It was such a mild evening for mid-October. The wind had been coming from the south for a while and everyone was talking about another Indian summer. The leaves on the trees had not yet changed colour, but there was such a dusty tired look about them you almost wished for them to turn, so they could fall to the ground and get some rest.
It was while she was sitting there, talking to the baby, that the feelings of unease began. She brushed her worries away, staying where she was, enjoying the birds and the fresh air. Suddenly she went cold and her heart skipped a beat. She knew something terrible was happening. She clutched her stomach, begging, praying, as she got to her feet and made for the house.
It is often assumed that people like Grace – people who are not obviously cheerful, people who appear to have a slightly darker view of the world than others – are not, as a rule, hopeful. But that is wrong. Grace was one of the most hopeful people she knew; she just kept it to herself. Not to do so would make her even more vulnerable when the worst happened, when the blow fell and she stood there, fool that she was, smiling up at the descending fist, her own hand outstretched as if she had expected a handshake. So when she lay in the hospital, waiting for her scan, having been told that the procedure would probably show that the pregnancy was terminated, she nodded and said she understood. But in her mind was quite a different story; secretly she hoped that the scan would show up a tiny being, still miraculously there, alive, growing. ‘Would you believe it?’ the technician would say, straightening up, beaming. ‘There’s a heartbeat.’
By the time Andrew arrived it was all over. Her doctor had just told her, very gently, ‘I’m afraid it’s as we thought, you’ve lost the baby.’ Grace kept her eyes very wide as she said, ‘It’s what we knew all along.’
Back home, afterwards, she had spent a lot of time wandering back and forth beneath the weeping willow as if she was looking for something.
Andrew changed. He said that it was Grace who had changed, although that was all right, considering what she had been through.
‘What we have been through, surely,’ she corrected him.
He who was so kind, helpfulness itself, always there, a shoulder to cry on, a friend to so many, a man to be counted on to give of himself and of his time and effort, he was curiously absent in those weeks after the second baby was lost. He stayed late at school. He went to see his old friend Ed, who had just lost his job and had no one else to talk to. He spent almost every weekend rehearsing the junior drama club’s Christmas production. ‘Those girls have worked their little guts out to get this play right; surely you’re not suggesting I let them down now?’
‘Too right I am. I don’t give a flying fuck about the girls’ end-of-term play or any other of their beastly little activities.’
He looked at her, incredulous. ‘I shall forget you said that.’ He stalked off. Even his steps sounded offended.
Grace ran after him, arms flailing, shrieking, unable to contain her pain and rage. ‘Don’t forget it. I need you, Andrew. I, me, Grace, your wife. I hurt and I need you! Why can’t you be with me?’
Andrew went to stay a weekend with Leonora and Archie in London. Their marriage was in difficulty. Mainly, it appeared now, because they weren’t actually married. Grace had only just found this out. ‘Tell them from me,’ Grace had yelled after the departing Andrew, ‘that if it’s broke, don’t bloody mend it.’
Before he left for London, Andrew had told Grace that she had a very odd, narrow view of the world. There were other people to consider, did she not see that? Grace seemed to be concerned only with her own problems, whereas he took a broader view and she would just have to learn to respect that.
Angelica was down for the second weekend in a row, not saying much about the lost baby but being Grace’s friend, silent or chatty, smiling or serious, whatever was needed, leaving her own baby with Tom’s mother on the pretext that ‘the old trout demands her pound of baby flesh and you know how carsick he gets’. Grace had not protested. Seeing her little godson, she thought she might either resent him or run away with him clasped to her bosom, and neither was a good idea.
‘So what if you are selfish and possessive right now?’ Angelica said. ‘You’ve had a shitty time. You’re allowed. But it’s typical men; always there when you don’t want them, never there when you need them. A problem once removed is so much easier to deal with than one that’s right up close, one that is there, with you when you wake in the morning and when you go to sleep at night. People once-removed are so much more grateful and when you’ve finished being good to them you can leave them where you found them and go back home. You, Grace, are home; you’re not grateful and there’s nowhere else to put you.’
