Weldon, Fay - Novel 07

by Puffball (v1. 1)

  Tucker put his hand on her bare tummy: he laid down his head to listen to the baby’s heart beat. That too answered some kind of craving in her.

  It was almost pleasurable; then it actually was—she forgot herself, she cried out. Liffey had an orgasm. Afterwards she cried—floods; all kinds of things, it seemed, got washed away with her tears.

  Liffey, rightly or wrongly, felt she had changed. She would never easily look like a little boy, feel like a little girl, ever again. It was a loss, she knew it—she was at her best when very young. All charm, no sense. The days of charm were gone. Now she was real and alive.

  Liffey looked to no kind of future beyond the day of delivery. Everything worked towards that end.

  Tucker seemed to like her tears. He made no comment on them. “Don’t tell Mabs,’’ he said as he went, and Liffey was safe again, knowing he was cheating too. Their interests once again coincided.

  She sang as she worked in the garden. She had to sit on the ground to weed; she found it hard to bend.

  Waiting

  The weather was hot. Liffey spoke to the birds and the butterflies. Tucker came up from time to time to see how she was. She quite looked forward to his visits: she ran to make him tea—ordinary tea bags now, not Earl Grey—discussed the cows, Dick Hubbard’s perfidy, the knack of making silage. Tucker made no more sexual assaults upon her. He seemed satisfied, having made his mark, having made her remember.

  The baby kicked and heaved, and made her laugh and pant: it seemed to have a foot wedged under her ribs. She hoped he was all right, that a leg wouldn’t grow crooked for being so long in one place.

  The doctor said that was highly unlikely.

  “No bleeding?” he asked.

  “No bleeding,” said Liffey. Liffey still believed she would have her baby naturally. She felt that fate had dealt her quite enough blows. It could not be so cruel as to make her submit to the surgeon’s knife.

  Slice into the smoothness, the roundness, the taut health of her tummy? Ah, no. That was a bad dream. Liffey loved her tummy now. She lay on her back and sang to it. The earth was warm and so was she.

  Liffey looked better. She was almost pretty again. The doctor said she would be delivered on October 10. It was now the beginning of September.

  Thirty-six weeks.

  The first puffball of the season appeared. A blind white head pushed its way out of damp warm ground, down in the dip by the stream where once, a year ago, Richard and Liffey had made their ordinary everyday love and thought themselves much like other people. Then, when the world was innocent, and Liffey was not pregnant or Mabs so desperate to be so, and Richard was faithful and Bella nothing worse than bored, and Karen was a virgin and Ray was not a laughing stock, when Miss Martin still looked up to her fiance, and Tucker contented himself with looking, through field glasses, at Liffey in the act of love—then indeed the world was young.

  Mabs was the first to see the puffball. She was out early, bringing the cows in. This was normally Tucker’s job, but the night before she and he had drunk a bottle of whiskey between them, almost inadvertently, one on either side of the fire, while the children, barred the kitchen, snivelled and snored upstairs.

  Mabs was having trouble with Debbie. Debbie was dirty. Debbie wet the bed. In the mornings she’d stand at the sink crying and washing out her sheets, cheeks red from a slapping, and doing her best—even Mabs had to admit it—but she was a cack-handed child, and never seemed to get through before it was time for the school bus, so she’d have to leave it, and then Mabs would have to load the dripping mass into the washing machine and finish it off. And now that it was school holiday time, it was even worse, for Debbie would spend the entire morning washing and getting in Mabs’s way.

  Debbie was eleven. She was a delicate-looking child, the prettiest of the girls and a throwback to some obscure ancestry. Mabs had the heavy, jowly features and prominent eyes of the Norman invaders of these parts: Tucker the smaller, darker, cautious looks of the Celts. Once, in any case, the general belief was—in the very old days—there had been two races about, the giants and the little people, but time and civilisation had diluted the strain, and now everyone was much of a muchness—only Mabs would look out, as it were, from the surface of her head, and Tucker from within it. But Debbie seemed a new, neater breed, incompetent with her hands, full of whims and fancies, uncertain of necessities, a decoration placed on the face of the earth instead of something part of it—and reminding Mabs for all the world of Liffey.

