A Midwinter Promise

by Lulu Taylor

But as the weeks went by and the pregnancy inside her became more certain, and she passed into her second trimester, she felt the fluttering of bad feelings and dark thoughts flitting past her conscious mind like bats swooping in the twilight. The baby was growing. She was past the time when it could disappear easily in a clot of blood and a stomach ache. Now she was for it again, in that horrible dilemma of losing each way, if it lived or if it died.

  She found herself, quite suddenly, repelled by food again.

  Why am I doing this? she asked, as, despite everything in her protesting, she went to the downstairs loo, bent over the old wooden throne seat and threw up her lunch. She could not explain and she could not stop it. The more she saw how happy and normal Sally was, the more inadequate and condemned she felt, and the more she kept her darkness to herself.

  If it doesn’t get any worse than this, then that’s okay, she told herself. If it does, I’ll tell David. I’ll tell him and I’ll get some help.

  But she was determined to show him that this time she was going to be all right. The thought of birth still filled her with mind-spinning fear but she dealt with that simply by refusing to think about it. The nightmares, unpreventable, that came to her when she slept were frightful: her body bursting open; a baby of hideous deformity; a dog or a snake or a calf emerging, slimy and blue.

  Just dreams, she told herself. Sally did it, with no fuss. She did it, and I can do it too.

  ‘I won’t be long, love!’ sang out the hairdresser as she went past Julia, who sat waiting on one of the plastic seats by the door. ‘I’m just waiting for Mrs Morton’s do to set, and we can start on you. Have you got a cup of tea?’

  ‘I’m fine without one, thanks.’ Julia picked up a magazine from the pile of well-thumbed, tired old things next to her. Johnnie was at home with Sally and Mundo and she’d taken a few hours to herself to get her hair cut, thinking she would try out a new salon in town. But most of the local ladies had had the same idea, and the place was packed.

  She looked at the cover of the magazine, intrigued. It was the kind she never saw, except when in a hairdresser’s or dentist’s waiting room, full of gossip and true-life stories. The front cover had a picture of the latest royal event: the Queen Mother’s eighty-ninth birthday. Inside, the article was lavishly illustrated with pictures of the gathering of the clan outside Clarence House for the traditional appearance and collection of cards and flowers.

  There she is.

  In a neat, narrow-waisted blue summer dress, with big splodgy flowers in pink and yellow; large gold and pearl earrings nestled into fluffy blonde hair; blue eyes made bluer by the dress. She was standing to the side, as if happy to cede centre stage to the main attraction of the little old lady in the lavender hat. She was smiling, apparently at ease, her beige-suited husband by her side.

  They look happy enough.

  She noticed suddenly that in one of the pictures she could see David, just back through the open gate of Clarence House, unobtrusive in a black suit, almost out of shot. But his eyes were fixed on the figure in the blue dress with a fervent intensity she’d never seen before.

  ‘I have to look out for her,’ David had said lately. ‘I can’t shake the feeling she’s in danger.’

  ‘Danger? But she’s got bodyguards, hasn’t she? Police detectives?’

  ‘Yes, but it only takes a moment. Ever since that nasty little pervert jumped out at her in Northumberland, I haven’t felt easy.’

  She remembered him telling her about the incident: some sex pest who leapt out of the crowd to get a hug and had quickly been wrestled away. ‘You told me he said he didn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘Maybe not. But he touched her. He could have had a knife or a gun. Then it would be a different story.’

  ‘David,’ she’d said soberly. ‘That’s not your job, you know. You organise the diary, you’re not in charge of saving her life. There are plenty of other people to do that.’

  He’d shrugged. ‘You’re right. She just seems so vulnerable at the moment.’

  Julia said nothing. After a moment he said, ‘Maybe I’m getting too sucked into the whole thing. Perhaps I ought to think of doing something else.’

  ‘You’ve been saying that for years, and you never do.’

  She gazed at his image now, caught forever in the August sunshine, staring at the back of that fluffy blonde head, and felt a twist of jealousy. All week he was in that other life of his; only at the weekends did he come back home. All week at the beck and call of his boss, smoothing her life out for her, supporting her, keeping her company . . .

  I won’t look anymore.

  She flicked the page over, getting away from the article, not wanting to see those pictures. Exasperated, she tossed the magazine down and picked up another, opening it at random. It was some kind of shock-horror rag and after a second’s bewilderment, she realised she was looking at a photograph of a huge exposed belly pictured from below, its owner’s face looming over it. In the centre of the belly was a kind of terrible, weeping wound, a purple puckering that glistened and shone. What on earth was it?

  Her eyes went to the headline.

  My stomach started leaking through my Caesarean scar.

  Julia gasped, going ice cold all over. Her eyes flicked down over the text but she found it difficult to absorb, with the giddy, sick feeling in her stomach and the loud buzzing in her head. She only managed to glean that one day this woman had woken up to find a fistula had formed from her bowel and pushed its way through the delicate skin of her scar, leaking out the contents.

  Julia stood up, dropping the magazine to the floor. She started to walk to the door.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the receptionist asked. ‘You’re next, dear.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Julia said in a blank voice, and she walked off in a daze, oblivious to everything around her. All she heard was the scream of terror in her head.

