Isa and May

by Margaret Forster

  I didn’t go straight on to May’s – how could I, in such a state? – though I’d intended to. I came home first, for an hour or so, just to give myself time to get over feeling so disturbed. Unusually for that part of the day, Ian was there. I wasn’t sure that I wanted him to be, but in the end I was glad. He was all concern, said I looked pale, insisted I put my feet up and had something to eat. It was comforting – comforting enough to make me tearful.

  I hardly told him anything of what Isa had said, and he didn’t press me. Probably he guessed it would be stuff about the baby, and he wouldn’t want to go over the same old ground again, especially when he could see I was in a funny mood. So we chatted a while, about nothing, and I sipped the tea he’d made, and composed myself. I didn’t even ask him why he was at home, just grateful that he was. I know Ian will not desert me. He won’t fade out of my life just because of the baby. Of course he won’t. If he moves out when it’s born – there, I’m pretending it might not be true that he will – he will still come and go. And he’ll put his name on the birth certificate, I’m sure. There’s no need to ask him.

  May came back home last week. She’s on some drug that stabilises her condition. She still doesn’t seem to want to know what that condition is. Serious, anyway. When I arrived she was knitting. She’d found some wool at the back of one of her drawers and thought it would do because I wouldn’t fuss about colour. The wool she’d found was a lurid lilac shade. ‘Lucky,’ she said, ‘it’ll do for either a boy or a girl.’ I reserved judgement. The needles she was using looked too small and delicate for her knobbly hands, but she was feeling her way carefully, knitting by touch rather than sight. Since she’d come out of hospital again she looked frailer but stronger in spirit, I thought – all due, Mum said, to the news about the baby. She is completely obsessed with thinking about my baby and won’t talk about anything else. She wants it to have a name already, before I’ve even had the scan to tell the sex. When I say I haven’t the faintest idea about what to call it she is scandalised – she always had her names ready. ‘Your other grandma will be wanting it to be called after her, if it’s a girl, I suppose?’ I said Isa hadn’t mentioned names. ‘She’ll be biding her time,’ May said, ‘you’ll see. She’s got something to leave, that one, something in the bank to pass on. She’ll be wanting a family name, like James or Patrick, you’ll see, and Isabel for a girl.’ I said I didn’t think Isa was interested in names. May couldn’t believe this. It was only natural.

  She switched to my diet. I wasn’t still a veggie, was I? Because meat was good for the baby, full of iron. I should be eating liver once a week, and drinking a pint of milk every day. I said liver, and all offal, was not recommended for pregnant women now. May was shocked. She’d forced herself to eat half a pound of lamb’s liver every Thursday, Thursday being the evening Albert worked late and she ate on her own. She hated liver, Albert hated liver, but liver it was for her when she was expecting . . . I closed my eyes. Why were we talking about liver? With all the things I wanted to know about May, why had it come down to talking about liver?

  ‘You’re tired, I can see,’ she said, accusingly. ‘What have you been doing, in your condition, eh?’

  ‘Working,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, not that bloomin’ reading and scribbling again, sitting in them libraries all cramped up – I’ve told you again and again, it ain’t good for you, squashing your organs, putting pressure on your bladder . . .’

  ‘Whereas of course you were doing the perfect thing for a pregnant woman with your first baby, standing at that factory bench, wasn’t it? On your feet for hours and hours every day, giving yourself varicose veins.’

  ‘None of your lip.’

  ‘It isn’t lip. It’s a fact. You’ve told me yourself how physically hard it was, and how women today have it soft.’

  ‘You have to think of the baby.’

  ‘The baby will be fine. Nothing I’m doing is harming the foetus.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘Foetus. A baby is an embryo first and then a foetus.’

  ‘It’s a baby, that’s all. Little miracles they are. You’re a very lucky girl.’

  ‘Why? Because I’m having a baby?’

  ‘Yes. Some women can’t.’

  ‘And some women don’t want them.’

  ‘Then they’re silly. What else is there in life to match having a baby?’

