It was a conversation he remembered by its fragrance: the air had been thick with mango and frangipani, overripe mulberries. Later, whenever he smelled the hot curdled sweetness of fallen fruit, he would see a shrunken doll on a tiled floor, a perfect lifeless thing. That was how Angela had described her miscarried child: like a tiny doll, she’d said. Another boy.
That night, after her story, he’d walked home through dropped frangipani, with summer’s early sun smearing lemon and grey on a black sky, unable to get the images and Angela’s words out of his mind. They’d been talking about the paddymelons in the hills, the wary eyes, their tiny babies tucked in pouches like pieces of warm dough. They lose them, you know, she said, and within seconds, it seemed to him, meaning shifted, she was saying something else. For a while he struggled to follow: who was this person with a baby tucked inside her? He pictured a thumb of warm doughy flesh.
I was only half-way along when the pains came, she said. Or not quite. I knew then it must be a boy. I knew.
He’d wanted to ask why but she was going too fast. The pencil in her hand moved with her voice, arcing and circling across the paper. Brahms – it must have been – soared around the ceiling. I tried to pretend I wasn’t feeling it. I told August it was muscle strain. Well, it was in a way. I lay on the couch, talking to the baby – I wasn’t even sure how much of a baby it was by then, how developed ... I spoke softly, trying to calm the pain, to whisper it away. Please stop. I must have been half crazy, talking to this unknown baby, this unknown face. I was saying, please stop. I love you. I already love you. Stop.
Kieren’s own words had fled from him, all his hungry questions. He was still, had frozen with the teacups in his hands, the sugar bag under his arm. He was just watching Angela’s face, her eyes intent on her drawing. Was she crying? He didn’t know, but her voice cracked then. I had to go to the bathroom, she said, and that’s when it happened. I had to crouch down with the pain. I was calling out, and then – it was so sudden, it didn’t seem like a birth. I’d tried to pull a towel down for him but he was there before I could, on the cold floor. And you know, he was perfect. Toes, arms, fingers. Smaller than my hand but perfect. A tiny, tiny doll. She drew a long breath. I don’t know how long I sat there. Ages. When I looked up August was kneeling in front of me. He was quiet but his face was all broken. She looked up briefly. A boy. A boy, she said, her face unknowable, her breath shredded, who never breathed.
Kieran had waited, but there was no more. Angela wiped her left hand roughly across her face, her right hand paused over the drawing. The white sheet of paper bloomed with buds at various stages of opening, tiny tight fists, or petals just unfurling. Kieran didn’t register the flowers at all, though his eyes fixed themselves on the cup-like shapes and didn’t move. Then his own hands resumed their tasks, spooning tea into the teapot, boiling the jug. The sounds clicked and clattered into Angela’s silence. When the tea had drawn, he filled Angela’s cup and took it to her. He touched her arm and left it there by her side. His own tasted only of disappointment, and sadness, so he left it, still half-full, and walked away towards the door. Hesitated there, waiting for something, an instruction, anything. Then left, closing the door softly behind him.
Now, suddenly – it seemed sudden – he was home, at his own back door, as if that other walk home had been relived. Except that this time he was drenched, his clothes were heavy and cold and his face was running with rain. He stood beneath the overhang with the smells of the storm he’d barely noticed and the drenched garden, the rich, plum-pudding smell of wet fertile earth. Brahms was no longer with him, and he was glad. He didn’t want to think about Angela’s baby now. He wanted the sounds of the storm in his ears, the sounds of life.
The air was liquid grey, but through the dullness there was a beam of yellow light. He realised Cress was in the kitchen, that it was dinner time, and he was probably late. The ordinariness revived him, of the kitchen light and of his wet shirt stuck fast to his back and the cool wind on his arms. He forgot about the lifeless doll and sat down on the back step, the reassuring wood beneath him, and took off his boots. He whistled as he opened the door to the warmth and the fuggy aroma of corned beef.
