Skin Deep

by Liz Nugent

  I remembered babies. In the orphanage, their crying had kept me awake at night. And at home, on the island, if one of my brothers had begun to cry in the night, my father used to get up in a rage and put the cot outside the back door. ‘You never cried, Delia,’ he’d say to me, ‘you were as quiet as a little mouse with slippers on.’ Mammy would get up and bring the cot back inside and spend the night in the chair beside the fire, trying to calm the squalling brat.

  I began to think about my mother for the first time in years. She had gone through four pregnancies. I didn’t remember her being pregnant with Brian or Aidan, but I remembered her swollen with Conor. I remembered my father on his knees, praying to her belly for another daughter. Mammy was so upset when Conor was born. Daddy was out at sea that day. Nora delivered him. She said, ‘He’s a healthy boy!’ and Mammy said, ‘Martin’s going to be so mad with me.’

  Hannah had two children, and a nanny. Peter warned me that we couldn’t afford a nanny. I said nothing. He tried to divert me by talking about names for our child, but I was in no mood to discuss such a thing. I insisted that Peter sleep in the spare room until the baby was born, now that we had a spare room.

  My overnight bag was packed by Peter from the seventh-month mark and placed in the hallway ready to go. I spent my days lying on the sofa, eating peeled carrots and feeling bloated and uncomfortable in between trips to the toilet as the baby made a playground of my womb and bounced on my bladder. Every day, Peter gave me five different phone numbers and the schedule for his day in case I needed to reach him urgently. His daily meetings out of the office had increased; he said he was on the verge of ‘something big’. He probably explained it to me, but I had perfected my listening face many years previously and knew well how to appear attentive while wondering how soon after the baby was born I could take a trip to the coast again. The journeys in recent weeks had become too exhausting and too inconvenient, and I longed to feel the sea air on my face.

  The day before my child’s premature birth on the 5th of May 1984, I tried cocaine for the first time. That morning, I had phoned Hannah.

  ‘Darling!’ she said. ‘It’s been bloody ages since we’ve seen you. I don’t suppose you’ve popped that sprog yet, have you? I remember what it’s like. Are you miserable? Shall I call over? I’ll ring Isabelle, and see if she’ll get out of bed for lunch.’

  I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant, I looked awful, but I was bored and bloated and restless and I hadn’t been out of the house in weeks.

  Isabelle and Hannah arrived together, laden with oven pizzas and wine. The wine wasn’t going to do any harm at this stage and I had a ready supply of Rennies to keep the acid in my stomach at bay. Hannah said Daniel and she were going to the Caribbean on holidays soon. The children would stay home with the nanny. She showed me the holiday brochure. I looked at the exotic photos of sea and sand and palm trees and felt a stab of jealousy. Isabelle noticed my look and laughed at me.

  ‘Oh, Delia, you are so funny. I hope you’re not judging Hannah for leaving the children behind? Are you going to be a typical Irish mother?’

  I protested, ‘Not at all, I wish we had the money for holidays like that.’

  They exchanged a look and I realized that it was not the done thing to talk about money in that way.

  The girls changed the subject and started talking about baby names.

  ‘What about Toby?’

  ‘Or Elliot?’

  When Peter had raised the question of names, I had rolled my eyes, but now I played along.

  ‘What about Aisling, or Siobhán?’ I spelled the names out.

  They hooted. ‘If you’re going to live here, you’re going to want a name that people can pronounce! Why put the poor child at a disadvantage?’ Hannah said.

  Isabelle poured the last of the wine into our glasses. ‘What about Charlie?’ she said, nudging Hannah meaningfully.

  ‘Do you have some?’ said Hannah.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I was bewildered.

  ‘Charlie, coke, cocaine,’ said Isabelle, producing a tiny white envelope from her handbag. She showed me the snow-white powder, like the talcum Peter had bought to pack in the hospital overnight bag. I thought she was joking for a minute, and Isabelle laughed at my shock. ‘Delia, you’re pregnant, so probably not a good idea for you, but you don’t mind if we …?’

