Star Gazing

by Linda Gillard

  I thought she probably had a shrewd idea of the nature of my entanglement with Keir. Apart from the fact that she seemed well aware of his attractions, it was what she would have wished for me, and Lou was ever the optimist. So my present difficulties wouldn’t come as a complete shock to her, nor did I fear her censure. Louisa is and always has been tolerant by nature. She has needed to be since I can’t have been the easiest of flat-mates, nor was I the most affectionate of sisters.

  Even if Louisa had had the slightest inclination to disapprove of my carelessness, she scarcely had a leg to stand on since she herself was engaged in an unaccountable relationship with a man half her age. That she’d always been fond of Garth, that she regarded him as a good friend, was not news to me. I knew they enjoyed each other’s company, that they shared a sense of humour, but I had no idea how they’d moved from camp matey-ness to being lovers. Or, rather, I understood how it could have happened once (I knew from recent experience how extreme circumstances can produce uncharacteristic behaviour), but I couldn’t really grasp how and why the relationship was ongoing. What I would have dismissed as a drunken fling – and Louisa had had a few of those in her time – now appeared to be something more serious, not least because Garth appeared to be making her seriously happy. I think that was why I couldn’t talk to Louisa about an abortion. I didn’t want to spoil things by burdening her with my problems.

  On the other hand, it’s possible I couldn’t face confiding in Lou simply because she seemed so very happy and I was so very, very miserable.

  * * * * *

  Garth lies on his back in bed, his shorn head pillowed on thin, white arms, his freckled brow furrowed with concern. ‘She’s cryin’ again.’

  Louisa stirs, groans and opens her eyes. Grey light at the window tells her it’s very early or another dreich Edinburgh day. Perhaps both. ‘Oh, God… It must be her hormones. Either that or she’s fallen in love with that wretched man.’

  ‘I thought you liked ’im? What’s ’e done?’

  ‘Nothing. That’s the point. He doesn’t ring, he doesn’t write, he’s stuck out in Norway somewhere and she’s here – pining.’

  Garth replies in a high-pitched, nasal voice, ‘Pinin’ for the fjords?’

  ‘Oh, shut up. You weren’t even born when that sketch was written.’

  ‘Well, look at it from ’is point of view: not much point writin’ to Marianne, is there? Not unless ’e’s got a Braille typewriter ’andy.’

  ‘He could ring her!’

  ‘P’raps she told ’im not to.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘Dunno. ’Cos she doesn’t want to be over’eard by us? She’s a very private person, is our Marianne.’ Garth sits up in bed. ‘Can you ’ear what I ’ear?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Listen… There! Did you ’ear that?’

  ‘What? Garth, don’t be infuriating. You know my hearing isn’t as sharp as yours.’

  ‘That! It’s Marianne. In the bathroom. She’s throwin’ up.’

  ‘Oh, poor thing! She really is under the weather these days. It’s just one thing after another! I’d better go and see if she’s all right. Put the kettle on, would you? Be a love and make us some tea.’

  As Louisa gets out of bed, Garth places a restraining hand on her plump arm. ‘Lou, ’ang on a minute.’

  ‘What is it now? Hurry up, Marianne might need me. She’s obviously ill.’

  ‘Nah, I don’t think so… I suspect everythin’ is in full workin’ order.’

  Louisa rolls her eyes heavenwards. ‘I don’t care what you say, I must be getting old. Sometimes I haven’t a clue what you’re on about! Look, I’m going to see how she is. Get that kettle on, please. And I’m requesting that as your employer, not your besotted paramour.’

  Garth raises a hand to his forehead in derisory salute. ‘Yes, ma’am.’ As Louisa hurries out of the room fastening her dressing gown, he throws back the duvet and mutters, ‘But I think you might be needin’ somethin’ stronger than tea, ladies…’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Louisa

  Marianne was pregnant. My little sister was pregnant.