Grace looked at Angelica and gave a little laugh without a trace of joy in it. ‘You’re saying everything I’ve tried not to think.’
Angelica leant across the table and took her hand. ‘What are friends for?’
‘I thought he was a safe harbour. Silly old me. Every sailor knows that when a storm brews you set sail for open waters.’
‘How is work? We could do with something new at the gallery. Mother thought she’d found the Georgia O’Keeffe of photography but, as I told her, the point about someone like O’Keeffe is that she’s unique.’
‘I don’t know, Angelica; for the first time I can remember, work just doesn’t seem that relevant.’
‘I’ve had moments like that; when I first met Tom, when I was pregnant and for the first months after Michael was born. Maybe it’s a woman thing, it’s as if a fog descends, of contentment or despair, hiding everything else from view. But the fog does clear, Grace, I assure you, and then you need your work.’ Angelica gently stroked Grace’s hand. ‘I’m not saying that work will make up for what you’ve lost, but it is the one thing that will give you a fighting chance of getting your life back.’
Before Angelica left, Grace asked her to bring Michael down next time. ‘I have to get used to it. It can’t go on for ever, this hiding of offspring as if they were illegal substances.’
Yet friends continued to be wary. When Grace was around they changed their conversations about first words, breast versus bottle and the rising cost of magicians for other, child-free topics. They stopped weighing up the advantages of the village school over the private kindergarten – learning to mix with everyone – and the advantages of the private kindergarten over the village school – not having to mix with everyone. Instead they spoke of teething, of overflowing nappy buckets and the exorbitant cost of toddler shoes. They did not want to flaunt their riches so instead they dressed down their lives for her benefit. They meant well.
Andrew carried on, Grace complained to Robina, as if the main criterion for deserving his support was not to be his wife. Robina told Grace not to be too hard on him. ‘You can’t expect him to feel this the way you do,’ she said. ‘Men don’t.’ Grace was too weary to argue the toss on behalf of the entire species. ‘I’d settle for pretend,’ she said. ‘But he whistles little ditties and avoids my eye. He’s busy-busy. He’s tired. He’s slippery, Robina. He ducks and dives. Of all people, I thought he would be different.’
‘Men don’t feel the need to talk about things. He can’t change what happened. He can’t get your baby back so he feels useless and that’s what makes him withdraw; it’s not unusual.’
‘I know, I know; men are from Mars and on Mars they do stuff and when they can’t they go off whistling. But women know that talking is not the antichrist of doing. Talking to me about what happened, letting me talk to him, might bring me back, at least. And I’m beginning to fear that I won’t get back on my own.’
‘There’ll be other babies,’ Robina said. ‘I promise.’ Robina had a problem accepting that sometimes life did not behave according to her rules.
‘I know you’ve talked to Mum,’ Andrew said. ‘And you’re wrong if you think I’m not upset. But it happens. It happens a lot. Lucinda Baker had at least five of these early miscarriages before Chloe was born.’
When she told him how much she needed him he looked pained. When she got upset he said he had always thought of her as so strong and brave. He had a way of showing his disappointment that involved his whole body; his eyebrows rose above the question in his eyes, his shoulders hunched just enough for you to notice and his arms grew stiff, refusing to extend into a hug.
Mrs Shield came to stay. For two weeks Grace was fussed over and commiserated with. ‘I understand,’ Mrs Shield said. ‘I lost a baby too, at six months.’
Grace had stared at her. ‘You were pregnant? You never told me.’
‘You were only little. I had not long married your father and I worried that you and Finn might feel even more insecure than you already did, poor little mites. I kept putting off telling you and neither of you noticed anything different.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘You probably just thought I was getting fat. And after I lost it; well, there seemed no point in upsetting you.’
