by Tor Udall
Each time was different. The first miscarriage was what they called ‘silent’: the dead foetus found in a scan, an unbelievable, unblinking ten minutes. You must be wrong, there must be a heartbeat. Jonah flew home from Copenhagen where he was touring his second album. Crumpled from the plane, he returned to find her sitting on the floor in her study.
‘I should ask them to try again – perhaps the scanning machine’s broken.’
He squatted down. ‘Oh, Jesus, Au, I’m so sorry.’
‘They’ve booked a D&C for Monday.’
‘But that’s another week—’
‘I kept asking if there was a heartbeat. But they wouldn’t stop fiddling with the machine, waiting for a second opinion. They wouldn’t answer me.’
He kissed her damp eyelashes, her wet cheeks. As the sun brightened, she asked him to make love to her in the room they had planned for their child. She wanted him to fill the stillness inside her. He knew that the foetus was calcifying, but still he yearned to be part of that inexplicable connection between mother and child. She let him in enough to understand, just a little. Audrey was so fragile he didn’t try to come. As they clung on to the reassurance of each other’s bodies, he ached to stay still within her, to learn again and again, love.
A few months later, they went on holiday in Sicily. Jonah remembers swimming in the sea, their sandy toes against the white bed sheets, the promise that soon they would start a family. He was astonished by the resilience of her body. Her scars began to blossom as they mined the furrows of their loss, and found themselves closer. Saying yes.
The second miscarriage happened in the bathroom. Jonah sank to his knees and fished the tiny foetus out of the toilet. He had held it in his palm, a sealed embryonic sac, about an inch long.
‘It’s good that you get to hold her,’ she said. ‘Imagine carrying her like this for nine weeks. This,’ she whispered to his unfurled fingers, ‘this is your dad.’
Jonah was frightened he would crush the last bit of their child they had left. Should he speak to this remnant of a pregnancy or hold his silence? He felt terrible for wondering what was inside: a bundle of DNA and potential, an idea they had enjoyed of what could be, or a malformed, tiny-tailed monster.
It was over a year before Audrey became pregnant again. During this time, the money from Jonah’s record label ran out. He stood in for a friend who was a music teacher at a sixth-form college.
‘I don’t think it’s for you,’ Audrey worried. ‘Your talent—’
‘But I need to earn. When the baby arrives—’
‘I got my period this morning.’
She was standing at the sink, elbows in soapsuds. He put down the tea towel, massaged her shoulders.
‘Teaching will take the pressure off. I’ll still write the third album, I promise.’
In September 2002, he embarked on a PGCE and Audrey stopped smoking. The next March, she was pregnant. When they reached the three-month mark, the elation of the scan, she made plans to turn the study into a nursery, but a couple of weeks later she miscarried again. That was when the real grief began. He tried taking her to fancy restaurants, or buying her the latest hardbacks from her favourite authors. But all she could do was complain. Why hadn’t he fixed the flush, or changed that light bulb . . . and what was that stack of coursework doing on the kitchen counter? Her friends reassured him that she was suffering from hormonal depression, but she refused to see a doctor.
It is different, Jonah thinks, the loss of a wife, compared to the loss of an unborn child. But, with all grief, there’s the corrosiveness of absence, and something that makes people strangers. It happened to them. In the last three months, Audrey no longer cried in the shower but listened to lavish baroque: Bach or Vivaldi. Perhaps she was trying to fill the house with all the music he had stopped playing.
Jonah runs the scenes in his mind, as if he can recompose the past. But he can’t alter the words that might have upset her. The news comes on and the shower stops running. He turns around to see Audrey opening the door of the bathroom. She is naked, wet. The mirage of his wife walks up to him and puts one soggy arm around his neck. She rubs her face against his cheek then finally her lips touch his. What kiss is this? The one he is imagining in her absence. It tastes of smoke and tears. Am I alone in this kiss? he asks. She disappears.
A Place for Lost Things
Jonah walks down a corridor that reeks of chip grease and polish. Once inside the classroom, he shows his pupils how to diminish a perfect fifth into a minor chord, but his insomnia makes everything feel far away, like a photocopy of a copy of a copy. The hours are glazed. But sound punctures through: his foot pumping the piano pedal, his chalk chipping a clef symbol on to the blackboard.
