Living With It

by Lizzie Enfield

  This was true. The house was big, but with all of us it was splitting slightly at the seams and, rather than sleep on our bedroom floor, the boys had opted to sleep in the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden. I suspect it was this physical separation from Gabby when she was most infectious that stopped them getting ill.

  ‘But Iris has.’ Eric put into words what I already knew, what was worrying me almost as much as the state Gabriella was in. ‘Gabs spent the whole day with her when we all went to the dune.’

  ‘I know that.’

  And I already knew, even before the doctor asked if she’d had contact with any ‘vulnerable groups’, that babies were more vulnerable to the disease and that Iris was too young to have been vaccinated herself yet.

  ‘You have to tell Maggie,’ Eric said, laying the responsibility on me once more.

  And Maggie was just as angry as Eric when I told her.

  There was a bit of awkwardness, anyway, when I knocked on the door of her room. I think she must have expected me to be Ben and she came to the door only half dressed, wearing her knickers and holding a T-shirt up to her chest. ‘Sorry,’ I said, catching her embarrassment. ‘I just needed a word.’

  ‘OK, you’d better come in, then,’ Maggie said, but she looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Shall I wait out here for a minute?’

  ‘No, it’s OK.’ She turned away from me and slipped the T-shirt over her head as she walked back towards Iris, who was on the bed, and took a pair of shorts off the end. ‘We were just getting changed,’ she said, stating the obvious as she slipped them on.

  Really there was nothing for either of us to be embarrassed about. But I think we both felt it. I was curious in the way you are sometimes when you catch another woman naked, especially if it’s a woman who is sleeping with a man you once slept with.

  So we weren’t exactly off to a good start, and the exchange didn’t get any easier.

  Iris was sitting on the bed, wrapped in a hooded towel, smiling and ‘chatting’. ‘Ba ba ba ba,’ she was saying. And then she added some of those other incidental sounds that babies that age make, which so perfectly mimic the way people speak that it almost sounds as if they really are talking, just not in a language that anyone but them understands. Although their mothers pretend that they do, and in a way they do, intuitively. They get the gist, as you do when you have a few words of French and the person you are speaking to is well disposed towards you.

  ‘Do you want to sit down?’ Maggie moved a pile of Ben’s discarded clothes from a chair so I could sit somewhere other than on the bed with the two of them. I’d already disturbed the intimacy of the moment. I don’t suppose she wanted me intruding on it any further than the chair by the dressing table.

  ‘Thank you.’ I sat, as invited.

  ‘Baaa, baaa.’ Iris was all smiles.

  ‘Oh, you do, do you?’ Maggie was too.

  ‘I love the way they sound as if they’re talking, before they actually do.’ I was acutely aware how peripheral I was to the scene.

  Iris began another unintelligible monologue and we both laughed.

  ‘I’m sure it makes sense to her.’ Maggie appeared to relax a little.

  ‘I’m sure. She probably thinks it’s us who are talking nonsense.’

  ‘Which most of us do most of the time.’

  Because I was hypersensitive to the news I was about to deliver, I wondered if Maggie was having a go at me.

  ‘It’s all part of them learning to speak…’ I began, but I could hear myself sounding too like the expert mother, adopting the tone which Eric had pointed out made me sound as if I was undermining Maggie.

  ‘How did you get on at the doctor’s?’ Maggie asked.

  ‘Well, the thing is…’ I stalled and then began to gabble. ‘Apparently there’s quite a lot of it around at the moment. Here, in the area, and at home as well. One or two friends of Gabriella’s from school have had it. So she’s been exposed quite a bit…’

  ‘To what?’ Maggie brought me to the point.

  ‘Measles. The doctor says she has measles.’

  ‘Poor Gabby,’ Maggie said slowly, as if she was saying what she thought she ought to say first, while at the same time allowing the implications for her, for Iris, to sink in slowly. ‘No wonder she’s been feeling so poorly.’

  ‘Ba ba?’ Iris appeared to be questioning her mother’s visible change of spirit.

