Letters to My Husband

by Stephanie Butland

  It’s funny to see people arriving and exclaiming over how pretty this place is, something I’d forgotten. I just see the bits I don’t like: the sky too close, the streets too narrow, the people knowing exactly who I am and where I fit into the Great Scheme of Throckton. But today, walking home, I remembered how I felt during my first spring here, and I was happy. I remembered my amazement at how green everything is, all the time, not just during spring and autumn, like it is back home.

  When I left, walking back through town, I think I saw Kate Micklethwaite.

  I shouldn’t be jealous of that girl. I shouldn’t. She nearly died, she’s traumatized, and she’s fucked up her super-bright amazing future. I should feel sorry for her.

  Or I should be like Patricia, who is angry. She’s muttering about how, when she was a girl, if you got into trouble then you at least had the grace to keep a low profile, rather than ‘flaunting your shame’. (There seem to be as many ways to not say pregnant as there are to not say dead.) Mel asked her what Kate had been doing, surely it was a bit chilly to be wandering around Throckton in a bikini? But apparently she’d been to the library to borrow a book about pregnancy. Mel said, I wouldn’t call that flaunting, I’d call it making the best of a bad job. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the two of them. Mostly I ignore them, or intervene if it’s getting out of hand.

  But now, I’m jealous of Kate Micklethwaite, who seems to have got, accidentally, I presume, what we wanted so badly. She got the baby. And she got the last touch of your life.

  In a funny way I’m glad we tried, and failed, to have a baby, because those four years of trying made me understand that life isn’t fair. And I’m glad I knew that before you died, because if I hadn’t, I can’t imagine how much worse these days would be.

  I love you. I do.

  E xxx

  Then

  ELIZABETH ONLY ONCE Thought she was pregnant. It was not long before they went to the fertility clinic. Her body was fraught with hope. She was fit and healthy, making of herself the best possible nest, and at the same time anxious and aching for a baby. She’d given up on trying to note things in her diary and now kept a spreadsheet to track everything she thought might be important: sex, menstrual cycle, exercise, alcohol, working hours, unusual events.

  She had always had regular periods, with less than forty-eight hours’ variation month to month. Later, she would describe her cycle to the nurse who took their details at the clinic, and when it was all written down, the nurse would look at Elizabeth and say, ‘Perfect,’ with a big smile and no irony. And Elizabeth had laughed, because surely a perfect menstrual cycle would have made a baby. A perfect baby. ‘That’s the spirit,’ the nurse had said.

  But there was one Wednesday morning, the second summer that they were trying, when Elizabeth got up and ready for work and was putting tampons in her handbag and feeling a bit sad at the sight of them, when she realized that there had been no pain, and there was no blood, and there should have been by now. Mike was at work; they had an agreement that he would be in the house when she did pregnancy tests. (‘You don’t need to be in the room,’ she’d said, ‘I’ll have enough of accompanied trips to the loo when I’m home with a toddler.’) She had gone to work and every spare second she had she was checking herself over for anything, any sign at all.

  At first, Elizabeth was scanning for cramp, the feeling of heaviness, of bleeding, but then, by lunchtime, she was looking for nausea, tiredness, or a feeling of knowing, so that later, she could say to Mike, ‘I just knew.’ She calculated dates, worked out that she would have an early April baby, and thought what a perfect time of year it would be to be born, to be new parents.

  She saw the three of them in the garden under the apple blossom, and they were as clear as if she was looking at a photograph. Elizabeth herself would be rounded and smiling, the baby on her lap as bright as a button with his father’s eyes and his mother’s hair, and Mike, proud and protective, standing over them. Their family, happy and complete at last.

  She was bursting to get home and do a test, but it was a day when she was staying until six, so she had thought, well, she would just practise waiting, because she would have until April to wait. Mike would come off shift at four, and so he would have walked Pepper, thought about dinner, and be in the perfect mood for finding out that he was going to be a father.

