This Holey Life

by Sophie Duffy

  ‘In a couple of days, she’ll have forgotten all about your breasts.’ She says this very loudly, with dramatic expression that could get her a job on the stage and to the great amusement of the builders on the next table whose ears prick up at the mention of my breasts.

  I slump in my chair, shielding myself from the inevitable checking-out. But Amanda’s words are registering in my pain-addled brain. ‘A couple of days? I can’t disappear for a couple of days!’

  ‘Be strong, Vicky. Don’t give in.’ She pats my hand (I knew I’d picked up that tip from somewhere). ‘I’ll pray for you,’ she adds, fiddling with her WWJD wristband. Then she downs her hot chocolate with amazing speed and leaves me to it, assured of my soul.

  The doughnut is doing bad things to my insides so once I’m sure I won’t bump into her again, I make my own departure, picking my way around the young man mopping the floor (I’d be impressed if I had the energy), heading where, I don’t know. I’d like to go to the loos and try and ease some of the milk out but that will only encourage more in its place. Be strong. Don’t give in.

  As I pass the builders’ table, one of them catches my eye, telling me – as if I’d be grateful for his thoughts on the matter – that he wouldn’t forget my breasts in a hurry. If only he knew the reason they were this size. Perhaps I should enlighten him, put him off his breakfast. Or perhaps I should give him a swift kick in his double eggs and bacon.

  After a random drive, up to Crystal Palace and down again, round in circles and along back-doubles, the pain is too much. I feel hot and flushed, a taste of sick nestling in my gullet, possibly the onset of mastitis, just to make my day. While I’m debating going to the doctor’s to get this checked out – surely only mothers of newborns have this problem? – I find the car taking me on its own magical mystery tour, right past the surgery and Eileen and all the possible help in there, help that I do and don’t need, straight past the school that is educating my daughter and nephew and we, the Espace and I, end up in the car park of St Hilda’s and for once the shoppers of Penge have spared us a place. Hallelujah. After several moments of careful manoeuvring, I am free of the car, and I let my feet take me onto hallowed ground, not into the church, but round the side, skirting the hall so I have to duck down below window height in case I am spotted by an eagle-eyed Olivia. Thankfully it’s too drizzly for the children to be out in the yard on scooters and trikes and so I am safe, but I wish I’d brought my cagoule, not that I’d have won the battle to get it over my towering infernos, and then along a red-bricked path cleared of weeds only yesterday by Miss Brooke, onto the damp grass, past the headstones and pots of wilting flowers and bare-leaved shrubs, over to the corner where, under the shelter of an ancient Yew, is a small, simple headstone that tries to sum up a short life and a sudden death. The unknown depths of what it is to be human.

  My Thomas.

  Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return.

  And thinking of him, I get the let-down reflex, that feeling a man can never know, the tightening in the breasts, the contraction in the womb, the sensation of milk flow, the leaking when there’s no baby. What I would give to have one more time with Thomas. One more feed. To hold him in my arms and feel his gummy mouth working hard. His eyes closed in concentration, his breathing, deep and contented. What I would give.

  All I can do for him now is tidy his grave, keep it moss-free, and make sure the letters of his name stay bright and clear.

  Thomas.

  Knowing I can go home to another baby, to my precious Imo, knowing I could go and feed her right now and stop this physical pain doesn’t help me. It doesn’t change a thing. Whatever I do, wherever I go, I can’t shake off the clinging, persistent, incurable ache. Time is a great healer. When I walk away from here I can’t bring him with me. I can’t bring him home with me like I did that first time, a day old, bundled in a blue blanket in the bucket. We brought him home, Steve and I, from hospital, clean and new, to a full house waiting expectantly for him: his big sister, Rachel, and a full set of proud grandparents, Mum, Dad, Dorota and Roland. They couldn’t have been more taken with him. His deep murky eyes, his tiny hand that would grab your finger for all he was worth.

  Now all we have of him are photos. In albums that are too difficult to open. In lockets that hang next to hearts. Memories of a sweet little boy. I have to leave him here, wherever he is.

  I would give my soul.

