Laura asked Edward what he meant, but he was unforthcoming: drinking his cup of coffee, knotting his tie, looking for his briefcase, he seemed distracted by thoughts of the day to come. After he left, Laura roused herself and cooked some breakfast. She had arranged to see Monica for lunch and shopping, but although the house seemed so empty, the thought of going out into the city was unappetising. She went to telephone Monica to say that she was feeling too unwell to go out.
‘Thank the Lord, I’m so ill too,’ Monica said in a thin voice, and then offered to come over instead. ‘I’ll bring you something for lunch – what are you craving? Tell me. When I was preggers, I only craved cold martinis and chips with vinegar, and my doctor told me that was the worst I could possibly do for my baby.’
When Monica arrived, pale under her usual make-up, Laura at first thought she would be a welcome distraction. But she quickly found her chatter disturbing. ‘Goodness me, Edward and his friends put it away, don’t they?’ she said, peering at herself in the hall mirror. ‘I look like death. I needed the night out, though – everything at home is unbearable.’ She paused and walked into the living room, still talking, almost as if Laura wasn’t there. ‘At home! I suppose that’s the problem. It isn’t home. I wish we were at home, I do wonder why I married a Foreign Office type when I only really like England.’
Although Monica had often gossiped to Laura in a complaining tone, this was the most negative she had ever heard her, and as lunch went on she opened up more and more: how Archie thought it was time for their elder daughter, Barbara, to go to school in England, but that Monica couldn’t bear to have her so far away; how their younger daughter was talking in an American accent and Monica found it horribly disconcerting; and, embarrassingly, how Monica had lost interest in sex. ‘Archie keeps wondering why I don’t want it any more; I was like a bitch on heat, my dear, when we met – even when I was pregnant – but the last year or two I just can’t be bothered. I look around the men at a party like last night’s, and I think I’d rather go to bed with you or you or you than my own husband – sorry, darling, I’m shocking you. I’m shocking myself.’ And to Laura’s dismay, the corners of Monica’s mouth turned down. Not knowing how to comfort her, Laura offered her a drink.
As she went to pour the drink, she wondered to herself why it was that she found Monica’s confidences so difficult to respond to. She would like to relax into intimacy with her, but she felt apprehensive that the price of such intimacy might be the expectation of similar confidences from her. And even if the inexorable need for secrecy was not always there for her, in a way she felt that Monica was breaking a delicate code of conduct; that there was something threatening to one’s married intimacy in telling such problems to others. But Monica did not seem to notice her unease, and took the martini she brought her eagerly.
‘I am awful, going on about my own problems when you are still grieving for your father.’
Laura corrected her, startled, telling her that all that was behind her now, but she could tell that Monica did not believe her. Was her manner, so flat and uncertain, that of a grieving daughter?
After Monica left it was almost dusk, and Laura found herself half asleep on the sofa. She was still thinking over what Monica had said: how could it be that she was grieving for her father, when she had felt more relief than sadness during the funeral? She had walked away from her childhood home the day she had stepped onto the ship in 1939; she had never wanted to go back there. She had left as quickly as she could after the funeral. And yet it did feel as though there was an absence in her life, at this time when surely she should feel more complete than ever. Was it the absence of war? Was it the absence of any work? Yes, she missed having a role, a purpose in this indifferent city. She could not match Edward’s excitement about the forthcoming birth.
As she thought about Edward and the fact that they were to be a family, she found her hands moving to cover her mouth. Other families filled her thoughts. She was thinking about Monica, and about her lack of love – her apparent contempt, it seemed – for Archie. She was thinking about Ellen, and the difference between the relationship she seemed to have now with Tom and the romantic letters she had written during the war. She was thinking about Mother, and how she still tried to keep up the pretence that she had never sat across the table from Father in dread of his anger, never walked quietly through her own house for fear of disturbing him. You are the only woman you know, Laura told herself, who can be sure in her love. Don’t be afraid of the change to come.
