Ray and Tony were silent.
“That was a flying saucer,” said Ray eventually.
“Don’t be stupid, Dad,” said Tony, embarrassed. “Anyway don’t call them flying saucers. They’re UFOs.”
“But you do agree we saw one?”
“No, I don’t,” said Tony wretchedly.
Ray ran back to report his sighting, and had to wake a sleeping house to do so. Bella was angry.
“Your brain’s gone to jelly,” she shouted. “You’re so afraid of your own mortality you’ve taken to seeing things.”
“It was real, Bella.”
“Tony, did you see the same thing as your father did?”
“There was something, Mum, but it could have been a fireball or a shooting star or something.”
Ray took hold of Tony and shook him.
“If you ask me,” said Bella, “that’s the first physical contact you’ve had with your son since the day he was born.”
Ray stopped shaking.
“Everything wonderful in my life,” he said to Bella sadly, “you destroy. I can’t even see a flying saucer but you entirely spoil and diminish the event.”
“UFO,” said Tony.
The quarrel continued until it was impossible for Bella and Ray to stay under the same roof. Tony and Tina wandered in the garden. Bella demanded that Richard take her to the station at once, and Ray got in the car at the last moment, and Liffey did what she could to comfort Tony and Tina. Their parents did not have the spiritual energy left to say goodbye.
Bella got to her publisher’s party.
Richard was laughing when he got home. “Oh, Liffey, darling,” he said, “how lucky we are. We’ve had our hard times, but things are going to be better from now on.”
He touched no wood as he spoke.
The Unexpected
Sun glazed, flowers glowed, bees droned. Richard and Liffey walked down the lane from Honeycomb Cottage to Cadbury Farm on the way to Sunday lunch. They held hands. Tony and Tina, taken aback by their parents’ sudden departure, walked behind, subdued.
Now, in late summer, after a season of Liffey’s tending, the cottage might have graced the top of a chocolate box. Hollyhocks, roses and wallflowers tumbled together against the whitewashed walls; swallows dived and soared above the thatch; Tucker’s black-and-white cows grazed serenely in the field behind; down on the stream moorhens paddled against the current in the dappled shadow of weeping willows. Peas and beans and carrots flourished again in the small vegetable patch, and there would have been potatoes in the field had it not been for the hungry cows.
“You do make the best of everything, Liffey,” said Richard contentedly as they walked.
He carried a puffball with him. It was tucked under his arm. It seemed to stare ahead as he walked; there were, by chance, blemishes spaced like eyes and mouth on its smooth surface. He was taking it as a gift for Mabs.
“I’m not sure she’ll appreciate it,” Liffey said.
“But they’re so nourishing,” Richard replied, “and so delicious. I’ll convert her.”
They came to the end of the wood. The long grey building of Cadbury Farm lay before them, with its crumbling dry stone walls, and the neglected outhouses, with their collapsing red-tiled roofs. Away to the right of them the ground swept down and across the levels of the valley, past small villages and hedgerowed meadows, threaded by ribbons of road, where toy cars and lorries trundled, to where the Tor rose, suddenly and dramatically, at odds with the gentle landscape that surrounded it.
“They say there’s a magnetic-force line straight from the Tor to Jerusalem,” said Richard.
“Who says?”
“Can’t remember,” said Richard. It had been Vanessa. She had told him to find a pine tree on a ley line and lean against it whenever his system needed revitalising. She had told him about twisted apple trees and yews that marked the radiating force lines from the Tor; about the old roads between Stonehenge and Glastonbury; about how it was no coincidence that he lived in London in the shadow of Primrose Hill—also seat of power—and in the country in the shadow of the Tor. Deciding, by virtue of his dwelling place, that Richard must be a rather special person after all, she had allowed him to sleep with her, and declared herself revitalised by the encounter and not—as she had feared—enervated. But she would not repeat the experience, no matter how his by now practiced hand strayed over her long, young, cool body. Once was enough, she said. They knew all there was about one another now—she’d as soon recharge herself against a pine tree or a ley line. But could he get her another modelling job?
