by Gwyn GB
‘Because you walked out on everyone, Katherine.’ Margaret’s voice becomes more whining when she says this, ‘Me, John, Mum, all of us. You’ve not been a sister to me, you just decided to leave and that was that. I have three children and you barely know anything about them. And what about John? Didn’t you ever think maybe he deserved the chance to have a family, to be married to somebody who is there and cares about him … and Mum, how much did she see you before she died? It broke her heart. You barely ever came back to visit. You’re selfish. Completely self-centred. Then you just bloody well turn up out of the blue.’
‘Steady on love….’Robert stands up now.
‘Butt out Robert,’ is his answer.
‘It’s OK Robert, let Margaret say what she needs to say.’ Katherine is staring at her sister now.
Robert slowly slides out of the room, keen to escape the battleground and avoid hearing things he thinks he’ll be embarrassed about later. ‘I’ll leave you to it then,’ he directs at Margaret, but she doesn’t even give him a glance in response.
‘Do you know what Katherine,’ Margaret is in full flow now, ‘one of your problems is you just won’t let it go. You’re here because of Anne’s mother, not us. Still behaving like a bloody martyr over Anne’s death. It wasn’t your fault, everyone knows that. You were sixteen but you’ve made it your life to keep on mourning her, to not let go…’
‘Perhaps there are some things you don’t know about.’ Katherine’s eyes burn with a new intensity now. Her sister has found her soft under belly.
‘Well perhaps there are lots of things you don’t know about too, and perhaps you should have concentrated on those who are still alive, the people who are your family instead.’
‘You’re drunk Margaret. I’m not here…’
‘I am not drunk. You just don’t like hearing the truth do you?’
Katherine throws up her arms in despair. She’s drunk enough wine herself to have lost some of her own inhibition, and patience. ‘Look if you won’t even let me speak, then I’m not going to bother listening to you.’ She flounces out of the room, just in time to nearly collide with James who has just arrived home.
‘Hi Aunty Kath,’ her nephew cheerfully offers; before seeing the look on her face.
‘Hello James. Sorry I can’t stay. Your mother’s in there. Good night,’ is as much as she can muster. Her sister’s onslaught is beginning to sting and it’s hurting big time. James looks somewhat surprised but she isn’t going to hang around for small talk just to placate him. Another time.
20
1984, Jersey
She looks at it. It’s quite possibly the most wonderful thing she has ever seen. She could kiss it, but perhaps that isn’t such a nice idea. Katherine is going to remember this moment, the moment she first saw it, forever.
Today is without doubt the best day of her life so far, although she might not put it to John like that. Husbands seem to like to think that you’d call your wedding day the best day of your life. Not that she doesn’t think her wedding day was fantastic, it was, it was completely wonderful, but this... This is different. A wedding is exciting, beautiful, an affirmation of something you’ve already created, life changing yes; but this, confirmation of a child growing inside of her, this changes everything. Not just their lives but it re-configures her very make-up, physically and emotionally. The chemicals in her body will never be the same again. She can never be the same again. So many thoughts are spinning around inside of her, so many possibilities, she can’t wait for John to get home. She will put the pregnancy tester back in its box for now, and then take it out later, watch his face transform.
Already Katherine’s mind has gone over the moment a hundred times. She will start off by saying ‘Darling, I’ve got some news for you.’ His face will look quizzical, perhaps slightly worried at what she might be about to say, but then she’ll announce, ‘You’re going to be a father,’ and he’ll explode with happiness, sweeping her up in his arms, before suddenly stopping and placing her gently down again in case he hurts her or the baby. After, she will run next door to tell Margaret and her mother. They’ll be squealing with happiness. Her mother will head up to the attic, rooting around in generations of keepsakes, until she finds the baby things stored away from when they were little.
John will call his parents. Or perhaps they’ll drive over there so he can tell them in person, see the joy on their faces at the prospect of being grandparents. They live in a bungalow in St Brelade and they go over and see them every other weekend, popping in for a cup of tea and a slice of one of the fabulous cakes his mother makes; or every once in a while inviting them over to the farm for Sunday lunch with her mother and Margaret. They’re quiet, gentle people and Katherine feels so lucky that they’ve been able to fit into her family like missing pieces of a jigsaw.