Saturday
Kieran was trying for nonchalance. For casual. It wasn’t easy. There was the fact he was in Cress’s room, for one thing. He knew she was doing the morning at St Barnabas but she might as well have been in the garden, about to burst in. He couldn’t ignore the prickly feeling of trespass. And there was this other thing: Abby was in the room too. He was so nervous his palms were beginning to sweat.
All his daydreaming and visualising hadn’t prepared him for this. For the past twenty-four hours, all he could think of, all he wanted, was to show her the dress. To impress her, to make her smile. But standing here now, holding it up in front of him so that only his face was visible, he felt stupid. Exposed somehow. As if he’d put the dress on, rather than just held it up for her to see. What would she think now? He pursed his lips, and chanced a look over the neckline at Abby, expecting bewilderment, confirmation of his mistake. Of his stupidity.
But Abby was staring at the dress, her seawater eyes alive for the first time in weeks. Her eyes seemed to alter the way she looked, the planes and angles of her face shifted into shadow, her mouth relaxed. She wasn’t smiling, but that didn’t matter. She was looking, and she seemed impressed. Kieran felt his whole body flush with relief. It’s got beads, he offered quietly, almost whispering, like the ones you saw in that shop.
He watched her, cautious. She seemed transfixed. Slowly, she took a step forward and ran her fingers over the scoop of neckline, pausing over the pearls. The look on her face removed the rest of Kieran’s anxiety. His hands no longer felt clumsy. He felt taller, better, braver. Do you want to try it on? he asked.
At first he thought she didn’t hear him. Then she took a step back. Shook her head, her eyes clouding over. That same cloud settled over Kieran’s heart. The dress felt heavy in his hands now, and his fingers ached from holding it. He lowered it, careful again, onto the sheet, bending to smooth out creases. No one would know, he said, his head bent. Not looking at her. No one even knows it’s here.
Abby’s hands clenched and unclenched. It wouldn’t fit, she said. He looked up at her face then, wondering what she meant. He had never contemplated that, had never thought of her as tall or short, big or small. Had never, he realised now, looked that closely. Now he did, tilting his head and frowning, but she was just Abby-shaped, her face and body too familiar. She was wearing loose cotton pants and a baggy long-sleeved shirt that must have belonged to her father, and a waistcoat hanging open. How did she know it wouldn’t fit? Kieran shrugged. He wouldn’t argue. I think it’s beautiful, he said.
That morning at St Barnabas Cress had offered to sort out the donation of wool and knitting needles and patterns, though she’d never been much of a knitter, unlike her own mother. She’d learned as a girl like everyone else, turning out lumpen tea cosies and scarves and even socks for the boys at the Front, but her mother’s neat rows of plain and pearl and cable stitch were hard to compete with. When Shelley was pregnant, Cress had bought wool for the first time since she’d left home, soft pastel greens and yellows for bootees and a shawl. She’d struggled with the heels of the bootees but finished them anyway, the small triumph no match for the labour it required. The wool for the shawl had been tucked away at the back of the linen closet – where, she mused as she made colourful piles on the wide counter, it probably still was.
She had driven down through streets scrubbed clean by the previous night’s storm, windows open, feeling the clean cool air on her face. She loved these mornings after rain; loved the newness of them, all their possibilities. Now she stood behind the counter with the spread of colour around her, hands efficient, quick. Five ply here, eight ply there, blues, pinks, yellows. Feeling the grain of the wool between her fingers, she wished briefly that she could be
one of those women who, settled and complacent, could spend whole evenings knitting jumpers and socks. It seemed that it might be consoling or even compensatory to do such things. But she knew also, without any doubt, that there would be no consolation there for her, at all.
Abby watched Kieran as he rewrapped the dress and bent to slide it back beneath the bed. Before he was quite finished, before he had a chance to make it tidy, to place it precisely, she turned and quietly left the room. Kieran followed, nudging the parcel further in with his foot. He hurried: it was the first time she’d been here, and he didn’t want her to look at things without him. He needed to be with her as she looked, to be her interpreter. And he wanted to see what she saw here, but more than that, he wanted to make her see with his eyes.
