by Anna Hope
Their breath plumes together in the freezing air.
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you were pregnant at the time. Because I didn’t want to upset you. Because I felt ashamed.’
There is a slackening. Cate’s hand drops to her side, her shoulders slump.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Cate. ‘You should have told me.’ Her voice is thick.
‘No,’ says Hannah. ‘You should have asked.’
It is late when they arrive at the hotel. The room is smaller than she imagined. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’ asks Nathan.
‘I was too late to book the en suite,’ she says wearily. ‘I think it’s down the hall.’ She is cold. She got cold out there on the bridge.
He nods, goes to his bag. ‘Can you tell me where you packed my toothbrush then?’
‘It’s here.’ She takes out her wash bag, hands him his toothbrush.
When he has gone she sits down in the armchair. She sees herself reflected in the driftwood mirror. This stupid black dress. Her make-up, smudged now. All of it broken. All of it over. It is all so absurd.
In the morning two trays are left outside their door. She brings them in and puts them on the table. Nathan sits up in bed, pulls on his jeans. ‘I’m going outside,’ he says. When he comes back he smells of cigarettes.
She calls the restaurant and cancels the lunch reservation.
There will be no lunch. There will be no oysters or artisan bread or Aylesbury lamb. There will be no children. She kills things before they are even born. He does not touch her. In a way she is grateful. It is as though she has broken into tiny pieces inside, with only her thin skin holding it all together, and if she is touched she might shatter – might never find the pieces to put herself back together again.
They walk along the beach without speaking. They look out at the roiling sea, then they climb back into the car. They drive back up the M2 to London. She pretends to sleep. They drop off the rental car. They take the bus back to Hackney.
They walk up the three flights of stairs into their flat. Nathan packs a bag.
Lissa
It is the final Thursday night, and the play flies. It is the freest she has ever felt on a stage – the lines rise in her as though they are her own.
You have mermaid’s blood in your veins, Vanya tells her, so be a mermaid. Run wild for once in your life.
As she comes off stage after her final exit, she realizes she has been unaware of the audience; entirely focused on the other actors, out of her skin. She has not thought about Nathan for an hour and a half. As they take their curtain, Johnny turns his face towards her, saluting her with a small nod. Then in the wings, in a gesture of old-fashioned courtesy, he takes her hand. ‘Magnificent,’ he says.
‘You, too.’
He inclines his head. ‘We should drink to it,’ he says. ‘You and I.’ He still has her hand in his.
She hurries to the dressing room, aware she is happy, that something has been completed tonight, that a question she asked herself as a young woman has been answered. That she can do this, that it is worth doing. That she has not been deluded or stupid or wrong.
As she is unbuttoning her costume, her phone vibrates and she sees a message from Nathan.
I’m here.
She stares at it, then up at herself in the mirror. She sees her outline there – Yelena’s dress for the final act: a long dark coat, the buttons fastening all the way to the neck, her hair pinned up. She sees the way her lips are swollen, the slant of her eyes, her chest moving up and down with her breath. She does not reply to the message; she knows he will wait.
She finishes unbuttoning her costume and slips out of it, hanging it up on the rail, then goes to the sink and splashes water on her neck. She pulls on her jeans and her top. Her make-up she leaves as it is – slightly smudged around her eyes. When she takes her hair out of its clips it falls in waves down her back.
Mermaid’s blood in your veins.
She picks up her bag and makes her way out into the bar. Nathan is alone at a table in the corner. She approaches him slowly. He stands before she can speak. His face is a mixture of nervousness and awe.
He is wearing a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She notices this. She notices his forearms. The way his hand moves to his chest as he speaks, referencing his heart. The way his shirt is open at the neck.
