The Frances Garrood Collection

by Frances Garrood

  ‘In a way, but the animals are more fun, so I shall alternate.’

  ‘But if you can see straight away that there isn’t room for them all, then that’s that, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, Ruth, Ruth. We have to prove it. We need proof. Facts, figures, that sort of thing. We’ve got to show him exactly why there isn’t enough room. And we’ve not just got to tell him how impossible it all is, but how ridiculously impossible. We’ve got to blow him — and his Ark — right out of the water.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ I hesitate for a moment. ‘Who’s “he”?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, it’s your father.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Yes. Oh dear indeed. But I didn’t know you were coming when we had our — discussion, and I don’t want to give up on it now.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘If you don’t mind, that is.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind at all. Dad thrives on this sort of thing. And if anyone can provide a successful argument in favour of all those animals living in even the tiniest of Arks, then my father’s your man.’ I watch Eric leafing through his Bible, making notes and chewing his pen. ‘Is it all right if I go now?’

  ‘My dear girl, of course you may go. I’ve kept you too long as it is.’

  He does have a point, for quite apart from routine house and animal duties, I’ve already spent an hour on the phone to the zoo trying to get answers to a list of questions ranging from whether zebras eat hay to the gestation of the rhinoceros. The man at the zoo is kindly and tries to be helpful, but he is bewildered by all these questions.

  Upstairs in my room I get out my violin and warm up with some scales. I’m not doing nearly enough practice, but without a goal, much of the incentive has gone. I shall never be a soloist, and now not even an orchestral player. So what (or who) am I playing for? My pupils? Even if I manage to get any, they won’t mind whether I practise or not. My public? Unless you count Eric and Silas, I don’t have a public. Myself? As I watch my fingers moving up and down the fingerboard, I remember practising these same scales for the exams I did as a schoolgirl, and my parents even then questioning the point of all that work. And I can see my small, furious, foot-stamping self trying to explain.

  ‘It’s for me, me, me! I do it for me! I love it. Can’t you see? Can’t you hear?’

  But all they could see was that their daughter was wasting hours of her time (and quite a lot of their money) doing something which they saw as trivial; a hobby perhaps, a pastime, but certainly not a career which would earn any kind of living. They didn’t like the sound that I made and couldn’t fathom why I enjoyed making it, and even the high marks I achieved in my examinations (invariably with distinction) failed to impress them. It was as though I had burst into another language and expected them to converse with me. It was totally foreign. I was totally foreign.

  I put down my violin and sit on the bed. Over the years, I have devoted thousands of hours to my music; hours of scales and exercises, of pieces and studies, and once, gloriously, a violin concerto with a full orchestra. They have been hours of toil, hours of weeping frustration but also moments of indescribable pleasure. Am I going let all that hard work go, just because I have no immediate goal? I told Eric and Silas that I love what I do, and of course it’s true. But like every love affair, my relationship with the violin is going through a rough patch; a period when it might be tempting to let it go, at least for the time being. Is that what I really want?

  I pick up my violin again, running my fingers along the grain of the wood, feeling the smooth polished back, stroking its familiar ribs and surfaces. I bought it with money left to me by a godfather, and it’s old and quite valuable. Far better musicians than I shall ever be have owned and played this instrument, and I often wonder who they were, how they came by it and how or why they passed it on. Maybe one day it will pass into the hands of my own child — my son, if Blossom is to be believed — and he in his turn will give it to one of his own children. Or perhaps he will sell it. Who knows? But one thing is certain. So long as I can play, I will. Not for audiences or even for money, but, as I told my parents all those years ago, for me. Because I have to. Because, quite simply, it’s what I do. I stand up and riffle through a pile of music, then I take out one of the Bach unaccompanied suites and painstakingly start to practise the first movement.

  ‘Any phone calls?’ I ask, when much later I come downstairs for a cup of tea (with no mobile signal, I’m now dependent on the landline).

  ‘None for you,’ Silas says. ‘Don’t worry. Someone will reply sooner or later.’

