by Sophie Duffy
‘And I’ll have a beer,’ Martin adds.
Great. Once Dorota gets here with her sherry – unless she’s stuck to her Lenten promise – we’ll be in for an interesting ride this afternoon. A cultural cocktail of delight.
Half an hour later and the hordes arrive, bringing bottles and flowers and noise. First Roland and Dorota, then Steve and the girls, and finally Claudia and Jeremy. Claudia is dressed for lunch at Claridge’s in a linen dress and her signature kitten heels (I can feel the tingling onset of bunions just looking at them). Dorota is wearing her usual baggy cotton trousers and tent-top but with a new ring on her wedding finger (Hallelujah).
All hands to the deck – apart from Claudia who has recently-done nails – as we sieve vegetables, warm up plates and carry food through to the back room which today earns the title of dining room, Jeremy’s zed-bed neatly folded to one side, his belongings tidied into stacker boxes. I am more grateful than ever that Martin has not caved in and got a replacement cello, though there has been talk of renting one. Another reason to work on marriage mediation between my brother and his wife.
As we are sitting down and starting to pass round serving dishes, the doorbell goes. I run though a quick list of possible visitors in my mind when Steve says, ‘Oh, yes, Vick, I forgot.’ He smacks his forehead in genuine horror so I feel panic rising like bile. ‘I half-invited Karolina and Natasha for lunch. They were at church and Amanda was about to ask them back seeing as they were on their own today and I intervened and said how about coming here if they fancied some company, thinking they’d be more relaxed with other children and she said they might but I didn’t think they really would but that’s nice isn’t it, that she felt comfortable doing this but I’m sorry I didn’t warn you, is there enough to go round... ?’
I don’t get a chance to answer him as he has made this speech whilst getting up from his chair, squeezing round our assembled guests, backing out the door and disappearing from sight on his way down the hall.
The remainder of us, having broken off our conversation, listen as Steve opens the front door. Karolina’s low gravelly murmur can be heard.
‘She is Pole,’ says Dorota, picking up immediately on a fellow countrywoman. ‘I bet she has very bad-dyed blonde hair.’
Fortunately Martin is sitting opposite me so I am able to aim a sharp kick in his shin before he passes comment on the irony of this statement. But he does slip out, ‘What odds would you give?’
‘Dead cert,’ Dorota replies.
Karolina appears in the doorway of the dining room, Natasha, eyes down, clutching her mother’s hand. Steve ushers them in, does a brief introduction. Poor Karolina is blushing as she realises we are on the verge of beginning a family meal and says: ‘This is bad time. We will come another day when you are less busy.’
‘No, no,’ I find myself on my feet, the good vicar’s wife. ‘There’s plenty of food. We can add a couple of chairs. In fact, Olivia and Natasha could share that small table and sit on cushions. They’d like that. It’d be fun. Like a picnic.’
Natasha doesn’t look like she would like that, or that she would find anything fun right now, especially a fake picnic on a plastic table in a stranger’s house. But when Olivia gets up to greet her, Natasha willingly clasps her classmate’s proffered hand. She follows Olivia to the little table, checking that her mother is in fact staying. Her mother is now seated between Martin and Steve, tight-shouldered and clutching her mobile phone.
‘So you are Polish?’ Dorota cuts to the chase, and her smug smile is intended for the rest of us that she was right about the blonde hair.
Karolina looks at Dorota, takes in her appearance, and says, ‘You are Polish too?’
‘How do you know this?’ Dorota is amazed. She thought her heritage was a deep secret from her past, forgets so many things about her give the game away.
‘You remind me of my aunt,’ Karolina states neutrally.
Dorota frowns and gets back to her food.
I hand Karolina a plate, insisting she help herself to whatever she fancies and to tuck in, it’s lovely to have her here, a nice surprise, wittering away to cause a distraction, make everything alright.
Martin does his gentlemanly act – and I’m almost grateful – passing our new guest the various vegetable dishes, offering them like delicacies. Karolina inspects each one rather too closely than is necessary before dabbing miniscule amounts on her plate. Martin’s attentiveness has no effect on Karolina, no giggles, no flicking of blonde hair, no pushing up and out of chest. But her shoulders have loosened a tad; her phone has been placed next to her knife.
