by Pat Rosier
They find a quiet table away from the bar.
“When will you find out if it's twins.?”
“I can't remember, I think the scan is at about 12 weeks. Or 10. Chloe knows all that stuff. To be honest, I don't want to know. Or I'm scared to know. It's possible, there's twins on both sides. It's scary. I mean, four under three, that's got to be a handful, even for Chloe.”
“How about not counting your chickens, uh, children, uh, bad metaphor.” I would want to know, Ann thinks. One way or the other.
“You know.” Is Josh looking bashful? “There's this woman at work, Juanita, she's younger, she seems to like me, she keeps, well anyway, I've been putting her off and I got a woman colleague to tell her I wasn't interested, but, hell, she'd be fun, there's not much fun in ….”
“Stop it!” Ann cannot believe how angry she is. “You’re a grown up man, Josh, not a ten-year-old kid lusting after a toy. Be your age! Chloe didn't get pregnant all on her own. What the hell were the two of you playing at, being so, so, so careless.” Then she’s laughing at the look on his face. “Sorry, what do I know, I'm in no position to lecture. But really, you wouldn't, would you?”
“Juanita? No, I guess not.” He sighs. “I probably want to feel sorry for myself and have you feel sorry for me too. Being a grownup sucks sometimes.” They are both quiet for a few minutes, then he says, “Chloe is fun, when she gets half a chance. She wants to study and become an accountant you know, she was going to start next year, but now, well she'll put it off, but I can't see being at home suiting her for long. She's so good with the kids I tend to leave it to her. I suppose I shouldn't …”
“No, you shouldn't.” Wow, she could be her own mother.
Joshua sighs again. “It all gets a bit of a drag, sometimes, life and work and babies and all. Weight of the world.” He sinks his shoulders in an exaggerated gesture.
“Yes, of course. And you have a job and a house and everyone's healthy and half the world or more is in some kind of desperate straits and why don't you just buck up and enjoy what you have!”
“Ouch! I didn't know I was bucked down.”
“Sorry. Projection. My own middle-class guilt.”
“You're right, though. Kind of.” They are both silent again until Joshua says, “Come on then, I'll beat you at darts.” And he does, but only just.
The house is quiet when they get back. Ann wakes up her laptop and sees an email from Ex. “Answer this, please!” it says in the subject line. This time, she opens it.
Dear Ann,
Julie was a mistake. It's over. It's horrible being in the house without you. Bella misses you too. Want some company for Christmas?
love,
Paula
So no-one has told Ex she’s away. That cheers her.
Ann hits reply and types:
Dear Paula,
Maybe Julie wasn't such a mistake. Sell the house if you don't like being in it. I've got company for Christmas—my cousin, his wife and their two-year-old twins. In London.
Ann
She clicks on "send," then puts the computer to sleep.
Chapter 9
The day they finally make it to the park, Ann enjoys seeing the children outside, getting muddy, chasing each other, demanding to be pushed on the swings. Like two little Michelin men, she thinks, bundled up in their boots and padded jackets and scarves and hats. They both fall asleep in the stroller on the way home.
Till the little ones weary
No more can be merry.
She quotes William Blake to Chloe as they each gather up a sleepy, grumbly child and carry them to their cots. Chloe goes off for a nap herself.
Ann is sitting at the table flipping through the latest Time Out, when she feels a hand tugging at her sleeve.
“Mummy?” It’s Jo.
“Mummy’s asleep,” she says, picking up the child and sitting her on her lap. “Will I do for a bit?”
Jo wriggles off and runs to the corner where the toys are.
“Come ‘ere,” she says. They play pile up the blocks and knock them down again and again. Ann feels a rush of warmth; this is the first time she will, in fact, do, for one of the children. Chris and Chloe appear at the same time.
From then, both children compete for her attention from time to time. They go to her for stories or clapping games, which they teach her. On her trips to the library she supplements her novels with picture books, looking for those with what she judges to be good language.