She bends her head – she is a queen tonight, and she accepts his tribute. As she sits before him she can feel herself, the parts where her skin touches her clothes, the hardness of her nipples, the tingling of her skull. There is an open bottle of wine on the table and he lifts it, pours her a large glass, and she nods her thanks. Behind the curve of his shoulder she sees Johnny standing alone at the bar, two drinks before him. He looks towards her; she sees his eyes slide over her and Nathan, then back to her, snagging on her with a question. She does not answer it – instead she turns away, to her drink, which is thick and red and looks like blood.
She sees the pulse at Nathan’s neck. His mouth, stained a little with the wine. The span of his hands on the table before her.
She drinks her wine and he drinks his and they speak but she is not sure, exactly, of what. When her glass is empty he asks if she wants more. At a certain point the bottle is finished. She looks up and sees that Johnny has left the bar without saying goodbye. She registers this, but distantly. ‘We could go back,’ she says, turning to Nathan. ‘We could go back to mine.’
And like everything else this night, it is surprisingly easy to say.
On the way he makes conversation, but as the train nears her stop the words dwindle and he falls silent. She catches him staring at his face in the window. They walk quickly, without speaking, across the park. In her living room, she paces around, switching on lights, while Nathan stands in the middle of the floor. ‘Do you want another drink?’ she asks.
‘OK.’ His voice is low and a little cracked.
She goes into the kitchen, where she leaves the lights off. There is a bottle of whisky at the back of her cupboard and she takes it out, pours a measure into two glasses.
There is a sound behind her and she sees that Nathan has followed, is standing behind her. He lifts her hair from her neck and holds it in his fist. He leans towards her and she feels his mouth at the place where her neck meets her shoulder. Then he presses her gently against the wall. ‘Please,’ he says, ‘don’t speak.’
She does not speak. Instead she turns to him and opens her mouth to his.
The next morning, when he has gone to work, she lies in bed and thinks of him. She can feel him still: his weight on her, the look on his face when she was above him, the feeling of him inside her. At the memory she is queasy with desire again, and when she puts her hand to herself she is flooded, swollen, slick with sex.
She goes out for coffee and sits in the weak sunshine, cradling her cup. She knows it is not wise to be out here, feeling this way, only streets from Hannah’s flat. She knows the scent of him is still on her, knows she is drenched in it. Men stare at her. She is a battery that has been charged again. It is simple electricity – it is outside of morality. There is a dangerous, shimmering elation to the way she feels.
Hannah
She begins to sleep in the little room. The sounds here are different from those she has been used to – she can hear the wind in the trees, the sounds of the canal: bikes clunking over loose paving stones, the mangled yowl of foxes, the shouts and laughter of drunken kids. She lies awake, staring at the play of light on the ceiling, and if she sleeps, she sleeps lightly and her dreams are full of strange, unknowable things.
In the mornings, for a few moments she is disoriented, lying here in this bed alone, and then she remembers – Nathan has gone, her husband has gone, and for the first time in over thirteen years she does not know where he is.
Outside, the winter city presses on her and she feels flimsy beneath its weigh
t. She forgets to shop and eats little, small mouthfuls of food she has in the cupboards: crackers and butter, a slice of apple. There is no joy in cooking for herself. She is getting thinner. She knows this but does not care; there is nothing to take care of herself for, no future to safeguard, no limits to keep within.
She gets a text from her brother. She’s here! Rosie Eleanor Grey. A picture of a small wrinkled bundle of humanity held in her brother’s arms. Her niece.
She writes back. Congratulations!! Can’t wait to meet her.
You’re still coming for Christmas? her brother replies.
Yes! Can’t wait! she lies.
The next morning she writes to work and says she is ill – a virus, that she needs to rest. The weather has changed again, grown bitter and cold. She puts on the radio, but does not really listen to it. She moves slowly through this place that has all the hallmarks of her previous life – the same rooms, the same furniture, the same books on the same shelves – but is utterly foreign. She has arrived at a destination, but it is an unknown place. She is aware that she hurts, but that the hurt is so large it is beyond her. There is no solace outside, in the sky, the grass, the animals and the trees. She is not like them. She cannot multiply herself – she is aberrant, outside of nature, and she knows it is better for her to be up here, alone.