Katherine puts the pregnancy test kit away in the little bathroom cupboard and heads back downstairs to their kitchen. It may be small, but she loves it with its brand new appliances and modern units. They’d chosen everything together, although John said, ‘I want you to have whatever it is you want. All I want is for you to be happy.’ He’d nearly made Katherine cry right there in the middle of the shop. So, she’d chosen the Calico cream paint of the walls, the Moorland moss tiles and charcoal grey marble effect worktops. They’re both proud of the state-of-the-art lighting John installed. Some under the top units, some in the ceiling to illuminate the cooker, sink and table. When she has guests Katherine likes to just turn on the under unit lights to give the kitchen a cosy feel. It’s filled with things her mother and Sally, John’s mother, have given them. Spare pans and Pyrex bowls, baking sheets and a weighing scale, and an old Jersey cow cream jug which takes pride of place on the windowsill next to the little primrose plant her friend Trisha from work gave them as a house-warming.
Katherine sits down at the little leaf-fold table their mother took out of the family kitchen years ago when sitting the four of them around it became too cramped. She smooths the thick white plastic tablecloth with her hand; it looks like linen, but isn’t. Underneath it the dark brown wood is stained, scarred by a big pale ring her dad inadvertently created with a hot mug of his favourite Darjeeling tea. On the other side are some neat little scratch lines from when the infant Margaret decided to gouge a pattern with her fork; all intermingling with a host of other family memories, now protected and hidden from view.
She looks at it with fresh eyes. They could squeeze another one in here no problem but another two would be pushing it. She can’t believe that in less than eight months’ time she’ll be sitting here with a tiny little baby: her tiny little baby. Feeding him or her, rocking and soothing it, smelling the scent of its soft skin and baby milk. The excitement of knowing there’s a little person growing inside of her; of not knowing what they’ll look like, of waiting for new life to begin, is a wonderful feeling. She takes the calendar from behind the kitchen door and sets about working out when their baby will be due.
When John arrives home Katherine is singing along to a Police song playing on the small radio-cassette player in the kitchen. Steam rises from a pan on the hob and there’s a pie in the oven which he’d know about even if he couldn’t see it through the frosted brown glass door, as it’s filled the whole house with a delicious buttery smell. John goes immediately to the sink to wash the fields from his hands, briefly kissing Katherine along the way. When he turns, towel in hand she’s there waiting for him, smiling. He stops, looking quizzically at his wife who resembles a small child about to explode with excitement.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she can’t help it, she just blurts it out, speech forgotten. The pupils of her eyes widen like black star bursts and she thrusts the calendar towards him with a big cross marked on it, ‘We’re due around the tenth of March.’
It takes a few seconds for the news to sink in and she’s watching his face intently. ‘Really?’ he asks, ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yep. I did a pregnancy test when I came
home from work. I’m two weeks late. I’m sure.’
The towel is thrown onto the draining board and John lurches towards her, arms outstretched, his face now a mirror of her own, and his body puffed to bursting with pride.
‘That is fantastic...you clever, clever girl.’
He kisses her, his love enveloping all three of them.
It’s difficult to say what Katherine notices first about being pregnant. Is it the general sense of her body being pre-occupied with something else? Or is it the effect of the massive hormone increase which not only makes her more prone to getting soppy at the silliest of things but also slightly fuzzes her mind. Then there’s the tiredness. It’s a different sort of tiredness to the ‘had a hard day’ type, or the ‘burning the candle at both ends’ type. It’s not physical from the point of view of aching muscles, but it’s as though her body just suddenly says enough is enough and demands a shut down. She has taken to going home for her lunch hour so she can get a half hour’s lie down. Luckily she hasn’t been too sick and she’s managed to hide it from everyone at work. They plan to tell those outside of the immediate family after the twelve-week scan.
