by A. J. Elwood
Yours sincerely,
Lawrence Fenton
16
I’m back at Sunnyside and, as if summoned by its name, light floods in at every window, dispelling any shadow that lingered there. I had dreaded coming back, half expecting Patricia to fire me after all, but she didn’t even comment on my absence, which had stretched to two days. I’d felt adrift rather than ill but Paul had picked up on it and insisted, though I’d been glad of the rest, and part of me had been relieved. Every time I’d closed my eyes, images flooded in: overarching trees filtering the light, making everything wavering and uncertain; a jug of milk so fresh, so intense, I could smell it; a garden full of colours that were too vivid, like the one at Sunnyside and yet unlike, its emerald grass headache-bright, the sky an endless azure, the scattered rose petals like drops of fresh-spilt blood.
Now there is nothing to mar my vision; the garden is innocent in its normality. Daffodils sway in the breeze, interspersed with purple crocuses, and everywhere birds are singing. There is nothing odd about any of it. Even Mrs Favell looks different. She’s still wearing her pearls and a silky blouse – today’s is a pale spring green – and she still has her upright stance, but that thing in her expression has gone. She looks at me as if I’m just a care assistant, which of course I am, and nothing else. She doesn’t seem especially interested in me at all and I tell myself I’m not interested in her. Everything feels ordinary, and yet flatter somehow, colour leached from the world despite the sunshine.
Occasionally I feel Mrs Favell’s eyes on me, but when I turn she’s bent over a book or helping Alf with his crossword and I’m not sure, when that happens, if I’m disappointed or relieved. The story is over. I don’t think there can be any more letters. I kept the last one she gave me. I’m still waiting for her to ask for it back, but she hasn’t mentioned it.
I’ve only kept it to spite her. Lawrence Fenton had made the right choice to distance himself from all of it, and I intend to do the same. Where could it lead? I doubt the Charlotte of the letters was really blinded at all. The whole thing was pure invention.
Yesterday, while I was resting with nothing else to do, I dipped into The Science of Fairy Tales, which is still on my laptop. I soon set that aside as well. It was indeed full of strange matter: stories of young women or their babies being stolen away by the folk, replaced by things that only looked the same – or almost. In reality they were the things that Lawrence had mentioned, bewitched stocks of wood or aged and worn-out fairies, transformed by a glamour or a spell to resemble the stolen person. Or they were fairy children, more fractious than the human kind, for whom the fairies wished to secure the milk and care of a human mother.
I shake my head. I wish I hadn’t read it. I wish I hadn’t allowed Harriet to put her hand on my belly. If she visits again, she’s not coming near me; I won’t let her. Either she’s as bitter and twisted as her mother, playing some sort of game, or she’s a pawn in Mrs Favell’s. Even if it’s over, I feel repulsed by the idea of her touching me. I don’t want her thinking about my baby, let alone reaching for it – probing – through my flesh.
I try not to think about the scan tomorrow. At least it’s fallen on my day off, so I don’t need to upset my co-workers or tell Patricia I need more time. I bury myself in my duties, soaping old men with a sponge, rubbing lotion into sagging, age-spotted skin, scrubbing dentures, helping Alf lift the spoon to his mouth. Barry is having a bad day and stares at his breakfast without touching it. When I go to help he looks at me in much the same bewildered way, his eyes glazed, and I wonder how much longer he’ll stay here. If his dementia gets worse – when he can’t recognise anyone for who they are, possibly even his own reflection in a mirror – he’ll be moved into a specialist home.
I’m not the only one keeping busy. When Paul dropped me off he said he was on his way into town to buy every job paper he can find. He promised, again, to look after me.
Edie puts her hand on mine and squeezes and I look up, startled. It’s a relief to see the bundle of knitting tucked under her arm, to know she’s working on it again, hopefully having forgotten what I said about her family. At first glance I take it for a yellow baby blanket, then she holds it out, all pride in what she has made, and I see only a mass of wool. Instead of careful lines of stitches there is a chaos of thread, so stirred about with her needles it’s hopelessly tangled.
