by Jane Rogers
“Soil’s not bad. Did you use anything on it?”
“No – no I didn’t. I didn’t know what.”
“Well, never any harm in a bit of manure. It’s not so easy to come by these days though. They’re all these chemical things now – I dare say they’re just as good really. It’s a bit heavy, isn’t it? You could do with a spot of sand in it.” He stooped over the sweet peas and examined them.
Carolyn watched him, caught between her astonishment at his presence here, and the sudden absolutely natural way they were talking. At home, before the accident, he hadn’t said so much to her for years. She hadn’t really thought about him, she realized. About him missing her or worrying. It had all been Mum. He came back and crouched by her side, staring at the garden as he spoke.
“I took the liberty of calling,” he said.
“Dad!” she interrupted him. “You can come any time. You or Mum –”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s about your Mum I wanted a word with you. She’s taken all this badly, Carolyn.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, almost maddeningly slowly. Adjusting her position and half closing her eyes against the sun, she too stared out over the garden, waiting for him to get to the point.
“She’s had a lot of disappointments in her life. She lost the first two babies, you know that, and she’s always done her best for you. She’s always worked hard and thought of you. She’s not –” He hesitated. “She’s taking it badly now. She doesn’t understand, you see, why you’ve never been home.”
“I did,” Carolyn said quickly. “I came for that weekend. Then I came, oh, a couple of Saturdays ago.”
“Last month,” he said. “Yes. But it’s a shock, you see, after expecting you home all that time you was in hospital – it’s not what she expected, that you would be off somewhere else. She’s – well, you’re important to her. Girls are, aren’t they, to their mothers. I don’t want. . . . She’s worried about you. Of course she is – it’s only natural.”
There was silence.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Carolyn.
“Well,” he said slowly. “I don’t want you living in our pockets. When it’s time for you to go, then you must go. But she broods, you see. At the weekends she broods. She sits and thinks about you. It would cheer her up if you came for your tea.” He paused. “Children do grow up, I know,” he said, staring at the bean poles. “They do grow up.”
It seemed inconclusive. He straightened his knees. “You do what you like, lass. I’m glad to see this, you’ve done well here. You can have some carnation slips next time you come home.” He turned to go.
“Dad – Dad – don’t you want a drink or –”
“No lass, I’m on my way to pick up a radiator. I’m on garage time already.”
He glanced at his watch. Suddenly he looked awkward, she saw his shoulders tense and his head duck slightly as they neared the french windows.
“Here, you can get out this way Dad, there’s a side gate.” She led him round and past the greenhouse.
“Right then,” he said, “Thanks,” and hurried away without kissing her goodbye.
She wandered slowly back to the garden. He must remember those days well she thought. Yet he had come here on her mother’s account, not on his own. He was content to let it go. Childishly, she wished she could still go gardening with him. She could have asked him about the carrots. Substantial memory melted suddenly to consciousness of present loss. As she grew up, her father had been of no account to her. Whose fault was it? Her mother’s? But he had always chosen to stand back; to be busy. He believed that children were the woman’s affair. She felt that between them, they had cheated her.
Chapter 12
Alan, Carolyn and Christopher moved into a flat the September after he was born. It was the converted first floor of a large terraced house, within walking distance of the university. Alan continued to work hard at his course, and Carolyn looked after the baby and kept house. Christopher was a slight child, with rather too thin arms and legs, and little flat wrists which always gave Carolyn a stab of apprehensive fear when she noticed them. His face was elfin, with wide grey eyes and a fuzz of pale hair, more like the fluff on a duckling than human hair. He was a demanding baby, and rarely slept through the night, even when he was a year old. When she heard him, Carolyn got up quietly, pressing the blankets down again to stop the cold air getting at Alan’s back. She crept into Chrissy’s room, shutting the door silently behind her. She was usually able to rock him back to sleep quite quickly. He fell asleep with one arm curled around her head, clutching a handful of her hair, his other thumb in his mouth. The only moment of danger was as she laid him in his cot again. Sometimes then he would wake and start to cry.