“It was exciting,” she tells Chloe, “to find both Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley in your library.” She explains that they are New Zealand children’s writers, both internationally famous. Books and reading are not so important to Chloe; she’s more interested in maths and crunching numbers. And the night sky.
“London is one of the worst places in the world for star-watching, it's so light-polluted,” she tells Ann. “It's the only really good reason for moving out to the country—I could have a telescope in the back garden.” But actually, she likes living in the city, as the children get bigger and she doesn't need a double pushchair—“Please, god not twins again,” she says as an aside—they’ll get around more easily, she wants them to know the museums and parks that central London has to offer. She likes it here, likes the way South London has a varied population, hates the race hatred the bombings brought to the surface. “People are people and mostly, whatever their religion, just want to get on with their lives and do their best by their families.” Like her. She wouldn't want to wear a chador, but if other women do why shouldn't they? It’s more than Chloe has previously said about herself in one conversation.
Books on local history begin to jump into Ann's library bag. She’s fascinated by the fact that Kennington Park Rd was once a Roman road running south from the original London Bridge. Of course, the history of the Thames is legion, but the area around Kennington itself has been full of life for thousands of years, too.
The sense of living somewhere where people have lived over tens of centuries fascinates Ann; royal ownership, a park that had once been a commons, potteries and glassworks, soap making, even marble processing, have been here. The slums of the 18th and 19th century were replaced by “proper’' housing from the early 1900s. If this house was Ann's she would want to find out the whole history of the place. It’s understandable that Joshua and Chloe are focused more on the present and there’s no real reason for Ann to feel pleased that it looks like they are planning to stay put rather than move out into the suburbs. She does so want Chloe to be gestating just one baby.
“Did you know that Kennington Park used to be Kennington Common, and much bigger, and that it was the first destination for the world's first motorised, and red, double-decker bus?” Ann asks Chloe on a dry afternoon when they brave the cold to take the children out. “Going out-doors,” as Chloe puts it. She nods in reply to Ann’s scrap of history, and asks whether Ann is warm enough in her room.
The house is heated by some mysterious system emanating from the basement which Joshua and Chloe have frequent consultations about. Ann is grateful for an even temperature throughout. She’s tried, again, to contribute to the costs of running the household and again been turned down; all she can do is bring home treats, of food and little things for the twins. She knows there’s a Tesco's online order coming up, she'll do her damndest to pay for that. Taking her hosts out to dinner is not a starter, they never use baby-sitters.
“Not until they are old enough to tell us what goes on,” Chloe said. Ann thinks Jo and Chris are quite able to tell anything they want to, but it isn't her business to comment, so she stops offering to pay for a sitter.
Ann watches the children get excited as they approach the park. Poor little buggers, she thinks, they've been inside for days. There’s no-one else in the playground.
Ann loses count of how many times they clamber up the steps of the slide and catapult themselves down. The swings have seats cut from rubber car tyres, not as lethal as the wooden ones Ann rem
embers, but still the adults hover. Pushing and chasing and hand-holding as a child tries something new, it’s quite a workout for them all.
Ann recognises the onset of a wave of nausea when Chloe's face pales and keeps an eye on her as she subsides onto a park bench. Then gets up again. “It's okay,” she says. Some mornings the retching and heaving send her off to the bathroom several times.
Being sick has become a game with the twins. One will grab a toy, anything that’s container-like, a tip truck or a stacking cone, and lean over it, chanting, Mummy being, sick, Jo being sick, Chris being sick, Au-Ann being sick, Daddy being sick, teddy being sick. Ann likes the hiccuppy version of her name they have made from “Aunty Ann.”
The light fades early, it’s barely three-thirty when they are bundling the children back into their stroller and heading home in what is almost twilight. All hats, gloves and scarves present and correct.
On the way back, Chloe says she is going to get the twins out of daytime nappies before the birth. She doesn't want to make more washing in this weather, but if she leaves it until summer to start there will hardly be time. Ann nods and smiles. She's become a competent changer of both kinds of nappies, the cloth and the disposable, and approves of the policy of using both. She’ll observe what the parents do regarding daytime non-nappies and copy that. It’s worked so far. She’s enjoying being part of a family in a way that’s new to her. Being a twin would be so different from being an only child; she has lived only with adults, and been content with that. She thinks of herself as having a happy, privileged, childhood.
