A Dry Spell

by Clare Chambers

  It’s so unfair, Nina thought, having to play the heavy parent all on my own. A great bubble of self-pity stuck in her throat and she withdrew to her bedroom on the pretext of phoning for a cab so that she could give her pillow a few good stiff-armed wallops and compose herself before facing them again.

  When she heard the clatter of the car’s diesel engine outside Nina came downstairs and pressed a ten-pound note into Kerry’s hand. ‘That’s for the fare,’ she explained, as if there could have been any misunderstanding as to its purpose.

  ‘Oh. Right,’ said Kerry.

  No doubt in her circles that meant ‘thank you’, thought Nina. James was hovering. He looked as though he might be going to kiss Kerry goodbye, but a glance at his mother, now sitting on the second stair in her tartan dressing gown, made him lose courage. ‘I’ll call you,’ he said instead, and they exchanged meaningful smiles before the door was closed and James had to turn back to face the inquisition.

  ‘Mum.’ James opted for the pre-emptive strike. Once Nina got started on one of her lectures she was unstoppable – by the time she was done with him he’d have forgotten what it was he wanted to say. ‘I’ve already told you we weren’t doing anything. But even if we were, I’m seventeen, nearly eighteen. I’m old enough to join the army and die for my country’ – this was the line he always peddled when lamenting his inability to buy a drink in the pub. ‘I’m old enough to get married, to be a father . . .’

  ‘That’s precisely what you will be if you carry on like that,’ Nina interrupted. ‘What are you going to do if she gets pregnant?’

  ‘She won’t get pregnant.’

  ‘She might. That’s what it’s for, in case you hadn’t realized.’

  ‘We haven’t even had proper sex yet!’ James practically shouted.

  ‘Yet?’ said Nina in a shrill voice, thinking, what does he mean ‘proper’? ‘You’re planning to, then?’

  James mimed banging his head against the banisters. ‘What century are you living in, Mum?’

  Nina, who considered herself the model of a modern, liberal, emancipated parent, was stung by this. ‘It’s not sex per se I’m worried about,’ she said, changing tack. ‘I’m not trying to protect your virginity.’

  ‘Too late anyway,’ James couldn’t resist muttering.

  Nina swallowed. ‘It’s the girl I’m thinking of. You wouldn’t be the one saddled with an unwanted pregnancy.’ That’s it, she thought. This is a feminist issue. ‘Apart from anything else, this is my house and I don’t want you bringing a procession of girls back here under my nose. It’s not as if you’ve been going out together for any time at all.’

  ‘So how long would we have to be going out for it to be okay?’ James wanted to know. He was leaning against the closed front door, in T-shirt and boxers, not having bothered to get properly dressed.

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. I haven’t got a specific timetable worked out,’ said Nina, outmanoeuvred.

  ‘So, basically, as long as we don’t do it here, and Kerry doesn’t get pregnant, you don’t mind?’ said James, attempting to tease out the main thread of Nina’s tortuous logic.

  ‘No. Yes. I mean I still mind, but I know I can’t stop you, so I’d rather you at least respect the . . . er . . . sanctity of this house.’ No, that wasn’t it at all, thought Nina. She didn’t give a bugger about the house, and she certainly hadn’t meant to convey that she’d be thrilled at the thought of them screwing in potting sheds and in the backs of cars. She felt all her anger dissolve into weary confusion. Perhaps it was cracking my head on the pavement earlier, she thought. It’s made my brain go woolly. ‘I was assaulted at the bus stop today,’ she said. ‘On the way to Irene’s.’

  ‘What? How come?’ said James, glad that the argument had burnt itself out, and congratulating himself on having escaped so lightly.

  ‘I ticked this girl off for dropping litter and she knocked me backwards into a pile of broken glass.’ Nina pulled up one of the wide sleeves of her dressing gown and craned back to inspect the grazes on her shoulder.

  ‘God. Why didn’t you say before? Did you call the police?’

  ‘No. It would have made me late for the house-clearance man,’ Nina replied. ‘As a moral crusade it was a bit half-baked, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Perhaps you should avoid moral crusades – they’re obviously bad for your health,’ James suggested, with a hint of a smile.

