Of course, it wasn’t long before Mats wanted a baby of his own. You know when your guts say no? Well mine were printing it in neon lights against the sky. But Mats, he wouldn’t let up. Partly for Artie, he said, so he didn’t grow up an only child. Mats had always wanted a brother or sister. I was an only child too, but it never bothered me. My folks were great. Dad died when I was fifteen and Mum five years ago. Cancer. She did get to meet Arthur before she went and though she didn’t approve of my method, fell madly in love with him. She would have been such a brilliant granny.
I did string Mats along, I suppose, you could put it like that, hoping he’d get over it. When we made love he stayed in me for ages, so I couldn’t get up and wash. Once I couldn’t find my diaphragm and found it pushed right to the back of the bathroom cabinet. I’m sure I didn’t put it there. And he knew my cycle better than I did, red crosses on the year planner.
No way he was going to forget it; I could see that.
click
Alis
Many weeks and many tricks later we were moved. Sunshine woke us that day, hot through the window. Auntie Deirdre’s hair was bigger and blacker than ever. There was so much hair spray in the kitchen it made me cough. She gave us new work clothes and told us to make up then she walked round us, saying, hmmm, hmmm. My tits spilled over my bra and Marta wobbled on her high platforms. Auntie Deirdre moved my bra straps and put more lipstick on Marta. Bubblegum pink. Marta hates lipstick but she said nothing. She was learning.
Auntie Deirdre gave us new names. Lola for me, Rosa for Marta.
I’ll be sorry to see you go, Auntie Deirdre said. Good girls after all. Even you. She smiled at Marta and Marta made a smile but her brows were pulled down, dark.
Where are we to go? I asked.
I saw the flash in Marta’s eyes and I knew she was thinking of home, but I was not so stupid.
That’s for me to know and you to find out, Auntie Deirdre said. She made Pop-Tarts with burning red jam inside and strong coffee with as much sugar as we wanted. The radio said it would rain in London after a bright start. I asked her when we would get cash. She laughed and shook her head. We heard footsteps on the stairs and she said, Heels on, quick, quick, look sharp.
Two guys came into the kitchen and Auntie Deirdre smiled and fluffed her hair. One guy was skinny and ginger, the other tall with a hat and shades. Mr Chapman and Mr Smith. Mr Smith never spoke a word.
Aye, Mr Chapman said when he saw us. He was the ginger runt man. They both walked round looking. Mr Chapman patted my butt; he poked Marta’s tit.
The long and the short of it, he said. He laughed so hard spit shot out and landed on Marta’s cheek like a bit of silver.
Aye?
Mr Smith nodded. No expression on his face.
This one’s fine. Mr Chapman pointed to me then looked at Marta. She lifted her hand to rub the spit off. The wee one’s got great tits but a face like a slapped arse, he said. Can you no make her cheer up? Or we’ll just take blondie here.
Marta switched a smile on her face but there was fright in her eyes.
Hope she’s no gonnae be trouble, said Mr Chapman.
She’s shy, Auntie Deirdre said, but she’s a goer.
Mr Chapman laughed and rubbed his hands. ‘Look forward to finding that out for myself.’
Deal, he said to Mr Smith.
Mr Smith nodded.
They drove out of London in a minibus with about ten girls, some to be dropped in cities on the way north. Marta and me, we stayed in the minibus all the way to Edinburgh.
Vivienne
click
I don’t know if this is helping. It’s getting like a habit. Or a hobby.
I dreaded meeting Mats’ folks, but in the end it had to happen. Rita minded Artie and we flew out for the weekend. It was March and still winter there. We stayed in a hotel right on the water, a honey coloured room overlooking the harbour, the iced-up boats. It made you feel so cosy, romantic, it was.
We arrived on Friday, saw the sights on Saturday – Munch Museum, Viking Museum, Vigeland Park with hundreds of statues – nearly walked my feet off. Then came the big moment – dinner with his folks. It was more like clog dancers than butterflies in my guts that night. Sneaked a couple of vodkas from the minibar to get my nerve up.