  ‘But I really need to be earning now,’ I say, getting milk from the fridge. ‘I put the advertisement in ten days ago.’

  ‘It’s probably the wrong time of year, August. Who needs violin lessons in August?’

  He’s right, of course. I should wait until the autumn and the new school year. But my savings are beginning to dip alarmingly, and while I’ve long since said goodbye to any hope of a gap year, I’m going to need things for the baby. Eric and Silas have said they’re quite happy to keep me, but I value my independence. Besides, it would be wrong to take advantage of their generosity.

  ‘I shall busk,’ I say, pouring boiling water onto a teabag. ‘I shall take my fiddle and go into town and busk. Someone’s bound to throw me a coin or two if I wait long enough. I did it on the underground when I was at college. There were three of us together at the bottom of the escalator at Paddington Station.’ Oh, happy days. ‘I did all my Christmas shopping one year out of my busking money.’

  ‘What on earth did your parents say?’ Silas asks. He is examining his latest acquisition, a dead squirrel, on the draining board.

  ‘I didn’t tell them. They would have been appalled. They would have considered it to be no better than begging, and the thought of their daughter begging on the streets would probably have finished them off. But they got very nice presents that year.’

  ‘Good for you.’ Silas sounds abstracted. ‘This is amazing.’ Tenderly, he lifts up his squirrel to show us. The squirrel doesn’t look dead at all, merely surprised (as well it might). ‘Not a mark on it, and it must have been knocked down. I shall enjoy doing this.’

  ‘Is busking legal?’ Eric asks.

  ‘I’m not sure now. I’ll phone the police and find out.’

  Ten minutes later, after an interesting telephone conversation with someone official at the police station, I have discovered that busking comes under the Vagrancy Act of 1824.

  ‘Very old-fashioned. Like being hanged for sheep-stealing,’ I tell Eric (Silas is still preoccupied with his squirrel).

  ‘Does that mean you can’t do it?’

  ‘Apparently I might get by on the grounds of providing “street entertainment”.’

  ‘Does that mean you have to have an audition?’

  ‘Heavens, no. But I might be inspected by someone from the Town Centre Management Team, whatever that is. I could take Mr. Darcy with me, if you’ll let me. People might be able to resist me, but they’ll melt when Mr. Darcy does that reproachful thing with his eyebrows.’

  ‘Are you fit to hang around street corners with your violin?’

  ‘Perfectly fit,’ I assure him. ‘It’ll do me good.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘It’ll do him good, too. It’s never too early to start enjoying music.’

  And while I’ve no idea whether the seahorse/rabbit has developed anything in the way of ears yet, I’m sure that I’m right. Bring on the council official and the generous, music-loving punters. I can’t wait to begin.

  Chapter Seven

  But before I can commence my busking career, there are medical matters to attend to.

  Now I have to admit that I had entirely forgotten that pregnancy is regarded not so much as a natural event as a medical condition fraught with hazards, and that a variety of investigations is required to ensure that nothing awful is happening either to me or to the baby. It was Silas who po
inted this out, and Silas who took me down to his GP in his muddy Land Rover. All was apparently well, as far as the GP could tell, but I am apparently due for my twelve-week scan.

  ‘Yes. It’s important to check up on things after the first trimester,’ says Silas, who has been looking things up in his book.

  ‘Trimester?’ I ask him.

  ‘Three months. It comes from the Latin,’ he informs me kindly. ‘Pregnancy is divided into three trimesters, and each one —’

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Silas, I think I get the message. And the doctor gave me this booklet. I can read up all about it.’

  ‘My book has diagrams.’

  ‘So has the booklet.’ I pat his hand. ‘Don’t worry. From now on, I promise to keep myself fully informed.’