Richard thought he probably couldn’t, but since then had regarded the Tor with more respect, as something with spiritual meaning, which could bring good things about, rather than a tourist trap for ruined abbey and UFO freaks. Things had gone wrong since then. He’d talked to Vanessa about Liffey.
“I didn’t know you were married,” she’d said, surprised. “I don’t want to get into all that scene. You should have told me.
“I didn’t think marriage mattered to you lot, one way or another.”
But it had seemed to; she had said she’d ring him when she’d worked things out, but hadn’t rung: and Richard was vaguely sorry, since Vanessa was restful, and her expectations from sex so little that he was bound to please, and his attempts at seduction for that reason unclouded but relieved as well. All that was behind him now.
“You’re not tired?” he asked now solicitously.
“No,” said Liffey. But she was. From time to time she had a dragging pain in her abdomen.
Labour
Thirty-eight weeks. The average duration of pregnancy is forty weeks, but can vary from woman to woman, and from one pregnancy to another, and from one marriage to another. Each pregnancy differs: each woman differs. Liffey’s baby was ready.
All through life the muscles of a woman’s uterus, like the muscles in the rest of her body, contract and relax from time to time, lest they waste away. All through pregnancy uterine contractions occur, every half hour or less, for about half a minute at a time. In late pregnancy they become noticeable, though not painful: they are known as Braxton Hicks contractions. When labour begins, these contractions become regular, stronger, and more forceful. They last for forty seconds or more: they mount to a crescendo more slowly, fade away more gradually. As labour progresses, uterine contractions come at shorter and shorter intervals; they are designed to eliminate the canal of the cervix without damaging its muscle, incorporating it into the lower uterine segment, so that the baby can be expelled. The upper uterine segment, where the contraction begins, and which consists almost entirely of muscle, behaves during labour in a unique way, known as retraction. It shortens itself slightly after every contraction, thus increasing its pulling power on the lower segment, which is already much stretched and weakened by the baby it contains. The pressures produced inside are considerable. The cervix, as the canal above it is, little by little, inexorably, drawn up, widens, or dilates, eventually making an opening some nine and a half centimeters in diameter, enough for the baby’s head to pass through—all going well with the baby, that is. This first stage of labour, as it is called, takes a different length of time in different women, varying from two hours to twenty-four but with some exceptions either side. It is not possible to anticipate the duration of a labour, or whether the contractions will be experienced as discomfort or pain: but as a rough working estimate, it requires some one hundred and fifty contractions to produce a first child, about seventy-five for a second or third child, and about fifty for a fourth.
Liffey, walking down the lane with Richard, had a mild backache and a slight dragging pain in her tummy, but so she’d had from time to time over the past few weeks. Earlier in the morning she’d had an uprush of energy—had swept and cleaned and even scrubbed, under and around her warring guests, but this had now passed, leaving her soft and languid.
“What a pity,” said Mabs when they got to the farm, “I was expecting
your smart London friends. So was Tucker. Weren’t you, Tucker!”
“They had to get back in a hurry,” said Richard.
“London folk are always in a hurry,” said Mabs, shooing Tina and Tony out into the yard. “I suppose my invitation wasn’t good enough for the likes of them.”
She was annoyed. Richard offered her the puffball by way of pacification. It made her laugh.
“God-awful things,” she said. “You’re quite mad, Richard." But she consented to slice it, a little later, and place it under the roast to catch the drippings and serve it like Yorkshire pudding.
“Just because I never have,” said Mabs nobly, “is no reason why I never should.” Her annoyance seemed to have evaporated. She smiled at Liffey and pulled back a chair for her, saying, “Don’t go into the parlour, since it’s only you. Stay and talk while I work.”
Tucker served elderberry wine, clearing a space on the crowded Jtable for bottle and glasses.
“How are you keeping, Liffey?” he asked. “No pains?”
“No more than usual,” said Liffey.