  A hand on my arm. I don’t jump because I was half-expecting it; there’s always someone lurking around this place, waiting to pounce on you from behind a gravestone. I thought it would be Amanda, still in hot pursuit. Or Desmond. Or Miss Brooke back to her weeding. But it is Karolina.

  ‘Gosh, we keep bumping into each other.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ she says and I can’t help a small smile to myself when I think of Steve’s take on coincidences. ‘Is this your little boy?’ she asks, so far out of the blue that I don’t see it coming.

  I nod, feeling light-headed. The ground appears to be moving, like one of those travelators at Heathrow, though I know I am standing perfectly still, concentrating on my breathing, the dark green needles of the yew above my head.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Shelley has big mouth.’

  ‘Ah, Shelley. Yes, she does. Very big.’ I watch Karolina’s hand fiddling with the crucifix round her neck. ‘And what else have you heard about me?’

  ‘You are vicar’s wife.’

  ‘I’m not as important as that. I’m just the curate’s wife.’

  She looks none the wiser so I fill her in on C of E hierarchy. ‘So you are training to be vicar’s wife?’

  ‘You could say that, yes.’

  ‘I did many years training to be dentist but it is not so important job as looking after souls.’

  ‘My husband does all that, not me.’

  Karolina shivers and then I realise I am shivering too, standing here in my next-to-useless cardigan, in the shade of the yew under a slate-grey sky, the February morning biting hard.

  She looks at me, up and down.

  ‘I have too much milk when Natasha was baby. I must return to work when she is only few weeks old. I must go in toilets and get rid of it. All that good milk washed away.’

  We should both be excruciatingly embarrassed, strangers talking about intimate details. But it isn’t embarrassment in the air. It is something else that I am not yet certain of.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she says.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I am sorry you lose your baby.’ Her words float there, quietly, the Penge traffic, going about its business on the other side of the high church wall, almost smothering them.

  ‘I can’t let go,’ I tell her, unexpectedly, for I have told no-one this, not even Steve.

  Her hands clutch her bag. ‘You are not ready,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll never be ready.’

  She has no reply, not in her bag, or up her sleeves so I don’t know if she agrees or what. But ‘never’ seems an awfully long time to feel like this.

  ‘You could get help maybe?’

  ‘I don’t want pills. I’ve been offered pills and I know if I took one that would be it. Hooked.’

  ‘I did not mean that. I mean for the breastfeeding. A doctor. Or that health visitor I see you with. She can get you through this, maybe. Then you can deal with your... loss.’

  ‘I’d rather just go home.’

  ‘You have good husband. Nice home. You will be okay, I think. But some men can’t wait around forever.’

  Karolina then says she has to go. And she slips back down the weed-free path and disappears round the side of St Hilda’s, her words hanging there before me.

  Some men can’t wait around forever.

  Back home. I let myself in, on tiptoes, easing the door open and closed. But Imo has the nose of a highly-trained sniffer dog and the howl of a Baskerville hound. Before I have made it to the stairs, Dorota appears in the poky hallway, blocking out the sun
light but not enough so that Imo can’t fix her eyes on me, reach for me, desperation in her little chubby face.

  Be strong. Don’t give in.

  I grab her from my mother-in-law who is so surprised to see me move so fast, yelping in pain, that she relinquishes her granddaughter and lets me take her upstairs.

  ‘You are making the rod for your back,’ she calls up after me. But I don’t hear anymore. I don’t know which feeling is stronger: the pain of Imo’s furious sucking, the relief of the milk flow, the sense of failure that I couldn’t even manage a morning, a few measly hours, or the guilt... because it is Imo lying here, curled up next to me on the bed, and not Thomas. He is left behind in the churchyard. He is not with me. He is gone.

  Much later, long after the end of playgroup, after the kids have been collected from school by an efficient Tamarine, after the sun has sloped off behind the rooftops of Penge, after Imo has consumed her own body weight in milk and I have applied hot flannel after hot flannel, after self-recriminations and explanations to Steve, to Dorota, to anyone else who thinks they have a valid opinion, Martin shows up again. For a bath. Apparently this friend of his has run out of hot water. (What a shame Steve can’t go and fix the boiler.) Dorota insists Martin stay for tea, which she is concocting. I don’t suppose he’ll be too impressed with her baked bean and turnip lasagne, but tough. He should have politely declined and left. Got a pizza. A kebab. A bucket of nuggetburgerwings.