‘What about us, Stefan?’ Dorota asks her son. ‘Do we get anything to drink in this house?’ Her fat hand flits up to her throat to dramatically emphasise her thirst.
‘There’s that fizzy wine,’ Dad announces.
‘Champagne,’ Martin corrects and scrapes his chair back before setting off to retrieve it from the fridge. My fridge.
The prospect of champagne makes everyone chattier, even though we’ll have to stretch it now. Martin brings everyone to attention with the pop-and-fizz that he does in front of us, the show-off that he is. He makes a point of looking up and down the table. ‘No champagne flutes, Victoria? Don’t tell me we’re going to have to slum it with IKEA’s finest.’
I resist the urge to do the tablecloth trick, yanking it away from the table (ta-dah!), leaving the crockery and cutlery behind. I turn to Karolina and say, ‘Forgive my brother. He has special needs,’ which makes Claudia and Dad hoot and splutter. But for once I don’t feel any pleasure in putting Martin down, not even with a receptive audience. It makes no odds to him what I say. And the thought of champagne mixed with casserole now makes me feel sick. I’m surprised Martin suggested it, other than to be flash. Surely it’s red wine with beef?
I’m finding it hard to celebrate anything let alone being a mother. My new-found ability to be hospitable is already waning and as soon as the main course is eaten, and seconds consumed by the greediest i.e. Martin, I make my excuses, saying I’ve got to check on the pudding. Not that anyone hears me, they are all too busy glugging back the remains of the champagne and the beginnings of a bottle of Sancerre that Steve and I were saving for a special occasion, which I suppose this is. So no-one notices me leave, not even Steve, usually so keen to help, as he is deep in conversation with Karolina, no doubt filling her in on the meaning of life. I wish someone would fill me in.
I don’t check on the pudding. The pudding is fine on its own, defrosting nicely on the side, just about enough to go round. I head upstairs instead, my feet taking me there rather than any intention on my part. As I reach the landing I hear Socks mew. A I’m-here-come-and-give-me-a-stroke mew. He is curled up in the box room, Imo’s room, on her chair, where I sit and feed her before putting her to bed. Where I sit with her in the night, listening to the train on the tracks, the wind in the scrubby trees, the creaks of the house. Not that I’ve done that for a while, she is sleeping through now. But I’m not. Every night, at some point, I lie awake, resisting the urge to go and check on her, studying the monitor on the bedside table, listening out for the reassuring snuffles, watching the string of flashing lights.
I rub Socks behind the ears. He stretches his paws, pinging out his talons appreciatively. His winter fur is thick and slightly coarse from nights stalking vermin up on the cutting. Nothing changes in his life. He has food when he wants it, somewhere cosy to sleep and groom himself, his own back door, a world of small wildlife at his disposal. He doesn’t care who’s here, in his house, who’s not, as long as there’s someone with a lap when he wants it, a hand that can turn a tin opener, rattle a box of Go-Cat, scratch him behind the ears. Every night is the same.
He would have been out that night too, a warm summer night, in and out of gardens, prowling, fighting, hunting. As for me, I’d had a whole night’s sleep for the first time since Thomas had been born. I’d fed him in this chair, listening to the shouts from the TV downst
airs, Wimbledon, Rachel and Steve shouting Come on, Tim, basking in the evening sun, a precious moment. He drifted off and my arm became hot and heavy. He was piling on the weight like Imo. I kissed him on his fuzzy head, then got up carefully and carried him over to his cot, out for the count, reminding myself to phone Eileen in the morning and ask about his eczema.
I can still feel the shape of him in my arms.
He’d only been sleeping in the cot for a few nights, having been promoted from the crib in our room. It was going really well, though he’d had a blip the night before, a few snuffles, unsettled, a little hot, we guessed a new tooth, though at three months it seemed early. Steve and I were dead chuffed at how good he was. Rachel had been a shocker, waking every two to three hours till she was six months old. We couldn’t believe our luck, having a placid, gentle, easy baby boy. Only I’d give anything now to have a loud, raucous, noisy boy. To have a six-year-old banging and crashing and kicking chips out of the skirting board. To be able to go back to that night and stop the morning from coming. But the morning came. I woke up next to Steve and checked the time. I could hear the telly drift up from downstairs, Rachel having gone down quietly and put it on. Her favourite video. Pingu. It was late. We’d overslept. But Thomas was still quiet. I knew straightway something was wrong. Something had changed.