‘Evie.’ Grace put her hand out. ‘Exactly how horrible was I?’
Mrs Shield laughed. ‘Oh Grace, you weren’t horrible. A little challenging, perhaps, but never horrible.’
‘I hate it when you are different from how I decided you are,’ Grace told her. ‘It’s too confusing when one’s parents start being people in their own right.’
Mrs Shield burst into tears. It was the first time Grace had ever referred to her as her parent.
There seemed to be a tariff of grief allowed, made up according to weeks of gestation. Twelve weeks allowed you fourteen days or so of dignified sorrow and a further fourteen of ‘not being quite yourself’. After that you were supposed to pull yourself together and get on with life. Another loss so soon after the first, and at sixteen weeks, allowed you to scream at your husband and his family in an uncontrolled manner and to burst into tears for no reason. (‘Hormones still all over the place.’) After a few days of that a longer period of withdrawal from activities, even family events, was allowed, if not encouraged. But grieve too hard and too long and they would start to whisper of hysteria and ghoulishness and lack of a sense of proportion and remind you of the value of knowing how lucky you are, really, to have a loving husband and family, friends eager to help, enough money and a nice home.
One day she overheard her father-in-law say to her husband, ‘For God’s sake, it was a foetus. My mother lost three between your Uncle Douglas and me. But in those days people were expected to get on with it.’
Andrew replied, ‘I know, but the way she is right now I can’t reason with her. If I try to suggest that she might be getting this a little out of proportion, she looks at me as if she wants to kill me.’
They stood talking in the hallway of Hillside House and Grace, next door in the sitting room with Kate, heard every word. Kate looked at her, her face turning pink then ashen. ‘It’s OK,’ Grace said to her. ‘It’s OK.’ Then she got up from her chair and left, brushing past the two men in the hall. She stomped through the wet streets in her thin-soled shoes, the wind sweeping the tears across her face. Back home she went straight upstairs to the bedroom, but before she got to the bed her legs gave way and she ended up doubled over on the floor crying until her face ached and her eyes were so puffy there was just a slit for her to look through.
She thought that the time it took a man to come after his wife, once she had fled in distress, was indicative of the state of the marriage. In the early days when love was both raw and tender he would follow hard on her heels, all concerned looks and anxious hands yearning to comfort and wanting to know what was wrong. Time passed stretching sympathy thin. This was when he would amble along a good half hour or so after the upset – concerned of course, but mostly hoping that a quick hug and a kiss and a soothing word or two would get things back to normal, fast. Then came the day when his eyes would follow his wife way ahead of the rest of him. ‘What now?’ he would ask himself. Finally, and unable to suppress his boredom, he would go off to get the whole business over with. ‘What have I done now?’ he would ask. And without waiting for an answer he would continue, ‘Do you have to make such a big deal out of everything?’ He would place his hand on her shoulder, gingerly, as if she had come hot from the oven. ‘Calm down … Stop being hysterical. You’re getting shrill again.’
When Andrew did return home, coming upstairs with steps so reluctant it sounded as if his soles were made of Velcro, the worst of it was that she had ceased to care if he came back at all. He stood looking down at her and asked why on earth she had run off and what she was doing sitting in a heap on the floor. Grace raised her head and looked at him for a moment before answering. ‘The bed was too comfortable.’
‘There, my point exactly; you revel in your moods.’ Then his expression softened and he put his hand out wanting to help her to her feet. She had to stop herself from snatching at it with her teeth. Instead she hugged her knees tight, refusing to budge.
Andrew kneeled at her side, impatient and concerned both at once. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I heard what your father said.’
‘Oh.’
‘And I heard you agree with him.’
‘Oh!’ Andrew jumped up and started pacing the room. ‘I was humouring him. He’s an old man, he’s of another generation. You can’t expect him to see things your way.’