  Then, as Elizabeth was walking home, heart twittering and soul contented, thinking about how she would tell Mike the news, but being fairly certain that she wouldn’t need to say a word because she could feel herself glowing, she felt the cramp tear at her.

  When she got home, on the edge of tears, it was to find a message from Mike to say that he’d gone for a run: they tended not to run together so often, these days. (There had been a row, when Mike had suggested that they should both enter the London Marathon next year. Is that because you’ve given up on the idea of us ever having a baby, she’d asked, and he’d said, no, it’s my way of trying to enjoy the life that we have, do you remember it, Elizabeth, it used to be enough for you.)

  Elizabeth had lain in the bathwater until it was lukewarm. When Mike came in, he was whistling, but he stopped when he closed the door behind him, and she had thought: have you stopped because this home has become a house that you can’t relax in?

  So when she came downstairs, and she saw the look on her husband’s face, half hoping, half ready with the sympathy, she had just said, not this time, sweetheart, and left it at that. Life went on. The cycle had kept on cycling their hopes away.

  When she lay awake at night, Elizabeth would think about that day: remind herself that nothing had been lost. She hadn’t been pregnant. Her period had been late, that was all. But she had felt bereft.

  She could have woken Mike and told him: she knew she didn’t have to lie there, feeling the way that she did. But she knew that if she told him, he would be upset for her, and it would be more pressure for next time.

  Instead, she thought about what they were doing to themselves; about how in not being completely honest she was keeping a secret, for the first time, from this man she loved more than anyone. It didn’t feel right. But then, all the books said that having difficulty conceiving wasn’t good for a relationship.

  Mike,

  Your mother looks terrible. Drained and tired and obsessed with Kate Micklethwaite and her baby. Yesterday, she came in – it was raining – and before she’d even taken her coat off, she’d started talking about what she’d have done with Kate. How at the first sign of trouble she’d have kept her busy, put her in charge of the ironing, including the sheets –‘People iron sheets?’ Mel mouthed at me before she made her apologies and bolted.

  It would have been voluntary work or helping with a church group, a part-time job in the library. Kate wouldn’t have been allowed to ‘moon about’ after she decided she wasn’t going abroad, if Patricia had had anything to do with it. (I started to feel sorry for the poor girl at this point.) How she’d have taken her to the cinema at weekends, and invited her friends round, and made sure every second of her time was accounted for.

  Under your mother’s hand, Kate would have spent a lot of time with people who loved her, and when she went to bed at night she would have been tired out, and have had no time or thought for mischief.

  And then, she said, and then, within a month, I’d have turned her round, and she’d be a normal, well-behaved girl with a bright future ahead of her, and I might be proud that Michael had saved her, and understand it a bit more.

  It was just as well that Mel had ducked out as soon as this all started, because your mother was in tears and I know she hates to cry in front of – well, of anyone at all. I sat her down and I said, Patricia, we might not like what’s going on here. It’s hard. But I think of it as Mike saving two people. I didn’t want him to die, but there are going to be two people walking around Throckton, Kate and her baby, for a very long time, for longer than you and me, probably, because of what Mike did that night. It’s
cold comfort, but it’s something.

  She was quiet for a minute while she dried her tears. So I told her that I’d baked a cake, and she looked so proud. God knows what she would have been like if we’d had our baby. She declared it ‘a bit dry but not a bad effort’ and then said she’d write down the recipe for her fruit cake that you liked.

  I said, I’d like that, and we’ll call it ‘Michael’s fruit cake’ even though you’re not here to eat it.

  She told me how she’s always thought of her steak and kidney pie as John’s pie because he liked it so much.

  And then we were both crying. I was having a better day until then: feeling a little bit like me.

  Mel came down and put the kettle on.

  This is a long road.

  E xxx

  Now

  KATE FEELS LIKE a lion cub in one of the nature documentaries that she and her father used to watch. There are times when she seems to have got cornered by something with big horns, and she can’t see her way out of it, and then the mother lion appears, all claws and teeth, and the predator is gone, running for the hills.