I look at Socks sitting innocently in the chair. And then at the cot, the blanket ruffled from Imo’s earlier nap. We had to get a new cot for her. I couldn’t bear to keep Thomas’. I thought giving it away would help lay waste to the memory of going in that morning. Going in to the cot and leaning over. Seeing him blue and still. Sweeping him up in my arms. Feeling him cold. Screaming and screaming and screaming until Steve ran in and stopped still, his face panicked, knowing but not believing I was holding our dead baby boy.
I straighten up the blanket and as I am about to go to the cat, to earn myself a little more time up here away from the white noise downstairs, I hear the doorbell.
Go away.
I was half-hoping it would be Jessica, poor girl, today’s not easy for those of us without our mother. But it’s a woman’s voice, strangely familiar.
I see her as I come down the stairs. She is standing with her fingers entwined in her long wavy blonde hair. Melanie.
She looks up at me. ‘You’re the woman who bought those ridiculous shoes.’
‘You’re the woman who sold them to me.’
Steve is standing there, unsure for a moment, then he says, ‘Do you need to speak to Martin?’
‘Steve?’
‘What?’
‘I don’t think this is appropriate right now, do you?’
But whatever I think is irrelevant because Claudia has chosen this moment to do something unusual and has come into the hall with some dishes. Which she drops. We all look at the pile of broken crockery, maybe not Wedgewood, but mine nonetheless. The clatter brings everyone else out to the hall, including Martin, whose face drops to join the shattered fragments on the floor.
‘Have you told her yet?’ Melanie asks, looking at an ashen Claudia.
‘Not now,’ says Martin. ‘Not today. Please Melanie.’
‘Mother’s Day, eh? Of course. How thoughtless of me.’ The sarcasm is visible. I could reach out and grab it and bang Martin on the head with it if I could be bothered. But I am tired of all this. Sick and tired.
I leave the audience and climb the stairs, hearing Melanie’s retreating footsteps and the front door slam. Then a deep and dangerous silence.
I should go back down and help my family sort out this mess but I don’t. I go back to the box room, to the place where I shared those precious moments with Thomas.
There’s a baby in the cot.
Oh.
For a split second my heart raised heavenwards in what I can only describe as joy. But it is Imo. Someone has put her down for a nap. Of course it is Imo. And how I hate myself for wishing it wasn’t. She is here, living and breathing and yet the joy has gone as quickly as it came.
I make myself go to her and take her in. Her chubby form. Her delicate beauty. On her front, bottom slightly in the air as if she is practising crawling in her sleep. She is angelic and gorgeous. I pull her cover up around her and my hand knocks against something hard. A rattle or something. I pull it out. It is Steve’s mobile phone.
‘You found it?’ Steve says, coming in the room, his sermon notes in hand, glasses perched on head.
‘Looks like St Tony came up trumps.’
He laughs and tells me Martin and Claudia have gone to the shed for a chat. I picture Martin and Claudia in our shed and can’t quite imagine a happy outcome.
I sit on the chair, shift the cat onto my lap, and feel his comforting warmth. ‘Carry on,’ I tell my husband, the vicar. ‘I’ll try and stay awake and you can practise on me.’
I listen to his words of surprising wisdom and make myself forget that downstairs is my family, my extended family. I try and forget the kids are playing virtual games instead of out in the fresh air on bikes and pogo sticks like we once were. I try and forget that my brother is being his usual pompous self, outwitting his wife in my shed. I try and forget my mother would be here sharing Mothering Sunday if only people had taken more care. I try and forget Thomas would be here if only I’d woken that night and gone in to check on him. I try and forget.