Still, there’s no trace of her pain in her eyes when she says, ‘I think there’s something different about you, Rose. Don’t you think so, Mrs Favell? Doesn’t she look well?’
I wince at her appeal to Mrs Favell but the woman only smiles and there’s nothing concealed behind it; nothing sly, nothing insinuating, nothing to make anyone think she’s anything other than she appears.
‘Of course there is,’ she says. ‘Very different.’
My unease rushes back but I brush it aside. I don’t have to listen to her. That’s not why I’m here. I’ll finish my shift and Paul will be waiting, and he’ll carry me away from it all, and tomorrow, tomorrow, for the first time, we’ll be able to look at our child.
17
It feels as if we’re going on some pleasure outing, just the two of us, until the hospital comes into view, a seventies box panelled in that peculiar shade of green so beloved of institutions. I can already smell the sterility of antiseptic and suddenly I’m cold right through. I suppose most women, when it comes to it, have a sudden panic that something is wrong with their child, that some carefully blank-faced nurse will take them aside, speaking in hushed tones, to tell them the worst. And yet this isn’t quite like that, because even while I’m trying to picture myself holding my baby, trying to forget the way I felt when I saw that positive result on a plastic stick, I can still hear Mrs Favell’s voice:
Tell me. Do you want it?
That evil bitch. I don’t know how she’s managed to take on such a presence in my life, or to cast such a shadow across it. What is she to me? Nothing. And yet I can still feel her daughter’s hand finding its way along my tunic to my belly, maybe further, to what was nestled within.
Paul’s hand suddenly lands in my lap, squeezing my thigh, and I catch my breath. ‘Are you okay?’
Of course, I tell him. Of course I am. We’re turning into the car park, the pale sky shining back from a hundred windscreens. Paul takes a ticket from a machine. He concentrates on slotting the car into a narrow space and by the time he’s done, it’s like he’s forgotten the question.
From now on, for the length of a morning, I’ll sit where they tell me and go into the rooms they choose at the times they want me. I’ll lie back and have cold gel squeezed on my belly and I’ll keep perfectly still. I’ll do everything I’m supposed to do; I’ll do everything right.
I’m sent upstairs, not to obstetrics as I’d expected but gynaecology, where the Early Pregnancy Unit is tucked away. No one here looks pregnant. I thought there’d be women with big clumsy bellies, perhaps with toddlers playing with giant plastic bricks or pulling fabric books to pieces, and I realise why: it’s so that the women who come here won’t have to look at them, if the news is bad.
There are only a few other patients, some of them looking younger than me. I can’t read their stories in their faces, can’t tell if they want to be mothers. They clutch various papers as they go from door to door, taking their histories with them so that doctors can write on them. When I’m called, it isn’t into a white room with a reclining chair and stirrups as I’d imagined, but a consulting room. A brisk woman with a neat hijab covering her hair comes in and explains that she’s a specialist nurse. She says it’s probably too soon and sorry it’s a little embarrassing but the scan will need to be internal; it’s a bit uncomfortable but it’s the best way to see. I’m going to have the external scan first in case they can avoid the other, but it’s possible that nothing will show up and I shouldn’t let that worry me. It doesn’t mean anything, she says, and I’m sent to wait outside again.
Paul talks to me and I n
od along, forcing myself to drink the copious amounts of water I need to get through before the scan. On the surface I’m as blank as the sky I can see through the windows. Beneath, all my fears are flooding back. It doesn’t matter how hard I’ve pushed them away; I can feel Harriet’s hand on me, hear my own voice saying I don’t want the baby. I’m suddenly sure that it’s gone. I turn to Paul and open my mouth then close it again. I don’t think he’d listen to me. He’ll hear it from the doctors soon enough; he’ll have to listen to them. Sure enough, a second later another nurse steps out of a door and calls my name.
Paul helps me up as if I’m eight months along, big with a baby and ungainly, and I pull my arm free and stand. I walk ahead of him into the room.
