“I'll have to go and get something,” I said.
I dashed to the bathroom and found the packet. We'd used one years before but then moved on to other ways. Would they still be okay? Didn't care.
Back in the room, she was sitting up in the bed, her legs drawn to one side under the sheets. Her head was down, and her flowing red hair was over her face. For a second, I could not think what she reminded me of. And then it came.
A mermaid.
It must have gone back to Dad, to his being with them, but for as long as I could remember, I'd had a thing about mermaids. As a small boy, they haunted my dreams, exquisite sea-girls, swimming around and under and between me in the cold, black water. I couldn't understand, but I could certainly feel, their erotic pull. Naked, beautiful, fatal. Even reading that the mermaid myth was probably based on the various species of sea cow—slow, ugly, harmless creatures, whose heavy-jowled mothers nursed their infants in a humanlike way, bobbing in the waves—even that couldn't spoil the magic. It was sex and death. It was too strong.
I reached forward and took Uma's chin in my hands and raised her head. Her eyes were glistening and lustrous. I heard the waves crash and smelled the salt sea. I saw the mermaid, the little mermaid.
The Little Mermaid.
Harry.
By some miracle of genetics, he had inherited my fascination. Over and over again, he'd watch Disney's Little Mermaid, asking who was who, and what did that mean, and where did the fish go when it swam out of the picture.
“What's wrong?”
“You look beautiful. I can't do this.”
There followed one of the most unpleasant half hours of my life. The sharp-tongued Uma I had known heretofore seemed now like a mild and gentle fawn, nuzzling at her mother's teat. Every aspect of my morphology, personality, demeanor, morality, and odor were dissected with the precision and distaste of a police pathologist picking through a rat-eaten corpse left for a year in a sewer. Uma had, in particular, a line in sexual ridicule that was as inexhaustible as it was inventive. I was doubly relieved that we hadn't had sex, as that would have given her yet more ammunition, more soundly based in empirical fact.
But finally, with magnificent disdain, she left, her head held high, justice, truth, and dignity all on her side. I shut the door behind her, put my back to it, and slid down onto my haunches.
I didn't think I'd be going back to the Freudian playgroup.
After ten minutes of deep breathing, I dragged myself up. I felt as though I'd spent a night wrestling with monsters in my dreams. But there was work to do.
Three hours later, long after the traffic on the road outside had seeped and vanished into the night, I'd finished my book.
PRADAPRADAPRADAPRADAGUCCI 22
Blue.
The line was blue.
No one ever gets the result of a pregnancy test without a deluge of emotions: joy, despair, fear, hope. I managed to squeeze all of those out of my half inch of blue line. I sat naked on the bathroom floor for an hour. I'd build myself up to the point of tears—I mean, tears of misery, not tears of joy, which, frankly, always seem a bit fake to me— and then the beauty and the glory of it would surge back, and I'd feel my heart swell and my spirit rise, and I'd want to fling open the windows and scream out to the world: “I'm having a baby.”
And I knew right away that it was going to be a girl, and I planned out the outfits—and believe me, I had a lot of ideas stored up in my head, because I'd never been given the chance to use them on Harry. Little dresses and skirts and tiny shoes danced through my mind like butterflies.
And the child, whose was the child? I didn't know; I don't know. The precise timing makes it more likely that it is Sean's, but something about the heat and carnality of the times with Ludo makes me think … Except that I won't think. I've thought enough. It's time to love.
Sean came over in the morning, proudly bearing his manuscript. I read it in the garden while he and Magnus chased Harry.
“Chase me, chase me,” he shouted, and Sean shouted back, “Don't be so camp,” and Magnus didn't know what to say except “Come here, newt. Come here, newt.”
I was a little disappointed that Sean couldn't tell what was going on inside me: it seemed obvious, as if I had “pregnant lady” written in light over my head like a halo, for all the world to see. Somehow I managed to concentrate on Sean's book. Of course, it helped that it was all about Harry and me.
When it was nap time, Sean and I lay on a blanket in the sun.
“What do you think?” he said, pointing with his nose toward the pages.
“I think it's quite funny, for you. Am I really such a cow?”
“I exaggerated a bit, for comic effect. You know how I do.”
“Oh yes. But did you really hate it so much?”
“Hate what?”
“Bringing up Harry.”
“It was so much harder than I thought it was going to be. And so much more boring. But overall I didn't hate it, I loved it. I mean, I love it; it's not like he's had enough now and he'll be taking it from here, thanks very much.”