  We had been warned about drugs at school, and even in Westport you’d know the few who were rumoured to be dope smokers, but cocaine was a terrifying drug that I had heard made people jump out of windows and run in front of speeding cars. Isabelle got a bit huffy.

  ‘Look, we can go to the pub down the road if it’s such a big deal?’

  ‘No, no, it’s fine. I, I haven’t … I’ve never seen it before.’

  ‘What is the name of your little town again?’

  ‘Westport.’

  ‘Was it very boring?’

  ‘I suppose it was.’ I felt defensive. ‘But it is beautiful.’

  I watched them chop out lines of powder with the edge of a credit card. ‘Does Daniel mind you doing this?’

  ‘Mind? Where do you think Isabelle got it? Just one of Daniel’s many little sidelines, if you’ll excuse the pun. Peter’s a good boy though.’

  ‘Oh, Hannah,’ interrupted Isabelle, ‘now we know why Peter has been so straight-laced. He’s been saving himself for his new bride! Honestly, we thought he was gay.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, look in the mirror, darling! There’s no one in our set that can match you for youth and beauty, even in your current condition. Peter kept his cards close to his chest. We didn’t even know you existed until you were married. How long were you dating? Were you childhood sweethearts?’

  I deflected the question by nodding at the lines on the table. ‘Would it really be bad for the baby?’

  Hannah was pleased to change the subject away from my youth and beauty. ‘My God, depending on who you listen to, everything is bad for the baby!’

  ‘May I try it?’

  Isabelle was doubtful, but Hannah told her not to be such a spoilsport. I felt like taking a risk. After all, my husband gambled with people’s fortunes every day. Why shouldn’t I take a chance with the baby? Maybe this could be the solution. Hannah showed me how to close one nostril and inhale with the other. I didn’t feel anything for a few moments, and then I heard a sudden rushing in my ears, and a soothing heat crept through my body. I put my hand on my belly; it felt like the alien thing inside me was a person, illegally occupying me. I stood up and walked about the room, trying to walk delicately like a dancer instead of the lumbering elephant I had felt like ten minutes previously. I was exhilarated and powerful. The girls started to hum some pop song and I swayed to their music. I said aloud, ‘Hurry up, baby, I’m totally fed up with you!’ Hannah and Isabelle went to the hi-fi and rifled through our record collection, pouring scorn on Peter’s taste until they found the Madonna album he’d bought me for Christmas. We all danced for a while, then Isabelle chopped out another three fat lines of white crystals. I still felt brilliant and didn’t need to indulge, but I wanted very much to be a member of this exciting little gang. How cool and fun and free we were. I didn’t even feel the discomfort this time as I bent at the knees to the low table and sniffed up the powder.

  As I sat down again, I felt a leakage.

  ‘What’s that? You’ve spilled your wine, Delia. Wait! Oh shit, your waters are breaking!’ said Hannah, as I felt a warm gush pass through my pants.

  ‘Not the sofa!’ cried Isabelle, who had commissioned it from a Chinese man in Camden Town.

  I watched the stain spread out underneath my lap, and was reminded of the glass of milk I spilled on my dress when I was waiting for Daddy to collect me from the doctor’s house in Cregannagh. I felt a split second of panic, but then, happiness. Finally, this creature would be on the outside of me, and I would be independent again. There was no pain. Not then.

  An ambulance w
as called, though I could have taken a taxi, but Isabelle said I was crazy to take any chances. ‘It’s a baby, for God’s sake, Delia. Get a grip. You have to act normally when they come.’

  By the time the ambulance arrived, all evidence of the cocaine had been hidden. I was still scattered in my thinking. Isabelle had rung Peter and told him to meet me at the hospital.

  The ambulance men took in the scene swiftly: three giddy women surrounded by empty wine bottles. ‘Have you been drinking, love?’ one said, but before I could answer, Hannah imperiously interrupted, ‘How dare you? What is your name?’ He and I ignored her.

  ‘I still have three weeks to go, is it too early?’ I said.

  The other man looked at me and I realized the stupidity of my question.

  ‘Maybe the baby won’t survive?’ I said hopefully. ‘Maybe it will die. Could that happen?’

