by J. C. Grey
‘I don’t want a divorce.’ It’s not what I’m here to say, but it is said now and it stops him in his tracks.
‘Well, too bloody bad … what did you say?’
‘I don’t want a divorce—not unless you do.’
‘Of course I don’t want a bloody divorce. I love you.’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘It’s the truth, Em. I love you. Trusting is another matter.’
In his expression, love and hate are difficult to tell apart at this moment. But my priority right now is not to know how he feels about me, but to memorise every feature in case it is the last time.
‘Things weren’t good between us those last two months,’ I tell him baldly. ‘I thought you’d had enough, that you wanted out.’
‘God damn it to hell!’ Even hissed low, his fury is palpable across the room. The barista heads towards us.
‘Is everything all right here?’ She is holding a phone, clearly preparing to call for assistance, and I don’t blame her. Marc looks as though he might tear someone apart limb from limb. I’ve never seen him this way.
‘Sorry,’ Marc mutters.
‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘We’ve finished. I’ll come and pay.’
At the counter, the barista asks me if I’m all right and if I want her to call the cops.
‘I don’t know yet.’ I answer her first question with wry smile and wave my card at the machine. ‘But it’s nothing the police can help with.’
‘Okay.’ She shrugs. ‘Love the hair, by the way.’ She’s serious, I think.
Marc is leaning against my car when I come out. I unlock the doors and we get in. He turns to me and in the close confines, his emotions are palpable.
‘Let me get this straight. You thought I wanted out so you left?’
‘I couldn’t give you what you wanted, so I thought I should give you the chance to go and get it with someone else. Daisy, perhaps.’
‘Daisy? Davis?’ He is genuinely perplexed. ‘Em, for God’s sake, we’re married. You don’t just walk out because things are a bit rocky. Why didn’t you talk to me about it?’
‘We were barely talking if you remember. You worked late every night and I … I thought you blamed me.’
‘I didn’t blame you! I blamed me, for ever raising the topic in the first place—for putting so much pressure on our marriage when we’d known each other for such a short time. I just didn’t know how to admit I’d been a bloody idiot.’
‘I panicked,’ I blurt, hope blossoming, even though he has not quite told me everything, I suspect. But in this situation, who in their right mind would spread their entrails on the ground to be picked over when there is still a significant possibility of things not ending well. I share something that I have already discarded as irrelevant. ‘She phoned one day when you were at the office. Daisy. At least, I think it was her. She never actually said.’
Marc nods. ‘I spoke to her on the phone. She wanted to tell me rumours were flying around that you were seeing someone else, and hinted that her shoulder was available should I need one to cry on.’
‘What?’ My eyes open wide in surprise.
‘I laughed and told her thanks but no thanks.’
‘I didn’t—’
‘I know that. There were no rumours, except ones Daisy started herself.’
‘I guess I was just feeling low when she called. It wasn’t her, just everything else.’
He is shaking his head. ‘What a fucking mess. I’m so sorry, Em, for taking my eye off what’s really important. You’re not enough—you’re everything. If you come back, no more talk of babies, I promise.’
‘Ah,’ I say. ‘That could be a problem.’ That’s when I tell him.
Sixteen
Present day, afternoon
My palms are a little damp as I rub them together at the door to the locked room, and my stomach is doing cartwheels, but there is excitement as well as fear. Will I be admitted this time, now that we have acknowledged each other? As I put my ear to the door, I can hear a rhythmic creak-creak-creak. Something inside is moving.
Instead of trying the handle, I raise my hand and knock. The creaking slows and stops.
‘Hello? Evelyn, is that you?’
Nothing.
‘I realise I didn’t introduce myself properly the other morning. My full name is Em Reed, well McAllister-Reed, actually. I hope you don’t mind me sharing your house.’
Silence reigns.
‘I’d like to meet you again sometime.’