“She’s not allowed to produce for another two weeks,” said Richard. “I can’t take time off until then.”
“You’re not going to be theresaid Mabs in horror.
“Fathers are supposed to be,” said Richard helplessly.
“Liffey, you wouldn’t want him to see you in that state?” demanded Mabs.
Both Mabs and Tucker wore their Sunday best. Tucker was wearing a collar and tie, which somehow diminished him. It made him seem uneasy and ordinary, and grimy rather than weathered, as if the ingraining accomplished by sun and wind was the mark of poverty. Mabs wore an oyster-coloured silk blouse, already splashed by juices from the rib of beef she was roasting and the sprouts she was stewing, but her hair was pulled firmly and neatly back, showing her broad face to advantage. She has lost weight recently, Liffey decided, and that made her high cheek bones more prominent and her dark eyes larger and more glittery than usual. Moreover, Mabs, who seldom so much as looked in a mirror but saw herself, as it were, defined by sky and hills, had today outlined them with black.
A witch, thought Liffey. A witch preparing for witchery. The ceremonial has begun.
Nonsense, thought Liffey. My neighbour, about whom I sometimes get strange fancies, connected no doubt with my pregnancy. My neighbour, the salt of the earth.
“I don’t think it’s going to apply,” said Liffey. “I’m going to have a Caesarian anyway. Or so they say.”
“They only say you might, Liffey,” said Richard. “Don’t exaggerate.”
“It’s natural for her to get nervous,” said Tucker, “at this stage.”
“The way I look at it,” said Mabs, “a man’s place during child-birth is down at the pub.”
Everyone laughed. Even Liffey.
Tony and Tina had been given a bag of crisps each and sent out to play with the others. The others were nowhere to be seen, so they sat on a wall and swung their legs and waited, with some alarm, for further events to transpire. They were hungry, but relieved not to have to sit down with the grown-ups for dinner. They were accustomed to the stripped pine furniture, uncluttered lines and primary colours of home, and found the rich dark mahogany and oak, the dust, and litter and the crumbling walls of the Pierce’s kitchen oppressive. They were accustomed, moreover, to adults who talked to them and who did not offer them crisps in lieu of conversation. They were accustomed to Richard but did not trust him; liked Liffey but judged that she was hardly in a condition to look after them; were angry with their parents for abandoning them; and missed Helga. They munched and crunched their crisps, and were silent, faces impassive.
Mabs had got their names wrong—had taken Tina for a boy, Tony for a girl.
“You can’t tell which is which,” she complained in their hearing. “I’d be ashamed to let my children out looking like that.”
Debbie was locked in her room again. Today the reason given was that she had failed to clean her father’s Sunday shoes. She lay with her legs drawn up to her chest, occasionally vomiting and groaning. She had had another dose of buckthorn to cure her constipation.
Buckthorn was a tall shrub that grew in the woods around. It had little creamy white flowers in spring and inviting black berries in autumn, and grew, in these parts, without thorns. The thorny kind, or Spina-Christi, provided Christ’s crown of thorns; Mabs’s kind, though without thorns, provided a powerful cascara-like purgative, which she prepared, with sugar and ginger, from the dried berries, and with which, like her mother, grandmother and great-grandmother before her, she dosed her children, doing them one damage or another. It was a local custom so to do. Dr. Southey would suggest to mothers that they keep it for cows, but they politely agreed and kept on dosing. Sometimes he thought he would emigrate and take a post in Central Africa, where superstition and witchcraft would be something clear and definite to be grappled with, not a running, secret thread through the fabric of life.
Eddie played silently in the corridor outside Debbie’s room. He crouched on the floor, listening to her groans, zooming his hand over the rug like a dive-bombing plane. There were blue bruises on his upper arms. Eddie was waiting for Audrey to come back from church. Audrey had a nice voice and a natural ear and had joined the church choir, partly because she could make thirty-five pence a wedding and more for funerals and partly because she fancied the curate, Mr. Simon Eaves. She looked at him with large, glittery, inviting eyes, and he struggled to believe there was no invitation in them; she was a child.