  Nina went to pat his cheek – a gesture he hated – and he ducked away, pleased nevertheless that they were friends again. They hardly ever quarrelled.

  ‘Well, goodnight then,’ said James, sliding home the bolt on the front door.

  ‘Goodnight,’ said Nina, and then halfway up the stairs she turned. ‘Why don’t you invite Kerry to lunch one Sunday so I can meet her properly? I don’t want her to think I’m an old dragon.’

  James laughed, uneasily. That was exactly what she did think. ‘I don’t know about lunch. The thing is she doesn’t like eating in front of other people. She’s not used to sitting around a table and stuff. She’d be embarrassed.’

  Of course, thought Nina. You don’t get a figure like that by eating normal meals. She probably prefers raiding the fridge at midnight and then sticking two fingers down her throat.

  ‘Not lunch then,’ she said. ‘Something else.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said James in his amiably non-committal way. Nothing would ever come of that little proposal, it was clear.

  What a depressing day, Nina thought, as she tossed the Times crossword aside and climbed back into bed. On the bedside table, next to the alarm clock and the herbal headache pills was one of the half a dozen items she had salvaged from Irene’s flat: the last photograph of Irene’s son, Martin, taken through the open window of a Land Rover parked outside the meteorological station in In Salah, Algeria, in 1976. Beside it was a picture of Nina, aged twenty-one, holding James as a six-month-old baby. Their cheeks were touching and Nina was smiling into the camera, with the confidence of someone still young and beautiful enough to outshine an angelic infant. But James was already looking away, his attention caught by something off to the left.

  She suddenly felt overwhelmed with grief and nostalgia – for her own lost youth, and for James’s babyhood, which was so irretrievably remote now; and because the best of their relationship was in the past. He’d been such an easy baby, so easily comforted. She recalled fleetingly but with perfect clarity the sensation of razor-sharp infant toenails raking her back: James had been a gregarious sleeper and had often crept into bed with her in the middle of the night. It was one of the things that had kept her single. From the moment he was born her vocation had announced itself: James. She would have to be everything to him – mother, father, brother, sister, friend – since everything he lacked was her fault. Once when he was nearly three he had asked if he could have a party for his birthday – he had picked up the concept from a children’s television programme. ‘How can you have a party, darling?’ Nina had said. ‘You haven’t got any friends.’ She hadn’t intended the remark to be wounding – he had no friends only because he was still too young for nursery, and Nina knew no one else with young children. But it evidently had been, because the following day when they were out in the car he had said, quite unprompted, and with great dignity, ‘The sky is my friend.’

  Well, he didn’t need the sky any more and pretty soon he wouldn’t need her either. These meditations were interrupted by a tap at the door which then opened a fraction. ‘I forgot to tell you,’ James whispered through the chink. ‘There’s a message on the answering machine for you.’

  ‘I’ll listen to it tomorrow,’ Nina replied. She was in a nice warm patch of sheet and couldn’t be bothered to move. It was probably something to do with work. Nina had trained as a social worker with Lambeth Council, but was now a guardian ad litem, representing children’s interests to the courts in custody disputes. Her clients frequently had out-of-hours crises. Whoever it was could jolly well wait.

 
‘Someone called Hugo,’ said James, withdrawing. ‘Calling from Australia.’

  Nina leapt from the bed as though she’d sat on a scorpion, her heart galloping in her ribs. In her haste, her left foot got tangled in the duvet cover and she fell, striking her face on the corner of the ottoman and dragging the bedclothes on top of her. This is prophetic, she thought, lying stunned on the floor. She put her hand up to her nose and caught the first drops of blood. Even after eighteen years, at a distance of twelve thousand miles, and without raising his hand, Hugo was still an agent of disaster.