Sometimes there are children in the park below. From this distance they are small packets of energy, jerky and joyous and untrained. They ride scooters along the paths. They trail after their parents and stop and pick up stones and look at them. She watches the children look at the stones and their parents, more often than not hurrying back to them, grasping them by the wrist and hauling them to their feet. If she had a child, she thinks, she would not rush and pull, she would get down on the earth, she would get down beside them and look at the stones.
Outside the world marches on, and Christmas looms with all its gaudy inevitability. She has said she will go up north, to Jim and Hayley’s, but now she would like to refuse the invitation to her brother’s house. But she has given her word, and there are presents to be bought: her parents, Jim, Hayley, Rosie. After work she walks towards Covent Garden, weaving past the tourists, the carol singers, everyone buttoned up against the cold, but she does not buy presents. Instead, she wanders into clothes shops, trying on things she would usually never wear: an ankle-length dress covered with a print of crawling vines, earrings that graze her shoulders, high-heeled boots the colour of blood. Her reflection surprises her – her fringe falling into her eyes the way it does. It is months since she has had it trimmed. Perhaps, she thinks, she will grow her hair long. Perhaps she will shave it all off.
One freezing afternoon, on Long Acre, her eye is caught by a child in a pushchair – a little girl. The child is grinning and giggling, clapping her hands. The buggy stops and Hannah looks up. The woman pushing the child is staring at her, her head on one side.
‘I’m sorry,’ says Hannah.
‘What for?’ says the woman. There is something crow-like about her, something unsettling about her gaze.
Hannah pushes her hands into her pockets. ‘I just—’ The child is chattering to herself, absorbed by her reflection in the shop window beside her. She has cheeks like a child in a picture book. Her hands are large and dimpled and strong.
‘Do you need healing?’ says the woman.
‘Sorry?’ Hannah’s eyes switch back.
‘Do you need healing?’ the woman says again. ‘Perhaps I can help?’
The woman reaches into the back of her buggy and pulls a printed piece of paper from a small stack. ‘Here,’ she says, holding the leaflet out. ‘Take it.’ Her tone is surprisingly brusque.
Hannah obeys, reaching out and taking it, folding it in half.
The woman nods and then, as though it is absolutely in her power, this holding and releasing of the gaze, she looks ahead and walks on.
At the entrance to the Tube Hannah finds she is breathless, as though she has been running. She pulls the paper from her pocket, sees an ordinary-looking flyer – something mocked up on a PC at home. It advertises the healing powers of Lindsay McCormack. There is a photo of Lindsay’s sallow face in troubling close-up, and an address, somewhere in the outer reaches of West London. She pushes it to the bottom of her bag. Later, though, back at home, she pulls it out again and gazes upon it in the light of the lamp in the small room – blurred pictures of female forms and trees, text in coloured lettering that is difficult to read. A testimonial from a man who was in chronic pain who feels much better now. All of it badly done, nothing in the least bit compelling about any of it.
And yet.
She picks up her phone, calls the landline number. It is answered quickly. ‘Hello?’
‘Oh – hello. I saw you. Today. In Covent Garden. You gave me a flyer.’
‘Yes?’ The woman sounds harassed, and there is the noise of a crying child in the background. ‘Yes, I remember.’
‘I wondered if you had any space.’
‘Space?’
‘To see me, I mean.’
‘Ah,’ the woman says. ‘Yes. How about tomorrow morning?’
She tells work she has a dentist appointment – an emergency filling – and then, just after rush hour, takes the Tube out west to the end of the line.
The address is deep in a warren of houses, an ungainly semi with a muddy patch of front garden. A trike rusts on the step, its trailing purple decorations soaked with rain. Hannah rings the doorbell and peers through the frosted glass. At first there is no sound, no movement, and she thinks she may have the wrong house – then the woman comes to the door. She is bundled in a cardigan the colour of porridge, her hair pulled back into a scruffy bun.
