All the Beggars Riding

by Lucy Caldwell

  ‘If that’s any consolation,’ she says.

  ‘I can’t go back, then,’ Jane says, easing the baby from one cracked, swollen nipple to the other. ‘Would you go back?’

  The fact that Helen hesitates, then struggles to answer, is answer enough.

  Another escape route gone. It seems, then, that things can’t get any worse. She is trapped, with nowhere to go: trapped in a way she understands she never was before. She exists day-by-day, moment-by-moment: if she thought further ahead, even if it was possible to exist outside the nightmarish present tense of the newborn, she would implode. Something in her switches onto autopilot. The first two weeks, alone, before Patrick can come back: when she thinks back on them, later, she has not a single memory of them.

  But things, slowly, start to get better. Helen comes round again, and Lydia, and the elderly lady from 52 calls in twice to clean the flat and make a cup of tea and give the poor new mother a break. She talks about her son, who is in the Army, and Jane realises she assumes that Patrick is too: an army doctor billeted in Northern Ireland. She doesn’t correct the old woman, and strangely, the thought gives her strength: there must be lots of wives, she thinks, who have to manage without their husband with them. The wives of soldiers posted abroad, who don’t even see their newborn for weeks or even months while they’re on tours. She has a way of visualising the situation now, of explaining it to people, of not feeling so completely alone. And she’s less alone than she could have been. After that awful initial fortnight’s absence, Patrick manages to make it over every single weekend to be with them. More than once she sees tears in his eyes as he whistles and wonders at the difference in Lara, and he says he’s dreading the autumn, when it’ll be back to fortnightly visits, if that. She doesn’t reply when he says that. But she stores the words up and repeats them to herself, turns them over and looks at them, replays them, searches them. He’s dreading the autumn. He doesn’t know how they can do it. That must mean, surely, that something will have to change. To see the way he holds Lara, smiles at her, tickles her feet and blows raspberries on her drum-tight little tummy: she can’t believe he loves his other daughter as much. The sickly one, with its allergies, that was colicky and jaundiced and had to be put under a special lamp for UV, and on a special diet. Thinking about it gives her a furtive, guilty sort of pleasure. She and Lara are the family he loves: she sees it in his eyes; she convinces herself she’s sure of it.

  She starts to pick herself up, to pull herself back together. She goes out walking every single day, for at least five miles, determined to walk the baby weight off. She does it even when she hasn’t had a chance to wash her hair and the stitches in her perineum are aching, and she does it despite the difficulties of getting the pram and baby out of the flat. It’s Silver Cross, the pram, the latest model, the best that money can buy. Of course it is: it was bought by Patrick Connolly, king of grand, impulsive gestures. It is navy, cot and hood, with two separate clip-on sunshades in broderie anglaise. It has its own lace blanket, too, and two foam mattresses, plastic-lined for protection. But it doesn’t fit in the lift: Patrick didn’t think of that. So every time she goes up or down, Jane needs to carry the baby in one arm and with the other and her foot tilt the pram up against the side of the lift so that the doors can close. It’s a tremendous hassle. If the baby’s sleeping, it’s guaranteed to wake her up. But she does it, every single day. It wasn’t until the baby was born that she realised just how much weight she’d put on: how porridgey her bottom was, her belly, her silver-streaked thighs. She’s determined that Patrick mustn’t have the slightest reason to leave her. She has sex with him before she’s ready, too, reassuring him that it’s fine, faking moans and sighs of enjoyment. She remembers what he said about Catriona, how delicate she was, how giving birth damaged her psychologically, which Jane takes to mean she lost the desire for sex. She doesn’t let herself wince when the latex of the condom rubs against her dry and tender tissues; she buys an ugly tube of lubricant and keeps it on her nightstand, and she dabs her fingers with it and uses it to lubricate herself so that she’s there for him, so that he can’t feel the need to turn elsewhere: to Catriona. They don’t have sexual relations, he told her recently, and Nicky’s almost fourteen months, now: they somehow never started again. She clings to this, yet each day she worries, because of course there’s going to come a time when they start making love again, and he’s not exactly going to rush to tell her that, is he? Despite all of their differences – in age, in size, in personality – sex has always united them, smoothed over their arguments or tears, reassured them that they’re meant to be together, because look at their chemistry, their passion: their bodies know. So she’s determined that things must get back to this. It’s the one advantage a mistress has, in all the films and books: her sexuality. She doesn’t want to be a mistress for ever, but for now, it’s all she’s got. It’s a battle, she tells herself now. She has to make sure she and her daughter win.