  Her mother seems to have developed a sixth sense for trouble, so that every time Rufus appears, his eyes cold, and starts talking about Oxford and the future and hard decisions now being the best in the long run, Richenda will come in and say something like, ‘Rufus. We had a long talk about this and we agreed that Kate has made her decision and we’d say no more about it.’

  At the library, when Mike’s mother had been at the desk, horrible staring and pursed-up face, Richenda had appeared at her shoulder and said kindly, ‘Mrs Gray, I hope that you’re well. I know things must be very difficult,’ and ushered Kate away before there was time for a response.

  When they had gone to see the midwife, and she had asked about the baby’s father, and Kate could barely trust herself to speak, Richenda had said firmly, ‘The father isn’t involved,’ and that had been the end of that conversation.

  Afterwards, Richenda had said, quietly, ‘When you are ready to talk about the father, Kate, I’m ready to listen. Until then, I’m not going to badger you about it. I trust that you have your reasons.’

  Kate had nodded, and just for a moment she’d been ready to tell her mother the whole of it. But then, she’d remembered her promise.

  Blake finds himself at the Micklethwaites’ house. He hasn’t called in advance; he was just walking past and thought he’d drop in on the off chance. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, the conversation he’d had with Mel the other night refusing to leave him. He pushes the gate open, winces at the squeak as he does every time.

  ‘Infuriating, isn’t it,’ Richenda calls from where she’s kneeling by a flower bed. ‘I’ve asked Rufus to deal with it a thousand times, and so I can’t do it myself now. It’s a sort of garden argument. Neither of us will give in.’

  She gets to her feet, pushes her hair out of her face. Blake notices that she’s barefoot, her toenails painted pale purple. ‘I didn’t know you were coming today. Have I forgotten?’ She makes a gesture, a twist of her palm, a drop of her shoulder, that says: the way things are at the moment, I could forget anything, so please forgive me if I have.

  ‘No, no,’ Blake says, ‘I was just passing, and, well, I thought I’d see how you are doing.’

  ‘You’ve heard, then?’

  ‘I’ve heard.’

  She smiles, and moves towards the house, speaking over her shoulder to him. He follows her, wiping his boots on the mat.

  ‘I can’t believe how calm I am. I had no idea, of course, although looking back, it’s obvious …’ They are in the kitchen now, Blake leaning close to hear her over the sound of the water filling the kettle, ‘But there you are. I think it’s because I was there for the scan. It makes it real. My mother used to say, a baby brings its own love, and, well …’

  It’s as though now Richenda has started talking, she can’t stop. She blurts it all out: due date, Rufus’s fury, Kate’s calmness, the planned decorating, how much easier it is when you know what sex the baby is, the university place released, the way that four months isn’t anywhere near as long as you think it is. And, as she does so, a waterfall of words, she recognizes that she hasn’t had a true conversation with anyone. Kate she protects, with her words as well as her actions, her watching. Rufus she bickers with, over the father and the future and the fact that he can’t accept what’s happening to them.

  She’s had the briefest of conversations with her sisters and the cousins Rufus keeps in touch with, who have sympathized and said things like ‘Well, I suppose you’ll make the best of it,’ with an undertone of ‘my child would never/has never done such a thing.’ Richenda hadn’t noticed how much she is holding on to, how many words, how many worries and doubts. But now, here is Blake.

  And Blake is telling her things that resonate with her own, unexpressed thoughts. That an unplanned child is not the same as an unwanted child. That these things can be the making of a family. That babies are born into circumstances thousands of times worse than this one will be, and that there’s no reason why Kate shouldn’t be OK, with the right support.

  Richenda’s face makes a shrug, because her hands are holding mugs. ‘She’s not getting a lot of support from her father. Or from the baby’s father, come to that.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’ Blake’s voice, well trained, is behaving exactly as it does when asking any other question.