  ‘I kno-ow.’

  Maggie picked her up now, drew the towel tighter around her and held her, protectively, while she spoke to me. ‘It’s highly contagious, Isobel.’

  ‘I know that, unless you’ve been immunised. Has Iris?’ But I knew she was too young; the jab was routinely offered at thirteen months. But some people did have it earlier, sometimes, if they were travelling somewhere where they might encounter the disease…?

  I was clutching at mental straws.

  ‘No!’ Maggie’s voice rose and then she lowered it, as Iris twisted round to look at her, alarmed by the hint of anger in the word. ‘And presumably neither has Gabriella!’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head.

  I should have kept quiet and simply apologised for putting Iris at risk. I should have made it clear then how bad I felt. I should have told her that Eric would drive her to the doctor in Biscarrosse, as he was planning to take the boys.

  I could have said almost anything and it would have been better than what I did say.

  ‘Often they have antibodies from the mother to ward things off in the first year, especially if…’ I realised, as soon as I got near the end of the sentence, that I could not finish it without adding insult to injury.

  Maggie finished it for me. ‘If they’ve been breastfed? Is that what you were going to say, Isobel? Jesus fucking Christ.’

  I’d never heard Maggie get angry before, not even the odd snappy word spoken to Ben, the way people do, not unkindly, just the way they take out their irritations with the world on the people they love most.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Maggie.’

  ‘You must have known all along that that was what was making her ill. You must have had an idea. If you knew some of her schoolfriends had had it and you knew she wasn’t protected, why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you take her to the doctor sooner? Why didn’t you warn me? You knew yesterday that she probably had measles and you left her here with me, let her play with Iris knowing how infectious it is, knowing Iris would get ill.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. Jesus Christ, Isobel, what were you thinking? You’re an intelligent woman. It’s a serious disease.’

  ‘Not always. I know lots of people who had it as kids.’

  Iris had started crying now, clearly distressed by the argument playing out in front of her. I said nothing more and Maggie took a deep breath, as if to calm herself so she could deal with her crying child. ‘I know, sweetheart. I know.’ She began rocking Iris slightly, focusing on her, looking up at me only to say, ‘I want you to leave now.’

  Reliving this scene, I wonder, not for the first time, whether Maggie is behind the solicitor’s letter. It just seems too out of character to have come from Ben. I mean, no matter how angry he’s been with me in the past, we’ve always come to terms with the way things are between us.

  But Maggie has never really seemed to like me, and it’s nothing to her if we fall out. I can’t believe Ben would risk losing either of us, even after what’s happened.

  ‘Can I sit down?’ I ask Gabriella now, and even with my own daughter I feel a bit apprehensive about sitting on the edge of her bed with her.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ Gabs sits on the end and pushes herself as far back into the wall as she can. She couldn’t create any more distance between us unless she went through the wall. Her position speaks volumes. I am not quite sure what to say.

  ‘The thing is,’ I begin, ‘the letter this morning…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well
, I haven’t talked it through with Dad properly yet and I need to do that, and we need to find out a bit more, so, if I tell you, do you think you can not talk to anyone else about it, until I have?’

  ‘That depends,’ Gabs says.

  ‘Gabs, please. You’re right to be worried about it. That’s why I’ve come up to talk to you. But I don’t want to worry the boys, not yet, not if I don’t have to. The fewer people that know what’s going on, the better.’

  ‘What is going on, then?’

  Gabriella looks at me and I take a deep breath.

  ‘The letter was from a solicitor,’ I tell her. ‘A solicitor who’s acting on behalf of Ben and Maggie. They want to sue us for, well…’

  I stop speaking because I realise I have to be very careful how I phrase this. I don’t want Gabriella to feel she is in any way to blame, but I know she feels responsible.

  ‘Because Iris is deaf,’ I tell her. ‘They want us to help pay for some of the costs they might incur from things like special equipment, schooling, that sort of thing. That’s what the letter was about.’