She wandered slowly towards the lounge room. Her hand trailed along the edge of the hall shelf and the way she moved was kind of dreamy, he thought. At the end of the hallway she paused, and her gaze drifted over the walls, the armchairs, the blank television. It came to rest on the low table, where Kieran had left his notebook.
He followed her eyes to the open page. It was stamped with his handwriting. For the second time in an hour he felt the kick of vulnerability in his stomach. There were five words in large print: ecumenical, canary, calamity, equine, vermicelli. She looked up and her face, he thought, might be a page too, empty, waiting for words.
Seconds – was it? of silence, just the air full of possible sounds. He pre-empted them all; moving forward, he picked up a pen and wrote down the last word he’d said. Beautiful. Abby was looking from him to the page and back again. Then she turned, took a step away. But Kieran’s hand was on her arm. You write one, he said.
Abby shrugged him off. I have to go now, she said.
He walked with her down the hill, through air that seemed benign, he thought, after what they’d just done. He buried his fists in his pockets. After all that, he wasn’t sure what he’d achieved, or even what he’d wanted to. Beside him Abby was like the morning, oblivious. He chanced a look at her. She was beautiful. Her eyes, he thought, would have looked just like that when she was born. Clear. Unsurprised. He tried to imitate that, tried to look placid, unconcerned, when she stepped away from him at the fruit shop and, raising her hand, drifted off, out of his reach. Then an idea exploded in him like a firecracker. Abby! he called, and before he knew it he was running towards her. Come on! I’ve got something better to show you!
Laura drove towards town. Her hands were firm on the wheel but beneath them fragments of emotion assembled and fractured and reassembled, confusion, disbelief, curiosity. Leaf patterns flickered across the windscreen and mocked her mood, the world outside all new and shining after the storm, charged with optimism. She looked around and decided to be calm and optimistic too – here was an eyewitness, after all, to Angela’s decision to give up her baby. But it was an act of sheer will to tuck her emotions away.
The night before, after the phone died on Cress’s words, the storm might have been inside the house. Her heart had slammed in her chest as she tried to remember each syllable Cress had uttered, each intonation, tried to fit the words to the face of the eccentric old woman she’d shared scones with that afternoon. She’d walked around the house, numbness giving way to the confusion she’d felt intermittently ever since. Why hadn’t Cress volunteered that information earlier? She looked out as lightning peppered the darkness with sparks and light. It was the only thing that stopped her running to the car and driving down to confront the old woman there and then.
Now she parked opposite the esplanade and walked into the shop without looking at the chairs at the door or china in the window. Cress was busy with a mound of knitting needles and wool behind the counter. Laura approached the counter quietly and picked up a soft purple ball, rubbing strands between her fingers. Hello Cress, she said.
Cress startled and her hands were momentarily stilled. Oh, she said. You’re here. Her eyes flicked up, then down again. She plucked at the piles of wool.
Laura looked around and behind her – there were two other women working at the back of the shop – then back at Cress’s head, bent to the wool, the fine silver hair precisely combed, the shoulders rigid. Cress had gone back to sorting; Laura watched as she bundled some size-six needles together and tied them with string. Around her, mounds of colour, pastel yellows and blues, spilled over the counter. For several long moments Laura fought an impulse to take Cress’s arm and shake it. She swallowed, and instead laid her hand on top of Cress’s as they moved among the needles. Can we go somewhere to talk? she said. Her words were deliberate, slow. I need you to tell me, she said, what happened to my mother.
Abby had always told him that she hated summer. She’d told him how it wore her out. The whole place, she said, felt held down and flattened, as if it had been pressed with a hot iron. Kieran thought of the old-fashioned irons he’d seen at St Barnabas, black and heavy. He imagined the heat and steam, the damp cloth beneath. Abby was right, he thought. That’s what this summer felt like.
But standing in the sun at the fruit shop, he’d remembered a special place that was cool on the hottest day. They would have to walk there, he told her, which made her frown and twist her mouth. He worried briefly that she would shrug and turn away. But she was interested, he could tell. It’s not far, he said, and then didn’t say anymore; he just headed off with his hands in his pockets, trying not to look back. She dug her hands into her own pockets and sauntered along behind him.