  I could feel the room freezing, as if I had spoken the unthinkable. Unthinkable to them, but all the time since I’d discovered my pregnancy I had wanted this baby to die. The London adventure was all very well, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay here, in this vast city, with Peter, miles from the ocean.

  As the effects of the cocaine wore off, my mood darkened and all of these thoughts whooshed through me in the later hours as wave after wave of agony washed over me, chasing the earlier swarms of energy away. In the labour ward, I even forgot my cut-glass accent. Doctors came and went and confirmed that I was dilating quickly, that the baby’s head was engaged. One chirpy Pakistani nurse told me, ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Russell. At your age, delivery should be straightforward.’ Here, they knew my real age. Other women in the labour ward with heaving bellies and anxious partners cried out in pain and fear. Hours and hours passed. Day turned to night turned to dawn. I contained my fear, scared that screaming might somehow help this baby to survive, this baby I did not want. Peter came and held my hand, but I told him I did not want him there. The constant poking and prodding and examinations by medics seemed so much more intimate than our sex life, and I deeply resented the fact that it was Peter who had inflicted all of this upon me, poisoning me with the parasite that I was finally about to expel from my body.

  The contractions sped up and I was wheeled into the delivery room, biting down on a rag the midwife had given me to stop me biting my tongue. The baby arrived quickly and I felt no more than a lurching and stretching in my pelvis as it emerged, slippery with my own juices. The nurses whisked it away immediately into the next room and I didn’t hear it cry. I was still hopeful.

  ‘Just got to clear his little airways, dearie, and make sure he’s all right.’

  ‘It’s a boy?’

  ‘Yes, didn’t you look?’

  I hadn’t. Within minutes, another doctor came in and laid this small squealing creature on my chest. He was alive.

  ‘Just for a few minutes, then we’ll have to pop him into an incubator, Mrs Russell. Shall I call your husband?’ The doctor did not wait for my answer and Peter was by my side within seconds, eyes shining.

  ‘Oh my God! We have a little boy!’

  I looked down at the tiny scrunched-up face, feathery dark hair, his button nose and the little rosebud lips that caught the light with their spill of drool.

  Peter kissed my face and the baby’s face and said in a tone of wonderment, ‘Look what we made, Delia! A perfect little boy. This is what’s important.’

  The child we had made was nestled into my shoulder. I waited for that moment of joy, of bonding, of pride. And waited.

  16

  The baby was taken away and put into a small plastic box, and I was told that I could visit him in the room with all of the other boxed babies as soon as I felt strong enough. Peter went to ring his mother from the phone box. I was given tea and toast, the most delicious meal I ever ate, before or since. They say it’s a hormone thing.

  The baby was small, five pounds in weight, so the doctors decided that it should stay in the incubator for a while, but we were both discharged after three days. The nurses tried to persuade me to breastfeed, but I point blank refused. The child had already used up so much of my energy. I needed my body to return to normal. Peter had borrowed Daniel’s car to collect us from the hospital. He made a big fuss and had filled the car with flowers. ‘My beautiful wife and my beautiful boy,’ he said, eyes gleaming.

  When we got to the house, I saw that Peter had set up the cradle on the sofa beside me. He gently laid the baby into it, and the child didn’t stir.

  ‘Put him in his room,’ I said, and Peter looked at me curiously.

  ‘We can’t keep calling him “him”.’

  I stared at the baby, who began to squirm under my gaze. ‘I think we should take the baby back to the hospital and put it up for adoption.’

  He was totally stunned. ‘It?’ he said. ‘You’re talking about our son.’

  ‘I don’t want him. I don’t want …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t want the baby.’

  He was pale, exhausted from working late and running back and forth to the hospital. ‘Is it because of the money?’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘Is it because you can’t have a nanny?’

  I didn’t know how to explain it to him, but the reality was that I didn’t want a child.

  ‘No, it’s not that, it’s … I never wanted this baby. I’m too young for all this. I should be out living my life. Please, let’s take it back to the hospital, please.’