This time there is a reclining seat. The nurse asks me to partially undress and lie down on it and I do. She dims the lights and adjusts her glasses, the better to see the screen. She doesn’t comment on the stretch marks girdling my belly. Perhaps she thinks they’re from gaining and losing weight. Perhaps she thinks they’re normal. How would I know? The gel is a cold shock against my skin. I feel as if it’s turning me transparent, like glass, and maybe it is. She keeps on talking, telling me what she’s doing, but I don’t really listen. This scan will come up empty. Then I’ll have the other one, the uncomfortable one, the embarrassing one, even though it won’t be any use because that will come up empty too. I don’t know how to feel about it. I suppose I’ll work that out afterwards.
She places a wand against my skin and a noise starts up, a constant loud humming, and a moment later there’s a wet swishing sound. She moves the cold nub around, up and down then across. I don’t know why she’s taking so long. She leaves it in one place before moving it back and forth again, not saying a word.
Then she says, in a bright voice, ‘Can you wait a moment? I’ll just call the doctor in.’
Paul steps forward and holds my hand, though I don’t look at him. I keep my gaze on the walls, at the posters covering every inch, the locations of sexual health clinics, the best technique for washing hands. I read them all, top to bottom and left to right, and I don’t take in a word. The door opens and closes again. I barely look at the doctor, an older woman wearing blue scrubs and a distracted expression. When she murmurs something about how she’ll just take a look I nod for a brief second so that she doesn’t start fussing about how I am.
The noise has been going all the time, that humming and the sound like water sloshing around in a tank. She takes hold of the sensor wand and moves it as the nurse did. I wonder why she’s so bothered if what they said was true, that they might not be able to see anything. She speaks to the nurse in a low voice and I catch, ‘Yes, you’re correct about the dates.’ Then she’s gone and we’re alone with the nurse again.
She leans over me. She has very smooth skin and full lips and very bright, shining eyes. She says, ‘Would you like to see?’
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. There isn’t anything to look at. But she turns a screen around and I do see: a picture in black and white framed by its silver edge; a scattering of particles, like dust; a dark oval amid the paler fragments, and within it, the suggestion of something curled. And I realise what the sound is, that watery in-out, in-out. It’s a baby’s heartbeat.
I draw in a long breath and the rush of air makes me dizzy. I stare again at the image in front of me. I can’t make sense of it. It’s large/small, it’s good/bad, it’s everything and nothing. It’s pixels on a screen, indistinct and impossible to read. It could be anything, and I’m more terrified of it and filled with joy than I can say.
The nurse passes me a paper towel to rub the gel off my skin. She tells me the other scan won’t be necessary, they can see everything they need. She says I’m further along than I thought, that the baby inside me is about sixteen weeks old, and I want her to stop; I want to grab those lips and twist them so that she can’t say any more. She’s changing everything with her words. I can almost see it dissolving in front of me, rearranging its parts into something other, something strange to me. I can’t be sixteen weeks pregnant. It isn’t possible. I would have known.
I remember Harriet putting her hand on my belly then moving it to cradle her own. I remember the neat mound under her jacket. One of the leaflets I’d been given said that most women start to show by sixteen weeks, and she’d clearly been showing. Her baby was older than mine.
I think of the book I’d tried to read, The Science of Fairy Tales, and its strange matter. All the stolen babies, snatched away from their mothers and taken beneath the hollow hills. The changelings left in their place, changelings that quickly sickened and died, or voraciously demanded more and more food, that were content to eat and sleep and lie there, pretending they weren’t already long worn out. Could changelings be placed in the mother’s belly while the baby still grew? The book hadn’t said. Maybe whoever wrote it didn’t know. How could they?
I can’t settle on any coherent thought. The nurse and Paul are still smiling at me, but the shine in their eyes is fading.
I realise I’m muttering under my breath, something about how it’s not mine, can’t be mine. At first I don’t think the nurse has heard, then her expression changes and I realise she has.