  When she goes to register the baby, she is forced to leave the sections for the father’s details blank, as they are not married and he is not there in person. The clerk reassures her that the missing sections can be filled in by the father easily, at any later date. They will be, she tells him. They never are.

  Canada, March 1976

  In the spring of 1976, Helen comes down to London to tell her sister that she’s emigrating to Canada.

  ‘There’s nothing for us here,’ she says. ‘Nothing.’ She gestures at the watery sky, the thin damp grass, the litter and the mud, the blistering rust on the bench, as if she means all of that, too. She can’t get a proper job, she goes on, only a couple of days’ supply-teaching a week. Her boyfriend, Paul, who trained as an architect, has been unemployed for more than a year, reduced to going round houses offering to do odd jobs, mostly not even for cash. They have no hope of buying a house or starting a family; Helen’s dreams of starting up her own business are a joke. So they are leaving. Paul has a cousin who moved to Canada, to Toronto. They are cashing in Paul’s small bundle of premium bonds and selling everything they have and they are moving there this summer.

  Jane says nothing at first, when Helen announces it. She doesn’t trust herself to speak. Helen is the only friend, the closest thing to a confidante, that she has left. She doesn’t see Lydia or her former flatmates any more. She can’t, for obvious reasons, keep up with the nurses from the Harley Street practice. Her father has had the second of his strokes, and requires her mother’s full-time care. She has acquaintances these days – the woman in the post office, the Indian man in the corner shop, the mothers with prams she sees on her daily walk – but she has no friends. She tries to be excited for Helen, or even just a little bit glad. She lets Helen show her the map – the vastness of it. The huge great blues of lakes, and national parks. She lets Helen talk about cabins in the woods in winter, and summers camping on the shores of silver lakes. Skiing and hiking and the cheap price of petrol, the possibilities, the life. You’ve never been outdoorsy, she thinks, but she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say: don’t go. Please, please don’t go.

  ‘Wow,’ she says. It comes out as flat and grey as the day looks, as she feels. ‘I mean, seriously,’ she tries again, ‘that’s – that’s really exciting. I mean, yeah.’

  ‘It’s a much better place to bring up kids, too,’ Helen says, and Jane realises she’s looking at her meaningfully. She pretends she doesn’t notice.

  ‘I suppose it is,’ she says, vaguely, and busies herself with wiping Lara’s runny nose and tearing off some more pieces of bread – they have come to Holland Park, to feed the ducks.

  ‘Jane,’ Helen says. ‘Why don’t you come, too?’

  ‘Helen,’ Jane says.

  ‘But seriously, why not? You could start again over there, you could – no one would know. A whole, new, fresh start.’ Jane goes to speak but Helen rushes on. ‘You can’t carry on the way you’re going. You just can’t. It isn’t sustainable. For you or for her. Think of her
, Janey. Think of little Lara. When she gets old enough to ask questions – when she goes to school. When she starts to realise. What’s going to happen then?’

  ‘By the time she’s in school,’ Jane says, stiffly, ‘things will be different.’

  ‘How will they?’ Helen explodes. ‘You’ve done this for almost three years, now. God! At first it was when the baby’s born. Then it was by the end of the year. Now it’s by the time she starts school. He’s not going to leave his wife and kid, Jane. He’s just not. If he was going to, he would have by now, bloody hell, girl. Don’t you see?’