She dreaded Alan waking up. He would roll over heavily and sigh and say, “Oh that damned child,” and then, “I’ll go, I’ll go – you stay here.” He would get up and blunder about falling over shoes and unable to find his dressing gown, until at last the light had to be turned on to sort him out, and Chrissy had worked himself into a frenzy. When he went into Chrissy’s room he said, “Well, what’s up then?” too loudly. She listened, shrinking under the blankets, for Chrissy’s angry wail at the sight of him, and the “Mu – Mu – Mu!” that he chanted when he wanted her. Alan always came back defeated, sooner or later, and then it took her twice as long to settle the child. It was so much better if she could slip out quietly and not let Alan know. Sometimes Alan said, “He didn’t wake at all last night, did he?” with such pleased pride that she smiled and shook her head. What did it matter, a little white lie like that? Anyway, Alan needed his sleep, he had books to read, plans to draw, and essays to write. You can’t think clearly on four hours’ sleep. It was better not to let him know that Chris woke regularly two or three times every night.
When he was twenty months old he became ill. The doctor examined him cursorily and told Carolyn that it was some kind of viral infection.
“Keep him warm and give him plenty to drink. His temperature may well go up before it goes down. Nothing to worry about.” He left two prescriptions.
Chris was plagued by a dry ticklish cough which kept him (and Carolyn) awake for the best part of three nights, and on which the cough medicine had little effect. He refused all food and she could hardly get him to drink. Within a few days he was a pitiful sight, white-faced with huge puffy red-rimmed eyes, his thin hair plastered to his head with sweat and the comfortable roundness of his baby tummy melted away. He cried on Carolyn’s shoulder, through pure discomfort and weariness, she believed, rocking him automatically and feeling like crying too.
Meg gave lots of good advice down the phone. It was she who suggested feeding drinks by the spoonful, and bathing his poor red eyes in a weak solution of bicarb. of soda. She offered to come down for the weekend to help, and Carolyn wanted her badly enough to hesitate before putting her off. There wasn’t a spare bed, for a start – but the main thing was that she knew it would annoy Alan. He was working hard to complete a special project for Friday, and had already told her he would give her a hand at the weekend. He would be angry if she preferred her mother’s help to his.
On Thursday night Chris came out in dark red blotches. Carolyn, appalled, called Alan to look. After a moment’s shocked silence, he said triumphantly – “Measles!” Of course it was, she realized. Measles, nothing worse. All children caught it. He didn’t have meningitis, or scarlet fever. He wouldn’t die. She felt light-headed with relief.
“Of course!” cried her mother, on the phone. “I should have realized when you told me about his eyes. I am a fool. I was lucky with you, you didn’t get it till you were at school, so you were that much older. But you were bad with your eyes all the same, I remember you were in a darkened room for days. Eh –” she laughed “– I remember, I put a headscarf over the lamp, and your Dad gave me such a telling off. It was singed – you know, scorched, when he took it off. Could have had the whole place up in flames.”
When they h
ad finished talking, Carolyn crept into Chrissy’s room with two kitchen chairs, and draped her shawl over them like a tent, and put the lamp underneath.
On Friday night Alan had met his project deadline, and spent the evening in the pub, celebrating with a few others from his course. When he went to bed he fell into a dead sleep. He woke in the small hours, feeling cold, and moved over to be closer to Carolyn’s warm body. But she wasn’t there. He groaned, and curled himself into a ball. Then he poked his head out from the covers to listen. He couldn’t hear anything. He recurled and waited, for what seemed ages. There was still no sound. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep in Christopher’s room. She’d begetting cold. He reached for his watch. Quarter to four. He put on his dressing gown and opened the bedroom door. He could hear her voice talking softly now, from inside Chrissy’s room. He moved to stand by the door, his head an inch from the wood. Her voice was clear and light, its pitch was always a shock to him, when he heard her without seeing her. She was crooning to the child. “Chrissy, Chrissy love, bumble-face, listen – just have a spoonful my sweet, just a little taste – open wide, come on love, open wide. . . . Good boy, good boy. That was nice, wasn’t it? Oh my lovely, look at your little eyes, they look like bee-stings. Sweetest bird, my sweetest love, oh, oh, it’ll soon be better. D’you want a drink? Chrissy? Here, try it, just a little, come on.” The child coughed and began to cry half-heartedly. “All right, never mind, hush, hush – listen Chrissy, what sort of a noise does a bee make, hmmn?”