  ‘But why don’t they just ask us?’ Gabby asks. ‘How much money do they need?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ I tell her. ‘And I don’t know why they’ve gone to a solicitor, either.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Gabriella asks.

  Same old question, for which I have the same old answer.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, and I can tell from the way she looks at me that, once more, I’ve not given her a satisfactory reply. ‘We might have to speak to a solicitor. But we’ll try and talk to Ben first. I’m sure we can sort this mess out among ourselves.’

  I try to reassure her, but I’m not so sure myself.

  WEEK TWO

  Ben, Saturday morning

  ‘Couldn’t you just switch your phone off today?’ Maggie says irritably. She has invited friends for lunch. One of her colleagues – maybe a former colleague, if she can’t go back to work. She thought it would distract us, when she asked Lola and her husband and child, but now, after a disturbed night, after a disturbed week, I think she wishes she hadn’t.

  ‘Sorry.’ I put my phone in my pocket.

  It’s still on and I will keep checking it. I’ll try to pretend it’s just another Saturday, if that’s what Maggie wants. But it isn’t. It’s beginning to feel a bit like last Saturday.

  They must have got the letter by now, and I want a reaction. Just like last week, when I knew that Isobel and Eric would find out Iris is deaf, and was expecting to hear from them.

  ‘What time are Lola and Joe coming? What can I do to help?’

  ‘They said about one. They’ll have George with them too. I’ve got some fish to cook for lunch. I wonder if I should get some fish fingers or something for him, just in case he doesn’t like it?’

  ‘Do you want me to go and get some?’ I am compliant. ‘I could take Iris with me. Maybe we could go to the park for a bit on the way home, while you start on lunch, unless you want me to stick around and help.’

  ‘No.’ Maggie softens. ‘It would be good if you could take Iris down to the shops. And maybe you could pick up some more wine on the way back?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say.

  We haven’t seen anyone for a while. Plenty of wine is a good idea. We need to have some fun. I know I’m not exactly relaxed at the moment. We don’t want our friends to walk into a house of gloom and anxiety.

  Isobel was different the first time I went to see them, after Gabriella was born. I expected her to be preoccupied with the baby, tired, all those things, but essentially the same Isobel. She wasn’t.

  She was pissed off with me for starters, for not having visited sooner. Gabs was about six months old when I did. I’d sent a card and flowers and I’d phoned Eric and congratulated him. But I hadn’t actually been to see them, hadn’t actually set eyes on the baby.

  I hadn’t realised it was a big deal. I was busy at the time. I had two jobs, one as a barman at a pub in Soho, and a shit job doing market research on Oxford Street; and an agent who got me auditions for parts I never got.

  I had no idea that while I was getting on with my life I was also building up the impression in Isobel’s head that I was snubbing her, not until Eric called.

  ‘Are you planning to come and see us, ever?’ he asked and it was the ‘ever’ which suggested pique. In it was an indication that I had been remiss in not visiting them before, and I’d better get my ass down to Brighton and take a look at this bloody baby.

  So I arranged to go down on a Saturday.

  I was invited for lunch, but when I arrived Bel was still in her dressing gown, sitting on the sofa feeding the baby, and lunch was clearly a long way from even being thought about, let alone served.

  Eric let me in and I have to hold my hands up to finding it all strange, them being parents – not least the spectacle (yes, I know ‘spectacle’ is not the PC way of describing it but that’s what I felt at the time) of Isobel beckoning me over to the sofa, where she was stranded, unable to get up because the baby, which was much bigger than I anticipated, was stuck to her breast.

  I know now this sounds immature, male, not very ‘new man’, but it made me feel uncomfortable seeing women breastfeeding, especially when the woman was Isobel. Her dressing gown was open and her breast was so exposed it was difficult – well, difficult for me anyway – not be slightly transfixed by it. To make matters worse, when I bent down to kiss Bel, the baby stopped sucking and turned to look at me.

  So, just as I bent down, to kiss Bel, I was suddenly face to face with her nipple, which was larger, darker and more erect than the last time I’d been been so close to it.