  I have never had a scan before, and envisage myself being posted into one of those long dark tubes for a lonely and claustrophobic half-hour or so, but apparently this scan is quite a simple procedure, and I will be able to see what’s going on. Now I come to think of it, I have seen friends coming hot foot from their scans, proudly sporting grainy and (to me) completely unrecognisable photos of their unborn offspring. Hitherto, I haven’t paid much attention to scans, but now that it’s time for mine, I’m rather looking forward to it.

  So, it would seem, are my uncles.

  ‘I think I should go with her,’ Silas says.

  ‘What, you mean come in and watch?’ I’m not at all sure about this.

  ‘Why not? I believe people are allowed to bring their partners, and you don’t seem to have one, so I can come instead. To support you,’ he adds, although even I can see that he is desperate to see what goes on (Silas is a terrible hypochondriac, and has a hypochondriac’s fascination for all things medical).

  ‘What about me?’ Eric says. ‘I think I should come too.’

  ‘Of course you can come too,’ Silas says. ‘We’ll all go. And we can go to the pub for lunch afterwards.’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I say, with the uncomfortable feeling that my life is being taken over. ‘This is my scan. I think I should be the one to decide.’

  ‘You need us to drive you there,’ Silas reminds me.

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  ‘No. Of course it’s not. All right then. We’ll take you and wait in the car while you have it.’

  ‘With nothing to do,’ says Eric.

  ‘And these things always take hours.’

  They both look at me, their expressions so ridiculously alike that I can’t help laughing.

  ‘Okay. You can both come. But don’t blame me if you’re not allowed in. And please don’t do anything embarrassing.’

  ‘Would we!’

  ‘I don’t know, but I have a feeling you might.’

  But while it has occurred to me that one or other of my uncles might well do or say something inappropriate, I never considered the affect that two identical elderly men would have on a waiting-room full of pregnant women and their partners. There are the double-takes, the whispers, the covert and then not-so-covert glances, and the outright stares. I wish with all my heart that Eric and Silas could have worn different clothes, or brushed their hair in different ways, or at the very least, sat at opposite ends of the room. But no. Here they sit, side by side, reading old copies of Woman’s Own and pausing occasionally to beam at their audience.

  ‘Do you have to do this?’ I whisper to Eric, who is sitting beside me.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Play to the gallery.’

  ‘I can’t think what you mean.’ He turns to the problem page (“Is my partner two-timing me?” screams one of the by-lines. More than likely, I think sourly).

  ‘You know exactly what I mean.’

  ‘My dear Ruth, if you’re born with a handicap, you might as well make the most of it.’

  ‘It’s not a handicap!’

  ‘No, but it might as well be, the way people behave.’

  ‘I believe you’re enjoying this.’

  ‘And why not? You must admit, it’s quite fun.’

  ‘I would have thought you’d have tired of this kind of fun by now.’

  ‘That’s what our mother used to say. But you don’t have to sit next to us if you don’t want to.’

  ‘You’re behaving like children!’

  ‘She said that, too.’

  Fortunately, at this stage a white-coated young woman calls out my name.

  ‘Miss Robinson? Come this way, please.’

  Eric and Silas put down their magazines and get up to follow me (more stares and whispers. Maybe everyone thinks I have twin sugar daddies).

  ‘Are you coming with her?’ The young woman looks dubious. ‘Both of you?’

  ‘We’ll explain when we get inside,’ says Silas. ‘You see,’ he continues, once the door is closed behind us, ‘we’re her next of kin.’

  ‘What, both of you?’ she says again.

  ‘Oh yes. Can’t you see the family likeness?’ (There is no family likeness.)

  ‘Well, maybe just one of you, if that’s all right with Miss Robinson.’

  I open my mouth to say something, but Eric gets in first.

  ‘It’s a bit delicate,’ he says. ‘You see, until six months ago, we were conjoined twins. Up until then, obviously we’d never been apart at all. And we — well, we still find it hard.’ I swear I can see tears in his eyes.

  ‘You were operated on that recently? Surely it would have been in the papers. That sort of thing is always on the news.’ Apparently my white-coated friend isn’t as gullible as Eric had hoped. She looks them both up and down, as though searching for a missing leg or the remains of a shared arm.

