‘But he’s always been loyal to both of us, hasn’t he?’ Eric is chipping away, trying to get at something, and I won’t let him.
‘Yes, but I used to think Ben might have preferred it if you’d married someone else. Maybe he didn’t want to have to drag me round with him for the rest of his life, but he had to, didn’t he, because I married you.’
‘Is that why you say he was angrier with you?’
I wonder, not for the first time in my adult life, if Eric knows more than he lets on. If it is the great unspoken between us – unspoken because, if it was raised, it would be so much more damaging than just letting it lie.
‘Maybe if you’d married someone else his daughter wouldn’t be deaf,’ I tell him.
‘But that’s just one of many “what if”s, Bel,’ Eric says, more gently. ‘Things don’t always turn out the way you want or expect.’
‘Like me,’ I say, deflecting the attention away from my relationship with Ben and back to one of the issues that remains unsolved.
‘What does that mean?’ Eric asks, but I suspect he knows full well.
‘Oh, come off it, Eric,’ I say, taking a deep breath because really I am too tired for another argument. ‘You’ve been saying it in your every reaction to me these past few weeks. I’m not the person you thought I was. I’m a disappointment. I’m a boring stay-at-home mother who made a mistake that came back to haunt us in a terrible way. Why wouldn’t you be disappointed? Maybe that’s why Ben was more angry with me. He also saw me for what I’ve become, whereas you are still the wonderful Eric Jordan.’
‘I’m hardly that, am I?’ Eric says, and his tone is accusing, yet again. ‘My life didn’t turn out exactly as I wanted it to, either.’
‘Well, I’m sorry if that’s down to me too,’ I say, the sarcasm all too clear in my tone.
‘That’s not what I meant, Isobel,’ Eric says. ‘But look at us. Look at the way we’ve been for the past few weeks. That didn’t spring from nowhere; it just got exposed.’
‘Jesus, Eric, what are you saying?’ I begin to feel panicky now. Hours earlier I’d thought one crisis had been averted, then another one narrowly avoided just now, and now a third appears to be looming.
‘I’m not saying anything,’ he says, his tone calmer. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s understanding, but it’s gentler at least.
‘Eric, we can’t let this…’ I hesitate, unsure what exactly to say. ‘We can’t let this destroy us. I know I made a mistake, and I’ve been paying for it, not just because of what’s happened to Iris but because of the way you’ve been acting towards me. We used to be a team, I thought we’d always be a team, but, as soon as you found out, you made it very clear that I was on my own in this. You’re still doing it and I can’t stand it. Why can’t you just stop?’
‘It’s not that easy,’ Eric says. ‘I know I haven’t handled all of this well. I didn’t mean to make you feel that you were on your own.’
‘Well, you did,’ I say, flatly. ‘I’ve never felt quite so isolated from you as I have these past few weeks. It’s unforgivable, the way you’ve been treating me.’
‘Then, clearly, we’ve both disappointed each other,’ he says.
This is not the reaction I want. I want to shake him out of this distant, recriminatory stance and back into taking notice of me, of my needs, of the fact that I need something from him.
‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ I try to push him into something more.
‘I’m sorry. Is that what you want me to say?’ he asks. ‘I’m sorry, Isobel, I really am. I wish I could have found a better way through all this, but I didn’t. I played it all wrong and I’m sorry if I hurt you in the process. I didn’t intend to.’
‘I’m sorry too,’ I say.
I still want to be angry with him but I’m treading carefully, the memory of Ben, here in the kitchen and what might have been, too fresh not to, and Eric’s earlier words, ‘Look at the way we’ve been for the past few weeks. That didn’t spring from nowhere,’ ringing in my ears still. Does he really believe that? Does he think things were wrong between us even before this happened? I’ve been scared these past few weeks about what would happen if Ben carried on with the legal action and, now that he’s dropped it, I’m even more scared.
‘I haven’t always found it easy, looking after the kids,’ I say to him. ‘I’ve always wanted to, and I love them all to bits, but it’s not always easy.’
‘I know that, Bel,’ he says again, and looks at me directly now. ‘And they’re great kids.’
