Happy Birthday and All That

by Rebecca Smith

  When Frank returned she did not look at him. She was never going to look at him ever again. Her tears were scalding.

  They did not speak until the children were asleep.

  ‘Posy, I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?’

  ‘To never have existed. And don’t you ask me what you should do. How about drinking bleach? But not anywhere that I have to clean up the mess.’

  Frank left the room. A few minutes later she heard the front door being quietly shut. How considerate of him, she thought. She ran after him.

  ‘Coward!’ she yelled. She would have been even angrier if she’d known that he took this as a suggestion and went for a few pints at The Cowherds on the Common.

  It is a fact universally unacknowledged nowadays, Posy told herself, that children sleep better when their daddy is in the house. All I ever wanted to do was to have a sensible family, to be able to get through bank holidays without a scene of some sort, to have my children growing up in an atmosphere of love, of security, where they can rely on their parents not to do anything awful. I know I didn’t mean to get married and have children when I was a teenager. I shouldn’t have. I should have turned out like Flora and turned into Aunt Is. I should never have let things turn out messy. My ambition was to Not Get Divorced.

  She could hardly think about it. It was like acid thrown in her face. And how could she bear to tell anyone? She wouldn’t. She’d say that if they wanted to know the reason for the Parousellis falling apart, they would have to ask Frank. Perhaps if she completely ignored it, didn’t speak of it, it would all go away. And what was she going to say to the children? And Flora? And Kate? And the aunts?

  Posy wondered what she would have to do to get someone to take over. Sit down in the school playground and cry? She would probably just be given a cup of tea and a talking to in the school office. Not turn up to collect them? Climb out of the bathroom window and run away? But of course she couldn’t. She walked around with her fists so tightly clenched that by the evening her fingers and wrists ached, and there were little pink crescents in her palms where she had dug her nails in.

  By day it was as though it had not happened, as though she had been pricked by a poisoned needle and had fallen asleep, but nobody had happened to notice. Life continued. The children were taken to and from school and pre-school. Isobel was got up and fed and played with and put down for naps and got up again and fed and played with. Life was as normal apart from Posy not looking at or speaking to or even acknowledging Frank’s existence. This lasted for four days. She felt so lonely and miserable that she kept wanting to call the Samaritans, but whenever she went to pick up the phone she was interrupted.

  ‘Mum, my wand is broken. Can you fix it with Sellotape or glitter glue?’ Poppy held the two halves out, her eyes full of tears. ‘And the Prittstick’s all dried up. And the tinsel’s all coming off.’

  ‘I know, I know, I’ll try.’

  ‘Mum, can I have a plaster on my knee?’

  ‘It isn’t cut.’

  ‘But I want one to stroke.’

  ‘Can I have one too? I want one to sniff.’

  Why bother having feelings, Posy thought. Surely it was an evolutionary dead end? No time for feelings. Better to be a robot.

  ‘No you can’t have plasters, just for nothing, if you don’t need them.’ (‘Keep your arms soft, but your lower body hard like steel,’ she told herself.)

  ‘Muuum, oh Muuum …’

  ‘Go and play outside.’ ‘I am hard like steel, I am hard like steel,’ she told herself.)

  And of course Tom fell over and grazed both knees and needed two plasters, and Poppy managed to find a tiny cut that merited a plaster too. And by the time this was done Isobel had woken up from her nap, so that was it. No more time to herself for another six hours. When the children were asleep Posy took very long showers or baths and cried. She found that as soon as the water started running she could start crying. When she finally got out she could make herself stop. Then she would go to bed and cry some more until she heard Frank coming up the stairs. This would make her freeze, and stay frozen until her next shower.

  Then one evening he said, ‘Can’t you just talk to me? I don’t know what I am meant to be doing.’

  ‘Are you expecting me to help you?’ she said, her voice flat, cold and hard. Her face an icy pond. ‘You are not worthy of my thoughts, you are beneath contempt. I cannot even think about you, contemplate what you have done. I regret every moment I have spent thinking about you, ever. I can only hope that none of the children will turn out anything like you.’ She was about to leave the room when she heard Isobel’s sudden anguished cry. She was up the stairs in the most dignified scurry that she could manage.