  ‘No. She won’t say. I’m not going to try to make her. She’s as stubborn as me and her father are over that wretched gate – she gets it from both sides – so it wouldn’t do any good, anyway. Not that Rufus isn’t trying. But, well,’ Richenda pauses, hands coffee to Blake, takes a sip of her own as Blake waits, ‘all that she’ll say is that he’s not around, and that could mean anything. It must have been after Christmas time when she got pregnant, because it was too early for the pregnancy to show in the hospital tests, and she didn’t leave the house for three weeks afterwards. So he could have been someone here, visiting, over Christmas. He could be away on holiday, or already at college. She might not even know who he is.’

  She looks to Blake, who, understanding what’s required, nods a nod that says, sad but true. He’s turning over ‘he’s not around’, examining it. Looking for clues, not wanting to find them.

  ‘I’ve got a shortlist, of her sixth-form friends who came back from their gap-year things for Christmas, but, well, I just don’t know.’ She pauses, going through the line-up in her mind. She remembers them, part of the group of almost-adults sprawled over her sofas, waiting for Kate before going out on New Year’s Eve. While the girls downstairs had been flirty, giggly, already a little drunk, upstairs Kate had been sullen, dragging her heels. Maybe—

  ‘There’s no point in speculating,’ Blake says, gently.

  ‘No,’ she agrees. She remembers that Rufus had a junior working with him, from September to January: he’d come to the house a few times, seemed to get on well enough with Kate, although she’d rather assumed he was gay. Still, there’s no telling. She wonders how she can ask Rufus about him, without appearing to ask: she’d got furious with him, last night, for doing exactly what she is doing now.

  ‘And how are you, Richenda?’ Blake asks.

  ‘I have absolutely no idea,’ she says.

  Upstairs, Kate teases Beatle with a ball, waiting for the grumble and throb of the voices downstairs to fade, so that she can take a walk. She knows she will soon be tired again, her body too heavy to be easy with, but for now she feels strong and her breath moves happily in and out of her. She doesn’t have to hide her baby any more, and she knows how to hide her eyes, looking constantly away from people, above or below or towards the ever-helpful Beatle, so that she can’t be stopped, chatted to, engaged in conversation.

  Her favourite walk is to Butler’s Pond, the place where the mix of emotions is so sharp and strong that she doesn’t know whether she’ll be elated or distraught. But both feel true, and in most of Kate�
��s world at the moment truth is not an easy thing, but rather, something to be protected, hidden, cosseted away, as her pregnancy has been.

  She won’t tell her mother where she’s going. She’s been letting her assume she’s going to the graveyard with her posies, sure that no one will find the flowers where she really lays them, between the roots of an ancient tree, hidden from the water’s edge and the people passing by with dogs and children on bikes, trikes and scooters. She wished she’d put them here all along, but she’d been so afraid of coming back to this place, for all the power and the pull it might have.

  As she waits, she thinks through her list of names. And suddenly, she has it, and she doesn’t care who’s downstairs or what they’re talking about.

  She heads down to the living room, and sees her mother and Blake look up at her, startled, caught out. Yes, definitely talking about her. Well, let them. Blake takes his hand from her mother’s arm. Kate almost changes her mind about what she’s going to say. She hesitates, and in that moment Blake gets up, faces her, and says, ‘Congratulations, Kate. You must be very excited about the baby.’ He looks straight at her as he says it. And he smiles.

  Kate is thrown, completely thrown, because it’s the first time someone has congratulated her about her little girl. She stands very still, absorbing the feeling of it, thinking of all the other people who have babies, who are washed in congratulations for months, who would think nothing of this heartfelt reaching-out, these simple words. She looks at Blake again, just to make sure there’s no ill-will, and he’s still looking at her, still smiling. She remembers that Mike had said he was a good man: but then, Mike had only good things to say about everyone. And she smiles back.

  ‘Kayla,’ she says, ‘I’ve decided to call her Kayla.’

  Mike,

  Everything is dull. People say I’m doing well, and I suppose I am. They say it as though I’ve been crippled and am learning to walk again, which I suppose is also true. I’m doing well in the sense that I don’t spend every minute of every day beating my breast and wailing. But everything is dull. Flat.