  2

  It was going to be a smacking sort of week. On Monday Harriet had crayoned all over one of her sister’s schoolbooks and, when given the mildest reprimand, hurled the book at the fish tank. On Tuesday she had thrown the most spectacular tantrum outside the school gates because Jane had refused to let her walk through the nettle patch at the edge of the playing field. On Wednesday Jane had woken up in a foul mood anyway and it hadn’t taken much at all, just a dropped bowl of Weetos – unforgivable, that one really, Jane thought. And today here they were in the doctor’s waiting room together because she couldn’t leave Harriet with Guy or he’d want to know why she was seeing the GP, and Harriet had been running around climbing on and off the chairs and doing that very high-pitched squeal for fifteen minutes now. Half the people waiting were glaring at her, Jane, as though they’d like to tear her heart out if she didn’t belt the child soon, and the other half looked as though they might report her to the social services if she did.

  The place was punishingly overheated for a spring day, the windows locked and barred, the radiators throbbing. God only knew what diseases were being incubated and circulated around her. Harriet came wheeling towards her, saw her expression and wheeled away again, cannoning into the coffee table, sending a pile of magazines slithering on to the floor. A ripple of tuning and tongue-clicking ran around the waiting room. Beads of sweat began to break out on Jane’s brow.

  ‘Harriet, come here,’ she said, trying to be both discreet and menacing. ‘Go and play with the toys,’ she went on, changing her mind, and pointing at the plastic basket of grubby teddy bears and chewed books which comprised the recreation area. Attempts to bribe Harriet to keep still and/or quiet with promises of sweets had failed, as had threats of vague and then specific punishments to be administered later. Jane had tried to restrain her in her arms but, though only three, Harriet was as strong and slippery as a giant fish.

  Jane’s older daughter, Sophie, now five and at school, had never been like this. She had been a compliant, docile child – inclined to tears, perhaps, but easily comforted. Harriet had shown signs of obstinacy from birth, rejecting all the efforts of her mother and the hordes of professionals and experts in lactation who had been summoned to persuade her to feed from the breast; crying inconsolably every waking minute for the first three months of her life. These early symptoms had now mutated into general defiance, disobedience and a thorough contempt for maternal authority. Jane had only ever wanted girls: she thought they would be gentler, less boisterous than boys, and fondly imagined that life with daughters would be much as depicted in Little Women – sitting by the fireside in the evenings embroidering samplers or singing madrigals around the piano. The reality had been a shock and a disappointment. Now she thought boys might not have been such a bad idea. The ones she saw at Harriet’s playgroup seemed affectionate, simple creatures, devoted to their mothers.

  The old lady beside her, bow-legged and bunioned (Jane was looking at people’s feet rather than making eye-contact by this stage), let out a hiss like a punctured tyre as Harriet tripped over her walking stick for the second time. Crack. Jane’s open palm caught Harriet on the back of the leg with a sound like gunshot. The child collapsed as if she had indeed been felled by a bullet, her wails rending the silence. Right, we’re going, thought Jane.

  ‘Jane Bromelow,’ said a disembodied voice and an outstretched hand appeared through a hatch, holding her medical notes in their brown cardboard wallet.

  Oh God, thought Jane desperately, manhandling the still sobbing Harriet towards the surgery door. As if it’s not going to be embarrassing enough, without this.

  The doctor, a youngish woman she had never seen before, gave her a wintry smile as Jane dumped Harriet at a small table strewn with more chipped and sticky toys. ‘Just sit there for a few minutes,’ Jane said.

  ‘What can I do for you –’ the doctor glanced at her notes ‘– Mrs Bromelow?’

  Jane looked at the woman’s left hand. No wedding ring. She would have liked a married woman doctor ideally; a married woman doctor stuck at home all day with a small child. But that was asking the impossible – even Jane had to accept that.

  ‘Well, I’m probably wasting your time,’ Jane said, already abject and apologetic.

  The doctor smiled. They all said that, and went on to waste it just the same.

  ‘It’s probably not even a medical matter.’ She glanced at Harriet, who was now trying to brush the matted hair of a one-armed Barbie doll, and wondered how much of all this she would take in and later repeat. ‘It’s just that for a while now I seem to have no . . . er . . . libido, if you know what I mean. I seem to have gone right off it,’ she finished lamely.

  The doctor nodded. ‘Are you on the combined pill?’

  Jane shook her head.