I retreat halfway to the bedroom door, not wanting to push things too far too fast. I have not forgotten Robert Sanders’ story of the man who fell from the window, which I have not yet had the opportunity to confirm or disprove. The weather has not relented enough for me to venture any further than the woodshed these last days. Even now the rain lashes the long windows, rattling the old panes and cascading in showers from the ancient guttering.
Glancing back towards the door before I leave the room, something catches my attention. I’m not sure what it is but it is enough to keep me there, watching and waiting. There it is again, but still I cannot identify what it is. The third time it happens, I lower my line of sight. I think I know. Something is glinting through the old-fashioned keyhole. It vanishes and returns at random intervals. I am certain it is the blinking of an eye.
I am being watched.
I am this close to calling out, to pleading with Evelyn or whatever is behind that door to reveal itself, but some instinct keeps me silent. It has already offered the hand of friendship, and will most likely do so again. Forcing the issue may be counterproductive.
This does not mean I will not look for other ways to satisfy my curiosity. I have not even begun to hunt for a way into the attic that must be there. Now, I slowly move through the first-floor rooms, my neck craned, staring at the ceiling, looking for a hatch. I am sure it must be here but though I carefully scan every inch, even in the bathroom, no manhole is visible.
Back on the landing, I stand uncertainly, looking this way and that. Yet another mystery. There is a ladder in the shed and I consider propping it against the outside wall, once the weather is better, and inspecting the attic through a window. But I am pretty certain the ladder will not reach the twelve metres or more necessary to reach the top floor. Even if it does, I am not enthusiastic about making the climb while I am alone—for all practical purposes—at the house.
I do have an idea, though, but not one I can put into action yet. In fact, there is nothing I can really do this afternoon. The garden is off limits. More than that, it is a bog after the rain we’ve had. Even when the rain finally stops, the garden may take days to dry out enough for me to continue working.
Downstairs, I wander into the dining room and aimlessly flick through my sketchbook. I have finished a second blog for Small Poppies on the topic of quality versus quantity. If there’s one thing I hate, it is cheap throwaway fashion designed to be cast out after a season. Cheap is never cheerful, in my experience; it is always depressing and looks ready for the bin after one wear. It is also wasteful, and unnecessarily so when it just takes a little creativity to have any number of looks available. Clothes swapping is one option; Claire and I do it all the time. Well, did. Fashion is seasonal, style is eternal is the title of the piece.
Today, I am not in my style mindset, though. The eye in the keyhole is all I can think of. I turn to the torn page where I have placed the scrap used for the note pinned to the bear, and re-read it. Without doubt it was written by a child—or someone the age of a child.
My mind conjures a vision of nineteen-year-old Evelyn falling from a window, fifties skirt flipping over her head as she plummets. Perhaps her life was saved, but brain injuries cast her mind back into childhood and … what then? Did she die sometime later, condemned to remain forever a child? Did her parents hide her here in shame until they moved away? If so, what happened to her then?
A shiver runs through me. I want to know—and I don’t want to know.
I still believe Robert Sanders was being overly dramatic. This ghost, if that’s what it is, has shown no aggressive tendencies, quite the opposite. From what I know of ghosts, they may be prevented from passing on, either by their own incapacity to acknowledge their death or the need to pass on a message before they pass. But that is about all I know. Until very recently, I had not even known I believed in them.
Frustrated at my impotence, I do another Google search, but without turning up anything new. Lammermoor is too small and insignificant to even warrant a Wikipedia entry, and all I find are advertisements about market days, four-year-old news about a neighbourhood dispute that ended in the decapitation of twelve garden gnomes and a couple of dated alerts about the River Lam, which is known to break its banks in heavy weather.
Of Lammermoor House, there is nothing at all. I expect to find something, real estate advertisements at the very least. But just as the house has retreated from the physical world behind its forest veil, it seems also to have disconnected from the digital realm.
I remind myself that Val is a businesswoman. She had probably seen no reason to waste money advertising a house she thought she had no chance of leasing. And if the last event of any note was the tragedy of the man falling from the upstairs window years ago when the internet was in its infancy, why would there be anything about the house online?
