by Bright
I grab a pregnancy test from the shelf behind me and follow the instructions on the back of the box. I rest it on the radiator and look at my watch.
I bought these knickers from Marks & Spencer. They’re white with green diamonds on them. They came in a multipack. I had no inkling, when I bought them, that they’d play such a pivotal role in my life. I take them off and look at the clot more closely. It has no distinguishable features. It smells of me. I smell of it.
It’s early, but I can’t hold out any longer. I look at the test.
A faint second line is appearing.
My jaw unclenches. I exhale. Thank God for that.
This is more implantation bleeding.
I wipe myself with the toilet roll. There’s more blood. I can feel it trickling out of me now, and I feel a twinge in my cervix as it comes out.
The test has had three minutes. The faint second line hasn’t grown any darker. It’s a ghost. I drop it in the bin.
I feel another spasm, and I pass more blood. I wipe it away and get off the toilet, but I don’t know what to do with my knickers. I don’t want to put them back on, but I don’t want to leave the clot alone. So I hold on to them. But I don’t touch the baby in case I damage it—it’d be like touching a butterfly wing.
My whole world is in the palm of my hands. My whole world is a glob of blood, a slice of liver, a butterfly wing. Nothing else matters.
I curl up on the floor, pressing my cheek against the cold vinyl. Sliver by sliver, I bleed and fall apart.
“Oh no, Solvig.”
Time has passed and James is looking down at me.
29
Tonight’s full moon means I don’t have to switch on any lights. I can even see the floorboards, and I know exactly where to step so that I don’t make any creaks.
I go into the spare room and walk over to the window. I wish I could open it and dive straight into the sea. I wonder what creatures are out there now, swimming in the moonlight. The sea serpent Morgawr, perhaps? Another Cornish legend.
Sometimes at this time of year we get the odd bluefire jellyfish washed up on the shore. James was so excited when we found one last summer. Normally they live in colder waters. They live for a year and will sting you even when they’re dead. I’ve never been stung by one, but I did tread on a sea urchin once. I was on holiday with my dad in Lanzarote. A local barman had to pull the spines out of the sole of my foot with tweezers, and then he shaved off the pedicellariae with a razor. I don’t know what the pedicellariae were, exactly. Dad and I couldn’t understand the barman very well. It was something to do with the sea urchin’s mouth, or possibly anus. Afterwards, I threw up, and vowed never to go near the sea again. A couple of days afterwards, though, my foot felt better, and I was back on the beach, building sandcastles.
The miscarriage happened ten days ago. I went to the doctor the morning after it happened. The appointment was delayed, so I had to sit in the waiting room with James for over an hour, watching two identical twin girls in the play area building a tower with green bricks, then demolishing it, then building it, then demolishing it. I almost screamed at the mother to stop them from repeating this endless cycle, but James put his hand on my arm and told me he’d take me for lunch afterwards. We’d go and eat some brie or salami or smoked salmon.
“I think I’ve had a miscarriage,” I told the doctor while James sat in the waiting room.
“It doesn’t say on your notes that you were pregnant,” she replied.
“I hadn’t got around to telling you. But I was. And I don’t think I am any more.” I got out my phone and showed her a photo of the clot.
The doctor barely looked at the photograph. “Let’s do a blood test to confirm either way, shall we?” She took an empty vial and stuck a needle in my arm. My blood came out almost black. Not like the bright red stuff I’d seen the day before.
“You can phone for the results tomorrow,” the doctor said. “In the meantime, I wouldn’t be too hopeful. This is your first pregnancy, yes?”
I burst into tears, and I was instantly angry with myself for crying in the presence of someone so heartless. “We’ve been trying since January,” I said. “I think there’s something wrong.”
The doctor handed me a tissue. “You’re thirty-seven,” she said, “which probably isn’t helping matters. It’s only going to get tougher with each passing month. But it’s still too early to think about treatment. We’ll see what the results of this test say, all right? If it’s bad news, you’ll need to keep trying for a full twelve months before we can refer you for tests.”
“What if I’d lied and told you we’d been trying since last October? Would you have referred me then?” I asked.
The doctor typed something on my notes but didn’t answer.
“Is it my fault? Is it because I’m a saturation diver? Is my body a hostile environment?”
The doctor stopped typing and looked at me over her glasses. “It’s just one of those things.”
I knew that the test results would come back negative. The doctor said my hCG level was four mIU per millilitre. Anything under five is considered zero. There’s no official evidence that I was ever pregnant.
How do you grieve something that never existed?
Or what if it did exist, but only barely? It scraped the edge of happening and then veered off course.
The cluster of cells inside me obviously managed to implant itself into the lining of my womb, or I wouldn’t have seen all those tests read positive. But what happened next? Did the cells fall out again? Was there a chromosomal abnormality, which meant that if they had grown to be the size of a baby—if my body hadn’t disrupted that chain of events—perhaps the cells wouldn’t have grown into a baby at all, but just one oversized spleen, or half an eyeball, or an unidentifiable lump of human meat?
There was something wrong with my baby, if I’m even allowed to call a failed embryo a baby, and I’ll never know what it was. I’ll never know if it was a girl or a boy, or if it could have rolled its tongue, or if it would have had a Darwin’s tubercle on its ear.