  ‘What do you think of her?’ Isobel asked.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ I said, unsure what else to say.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Eric offered, and I was grateful for the diversion.

  ‘I could do with a coffee,’ I said, imagining this was a fairly simple request.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re out of coffee,’ Eric replied, and he and Isobel exchanged a look. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘I’ll make it, and then I’ll just pop to the shops to get a few things.’

  ‘And, when she’s finished feeding, would you mind keeping an eye on Gabs while I have a shower and get dressed?’ Isobel asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, although I didn’t feel at all sure.

  Eric came back with a cuppa and soon after that I was left literally holding the baby while he went out to buy lunch and Bel got herself washed and dressed. She couldn’t have been more than about ten minutes but it felt like a long time. I had no idea what to do, other than shake a toy rabbit with a plastic stomach that contained beads at her and hope she didn’t cry.

  After pasta with a pot of sauce from their local corner shop, Isobel said she was going to feed the baby again, then rest. Eric suggested we go to the pub. Or rather, he asked Bel if she would mind if we did. The female imperative tense.

  ‘I’ll have my phone with me. You can text when you wake up or if you need me,’ he said, reassuring her in a way that suggested we were going on an expedition up Mount Everest, rather than to the end of the road for a pint.

  ‘So how are things?’ I said when we were ensconced in the corner of the Open House.

  ‘To be honest, it’s not that easy.’ Eric took a sip of his beer.

  ‘I can imagine,’ I said, although in truth I couldn’t. I had no idea. I wondered how difficult a baby could be.

  ‘She’s a gorgeous baby,’ I added. ‘And Bel looks really happy.’

  ‘She is. She’s amazing. Honestly, Ben, you have no idea what it’s like. I never thought I could love anyone as much as I love Gabriella, and Isobel’s devoted to her.’

  I could sense a but.

  ‘But?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. I mean, Bel’s great with her. She can hardly bear to be parted from Gabs and she is coming on really well. But sometimes she seems to get eve
rything out of proportion.’

  I nodded, although I wasn’t sure what he meant.

  ‘I came back from work the other day…’ Eric lowered his voice, although there was hardly anyone in the pub. ‘Gabriella was asleep in her cot and I was hoping Isobel might have been able to get us something to eat. I know that sounds old-fashioned.’

  ‘Not really.’ Isobel was at home with a baby all day. Eric went up and down to London and did a full day’s work in between. Hoping for a meal at the end of it all wasn’t some sort of throwback to the Fifties; it was reasonable.

  ‘I know it sounds odd, but you kind of need to eat when the opportunity arises, and Gabs being asleep was an opportunity. But Isobel hadn’t done anything about dinner.’ Eric paused before adding, ‘Which was fine. I’m happy to make something for us both when I get home.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, I was back a bit earlier. I’d rushed because I’d spoken to Bel during the day and she was upset. Gabs had hurt herself.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘She had a bit of a scratch, near her eye. It wasn’t that bad, but Isobel thought it was her fault. She’d been changing her nappy and the phone rang and she picked Gabs up off the floor a bit too quickly and caught her head on the side of the bathroom cabinet. Her face did look a bit sorry.’

  ‘Accidents happen.’ I couldn’t see the big deal.

  ‘That’s what I said, but when I got home Bel was in a sort of frenzy. She didn’t even register that I was there at first. She was cutting up bits of sponge and taping them to every edge she could find: the corners of tables, the tops of chairs, even round the banisters on the stairs.’

  ‘Why?’ I didn’t get it.

  ‘It was crazy really. She said she was just trying to stop her from getting hurt again but half the stuff she was covering, Gabs doesn’t even have access to anyway. I mean, she can’t even crawl or anything.’

  I was unsure what to say.

  ‘I tried to remonstrate with her. I told her that life was full of risks and she couldn’t protect Gabriella from everything, and she just said something like, “Well, I’m going to do everything I can to try,” and then burst into tears.’

  ‘It all sounds a bit strange.’ I ventured as much of an opinion as I dared. It sounded downright weird really.