With nothing else to do, I head into the library to find Jane Eyre. It is definitely the kind of afternoon to curl up inside with a book. But even that I cannot settle into, my eye drifting to the gap in the bookshelves where it used to sit, and the military history encyclopedia now resting diagonally across the gap. On an impulse, I grab it and open the cover.
For Louis on your 15th birthday.
I squint at the inscription as I reread it. The more I look at it, the less sure I am that the 15 is a 15. The writing is so loopy that the 1 could almost be an embellishment of the 5. I flick through the book. It’s not something I would imagine a parent giving a teenager for a birthday present, let alone a five-year-old. It is a rather dry account of the battles of the ancient world, with only few pictures, obviously intended for a much older person. I wonder if it once belonged to the Brigadier, Evelyn’s father.
Robert Sanders would surely know the Brigadier’s first name. I will ask him when I am in town. I want to go now, to find some answers to the questions raging inside.
Going to the window of the study, I stare out down the drive. But the rain is so torrential, it looks as if it may never stop.
November last year …
‘Someone with your build needs to be especially careful.’
Yvette makes me sound like a Ukrainian shot-putter, even though I’ve put on just three kilos and am barely showing although I’m nearly at the four-month mark. My face is rounder, though, and my breasts—well, Marc is the expert on those.
Marc opens his mouth to respond but I shake my head. As the recipient of a mega-dose of super-happy pregnancy hormones, which have also brought some sort of dewy sheen to my skin, I am inclined to go easy on Yvette. Less than a year ago, she lost top spot in her firstborn’s affections—to a hussy!—and next year she’ll lose her runner-up spot, too.
I smile benevolently, placing my hand over Marc’s, which rests over my belly. ‘We’re both enjoying my womanly curves.’
The reference to sex, however obscure, hits the mark. Yvette’s face turns pinched and sour. Quite frankly, I’m not sure how she came to have three children. ‘In polite circles, one doesn’t embarrass one’s hosts, dear.’
Léo interjects cheerfully. ‘I’m not embarrassed. In fact, I’m dying to know more.’
Gordon joins in the banter and before long the matter that provoked it is long forgotten, and we are assembling on the terrace for the first barbecue of the season. It is cool still and I am wearing one of Claire’s designs—a short crocheted wool dress in black and white—and high black boots.
Marc hovers, putting his jacket over my shoulders before the breeze can touch me, and keeping the champagne out of sight. I do miss champagne and soft cheese. Sylvie and Brand’s son, Rainier—Yvette, of course, is beside herself at the royal connotation—will be christened this afternoon, hence the gathering. I would much rather be on the couch at the apartment, my head on Marc’s lap and him playing with my hair as we watch some crummy old movie on TV, but family comes with duty.
‘How’s Peanut?’ Marc murmurs for about the sixth time that day. He has been almost overbearingly attentive since the moment outside Hetty’s when I told him he was going to be a father, despite all the evidence against it. It was only when I threw up all over his shoes—ones he’d bought against my advice—in the lift up to our apartment later that day that it became real to him, I think.
He had been horrified when I told him I had not yet visited a doctor, and we went to see Macpherson that afternoon. She calmly confirmed my diagnosis and showed not a trace of smugness that her advocacy of patience had been proven right. Since then, we have gained an obstetrician of some renown and an album full of scans that show nothing even vaguely human in my opinion, although one of the early ones depicts a shadow resembling a large peanut if you hold the picture upside down, hence the nickname.
The next time we go, I am hoping to see a hand or foot—even a tail would be a relief. The obstetrician, too, has been frustrated at not being able to get a clear shot of the fetus’s development. He says we have a wriggly one on our hands, although I have yet to feel more than a fluttering inside.
‘Fine.’ I take the plate of well-cooked steak and carefully washed salad he offers me. ‘Everything’s fine.’
‘I suppose you’ll have to move,’ Yvette says. ‘An inner-city apartment isn’t really suitable for a child. The Vaughans at number eight are about to relocate and would prefer to sell off-market. I could put in a word.’