  Was I shocked? ‘Does the Pope have a balcony?’ as Garth would say. ‘Pole-axed’ doesn’t begin to describe my consternation. Marianne emerged from the bathroom, white-faced and haggard, her nightdress splashed with vomit. The sight would have made a stone weep. I said, ‘Marianne, is there something you aren’t telling me?’ She didn’t bother to deny her condition, excuse it or prevaricate, she just burst into tears and wailed, ‘Oh, Lou – I’m so sorry!’ I threw my arms around her and we stood in the hallway – Marianne crying her eyes out – until Garth appeared at my shoulder and said, with ineffable tact, ‘Tea’s up, girls.’

  I don’t know when I last saw her so unhappy. Certainly not since she lost Harvey’s baby. Her misery made a delicate situation more difficult to handle than it might otherwise have been. Although I wanted to sympathise with my poor sister’s plight, see things from her point of view and offer much needed support, try as I might, I couldn’t disguise the fact that my feelings about this pregnancy were quite unequivocal.

  I was completely and utterly thrilled.

  * * * * *

  The breakfast table is a curious but comforting sight. Garth has laid a clean linen tablecloth and placed on it a large pot of tea, two bowls of porridge and a bottle of brandy. He kisses Louisa on the cheek, then disappears to the kitchen to wash up. Louisa pours them both a brandy and insists her sister drink it. To her surprise, Marianne finds the brandy settles her rebellious stomach.

  Louisa sits and contemplates her congealing porridge. ‘We really ought to make an effort, you know. As Garth has gone to all this trouble.’ She spoons some into her mouth. ‘How many weeks are you?’

  ‘Six. No – nearly seven now. Time flies when you’re having fun.’

  ‘And there’s no doubt? You’ve done a test?’

  ‘Two. At the surgery. Dr Greig was very helpful. She’s given me all the information I need about a termination. Now I just need to stop crying – and vomiting – long enough to get it done. You don’t need to worry, Lou, everything’s in hand. I had hoped you’d never know.’

  ‘Well, I’m very glad I found out! I hate to think of you going through all this on your own.’ Louisa looks at her sister for a long moment, then says, ‘You have to tell him, Marianne.’

  ‘No, I do not. What would be the point?’

  ‘It’s Keir’s responsibility as much as yours.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. It’s my body that’s been hi-jacked, not his.’

  ‘All the more reason why he should share the responsibility.’

  ‘For what? Getting rid of it? Do you seriously think he’s going to fly back from the Arctic to hold my hand? For heaven’s sake, Lou, be realistic. He’s a man! He’s an oil man.’ Marianne reaches for her brandy and takes another sip. ‘And he’s a bloody Highlander. They don’t do feelings.’

  ‘But Keir isn’t like that!’

  ‘How would you know? You’ve only met him twice.’

  ‘If he were as you describe, he wouldn’t have sent you a CD of Arctic birdsong or a tape explaining the Northern Lights. I mean, he took a blind woman sight-seeing! You can make a case for Keir being eccentric, even insane, but not insensitive. If he were the clod you make out, you surely wouldn’t have slept with him!’ Marianne is silent. Louisa pours her a cup of tea and places it by her right hand. ‘Drink some tea. You’ll be dehydrated with all that vomiting.’

  ‘Please! Don’t even mention the word or I’ll start again.’ Marianne feels for her cup and lifts it carefully to her mouth with both hands, warming chilly fingers on the bone china. ‘Keir doesn’t need to know I’m pregnant and there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from telling him. I certainly don’t need his support to go through a termination.’

  ‘I realise that, darling, I just thought that if you saw him again – oh, God, I’m sorry – I mean if you m
et with him again and explained…’ Louisa’s voice tails off. Tight-lipped now, she begins to trace with a finger the pattern of embroidery on the tablecloth.

  ‘What, Lou?’

  Louisa registers the warning note in her sister’s voice but decides to ignore it. ‘I thought perhaps you might change your mind. That Keir might change your mind.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought if you had his support… you might not want a termination.’

  Marianne sits quite still and says nothing. Louisa remembers a time when, as a girl, she’d hidden under the dining table to avoid her little sister’s wrath and randomly flung missiles. She is considering this option again when Marianne speaks, her tone and bearing imperious.

  ‘Do I understand you correctly? Are you suggesting there is the faintest possibility that I could keep this baby?’