Paul leans over me, kisses my cheek, maybe trying to stop me saying anything else. He hasn’t shaved and his stubble is scratchy. When he speaks his voice is too loud; he’s not talking to me at all. ‘She’s fine,’ he says. ‘It’s just a bit of a surprise, that’s all. For both of us.’ He squeezes my hand a little too tightly, as if to say, Shut up.
I can’t shut up. ‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I would have known, wouldn’t I?’
The idea strikes me that if I hadn’t known I was pregnant when I started working at Sunnyside, she would have. Mrs Favell, with her sly looks and slyer smiles, would have known.
But there is a baby, and it’s still inside me. To think she could have done anything to it is ridiculous. So I’m further along than I thought. That’s not impossible, is it? I’ve heard of women having babies all of a sudden, never having realised they were pregnant at all.
I feel like I’m reaching after something that isn’t there.
‘It’s quite possible,’ the nurse says, echoing my thoughts. Her voice is chirpy again; she’s brushed away any worries she’d had. ‘You might have had some implantation bleeding. That confuses ladies sometimes. It’s perfectly natural.’
Implantation. Perfectly natural. I think of the strange thing inside me, curled into its tiny nest. I suddenly want it, fiercely, and a rush of heat passes through me. I’m not sure if it’s because I want to be a mother or because I don’t want her to take it from me, but she can’t take it from me, not if I don’t allow it.
I push myself up from the horrible chair and remember. I only want to hear the truth from your own lips. Tell me. Do you want it?
And my reply, a single word, one I can’t take back: No.
Had that only been denial – or had I granted her some kind of permission?
I sway and someone grabs my shoulder. It must be Paul because the nurse rushes around the chair and takes hold of the other. I’m caught between them and I can’t move. I’ll faint if I do. And I wish everything could stay like this, in their hands, so that I don’t have to think any longer; so that I don’t have to know what it is I’ve so unwittingly done.
18
‘The roof leaked,’ Mrs Favell says, ‘every autumn. Every year my father-in-law would have a man come from the town and go over it, inch by inch. He’d stand there and smoke his pipe while he went all over the slates, tugging here, tapping there, and the very next month we’d have to put down buckets and chamber pots. Water dripped through the light fittings sometimes, and he’d stand underneath sniffing for gas with the drops falling into his eyes.’
I stand in the doorway and listen. I can almost see an older man with a beard, clad in tweed, blinking back the falling water. The room I envisage is small and dark with a low, beamed cei
ling, smelling of tobacco and dust and time. I don’t know what decade she’s talking about – she’s holding court to one of the other residents, discussing the ‘old days’ – but somehow I picture her wearing a print dress, not even a style from the nineteen-twenties but older still, sharply narrowed to a corseted waist, topped by a white Victorian apron.
That can’t be right of course, despite the mention of gas fittings and chamber pots and the formal way she speaks. I close my eyes and see again the pages I read the night before, from The Science of Fairy Tales, archaic and strange. One way to banish a fairy, the author said, was to trick it into revealing its age, thereby exposing its true nature. I think of the scan, the too-large embryo growing inside me. Had we identified its correct age? Was it really sixteen weeks old? But Mrs Favell parades her knowledge of times gone by, not hiding it at all.
I tell myself not to be stupid, that everything isn’t about me, just as her voice lifts. ‘Oh, Rose dear, is that you?’
I grit my teeth and steal softly away, up the stairs. I won’t slink into the lounge at her call like a beaten creature. I’m not hers to command; I’m nothing to her, or should be. I’m the hands that wipe and polish and fetch, doing the same things my predecessor did, only the faces changing. Soon I’ll be gone too. The baby has put a time limit on that. It’s due in September, at the end of the summer.
I put a hand on my belly, thinking of the little ticking clock inside me, the tiny chambers of its heart beating twice as fast as mine. My bump is plainly visible under my tunic now. It burgeoned just after the scan, as if seeing it suddenly made it real and it’s not hiding any longer. Patricia didn’t fire me after all. She tried to look pleased as she adjusted my duties, cutting out any heavy work or manual lifting.