*
“I'm off to the library, do you want anything from out there?” Ann puts her head around the door into the living room where Chloe is playing with the children. Supper is prepared, a chicken casserole a la her mother, in a low oven, vegetables prepared.
“No thanks.” Chris runs over to Ann and looks up at her. “Me too lib’y,” he says.
“Sorry, sport, too late, too dark, too cold, too near your bath time.” She puts her hand on his head, briefly. His bottom lip quivers, then he runs back to his mother and sister, shouting, “My turn, my turn!” and pushes Jo out of the way, so she falls and cries. Chloe waves Ann off.
*
“You might be interested in this, it was just returned today.” The librarian is black and tall and speaks in an educated English voice. She holds out a book called Lambeth Past
“Oh, Thank you. You are observant.”
“It's my job to be observant. You’re not from around here.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No. New Zealand. Using my cousin-in-law's library card. I'm staying there. These,” indicating four picture books, “are for her children. Is that a problem, me using her card?”
“It probably should be, but, no.”
The librarian, it turns out, is called Suzanna-with-a-zed. Ann tells her about staying on because of the morning sickness and the twins and gets her books issued. She also tells her her name.
“Well, Ann from New Zealand, would you like a night out with the girls?”
Girls? She looks around her. There are plenty of people in the library as usual, but no group that could be “the girls.”
Suzanna is grinning. “There's a pub by the Oval,” she says, “I'm meeting a few friends there after work, in half an hour or so. You could join us, have a break from do-mes-tic-it-y.”
Has Suzanna been really observant and made something of the string of Jeannette Wintersons and Sarah Waters she has been including in her take-outs? Ann thinks it might be fun to have drinks and maybe a meal with a group of women, she guesses a bit younger than her. She isn't going to get into nightclubbing or any of that, oh no, but she could walk home at any time. She looks doubtfully at her bag of books. Should she drop them off first? She feels embarrassed at the thought of explaining to Chloe. Phoning would be easier.
“You could leave that here,” says Suzanna, “pick it up tomorrow.”
“Okay, thanks, I will. I'll just browse around until you're ready to go, shall I?”
“Sure.” Ann watches her walk away. Smart boots, short skirt, leggings, classy multi-coloured sweater-type top, nearly as long as the skirt. Hair that Ann envies, black, big, not quite Angela Davis style. Angela Davis in the eighties that was, as in the photo on the front of her first book, or at least, the first one Ann came across. Women, Race and Class; heady stuff to a teenager trying to make sense of a friend who was Maori and clever and dropping out of school.
“Chloe? Hi, I'm ringing from the foyer of the library, I've been asked out for a drink with a woman from the library and some of her friends. Local, the pub near the Oval. Supper's all done, yes, in the oven, it should be ready about seven. You okay with me staying out? I'm not abandoning my duties am I? Okay, good, see you later.” Of course I'm not embarrassed, she tells herself as she goes back inside.
Ann sits on a low stool among the picture books, practised enough to tell in the first couple of pages if she thinks one is any good; language rhythm, a good narrative, not patronising, pictures that add something that isn't in the text. She is trying to work out why she likes The Cat In The Hat but not The Cat in The Hat Came Back when Suzanna appears beside her.
“I do read grown up books, too,” Ann says as she stands up.
“I know.”
“I think you know altogether too much about what I read for someone I don't know.”
“It's not every day a smashing woman I've never seen before comes in here, off the street as it were, using someone else's library card. Of course I took an interest. Jeez, I hate this cold.” There are people hurrying home in all directions. Car lights flash as they turn corners or edge into parking spaces. There's been no rain for a couple of days, some of the leaves on the ground are almost crunchy underfoot, others stick to the footpath in viscous, gooey clumps. Corners and curbs are particularly dangerous.