At least twice on the way up the hill she stopped, slumping against a fence or a tree, complaining. Kieran would stop and turn, waiting. The second time he said again, It’s not far, and resumed his pace, perhaps a bit slower. Abby’s face was glossy and pink; she looked tired out, the way Cress did after a hot day in the yard. It was hot. The sun was banging down on his head and his arms, and he could feel beads of sweat running down his spine, tickling him.
But the air changed as soon as they entered the forest. Kieran felt the cool breath of it on his skin. Even the fingers of sunlight that reached down through the canopy were soft. After a minute or two he turned to Abby. She was wiping her face on the collar of her shirt. It’s like another country in here, he said. Isn’t it? As if he’d conjured it, right there and then. She smiled a kind of pale smile, a small concession, and they walked on.
They seemed to have been here for an age. The wooden park bench felt like hot steel beneath her and Laura wanted to get up. But instead she took a breath and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees.
Fifty-six years. Cress was talking again. She’d told Laura about her training, about the horrors of blood and bedpans, wards that smelled of chloroform, that smelled of pain. Sickly sweet, she’d said, that’s how pain smells. Like jasmine, waving her blue-veined hand towards a profusion of the white flowers on a fence at the end of the park. Laura tried for patience, then spoke up. Yes, she said, now tell me about the labour ward, when Angela came in. You were there – it was a question rather than a statement. Cress looked straight ahead; she might have been considering the truth of it, Laura thought. Then she said, Fifty-six years. Laura watched as everything in the park around them struggled to keep still, the long grass near the fence and the weeds looked fidgety, all of it ready to pull away from this place and fly off. It was one of the first births I saw.
Then it all went still. Even the sun-battered hibiscus came to attention. Laura realised she could hear every sound in the air, a crow calling, a leaf falling, a spider dropping silk.
I can see the pattern of the smock she was wearing, Cress said. Small blue checks, or maybe lemon. Like everyone wore then when they were expecting. Hers was huge, second-hand probably, and she was a little thing under all that baby. She looked like a child in dress-up clothes.
Laura didn’t move, didn’t look sideways. The spider spun, the leaf kept falling.
When someone was delivering they’d call the tra
inees. We’d all run. I had new shoes, brown leather, made a terrible noise on the lino.
Somewhere a wasp nosed and dived. The air thickened. I can still remember those high labour ward beds. Cress paused, looked around, perhaps for the wasp. But back then, all I saw was her belly. Under the smock it was enormous, shocking. And so tight – like a ball inflated too far. Someone said, it’s crowning. They said, don’t push yet. And then a noise like, well, like a chair dragged across concrete. She paused again, considered what she’d just said. She couldn’t stop it, it was all too fast, and the baby’s head was there. Then too quickly the body, a seal swimming. A boy, but no one says.
The stillness was broken then, as Cress straightened her back and shifted her feet, bringing her heels together. Her voice became businesslike. It was a fast labour, no time for the gas or anything. We all stood there blinking at this baby, a bit stunned. But the file was marked ‘adoption’ so they wiped him and wrapped him and I took him to the nursery for weighing and checking. Best to separate them quickly. They don’t attach then.
Who would have marked the file? Why did it say that? Do you know? Laura turned to look at Cress.
The social worker, I suppose. All the girls saw a social worker. It would all have been discussed beforehand.
Laura felt as if she was speaking from inside a slow-motion movie. As if she was in the room, by the window, watching the birth, watching the mother, watching the baby plucked up and carried off. Did she hold him? There were a thousand questions. Did she ask for him?
Cress didn’t miss a beat. Briefly, she said. Though they normally didn’t. That was the rule. If it hadn’t happened so quickly she wouldn’t have seen him at all. It was kinder. If they saw them and held them they’d just fret. Better to let mum recover and go home, forget it all. Or else she might change her mind and that wouldn’t do for anyone.
The China Garden Page 11