting them to use the back door. At work she ate her sandwiches at her desk and left after one drink on the rare occasions they persuaded her to go out. She didn’t gossip with the hairdresser or the neighbours. She was poor at making phone calls and never sent Christmas cards to the other couples they’d met on holiday.
It was tempting to tell herself that Neil was the exception, that she didn’t hold herself back from him. But she knew that she was giving herself an excuse. If she were a plant she wouldn’t be entwined with Neil either. If anything, he would be the bamboo cane, keeping her upright and straight, bound to her with lovingly tied bits of twine, whilst all the time there was some force, just as invisible and irresistible as gravity, trying to pull her away from him. She wondered if he knew that, if he realised what a miracle it was that she’d found him and what a mess she’d be without him. She wondered if he had any inkling that she was having the child purely for his sake, and how much she feared it would cost her to do it. She hoped not.
It was easy now to spend hours in these musings, the weight of her middle anchoring her to the sunbed and the sky so bright she got black and white spots even with her eyes shut. She didn’t notice exactly when the discomfort sharpened into a tightening and finally became pain. The realisation that this was it – that the baby was coming – stole up on her as gradually as the midsummer sun slipped down through the silhouetted leaves of the distant ash trees. What was she scared of? Not so much of the birth – it had to come out, after all. No, she was afraid of what came next.
Abe had called just the day before to say that she would definitely be allowed to keep the child, and the news terrified and thrilled her in equal measure. Social services had raised concerns, but she’d made a good impression at the interview she’d had with them, and Abe had persuaded them they didn’t need to interview Neil unless there were any specific issues in future.
Now the court had endorsed their report; no one would take their baby away. If things went well, the child need never know. More importantly, Neil need never know about their narrow escape. Abe still wanted her to tell Neil everything, although when push came to shove he backed her up. Aside from tha
t disagreement, Barbara was a model charge. Abe had more serious problems to worry about than her and Neil.
When Neil arrived home at quarter past ten, she was still on the sunbed. He’d been doing extra shifts where he could get them, to save up for the baby and in case the office had to go on short time again later in the year. He came into the garden, grimaced and glanced up to where the vapour trails from a couple of jets were reflecting the last pink afterglow of the sunset.
‘It’s barely cooled at all, has it?’ he said. ‘I suppose we won’t be getting much sleep again tonight.’
‘No,’ she replied, blinking back the strongest twinge of the evening. ‘I don’t think we will.’
*
Much later, after Neil had been paraded in to be presented with his daughter, and then swiftly shepherded on by the nurses, Barbara took her daughter back and felt glad to have the baby against her skin once more. The gladness came as a surprise, a relief. ‘Helen,’ she cooed, drawing out the last syllable so it sounded almost French. There was a long way to go, but, just maybe, they could do it.
She had found it hard to watch Neil with the child in his arms, rapture written across his face and growing clearer every moment as the summer dawn flooded the ward with light. She tried to tell herself it was maternal instinct, the natural wrench of being parted from the flesh and blood that had been part of her own for all those long months. She knew, though, in her heart, that that was not the cause of her pain.
In Neil’s expression she saw a reflection of another fatherly face. A man who had looked at a baby in just that way – with the same beautiful, terrible, hurricane-force love. A man who Barbara hated more than anything else in the world. A man on whom she’d sworn she would have her revenge.
Barbara sometimes wondered if she loved Neil so fiercely because he couldn’t have been more different to that other man. In looks, in voice, in opinions, in everything he had been the opposite of Neil. In everything, that was, except the look in his eyes when he held his child. And, just as before, the child gazed innocently back, with never an inkling of the trouble it was going to cause.
Even now, even in this moment where she should be at her happiest, she was tainted and tarnished by the memory of him. He had stolen any chance of her enjoying her own child, ruined any possibility of her being a normal mother. Probably he’d all but forgotten her, but she hadn’t forgotten him.
August 2017
Helen
She watched the clock: 15.32, 15.47, 15.55, 15.57, 15.58, 15.59, 16.00. Twenty-four hours. Barney had been gone for twenty-four hours. She didn’t know where he was, who he was with or if he was okay. She didn’t know if he had Rabbit or if he was crying for her. She didn’t even know the exact moment when that twenty-four-hour milestone had been reached, and she didn’t know why that bothered her as much as it did.
Neil said she should sleep. Veena said the same. How was she meant to sleep without her son? How was she meant to exist at all? She had no tears left. She had no words left.
She had nothing.
Barbara
You knew you were old, Barbara realised, when you stopped caring about what happened to you. Her ambivalence towards this cancer – trivial, tiresome, terminal (possibly? probably? She sensed, rather than knew the answer) – threw the point into stark relief. She felt a crushing tiredness and a general disengagement from life. What a gift it would be to start her sixty-nine years again, she thought, and what a curse to have another sixty-nine to go from here.
She told herself she should shake off such morbid thoughts and accompanied the resolution with a determined little twitch of her shoulders, which then set off a pounding in her head. She’d take another ten years and be grateful – twenty even – if she had her health. There was no point in wishing it away. But the cancer wouldn’t kill her quickly, not from what Eklund said. And she needed a few days, perhaps weeks, of clarity and energy and purpose (as much as she could muster at any rate) more than she needed a few more months or years of twilit, fading life.