Every morning John fusses over her when she’s feeling nauseous, although it’s actually been worse in the evenings when she’s tired. Her breasts are so tender it feels like her nipples are being rubbed by sandpaper, even with the softest cloth. The biggest change of all though has been the feeling that her body just isn’t hers anymore; it’s not just her brain, her soul living within its confines. Somebody else has taken up residence. From being careful what she eats and drinks, to the way she finds herself subconsciously rubbing her stomach, she’s already begun mothering her unborn child. Her role in life has changed.
‘Mrs Le Marquand?’ The midwife standing at the waiting room doorway calls from her notes.
‘Yes,’ Katherine raises her hand, then instantly feels like she’s back at school for register-taking. She and John get up to follow the midwife to one of the examination rooms. Katherine is so excited, but she’s also nervous. Excited because this is the first time they’re going to see their baby; nervous because she has some strange irrational fear she’s not actually having a baby at all – that it’s all been some kind of phantom pregnancy like dogs get. Then there’s also the fear no mother wants to think about, that something terrible might be wrong with the baby.
‘Hello I’m Debbie, do come in. Is this your first?’ The midwife is lovely, softly spoken, at a guess in her mid-fifties with a bob of brown and grey hair that goes well with her blue uniform. Her face is lined, not with deep fissures, but more like pottery glaze which has crazed; her skin having already lost the firmness of youth. She looks anything but porcelain-like though, the plumpness of her cheeks combined with soft downy hairs gives the impression of an over ripe peach. She’s almost ephemeral or too soft for this harsh world. Katherine wonders if perhaps she’s soaked up an excess of other people’s sadness because she looks like the kind of woman who will sit and talk, or listen, to you patiently forever - if that’s what it takes.
The midwife runs through her notes and then asks Katherine to get up onto the couch. ‘Have you got a full bladder?’
‘Yes,’ she replies instantly. In fact, she feels as if she’s got such a full bladder the midwife could well witness a dam burst if she’s not careful.
Debbie takes a big squeezy plastic bottle, gives it a shake and then squirts warm gel onto Katherine’s tummy. Her trousers are already down to her pubic bone and Debbie has tucked a paper towel over the top to stop the gel from getting onto her clothes. John smiles at her reassuringly as he sits on the bright orange plastic chair the other side of the bed.
‘Let’s have a look then,’ Debbie says, taking the hand monitor from the scanning machine. She pushes it into Katherine’s abdomen, pressing and moving it around, every now and then finding her bladder which is most uncomfortable, and then, ‘Here we go,’ Debbie smiles at them both and turns the monitor around so they can see. There on the screen is a shape just like the ones in the book and magazines she’s been reading - a tiny little human. She can’t take her eyes off it and feels John’s hand reach for hers. ‘Here look. There’s baby’s left arm and here, its right,’ Debbie manoeuvres the scanner around, pressing this way and that into her lower stomach. The little baby on the screen jerks and jumps in response to the pressure. Katherine’s so enthralled she no longer hears the screams from her bladder. ‘Here’s your baby’s heart,’ Debbie continues her anatomical tour, showing them their tiny offspring is all present and correct. ‘Everything looks absolutely fine,’ she smiles, ‘it looks like you’re eleven weeks and two days. I’ll just take some more measurements.’
She uses the machine to print out some images, finally wiping the gel from Katherine’s stomach. A grin has fixed itself to Katherine’s face, she just can’t stop smiling. As she rubs the last of the gel from her tummy she imagines just below the surface of her skin is their little baby, all safe and warm inside of her.
They leave clutching two grainy images of their first child and, after a dash to the toilet, exit the hospital officially as parents-to-be. Arm in arm. The joy of new life swelling their shared world with a thousand hopes and expectations.
Katherine begins to learn a new language, the language of pregnancy and child birth, which introduces her to words like ‘trimester’. She’s just completed her first, so she learns, and is now starting her second: the easiest of the three by all accounts. She discovers her baby is already fully formed, and now it’s simply a case of growing bigger. The whole process is a wonderful mystery to her, a voyage of discovery. The most natural and normal function of a woman and yet it’s the most wondrous. To think a little human being which will one day be riding a bike, playing on the beach, going to school, and eventually perhaps becoming a mother or father itself, is growing inside of her.
