More Than You Know

by Penny Vincenzi

  It was a battle, and it raged for days and became very ugly. He told her she was disgraceful; she told him he was monstrous; he told her she lacked a sense of maternal duty; she told him he had no concept of the sort of person she really was; he said if he had, he certainly wouldn’t have married her.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t just get rid of the baby; I really am,” he said, finally, “since it’s going to be such a burden to you. Maybe it’s not too late to do that now, Eliza. I’d investigate it if I were you.”

  Eliza walked up to him and started to attack him physically, flailing at him with her fists; he stared at her, then turned in silence and left.

  He didn’t come back that night, spent it in the office; but as he sat at his desk, grey-faced and shaking with exhaustion the following morning, staring out of the window, and his misery so evident that even Louise was touched by it, Eliza walked through reception and into his office, shut the door behind her, and told him she had decided that she would give up work when the baby was born.

  It was prompted partly by her own guilt and partly as simply an acute weariness and inability to go on fighting Matt in all his hurt fury.

  The guilt, because of course she knew, deep down at the bottom of her soul, as any mother or rather prospective mother would know, that she should stay at home and look after this precious longed-for little creature, that it was her responsibility to do so and to deny it was an act of wanton selfishness. She could plead no mitigating circumstances: there was no financial need for her to carry on working; her work was hardly benefitting humanity. It was acutely superficial in its nature, as Matt had so forcefully pointed out, and continuing in it was undoubtedly threatening her marriage. Which was not going to benefit the baby either.

  But it hurt desperately and harshly; she felt bereft, robbed of her life prize so dearly won. And she felt afraid, too, of a future without one of her main sources of happiness. Try as she might, she felt an uncrushable resentment towards Matt.

  It was a new world she had to make her way in; she hoped she would survive.

  Jenny was having what she called a turnout. This mostly meant taking everything out of every cupboard and drawer in the office and putting ninety-nine per cent of it back again, all to a running commentary on her own progress, when the phone rang. It was Barry Floyd.

  “Is that the lovely Jenny?”

  “It’s Jenny, Mr. Floyd, yes. I don’t know if—”

  “And is the equally lovely Louise there?”

  “I’ll just inquire, Mr. Floyd; would you mind holding?”

  “I wouldn’t mind holding anything at all, and certainly not you, my darling, no.”

  “It’s Mr. Floyd, Miss Mullen,” said Jenny. “He sounds very cheerful. Do you want to speak to him?”

  “Well, since he’s cheerful, yes, Jenny, put him through. Barry, hallo.”

  “Good morning, my darling Louise. And how are you this beautiful morning?”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” said Louise, “but I don’t know where you are. It’s pouring with rain in London.”

  “I’m in London and it looks beautiful to me. Now then. Could I interest you in a tenant today?”

  “What sort of tenant and for where? That building in Holborn?”

  “No, not Holborn. This is about Slough. Someone who just might be moving in … that direction, just so long as he can find premises.”

  “Oh, my God. Barry, that’s amazing. Who is he?”

  “It’s a little outfit—you may not even have heard of them—”

  “Oh.” Louise’s voice echoed her disappointment. They needed a big one for Slough: a really big one.

  “Still—worth pursuing, I think. Could you see him for a meeting this afternoon on site, do you think? At around three p.m. And bring those two boys of yours with you.”

  He always referred to Matt and Jimbo as Louise’s boys; she liked it; it diminished them rather satisfactorily.

  “I’ll try. But it’s quite a trek out to Slough. And … well, if he’s really small, is he the sort of tenant we want anyway?”

  “Oh, I think so. You know how one thing leads to another in this game.”

  “Well, I’ll ask them. But I’ll be there.”

  “Good girl. You’ll like him; he’s a real charmer.”

  “That always helps,” said Louise.

  She asked Matt and Jimbo whether they wanted to come; they both said they had far more important things to do, and that a small tenant for Slough would be worse than useless.