She might take the chemo in the end, but she wouldn’t take it now. She needed to be sharp and there was too much risk it would blunt her. Plus, there was still a chance that she would need an exit route, and there was no point in giving up the most obvious one. For now though, her mind was fogged enough, and she needed to keep it as clear as possible. She’d started this game and she needed her wits about her to finish it.
Anyway, not all that she had once been had crumbled. Barbara knew about being hunted and being trapped. She knew about it in her veins and her sinews, just as a fox or a hare knows about it. The worst she had to say about the bloody cancer was that it stopped her from running. Barbara had always kept shoes by the door, cash tucked in the bureau. She had always been ready to run away; now it was time that was running away from her.
Eventually, she focused on the clock. It wasn’t enough just to look at it, looking did not penetrate the miasma, looking left her swimming in these drugged and indolent thoughts. With effort, she interrogated the clock; she drilled into its mysteries to read the time: almost half past four. Her brow furrowed, the action was slow and deliberate, almost as mechanical as if she’d had to lift a hand to pull a thread that would concertina the skin. The curtains were open and the sun was shining, so it must be afternoon. This thought was confirmed when she turned to the tray by her bedside, which showed evidence of lunch. Yes, she thought, asparagus soup. And no one had come.
Slowly, she turned to the unit beside her bed and fumbled for her washbag. She had to pause for several breaths before she was able to lift it to her lap and draw the zip. Inside, there was another zipped bag, a little needlecord purse that she’d bought at a Christmas fair. The pattern of holly berries danced before her eyes. Inside that, a cheap plastic phone, a text message waiting for her: IT’S DONE.
An uneasy wave of excitement flooded through her. Then she carefully replaced the phone and rang the bell.
‘Everything okay, Mrs Marsden?’
The nurses came quickly here. There was a smiling head poking round the door frame almost before her finger had left the buzzer.
‘Yes, I just wondered … is it half past four?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Where are … I mean, have I had any visitors today?’
‘No, Mrs Marsden, don’t worry, you’re not going mad! Your husband called to say there was a problem at home. Nothing for you to worry about, but it means they can’t get in today. We would have told you, but you were dozing earlier.’
Barbara nodded and the nurse bustled out. She considered phoning, even going so far as to pick up the hospital handset from beside the bed. It was a proper phone – the handset was made of chunky moulded plastic and attached to the base with a spiral cord. At home they had a sleek dinky cordless model that was always getting itself lost. Should she phone Neil or Helen? She cradled the handset on her chest, never quite able to bring herself to dial either of their numbers.
‘Mrs Marsden? What’s wrong? Do you need something?’
It was the same nurse as before. Barbara was puzzled. ‘I’m fine. You’ve just been in.’
The nurse sighed and pointed to the handset. ‘Your phone’s been off the hook for three minutes,’ she said. ‘It alerts us in case you’re trying to get help.’
Barbara looked down at the handset, surprised she’d been holding it for so long. There was a faint buzzing coming from it.
‘Sorry, my fault.’
‘Don’t worry, Mrs Marsden, it’s what we’re here for. Do you want to call home? I could do it for you if you like?’
But Barbara shook her head.
‘What about some television then?’
‘It’s all right, I’ll just doze I think.’
‘Good idea. Get some rest.’
The nurse left for the second time. Barbara used the remote control to shut the curtains, closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind of the worry. It might have worked, it might not, but the same nurse opene
d the door again before she had a chance to get close to sleep.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you.’ She looked pale and worried, her cheery, bustling competence suddenly deserting her. All of Barbara’s senses pricked to attention as the woman continued to speak. ‘I’m afraid the police are here to talk to you.’
The policeman took off his hat as he came into the room, followed by a young female officer who did the same. ‘Mrs Marsden?’ he said, waiting for her confirmation. ‘Mrs Marsden?’ the officer tried again, awkward, as he moved towards her in his clumsy boots and stiff vest.
‘Yes. Sorry.’
‘I’m PC Hurran. This is my colleague PC Merrick. Do you mind if we sit down?’
‘What are you here for?’
He took a seat anyway. ‘I have some bad news for you, I’m afraid.’
‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’
His stomach bulged as he sat and there was a glisten of sweat on his brow. He didn’t look tall enough or fit enough to be a policeman, she thought. He wouldn’t have got through in the old days. She felt a flicker of contempt.
‘Barney, your grandson. Unfortunately, he’s gone missing. A member of the public saw him getting into an unknown vehicle yesterday afternoon. He’s not been seen since.’
His tone was flat, his eyes searching. Barbara’s heart lurched and it took her by surprise. She had felt only half-alive since the operation; she almost wouldn’t have believed she still had it in her to react like that.
‘No!’ It came out as a sob. ‘Why are you here? Surely you should be looking for him?’
‘We’re doing all we can, Mrs Marsden, believe me. Your husband wanted to come and visit – in fact I’m sure he’ll be along this evening – but I wanted to speak to you first.’
‘Why? I don’t understand.’
‘Yesterday your daughter told one of my colleagues about some letters, Mrs Marsden, anonymous letters addressed to you.’
Barbara nodded slowly. ‘That’s right, I’ve been so stupid … Sorry … what did you say you were called?’
The Mother's Lies Page 14