by A. J. Elwood
4
The day drags until it’s time for Paul to pick me up, daylight finally yielding to the gathering dark and the nip of autumn in the air. The laundry was in use non-stop and by the time I managed to throw my soiled uniform into the washer it was barely worth changing into it again. It’s still damp and I’m carrying it over my arm so that I can dry it properly at home. The one I’m wearing is still hanging off me. I feel like I can’t quite breathe in it. The reason for that is the old belt I’d taken from the lost and found cupboard, stuff residents have forgotten they ever possessed, that lack their owners’ names stitched into the inside of collars or ironed onto discreet corners, or maybe that relatives failed to claim after they died. I don’t know who this could have belonged to – it’s broad, dry, the leather cracked. I used it to cinch in the excess fabric, pulling it aggressively tight, and even now the constriction around my middle feels like a triumph, though when I look down at the bunched-up fabric it reminds me of Reenie’s cardigan: a nice try, but fastened on all the wrong buttons.
At least I didn’t see Mrs Favell again, except at a distance. She was sitting with Harriet, the pair of them side by side, not looking at each other. Harriet was still holding the little golden child and I noticed that Mrs Favell didn’t fuss over her, didn’t take any notice of her at all, though she did have a new look in her eye, something like satisfaction. I didn’t want to see it, or her. I didn’t want to dwell on the way my body had responded to Robyn’s cry.
Even now the hours have passed and the day is over, I don’t know what to make of it. I feel as empty as my baggy tunic, as featureless as the sky. Everyone else on my shift has already left, shouting their goodbyes while I shrank back against the wall, watching the dark close in. It’s remarkably quiet. The occasional car passes and that is all, until someone throws a window open in the kitchens and I hear the rattle of dropped cutlery, a staccato burst from a radio. Even so, I sense the silence waiting beneath. It almost feels as if it’s emerging from the trees that loom behind Sunnyside, from the earth, the grass. Mrs Favell once spoke of listening to every tiny living thing and I almost understand what she meant, though now I know it is not sound they make, but silence; a living silence, a waiting silence.
Something bursts past my ear, a series of tiny clicks that quickly pass beyond range. Bats must be flying and I look up at the sky, searching out scraps of darker black flitting across it, but I can see nothing. Soon it will be too dark to make them out even if one flies right in front of me. More clicks: but when I look up there are only little lights confusing my vision, the first stars starting to emerge.
Paul is late. I look at my watch, an exaggerated gesture, hoping he’ll pull around the corner in a blaze of headlights in time to see it. Then I shiver. I have grown accustomed to overheated rooms and I miss them now. Has he fallen asleep on the sofa? I imagine him snoozing in the warmth, lit by the television’s flicker. He may have a baby to feed and bathe but I’ve lifted spoons to old men’s mouths, sponged down their sagging skin. He’s changed nappies and washed bibs; so have I. I’ve scrubbed bedpans until they gleam. Spitefully, I catalogue all the horrible jobs I’ve done, ready to throw them in his face. I’m a bad person, but just now I can’t bring myself to be otherwise. The fact that I’d rather be here, that I chose to be here, only makes it worse.
I pull at the sagging belly of my tunic, remembering the sensation of warmth leaking from my breasts. We always tell the old not to be ashamed of their untrustworthy bodies – why should I be? It was natural. A mother’s response. If it was something that happened to men, they’d probably boast about it.
That’s not the reason it’s troubling me.
I give in to my exasperation and rummage for my mobile phone. Paul’s number rings for what seems a long time then goes to voicemail. He must be in the car, then. That’s something, at least. Maybe Alexander refused his milk and made him late. But Alexander never refuses now, he wants more and more all the time. He always drains his bottle. I’m not sure I can satisfy him much longer. My breasts respond to that thought too, not with milk but with pain, the memory of his teeth.
I close my eyes. If only I could be like Harriet: neat, self-contained, composed, capable. An adult, not a self-pitying child.
The minutes slip by, viscous and reluctant to leave, and still Paul doesn’t appear. It occurs to me that something is wrong. He might be in hospital. He could be rushing the baby into hospital.