‘We’re lucky,’ I say. ‘We’ve been very lucky.’
‘It’s not all down to luck – ’ he begins.
‘Don’t start, Eric, not now, please,’ I interrupt him. ‘Can’t we just try to move on?’
‘What?’
‘I know my actions led to Iris being…’ I pause. It’s still hard to say ‘deaf’.
‘I was going to say that you’ve done a good job,’ he says. ‘With the kids.’
‘Oh. Thank you.’
It’s something.
‘I know I haven’t always got everything right,’ I say. ‘But, as I said, it’s not always been easy. I need someone to be there for me, Eric.’
‘I tried to be there for you,’ Eric replies.
‘Not enough.’ I say. ‘And not at all recently.’
‘Sorry,’ Eric says again. Then he changes tack slightly. ‘Did Ben say why they’ve decided to drop the legal action? Did he just want to force an apology out of us?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if they’d already decided, before he came down, or if he just realised that arguing was getting us all nowhere,’ I say. ‘But I think he just needs to concentrate on Iris.’
That is pretty much the truth of it, and Eric seems to accept it, for the time being. ‘I’ll go and see the kids,’ he says. ‘Are they are all home?’
‘Gabs went to see Megan after school and she’s staying the night,’ I tell him. ‘The boys are in the living room, I think.’
I take a deep breath as he walks out of the kitchen, and slowly exhale before I begin the evening meal preparations.
When dinner is ready I head to the living room, but I pause before going in. Everyone is laughing. I can’t hear what they are laughing at, just overlapping peals of riotous laughter interspersed with bouts of speech. My two boys and my husband, laughing loud, full, deep laughs – joys-of-family-life laughs.
If I go in and ask, ‘What’s the joke?’ I fear they may stop, so I wait at the threshold of the living room and listen.
‘The Koran?’ Harvey repeats in a high-pitched voice.
‘No, Mum,’ he says in an exaggerated version of his own. ‘Kerrang! It’s a heavy metal magazine.’
So that’s what’s got them going. I smile to myself. Harvey is repeating a conversation I had with him earlier in the week. ‘Can you ask if they’ve got a copy of Kerrang! in the newsagent?’ he’d asked me. ‘I want to get it.’ But, not being a teenage fan of heavy metal, I’d had no idea what he was talking about and replied, surprised, ‘The Koran?’
I’m about to go in but I hesitate, long enough to hear Eric say, ‘And how did she react when she thought you wanted a copy of the Koran? I’d love to have seen her face.’
‘Oh, no, Harvey, you can’t become a muslin,’ Vinnie says in a high voice. ‘They make women wear nose-warmers!’
‘Muslim, eejit,’ Harvey says, but his tone is friendly enough. ‘And they’re called burqas, not nose-warmers.’
‘Can you imagine?’ Eric says, and he’s not really laughing any more. ‘That would have been a real slap in the face for your mother.’
‘Oh, no, you must be liberal activists and not Muslims,’ Harvey says in his high-pitched ‘me’ voice again, and they laugh.
But I can’t find it in myself to find any of it funny, not now. The three of them laughing at me, Eric colluding in their joke, insinuating that I’m so controlling I couldn’t handle it if one of my childr
en wanted to convert.
That’s the real slap in the face.
And my face is still stinging.
A FEW MONTHS LATER
Ben, Saturday
It’s the first time I’ll have seen Isobel since I went to their house. It’s the first time Maggie’s seen her since we went to France – and Eric and the kids. I’m feeling a little apprehensive, naturally.
But Maggie won’t be drawn.
If I ask her how she feels about everyone coming she says, ‘Fine.’ But she says it in a way that suggests she’s anxious and trying not to let it show, trying just to get on with the preparations.
Iris is not being christened but we decided to have a party to celebrate – not a naming ceremony or anything official, just a party.
Maggie wasn’t that keen, when I first suggested it, but I wanted to do something. We’re not married, our daughter’s not christened, and we’ve never had an occasion to mark the fact that we are together and a family. We won’t have any photographs to show Iris when she’s older, or any memories of starting out as a family – not good ones, anyway. I want a good one, after the past few months of crap.