There was a silence, then she laughed. “That’s what he does, that’s what he does, bzz, bzz. Ooops-a-daisy, up he comes, bzz, bzz, he’scorning, he’s coming –” The child made a noise which sounded like a mixture of laugh and cry. “Here he comes, no, no Chrissy, hush – listen, what does he do then? Mmmn? Off he goes, bzz, bzz, look – till becomes to the dog’s house. And he knocks on the door, tap tap tap with his little feet and he says, Bzz bzz, Mr Dog, have you got any flowers for me to eat? And the dog says – ?”
After a pause Chrissy’s high voice sounded pathetically, “Woo, woo.”
“Very good! and oh! up jumps the bee and goes buzzing over to the other side – to – to Max’s book, and he says to Max, bzz, bzz Mr Max, have you got any flowers for me to eat? and Max says – ssh, can you hear him . . . ?” Her voice trailed off and started up again after a minute, in a whisper. “So the bee picked up his flowers and flew back home to his friend Christopher, and said, night night, Christopher.” There was silence.
After a long while Alan opened the door a crack. The room was very dim, he saw that she had suspended a shawl over the light, so that it shone dappled on walls and ceiling above. Although it was so dark, it reminded him of summer, being under thick leafy forest trees in sunlight. She was sitting in the armchair with the baby curled over her left shoulder, his head buried in her neck, and both his hands clasped around her head. Alan saw that her eyes were closed. She had not heard the door as it softly brushed the carpet. Christopher’s outstretched right hand was running slowly through her hair, touching her head at the roots and pulling the hair outwards so that it fell back like a fan. Alan saw that she herself stroked the back of the child’s head rhythmically with her right hand. Her face was relaxed. He stepped forward, then stopped uselessly. He wanted to tell her to come back to bed, to put the child down now he was quiet. Something in the syncopated rhythmic movement of their two stroking hands stopped him though. In the uneven forest-dappled light, the mother and child were quite self-contained. He stood staring for another minute, then turned and, shutting the door silently behind him, went back to the cold bed.
Alan was having his breakfast when Carolyn came into the kitchen in her dressing gown.
“Want some tea? I was just going to bring you some.”
“Please. He’s asleep, I don’t know how long for.” She slumped in a chair and folded her arms across her chest.
“You look awful,” Alan observed, pouring boiling water on to a tea-bag.
“So does he. It’s horrible – it’s really pathetic. His little eyes are completely raw, he can hardly open them.” She paused. “Thanks. It’s not just the spots, he’s all puffed up and swollen with it. I just feel as if there’s nothing I can do. He won’t drink, hardly at all.” She fell silent, sipping at her tea. Alan watched her, noticing the pallor of her face and deep rings under her eyes.
“When did you last go out of the house?” he asked suddenly.
“What?”
“When did you last go out?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t go out yesterday or the day before, I know. Or Wednesday. Did you go out on Tuesday?”
“Alan, I don’t know. I don’t even know what day it is. Of course I can’t go out while he’s got a temperature.”
“You’ll make yourself ill.”
“I’m all right. I’m just tired. I wish it was over, that’s all.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“When?”
“Last night. When he woke up.”
“Alan –” she looked up at him, laughing disbelievingly. “What’s the point? He’s not sleeping for more than two hours at a time at the moment. I know what he needs. I know where his medicine and his drink are, when I last changed him, everything. There’s no point in both of us being awake all night, it’s not going to make him get better any quicker.”