Something inside me goes numb and I’m not sure if that’s because I’m not a monster after all or because of the chill that’s rising from the ground. I shiver in earnest. A breeze is picking up, one that must be coming from the woods because it smells of damp earth and leaves. What made me wait outside? I could go back into reception, but they’ve seen enough of my ballooning tunic. Better to stay here, in the dark.
Half an hour later, he pulls around the corner. I step forward, my legs stiffened with cold, as he throws open the door from the inside. His smile fades when he sees me. ‘Sorry, love. The baby was restless. Couldn’t find the keys anywhere, then it took ages to get him dressed and into his seat.’ He grins again, something he can’t help. He’s talking about his son, after all. Even in the midst of remorse, contentment rolls off him.
I get in without saying anything.
‘Aren’t you going to say hello to little Alexander?’
I’m the bad person again. He’s late and I’m the bitch, the wicked witch. I lean right over to peer into the baby seat, which faces backwards. Alexander returns my look. He’s wearing his best coat. He’s gumming his knuckles; a trail of drool has run down the arm, into the seat. It smells of sour milk – or is that me? I smother my sigh, blow him a kiss and face forward. Paul steadily, carefully, drives us home.
I never expected Paul to metamorphose into a meticulous house husband and when I think of Harriet’s perfection I’m not sure I want him to, but I’m still shocked when I walk in. It looks as if someone’s done battle with evil spirits. Baby clothes are everywhere. Was it really so hard to find Alexander’s coat? And it’s not just clothes. I cross the lounge and see into the kitchen.
I don’t turn to Paul, not wanting him to see my anger. I’m not going to be that person. I tell myself it’s a good thing he hasn’t changed so very much that I can’t recognise who he is any longer.
I hear the rustle as he takes off Alexander’s coat, the smack of lips as he kisses his head. Then he’s next to me and he freezes. He lets out a low whistle that tells me everything is not as I think, that Paul is as surprised as I am, and unease creeps along my veins.
‘Woah. Sorry, hon.’ He thrusts Alexander towards me and I grasp him awkwardly. ‘For God’s sake – I was sure I’d put all this in the washing basket.’
The basket’s in the kitchen too, the lid on the floor. It was full to overflowing when I left this morning but there’s nothing jutting from it now. The contents are scattered. Did Paul try to make a start on it? How did he make such a mess? The machine isn’t even going. Then I see the worktops and fresh anger simmers inside me. Washing powder is everywhere, strewn across the counters, spilling to the floor, even in the sink. At first glance I’d thought it was only the light gleaming from the surfaces, but there isn’t any light; it’s full dark outside, nothing to be seen in the glass but my own reflection.
I go closer, Alexander wriggling in my arms. How on earth has he made such a mess? Why didn’t he clean up? I would have. I know Alexander’s difficult but I think again of my own day. An image: raising an old man’s hand into the air, washing his armpits while he stares at the wall, the bulging belly of my uniform hanging between us, both trying not to see too much.
In the window, my lip twists into something ugly. I try to straighten my expression but I can’t. Instead I go to the worktop and run my finger through the white powder. I frown. It isn’t grainy, doesn’t have flecks of blue in it as our washing powder does. It’s too fine, doesn’t cling to my skin in the same way. There’s none of its s
harp clean smell and I lift it to my lips. It’s not washing powder but flour.
Flour is constantly spilt about the kitchen; and the milk rapidly turns sour, although it has not been left out…
I shake my head. I don’t feel angry any more. I feel wrung out, empty; lost.
Paul is at my shoulder. ‘How the hell did that happen?’
‘Maybe you were baking me a cake.’ My words emerge weakly, but the sarcasm is still there. He starts scooping up the flour, throwing it into the bin. Powder blooms into the air and he pats his hands together, making it worse. Alexander lets out a gurgle, a little like a laugh. I grip him tighter and he squirms in protest, so I force myself to loosen my fingers. What will he do if I don’t? Cry, scream, or something else?