Edward came in late, the tiredness etched into his face. He walked into the living room where Laura was lying on the sofa and sat down with a glass of gin, picking up a book that was lying on one of the shelves beside him. Laura sat up, stretched a little, and realised she wanted to tell him about the thoughts that had been passing through her mind.
‘You know you said I was low – I think I am worried …’
Edward put his finger in the book he was holding, and looked up. ‘It is frightening for you – but I’m sure it will all be all right. The doctor said you were going along fine, didn’t he? I found out today that I’m going to be expected to go with the ambassador on a speaking tour in a couple of weeks, but that’s still well before your date.’
Laura tried to explain that it was not fear about the birth that was dragging her down, or at least not the physical reality of the birth. Trying to convey what bothered her, she found herself returning to that moment many years ago when she had first been told about the possibility of a finer way of life. Whenever she travelled back to the memory of the Normandie in her mind, she found those few days still bright and clear into her mind. The promise of the future. ‘When I first met Florence, when she told me what communism would do for people, it was something she gave me to read. It was really impressive. Even today I remember every word—’
Edward said nothing, but Laura pressed on. She was not sure if what she was saying was welcome. The habit of secrecy had intensified between them, but at that moment she longed for reassurance from him, a moment of recognition of their shared dream. ‘It was from the Worker. About what family life would be like under communism. The writer said: “There we see no selfish husbands who expect servants rather than companions, and no nagging wives who realise life has passed them by. We see women who proudly go out and put their shoulder to the wheel, and men who are not ashamed to rock the cradle.” Or words to that effect. It’s odd how one can remember something for so many years, if it’s really important.’
Laura wanted to go on and talk to Edward about how they could be that kind of family, that they were not doomed to be like the families she saw around them – the distant fathers and resentful mothers, the growing rifts, the possibility of anger, of violence, the secrets that lay at the heart of families. But Edward stood up to get himself another drink, and Laura lost the thread and finished up on a different, more complaining note. ‘I suppose now we’re having a family I’ll never have anything else to do.’
‘But that is such an important thing for you to do,’ Edward said, sitting back down and opening his book again.
‘It’s easy for you to say that.’ Laura felt frustrated in her effort to communicate her feelings about the way they seemed to be sleepwalking forwards rather than choosing their path. ‘What’s the book?’ She didn’t want to make him argue, but equally she couldn’t bear silence to descend just now. To her surprise, Edward closed the book and put it under his chair.
‘It’s nothing – one of the professor’s old books, actually. Tell you what, why don’t we have another go at chess?’ Laura had tried often enough to play with him, and she didn’t really fancy trying again, but she acquiesced.
As the days passed and the birth came closer, Laura’s mental anxiety receded and all her consciousness seemed to become concentrated in her body. The movements of the baby inside her woke her at night and startled her during the day. There were still some three weeks to go before her due date, and yet she found
herself packing and repacking the bag that she was to take to the hospital, putting in not only things for herself but also the impossibly small clothes for which she had shopped with Monica.
She even became infected by a desire to keep the house cleaner than it usually was, and after Kathy had finished dusting, she would sometimes find herself going through the rooms with a cloth, or rearranging things in closets and shelves – not that she ever seemed to make much difference to the dark, unhomely rooms. One day she was in the living room when she noticed how under each of the armchairs there was a faint shadow of dust on the parquet flooring, and, irritated that Kathy had not moved the chairs before sweeping the room, she went to get a dustpan and brush and came back and pushed the chairs to one side herself. Under one of them she saw the book that Edward had been reading the evening after Whiteley’s party. Picking it up, and looking at its title, she realised at once why he had not wanted to discuss it. Even she knew it was a book banned by the Party, absolutely known to be a pack of lies. He had left it open, face-down, and she couldn’t help looking at the page he had been reading. It struck her with horrible force: a father trying to speak to his son through a wire fence in some kind of prison camp. ‘For a second he turned to me, his face wet with tears, his hands clutching the grille convulsively.’ With a movement that almost shocked her, Laura threw the book back onto the floor and shifted the chair back over it.