I want to celebrate Maggie and me being together and having a beautiful daughter who won’t grow up to be like other children but will be uniquely herself. I get that now. It’s not just accepting it, like a bad thing that I have to accept and get on with; I really think Iris is amazing, the way she is.
She’s started to walk and she’s signing quite a lot. We do communicate, probably as much as any parents of kids this age.
Bel once told me that Yasmin described finding out Conrad was autistic was like thinking they’d booked a holiday to Italy and finding out they were actually going to Holland. It’s a good analogy. So we’re not going to Tuscany any more, we’re going to the Zuiderzee. Tuscany’s too hot and it gets really crowded with Brits and politicians in summer. Holland is flat and emptier and great for cycling, and that’s where we’re going with Iris.
I’m glad now that the travel agent got the bookings muddled up. Life never turns out the way you expected. A year ago, I was a disenchanted drama teacher with a healthy new baby. Now I’ve got a deaf daughter and I’m looking into training to teach in a deaf school, and I’m excited by the prospect, really excited actually, more excited than I have been about anything for a while.
And I’m happy too, even if just now I am not exactly looking forward to seeing Isobel. But she’s only one of fifty guests. I’m not going to have to spend much time talking to her. I can be civilised because I feel kind of free of her now. Finally, I really don’t care what Isobel does or thinks.
So I have spent the morning at the park with Iris while Maggie was preparing food. Everyone is invited for two o’clock, for a late buffet lunch, followed by tea and cake.
The timing has confused Ruth, Maggie’s mother, but we wanted to fit the guests around Iris’s routine. She naps early afternoon and usually wakes up happier for it. So she will be sleeping while everyone has lunch and then, when she wakes, we can have cake.
‘Do we need cake, if we’ll have had a late lunch?’ I had asked Maggie. She seemed to have been fretting about it more than it warranted – looking up various different recipes, trying to find a cake that would appeal to everyone.
‘It’s a celebration. We need a cake.’
‘I could order one somewhere, if you don’t want to have to make one on top of lunch,’ I’d suggested. ‘There’s that pâtisserie just off the high street. I am sure they could do us a cake.’
‘No, I want to make it. It needs to be perfect for Iris,’ Maggie had said.
But in the event she didn’t quite get around to it. ‘I’ll buy something from the supermarket and ice it myself,’ she said when I asked yesterday if she was still planning to make one.
I love the fact that Maggie doesn’t try too hard to be perfect. She wants Iris to be excited by the look of the cake. She knows no one will really care if she made it herself or bought it from Sainsbury’s.
So Maggie is in the kitchen now, taking two shop-bought sponge cakes out of their packaging and laying them on a large foil-covered chopping board, only just starting the assembling and icing, even though nearly everyone has arrived, including Eric and Isobel and the kids.
I’ve exchanged a few words with Isobel – pleasantries on arrival, nothing more. But she comes over now, as I am about to go and drag Maggie out of the kitchen.
‘Where are Maggie and Iris, Ben?’ she asks. ‘I haven’t seen either of them yet.’
‘Iris is asleep,’ I tell her. ‘And I think Maggie’s in the kitchen. I was just going to go and tell her to leave what she’s doing and come and join us.’
‘Can I come with you?’ Isobel asks, and she follows me, even though I only shrug by way of reply.
Maggie has almost finished the icing now.
‘That looks good,’ I say, half wanting to make Isobel think she has baked it herself.
‘Lemon cake,’ Maggie says, although I know this. I’ve seen the now discarded packaging. ‘And a cream cheese icing.’
‘It sounds delicious,’ Isobel says, and Maggie looks up, as if registering her for the first time.
‘Iris loves it,’ she says. Her expression gives nothing away.
‘Can I do anything to help?’ Isobel asks.
‘No, thank you,’ Maggie says, politely enough. ‘It’s all under control.’
‘Are you going to come and join everyone?’ I ask.
‘I’ll be there in two minutes,’ Maggie says.
‘OK.’ I pause, not sure whether I should leave Maggie on her own with Isobel.
‘I’ll be out in a second, Ben, really,’ she repeats, as if she wants to me to leave.