“In other words, you can do without me.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Alan. You have to go to college don’t you? What am I supposed to do?”
There was silence while Alan turned the pages of the paper mechanically.
“Well I’m at home today. What needs doing?”
“I don’t know. Do what you want.”
Speechless with weary anger, she cut herself two crooked slices of bread and put them under the grill.
“Why are you so angry?”
“Because – because it’s just so unfair. I’m up all night for nights and you don’t thank me, you act as if I’m trying to exclude you from something. All you think about is yourself. It’s incredible.”
“All right!” he shouted, jumping up and slapping the paper down on the table.
“Sssh – shut up, don’t wake him!”
Alan sat down again, knotting his legs around one another so that he made a dangerously tight parcel. “All right,” he said quietly. “I’m selfish. I go out all day to college having a lovely time while you stay at home making yourself ill. I don’t have to go. I don’t have to pass exams or get a job, we don’t need the money – oh no, I do all this purely for my own amusement.”
“I’m not talking to you.” She stood by the oven, rubbing one barefoot against the other, glaring at the toast which was already burnt.
“Carolyn! It’s on fire!” He jumped up and tipped the flaming toast into the sink. “Sit down. I’ll make you some.”
When she was eating her toast he said, “What d’you want me to do today, then? Why don’t you go and have a sleep for a couple of hours while I keep an eye on Chris?”
“I – no, he’s – I want to – can you go to the chemist’s for me? He needs some more fruit juice. Delrosa, get the orange and the rose-hip, and some disposable nappies? I’m not – they’re all dirty, I didn’t do them yesterday, they won’t be dry. And something for dinner –”
“OK.”
Alan went into the bathroom. Carolyn sat with her eyes closed listening to the water running and the traffic outside. Alan came in again. “No. You go.”
She looked up blankly.
“Look Carolyn, this is ridiculous. You haven’t been outside that door for days. Ever since he got ill – for nearly a week, I bet. If I can’t look after my own son for a couple of hours while you go shopping, heaven help us.”
“But Alan, he’ll wake up soon.”
“Good. Why can’t I give him his breakfast? Get dressed and go, go on.”
Carolyn went slowly to the bedroom. When she came back, tears were running dow
n her face.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t want to go. Alan, you go.”
“Carolyn, you’re becoming unhinged. You know what you want to buy better than I do anyway. What d’you think’s going to happen? D’you think I’ll let him die? Come on lass, pull yourself together.” Kindly, he dried her face on a tea-towel, helped her on with her coat and shepherded her down the stairs.
“I haven’t looked at him,” she wailed.
“Carolyn, I’ll go and look at him as soon as I shut the door on you. Go on. I’ll see you soon.”
He stood for a moment listening to her standing still on the other side of the door, then heard her footsteps moving slowly away. Running upstairs to the sitting-room window, he was in time to see her cross the road, staring up and down vaguely like a blind person. It was ridiculous. She was a nervous wreck, and all that was wrong with the child was measles.
He went quietly into Chrissy’s room, stopping inside the door for a minute until his eyes adjusted to the dimness. She had rigged up an old green bedspread over the thin cotton curtains, so the room was very dim with a murky greenish light. Chrissy’s breathing was fast and rasping in his throat. He slept with his mouth open, lips pouting like a pig’s snout. His face was puffy and covered in dark blotches. It looked mishapen in this light, almost as if something was eating away at it. His hair was like streaks of dirt on his head. Alan put his fingertips close, touched the top of the head lightly. Heat was radiating off it.
He crept back into the kitchen and made himself another cup of tea. As he was stirring it he heard Christopher cough and start to cry. Quickly he went to pick him up. “Hello Christopher, hello old mate. Well, what’s up then? Would you like a drink, eh?”
He lifted the child gently from the cot. Christopher’s feeble complaining cry continued. Alan wrapped one of his cot blankets round his shoulders and took him to the kitchen to make a drink. As they entered the kitchen Christopher let out a wail, ducking his head in towards Alan’s body. “What’s up? What’s the matter?”