The Longing

by Jane Asher

  ‘What a mess,’ said Michael aloud, and Anna turned her head to look up at him, then looked across herself at the three youths.

  ‘What them? Oh they’re all right. Leave them alone.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean that – I just felt sorry for them, that’s all.’

  ‘There’s no need to do that; don’t be so patronising – they’re tougher than you or me put together. Don’t give us your pity, Michael – we don’t want it and it’s no help.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Juliet, you’ve got to listen to me. I’m trying to be understanding, I really am, but you’re pushing me too far. You must never, ever contact Anthony Northfield again – ever. Not even once. We can still make things work, but you’ve got to stop this craziness right now.’

  ‘Michael, you don’t understand – it’s not a question of my stopping anything – it’s all gone much too far for that. Anthony and I have denied our love for far too long as it is and—’

  ‘Shut up! Just shut up!’ Michael lunged towards her in the small hallway and grasped her hard by the shoulders. ‘You’ve got my son inside you, you bloody woman! Our son’s inside you! You don’t have these kind of choices, understand? I’ve indulged your selfishness too much; you’re not going to do this to me, Juliet, I won’t let you. You’re staying here until the baby is born and then you can do what you like, I don’t care. But you’re not taking my son away – do you hear?’

  ‘I’d hardly call it your son, Michael, would you? If it is a son, that is – I love the way your pathetic male ego can’t imagine it being anything else. It’s not as if you were ever really very good at that kind of thing is it? We may have used your sperm, but if you want to get technical about it, I must say I think Anthony has every right to claim just as much parenthood as you. How do you think I’d have ever got pregnant without him? Ever thought of that?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, you stupid, silly woman? Listen. Just listen to me quietly for a moment.’ Michael let go of her and his arms fell to his sides as he leant back against the wall. He took a deep breath, and began again, slowly and calmly: ‘I want you to think back over the way things happened and where we are now.

  ‘I am your husband. You couldn’t get pregnant. We went to see Professor Hewlett because we needed help. It took a long time and you went through a lot of emotional trauma – as they said you would. You did eventually get pregnant – much to our delight, as you may remember – and everything was going well. Now you’ve dreamt up this absurd infatuation with this unpleasant young doctor and you’re letting it all get out of hand. You’ve got everything twisted because you’ve been upset and—’

  ‘Oh really, Michael, don’t be so childish. You don’t have to go through this history business, you know. I’m not mad. I haven’t forgotten anything – I’m quite well aware of what’s been going on. It’s just that I’ve also been aware of Anthony’s love, which is something I tried to keep from you as long as I could. I thought I could just leave here and things would sort themselves out. But it hasn’t been quite that easy. I’m sorry, darling – I really am. It’s not something we can change, though, you see. It’s just the way it is and I have to go to him.’

  There was something in the gently patient, even sympathetic, way she was explaining this to him which finally convinced Michael that Juliet really believed, completely and wholeheartedly, everything she was saying. He reluctantly admitted to himself that Anthony Northfield was right and that he could no longer deal with this on his own.

  ‘Juliet, come into the sitting room for a moment. I’m not going to try to persuade you out of anything you feel you need to do, I promise you that. But please just come and sit down with me for a while.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  They moved into the small, warm sitting room, where – it seemed to Michael – such a short time ago Juliet had brought him the news of her pregnancy. He had felt a little surge of pleasure each time he had entered the room since the happy day she had sat at his feet and told him: even the armchair had seemed to glow with satisfaction at the privileged position it had taken in the momentous moment when he had discovered the presence of his future child. But even then, he now realised, this viper had been coiled inside her; she had known of it, nurtured it even, and said nothing. Through his enlightened eyes the room looked sad, empty and defeated, and the Christmas tree seemed to mock him with its false promise of happiness. As he gently took Juliet’s coat off her shoulders and slid it down her arms, he felt a pang of terror at the sight of the deceptively flat belly that had, up until the last few days, brought him such proud excitement.

  ‘Sit down, Julie. Please.’

  ‘All right – but you’re not going to change my mind, you know. You can’t make me. I can go where I want. That’s the law.’

  It was all he could do to restrain himself from shaking the madness out of her, but he closed his eyes for a moment and clenched his fists in an effort to control himself before sitting down opposite her.

  ‘Just please do one thing for me. Will you go and see someone about all this with me? Talk to someone objective who won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to, but who may be able to advise us how to cope with it? Please, Juliet, it’s the least you can do for me.’

  ‘Do you mean a psychiatrist? You still think I’m imagining all this, don’t you?’

  ‘No – well, yes, actually I do, but don’t let’s start all that again – that’s not my point. Just let’s go and see a professional who can try to explain it.’