So I turn to go, but I move slowly enough to hear Isobel saying, ‘Maggie, I know it’s not the time or the place. But I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I know I should have said it before, to you, and I’m sorry I haven’t.’
I don’t hear the rest of the conversation. Julie Effingham comes over to me. ‘Lovely house, Ben,’ she says. ‘Where’s the lovely guest of honour?’
‘Asleep,’ I say. ‘She’s a princess. She needs a lot of sleep.’
‘Ha – don’t we all?’ Julie replies, and then Maggie comes to join us.
‘Hi, Julie. How lovely you could come! Have you got a drink?’
And so it goes on. People come and go. I top up their glasses. Maggie invites them to help themselves to food. Everyone seems happy. I kind of wish Iris were here too. It’s in her honour after all, this party; it seems a shame for her to miss it. But Maggie’s right, it’s easier to get all the eating out of the way while she’s still asleep. It’s easier for Maggie to deal with the guests if she’s not having to pick Iris up or try to sign to her.
‘When are we having the cake?’ Vincent asks, rushing up with purpose, the way he does.
‘Not till Iris wakes,’ I tell him – and right on cue the baby monitor on the mantelpiece squawks.
‘She’s awake!’ Vincent says triumphantly, as if he made this happen.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’ll go and get her. Will you find Maggie and tell her?’
People clap when I come down the stairs carrying Iris. She’d probably cry if she could hear the rumble of applause. But of course she can’t. She simply takes in the smiley faces and beams back, half aware perhaps that this party is for her.
‘I’ll get the cake,’ Maggie says, and she goes to the kitchen and returns with it, iced now and decorated with a butterfly shaped out of Smarties, with two candles for antennae.
The spectacle makes Iris squirm and clap.
I put her down and say a few words. Not much, just stuff about how happy we are to have a baby and how happy I am to have met Maggie.
I catch Isobel watching, out of the corner of my eye, and I can’t quite interpret the way she is looking.
Maggie cuts the cake.
Vincent and Harvey are nearest, Harvey wiping crumbs of what he’s already
eaten off his jumper in preparation for cake. Maggie hands them the first slices. Then she keeps cutting, handing out plates with thick triangles of lemon cake.
Iris has the biggest slice. She’s kneeling on the floor with her plate on the coffee table, smearing her face with the cream cheese icing, happy. Ruth has brought extra teapots from her home and has been filling them valiantly, ready for people to serve themselves. When she’s done cutting cake, Maggie sits down, maybe for the first time during the day.
‘Well done, love,’ I say going over to her. ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you,’ she replies, and I go to pour some from one of pots Ruth has lined up along the dining table.
And that’s when the commotion begins.
‘Eric!’ I can hear Isobel’s voice cut sharply across the general babble in the room.
‘Eric!’ There’s a note of panic. ‘Eric, can you get my bag?
Harvey’s having a reaction.’
‘Where is it?’ Eric asks.
‘All the bags and coats are in our bedroom,’ I say to him. ‘But I don’t know which is Isobel’s. Can I do anything?’
I know Harvey has a nut allergy, of course, but I’ve never witnessed him have a reaction. It’s a little scary. He was fine one minute and now his face is red and he seems to be struggling to breathe.
‘I’ll go and get it.’ Eric bounds up our stairs and a little space is beginning to clear around Isobel and Harvey.
Maggie is, strangely, still in her seat. I’m not quite sure what to do but I feel, as hosts, we should be doing something as Harvey gasps for breath.
‘Breathe slowly,’ Isobel is saying to him. ‘Dad’s just gone to get my bag. Your epipen is in it. Just keep calm.’
Harvey is beginning to look terrible. His face is getting redder and his lips are swollen.
‘Gabriella, will you go and help Dad find the bag?’ There’s urgency in Isobel’s question and Gabs rushes upstairs without further prompting.
‘Shall I get him some water?’
‘Is he choking?’
‘Is he asthmatic?’
‘No,’ Isobel says, looking towards the stairs. ‘He’s got a nut allergy. Harvey, what have you eaten?’
Living With It Page 29