“I know. I forget sometimes that he's not even three yet. So much more to go through together. But I've got some more news.”
“Don't tell me, another promotion? You're being officially crowned as the princess of Prada?”
How could he not tell? The silly man.
“Not exactly. I'm pregnant.”
There was an instant, massive grin, swallowed a moment later. But it kept bobbing back to the surface.
“I suppose that merits a kiss.”
He rolled on top of me and did a pretty convincing kiss. But I opened my eyes and saw that his were open, too.
“Celeste, do you think we can afford a nanny?” he said, when I disengaged. “Do you even think that we should get one if we can afford it? If I've got to be a mom again, I will, but I'm going to whine and moan so much you'll divorce me on the grounds of … um, being a really boring moaner and whiner.”
“Snappy.”
“Sorry, it's the shock.”
“But you're happy? Just a bit?”
“Yes darling, I'm happy. In a moaning and whining way. Really happy. I've, er, had some stuff lately. Stuff to deal with. In my head. But I feel it's all behind me now. No, don't look worried. Nothing bad, nothing, you know, gruesome. But I made some decisions. And you know what I'm like about decisions—the whole never-making-them thing—and so now things are better. That was clear, wasn't it?”
I looked at him seriously.
“Sean, is there anything you want to tell me?”
“No, look, I swear, there was nothing.”
“Whatever it was, I forgive you.”
“What if there was nothing to forgive? Because there wasn't.”
“I forgive you anyway.”
“That's not fair,” he said, feigning indignation. “You can't forgive me when I haven't done anything, just so you can get the better of me. In a forgiving way. It's completely cheating.”
“Then I forgive you for what you haven't done.”
“This is intolerable. I'm not talking to you anymore. I'm going down there to say hello to my new son.”
“Daughter.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah.”
Then he slid down and kissed my belly and talked to it for a while—mainly philosophy but with some general observations about life, literature, and football. After five minutes, I got bored.
“There's something else I want to say. You never let me answer about the nanny. No, we can't have one.”
He stopped talking to my tummy. His face sank.
“Oh.”
“We don't need one. And we can't afford one, not on whatever pathetic salary you can rake in as a writer and would-be humorous broadcaster.”
“What are you on about?”
“You had your go, now it's my turn.”
He started to smile, but uncertainty still played around his eyes
.
“You mean you're—”
“It's already done. I've resigned.”
“But we'll be broke. And besides, I thought your career came first. People are going to say I've forced you to sacrifice it. I'm going to be made out to be a monster. I hate that.”
“Don't be such a pansy. Look, I wanted a career, and I've had one. I can always go back and do it again. Three years ago, I didn't want to stop, didn't want to give it all up to bring up a child, but now I do. We're taking it in turns. Isn't that how it should be?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“And as for being broke, well, we're lucky that the mortgage is tiny, and we can tighten our belts a little.” He laughed. “Stop it! I can do it. I'll even get buses if you want me to. Bye-bye, taxis. But the other half of the deal is that now the onus is on you to make a living. You were a good mom, now be a dad. Bring home an antelope or two, you big butch bastard.”
“Shit,” he said. “Things might be a bit sparse on the antelope front.”
And then he told me about getting the sack from Woman's Hour.
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” I replied, trying not to spoil it by grinning. “There's a message from Jemima something. She sounds nice. Says they got a great response to your last talk, and can you come in to discuss the next series. So you can't use that as an excuse.”
And then I leaned over and kissed him on the mouth, and at that moment, Harry woke up. Bella brought him down and plopped him between us. He was fuzzy and woozy, and a bit tearful.
“Mommy daddy mommy daddy,” he said, turning from one to the other, dissatisfied equally, it seemed, with both of us. Then he flopped down on the blanket and said, half crying, half sighing, “Mermaid, mermaid.”
Acknowledgments
Anyone who knows him will instantly recognize the voice of my husband, Anthony McGowan, in the “Sean” chapters of this book. My thanks to him for so nobly sharing his wit, wisdom, and almost superhuman powers to irritate.
My thanks also to my editor, Signe Pike, without whose enthusiasm and energy this book would never have been completed.
REBECCA CAMPBELL, the author of Slave to Fashion and Slave to Love, was educated at the London School of Economics and the London College of Fashion. She lives in North London with her husband, a writer; their son, Gabriel; and daughter, Rose.
The Marriage Diaries is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by Rebecca Campbell
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48796-4
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