‘No.’ Grace got to her feet and picked up her dressing gown from the bed, searching the pockets for her cigarettes. ‘No, I suppose not.’ She lit, one, blowing a perfect smoke ring. ‘My problem is that I thought there was this thing called our way. But there isn’t, is there? And that’s what frightens me.’ Now she looked at him. Whatever it was he read in her eyes made him flinch and take a step back.
‘I do love you,’ she said, her voice matter of fact as she stubbed out the cigarette, grinding it into the ashtray, then lighting another. Andrew winced; he hated her smoking. ‘At least I think I do. And I still quite like your parents. But I wonder about you all, more and more. I wonder what you see from your kindly perky Abbot eyes. I do know that whatever it is it’s far away; it’s not me or Kate or Leonora; it’s not those of us up close. Perhaps I shouldn’t blame you. Up close is not very comfortable, is it? I know your mother would rather I wasn’t the sort of woman who keeps losing the grandchildren before they are even born. I know you wish I wasn’t taking this so badly but that I would bounce back and stop being so tiresomely needy, so inconveniently and thoughtlessly sad. So go on, distance yourself elegantly, go off and be there for those once-removed. It’s messy around me, I know.’
Andrew’s complexion, ruddy and freckled from weekends spent outside, turned a deeper pink. ‘I had no idea you felt like this. You’re so … so bitter. I don’t believe I know you any more, Grace. Really, I don’t think I can take this for much longer …’
She looked at him, at the pained expression in his eyes, at his jaw muscles working, and she realised he did not concern her much any more. He was too removed to make an impression.
Another month passed. Could Grace please, Robina asked her one day, wear something other than black? She had invited Grace over for tea and a chat, pretending she needed help with choosing curtain materials but really just to get her to step outside the cottage.
‘What do you want me to do? Say “Hey, I just recently lost another baby so why don’t I go and shop for some fuchsia?”’
‘Of course not, Grace,’ Robina said in the voice she used when telling Rory that Rodney the pet rooster had gone to heaven. ‘All I’m trying to say is that you’re not the first woman to have suffered a miscarriage.’
‘Three times, Robina.’ Grace had not meant to say that. No one knew about the first one all those years ago. ‘And by the way,’ she added, her voice conversational, ‘I take honey, not sugar, in my tea. I have done for the whole time that you’ve known me.’
Robina was staring, her mouth wide open enough to fit in a fist. ‘What do you mean three times?’
‘Nothing; it’s nothing to do with you,’ Grace said. ‘I
’d better go. I’ve got things to do.’ As she walked past on her way to the back door, Robina grabbed her by the arm. ‘Grace, please tell me, what’s all this about three times?’
Grace looked into Robina’s keen eyes and saw the concern. She felt bad suddenly. It could not be easy to have Grace as her daughter-in-law, Grace with her black moods and black clothes and lost babies. She opened her mouth about to speak, to say something, anything to show that she was sorry too and that she wanted to be friends. But Robina spoke first. ‘You should have told me. You both should. I assume Andrew does know?’ She still had her hand on Grace’s arm.
‘Not entirely,’ Grace said.
‘What do you mean, not entirely?’
‘He knows about what concerns him.’
‘Are you telling me that you’ve been pregnant before … before Andrew? Did you not tell him about this?’
‘No. I didn’t think it anyone’s business but mine.’
‘How can you say that? Andrew is your husband. We’re your family. We love you.’
Grace thought for a moment before saying, ‘No. No, I don’t think you do. And I don’t believe the fact that I have had other relationships would come as a complete surprise to Andrew. Then again, in the happy-clappy warm and woolly world of the Abbot family maybe he did expect to marry a 29-year-old virgin.’
‘I know you’re upset, so I’ll pretend you didn’t say any of that.’
‘Actually,’ Grace looked at Robina steely-eyed, ‘I really would rather you didn’t. I’d really rather you listened to what I’m saying and remembered, just for once.’
Shooting Butterflies Page 15