  Peter stared at me. ‘Was this your plan all along? Get to London, marry me and ditch the baby?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t think ahead. I thought London would be fun, exciting, you know? I’ll be a terrible mother.’

  ‘I know,’ he said, ‘that you wouldn’t have married me if you weren’t pregnant, but we have something here, something real between us, don’t we? I mean, you could have stayed in Mayo and given the baby up for adoption. You came here for me because you felt something.’ His tone was authoritative. He was trying to convince us both.

  ‘I don’t want the baby.’

  Peter held my face tenderly in his hands. ‘You are scared and you have baby blues. I read about it in the book. It’s actually quite normal to feel like this. Don’t worry. Those feelings will pass.’ He kissed my mouth. ‘I’ll never get tired of your beautiful face, Delia. It might have seemed like a mistake in the beginning, but our baby is not a mistake, not now. I’ll get you a nanny. God knows how we’re going to afford it, but I’ll do anything, Delia, anything for –’

  We were interrupted by our ringing doorbell. He clapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Shit, it’s probably my mother.’

  ‘You invited your mother?’ I was incredulous.

  ‘She wants to see our … son. Please pretend that everything is OK. Be normal!’ His desperation was pathetic.

  I braced myself for the arrival of Elizabeth Russell. I anticipated hostility, but when she walked in, she surprised me.

  ‘Congratulations, Delia, you poor thing! You must have got such a fright with him coming early like that. How is my grandson?’

  I replied in my new accent, taking her by surprise. ‘Well, see for yourself, there he is.’

  ‘You sound so different, Delia. You’ve picked up the accent quickly.’ She whooped when she peered into the bassinet. ‘May I hold him?’ She pushed him up in the air for a few seconds and then cuddled him close. ‘Oh Lord, he is the most perfect thing ever. Peter, he is just like you! I can’t see you in him at all, Delia. Sorry! Is that insensitive? I mean that it’s like going back in time. He’s the image of you, Peter.’

  Far from being insulted, I was relieved that she could see nothing of me in this baby. It made me feel a little less responsible for him. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘he’s like his daddy.’

  ‘And what are you going to call your little boy?’

  ‘Harry,’ I said, and it was a spiteful thing to say, but that’s how I react sometimes when I’m trapped.

&
nbsp; Peter glared at me. ‘We haven’t decided yet, Mum. Delia is joking.’

  Elizabeth looked appalled. ‘I don’t think that’s an appropriate joke, Delia. I don’t think we should ever joke about Harry.’

  I felt a little surge of inner triumph. ‘I’m sorry, I know. I’m … tired.’

  Elizabeth brightened. ‘Of course you are. Get yourself into bed. Peter will show me around the house and we’ll watch the baby. Go and rest, dear. I’ll make up some bottles for you.’

  I happily went to bed for the afternoon. When I woke hours later, Elizabeth was hovering at the bedroom door with a cup of tea for me. I roused myself and accepted the tea. She sat on the end of my bed. ‘You don’t mind, do you? I think we should have a chat, woman to woman. I’ve sent Peter off to get groceries. There is nothing to eat in this house!’

  She was much kinder than I expected, considering I had broken one son’s heart and stolen the other one. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you are the mother of my grandson and I want to be in his life and I also want to keep in better contact with Peter. He has distanced himself from us all over the last few years. Sometimes I think he’d prefer to deny his Westport roots, but you, well, no matter what’s gone before, you will keep him grounded, won’t you? Remind him where he came from?’

  I nodded.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she said. ‘Overwhelmed?’

  I nodded again. ‘Yes, the whole thing, the pregnancy, marriage, London – and the baby coming early was quite a shock.’

  ‘I’ve had two boys, as you know, and let me tell you, it’s always a shock, no matter when they arrive.’ Her fingers fluttered to a crimson patch at her throat. ‘I wanted to … to apologize to you. My husband should never have tried to force you into an abortion. It was so … wrong. I think he realizes that now – well, at least I hope he does. We don’t talk about it.’ She was speaking quickly, nervously. I hated her sanctimoniousness. She wasn’t the one who was going to be left to rear this baby.