  Slap, slap. You dirty little thing!

  Mabs sent the whole lot of them to bed early and then drank more whisky than she meant, to calm her nerves. Soon she was talking about Richard and Liffey.

  “Of course he won’t put up with her for long,” said Mabs. “Dumping her down here is just the first stage. He’s on the way up in the world and she’s a millstone round his neck.”

  “You can’t tell what goes on between man and wife,” said Tucker.

  “I can,” said Mabs. There was still a light left in the sky. The Tor seemed very near tonight, as it did when rain was about.

  “Judging by the things he lets slip,” added Mabs.

  “I think he’s interested in a whole lot of things,” said Tucker, “not just his office.”

  “It’s going to rain,” said Mabs, as if willing it, and the Tor stepped nearer, listening. Tucker told himself it was only a sudden shift in the pattern of clouds above the Tor.

  “I wonder who it will take after when it’s born?”

  “Not me,” said Tucker, rather too quickly.

  “It had better not,” said Mabs.

  “Well,” said Tucker, “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. We got the cows in Honeycomb field, didn’t we?”

  “Not for long,” said Mabs, and the rain started and drove against the window pane in sudden gusts. “She’s a slut and a thief and she came out of nowhere and stole my baby.”

  “That’s nonsense,” said Tucker.

  “Then why haven’t I got one?”

  Mabs went to the cupboard under the sink, where the candles were kept in case of powercuts, and lit one, and waited until the wax began to melt, and then took the drips and began to mould them. First came the head, white and blind, with a pinch for the neck, and then a half-pinch, not at the waist but where the trunk joined the legs, so that the belly curved out round and full.

  “Don’t do that,” said Tucker, “it gives me the creeps. Who is it?”

  “Who do you think?” said Mabs. “Liffey. I’ve done one for the baby. That one’s in a drawer keeping its strength, but this one’s the mother. I’ll get them both. Why not?”

  She took a hairpin from her head and was about to pierce the belly, but Tucker thrust her hand aside and slapped her, and then bore her down on the floor, pushing up her old skirt and down her pretty, slippery knickers, and had her, while she laughed and panted and struggled.

  “Why do you do it?” Tucker asked later. “It’s a wicked thing to do.”

  “She stole my baby,” Mabs persisted.

  “If she did, it’s not her fault,” said Tucker doubtfully. Perhaps such things did happen—who was to say? Certainly Liffey was pregnant and Mabs was not. And Liffey had never been pregnant before and Mabs usually was.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” said Mabs. She slept peacefully afterwards, but Tucker did not, and he groaned and moaned, so in the morning Mabs kindly rose and brought in the cowson his behalf from Honeycomb field. And there, down in the long grass, as a kind of omen and reward, was the puffball.

  Mabs stared long and hard at it and after breakfast went up and knocked on Liffey’s door. Liffey was hemming cot-sheets. Liffey quite enjoyed the task: to sit patiently sewing, each stitch an act of faith in the future of both her child and herself, stemmed up anxiety and sorrow and made her feel at peace. But Mabs wouldn’t have it.

  “It’s unlucky to sew for babies before they’re born,” said Mabs, peering over Liffey’s shoulder
s.

  “I hadn’t heard that,” said Liffey.

  “Well, now you have. It’s tempting providence.”

  “I suppose it is, in a way.”

  “Come over and use my machine. And stay for lunch,” said Mabs.

  So Liffey took the pile of old flannelette sheets that Mrs. Lee-Fox senior had sent her by parcel post and walked over to Cadbury Farm and sat in the kitchen, where Mabs’s children yammered and cowered and snivelled and were slapped and shouted at, and used the sewing machine and wondered if she really wanted a child.

  The baby kicked Liffey. It had changed its position. Its head lay somewhere over her left groin, its legs tucked under her right ribs. Sometimes it waved its elbows and made her gasp. It’s not what you want, it seemed to say, it’s what I want.

  Tucker was out with the cows. A cat sat by the fire. Eddie crouched beside it, poking at its eyes with a stick. Jab, jab.

  “You leave the cat alone,” shrieked Mabs, “or I’ll have you put away.”