  The coldness in her eyes was frightening him, but, much to his surprise she suddenly smiled at him, and said cheerfully: ‘Yes. Yes, all right, if you like.’

  Anthony arrived at his Maida Vale home late that evening. He left the car in a residents’ parking bay and walked towards his front door; cold, tired and a little depressed. The polish had been stripped off his life by the Evans incident: the long-dreaded crack in the thin exterior of his confidence had appeared, and he sensed it widening to reveal the inadequacy he had always known was hiding beneath. They would find him out – they were already finding him out. He knew that this woman’s obsession threatened to peel away the success he had worked so hard to achieve; and it was all his fault. If he could only handle this with the cool, removed professionalism that he knew it deserved, there need be no problem: he had done nothing wrong, only his own lack of nerve made it so menacing. He felt once again like the clumsy son and big brother who, however hard he tried, never quite kept up with the triumphs of the rest of his family; triumphs they acquired so easily and with so little effort compared to his hours of struggle.

  The husband had talked to Hewlett, and however supportive the professor had been in the two discussions he’d had with Anthony since, he knew it had irritated the old boy and had slightly, albeit irrationally, diminished the younger doctor’s standing in his boss’s eyes. Image was all important to the clinic; Hewlett never shunned publicity, and revelled in the news items he was occasionally asked to take part in, whether of the positive ‘Miracle baby for hopeless couple’ type or of the ‘Shock horror – woman to bear twins at 50’ variety. In every case he was only too happy to trot along to the television studios or to give telephone quotes on anything related to the easily exploitable sensationalist aspects of IVF. Occasionally he had sent Anthony along in his stead, particularly when charm was called for to help to put across to the general public such delicate matters as multiple pregnancy and selective embryo destruction. Any tarnish on the character of one of his staff – even if totally undeserved – would be bad for image and therefore for business. The whole situation left Anthony feeling very disturbed.

  He dug a hand into his pocket and searched around for his door key, his breath steaming in the cold, dark air, his briefcase heavy in the other hand. He heard his own impatient grunting in the silence of the quiet street, and sniffed as the cold began to make his nose run. Suddenly, without any warning or hint of movement from within, the
front door was thrown wide open a few inches from his face and for a fraction of a second his mind refused to interpret the confusing signals it was receiving from the sight of the person confronting him.

  ‘Hello, darling, I’ve been waiting for you. Come in.’

  The automatic urge to get in out of the cold was strong enough to overcome the initial resistance Anthony felt to moving any closer to the radiantly smiling figure of Juliet Evans, who was standing in the doorway with one hand still holding the open front door, and with the other reaching out to usher him in.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered as he pushed past her, squeezing himself against the opposite wall so as to avoid touching any part of her. ‘How the hell did you get in? Where’s Andrea? What the hell are you doing in my house? Don’t shut the front door! I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to leave immediately. Could you go, please?’

  But it was too late. Juliet had closed the door and had turned to face him, a triumphant, determined look on her face. She moved towards him and he backed away down the short corridor, but then, as he reached the entrance to the sitting room, he stood still and held his arm across the doorway, blocking any chance of her going in. She too had stopped, and stood patiently waiting to see what he would do next. Her hair looked recently brushed and hung in a shining waterfall around her face, and she was fully, and beautifully made-up, lips a scarlet focus for Anthony’s reluctant gaze. She wore a belted raincoat of some fluid, fine material that was pulled in tightly, emphasising the slimness of her waist and the rounded femininity of her breasts and hips. The promise of early pregnancy gave her a voluptuous ripeness and she looked – even in his angry, bewildered state, Anthony registered the fact automatically – beautiful.

  ‘Andrea let me in. She didn’t seem very pleased,’ she laughed. ‘Now she’s gone out. Perhaps you should give me a key, darling? When is she leaving?’

  The telephone rang in the sitting room behind him. As Anthony turned to move into the room he shouted over his shoulder at her, knowing as he did so that he was handling it badly, that he was overreacting: ‘Please get out of my house, Mrs Evans. If you don’t leave immediately I shall call the police—Hello?’

  He looked away from her and frowned as he listened to the voice on the other end of the telephone, then looked up at her again as he went on, ‘Yes it is . . . Yes, yes she’s here now. Come and fetch her please or—’

  As he spoke, Juliet walked into the room and across to where he was standing by the small telephone table. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What do they want?’

  Anthony ignored her and turned his back, speaking again into the receiver. ‘Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure I can . . . all right. All right, if I can.’

  He turned round again to look back at her, and a jolt of horror flashed through him, making his groin shrivel and cramp and reaching his head in an explosion of red shock. Juliet had undone her coat and was slipping it off her shoulders and Anthony took in, at one horrified glance, the large, swollen breasts, white belly and dark, dark triangle at its base. The mixture of panic and repelled excitement that jarred through him made him catch his breath.