  I was about to make some mocking remark, along the lines of what a philosopher she was, how profound I don’t think, but I stopped myself just in time. She was being sincere, and I thought maybe she was presenting me with a way into a proper discussion, of the sort I’d always wanted to have, about her thoughts on her own life. I let her laboriously knit another row of whatever this alarming lilac wool was to become, and then, very quietly, I said, ‘Do you really think that, Granny? That there’s nothing in life to match having a baby?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you mean the actual having of it, the experience of it growing inside you and then giving birth, or . . .?’

  ‘I mean the baby. When you see it, and you think: look what I’ve made.’

  ‘So it’s pride?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s nothing to match it because you’re so proud of what you’ve achieved?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, muddling things up, wrapping everything up in words.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to.’

  ‘You don’t mean a lot of things. Wait till you’ve had your baby. You’ll change your mind, madam.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You’ll know what.’

  There it was again, the same going round in circles, the same irritation coming off May in waves. Babies were miracles. Babies were the best experience in life. And she didn’t want to discuss it.

  I didn’t stay long after that. When I got up to leave, she didn’t make her usual comment about me always rushing off, hardly stopping to warm a seat, etc., but instead encouraged me to go home and put my feet up. She asked if ‘that Ian’ was looking after me. I said he was. That pleased her. I’m sure Albert never looked after her, but my dad had looked after my mother and she had been amazed to witness it. Modern fathers met with her approval in this respect. She asked me when I was going for the next scan and I told her the date again, and repeated that I’d come straight from the hospital to tell her first whether it is a boy or a girl.

  The scan is next week. Before then I must, I must, complete a draft of my dissertation for Claudia. I feel as if I am Bob the Builder. A refrain runs in my head, going, ‘I cannot do it, I cannot do it’ and I answer myself, ‘Yes you can, yes you can.’ It is essential that I do it. I will not have this baby turning my mind into mush – and there I am, using pregnancy as an excuse when it is no excuse. All I need to do is read through my research material and then think. Think clearly. Think constructively.

  Everything will then fall into place.

  Think clearly. Simple words, simple instruction, but a very difficult task. Thinking, in my case, always seems to lead to dreaming. I start off well enough, but then the thinking can’t be held on a tight rein – it becomes wayward, undisciplined. Lists help at first, but then I stray from those too.

  Think clearly. But nothing is clear, that’s the point. I can think deeply, I can think intensely, but aiming for clarity defeats me. Nothing is clear, but does that mean the idea behind my dissertation is invalid? I truly don’t think so. I will try again.

  I’ve printed it out. A first draft of my dissertation. It looks professional. Neat, tidy. And it reads well. I am quite flushed with success. I did, with a huge effort, manage to think clearly, and it shows. It wasn’t beyond my capabilities after all. But of course that is the easy bit, the first draft. I still have to write the whole finished dissertation. The ideas have to be fully developed.

  Like a baby, really. The baby has to grow, to develop, or it’s nothing. Everything is there from the beginning, ready to grow, but it migh
t not. It takes time. The woman’s body has to work hard to feed it and then produce it . . .

  But there is no comparison between the writing of a dissertation and the growth and birth of a baby. I am romanticising an ordinary activity, trying to make it something more important than it is. May is right: there is nothing in life to equate with producing a baby, nothing quite so strange and mysterious. And I haven’t even done that yet, nor completed a dissertation.

  I got lost in the hospital, God knows how. I thought I was being clever, going in at a side entrance, sure there would be plenty of signs telling me how to get to the maternity unit, but there weren’t any. I seemed to wander along empty corridors for miles without meeting a soul, and what dismal, dreary corridors they were, nothing on the walls but dirty paint, and the floors lacking any hint of polish. In the end, I had to go all the way to the main exit and then start again, this time seeing and following the signs.

