by Toby Litt
As he put the washing-up liquid firmly back in its correct place, a couple of soap bubbles boffed up into the air. Completely surprised and delighted by them, Paddy watched as they twirled towards the window-pane. (Again, he heard a sound he assumed was from Agatha – her movements.) He didn’t want the bubbles to land and pop but knew they would; they did. He moved across the room, away from the sink, quite as if he’d come to the end of some long decision, a month of pretending he’d been thinking about something else: he didn’t really know how he thought any more; he wasn’t sure if he ever had. He remembered sequential, philosophical, prosy thought: that was his professional mind, and he could employ it at will, whenever he had no distractions (no Monster). But life-decisions were made in a way far more poetic, now-you-don’t-see-it-now-you-do. They were mushrooms of the mind; not there, not there, still not there, then fully formed and going corrupt. Decisions weren’t made, they occurred to him – he occurred to them. He wondered if this was how other people’s minds worked – then realised that, of course, he’d have to go back to the beginning with the whole idea of other minds. Paddy felt stupid – he needed to be practical: what was he going to say to Agatha? He wanted to tell her the same thing he wanted her to tell him – It’s going to be alright. For this, he wanted no proof, just strong, warm, irrational insistence. It’s going to be alright. He and Agatha, though, could no longer convincingly reassure one another; each of them had used the words too many times, and in too many situations which had subsequently proven all wrong. Neither could take the other seriously as a comforter: in fact, they now mistrusted reassurances, were superstitious about them, afraid ever to hear them: alright had preceded agony too often to be plausible as anything other than its negatived sense, all wrong, don’t worry, it’s going to be all wrong. Perhaps in this they had worn one another out – it was hard to see how anything sayable, anything not an event, a good, healthy birth, would fix them for one another.
In five minutes he would take himself upstairs – all the way to the top.
CHAPTER 18
COMING through the front door, next but one evening, Paddy started speaking a little too early and loudly – careful, however, not to give too much information and be discovered as lying. ‘Aggie, I bumped into Henry,’ he said, omitting the words Hey and Guess what.
‘Hope it’s not too much of a surprise,’ said Henry, walking into the front room. Agatha looked at them both for a long moment, distracted; then she became charm, quite tinkled with it. ‘Henry,’ she said, ‘how are you?’ He was very well. Just before this, Agatha had found herself on the sofa – she assumed she had fallen asleep there listening to the breathing, but it was only now that she heard the first slow intake. Since noticing it, she had realised that the breathing didn’t happen all the time. She had begun to suspect that it was only when she was doing specific things that it was audible, but she hadn’t yet worked out which these things were. Certainly, the more routine hours passed without her hearing anything – they weren’t memorable, at all. She had no time to pursue this thought now. ‘It’s lovely to see you. How’s May?’ She was well, too. ‘And Hope?’
‘Yes,’ said Henry. Paddy immediately became worried that Henry would get to see none of Agatha’s torpor, her incipient madness – she would twinkle and charm her way through the whole visit, wittingly deceptive or not. Agatha offered tea or coffee, or something alcoholic. Henry thought a beer, thank you; Paddy with a nod would have the same. Agatha went off to get them. There was a moment of awkwardness: should the two men follow her into the kitchen? In the flat, Paddy felt, they would have – or would at least have kept talking to her (shouting from any room to any other had been unembarrassing, here was different). He looked at Henry, whose eyes had been searching for his: Henry now gave him a definite look, but not a diagnostic one – this situation is intense is what it said, not this is what this situation is. Paddy wanted to ask, What do you think so far? but he could only shrug in a way he hoped was comprehensible. Henry, inexplicitly, shrugged back – and started to talk about his day, would not be drawn just yet. It was only when putting the three glasses on a tray to bring them through that Agatha fully realised they had an unexpected guest and that she was going in some way to have to cope with his visit. This upset her; Henry was not someone with whom she should have to cope – she and Paddy were very fond of him; when bad things happened to him, they even allowed themselves to admit they loved him. She picked up the tray and all the way into the front room thought she was going to drop it. ‘There you are,’ she said almost with triumph as she handed the glass to Henry, who was talking but not rudely and didn’t stop for the gift-glass but incorporated a thank you into one of his sentences. He was telling an anecdote, which turned out to be quite funny; Agatha found it more amusing than normally she would, because it was such a change to be listening to a different humour: Paddy’s was so familiar – and some of what made them laugh had become shamefully (had anyone else known) grotesque; if they laughed, when they laughed – rarely, and, then, hard; often until crying. Henry talked a while longer about the same funny character at work, less funnily; he drank the first half of his beer very quickly. His was the loudest non-shouting voice the house had heard in months; he enjoyed the theatricality of the large ringing room.
The awkwardness he had initially felt at the major fact he was concealing began to diminish; this, he could do. Paddy had relaxed, somewhat (half-forgetting his and Henry’s mission): Agatha’s unusual attention and her slightly false responsiveness to anything Henry was saying – surely this wouldn’t pass unnoticed. Henry knew her, and how one story of anyone’s usually led to one of hers; chain of anecdote. But Henry was probably thinking that nothing much, apart from the big, terrible things, had happened to Agatha recently; she wasn’t going to be talking, like him, of confrontations and misunderstandings, annoyances and stupidities. Halfway through Henry’s next anecdote, Agatha changed – became slap-serious; she did not interrupt him, though Paddy could tell she wanted to – she waited until he had taken a quiet sip of beer, then until he’d swallowed. ‘How many weeks is she?’ Agatha asked.