There’s only one week to go before the school breaks for summer. Jonah has done his best to fulfil his commitments, commuting to Paddington each day to teach Music GCSE to a bunch of teenagers. On the desk, his beige satchel, blotted with ink, looks like it belongs to a student. Last September he’d hoped it suggested he was still creative, a rebel. How ridiculous that he once cared what people thought. The bell bullies.
In the staffroom, the maths tutor, reading the newspaper, wets his finger to turn each page. It makes Jonah shut himself in a toilet cubicle for fifteen minutes. Be functional, he chants, focus. After lunch, he stands in for a sick PE teacher and oversees the dilapidated outdoor pool, the whistles and shrieks slashing his eardrums. His voice bellows as he disciplines a couple of kids. Trapped in his throat is a rage. Unrecognisable.
‘I am angry.’ He says it out loud to his therapist that evening. He is here on his GP’s insistence.
‘I thought she’d get over it, that we’d try again. How could I have been so stupid? I should have insisted on counselling.’
Paul Ridley just contemplates him.
‘Did I mention that I’ve already got Audrey’s bench? Kate, one of her friends . . .’ Jonah halts, tries again. ‘She’s well connected.’
He looks away from the pronounced eye sockets, the remarkably blond eyelashes.
The therapist leans forward. ‘I’m wondering if there’s anyone else you’re angry with?’
‘You mean her?’
Silence.
Paul Ridley inhales nasally. ‘Whether it was suicide or an accident, I imagine you feel abandoned.’
‘She lost three children.’
‘So did you.’
Jonah thinks of all the words he wishes he had said. He was not enough. He never was. A man of slender love, of thin ability. He thinks about his impotence, his failure to keep his wife alive. Happy.
Milly strolls around the Gardens. Every now and then she picks up litter, just like Harry showed her. She knows each path well, even some of the people: the mum in her fake-fur coat, pushing a pram – she always comes after school; then there’s the old couple who perch in the Palm House. Packed lunch balanced on their knees, they hope the humidity will soothe their arthritis. One woman always sits on the same bench, doing The Times crossword. Further along, by King William’s Temple, there’s another regular: a photographer with a tripod. Shirtsleeves rolled up, he focuses his lens on the twisted trunk of a Tuscan olive. As he shoots the picture, Milly bends down to pick up an empty water bottle, a fag end.
Along the Cherry Walk, the blossom is long gone, and Milly is struggling to hold all the tissues and lollipop sticks. Outside Temperate House, a woman sits on a bench, drawing in a sketchbook. Milly stops to study the shape of her shaved head, her crew-cut dyed as black as a raven. There’s something familiar about her skinny limbs, her fragile posture.
She is perhaps in her twenties. Poking out of her canvas bag is a large book with the letters M o d i g l i a n i. Suddenly the bag rings.
The woman picks up. ‘No, Mark. I can’t make it tonight. I’m working.’
Silence.
‘No.’
She angles her body as though she’s shouldering the caller out of view. Putting down the phone, she looks at her sket
ch and breathes like she’s praying. Milly moves closer, but the woman crumples the page into a ball. It makes Milly feel faint, as if she were as insubstantial as a paper doll.
The woman moves away from the glasshouse, throwing the drawing in the bin. Discarding her own collection of litter, Milly trails after her. The woman is wearing heavy boots and a dress that is too red for her pale skin. She walks with a wiry determination, the canvas bag slung over her shoulder. When she takes the short cut through the woods, it’s obvious that she knows where the grass is boggy, or the best route to avoid a carpet of goose droppings. Milly thought only she and Harry knew the Gardens so well. She’s been a dragon-fighting samurai under the ornamental cherries, or played pirates by the lake, and now, by this expanse of water, the woman crouches down. Rummaging through her bag, she fishes out a box. Inside are three white objects, each the size of her hand. When Milly hides behind the eastern hemlock she sees them clearly: birds made out of paper. Their necks are proud, their wing tips delicately arched.