Their house, half an hour’s drive out of the city, is typical Scandi – sleek and modern, pale fabrics, wooden floorboards, tasteful lighting, tall, slim Bang & Olufson speakers in the corners of the room. Don’t know why I noticed them! I’m not bothered about techno stuff like that. It was all so perfect, like something from a Sunday supplement. Too perfect maybe. Kept looking for a crack in something or a dead plant or fleck of toothpaste on a mirror. But nah. It was only one evening so I went with it, relaxed. Lovely music came through the lovely speakers, some sort of Norwegian Jazz, like Mats plays sometimes.
And they were nice. Put me at my ease. Mrs Brunborg, Mette, was teeny weeny. How could Mats have come out of something that size? And so perfectly dinky in her tiny tasteful clothes and swept up fair hair. Her face was wrinkled but in a sophisticated way, not ravaged. How do some women manage that? It wasn’t till his Dad, Jan, came lumbering into the room that I saw where Mats got his looks from, and his size. Jan was a vision of how Mats will look in twenty years: very nice too.
‘So lovely to meet you,’ he said and squeezed my hands in his enormous ones.
Mette said, ‘Welcome to the family,’ and kissed my cheek, and to my relief offered drinks. (Mats is not a big drinker, and nor am I, but it does help break the ice.) I knew they’d been upset not to come to the wedding, not even to meet me before, but before I couldn’t. Now I could see I’d been silly. Just like Mats said, there was nothing to worry about.
Though it still felt as if I was at an interview. How could I possibly be good enough for the job?
The table was set like it was Christmas and the main course was actual reindeer in some sort of berry sauce. Plenty of red wine and aquavit went down – at least in my case! Well I was nervous. They asked me question after question about myself till Mats had to call them off. But no, it was OK.
click
I knew they loved Mats’ ex – who was some sort of family friend. They’d been terribly upset about the split. I did notice and pretended not to, a photo of her and Mats on the wall. You’d think they take it down, wouldn’t you? I saw her once in Edinburgh. (Of course she had to be thin as a rake and blonde as . . . I dunno . . . Shredded Wheat or something.) I thought the Brunsborgs might see me as some sort of scarlet woman or husband stealer. (It turned out he wasn’t quite as fancy free as he’d said when we met, or else I’d got it wrong. He now claims I seduced him. I don’t bother correcting him. What’s the point? The past is the past.)
Anyway, the Brunsborg’s couldn’t have been nicer to me (apart from that photo). They wanted us to give up our hotel room and stay with them; but that would’ve been too much – having to face them at breakfast as well. And it was more romantic. How romantic can you be in the in-laws spare bedroom?
I’m pretty sure it was that night, in that hotel room, that Tommy was conceived. I was so relieved about the evening, maybe a little woozy from the aquavit, and let Mats persuade me not to use my diaphragm.
I should have listened to my gut feeling. I should have thought harder. I should have admitted to myself that though I loved Mats for his kindness, looks, for taking Artie on, giving us a lovely home, for bringing money in (with our two salaries we were pretty well off for a while there), I wasn’t actually in love with him anymore. Does that make sense? Or is it even true? Don’t know if I ever was properly. What is in love anyway?
As soon as I was pregnant though I started to feel kind of . . . just off. I can’t put it in words. It was like I just wanted to crawl inside myself and not be touched, not let him in.
A tiny glass of wine, I think.
click
Alis
Marta gave Chapman the name Ratman and we laughed at the little runt. Ratman likes us to be scared. But he was more scared of Mr Smith. Mr Smith never said one word on the drive to Edinburgh or took his shades off even when it got dark. Stupid prick.
Ratman pretends that he likes girls but he is gay. I can tell. I have the gaydar. Dario is Ratman’s boyfriend, he is only idiot boy from Bucharest, but he helps Ratman manage his girls. Dario is beautiful like a girl but he has no soul. I told Marta never trust him.
We worked every day but we got no cash. When I complained, Ratman said we must work to pay for our keep. He said, You are illegal immigrants and if the police get you they will put you in jail and throw away the key. He said, If you are not good girls your family at home will suffer.
I have no one but this scared Marta so much. Her face was the colour of bad milk.