Thoughts for the Day: If I was allowed to believe in reincarnation, I would wish to come back as a cat in South London. Failing that I would come back as a behemoth. No-one would mess with Vicky the Behemoth.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Thursday 6th March
Natasha has been absent from playgroup all week and I am fighting the fear that I somehow gave her food poisoning last Sunday, but when I asked Shelley yesterday, she said Karolina has got flu and can’t manage to get to playgroup. So that is what brings me to their flat early this morning, armed with flowers, Lemsips and homemade chicken soup. That is when I am surprised to see the state Karolina is in and why I insist on phoning the doctor.
‘No. No doctor,’ Karolina is emphatic. Emphatic as she can be languishing on the sofa, under a duvet, surrounded by mountains of discarded tissues, screwed-up crisp packets, grubby toys, dirty tights, magazines, dog-eared books. ‘Doctors do nothing for me. I must wait and I will be better.’
‘Then let me take Natasha to playgroup. Give you a break.’
Karolina looks suspicious but cannot muster the energy to resist. ‘Okay but do not give her sweets.’
I ignore her lack of gratitude and assumption that I will ply her daughter with sweets, reminding myself she is a dentist and too ill for niceties. But however ill I was, I would never let my home – even a home-from-home – slump into such a slovenly state. Really it is quite disgusting. The carpet, the patches of it that can be glimpsed though the rubble, is hairy and mouldy-looking. The hair – white and short – must come from Karolina because presumably they don’t own any pets, living as they do on the third floor of this block of flats. I dread to think where the mould came from.
The coffee table is covered with the detritus of illness and general living: six mugs, four plates and an assortment of cutlery; Polly Pockets who reside in a world of chocolate wrappers (now, now, Karolina, cavities); junk mail, flyers, take away menus, nail varnish bottles, matches, lighters, joss sticks, tobacco, Rizlas, CDs, broken CD cases, orange peel, empty grape stems, broken pencils, earrings, coins, a mobile phone, an odd sock, toe nail clippings and a packet of pills.
I try to surreptitiously scan the label of the packet but Karolina spots what I am doing and, with a surge of energy, swipes them from the debris, saying, ‘From the doctor, for my flu, antibiotics.’ Hmm. Doctors do nothing for me.
Shelley is surprised to see me turn up with Natasha and Olivia. Not as surprised as I am, that both Natasha and Karolina have agreed to this arrangement. Or that I could do such a Christian act. Maybe Steve’s goodness is rubbing off on me. Or Amanda’s. Or maybe I am not such a bad person.
I w
atch them from the door on my way out. Olivia bypasses the cutting and sticking table, steadfastly ignoring her celebrity demons, and heads instead for the comfort of the book corner, pulling Natasha along with her. Once there, Olivia sits her new friend down and reads her Spot the Dog. She even allows her to lift a flap.
Seeing the confidence of Olivia, I can’t help wonder how Thomas would have been as a boy. Would he be a noisy, messy six-year-old? Or quiet and pensive? At three months old it was impossible to say except that he was beginning to show us his personality.
‘Where’s the baby?’ Shelley asks, knocking me out of my daydream.
‘The baby?’
‘Your little girl.’
‘Oh. Yes. She’s with Steve’s parents.’
‘You’re lucky to have them,’ she says. She knows nothing. I’d rather have my own mum. But I can’t be bothered to say anything. ‘Yes, I’m very lucky.’
Luck? Is that what this is all about?
I want to tell her all about Thomas, all about the ambulance, the hospital, the aftermath of the funeral, having to cope with Rachel missing and mourning her baby brother, with Steve, my rock who was eroding into rubble day by day.
And me, I was Strong Vicky. I was Capable Vicky. I was Isn’t-she-amazing-the-way-she-carries-on Vicky. I was coping. And then one day Steve gets a call to go to Dartford and our lives, which have already been thrown up in the air and scattered into the winds, fall back down to earth and land in a different pattern, the holes that were there before bigger, the gaps deeper and more treacherous, liable to widen at any second and topple me in, swallow me up and down. Down, right down until there is nothing.
Only, when you get to that point of nothingness, you start to kick your feet and push with your arms. You start to pull yourself up towards the light until one day you are breathing air again. You begin to live and make plans and try new things and have more babies. But that doesn’t stop you yearning backwards or wishing yourself forwards. It doesn’t help you live and enjoy each moment. It doesn’t stop you wondering what if... ?