  Louisa resumes her close inspection of the tablecloth and says in a small voice, ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘You must be out of your mind.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I am. I’m sure some people think so. I write books about vampires and sleep with a man half my age who until recently looked like a vampire.’ Louisa reaches for the teapot and refills her cup, splashing tea into the saucer. ‘Wanting to become an aunt, or a sort of surrogate mother at fifty-one is no doubt further proof that I’m losing my marbles. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d be an unfit mother. Does it?’ she adds doubtfully, stirring her tea.

  ‘Let me get this straight – you’re saying you want me to have this baby so you can raise it?’

  ‘No, I want you to raise it! But if you don’t want to, or feel that you can’t, then I’m saying I would raise it. With your help,’ she adds. ‘Let’s face it, darling – it’s the Last Chance Saloon for both of us. But we could do this! Do it together! They say children don’t need two parents, just consistency of care, a loving family background. Between us we can provide that!’

  ‘Lou, we are both middle-aged women. And one of us is blind!’

  ‘So what? Some women my age are still giving birth.’

  ‘Not naturally. Their reproductive lives have been extended with IVF and hormones. They’re biological freaks.’

  ‘No, they aren’t, they’re just desperate women.’

  ‘And is that what you are? Desperate?’

  ‘No, not at all! I have a fulfilling career, pots of money, a man I’m very fond of and all the sex I can use, thank you very much. But I would love an addition to our family. I would love you to have a child! To make up for the one you lost and the husband who was taken from you. I would love a baby for me, but mostly I want it for you.’

  ‘No baby could possibly make up for losing Harvey.’

  ‘No, of course not, I realise that. I’m sorry, I didn’t choose my words very well. But I think you know what I meant. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He’s taken away rather a lot from you, Marianne. I think it’s payback time.’ Marianne doesn’t reply and Louisa sighs. ‘Won’t you try some of this porridge? It’s still hot. Sugar’s to your left.’

  Marianne doesn’t move. ‘It would be totally insane. And I would be the world’s worst mother.’

  ‘Oh, very probably.’

  ‘And blind.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be easy, I do admit. But you’d have me. And maybe Garth if he sticks around. He knows an awful lot about babies and children. He’s the eldest of six, did you know? Between us we would manage somehow, I’m sure.’

  ‘What about when you’re away? How would I manage then?’

  ‘We’d employ a nanny.’

  ‘There’s no room for a nanny!’

  ‘There’s no room for a baby! We’d have to move. The child would need a garden to play in… fresh air… trees to climb.’

  ‘Stop it! Stop this fantasy! For God’s sake, Lou, stop scheming! This isn’t the plot of one of your books. We aren’t fictional characters deserving a happy ending. This is real life! Mine!’

  ‘Yes. It’s also the baby’s.’

  ‘That’s emotional blackmail.’

  ‘I know. But it’s also true.’

  ‘I refuse to be manipulated. I do not feel guilty about being pregnant, nor do I feel guilty about getting rid of it.’ Marianne swallows some more tea. ‘I’ll probably miscarry anyway.’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘What do you mean, “Ah!”?’

  ‘I mean, ah, I see why you’re so dead-set on getting rid of it. You think you’ll lose it anyway. So you’re getting your retaliation in first.’

  ‘Well, I probably will lose it. I’m forty-five!’

  ‘But you’re fit. You have the body of a much younger woman. Our mother was forty when she gave birth to you. And what about Cherie Blair?’

  ‘Dr Grieg said the chances are high that the baby would suffer from some abnormality.’

  ‘Well, she has a duty to warn you, I suppose, but the chances of the baby being normal are much higher. And there are all sorts of tests they can do these days.’

  ‘They can’t detect everything.’

  ‘No, I know, but if there’s something badly wrong you probably will miscarry. Anyway, who are we to play God and decide who’s fit to be born? You were born “handicapped”, as they used to say in the bad old days. Has anyone ever loved you the less for it, or wished your life away?’

  ‘If Keir happens to be a carrier for my condition, this baby could be born blind. There’s no pre-natal screening for LCA.’