  “Barry said he was worth pursuing. And it is very important to us, that site. Plus Barry said he’d want a quick decision if he liked the place.”

  “Yes, all right,” said Matt, “of course someone should go, but that’s fine; you’ll do. And there’s no way I’m going to be rushed into letting some wanker take half that space or less, and you can tell Barry that first off.”

  She had still not returned by half past six; Matt and Jimbo were beginning to grow irritable. Jimbo was expected at his fiancée’s home for a family conference about the wedding, now rivalling the D-day landings in its complexity, and Matt wanted to go and look at a car-park site in the city.

  “Give her another half an hour; then we’ll lock up and she can tell us about it in the morning.”

  At six fifty-nine precisely Louise came in.

  She had what they both called her look on. It was a look that transformed her from sexy, sassy girl to sleek, successful woman, and it settled on her whenever she had pulled off some deal. It was partly the way she moved, rather more slowly than usual, partly the expression in her eyes, partly a just-supercilious curve to her mouth.

  “Oh,” she said, “hallo.”

  “Hallo, Louise. Bit late, you could have called.”

  “Yes, well, unfortunately there aren’t any telephones set into the foundations at Slough, and the two boxes I passed were out of order. Anyway, it’s only seven, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Yes, OK, OK. What was this mysterious client, then, and is there any hope of a deal?”

  “I … think there might be, yes.”

  She sat down on Matt’s desk, her long legs swinging, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and the small tortoiseshell lighter they had given her for her last birthday, and lit one, inhaling hard and then blowing out a great cloud of smoke.

  “Quite a lot of hope. Good thing I went; he’s going to need quite a bit of stroking. He was obviously a bit disappointed we weren’t all there; he’d brought his PR along.”

  His PR! Jimbo and Matt looked at each other. Small firms didn’t usually have PRs, and certainly not ones they brought to meetings.

  “Yes. She was great. I really liked her.”

  “She!”

  “Yes. Nothing wrong with that, I trust. Or do you not approve of female PRs?”

  “Of course we do,” said Jimbo hastily. “We approve of female everything. Even developers.”

  “Yes. Anyway, her boss, he liked the development very much, liked the landscaping particularly, and the location, of course. Matt, I made sure you got the credit for that, at least—”

  “What do you mean, ‘at least’?”

  “Well, even though you were too busy to come.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Louise,” said Matt, “who the fu— Who was this client?”

  “Have you heard of WireHire?”

  “WireHire?”

  There was a silence; Matt and Jimbo looked at each other and then at Louise, Jimbo’s face red, Matt’s white.

  “WireHire? You mean … the company that’s hot on the heels of Radio Rentals?”

  “Yeah, well done. They’re very big mostly in TV now, and especially the new color sets. Which they say are the next big thing. No one’s going to want to buy them at the moment—they’ll be terribly expensive—but everyone’ll want one, so—”

  “Shit,” said Jimbo.

  Louise smiled at him sweetly.

  “Yes, indeed. Well, they want to rationalise their offices
, as they put it. Having all their clerical staff under one roof will save them zillions. Said it would be perfect for them. We’ll have to hurry the completion along, naturally, and of course you did say you weren’t going to be rushed into letting some wanker have it, so as I said to them—”

  “Louise, we must have a meeting with them ASAP. Obviously. Er … who came then, apart from the PR?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, obviously Bill Laurence wouldn’t have come himself.”

  “Now, why do you think that?” said Louise.

  “Well, he’s the big boss. He wouldn’t have time to visit sites, for God’s sake.”

  “Do you know, he does. He thinks it’s crucial that the head of a company be involved in decisions over where his workforce is to spend its days—its habitat, as he put it—and to meet the people who are creating that habitat. He didn’t seem too much of a wanker to me. Anyway, there’s no need for you to meet him yet.”

  “What? Of course there is.”

  “No, no, really there isn’t. I explained to him I was a partner in the company and that Barry and I had actually been present at its birth, so to speak, and he was perfectly happy to shake hands on it. Felicity made sure there were some photographs of that.”