  Jab, jab, jab, went Eddie, until his mother seized him and flung him half across the room.

  Mabs served cabbage and bacon for lunch. She would let the cabbage cook for a couple of hours, then squeeze and press some of the water out of it, and cut it into wedges.

  Mabs walked with Liffey back to the cottage after lunch. She said she wanted the exercise. Liffey wished she didn’t. Moreover, she ran her large hands over Liffey’s tummy before they set out, and Liffey wished she wouldn’t do that either.

  “It’s a girl,” said Mabs, “you can tell. What do you want? A boy?”

  “I don’t mind,” said Liffey. “So long as it’s human.”

  It was a little joke she made, but Mabs seemed to think she was serious.

  Mabs saw the puffball.

  “Look,” she said. “Isn’t it horrible!” And she pulled back the long grasses and ran her hands over its surface rather as she had run them over Liffey’s tummy. Then she straightened up and kicked the puffball, and it spattered into pieces. “I can’t abide those things,” Mabs said. “Coming up from nowhere like that.”

  Liffey felt quite sick and trembled, but Mabs smiled pleasantly, and they walked on.

  “They’re only big mushrooms,” said Liffey presently. “They don’t do any harm.”

  “Can’t abide them,” said Mabs. “Nor does Tucker. No one round here does.”

  Liffey sat for a while after Mabs had gone. It was a lovely, warm afternoon. Bees droned, sun glazed, flowers glowed.

  Preparations

  Changes had recently been occurring in the lower part of Liffey’s uterus. It was gradually softening and shortening, in preparation for labour, and it was to this lower part, of course, that the baby’s placenta was attached. Now the placenta separated itself fractionally from the uterus, and Liffey lost a few drops of blood, but failed to notice. For there was a thunderstorm over the Tor that evening and lightning struck a cable, so that there was a powercut. Mabs had to take out her candles again, but Liffey had none and had to undress in the dark and did not notice the staining.

  “Make the lights come on again,” said Tucker to Mabs, half joking, and no sooner had he spoken than they came on. “You’re a witch,” said Tucker, “that’s your trouble,” and then had to spend half the night pacifying her. She did not like to be called a witch by anyone, let alone her husband.

  The doctor sent Sister Davis, the midwife, up to see Liffey.

  Sister Davis was a slender, doe-eyed girl, who had no intention of ever having a baby herself.

  “No bleeding?” she asked.

  “No,” said Liffey.

  “The minute there is,” said Sister Davis, “you’ll come along in to hospital, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” said Liffey.

  “I don’t know why they haven’t taken you in already,” said Sister Davis. “Of course they’re short of staff up there and it’s a question of priorities.”

  “I feel fine,” said Liffey. “I really do.”

  “Up here, on your own,” said Sister Davis, running expert hands over Liffey’s tummy. “No telephone, no husband. It isn’t right.”

  “It’s very peaceful,” said Liffey.

  “And you have good neighbours,” said Sister Davis, “that’s the main thing. Mabs Pierce is an old hand at motherhood. I wonder when her next will be? She’s leaving it longer than usual.”

  “I don’t think she wants any more,” said Liffey, surprised.

  “No? What a pity. She’s such a lovely mother. The babies slip out like loaves from a greased tin!”

  Sister Davis reported to the doctor that Mrs. Lee-Fox seemed in good health and spirits, and she was sure that Mabs Pierce would keep an eye on her. The doctor replied that somebody ought to be keeping an eye on Mabs Pierce and sent the health visitor up.

  The health visitor called in to see Mabs.

  “You’ll keep an eye on Mrs. Lee-Fox, won’t you?” said the health visitor, an eye on Eddie’s facial bruises.

  “Of course,” said Mabs.

  “What’s the matter with Eddie’s face?” asked the health visitor.

  “Fell into the grate,” said Mabs, “didn’t you, Eddie?”

  “That’s right,” said Eddie. Mabs clasped Eddie to her with a spurt of genuine affection. She was feeling better. She felt that in some way or other she’d off-loaded a bit of bad.