“Here we are.” The sign says “Traveller's Rest.” Maybe there’s been a pub or an inn here for centuries. Suzanna leads her through the bar to something that might be called a snug but is really just a small, open room around a corner. Five women sit around two tables pushed together. There are four empty seats. Ann feels shy. The greetings are loud and warm, everyone talking at once and Ann doesn't get any of the names. She sits on a proffered chair, then gets up again, offering to buy Suzanna a drink.
“A white wine, thanks.”
When she comes back with the drinks there’s a lively conversation going on about a manager at the Southwark Library, of which Newington is a branch. So they are all librarians.
They trained together. “Except for me, I did my school time in Bristol.” The woman on the other side of Ann has short, spiky mousy-fair hair, gelled, with a peak at the back. Her name is Sylv. “Are you a librarian?”
Ann shakes her head. “No, a lecturer in English literature. Or I was, until I lost my job. In New Zealand.”
Suddenly all the group's attention is on her. Is she looking for a job in London? Good luck if she is, everyone who has a job is holding onto it like grim death and new ones just aren't happening. Will she be here long? Is New Zealand really paradise? Was Ann born there? She can't keep up with the questions.
“Give the woman a break.” That’s Suzanna. “I brought her here for a drink, not an interrogation. Oops. Sorry, Irena, bad choice of words.” Suzanna puts her hand on Irena’s arm for a moment.
“My brother was arrested and interrogated after the bombings,” Irena explains, “He was coming back from visiting our grandparents in Pakistan. We were both born in London.” The information is given flatly, spoken by someone who has said it often.
“I'm sorry.” It feels inadequate, but what else can she say? She has no idea how to engage with this woman and is fascinated by the story. “Is it—he—all right now?”
“More or less.” Irena is slightly built, with straight black hair, looking very different from Suzanna, even though she’s dressed in the same style and has the same accent. The
conversation moves on. Irena and Sylv are partners, Ann works out. Jac has a partner who works in retail—does that mean she serves in a shop?—on the other side of London. Her parents are Jamaican. The women look at each other with a raised eyebrow or two when Ann asks, but she can't help herself. Maeve is Irish, Tanya from Cornwall.
“And we're all queer English girls—with a New Zealand visitor—having a quiet after-work drink together.” Suzanna again. Her chair is very close to Ann's. She can follow what Suzanna, Irena and Sylv say easily enough, but the other three have such varied accents and speak so quickly that she misses a lot of the conversation, which doesn’t stop her enjoying being in an English pub with a group of lesbians.
Maeve, Sylv and Irena leave first together, heading for the underground and Barnet, where they share a flat. Suzanna, Jac and Tanya are staying on for pub food and Ann stays with them. It’s easier to follow the conversation with less people around a single table. Their concerns are similar to those of her friends at home—jobs, parents, friends, housing, their careers and futures, worries about the financial crisis and the security of their jobs.
“My boss is a fool, and I think he hates me for being competent, and I'd love to move,” says Tanya, “but the job market has closed down. No-one is hiring. I'm staying where I am.”
They want to know about the lives of Ann and her friends in New Zealand. She refers to Ex only in passing, tells them about lezzie drinks every second Friday at a Wellington downtown bar, singles dinners, monthly potlucks on the Kapiti Coast, hanging out with friends, and tramps—hikes—and sailing trips organised from time to time by a self-appointed organiser.
“All rather affluent, really, except for the potlucks. Lots of friendship groups, we entertain in our own houses a lot.” Ann feels a pang as she realises she doesn't have a house any more.
“The trouble with London,” says Tanya, “is that we’re spread out all over, and it takes an age to get from one part of the city to another. Sylv and co will be lucky to get home in an hour.” She gets up to go for more drinks. Ann points at her water glass; her two glasses of white wine are long past; these women have a far greater capacity for alcohol than she does. Jac goes off to the toilet. Suzanna puts her mouth close to Ann's ear and says, “Come home with me.” Then she throws her head back and laughs at Ann's startled look.