  ‘Because that can sometimes account for it.’

  ‘Only I’m not,’ said Jane.

  ‘Mmm. Are you getting enough sleep? Do the children disturb you?’

  ‘I could always use a bit more sleep. And sometimes they come in, you know, when they’ve had nightmares. But not all the time.’

  ‘Perhaps you feel inhibited because they might hear you?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Otherwise relations with your husband are all right?’

  ‘Oh, fine, fine.’ Jane pictured Guy, still loyally wearing that horrible pullover she’d knitted him in the early days of their marriage, with a sudden rush of affection.

  ‘Have you talked to him about this?’

  ‘Oh no. I wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings. He’d take it personally. And it’s not personal. It’s not as if I daydream about having sex with other men.’ Oh blast, she hadn’t meant to say ‘sex’ in front of Harriet. ‘I think he’s sort of starting to guess though.’

  They had been in bed a few nights previously when Guy had said out of the blue as she was dropping off to sleep, ‘Do you have any sexual fantasies?’

  This sort of conversation, Jane knew from experience, was likely to be a prelude to a gentle hint that she might like to be a bit more adventurous in that department, and was therefore best headed off.

  ‘Er . . . yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Go on, tell me.’

  ‘No, no, you’d be shocked.’

  ‘No I wouldn’t,’ said Guy, suddenly aroused.

  You would mate, thought Jane. Because my sexual fantasy is NOT HAVING SEX. But instead she said, ‘I think the thing about fantasies is they only work in your head. The minute you try to discuss or enact them they don’t work any more.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Guy. ‘But, you know, if there’s ever anything you want me to do, I’d do it for you, however weird it seemed.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jane, kissing him, but failing to reciprocate the offer. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ And the discussion had died there.

  ‘Are you happy with your method of contraception?’ the doctor inquired. ‘Fear of pregnancy can be an inhibiting factor. Perhaps you might like to try something safer?’

  Like the libido-reducing pill? thought Jane. ‘Maybe,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have any psychological problems – any bad experiences with sex in the past that you might need to work through? I could put you in touch with a counsellor.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, I don’t think counselling,’ Jane said hurriedly. How ever would she fit that in? She couldn’t very well take Harriet along. Besides, Jane was a th
orough sceptic where that sort of thing was concerned. Even coming to see the GP was a great concession.

  ‘There are these sex therapists,’ the doctor was saying, rolling her eyes. She seemed to be having trouble with her contact lenses. ‘But they generally like people to come along as a couple. So if you don’t feel like involving your husband . . .’

  ‘No, not yet. Perhaps . . .’ She was interrupted by a yelp of alarm from the doctor, who shot out of her swivel chair and made a lunge for Harriet, who had abandoned Barbie and had one hand in the washbasin, from which she produced a used speculum. Jane and the doctor exchanged horrified looks as Harriet dropped the instrument back in the bowl with a clatter.

  ‘Here.’ The doctor pumped a dollop of antibacterial hand-wash from a dispenser on the side into Harriet’s hands and scrubbed them vigorously. ‘I’m so sorry about that,’ she said faintly, envisioning piles of lawsuits landing on her desk the following morning.

  Jane shouldered her bag. ‘My fault,’ she said. ‘Come on, Harriet. I’ll think about your suggestions. You’ve been very helpful,’ she lied.

  ‘You could try and experiment with different positions,’ was the doctor’s final offering before Jane opened the door. ‘Women’s bodies change after childbirth. Perhaps there’s a bit of underlying discomfort that’s putting you off.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ said Jane, now desperate to be on her way.

  Different positions, she thought scornfully, as she led Harriet back through a now quiet waiting room. If modern medicine couldn’t come up with anything better than that then she’d have to look elsewhere. What a waste of a morning.

  ‘What’s a beedo?’ Harriet demanded in a loud voice.

  ‘It’s a bit like a bidet,’ Jane replied, bundling her out of the door on to the street. ‘Only different.’

  3

  On Guy Bromelow’s second day at boarding school his mother, Daphne, had received an urgent summons: his PE kit was not complete; could she bring him some white gym shoes, size 4.