‘Come in.’ She leads Hannah through a dark hallway to a small back room with a table and two blankets. ‘Hop up.’ The woman pats the table.
The room is chilly, uninviting. ‘Would you mind,’ says Hannah, standing in the doorway, ‘if I visited the loo?’
A flicker of irritation crosses the woman’s face. ‘It’s just out the door on the right.’
Hannah locks herself in the toilet and stares at her reflection in the mirror. Her cheeks are flushed, but her lips are pale and set in a tight line. What is she doing here? She has a strange, uneasy sense that she has been summoned here, or that she has summoned the woman from the depths of her subconscious mind – that this woman holds some unearthly power, that if she goes back into that cold room, she might never come out again, might never leave this cheerless place. She uses the toilet, flushes, and washes her hands with the small hard sliver of soap. In the hallway she hesitates – there is still time to run.
But the woman is waiting. She holds out her hands for Hannah’s coat, which she hangs on the back of the door. ‘Hop up then,’ she says again, gesturing to the table.
Hannah slips off her shoes and complies. It is cold. Should she tell her how cold it is in here? The woman is wrapped up in her cardigan, but Hannah is only wearing her work dress. She pulls the blanket around her knees. It crackles and sticks to her tights.
‘So,’ says the woman, her head on one side. ‘What brings you here?’
Hannah’s lips are dry. She licks them. ‘It was strange. For you to approach me – and – and – this is unlike me, very unlike me, but I just felt compelled to call.’
The woman nods. ‘I sensed it,’ she says.
‘Sensed what?’ says Hannah.
‘Your need.’
‘Need for what?’
The woman pauses, shifts in her seat. ‘A child.’
‘Ah,’ says Hannah, and then falls silent, her skin prickling with anticipation, with fear.
‘Tell me,’ the woman says.
‘I – we’ve been trying. For a long time. For three years, and nothing. And then we started IVF. And I got pregnant. And lost the baby. And then we tried again. The IVF. And now my husband has left.’
The woman nods, as though none of this surprises her.
‘Someti
mes,’ says Hannah, ‘I feel cursed. I don’t know why I should be cursed.’ She is babbling now, gibberish. ‘I try and be good.’ The woman is staring. Hannah is silent a moment, then, ‘It’s cold,’ she says.
The woman gets up and turns the radiator dial a notch. ‘I have the heating off in the day.’
‘Don’t you heat it up? When you have clients? Patients?’
‘They usually like the blankets,’ the woman says.
‘Oh.’
‘Would you like another?’
She looks down at the shiny, unpleasant blanket over her knees. ‘No. Thanks.’
The woman rolls up her sleeve. She takes Hannah’s calves in her hands. Her palms are not warm. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m going to work on you now.’
‘Work on me?’
‘Just lean back and relax.’
The woman’s eyes begin to roll back in her head. She nods to herself, as though her suspicions are confirmed by the feel of Hannah’s feet, her calves. The woman’s eyes are closed now; she seems to be listening.
‘Mmmmm. Mmmmm.’ The woman is making a low humming sound. ‘Mmmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm.’
Hannah looks out of the window at the dreary little garden.
‘Am I cursed?’ she says to the woman. ‘Can you tell me if I’m cursed?’
But she is not sure if she has spoken or not, if she has uttered or only thought the words.
Lissa
On the last night the cast club together and buy salmon and dill and cream cheese and crackers and vodka, and one by one, when their final scenes have finished, they go into the men’s dressing room and down shots – Nostrovia! By the time of the curtain call they are all tipsy, and when the final curtain has been taken they pile back into the dressing room, all of them in their costumes still, making Johnny and Helen – the last of them left on stage – drink three shots each to catch up.
Klara comes and finds them, hugging them all in turn. The technical staff drink beer and cider while the actors sink more vodka, singing their Russian song over and over again – until even the technical staff join in. Someone puts on dance music, and the dressing room becomes a shebeen as the noise level increases to a roar.