  Jane’s lips are pressed tightly together. Helen waits for her to speak: she doesn’t speak.

  ‘Mum will help you out with the airfare and a bit to get you started,’ Helen says.

  ‘Oh, she will, will she?’ Jane rounds on her sister.

  ‘Don’t be like that. She just wants the best for you, too.’

  ‘So it’s all been discussed – decided, has it?’

  ‘No, I just – we just mentioned it, was all. And Mum said—’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more of this.’ She shoves the map back into Helen’s hand. ‘Lara! Come on, sweetie,’ she calls. ‘The ducks have all had their lunch, now. It’s time for us to have ours.’ She gets to her feet.

  But Helen won’t give in: she’s been working herself up to this, Jane realises, and is determined to say her piece. ‘Please, Jane,’ she says, clutching at Jane’s raincoat, ‘just think about it. You’d have us over there, you’d give Lara a better life, and you get a chance for yourself, too. Meet someone else and start again.’

  ‘I don’t want to meet someone else, Helen,’ Jane says, shaking her sister off. ‘You just don’t get that, do you? The thought makes me feel . . .’ She tells herself to breathe, not to rise to the bait. She knows, by now, not to try to explain, not to expect sympathy from anyone, not even Helen, maybe most of all not Helen. ‘Sometimes, OK?’ she says, and it’s something she’s never admitted to anyone, ever, ‘I pray and pray and pray not to love him. To be able to leave him. But I can’t. I love him, and I just . . .’ She takes another shaky breath. She knows it’s no use. She can’t even explain it fully to herself. ‘I just have to believe, Helen, that one day – because believe me, you’re not saying anything I haven’t said to myself a thousand times, OK? But I’ve made my choice. It may not be understandable to you – or from the outside – I get that. But it’s my life and I’ve made my choice.’ She bends and hoists her daughter onto her hip. ‘We’re happy, aren’t we, pet?’

  Lara wriggles and kicks her muddy little wellingtons against Jane’s side; squeals to be put down; stiffens her little body into a plank and reaches for the ducks.

  ‘Mumm-eee,’ Lara shrieks.

  ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ Helen says.

  ‘When you have kids,’ Jane begins, but Helen cuts her off. ‘I don’t mean the having a kid bit. I don’t mean the practically being a single parent bit. I just mean – I mean . . .’

  The two sisters stare at each other.

  ‘When you talk about – “I just love him” – I mean, God, Janey, you sound like a teenager, do you know that? Do you know how much of a lovesick teenager you sound?’

  Jane turns away. It’s the last time she ever tries to explain, aloud, to Helen, or anyone, her choices or the reasons for them. She shouldn’t have tried, even now. She busies herself with buckling her wriggling toddler into the buggy, snapping the stiff fastenings closed. Finding chocolate buttons to divert the threatening tantrum.

  ‘What’s happened to you?’ Helen says.

  Helen and Paul get married, hastily, at the East Riding Registry Office in Beverley: it makes their emigration easier if they are a married couple. Jane doesn’t go to the ceremony. There are old school-friends there, relatives, former neighbours and friends of the family. She can’t quite bear the thought of the scrutiny, the thought of turning up there with her daughter in tow, and answering questions about the father or their life in London. The other reason is that it’s Patrick’s weekend over: if she goes back up north, she won’t see him for over a month, and she’s scared of this; scared that absence will make the ties between them weaken, or stretch to snapping point. For the same reason, she doesn’t go to Helen’s farewell party, either. She sees them on the evening before they fly – their flight is in the morning, from Heathrow, and so the night before they spend in London and she meets them for a drink to say goodbye. It is an awkward meeting; Lara grizzling because it’s past her bedtime; Helen and Paul excited and nervous and fidgety, and probably resentful that she didn’t make it to their wedding or their send-off; nobody saying what they really want to say, or what they really think.