  Even then, I went first by mistake to the postnatal ward, which scared the hell out of me. I shouldn’t have been allowed in there in the first place – there was a locked door, but when the man in front of me was let in I just followed on, not realising it was the wrong place. I swear the impression was that I’d come into a battery-hen farming shed – well, not exactly a shed; it was a long, narrow room with beds either side, tightly packed in, with red and white patterned curtains drawn round all but one of them. I walked the full length, not a nurse in sight, until I came to the end and saw a woman breastfeeding a baby, so I about-turned smartly and walked straight back out, hearing whispered voices behind the curtains and the odd birdlike screech from a baby. This is where I would be in another twenty weeks, packed in like this, no privacy. I’d go mad.

  ‘You’re very pale,’ the nurse said, when I finally found the right clinic. ‘Have you been eating properly?’ I said I had. I said it was just that I’d got lost and was afraid I’d be late. This seemed to amuse her. She indicated a row of women sitting in the corridor. ‘Plenty of time,’ she said. I sat down on the only available seat, clutching a pager I’d been given. After nearly an hour of other women’s pagers pinging, but never mine, I started wondering how much it would cost to go private, though Dad would be disgusted with me. He doesn’t do any private work, never been tempted, even though he knows the NHS is overburdened and he never has enough time in his own clinics. It isn’t just the waiting itself that I’d like to avoid, so much as the herd-like, helpless feeling it fills me with. I feel pushed into a group where I don’t count as an individual. But I couldn’t even begin to afford private health care, quite apart from the principle thing, so my next thought was whether I could have this baby at home. Why not? I was born at home, accident though it was, and May had all four of hers at home. (I suddenly remembered asking Isa where she gave birth to my dad, and her careful answer that he was ‘born in hospital’.)

  If I had the baby in my flat, I’d need help. Could I ask my mother? No, it wouldn’t be fair. And supposing something went wrong . . . My pager went off at last and saved me from any more mental meanderings of this sort. I was directed to Room 6, where a woman dressed in a green smock and trousers was sitting in front of a scanner, a computer screen, I supposed. The room was in half darkness, and though I wasn’t in the least worried – I’d had the earlier scan and knew how easy it all was – I began to feel faintly excited. The woman told me her name, which I didn’t take in, and said she would talk me through what she saw on the screen and if I’d any questions she’d answer them if she could. Then I lay down, as before, and the gunge was plastered over my belly. She tilted the screen slightly so that I could watch, and at once the shape of the baby filled it. ‘There you are,’ she said, ‘there’s the head, there’s the neck, now I’m going to follow the spine and through the buttocks . . . Do you want to know the sex?’

  Did I? There was May to consider. She might not live until the baby is born, and she so wants to know. But did I want to know? The operator was asking again. ‘Do you want to know the sex? If in doubt, you should say no.’ I asked her how certain it was that she could tell me accurately. She said it was never a hundred per cent certain but that in my case she could see it clearly, or else she wouldn’t have asked if I wanted to know. I lay there, thinking. Did I care about what she claimed was the tiny margin for error? I decided I did. If she’d said the prediction was one hundred per cent certain, I would have said yes, tell me. But that minute possibility for error somehow made me say no. ‘No thank you, I don’t want to know the sex.’

  May will just have to live, and wait.

  X

  ELSPETH HAS GONE. This is catastrophic. She didn’t even give notice, but then as she’s never had any contract she wasn’t obliged to. Seems she rang Dad this morning at work on his mobile and said she was very sorry but her nerves were ‘frayed to bits’ and her doctor had forbidden her to leave her flat. She said she would not be returning to Mrs Symondson’s house – not ever. She had been treated with ingratitude and contempt and it was more than the frayed nerves could stand – in fact, Mrs Symondson’s treatment of her over several months now, though she had never complained about it, was what had caused the fraying of the nerves. Dad said she was weeping. Nothing he could say would console her.