‘No!’ Both Marc and I almost shout in horrified unison.
There is a strained silence.
‘We’re quite happy where we are,’ Marc says. ‘And we have the shack if we need to get away.’
‘It has no garden, Marc. Be practical. Children need space to run around. Something like Sylvie and Brand’s lovely place at Rose Bay would be perfect.’
Yvette talks as though Rose Bay was Sylvie and Brand’s idea but everyone knows it was hers. Heat rushes into Brand’s face at her words; not only was he bullied into his choice of home, he had to accept a handout from his in-laws to pay for it. That, too, is common knowledge.
‘Unless our child is unusually advanced, it won’t be running for a while,’ I say. ‘And there are parks.’
Yvette screws up her nose. ‘But there are all sorts of people there.’
‘Exactly.’
She is done for the moment, but it drives home that the next few months will not be the cruise I have experienced since returning home from my self-imposed exile. Marc has done everything possible to make sure that this time we succeed. He has pared back his work hours to attend prenatal appointments, watched unflinchingly a film designed to prepare new parents for labour—in which three other fathers fainted and two left the room just in time—and has thrown himself enthusiastically into baby shopping. When Claire dropped over last weekend to brainstorm the nursery interior, he willingly lobbed up creative ideas for us to shoot down.
He even grinned when Brendan welcomed him to a spontaneous up-the-duff party with a cry of ‘come here, you fertile bull of a man’, and nodded with due respect when warned of the dangers of over-tight underpants. James and Will, also invited to the party, have since presented Marc with a pair of tighty-whities featuring a snorting, stamping bull.
My only gripe is the fact that he treats me as though I am a fragile eighty-six instead of a healthy, pregnant twenty-five. Now the morning sickness has stopped, I feel fantastic. Everything glows the way it is supposed to and I am bursting with energy, especially in bed, where I have had to take control in the face of Marc’s caution. It is a reversal of roles and one I have embr
aced.
My brief disappearance is not questioned by the media once my pregnancy is announced; I suppose everyone thinks I was just keeping a low profile. But interest in my life seems to be greater than ever. Even casual comments to strangers or acquaintances turn up a couple of weeks later in some gossip rag, twisted in order to make them more portentous. Sometimes no one says anything. ‘It’s a boy!’ declares one magazine cover after I was snapped walking past a sports shop with a cricket bat placed prominently in the window.
It is amusing in its way, and I am in demand at a time—ironically—when my focus on building a career seems to have blurred. Despite this, I have done another tongue-in-cheek fruit advertisement—melons this time, much to Yvette’s continuing horror—and have been collaborating with Claire on a range of children’s wear made from recycled forties fabrics.
Most significantly, my pregnancy has inspired the concept for Brendan’s next show—Elemental. He says he wants to capture a woman coming to terms with her own power. I don’t think I am the right person to achieve what he has in mind but he is adamant. There will be some nudity, although I think it will be impressionistic, but I have not told Marc yet. I need the right moment.
I will not be asking permission, don’t get me wrong. Part of me thinks it does not require discussion at all. But the new more adult me recognises the sensitivities. He has never before been anything other than supportive of whatever I want to do, or pushed me—even when perhaps I wish he had. Now though, a part of him grows inside of me, yet he has few rights and no control.
The other matter we need to discuss is the imbalance in success, wealth and maturity that has dogged our relationship. It is not his fault and the solution is not with him, but it is what I feel and I must try to tell him before too long. Since my return, it has been too easy to wallow in our re-found happiness. Neither of us is willing to rock a boat we suspect still has a hidden leak.
Perhaps I will say something after the next scan, late at night after we are gorged on sex and drowsy. I know he is excited at the prospect that it will show a peanut transformed into a fetus. Maybe we will even know the gender. Marc wants to know; I am undecided. Either way, he will be on a high and, if I can get the words right, I am hopeful we can talk about some of the big issues.