The woman kneels at the edge of the water, the soles of her boots clogged with mushed dandelions. She lays the origami birds down on the surface as if placing flowers. They float for only an instant then sink. A familiar headache begins, a throbbing under Milly’s right temple; she blinks. The woman is still on her muddy knees. There’s no sight of the birds on the water, just the surface murky with weeds.
Milly fingers the wooden lump in her pocket. Her flower press usually comforts – the ridged carving, the metal screws – but the urge to run grabs hold. Plimsolls thumping against the ground, her knees shocked by reverberation, she races away from the lake, retracing her journey. Once back at the Cherry Walk, she rifles through the bin. Past the empty wrappers and sandwich crusts, she picks up today’s newspaper. Delving in again, she finds what she’s looking for, then opens out the tight ball of paper to discover the drawing of a child. Her hair is in pigtails, her smile cheeky, but there’s something wrong with her eyes . . . as if they are too old, or heavy. Somehow, with only a pencil, the woman has conveyed the girl’s question. It lingers, unanswered, between the page and the viewer.
‘What’s the matter, luv? What are you up to?’
‘Collecting litter.’
A smoky hand steadies her shoulder. ‘You look like you’re about to keel over. Please tell me you haven’t talked to a stranger?’
The only thing she can hold on to is Harry’s gaze. As he crouches down, she strokes the grey bristles on his cheek. She likes the roughness of it, like a scratchy towel she has known for years.
His hug always roots her. Yesterday he taught her about the early-eighteenth-century sweet chestnut, otherwise known as Castanea sativa. As usual, he talked to her as if she wasn’t a child. After learning how to spell it, she pressed her ear against the bark, hoping to hear the tree’s ancient heartbeat.
‘That’s the sap scurrying from root to leaf. Can you hear it? Think of the thousands of conversations it has witnessed . . . how it has helped us breathe. For centuries . . .’
Harry pulls back from the hug and gives her shoulders a squeeze.
‘I’ve finished for the day. How about we find out what’s happened to the Swallows and Captain Flint?’
‘Great. I’d like that.’
From his breast pocket, he produces a large, yellow flower. ‘The Allamanda cathartica. I found it on the floor in the Palm House. Most people call it the golden trumpet . . .’
‘It’s perfect.’
As she takes it, he doffs his cap. It’s an honourable hat, made of tweed. He’s wearing the scarf that Audrey gave him, the colour of brick. Milly straightens the fabric, kisses his cheek.
‘Perhaps it’s the trumpet of a fairy queen.’
She loves how he laughs with his eyes – like sunshine on water.
‘Go on,’ he urges. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Milly eases out the flower press from her pocket. The carved case is four inches square. She unscrews each worn, winged nut, then levers out the wood. The blotting paper is egg blue, dusty pink, pale apple green . . . all tatty at the edges, the pulp slightly puffy in places. A tiny bug is splattered on one of the sheets.
She takes a while to choose the mauve background. When she places the flower down, adjusting its angle, she can feel Hal studying the scar on her right temple. This is the place he kisses each night, the slightly puckered flesh like a baby rose, a lighter pink than the rest of her. He always believes she is asleep, but this is the one thing she stays awake for. Eyes scrunched closed, she clings on to this daily tenderness, like a sapling stretching towards sunlight.
Once the summer holidays begin, Jonah visits the Gardens daily. He always walks the same route, strolling past the Temple of Bellona towards the lake where he completes a lap around the water before settling down on Audrey’s bench. Perhaps if he turns up at the same hour each day his wife will know when to sit beside him. He doesn’t believe in this, but it doesn’t stop him returning, as wretched as a dog seeking his master. The habit becomes a rut that he wears down, day after day.
Kew has its own patterns. There are more tourists this time of year. He prefers the people who ask if they can sit beside him, to those who barge in and make inane comments about the markings on the red-crested pochard. Right now, a young couple are walking towards him. Venturing on to the deck, they try to impress each other with their knowledge of waterfowl while an exhausted Jonah stares them out, bullishly defending the sixty square feet of concrete around his wife’s memory.
The bench is as conspicuous as a fresh grave. Unscathed by weather or bird droppings, the redwood stands out from the other, greying seats around the lake. The plaque gleams.