  “Who’s Felicity?” said Matt irritably.

  “The PR. Felicity Bristow, she’s called—jolly posh, Matt; she could have gone to school with Eliza. Anyway, she said the pictures would go into the company magazine and then later on, when contracts had been exchanged, she’d circulate them to the press. So all you have to do for now is sit tight and wait for further developments.”

  She stood up, smiled at them sweetly, stubbed out her cigarette in Matt’s ashtray, and walked to the door. “Night, chaps. See you in the morning.”

  “I just can’t do this. I can’t; I can’t.”

  “Yes, you can. Come on; you have to concentrate.”

  “No, no, I can’t; I’m so tired—Oh, God, here comes another one, oh, my God—”

  “Come on, hang on to me. That’s it. You’re nearly there—”

  “It’s all right for you, you bastard; you’ve no idea what I’m going through. Will you just fuck off; go away.” Tears streamed down Eliza’s face; she threw back her head and shut her eyes.

  “That’s good,” said Professor Collins. “That’s very good. She’s getting upset; means she’s in transition—any minute now she’s going to want to push. Right. Off we go. One more push and … yes, good, very good, there’s the head; now wait; try to relax, and again … yes, come on, Eliza, now, now, now, yes … yes, there we are … good, good, very good, yes … and … yes! Good girl, well done, well done …”

  As Eliza said afterwards, it was a bit like being told how to have an orgasm.

  A moment’s silence then, the pain gone; the room back in focus, Matt smiling at her, tears streaming down his face, and then the cry, the raw, triumphant, newborn cry, and then: “Well done, Eliza. Congratulations. Must dash,” from Professor Collins. And then: “Seven and a half pounds, very good, she’s beautiful; here, hold your baby, Eliza. That’s right,” from the huge, smiling black midwife who had cajoled and bullied and encouraged her and cared for her through the long, long night, and she was crying and Matt was kissing her and kissing the baby’s head and crying too, and telling her he loved her and then … then …

  “Better start saving for the wedding,” the midwife said.

  “Wedding?” Eliza peered into the towel that was wrapped round her daughter, her screaming, amazingly beautiful, astonishingly wonderful daughter. “Oh, my God! It’s a girl. Nobody told me.”

  “We told you, honey,” said the midwife. “You just weren’t paying attention.”

  “Matt, did you realise, it’s … she’s a girl.”

  “I did, yeah. Bit different from a boy in certain departments, I noticed. I’m quick like that.”

  “So … is that all right?”

  “Course it’s all right.” He was bent over the baby, smiling at her, stroking her cheek. “She’s amazing. Beautiful. Can’t believe it.”

  “But … you don’t mind it’s not a boy?”

  “Mind? Why should I mind? Girls are much more fun. We can have a boy next time.”

  “What next time?” said Eliza.

  She looked down at the baby in her arms, and the baby looked up at her, and love took hold of her heart and turned and twisted it into a completely different shape. She stroked her daughter’s small, dark head and her soft, limp little legs, and tangled her tiny starfish fingers round her own giant one, and the whole world was changed.

  They called her Emmeline. Emmie for short. Their blue-eyed, dark-haired, strong-willed, difficult little daughter. Who screamed from one feed to the next, who seemed to need far less sleep than they did. Whose father doted on her, whose mother adored her, whose two grandmothers, bonding most happily over the small head, agreed that she looked like both her parents, while each privately knowing that she actually looked exactly like only one of them, and whose two grandfathers, the one wheeled into the ward in a wheelchair, the other swaggering with secondhand pride, shook hands over her, smiling bashfully, and became friends. Pete took charge of Adrian for the rest of his visit, wheeling him out of the hospital and into the pub—“Well, we can’t sit there all day, can we?”—plied him with the beer he was forbidden, and promised to sort out a series of ramps for him at home, so that he could be moved about more easily.