Today Audrey asked if she could stay behind after church and speak to him, and Mr. Eaves felt he could not very well refuse, and also that it would be prudent not to see her alone.
“Well,” said Mabs, preparing the puffball for the oven, “I don’t know about you lot, but I’m certainly looking forward to the baby. You’ve really made me feel quite broody, Liffey.”
She sliced into the puffball with too blunt a knife, so that the edge crumbled as if it were a ripe Stilton she was parting and not an edible fungus.
As she cut through the flesh, not cleanly, but bruising and chipping on the way, she stared at Liffey’s stomach.
“I’m imagining it,” thought Liffey. If she were doing it on purpose, surely Richard would have noticed? But Richard smiled amiably on, his mind on good red meat juices and the creamy texture of roasted puffball. And Tucker stared into space and drank.
But why does Mabs hate me, wondered Liffey. I am not a hateful person. I am a nice person. Everyone likes me. They may forget me, but if I’m around, they like me.
I have slept with Mabs’s husband, but Mabs doesn’t know that. Mabs can’t know. Tucker was lying.
When the knife had pierced to the very centre of the puffball, Mabs gave it another twist.
She hates my baby too. She wants to kill it.
Liffey looked at Richard for help. Richard was speaking.
“Puffballs are truly amazing. Nature’s richest bounty. And you can hang them up and dry them, and then they make wonderful firelighters. Did you know that, Tucker?”
“Can’t say I did,” said Tucker. “We use a gas poker to light our fires, in any case.”
He smiled at Richard as he spoke, as a grown-up might smile at a rather slow child, and then he looked at Liffey with a sympathetic expression on his face, which would have been pleasant enough except that Mabs was watching Tucker watching her, and Mabs’s eyes seemed not just brown, dark brown, but deepest black.
Things fell into place.
Mabs knows Tucker comes up to see me. Tucker wasn’t lying. Mabs knows. Knows he came up again, and I let him.
Make it a dream.
Dinner is served, in the cold dining room, on the French- polished table. It is a room that is hardly ever used. .
“So, Liffey,” said Mabs brightly. Tucker carved. Mabs served. A face appeared briefly and hungrily at the window, and disappeared again. Tina’s. “Only two weeks more to go. I expect you’ll be glad when
it’s over.”
“I like being pregnant,” said Liffey brightly. Liffey knew that she must now assert her will against Mabs: must oppose bad with good, must send out against her such spiritual forces as she could muster. Mabs had a strong, evil battalion already assembled: as she doled out mixed thawed peas and carrots, and roast and mashed potatoes both, she doled out spite, anger, enmity and mystery. They were hers to distribute.
Wonderful dinner! Liffey said so.
Liffey must be cheerful, honest, ordinary, positive and kind. Then all might still be well. She must set up a bulwark of goodwill. Her defence must be an armoury of opposites. She had no attacking weapons. She could not love Mabs, who had stuck a knife through Liffey, into Liffey’s baby, and twisted.
Mabs, who limped when you drove a nail through her footprint.
Ha-ha.
Yes, Richard. Mabs, witch. Do you know? Are you part of it too?
Oh madness! Paranoia! Pregnancy!
Liffey looked down at her plate. On Richard’s plate and Tucker’s were good thick lean and shapely slices of roast rib of beef. On her, Liffey’s, plate was a little mound of fat and gristle.
Mabs watched Liffey watching her plate. Liffey raised her eyes and stared at Mabs.
Mabs smiled. Mabs knew. Mabs knew that Liffey knew that Mabs knew.
Richard noticed nothing, or pretended to notice nothing. He was fishing for more puffball slices with Tucker’s carving fork.
“Give Liffey a decent piece of meat,” said Tucker mildly.
“She doesn’t want too much at this stage,” said Mabs, “do you Liffey?”
“I’m fine,” said Liffey, “really fine with what I’ve got.”
Well done, Liffey.
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