  Isobel had a temperature. She was pulling at the hair behind her ear. Definitely an ear infection.

  Frank loomed like a huge stupid sheep in the doorway of Isobel’s room.

  ‘Want some help?’

  She was rocking Isobel, singing softly into her hair, wondering if the Calpol was in the upstairs or downstairs bathroom cabinet, or perhaps in the kitchen cupboard, what about that baby Nurofen? Was it all right to give her both or, might some Olbas Oil clear the blocked tubes, and would she be able to get an early appointment at the doctor’s?

  She turned her back on him.

  ‘Perhaps you have forfeited the right ever to hold her again,’ she said.

  ‘Posy. I only did it once. I just made one mistake.’

  She felt like screaming obscenities at him. She turned her back so that he wouldn’t see the hot tears that were now running onto the downy dark swirls of Isobel’s hair. She heard Frank retreating down the stairs, and then the familiar squirt of the wine-box tap. He hadn’t told her what that one mistake had been; now he thought about it, his one mistake had been staying in Southampton. If only, if only … saddest words in the English language.

  ‘Self-indulgent shithead,’ she thought, but didn’t say. She was determined that she wouldn’t do anything wrong, that she would get to hold on to every scrap of the moral highground.

  He might at least get the bloody Calpol. It didn’t take much imagination to fetch that and Isobel’s Tigger beaker with some water in it.

  But Isobel had fallen asleep again. Posy gently put her back in the cot and stood there for a few minutes watching her breathe. In the bottom of the airing cupboard was a rolled-up futon. She hauled it out and silently spread it out beside the cot. She found the spare quilt. It was the one she had owned as a girl, had brought to university with her. She still had the yellow and white stripy cover that her mum had bought for her. It was washed and faded almost to transparency. It was the first one she could find in the dark heap of towels and tablecloths and dinosaur-themed bedlinen. She was pleased. If only she could slip back in time, not meet Frank, but then of course no children … She was soon asleep, even though it was only half past nine.

  Isobel woke and cried again several times in the night. So did Posy. In the morning she woke with her fists clenched, her teeth gritted, ready to fight. To be angry before she was even awake, that was pretty impressive. She was crammed full of anger, hatred, and resentment. She was a stuffed date. Thick marzipan anger rolled around a walnut, hard and nubby, insoluble hatred, stuffed into her split self.

  They got an appointment with Dr Patrick for 9.40. That, at least, was good.

  The doctor was Posy’s favourite. Usually you had to wait weeks for an appointment with her, or try your luck at the Monday Wait and See surgery which started at 12.30 and lasted all afternoon. People started queuing for it at 11 a.m. Dr Patrick did most of the surgery’s antenatal work. That was how Posy knew her. Dr Patrick had two children of her own and a husband who went pot-holing at weekends.

  Isobel’s name was called at 10.15. This was prompt for Dr Patrick. She was too kind. She listened to her patients and took too long. Posy had often wondered whether doctors kept their patients waiting in order to wear them down. It seemed to be a successful method
of reducing people to a state of tearful anxiety where they would reveal their true feelings quickly, and spill the beans about what was really wrong. It got her every time. And so it was that when Dr Patrick said, ‘And what’s the trouble?’ The whole story, Frank, Melody, the baby, came pouring out. Blood and guts on the consulting-room floor.

  ‘Well,’ said Dr Patrick. ‘I’m afraid I really don’t know how to make that one better.’

  ‘But Isobel has an ear infection. That’s why I’m here. I didn’t mean to say any of that. You must think I’m mad. A crazy fantasist. But it all seems to be true.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at these ears … mmm. This one is quite inflamed. You’d better have some Amoxycillin. That will sort it out.’

  ‘Thank you,’ sniffed Posy. ‘It’s probably Frank’s fault. He still smokes. I told you he didn’t when I was pregnant, but he does. Only in the garden and in his shed. It’s his fault. A psychic connection.’