  Charles, Jimbo, and Maddy were all asked to be godparents, and were all duly moved to tears by the request; friends flocked to Eliza’s bedside for the entire seven days she was in hospital, in larger groups every day until Sister said she really must insist Mrs. Shaw respect visiting hours and the rule of three visitors at a time—although some of them were so exotic, men in brocaded frock coats worn over faded blue jeans, or velvet suits in purple or black, and girls in knicker-skimming dresses, thigh-high boots, and brilliantly colored fur coats, that she was reluctant to halt the flow, although she did have to put a stop to the flowers, which threatened to engulf the entire ward.

  Eliza recovered quickly, and begged to be allowed home early. Sister said she was to do nothing of the sort. “You feel all right here, I know, but you wait till you get home to the housework and the washing and no one to help with the baby.”

  Eliza said rather sheepishly that she was going to have help with all that (a cleaner, a present from her godmother, who had actually wanted to pay for a maternity nurse for a month, but Matt had forbidden that—“I’m not having some starched harridan taking over our baby”), but Sister then pointed out rather sharply that she hadn’t actually resolved Emmie’s feeding yet and it was a good idea to have that established before getting home.

  “And besides, Professor Collins likes his mothers in for a week, building up their strength and getting some proper rest.”

  “I don’t want to rest,” said Eliza crossly. “I want to go home with my baby.”

  Four sleep-deprived weeks later she would have paid the hospital to have her and Emmie back.

  Breast-feeding hurt so much that Eliza yelped aloud with pain every time. She longed to put Emmie onto the bottle, but Matt wouldn’t hear of it.

  “My mum says you’ve just got to persevere,” he said. “The more you do it, the more the milk flows.”

  Day had blurred into night, one feed into the next. She was frequently still in her nightie at teatime. When she did finally get dressed it was into her maternity clothes; the huge, leaky breasts that so totally failed to satisfy her daughter were not to be suppressed under any T-shirt or sweater, her waist still went out rather than in, and her stomach still protruded soggily beneath it. “Even my thighs are twice the size,” she wailed to Maddy. “I can’t bear to look at them.”

  She longed for Matt to come home each evening and then within ten minutes was quarrelling with him; he too was tiring of the noise, the lack of sleep, her exhaustion, and the apparent end of life as they knew it.
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  The cleaner left after the first week, when Eliza lost her temper with her and told her to stop polishing the bloody floor and wash up last night’s supper things instead.

  They rowed a great deal; Matt simply couldn’t see why Eliza was failing so spectacularly at what seemed to him a fairly simple set of demands. “All I’m asking,” he said as they went into week three, “is that you’ll have a meal ready for me when I get in. I don’t quite see what you’ve got to do all day.”

  That was the night when Eliza discovered there was not a clean or even a dry nappy in the place.

  That was the night when she told him to piss off when he told her it didn’t matter and they could rip up a towel and use that for a nappy; that was the night when he said he didn’t mind any of it, except her being so bloody miserable; that was the night when she told him if he didn’t give her a break and look after Emmie one night a week, she couldn’t answer for the consequences; that was the night when he told her to pull herself together and that he was going back to the office.

  That was the night when she rang her mother, and her mother told her to go out and buy some bottles and some Cow & Gate milk powder first thing in the morning.

  The next night was the one when Emmie slept as she was supposed to do, from six to ten o’clock and then from eleven to almost five.

  Matt was cross about the bottles, but grudgingly admitted that Emmie did seem happier. Eliza knocked her life into some semblance of routine, and discovered that great saviour of new mothers, the nappy service, whereby a cheerful man arrived on the doorstep every morning with a neatly folded pile of clean nappies and bore off the heap of dirty ones in a plastic bag. It seemed a much better use for her godmother’s money than the cleaner.

  They were not, of course, short of money; Matt was making a lot now and was the opposite of mean with it, but Eliza had had to hit the hard and unforgiving buffers of not having her own supply.