  Still, Jeremy is pleased to see his dad and even drags himself away from Neighbours to come to the kitchen and make him a cup of tea. Then he gets out his RE homework to show. The Sermon on the Mount. Hovering at the kitchen sink in case I am needed – which I am, judging by the amount of washing-up my mother-in-law has generated – I notice my brother wince. Our household produces many winces from him. He only has to look in a cupboard or listen in on a telephone conversation to pull that contorted face that reminds me yet again how it felt to be that buck-toothed, frizzy-haired girl. How anyone can wince at the Sermon on the Mount is beyond me. But Martin is an angry atheist, another of Darwin’s Rottweilers, a Dawkin’s Labrador, getting in a doggy stew at the faintest whiff of faith. Mother Teresa, Julian of Norwich, Terry Waite; he lumps them all together under the heading of ‘God Nutter’.

  ‘Why don’t you show your dad the makeover you’ve given the shed?’ I suggest, trying to make some breathing space in the kitchen, which is full of hot air.

  ‘Yeah, Dad, come on, it’s wicked.’ Jeremy leads the way authoritatively, physically pushing his father out the back door.

  Not that Martin is reluctant to be ejected from the kitchen; it has the dual function of getting him away from two mad women and giving him the opportunity to light up.

  And what about me? I’d like to lock the shed and douse petrol all around it. Then accidently on purpose, light one of his fags. Not with Jeremy in there, obviously. I’d let him back in the house to watch the end of Neighbours. Good old Auntie Vicky.

  ‘Vicky?’

  I hear a distant voice. A glass is prised into my scrunched-up hand.

  ‘You look like you want to punch your brother’s lights out.’ Dorota beams at her cockney expression. She has a whole collection of them, quite endearing with her Polish accent, still thick after decades in this city. ‘Remember you have one brother only. I have none, no-one who remembers my mother or father. Martin is the only one who knows your childhood. And your daughters... well, they have Jeremy. They are lucky to have such a cousin.’ She manages to stop herself saying that my girls will never have a brother. And she is right; they do not have a brother. But they did. And I do. Is that supposed to make me appreciate Martin?

  I move away from the washing-up and stand at the door, which has been left ajar to release the steam from the root vegetables Dorota has been boiling to a pulp. The physical pain is easing, thanks to the cabbage leaves she’s stuffed down my bra. So I’ll forever smell of school dinners. But the lower, underlying, persistent ache is still there. You’d think I’d be used to it by now but it still takes me by surprise.

  And there is Martin, loitering on one of my stepping stones, in the dark garden, marked out by the red tip of his stinky cigarette, bringing a whole new meaning to Ash Wednesday. Grant that these ashes may be for us a sign of our penitence and a symbol of our mortality.

  Do I really wish Martin was dead? Burnt to a cinder? A pile of ashes to be spread on the garden? No, I just wish he was back in Dulwich, drinking bottled beer from his very expensive American fridge and winding up his own family, his wife and his son, putting up with Pimp my Ride on his vast plasma screen, so I can finally have my space back. That is, once Dorota has returned to Roland.

  And Roland? Has anyone other than Steve given him a moment’s thought today? Poor Roland. Where is he in all this? Down The Bull, according to Dorota. Maybe I should join him. But something tells me an early night is required. But if I’m to get any sleep I need Imo to relieve me of some of this milk. Just one more feed.

  Thoughts for the Day: Steve is a man of patience. And he is a man with all the time in the world. All the time in eternity. So he will wait around forever. Won’t he?

  Chapter Twenty-one: Friday 8th February

  Dorota is still here, at my kitchen sink, scrubbing yet more cabbage leaves, having taken on the challenge as if she were my personal trainer. She’ll be massaging my shoulders and giving me pep talks next.

  I turn my attention to the fridge, removing half-eaten jars of chutney and olives. It needs a thorough clean. It is deeply satisfying, allowing me to zone out and think of nothing but the task in hand, but then I become unsteadied by the sight of one of Martin’s Stella Artois bottles lurking behind the tomato ketchup. I hear Mum’s voice echo again – Pop down the chemist’s will you, Vicky-Love? – but elbow grease soon gets rid of that.