Ratman’s girls were not allowed to mix with the other girls, so we stayed upstairs in kitchen to wait for tricks. Other girls came in sometimes but Marta and me, we didn’t really talk to them; we stuck together. We watched each other’s backs.
Now I can’t watch Marta’s back. Please God keep her safe.
Mats
I dreamed I was cupped in the palm of a hand and felt so safe. But then came a sound like a saw, a danger, a snickering; the palm was too hot, and started to tighten like a fist. I began to struggle and woke sweating. Vivienne was asleep on her back, breath catching in her throat. She was not supposed to lie that way, the weight of the baby pressing on her spine. Her belly pushed the duvet up in a mound. Seven months pregnant. The child in there – she thought girl – but we didn’t know for sure was almost ready. Almost cooked, as she said it. I’d read that even if it were born now, it would be OK; thin, for sure, the last few weeks are when the fat accumulates, but otherwise OK. The baby was made. My child was made.
Very slowly and too lightly for her to feel it, I rested my hand on her belly. Whenever I tried to touch her when she was awake she withdrew, sometimes she actually flinched. Maybe it’s normal behaviour for a pregnant woman; how would I know? It’s my child in there, I wanted to say but I did not allow it, this petulance, which would sound so childish.
Even before she got big enough to make it necessary, she dressed in baggy shirts and sweaters, her waist gone, her style gone, as if she was trying to hide the pregnancy. It turned out she had kept her father’s bathrobe, a massive grey felt thing that smelled of mice. She unpacked it from one of her many boxes, and hid herself inside it, never allowing me to see her. She was not one for walking about naked, as my family do at home – in Norway it is the normal thing – but now she seemed afraid for me to see her body. When I saw a pregnant woman in the street I found my eyes following, watching her curves, her movement. Some women seem proud to display their shape, and that is how it should be. This was crazy! My own wife pregnant, my own baby growing inside her, and I was not allowed access.
We had not had sex for weeks and I was trying to be patient. I attempted to ask Ferg about it at one of our Friday evening drinks, but he misunderstood what I meant and laughed, claiming that Karen was insatiable when pregnant. ‘One of the perks of all those hormones,’ he said. ‘But you pay for it when the bairn’s born. Make the most of it,’ he advised me. ‘Once it’s here you won’t get a sniff for months.’ What could I do but nod and grin? I was ashamed to admit I’d stopped getting it already. Ashamed of Vivienne. A little angry maybe. Why didn’t her hormones work like that?
Always I’d looked forward to my wife’s pregnancy (though of course, I thought it would be Nina). I thought lovemaking at this time would bring a new kind of intimacy; it would feel a privilege to touch the growing belly, come close to the child, like being granted access to the process of creation.
Now Vivienne shifted and swallowed and I removed my hand. She began to snore. I had to talk to her about the sleeping position. Lying on the side with a pillow to support the bump was the best way, they said at the class. Tonight I would insist, but for now . . .
I knelt and lifted the duvet away. The light was poor through the curtains, but enough to see by. She was wearing a big T-shirt with Marge Simpson on the front. When we’d first got together she dressed up for bed in beautiful silk and lace nightgowns, she’d called them that herself, that she found in vintage shops, but since the pregnancy not at all. The T-shirt was rucked up showing a mess of pale brown pubic hair. Holding my breath I picked up the hem of the T-shirt and lifted it further to expose her belly. I admit I was shocked by the way the hair grew in a line, spiky as barbed wire, from her pubis to her navel. The skin was streaked with shiny red marks as if she’d been clawed by some kind of beast. What had I been expecting? A pure white dome? I forced myself to stare, to confront this truth. This was the animal thing that pregnancy was. That she was, that we all are. My stomach roiled with a kind of revulsion but also with compassion for this animal, my wife, and with the first painful throttle of love for my child. The mound shifted. My heart beat fast and I was dizzy. Gently I put my fingertips to the movement and felt a slide of hand or foot or knee or elbow.
My child, my responsibility, as was Vivienne, as was Artie, of course.