When Edward came in, although Laura had not planned to do so, she returned to the discovery she had made that afternoon. ‘The book you were reading …’
‘Which book?’
‘The Tchernavin book.’
‘I didn’t read it,’ he said.
Laura was startled. She had seen him with it. She knew the Party would frown on it, but she didn’t think that even this would be a secret from one another.
Then Edward backtracked. ‘I just looked at it,’ he admitted, walking over to the drinks cabinet. ‘It’s all lies; it’s all about fear – and cruelty. How can that be?’
‘That can’t be.’ It wouldn’t make sense. Fear, surely, was the characteristic of their incomplete lives, of the fact that they were not yet where they should be. Where they were going, that was what they should talk about. They must remember what their joint belief was – for the future, for their child. ‘I think—’ Laura was about to say more, but just then she was jolted by a clench of pain.
In later weeks, when Laura thought back to that evening, it was as though a crimson curtain came down over her sight. Through the curtain there was only pain, slamming her over and over again to the floor. She had always hoped she would be good at childbirth; she had seen herself as a stoical figure, and both Ellen and Mother had always been dismissive of too much talk of the awfulness of the experience. But by the time the cab Edward called had brought her to the hospital, she was groaning and lowing like a cow, and by the time the doctor was brought in to examine her, long yells were periodically escaping from her.
‘Don’t make so much noise, you’ll scare your baby,’ said one cross-faced nurse to her, at which she turned to Edward and said, ‘Make her go away,’ with vehement intent, before the next wave of pain picked her up and slammed her down again.
The nurse did not go, but was joined by a number of other medical staff, talking in hurried voices. Laura was trying to ask what was happening, when a mask was put over her face and she was allowed to go under the wave entirely and absent herself from the spectacle of the tragedy that was about to unfold.
Much later, Laura learned words for what she had gone through. She learned about a detached placenta, about haemorrhage, and a resultant lack of oxygen. But at the time there was nothing as precise and transparent as words. When Laura woke to the emptiness of the hospital room, there was only a receding tide of pain. She tried to move, and felt the pull of a wound in her abdomen. She saw Edward, asleep in a chair. ‘Edward,’ she whispered, and then louder, until he woke. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, and lying there she watched the grief take shape in his eyes, just as she had watched the happiness take shape months earlier.
The return to the little house took place some days later. They got out of the cab, Edward holding that bag of clothes and the teddy bear, and opened the door into the quiet hall. It did not feel like coming home, Laura thought; she had never liked that hall table with the curved legs, and where had that stain on the bottom step of the stairs come from? She walked into the living room and sat down with a grunt of discomfort. Edward brought her a cup of tea. ‘Shall I put something stronger in it?’ he said. She shook her head and watched him tip gin into his own cup.
The silence between them was broken by the telephone ringing. It was Mother, saying she would be there by the evening. Edward had dutifully rung her from the hospital, and had been taken aback by her announcement, which he had duly reported to Laura, that she would come to stay with them for a while. ‘I wish you hadn’t let her come,’ Laura said now in a monotone, and Edward said in a similar voice that he hadn’t known how to stop her, but that maybe in fact it was a good thing, since he had to leave for this trip with the new ambassador, Inverchapel, the next day.
Laura had forgotten about the trip. ‘My head hurts so much, will you help me upstairs?’ was all she said.
She was drifting in and out of sleep when she heard the door slam and Mother’s voice intermingling with Edward’s downstairs. Later, Laura was aware of her looking in on her, and even in her vague state she registered how odd it was that Mother’s usual demanding manner seemed to have been put to one side as she drew the curtains, but left the room without speaking. Later that evening, when she came in with a tray – on which she had put a meal that she and Kathy had clearly put together in a hurry, though it was perfectly edible – again she did so more or less in silence.