  ‘You know perfectly well that it’s a one in two hundred chance of that happening. You’re more likely to be knocked down by a car on the way to the antenatal clinic. Tell me,’ says Louisa, scraping the last of the porridge from her bowl, ‘Did you go through all this soul-searching when you found you were expecting Harvey’s baby?’

  ‘That was different. I was married to Harvey. There were two of us. We were in it together.’

  ‘There are two of us! If you gave Keir a chance, perhaps there would be three.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘What have you got against this baby?’

  ‘I don’t want it!’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Marianne. I don’t believe you’ve even asked yourself if you want it. Or, for that matter, if you want Keir.’ Louisa pushes her bowl aside and leans across the table. ‘Do you know, I’ve always thought you were the bravest person I’ve ever known. And that’s what’s knocked me for six. Not the fact that you’re pregnant, the fact that you’re scared to look into your heart and ask what you actually want from life. God knows, you might not get what you want – which of us does? – but please don’t be afraid to want more than you have! I know some cynics think the secret of a happy life is low expectations, but I refuse to subscribe to that. It’s mean and small-minded. I wouldn’t raise a child to believe that. Would you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Nor, I suspect, would Keir. Tell him, Marianne. Give him a chance. Please.’

  ‘No, Lou. And that’s final.’

  * * * * *

  Marianne

  I had several reasons for not wanting to tell Keir I was pregnant. Louisa knew some of them but not all.

  The very last conversation I had with my late husband was a row. A terrible row. A row so bad, we hadn’t even telephoned each other to kiss and make up before he died in the Piper Alpha conflagration. I still remember the last words he ever spoke to me, although I’ve spent eighteen years trying to forget them.

  I’d told Harvey I was pregnant.

  When my period was a week late I’d gone to the chemist and bought a pregnancy test. Harvey was away so I’d asked a friend, Yvonne, another oil wife, to come round and read the test result for me. We sat together in nervous silence waiting for the result to show. Eventually Yvonne said it was a positive but that you could get a false positive, so I should leave it a few days before doing another test. They came in packs of two so I put the other test away in the bathroom cabinet to do when Harvey came home. I wanted him to be the first to know, know for c
ertain, and I wanted him to be the one to tell me.

  We’d never discussed having a family except in vague terms. Harvey had asked if any children I had would be blind. I said they wouldn’t, not unless I’d had the misfortune to fall in love with an unwitting carrier of Leber’s Congenital Amaurosis and the chances of that were about one in two hundred. Any child of mine would be a carrier of LCA but not necessarily blind.

  At the time of his death, Harvey was thirty-three and I was twenty-seven. Decisions about parenthood hadn’t seemed particularly urgent. His job in the oil industry was well paid but insecure. He was often away. I doubt he ever thought fatherhood was a real option for him. I was blind; my parents were dead; his widowed mother had gone back to live in Canada; my sister lived more than a hundred miles away in Edinburgh. I didn’t make friends easily and had no support network, just the casual and often temporary friendships offered by oil wives like Yvonne, women who were passing through, who preferred the company of women like themselves, women who could see.

  Harvey never asked if I wanted children and I never said that I did. I didn’t think I did, but I realised afterwards that wasn’t true. I just hadn’t asked myself the question. Harvey – so I discovered – didn’t think we could afford a child. He had a point. He liked the good life: holidays abroad, a smart car, meals in restaurants, decent clothes. We had a comfortable flat in Aberdeen and the mortgage repayments were punitively high. Harvey earned a lot of money but we spent a lot of money. He was right. We couldn’t afford a child, not without making big changes to our lifestyle. All this I knew before Harvey said it, but I hoped he would say something different. I hoped he would feel differently, as I had done once fate had taken a hand.

  I was on the pill and took it conscientiously. There was no element of deceit, something Harvey accused me of in the heat of the moment. I’d had a gastric bug and spent a day vomiting. I would have brought up one pill and was late taking the next. My routine was thrown by illness and since I never saw my packet of pills, I was dependent on my memory. Missing two pills must have been enough. I found myself unintentionally pregnant, simultaneously thrilled and appalled.