‘What the hell!’ She woke suddenly and jerked away from my hand, pulled the T-shirt down, the duvet up. ‘What the hell?’ she said again, frowning at me as if I was a stranger. ‘Jesus, Mats, I was fast asleep.’
‘I’ll get you some tea.’ I stepped away.
‘Mats?’
‘I wanted to see,’ I said.
‘But that was weird. You don’t want sex do you?’
I went into the kitchen to fill the kettle. My reflection in its smudged chrome side was warped and tiny. The way she said it! As if wanting sex was strange, or a weakness. Last time I tried she said: ‘Do you really like the idea of ramming your penis right up against the baby?’
And since she put it like that, I found the answer was no.
❦
I showered and made coffee. She got up, came in and sat at the table flicking through a magazine. She’d been off work two months already with high blood pressure and headaches, and in the mornings, while I got ready, she sat among the scattered Coco-pops and dirty plates, drinking tea, flicking through baby magazines.
Of course, she needed to rest. It was good for her to rest, good for the baby. I was better in the mornings than she. I was a lark while she was an owl. Neither of us could help it, she said, it was biorhythms. Since watching a documentary about biorhythms, she used them as an excuse for everything.
‘I think I’ll knit this,’ she said now, showing me a picture of a baby in stripy jumper.
‘I didn’t know you could knit.’
‘Can’t be that hard, can it?’ she said. ‘Oh, would you take Artie? Save me getting dressed.’
‘For sure.’
In this new house (on which the mortgage was immense) the kitchen was dim, the wrong side for the morning sun. Because the flicker of the fluorescent light – the tube needed replacing – brought on Vivienne’s headaches, we had to breakfast in the gloom.
Arthur grinned up at me, small elf face with big specs, a rim of milk on his upper lip.
‘Marmite or jam?’ said Vivienne.
‘Peanut butter.’
‘We’re haven’t got any.’
‘Peanut butter!’ Arthur folded his arms and stuck out his bottom lip.
Vivienne slathered jam on the toast and put it in front of him. Arthur sighed and shrugged and gave me such an adult look it made me smile. Though Arthur wasn’t mine, I cared for him almost as if he was.
‘Dad,’ Arthur said, and I sighed inwardly knowing what was about to come. This was his favourite game. ‘Would you rather be run over by a truck or eaten by a lion?’
‘Truck,’ I said. It was best to play along and wait for him to get tired of it.
&nbs
p; ‘Would you rather cut off your hand or your foot?’
‘Foot.’
‘Obviously!’ Vivienne smiled at Arthur and I saw how it softened her face, the way her front teeth were a little crooked. I’d almost forgotten that. Relieved at this feeling of tenderness towards her, I looked at her lips, at the lovely distinct mole. I had to love her; she was my wife. My palm remembered the sensation of the squirm of my child squeezed in there now, waiting, nearly cooked.
I topped up my coffee, the Vinyl flooring sticky against my soles. I’d offered to pay for a cleaner but Vivienne had been hurt. She hated the idea of help, which meant that I’d taken on most of the housework. Not that I minded. Of course, I’m not that kind of guy. I’m a feminist, for sure, trained by Nina, no question about it. But I did work long hours and cleaning the house was not my preferred activity at weekends. Was that so wrong?
The post flapped through the front door and I went to pick it up. Junk mostly, but one letter addressed to me, a letter from Norway. The handwriting, small, neat, precise: Nina’s. Here the sun shone in wavy greenish patterns through a narrow stained- glass window. I stared at the envelope, watched the green light wobble across it before folding it and shoving it in the breast pocket of my jacket.
‘Might join the boys for a drink tonight,’ I said as I went back into the dim kitchen. There was a strange deep feeling in my stomach, as if the ground beneath me was hollow, as if I could easily fall through.
‘Go for it,’ said Vivienne. She stretched and yawned and her dressing gown fell open to reveal a white, swollen breast, veined with blue. It made me think of Stilton. I looked away.
‘Could you pick up a fluorescent tube?’ she said.
‘Drown or burn, Dad?’
‘That’s enough,’ Vivienne said, pulling a wry face at me.
The Squeeze Page 5