The next day Laura stayed in bed all morning after Edward left. Through a fog she was aware of those household noises that remind a sick person that they are still part of the world, that cushion them with the warp and weft of daily life; she heard footsteps, a telephone conversation, a vacuum cleaner going, and at lunchtime another knock at the door with a tray. Mother came in and, as Laura ate, she moved around the room folding clothes. Laura heard her trying to open the drawers of the tallboy. ‘They always stick,’ she heard herself saying.
‘We could get you some new furniture,’ Mother said.
‘It’s not our house,’ Laura said, and put her hand up to her head. Headaches from the anaesthetic were still troubling her.
Mother was by her bed, but to her relief didn’t talk about what had happened. ‘I thought we’d try a sponge bath after you’ve eaten.’
After the bath her mother sat doing a crossword puzzle while she listened to the radio, and then they talked about a novel that they had both read, and about what they thought of the fashions in the Vogue magazine that Mother had bought. That’s how they passed the next three days, not talking about the baby or the hospital, but in an odd way Laura felt that Mother’s presence and inconsequential conversation formed a net, and although every night she dreamt she was falling, alone, with no one to catch her, her baby son slipping away from her as she fell, during the days she began to feel as though she was being brought to shore.
On the fourth day after her mother’s arrival, Laura felt well enough to get up, and they sat for a while in the living room. But as soon as her strength began to return, Laura found her mother’s presence less reassuring. She began to feel gritty with irritation over her slow-moving conversation and her anxiety about small things such as what they would eat that evening and why Kathy kept burning the potatoes. And she found her tentative movements, as she padded around the house with self-conscious attention not to make too much noise, undeservedly maddening. Above all, Mother’s decision not to mention the expected presence who had failed to arrive no longer felt kind. It seemed excruciating. But Laura said nothing, and remained the dutiful patient, eating her soup and playing cards in the afternoons.
It was te
n days after her mother’s arrival that Edward returned. He had telephoned each day, but had been as monosyllabic as Laura had been, and it was a shock, when he came in, to see her own exhaustion reflected in his face. Mother was not at ease with him, and as he went to get out the gin bottle before dinner, she asked him needling, polite little questions about his trip. In response, he talked about what he had been doing, accompanying the new ambassador on a public relations trip through unexciting areas of Colorado and Oregon, and Laura was surprised by how bitter he allowed himself to sound. ‘Poor Inverchapel had to keep telling them how wonderful it is that the empire is unravelling, and to try to play up to their rabid Red-baiting. He did it all better than Halifax would have done, though, I think.’ He shook his head. ‘Though neither of them finds it that easy flirting with these homespun Americans. Who would?’
Mother and Kathy had cooked roast chicken with creamed potatoes and string beans, and Laura found herself eating properly as Edward sat there, drinking and mulling over his trip. After a while she realised he was talking, for once, simply to ensure that he did not have to hear too much about how things were going with her, but she did not judge him for that reluctance. She felt relieved that he was back. Soon Mother would go and when they were alone again they would have the chance, she told herself as she scraped up her chicken, to recreate the happiness that could be theirs. She picked up her glass of wine and the cold burst of sourness in her mouth was refreshing. She smiled at Edward as he went on talking in that uncharacteristically inconsequential way.
4
‘You’ve recovered so well,’ Monica said when they met at a cocktail party held by a senator a few weeks later. Apart from an overriding sense that she had to be careful not to move too quickly, or talk too fast, that the carapace she had built up for herself had to be carefully handled at all times, Laura inwardly agreed with her; she had recovered well. The scar on her belly was itchy now rather than painful, and that evening she had experimented with a dark eyeliner and bright lipstick of the kind she never usually wore, which seemed to compensate for the expressionlessness of her face. And she felt almost grateful that nothing seemed to have changed around her; this was the kind of party she remembered from before her pregnancy – the tables of smoked turkey and ham, the trays of martinis and manhattans. There was Edward still at the British ambassador’s side, even if it was no longer the slender, wry Lord Halifax, but the altogether more talkative Inverchapel.
A Quiet Life Page 28