I go to put him in his bassinet. Paul is wiping down the tops, though more flour spills to the floor and when he rubs his hands on his jeans he leaves thick pale streaks on the denim. ‘I must have got it out by mistake. Probably left the salt in the fridge too. Welcome home, love.’
He laughs. He isn’t bothered by it, not in the least. And what can I say – that fairies are in the house? That we let them in? I wish I’d never listened to Mrs Favell. I wish I’d never taken that first letter from her hand. Now I can’t banish her.
Still, I stalk over to the kitchen cupboards and yank one open. There is the little bag of flour, half empty, sagging, too much paper to enclose its wasted contents. I grab it, turn, reach the bin in one stride and dump it in. It’s not like we’re chefs; we won’t miss it. No one’s going to spill flour around my kitchen again. We’re done.
Paul bustles about, picking up the washing, putting a pan of beans on the hob and slotting bread into the toaster, heating a bottle for Alexander. I offer to help but he insists and I sit on the sofa, let my head fall back and close my eyes. Still, the images come: Harriet, so capable, mature, happy. That lovely child in her arms. Perhaps she’ll visit Mrs Favell again soon. Surely a grandchild will give her a reason to come more often. I might see her too: I might see the baby – Robyn – again.
Alexander shifts in his bassinet and starts to cry, a thin, hungry, exasperated sound. I sit there, waiting for my body to respond. Now that I’ve leaked milk once it might happen all the time, but when I look down at my chest, there’s nothing there; not even an ache where my feelings should be.
5
I drive to work, carry out my duties, laugh and smile with the residents or cry and commiserate, doing whatever is required, the days blurring together. I go home and milk myself for Alexander and hold him on my lap and sit in front of the TV with Paul. Often we both fall asleep on the sofa before it all begins again. I don’t think about where or who I am any more. The routine carries me. I run the steriliser, make sure that dribbly toys are washed, that clothes are put on the right shelves. My hands are deft even though it feels like they belong to someone else. My feet are still swollen from the pregnancy; my shoes don’t seem to fit. Everything takes place at a distance, and I wonder if it’s the same for Paul, though I don’t ask him. I suppose this is what it’s like, being a new parent. We’re exhausted all the time and we don’t talk and don’t touch each other and we carry on. That’s what people do. It will get easier; I wonder if it already has, scarcely without my noticing.
Until then, Sunnyside is my escape. At least Mrs Favell and I take little notice of each other. I tell myself she’s just an unhappy old lady who wants to make other people unhappy too, and I’m glad I’m not like that and never will be. I try not to speak to her, concentrating on the nice ones, the ones who nod at all the platitudes: How are you feeling, Lovely day, Nice to see so-and-so again, How’s the family? Until one day I go to Mrs Favell’s room to see if she wants to take part in a trip to a stately home that Sandra is planning, and she isn’t there, and an impulse takes hold of me and I look under her bed and see the box hiding in the shadows.
I don’t think it’s even been moved. It’s still sitting where I must have left it, a little crooked. I’m not sure the lid’s on straight. It’s hard to tell without looking closer.
I lower my face to the carpet and reach for it, feel the familiar touch of wood made silky by the passage of years. I want to see the photographs again. Will they have changed? Will Charlotte and Harriet be holding a child in their arms, a pretty baby in an old-fashioned bonnet edged with lace? Will her face be shaped like theirs – or mine?
The box is in my hands. I take off the lid.
There are no photographs. At first, I’m not sure what I am seeing – it reminds me of a painting I once saw with a mass of twigs, but there are also clumps of moss and downy-soft feathers, and what I think of is a skeleton: fine bones, spindly legs bending backwards, the translucent filaments of wings. I blink. It’s not a skeleton, not even a bird. But there is a nest, intricately woven. The hollow at its centre is tiny, smaller than a fist, and at its heart is an egg.