  ‘Undoubtedly. Now about you …’

  ‘I haven’t been right since Isobel came along … I just always seem to be struggling. I feel as though I’ve got my boots on the wrong feet all the time, or my trousers on back to front or something. That I’m forever scrambling up a shingle bank and slipping back down with my shoes full of stones. It all seems to be stormy weather, heavy weather, I don’t know which one I mean.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve had some post-natal depression.’

  Posy nodded silently, crying again.

  ‘I’m sorry to make a fuss.’

  ‘Have you tried St John’s Wort? It’s very unpleasant, the tea, but very, very good. I don’t want to give you Prozac straight away unless you want me to. You are quite right to be depressed. There would be something wrong with you if you weren’t very, very unhappy at the moment. You need to work through this. Somehow you will. You will. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but you will.’

  ‘I haven’t any choice. The children,’ said Posy, with a vague wave of her hand, indicating the invisible presence of James, Poppy and Tom. ‘I feel as though I can’t exist as a real person. I have to just keep going through the motions, keep functioning until I can react. I don’t know what to do. There isn’t any solution.’

  ‘You have to think about what you want.’

  Posy nodded, but found herself thinking, ‘What I really want is a flat stomach.’ She was amazed that she could be so frivolous and cold and so alone all at the same time.

  ‘Could anyone help you, your sister? A friend?’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone. I can’t have them all thinking and pitying me. Everything is ruined for ever.’

  ‘Then don’t tell anyone yet. It’s amazing how little people notice about those closest to them.’

  Posy nodded. Reached for yet another tissue.

  ‘Or you could make him tell them all.’ The doctor said this with a sly smile. ‘But I am going to refer you for Therapeutic Therapy. It’s something we are doing a trial study on. It’s an experimental pilot scheme, usually only available privately, and there’s even a crèche.’ Dr Patrick opened her desk drawer and found a pink stripy folder, much prettier than the sort of thing medical professionals usually use. She took out a card with an address and a design of primroses on the front. Inside were columns for dates and treatments.

  ‘Pitty pitty Mummy,’ said Isobel reaching up for the card. Posy smiled.

  ‘She’s never said “pretty” before.’

  ‘Your mummy is pretty,’ the doctor told her. ‘And this will make her look even prettier. Now Posy, don’t whatever you do mention this to Frank. And we’d be grateful if you kept it as quiet as possible. Places are very limited and if word gets out we’ll have a real clamour. Private pleasures are often the sweetest. Remember that you deserve this. Don’t go for the flotation tank until you feel much better, they usually make people cry. Unless you want to have a good cry, of course.

  ‘Give them a ring. They’re open till late. You have to make your own bookings. You have ten sessions to be used over the next ten months, quicker if you want. Make the most of it while it’s free. They’ll give you a diary. It would be very helpful if you could keep a record of how helpful or otherwise it is. To help us get future funding if it’s effective. And I’d better see you again soon. We’ll try Prozac in a couple of weeks if you need it.’

  ‘Thank you, thank you.’ Posy scooped up Isobel and their huge bag of changing stuff, breadsticks, books, boxes of raisins, spare clothes. The people in the waiting room glared at them. Dr Patrick was now running forty minutes late.

  Posy strapped Isobel into the pushchair and headed for the chemist. While she waited for the antibiotics she read the list of treatments. What should she choose? Aromatherapy Massage? Deluxe Jessica Pedicure [with hot wax bootees]? Vital Eyes Treatment? Aromatherm Perfect Legs? The list went on and on. She smiled. She would ring them as soon as she got back. There was still nearly a month to go before the end of term. Perhaps she could fit in two visits before then, perhaps three … and then maybe in the holidays she could leave the children with Flora or Kate and still go. Oh, the doctor had said there was a crèche. It said complimentary refreshments too. What bliss, what luck.

  She walked back up the hill and home. At the top of the road she could see lorries with fairground rides, huge trailers bringing marquees, men putting up signs to direct the balloonists, exhibitors and visitors to various parts of the Common. It was the Balloon and Flower Festival at the weekend.