  How did life change so suddenly from one minute to the next? How could something as inane as an article in a cheap shock-and-scandal magazine change her life so rapidly and so thoroughly? It shouldn’t be possible and yet it was.

  A switch had been flicked and all the ghouls and horrors that she’d been studiously ignoring were suddenly there, illuminated in all their vile, visceral contortions, showing her the stuff of her terrors in full technicolour.

  I’m going to die. Any moment, something terrible is going to happen to me. My scar is going to burst open, the baby will come out, my intestines will leak out, all the gore and the blood will spill everywhere.

  She was in the car, starting the engine to drive home. As she went, she clutched one arm across her belly, which had swollen as she settled into the second trimester, as though she was afraid that at any moment she would have to hold in her own stomach. A flutter inside her made her shout out loud, certain it was all beginning. The car veered over into the opposite lane and she wrenched it back, one-handed.

  The terror was almost too much to stand. It occurred to her to drive to the clifftops and take the car over the edge in order to end this frightful situation, but she couldn’t think clearly enough to work out how to get there or how to find a place where she could get access to the edge. The confusion was too much to fight against, so instead she did only what she could do and drove home to Tawray.

  When she got there, she was gibbering and shaking, clutching her stomach. All the while another voice in her head was telling her she was being stupid and that she shouldn’t listen to the cacophony of doom, but it was all too raw and too terrible. She stumbled up to her room, not stopping to find Sally or minding about where Johnnie was, and when she found the dark peace of her bedroom, she climbed under the sheets of her bed and lay there shivering violently, despite the summer heat.

  She was already grieving for what had gone: she’d lost her peace of mind in one extraordinary second. She didn’t know if or how she would ever get it back.

  When Sally knocked on the door a little later, Julia was strangely calm agai
n. The fact that her stomach had not yet burst through her scar was helping her to grasp on to some small piece of normality, but she felt dead inside, numb and beaten. All she was sure of was that something pulsed deep within her, with its own beating heart and its own will, and it wanted her dead.

  She climbed out of bed and went to the door. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you all right? We didn’t know you’d come back until we saw the car.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see Johnnie? He’s going to have his tea in a moment.’

  ‘No.’ She pulled each word out of the slurry of her mind with the greatest effort.

  ‘Julia, open the door, please.’

  Julia tried to work out whether she wanted to open the door or not, but the effort was too much so she simply obeyed.

  The expression on Sally’s face told her that it was obvious something was amiss. ‘What’s happened? Is the baby all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m fine.’ Julia could hardly summon up the energy to speak. ‘I’m just very tired, that’s all. I have to sleep. Can you look after Johnnie for me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sally was frowning, not sure if Julia was simply tired or if it was something more extreme than that.

  ‘Thanks. I’ll be better tomorrow.’

  She shut the door and went back to her bed.

  Julia managed to get up the next morning, but she was still consumed by the lifeless, draggy feeling of the previous day. When she got downstairs, Sally was already up with Johnnie and Edmund, the baby on his bottle in her arms and Johnnie flinging porridge around his highchair and sometimes into his mouth.

  ‘Julia, are you all right? I was just coming to check on you. Are you ill?’

  Julia shook her head. ‘I’m fine,’ she said and tried to force out a smile.

  ‘Do you want some coffee?’

  Julia felt a swirl of nausea and shook her head. ‘Nothing, thank you. Listen, can you help me with Johnnie? I need to do some gardening today.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Sally frowned. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’

  ‘Yes. But I have to get to the garden. Sorry.’

  All day long she worked manically, feeling the calm return as long as she was in the garden, dealing with the weeds, tending to the flowers, harvesting the vegetables, turning the compost heaps or emptying the bins, squashing the bugs or collecting snails. Sally brought Johnnie out to play in the morning and again in the afternoon but she seemed to sense that something in Julia required isolation and the release of manual labour to help her get back on track.

  As soon as she came inside, she felt the darkness drop on her, the terrors of the approaching birth and the compulsion to hurt herself. She understood she had changed but she simply couldn’t help it. She was hanging on by her fingernails, and she knew it.

  David came home a day earlier than expected and Julia suspected that Sally had phoned him and told him that all was not well. He looked strained and pale, worry all over his face.

  They went upstairs together and lay a long time on the bed. David put his arms around her, and stroked her hair as she lay pressed close to him, pulling comfort from the warmth of his body and the beating of his heart and his breath against her head.

  ‘Julia, are you getting ill again?’

  I don’t want to let you down. You don’t deserve it. ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘You could go back to hospital, you know. That would be fine, if it’s best for you.’

  ‘I don’t want to do that.’ She meant it. The safety of the hospital was enticing, and she remembered the blissful feeling of all responsibility being lifted from her, but the thought of leaving Johnnie and the garden was too terrible. The only two things that gave her life meaning. And David, of course. That was what made this different from the last time. She didn’t want to leave now, she had too much to stay for. But those gruesome sights in her head, the compulsion to get rid of what was in her, the fear of what lay ahead . . .