I stare at the perfect matte surface of its shell. It is the ivory of wedding dresses, though covered in numerous speckles like faded ink, their pattern reminiscent of handwriting. I pick it up and turn it in my hands, trying to see if there’s some message there for me, but I can’t read it. The egg is heavier than I expected it to be. Robyn, I think. Robin. I think of a grotesque little creature trying to push its way inside and it all comes back to me, more vivid and colourful than anything has been for months. I think of the baby inside me; Harriet’s touch on my belly. And Mrs Favell’s voice, seemingly years distant. The sap is rising, can’t you hear it? The cuckoo calls.
The cuckoo. They lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, don’t they? They fool them into raising their chicks, too big and too voracious, while their own offspring are pushed out or starve to death.
And yet I don’t think this is a cuckoo’s egg. It isn’t blue, but I think it’s a robin’s.
The egg yields at the same moment I realise I’m squeezing it. Shell fragments and something viscous and strangely warm spatter my skin. I cry out, expecting there to be blood, bone, hair, but there is only albumen on my fingers, glistening and foul. There is a smell but not what I expect, not rotten, not bad. I know what it is before I close my eyes and picture Alexander’s fontanel: it is the perfume of his scalp.
Tears sting my eyes. I begin to wipe the remains of the egg from my hands as best I can, the fragments of shell turned sharp, and realise there is something else nestled within. I peer down and see something small and slender, a piece of eggshell gone bad perhaps, and then the light catches the edge of a glistening wing, the gleam of a dark eye.
I gasp and start back, spilling slime onto my tunic. I tell myself there’s nothing there but when I look a second time I see the eye staring back at me, and something else: not feathers but lacy and impossibly delicate, albeit weighed down with albumen. An almost iridescent gleam flickers. It’s an insect, that’s all – I can’t tell what kind. A dragonfly?
I can’t wrap my mind around how it came to be here, inside the egg. And then I realise that this thing was never inside the egg; it couldn’t have been. The insect had simply been caught in the box, a stray creature that had crawled or been trapped in there, probably accidentally, without even Mrs Favell’s knowledge. I had scooped them up together, interloper and egg, and when I crushed them I had pressed them into one.
I rub my hands over the box, letting the ruined contents drip back inside. There, I think. Witnessed their solemnities. I tell myself I don’t care what she’ll think when she finds the mess; it serves her right. I replace the lid and shove it back under the bed and sit there for a second, staring at nothing, until the door scrapes back against the carpet and I turn to see Mrs Favell.
She stands over me, unmoving. Her lips are compressed, but she doesn’t look angry so much as curious. It is as if she’s seen me, really looked at me for the first time in a long while. I feel like a child caught nibbling the gingerbread house, about to be thrust into the oven by the witch; a trespasser in Baba Yaga’s shack, as she flies through the window in her mag
ical mortar and pestle; a bride hiding from her husband after peeking into the forbidden room, awaiting his punishment.
She doesn’t need to say anything. She knows what I’ve done. It’s written on my skin, would be even if my hands weren’t sticky with albumen. It doesn’t cross my mind until later to wonder how she’d come by the egg, whether it was even legal for her to possess it. I am diminished by her gaze, shrivelling away to nothing.
Slowly, she smiles. All she says is, ‘I shall want you to read to me later, Rose.’
She doesn’t need to say anything else. I’m dismissed and I know it. I get to my knees, then my feet. My movements are treacly and I can’t move any faster. My limbs won’t respond.
I leave the room. I don’t think she troubles to turn and watch me go.
6
I know when it is time to read to Mrs Favell by the look she gives me from across the residents’ lounge. She turns and walks out of the door and I know I’m supposed to follow. There’s no point in putting it off and so I obey, keeping my eyes fixed on the stairs in front of my feet.
I find her waiting with her back to me, the cold autumn light limning her hair. The book is already held in her hand, her thumb marking the place. It has a worn cloth binding with a title printed on the spine, though I can’t read it from here. Without turning, she holds it out.
Once I’d rebelled against the way she treats me like a servant, but now I don’t care. I take the book, carefully so as to keep her place, and see the page she’s chosen for me. I wonder if it’s out of spite, but of course it is. She won’t report me or say anything about prying into her private things, about how I smashed the bird’s egg, but she will take her revenge.