  ‘Oh no!’ he gasped. ‘Get out! Put your coat on and get out!’ He shouted down into the receiver: ‘Your bloody wife’s standing here with nothing on! You’d better do something about this, I’m telling you, or I’m calling the police.’ What am I doing? he thought. I’ve got to calm down. I can handle this.

  He slammed the receiver down and turned to the undressed woman, who was standing quietly next to him, seemingly unaffected by his enraged state.

  ‘Come on, darling,’ she murmured, holding her arms out towards him, ‘come on, my love – don’t make trouble. I know everything, I told you. And don’t call me Mrs Evans, you silly boy. You don’t have to—’

  Anthony picked up the coat from the floor and pulled it roughly around her shoulders, attempting to cover as much flesh as possible without touching her skin with his hands, and at the same time marching her, unresisting, towards the front door. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll put you in my car and take you home.’

  ‘Whatever you say, darling. There’s no hurry. Whatever you say.’

  The green painted front door was covered in brass plates like an old soldier’s chest with ribbons; the dilapidated, well-worn building displaying its colours in the impressive number of ‘FRCP’s it had accumulated over recent years. Once inside, the presence of the medical establishment was far less obvious. If the fertility clinic a couple of streets away hid its identity behind jolly staff photographs and informal furnishings, this masqueraded as the town house of a respectable nineteenth-century family. Dark, mahogany bookcases lined the large ground-floor waiting room; a vast gloomily coloured Persian rug was on the floor, a dusty chandelier hung from the intricately patterned ceiling. The receptionist, too, seemed as if she had been left over from some other era: the long skirt, cardigan and grey perm all looked as if they were covered in a fine layer of dust, and as she raised her spectacles to her eyes, the lenses appeared dull and cloudy. Michael thought she must have been preserved in her entirety in a damp chest somewhere, to be raised intermittently from her suspended state by the ringing of the bell, in order to greet the patients with her unsmiling, fusty melancholy.

  ‘God, just imagine if you were suffering from depression or something,’ he whispered to Juliet as they sat together side by side on uncomfortable straight-backed chairs at the enormous polished wooden table in the empty waiting room, ‘I should think she’d finish you off completely.’

  Juliet smiled in the polite, detached way she had adopted over the last couple of days since agreeing to make the pilgrimage to the psychiatrist, and Michael sighed. He still found himself talking to her in the old way; half expecting her to shake her head and laughingly tell him she had been pretending and that everything she had said about Anthony Northfield was a stupid practical joke.

  He leant forward and picked up a copy of Country Life from a dog-eared pile in front of him, and was unsurprised to find it a year and a half out of date. After a few half-hearted flips of the pages, he flung it on the table and leant back in his chair, forcing it to rock back on its turned wooden legs. ‘Not that it would have made much difference, even if it had been bang up to date, of course,’ he said out loud, aware that he might as well have been talking to himself, but ploughing on in a relentless disregard for the indifference of his wife beside him, trying to lift the oppressive atmosphere by at least a gesture at normal chatter, ‘I suppose pictures of debs coming out or going in or whatever they do nowadays are pretty much interchangeable. Pity I caught sight of the year really, or I’m sure I’d have been perfectly happy. This is when you miss Punch of course. You never realised how much you depended on all those unfunny jokes to cheer you up in waiting rooms until they weren’t there. Somehow old Tatlers and Horse and Hound just don’t bring one quite the same lightness of spirit, if you know what I mean.’

  The perm appeared around the door and informed them that ‘Professor Field is ready for you’ in a tentative whisper. Michael thought how perfectly the voice suited the personality, and as they followed her down the passage towards the back of the building, he imagined how shocking it would have been if she had popped her head round the door and come out with a loud, resonantly jolly, ‘Hello there! He’ll see you now, you two; he’ll soon cheer you up – come along, please!’

  They reached the smallest lift he had ever seen, which had been fitted into what was obviously originally the well of the back stairs, and the perm heaved the heavy, double, old-fashioned iron gates back and ushered them inside, murmuring something Michael couldn’t quite hear as she did so. ‘Sorry?’ he said as she heaved them shut again.

  ‘Please press Two,’ she repeated and retreated down the corridor again to disappear into her cubbyhole off the hall.

  On Floor Two, Michael pulled back the gates with difficulty, admiring retrospectively the perm’s hidden strength, and deciding all
her energy must have been channelled into lift work leaving none for vocal projection. On the landing a black-coated, striped-trousered figure was waiting for them, who, to Michael’s relief, greeted them loudly and warmly.

  ‘Not the largest lift in the world, is it? I have to ask any patients I suspect may be claustrophobic to use the stairs I’m afraid,’ he cheerfully remarked.