Henry met her immediately; he had, Henry, been blustering, and Agatha had seen the reason: his major fact was discovered. ‘Four or five,’ said Henry, ‘I’m sorry – we were going to wait until the first scan before we told you. It’s so ridiculously soon. We shouldn’t even –’
‘What?’ said Paddy, no slower than anyone might be expected to be.
Agatha smiled. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’
‘I’m anxious,’ said Henry, and laughed through the awkwardness. ‘I’m happy,’ he said, the humour having clearly gone from his laugh.
‘I’m happy for you,’ said Agatha, blinking. ‘I’m delighted – now please go.’
Without hesitating, Henry stood up. Paddy took only this time to quash his instinct to stop him: Henry would have seen enough, from this.
Agatha was radiant as she crossed the room and took Henry by the shoulders and kissed him on the lips. As her face was drawing back, Paddy heard her whisper – but it hadn’t been intended as secret: ‘Quickly – go quickly.’ Henry was leaving a half-full glass of beer but without a glance – he gave little more to either of them. Paddy went with him to the front door, taking his usual shelter in practicality. ‘It’s great news,’ he said as Henry went past him. ‘Tell May…’ he said, and then shut the door when he saw Henry, aghast, obviously, even from the back of his neck, keeping going.
Henry had failed to get through this – and Paddy had put him up to it, unsuccessfully.
He heard Agatha moving about in the other room – he thought she was walking her agitation, but actually she was just sitting down. He went and sat beside her, to be ready. The evenness of her breathing disturbed him hugely: how was she going to get from here to sobbing without some incoherence?
‘How did you guess?’ Paddy asked.
‘I just knew,’ Agatha said. ‘And I don’t want to talk about it.’
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‘Alright.’
‘How was today?’
‘Can I just say one thing?’
‘What is it?’
‘They must have –’
‘Yes, it’s about as soon as they could have. It happens all the time, though. More than you know. Some people are…’ Agatha didn’t know whether to say lucky or unlucky. ‘It happens to some people,’ she definitely ended.
Paddy went into the kitchen, shaken, and poured himself a glass of water. For the rest of that evening, he managed not to mention Henry and May, Hope and babies in general. Agatha seemed calm, to him, and felt herself to be astonishingly unaffected by this. After Paddy had gone to bed, she was able to devote some time to thinking it through. She knew that she was jealous, jealous of the pain as well as the delights, but she didn’t think she hated May. In all this, she was glad to be accompanied by the breathing.
CHAPTER 19
THE following afternoon whilst Paddy was out at work May came round, on her own. Agatha had been expecting a visit from her – although there had been no phonecall, because there had been no phonecall. When she saw who it was on the doorstep, Agatha wavered for a pulse – did she feel herself capable of this? Just to shut the door, whatever the consequences for future friendship or estrangement, seemed so attractive. Instead, she managed one of the most demanding smiles of her life – one that required emotional pulleys and levers to help it ascend. As May came in, Agatha saw through her belly to what was, at five weeks, likely to be inside her; this did not remain a static thing, though, but ramified nauseatingly into a future, a personality, a giggle and a subject of many many hours of future discussions – if they managed, after this, to remain friends. May stopped in the hall. ‘Is this alright?’ she asked. ‘Are you alright about me coming round?’
‘I’m fine, I think,’ said Agatha, hoping that saying so would make it so. She had been in the front room just when May knocked, and decided now they should go and sit instead (to protect them both, in some way) in the kitchen. One of Agatha’s hands gestured, Agatha hardly knew which, but still May made no decisive move. ‘Let’s try,’ said Agatha, ‘at least.’ Which brought May to her own surface, and Aggie could see her eyes going glassy as she stepped past her. By the time they had reached the back of the kitchen, wordlessly, Aggie had breathed herself back into composure – deep and two and out and deep and two. A scrape that moment did nothing to disturb her. May, too, had somehow calmed herself. ‘Just a glass of water, please,’ she replied to Agatha’s next question.
‘You can have whatever you like,’ Agatha said, and realised the question had phrased itself as if to a child.
‘Just water, please,’ repeated May. ‘I’m off caffeine – and you know I hate all that herbal tea-stuff.’
Agatha poured them out a couple of large glasses, straight from the tap; they had a water filter, but she felt it was at this moment an affectation: she didn’t want to wait for a fresh load supposedly to purify.
‘I came to apologise,’ said May.
‘You don’t have to,’ Agatha said quickly, trying to interrupt the prepared speech; she was very concerned she might detect traces of pity in it, something she knew would make her hate May – and Henry, too.
‘No, I’m sorry you guessed. But I’m more sorry that we didn’t tell you. We’d decided not to tell anyone until –’
‘Henry said. I understand.’
‘We didn’t know, last time we came round. I was so embarrassed, when I found out. I thought I’d stay away until I could see you safely – I mean, you wouldn’t have had to guess, because I’d have told you.’
‘I realised that, after Henry said.’
‘We feel really bad,’ May said.
‘Do you?’ asked Agatha – she was trying not to remember five weeks in, and all the feelings of world-importance and nauseous physical glee; of being definitely blessed and other people being so sorry-seeming and unfulfilled.
‘Oh, Agatha, it’s such crappy timing. It makes it look like we did it deliberately to taunt you.’