  Eddie looked up at his mother with such evident pleasure and gratitude that the health visitor decided she’d better let well alone. Even if you feared a child was being battered, the problem of alternatives remained. Mrs. Wild was of the opinion that short of death, a natural home was better than an unnatural one, with changing foster parents, or in institutions. The child’s spirit died, in any case, if the mother failed to love it, no matter who intervened—just the same way as its body would die if she failed to nurture it. And once the spirit died, you could do what you liked with the body, and make yourself feel better, but scarcely ever the child.

  Eddie’s spirit hovered on the brink of life and death.

  Liffey’s baby floated free and wild. In normal first pregnancies the baby’s head descends into the cavity of the pelvis at the thirty-eighth week, a process known as lightening, inasmuch as the pressure on lungs and heart and digestive organs lessens and the mother thereafter feels more comfortable. Liffey’s baby’s head did no such thing: it could not. The placenta barred its way. Liffey’s baby did not care. Liffey’s baby, headstrong, trusted to a providence that had already acted against it, whether twisted by Mabs’s malevolent will or merely by the laws of chance. One pregnancy in a hundred is a placenta praevia. Does every one of those foetuses have a Mabs in the background? Surely not; such foetuses are merely accident prone, or event prone, as some individuals are, at some time or other in their lives. Ladders fall on them or pigs out of windows, or bombs go off as they approach; or, in country terms, their crops fail and their cattle sicken and a witch has overlooked them.

  Liffey’s baby, overlooked or accident prone, take it how you will, leapt in Liffey’s womb, and its umbilical cord—now twenty inches long—exerted gentle pressure on the upper side of the placenta; so that it slid further over to cover Liffey’s cervix fully. And then it leapt again and contrived an actual knot in the cord, but fortunately—or whatever we mean by that word —the knot did not tighten, and the cord continued to supply the foetus with blood through its two ingoing arteries and remove it through its single outgoing vein. But there the knot was, and should it tighten, that would be the end of that.

  The baby sang to Liffey: Liffey drowsed: the knot did not tighten. Nor did Liffey’s blood pressure rise: it stayed at around 20/77 of mercury—the upper figure being the pressure reached within the blood vessel at the height of a heart beat, and the lower figure being the minimum level to which the pressure falls between heart beats. The upper figure could vary, safely enough, with exercise, fatigue, excitement and emotion—and indeed had risen dramatically when Mabs kicked the puffball to piece
s—but the lower figure could only vary as a result of some fundamental change in the circulation, which might tend to reduce the blood supply to the uterus, placenta and baby, and result in what must at all costs be avoided—premature delivery.

  Catharsis

  In London the sun shone day after day. It was hot. Karen’s boyfriend, Pete, was found asleep in the potting shed and lost his job. He turned up at Karen’s house and introduced himself to Karen’s mother. Karen’s mother was a psycho-therapist, and asked him in.

  “How dare you have him in the house without asking me first,” shouted Karen, all red hair and spoilt pout, already on her way to Ray’s.

  Helga let her in. Ray and Bella and Richard were all out. Karen watched Helga wash dishes and peel potatoes and despised her.

  Ray came home and was both disconcerted and delighted to find Karen in his kitchen.

  “I’ve left home,” said Karen.

  “You can stay here,” said Ray. “Bella won’t mind. You can help Helga with the children.”

  They went upstairs. Helga chattered and crashed. Karen revealed to Ray that Bella was having an affair with Richard, an item of news she knew from an unkept confidence of her mother. Ray hit Karen, so shocked was he; Karen fell into Bella’s arms as she returned home with Richard. Ray knocked Richard down the stairs, and Karen ran shrieking from the house.

  Ray’s nose bled heartily from Bella’s blow, and she had to mop him up in the bathroom, her own eyes blurred with tears of remorse and indignation mixed. Richard rose, dazed and alone, from the floor, and gathered his belongings and prepared to leave, out into the night, wondering where he would go.

  But Bella and Ray barred his way.

  “Don’t go,” said Ray, “we must talk everything out,” and they led him by the hand to the kitchen, and there they sat all night eating French bread and Brie, and drinking coffee, and more coffee, and whisky and more whisky, while tears ran and voices grew husky, and childhoods were remembered and rankling incidents recalled, and marital failures and erotic disappointments mulled over.