It’s also a scary prospect. Katherine’s seen enough movies with screaming, sweating, straining women supposedly giving birth, to know that it’s a somewhat unpleasant and painful process. After a little gentle persuasion John agrees to go along with her to some ante-natal birthing classes. She books their place, plots the dates onto their calendar, and imagines how many weeks gone she’ll be by then and what she might look like.
It’s funny how you can go through life barely noticing something, or at least not registering that you’ve seen it, but then when it happens to you all of a sudden it’s everywhere. Katherine seems to be surrounded by pregnant women and babies. She’s never been a ‘baby person’. The kind of woman who adores every single baby they see, stopping to coo over them, or even asking to hold them. She’s never seen the attraction: until now. Now she’s on the threshold of motherhood: she’s sneaking peeks into every pram and pushchair that passes, smiling conspiratorially at other pregnant women, putting her hand to her tummy at the sight of new-born babies and checking out the relevant equipment and outfits of the respective infants. It’s a new club, a new world she’s entered and there are so many more discoveries to come.
A favourite topic of conversation between Katherine and John is the subject of ‘The name’. Every now and then one of them will ask, ‘What do you think about...’ She’s found it odd going through the naming process because she’s quickly discovered who in life she really does and doesn’t like. Names are tainted by association, and for both of them there are certain ones they’d never entertain giving their child as it reminds them of somebody they’re not particularly keen on.
Margaret has given them a little Baby Names book in which she neatly inscribed, ‘To help you choose, love from Bump’s Aunty Margaret x.’ It’s one of those books that gives the meaning of names as well as a big selection to choose from. Katherine hadn’t realised it, but her name means ‘pure’; whilst Anne derives from Hebrew meaning ‘God has favoured me.’ She doesn’t think he actually favoured her at all. Katherine toys with the idea of naming their baby Anne if it’s a girl, a kind of tribute to her friend, her
way of saying sorry; but she decides against it. The superstitious part of her worries Anne’s troubles might transfer with her name.
Options they are seriously considering include Emily and Rebecca, whilst John likes Charlotte and Alice. Katherine writes down their suggestions so they can see if there’s one they both favour. On the boys’ list are William and Thomas, Charles and Oliver.
Straight after her twelve-week scan she lets her boss and everyone at work know she’s pregnant. Trisha immediately squeals, ‘I knew it, I knew it,’ and everyone congratulates her. Before long the Jersey bush telegraph has gone into overdrive and wherever Katherine goes friends and family acquaintances come up to her and congratulate her. Everyone seems to want to share in their good news.
The gradual swelling of her belly, which she so wishes would hurry up so everyone can see what she has known for months, and the shared expectations between her and John, make Katherine feel content. More content than she can ever remember feeling. There are times when she can just sit and do nothing, absolutely nothing except breathe and think about their new family. This marvellous feeling of being peaceful, serene and at ease with herself is something new, something she’s never felt before and she likes it.
21
March 4th 2008, Jersey
Katherine doesn’t wake up to clear fresh air after their long overdue family storm cloud had burst. She awakes in the spare room of her sister’s home with Margaret’s accusations crashing around inside her head, which throbs and aches from their constant battering; and perhaps also from the dehydration and disturbed sleep, the results of too much wine. One consolation is she suspects her sister, who had drunk far more, will be feeling much worse.
Katherine lies on the sagging mattress looking at the room, its familiarity now contemptuous. The sloping ceiling is still covered in the faded flowers of 1970s fashions, even the duvet cover, a paisley type affair, had been one of their mother’s and it’s an irritation. Perhaps she’s made a big mistake coming back here. Right now she feels very alone, more alone than she had in London. Margaret has the advantage, she’s got Robert to go over the argument with, calm her down, bring back some rationality and help soak up her emotions. Katherine, fired up and consumed by her own arguments, feels like an unwelcome outsider.