  He’s already sent her flowers, plus a cheque and a letter. And now he is going round to Isa’s and would like me to join him, if I’m free. Of course I’m free. He hardly ever asks me to do anything for him and I wouldn’t dream of refusing, but I do wonder why he wants me there. He knows things have been a bit delicate between Isa and me for a while now, so he might imagine my presence would aggravate her if she’s in a touchy mood as a result of Elspeth’s sudden departure. Does he, I wonder, feel suddenly nervous at tackling Isa about Elspeth’s accusations? Does he perhaps want a witness in case she says things to him he wants someone else to hear?

  The front door was locked, from the inside, with the key still in the lock. Dad tried to push the key out with his own key but of course this didn’t work. We rang the bell repeatedly and could hear it ringing inside, and then we banged with the brass knocker and yelled through the letter box. I used my mobile to ring Isa while all this was going on, but there was no reply. Dad said he’d have to break in. We stood and surveyed the house, wondering which window it would be easiest to break and gain entry through, and also easiest to get a new pane fitted in afterwards. Isa’s house is detached, with a good number of ground-floor windows, but a lot of them have bars on them (the pantry, the downstairs cloakroom, the utility room). Round and round we went, several times, then just as Dad was settling on the glass panel of the side door, even though it had bars inside (reckoning he could stick his arm through and open it, because the key was always left in the lock), I saw Isa looking down at us from her bedroom window.

  We stood back on the lawn and waved and smiled. Isa stared back at us but gave no corresponding wave. We groaned as she turned her back and disappeared from view, but then we could see her going down the stairs – there’s a window halfway down on the landing – and next she appeared at the patio doors. She didn’t open them, but stood right up close to them and peered out, shading her eyes from the sun, which was shining into them. Dad went closer, shouting, ‘It’s me, Mama, it’s James come to see you. It’s James, Ma, can you open the door and let me in? Can you? See, Ma, it’s me, James. OK?’ He was almost pressing his nose against hers by then. Still she made no move to unlock and open the doors, but at least we could see that she wasn’t lying somewhere with a broken leg or something. I wondered if my being there, at Dad’s side, was making her uncertain, so I backed off, leaving him standing there on his own. He stepped back too, just a little bit, and didn’t call out again. He stayed still, his hands clasped in front of him in an oddly pleading way, quite unthreatening. After what seemed an age, but was probably only a couple of minutes, Isa slowly reached up and loosened the bolt at the top of the glass doors and then equally slowly, and with obvious difficulty – this bolt, we knew, was stiff –
undid the bottom one. All she had to do now was turn the key, but she hesitated. She was saying something. Her breath steamed up the glass. Dad went closer, and whatever she had said was a question, because he nodded. The key was turned and the door opened.

  I still kept well back, on the lawn, waiting. Dad didn’t enter the house at once. He let Isa study him, almost in the way it’s wise to let a dog sniff you, and then I heard him say, ‘Ma,’ and I could see her smiling and holding out her hand in that regal way she has. They went inside, away from the doors, but not before Dad had given me a little wave and indicated with a nod of his head that I should go round the side to the front door (or that was how I interpreted the gesture). When I got there I didn’t know whether to ring the doorbell or just wait, but as I was deciding the door opened and Dad was there. ‘She seems fine,’ he whispered as we walked together into the drawing room, where Isa sat in state. ‘Isamay!’ she said, with every appearance of delight, and offered her cheek for a peck. I pecked (one side only, as the rules dictated). ‘Now, this is a pleasant surprise. Both of you together, how unusual.’

  ‘Well, Ma,’ Dad said, ‘we were worried.’

  ‘Why would that be?’

  ‘You haven’t been answering the phone, and—’

  ‘I expect I was busy when you called. You cannot expect me to sit around ready to answer the telephone, James.’

  ‘But the front door was locked, and my key—’

  ‘One cannot be too careful these days. You have told me so yourself.’

  ‘Yes, but locking it and leaving your key stuck in the lock means no one can get in with their key . . .’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But you might have been ill, or had a fall, or—’

  ‘Really, James, you are full of gloom and worries.’

  ‘Sorry, but—’

  ‘Now, shall we have some tea? Isamay, go and find Elspeth and ask her if she will be kind enough to bring us some tea.’