  Frank was out, doubtless hiding from her. Good. Pitty pitty Mummy, thought Posy. Pity Mummy. Pretty Mummy. Pity Mummy.

  She made a booking for the following week. Aromatherapy facial with back, neck and shoulders massage. That sounded rather good.

  The post had been. Yet another Mini Boden catalogue and a letter that, with the wonky typing and second class stamp, could only be from her aunt.

  Dear Posy,

  We hope you are all keeping well. Bea has had a rather nasty fall in Morwenstow Church and has broken her wrist (fortunately her left one), whilst I have gashed my leg on Barney’s gate. It is taking its time to heal, and the district nurse is coming every few days to replace the dressing. Between times we are putting honey on it, but my rather poor circulation is making it all rather slow and tiresome.

  I wondered whether you and/or Flora might be able to come and spend the hols with us. We don’t have many parties booked, but there will be the usual trippers I suppose.

  It would be delightful to see you and your brood, and we would be jolly glad of an extra pair of hands or two, even though yours are already so full.

  With best love,

  Your Aunt Is.

  She wiped Izzie’s sticky hands and face, changed her nappy, and put her up for a nap. She made herself a cup of tea and sat down to phone the aunts.

  ‘Aunt Is?’ said Posy.

  ‘Yes,’ she barked.

  ‘It’s Posy. Thanks for your letter. I was so sorry to hear about the leg. How is it now?’

  ‘Oh, still very tiresome.’

  Posy knew that Aunt Is would never admit to anything of her own being painful. She also admired the aunts’ telephone style. They would say only what needed saying and then hang up. No endless chit-chat. Posy knew that she had to state her business quickly.

  ‘We’d love to come,’ she said. ‘As soon as the summer holidays start. That’s on the 23rd.’

  ‘Jolly good,’ said Aunt Is.

  ‘We’ll stay as long as possible,’ Posy went on, ‘maybe for the whole summer. Frank and I weren’t planning on going away anywhere, so this will be a lovely holiday for the children. We’ll have to bring the rabbit, but she can go in with the hens, can’t she? I haven’t asked Flora yet, but I expect she’ll come down when she can get away. She’s very busy with work, as usual. I don’t think Frank will be coming.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ve been having some problems.’ Posy could feel her lip tremble. She felt like blubbing. She hoped that this wasn�
��t detectable.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Aunt Is. ‘Sorry to hear that.’

  Posy couldn’t think of anything to say. There was a long pause, the sort that would usually signal the end of a phone conversation with her aunt. She could hear Aunt Bea in the background shouting ‘Get down demon dog!’ and then a metallic sort of quiet thump, the sound of the lid of a cake tin being replaced. She thought she could smell Madeira cake coming down the wires.

  ‘My dear, er, do try not to worry,’ Aunt Is said. ‘These things tend to work themselves out.’

  ‘This is pretty bad,’ Posy said. ‘I wish I was with you now.’

  ‘All this business about love,’ Aunt Is said. ‘I do sometimes think its importance is much exaggerated.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Posy. ‘But you do have Aunt Bea to keep you company.’

  ‘Ah yes. I suppose I don’t really have to think about it much.’

  There was a chink of teacups. Really, Posy smiled to herself, they should get jobs doing sound effects for radio plays. Tuck in, she thought, tuck in.

  * * *

  It was time she told Flora.

  ‘Flora, it’s me. Could you come over? I need to talk to you about something.’

  ‘I’m in John Lewis. In a queue in Toiletries. I’ve got present buying and wrapping to do. Could you come and join me?’

  ‘Better not. I haven’t got long before I pick Tom up. Sorry to sound so feeble as usual.’

  ‘Would you like me to come round? I could be there very soon.’

  ‘Yes please. If you’ve got time. It’s all a bit awful.’

  ‘Nobody’s ill or hurt, are they?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Why not just tell me now and get it over with.’

  ‘Um. It’s pretty awful.’

  ‘You aren’t pregnant again? Oh Posy, no more!’

  ‘Not me. This twenty-two-year-old. Melody.’ She spat the name.