Audrey Wilson
1968–2004
Her footprint on my heart and these gardens
forever
Unnerved by Jonah’s unwinking gaze, the couple leave, their conversation stalling.
Jonah keeps his vigil. There is a particular hour when the birds take over, the hush of wings followed by the squawk and swoop of feeding time. A gosling in a running formation trips up and perhaps sprains its ankle; it limps on, trying to keep up with the rest of the gaggle. Jonah remembers what he hadn’t relished enough.
‘Jonah? I was right. It’s a dove tree, because the white bracts look like wings. But sometimes it’s known as a handkerchief tree, or a ghost tree. I asked one of the gardeners there.’
On returning from her investigation, Audrey had tucked her arm inside his. Hands still in his pockets, he felt the weight of his wedding ring. Worn for only a year, it still held a novelty. He liked the sense of gravitas, of gravity, that it gave him.
‘Its Latin name is Davidia involucrata.’
Audrey paused to savour the ancient words, then told Jonah about the tree’s heritage in the Sichuan Mountains. He was amused by the mass of detail she had accrued in her two-minute absence.
They had met in Kew Gardens in 1995. They were in their late twenties, enjoying a hot, hazy day outside Temperate House, a Victorian composition of white metalwork and glass. Its octagonal structures housed fuchsias, salvias and brugmansias; but on that fragrant afternoon, roadies were climbing scaffolding, their boots tearing up the beautifully mown turf. While they rigged the lamps for that night’s concert, the Rolling Stones’ ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ played through the speakers, and Audrey walked up to the sunbathing Jonah and asked him for a light. As the chorus sambaed in, he couldn’t guess her name. Her smile was sunshine.
Jonah blinked through the shield of his fingers at the woman clutching a paperback of Aimez-vous Brahms in one hand and an unlit cigarette in the other. He took in her cream culottes, her pristine blouse, the red plait hanging between her breasts. Their first conversation lasted the time it took for Audrey to finish her cigarette. By then, Jonah had discovered that she was a translator. Despite literary yearnings, she mostly dealt with technical documents in Russian or Polish. As the music jangled jubilantly between them, a cocksure Jagger syncopating the
air, there was rhythm between them. But it was her smile that disarmed. He wanted to unclothe her elegance, to explore that gap between her front teeth with his tongue.
In a rush of wanton curiosity Jonah offered to buy them tickets that he couldn’t afford for that evening’s performance. They met a few hours later, on the same lawn. Crowds had gathered with picnic blankets and hampers full of plastic champagne flutes. It was a balmy, scented night and everyone there knew they were lucky, graced with a warm evening during the British summer. There was the sense of not wanting to be anywhere but here.
Schubert was his favourite. They stood enraptured when ‘Ellens dritter Gesang’ began, and the sky over the Gardens thickened with ‘Ave Maria’. In the interval, they discussed the blessings and frustrations of a foreign language. Starting their second bottle of wine, Audrey offered to translate the German, but Jonah preferred to hear the emotional shape of the sound. To him, the lack of understanding allowed the step-by-step wonder of experience.
‘I know you’re a linguist, but there are just some feelings we can’t get our mouths around.’
She took a breath as if to explain, then laughed at herself. As they held each other’s gaze, the garden hesitated, as if the word ‘love’ was being pencilled in. It remained unspoken, a sketch of an emotion; too light, too amorphous. It was so foreign that they didn’t share that word for a long time. Instead they held hands as the night exploded, the sky sparking with cascading light.
Once the smell of cordite had settled, they were ushered out into a Kew Road jammed with retreating spectators. They said goodbye by the bus stop, Jonah’s boot shyly scuffing the pavement. Finally he kissed her, a question on his lips: non-intrusive, humble. Her answer was rapturous. Later that night Jonah lay alone in bed. All he could think about was the burn of the traffic, the glare of the streetlights and the quiet happiness of their mouths.
Their second date was at a pasta restaurant in Parkway. Over dimly lit meals, they felt an urgency to share their stories. Audrey retold a childhood full of exotic holidays and immaculate gardens. Her father taught his only child about ambition. Her mother, a glamorous socialite, enjoyed a mid-morning tipple.