  Alfred Jack Moorhouse

  and everything after

  She should have gone with them, she knows. It’s the new start she needs, and it makes perfect sense. She should have gone with them but she can’t. Letters from Helen come, describing their new life, and always ending with: Think about joining us, Janey. The weeks pass, the months pass, and somehow another year’s gone by. Lara is three; she’ll be starting school next year. Patrick still hasn’t left his family in Belfast. Jane’s no closer to explaining to herself why she has stayed: why she stays. It’s not that she’s accepted it: nor even that she’s used to it. Perhaps it’s that she’s gone so far down this road that it seems she can’t go back. Her hope, her belief, that one day he’ll choose them, is not just delusional: it’s not just desperate, either, it’s deeper than that. It’s necessary. With every day, every week that passes, it becomes more necessary still. She’s gone too far, sacrificed too much, not to win him, not to prove the world wrong. She stops asking him, stops trying to manoeuvre the conversation round to it. She just digs in, holds tight, hopes and waits. He loves that she’s strong – and so she’s strong for him. He loves that she’s sexy – so she makes sure that whenever she sees him, she is smooth and buffed and ready, her hair the way he likes it, her make-up, his favourite blush-pink brassiere and cami-knickers. It isn’t to diminish their relationship to say that this is surely a factor, that the honeymoon phase is indefinitely prolonged, because they only see each other every other weekend. Of course now there’s a baby, a toddler; smelly nappies, chickenpox, spattered food and scattered toys, screaming and tantrums and broken nights. But somehow Jane contrives to ignore this, to minimise it, to concentrate on having Patrick’s flat spotless, a cake baked, his favourite drinks in the cabinet, his daughter in a pretty dress, herself delighted to see him. She tries not to cry in front of him, to make him unhappy, to be weak, or needy: all of the things she’s sure Catriona is. She’s terrified that if she lets it slip, even for a minute, she’ll lose him.

  He’s the only thing she has left. It is as if she is hibernating, waiting. She has retreated almost completely from the world. She can’t let new people in, because then she’ll have to tell them, or else lie to them. The handful of friends who did visit while she was pregnant and when the baby was born have slipped away after slowly running out of things to say or ways to be with her, as she retreats, once she won’t listen to their advice which is always, repeatedly, leave him. The estrangement from her mother is completed, too, because Margaret Ann is able neither to sanction nor ignore her daughter’s life. They meet, and they have nothing to talk about: no subject is safe, is uninflected, neutral. Even careful talk of Lara – how she’s growing, walking, then talking – doesn’t work, because the very fact of her is a reminder of the situation. The time between their conversations lengthens, until it becomes almost impossible to pick up the phone. Jane sends photographs, now and then, and Margaret Ann sends money; their communications are reduced to this, gestures. Even these are fraught: Jane imagines her mother reads defiance into her sending the photographs, and she sees pity and condescension into her mother’s tightly folded wads of five-pound notes. Helen is gone to Toronto. She is completely alone. She falls pregnant with Alfie.

  It is intentional. The first t
ime wasn’t, but the second definitely is. It is her way of forcing the cards, tipping the scales. Even if the second baby is another girl, it won’t matter, because they’ll win on the balance of numbers. It’s ludicrous, even to contemplate a new baby. The flat is too small, for a start. Money is stretched, even with Patrick’s salary, because he’s having to earn for two whole lives. It’s the only thing, however, that Jane can think of: the only thing she has left. The last three years – three years – have worn her out, body and soul, more than she can bear to contemplate. It’s all or nothing now, double or quits. She stops taking her birth-control tablets. A part of her feels terrible, it’s true: she’s like the stereotype of a woman in a magazine, or a villain in a film, trapping the man into having a baby without his knowledge, without his consent. Another part of her, the fantasist, just wants a brother or sister for Lara, wants to be a family. She doesn’t have a job, or any degree of independence. She’s doing the only thing she can: the only thing she thinks she can.