  ‘We haven’t really talked about the birth,’ David said gently. ‘If you need to have an elective Caesarean, we should start the process now.’

  ‘I . . .’ A vile sick feeling kicked in her stomach. ‘I don’t know if I can have a Caesarean.’

  He pulled away from her. ‘What? But last time you were so very frightened of giving birth.’

  ‘I still am. But Sally did it. I should be able to do it.’

  ‘You’re not Sally. She has nothing to do with it. You have to do what’s right for you.’ His blue eyes were so frank, so determined. David knew best and he wanted the best for her.

  ‘So you think I should have a Caesarean?’

  ‘Yes, I do! It worked last time.’

  She wanted to tell him that if she had another operation, she was convinced she’d wake up with her insides leaking out, but that sounded so ridiculous she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He would bat it away, tell her she was being stupid. He didn’t know it could happen, that it was a real thing. He hadn’t seen that picture.

  ‘All right, if you think so,’ she said helplessly, and he seemed happy with that.

  Julia knew the darkness was descending on her. It didn’t mean that she loved David and Johnnie any less desperately, but that the feelings she was battling had become so strong that she had to turn all her resources inwards simply to stay alive. Her great fear now, besides that of the approaching birth and the realisation that the solution of a Caesarean birth had been taken from her, was that she might lose this battle.

  Her anxieties returned in double measure but now with a new twist. Even though her scar was nothing more than a thin silvery line below her stomach, she was afraid that it would become infected and she cleaned it compulsively every day, graduating from soap and water to disinfectant to a solution of bleach. Her hands too had to be clean, and she could no longer go into the garden in case she caught something from the germ-laden soil all around. She imagined spores of some kind, minute wriggling worms that flew under her clothes, found the scar and burrowed in, head first, to infect her. The only thing that had been her consolation and salvation was now taken away from her.

  Julia knew that David and Sally were talking about her, that they were worried by her state of mind. Her insistence that nothing was wrong was soon done away with. They all knew that the illness was back, as strong as ever.

  ‘I don’t want to go back to hospital,’ she told David when they were able to talk about it. She couldn’t look at him, though. The worry and pain in his eyes were too much to bear.

  They were sitting together in the bedroom, the curtains drawn against the bright day outside, where she felt safe from infection, despite the stifling heat.

  ‘They can help you there,’ David said. ‘They did it last time.’

  ‘No.’ Julia shook her head. ‘It’s different. There’s Johnnie now. If we get them involved, they might take him away from us.’

  From his worried frown, David had not considered this. ‘Would they? Are you sure?’

  ‘They might. Or they might never let me out.’ She wanted to hold his hand but couldn’t be sure that he’d washed it, so she made a vague gesture towards him. ‘We can’t risk it, we just can’t.’

  He studied her for a moment and saw that she was getting agitated. ‘Yes, all right. But if it gets bad, Julia, if you want to kill yourself or hurt the baby, you won’t have a choice.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt the baby!’ she cried in torment.

  ‘All right, all right! I understand.’

  She started to cry, twisted up by the knowledge that she didn’t want to hurt the baby, but she might not be able to help it if the terror got too great. I’ll do everything I can to force myself to be all right. I will tell him if it gets too bad.

  David said gently, ‘I’m saving up my leave just in case you need me here later. Sally will stay with you until then. She knows everything, Julia, she’ll look after you. And I’m only a few hours away.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’


  He smiled at her, though his eyes were sad. ‘You’re being brave.’

  ‘I’m weak. I’m a coward.’ Her voice was faltering as she spoke.

  ‘No. You’re trying to conquer your fear. That’s the definition of bravery, my darling. But I’d do anything to take all this away from you.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘Can I hug you?’

  The voices in her shouted that she mustn’t touch him, but she struggled against them and won. In his arms, she felt a vestige of the love and comfort she used to get from him.

  ‘I love you. You can do this, Julia,’ he said softly. ‘I know you can.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As Julia’s time to give birth drew near, she found a new place to hide. Now, the pregnancy did not exist. There was no baby. Her fears of infection and desire to keep clean remained, as did her need to purge after eating, and her now chronic insomnia, but her mind drew a protective veil around her and allowed her to occupy two contradictory positions at the same time.

  David took leave from his job as the nights grew dark and the time approached when Julia could go into labour at any time. Sally was there constantly, and Julia was aware, dimly, of the new alliance between her husband and her friend. They’d been bound together by her situation, and their duty to her.

  Christmas was coming once more, the days were short and cold, and their lives retreated inside. The gardens were put to sleep and everything became about the house. A tree was put up and presents soon gathered at its base. David wrestled in armfuls of holly and ivy and great bunches of mistletoe with their pretty pale green berries, so they could decorate the old rooms.

  ‘It needs something bright really,’ Julia remarked as she looked at the swags of green she’d laid across the chimney piece. She was sitting on the window seat where she’d once had a hidden nook, soaking up the warmth from the old radiator underneath. ‘Flowers, or something.’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ Sally said idly as she turned the page of a magazine. The natural look wasn’t really her thing, Julia knew. She preferred metallic sparkle and artificial lights.