  Dorota and I work in companionable silence and I smile to myself, thinking how much my mother-in-law and I have in common despite her being from Gdansk and all her petty annoyances. Mum wasn’t annoying. She was just a mess, couldn’t keep a household. But it didn’t matter. It gave me a place in that family, as I could never live up to Martin.

  Dorota has stopped scrubbing now, and peels off her rubber gloves. I look up at her from my position on the floor and see the slump in her shoulders, a characteristic she’s handed down to Steve for when he’s tired, or Charlton has lost, or when he’s facing the Bishop. Is she crying?

  ‘Dorota, what is it?’

  She starts fully-fledged bawling and I wonder just how many tears will be shed in this house this year.

  ‘I miss my Roland,’ she says. ‘But I can’t go back.’

  ‘Why can’t you go back?’’

  ‘Because I am silly old woman.’

  ‘No, Dorota. You’re not. You are a wonderful woman and Roland is lucky to have you.’ I had no idea these words were going to tumble out of my mouth but there they are, floating in the steam of the kitchen and I am rather proud of myself for saying something kind, that I know is actually the truth deep down. She might be my mother-in-law but she is the only mother I have now. I’m even more surprised to find myself getting up and hugging her, far more meaningful and restorative than hand-patting has ever been.

  She takes a huge sniff and blows her nose into the clean hanky I offer. Her shoulders straighten. ‘The drawers in the girls’ bedroom need sorting out,’ she says. ‘There are plenty clothes you can pack up and send to Romania. They are still very poor there. Not like Polska. We Polish work very hard. We are intelligent people.’

  I’m really not sure how to answer this, so I let her go.

  Late afternoon and Roland is on the phone. He has been calling several times a day, trying to get his wife to speak to him but she is not ready yet. So I let Roland waffle on; he is lonely, all on his own and I feel sorry for him. I half-wonder if I should go over but daren’t leave the house right now, not in my physical state, not with Dorota all upset. Besides, from past experience I know this will be d
one and dusted soon. Until the next marital crisis five years down the line. I try passing him onto Steve but he shakes his head and holds up his left shoe as an excuse. He’s polishing his vicar shoes – plain black Doc Martens – on the kitchen table, having first carefully covered it with Martin’s Observer, being well-trained. He’s not joining in his family’s unusual reminiscing today. Dorota, still labouring over the girls’ clothes upstairs, isn’t one to hark back over her past; she says ‘it is what it is’ and talking about stuff won’t change it. But she has mentioned her mama and tata today. Her Polska. Being apart from Roland must remind her of how cut off she is from her mother country.

  ‘Why don’t you come over?’ I ask Roland, ignoring Steve’s more energetic head-shaking, and turning away from him. ‘Or Steve can come and see you.’

  Steve sighs, then clears away the shoe kit and, after a grudging goodbye peck, sprints off for a confirmation class. His first one. Desmond is finally relinquishing some responsibilities, now Steve has proved himself to be more than a plumber. He’s still got a way to go with me.

  ‘Roland? You still there?’

  ‘Still here, love. I’m alright. Just give the old girl a hug from me.’

  And I can’t help smiling to myself as we say our goodbyes.

  As for Steve, he needs to put his family first, his mum and dad. Us. I feel like I’ve been pushed to the back of a very long queue. I know I should be pleased he’s found fulfilment in his life – six years ago I would never have thought that was possible as he was falling to pieces, breaking up before my eyes and I could do nothing about it except be the strong one. But now my strength is sapping. I am so very tired. And he’s off out with a bunch of willing Christians, prepared to take that extra step of faith and be confirmed into the church. Teenagers mostly, from the local private school. And, surprisingly, Karolina. She talked to Steve after the service last week and said she was seeking God. Always one to encourage a search, Steve invited her to Alpha but she said she was beyond that. She knew where God was, she just wanted to get to know him better. She wanted to be baptised. She was very keen, which goes to show you never know about people. He said she was really friendly and everything, which I should tell Shelley at playgroup. Shelley should be the one that Dorota aims her speeches at. She’s a right little Enoch Powell. Not me. I married a half-Pole, didn’t I? I married a plumber.