  ‘Oh, no newspapers.’ Eric looks shocked. ‘Patient confidentiality,’ he says, tapping the side of his nose. ‘We managed to keep it out of the papers. We still walk with a limp,’ he adds.

  The technician is obviously baffled. As for me, I’m furious. They have obviously done this before. This routine is well-rehearsed, and they’ve got it off so pat and their delivery is so convincing that in the end they are both given permission to stay. Eric winks at me, but I ignore him. They may be able to get round officialdom, but it’s going to take a lot more to get round me. I consider sending them both out, but I feel suddenly vulnerable, and would appreciate their company even if I haven’t yet forgiven them.

  But all our differences — if that’s what they were — are forgotten when the scan begins and we see the monitor.

  ‘Look.’ The technician points to the screen. ‘There’s its heart beating, and there’s an arm ... and another. See there. It’s kicking.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’ Silas appears lost for words. He and Eric exclaim and coo over this tiny apparition as though they alone are responsible for its existence, while I am totally bemused. True, there is something swimming about on the screen, bobbing gently in its warm watery world, and I can just about see a beating heart and something which might be a limb. But they are the heart and the limb of a seahorse/rabbit, not anything which resembles a human being, and I feel cheated and disappointed. It is like showing people round one’s own haunted house, and being the only one who can’t see the ghost.

  ‘Oh, Ruth! You are so clever! Look what you’ve made!’ Eric says, and this time there are real tears in his eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so wonderful.’

  ‘Is it all right? There’s nothing wrong with it, is there?’ Silas asks.

  ‘Everything looks fine, although of course she’ll have another scan at twenty weeks.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I hear myself say, ‘but this is my baby.’

  ‘Of course.’ The technician smiles at me. ‘I’m so sorry. But your friends —’

  ‘Uncles,’ says Silas.

  ‘Uncles, then. Well they like to talk, don’t they?’

  ‘They certainly do,’ I say with feeling. But of course, now that I have her attention, I can’t think of anything else to say.

  ‘Boy or girl?’ Silas ventures.

  ‘Boy o
f course,’ Eric says.

  ‘Would you both please shut up,’ I say, and turn back to the technician. ‘Can you tell the sex yet?’

  ‘Blossom’s never wrong —’

  ‘Please, Eric. Can you tell?’

  ‘Too early, I’m afraid. But of course your Blossom has a fifty percent chance of being right.’

  ‘She wouldn’t like to hear you say that,’ mutters Silas.

  Just for a moment, lying on this couch with my tummy exposed and these two mad people having their discussions across my body, I think of Amos; big, generous Amos, with his beard and his smile and his kind brown eyes, and for a moment, wish that he was sitting here beside me, holding my hand. But he doesn’t even know about the baby. What kind of a father would he have made? I wish I had been able to tell him about it, for now I know that we really have managed to create a new life, even if to me at least it bears little resemblance to a human being, I feel as though I have stolen something from him, albeit unwittingly. His genes, his input, are alive and apparently well inside my body. All those weeks ago, I exercised my “right to choose” when I decided to go ahead with my pregnancy, but Amos was never given any choice at all.

  In the pub over a ploughman’s and best bitter (Eric and Silas) and a cheese and tomato sandwich and orange juice (me) my uncles get out their grainy photos (they managed to persuade the technician to give them one each) and coo over them together, pointing out to each other features which even I know to be invisible at this early stage. But they apologise to me very charmingly for their behaviour in the hospital, and of course, I forgive them.

  For quite apart from anything else, where on earth would I be without them?

  Part II: Autumn

  By the end of the second trimester, the foetus weighs between one and a half and two pounds. The skin has thickened, the lungs are developing well and hearing and taste have developed. Eyebrows and eyelashes are present, although the eyes themselves may still be closed. A pattern of sleeping and waking may be detected, and there are periods of intense activity. At this stage, the baby has an 85% chance of survival outside the womb.