I’ve been in bed for most of this week, staring at the ceiling. I’ve given the baby a name: Lucy. I felt that she was a she while she was inside me, so that’s what I’m going to believe. Lucy is the name scientists gave to a three-million-year-old skeleton they found in Ethiopia. Lucy is one of our earliest ancestors, and, according to the Beatles song she was named after, she is also in the sky with diamonds.
I go to the shelves opposite the window and look at the boxes of equipment. I fetch the things I’m going to need: a tattoo gun, ink, machine tips, power source, needles, wet wipes, latex gloves. I lay them out on the desk by the wall and sit down.
The needles are all so big. Not like sewing needles. These ones must be fifteen centimetres long. I try to find a tip and needle that look like they fit together. It’s hard to tell without unwrapping them, so I put on a pair of gloves and take some out. Finally, I find a pair that match. This needle is one of the thicker ones, which isn’t ideal. In fact, it’s made up of about fifteen needles and looks like a miniature comb. Never mind. As long as it’s pointy.
I push the tip into the tattoo gun, then insert the needle carefully, knowing how easily these things can break. I secure the needle with a rubber band, as I’ve seen James do, and press the trigger to test it. The end of the needle pops out. When I release the trigger, it pops back in again. That’s good. This is going to work.
I attach the gun to the power source and pedal; then I pour out some black ink into a plastic container and dip in the needle. I rest my forearm on the desk, wrist up.
I’ve heard some people describe tattoos as pleasurable, and I’ve heard others describe them as torture. James talks of the pain curve. He says the first couple of minutes of getting a tattoo are intense, as your body is getting used to what’s happening. But soon, you start to make endorphins, and they give you an hour or two of natural pain relief. During this stage, James says, some peopl
e find the experience of getting a tattoo quite enjoyable. And then, if you’re getting a bigger piece done, your body starts running low on happy chemicals. When that happens, you’ll likely need regular breaks, and you’ll feel relieved every time the gun breaks contact with your skin. Even the toughest guys can be shrieking in agony after a five-hour-long rib piece.
I’ve never had a tattoo, but I have been in pain before. I had my wisdom teeth removed a few years ago, and the anaesthetic didn’t work properly on one side. That was bad. I’ve burned myself welding a couple of times too. Nothing horrific, but enough to cause the skin to blister.
I push my foot down on the pedal. The buzz of the machine startles me. I take a deep breath. Best way to do this, I figure, is quickly. Don’t overthink it. I press the needle into my skin.
Blood pools on my wrist. The needle must have gone too deep. I get a wet wipe and mop it up. I’m left with a thick, reddish-black smudge. It doesn’t look much like an L, but perhaps it will when it dries.
I hurry out a U and a C. This time there’s just a trail of black dots—I haven’t gone deep enough. I’ll have to redo it in a minute. I press harder for the Y.
“Solvig, what’s going on?” James is standing in the doorway, in his boxers. He hasn’t got his prosthesis on, and he’s holding the door frame for support. “Put down the gun. Please.”
I want to take my foot off the pedal, but I’ve turned to stone.
“Stop it, love.”
“It hurts so much,” I say.
When I release the pedal, the machine stops buzzing, but now I can hear the whooshing inside me.
James hops over to my chair and puts on some latex gloves, then sets about wiping up the mess I’ve made.
“What’s that?” I ask, as he applies a layer of ointment.
“Baby rash cream,” he says. “It’ll protect the wound.”
I can smell his body. It’s the smell I know well, but I feel as though I’m smelling it for the first time. I always thought it was coffee and garlic. Now it’s hazelnut, cider apple, moss. It’s the smell of the man who loves me, who is wrapping cling film around my wrist, taking care of me.
“Sorry,” I say, as James holds me.
“It’s okay.” James strokes my hair. “Let’s go back to bed.”
We lie between the sheets, and I mentally trace the name “Lucy” on the ceiling, wondering when the pain will end. A long time goes by, maybe hours.
“I think I’ll cancel my appointments today,” says James, finally breaking the silence.
In the garden, the siskins sing their songs—tilu, tilu, tilu—and the weak October sunshine begins nudging its rays through the grey curtains.
I squeeze James’s hand. “I’ve missed you,” I tell him.
“I’ve missed you too.”
I nuzzle his neck, and I look, really look, at him. “Make love to me,” I whisper.
James takes me in his arms, and slowly, over the course of the next hour, he kisses me from head to toe. He fulfils my request, more literally than ever before.
When we are finished, I roll onto my side, looking at the black smudge beneath the cling film on my wrist. It looks like an oil spillage. I can just about make out the letters L and Y. “Lie,” I say quietly.
“Pardon?” James kisses me behind the ear.
“I never want to lie to you again.”
“That’s good. I don’t want to lie to you either.”
“I’ve got a secret.”
The sun shines more brightly now. With my back to James, I look at the white wall opposite me, and I talk about Evie. I don’t mention Center Parcs or Mars. I simply talk about a woman I met while I was away from home. I explain that although nothing happened, there was a space between us. A space that was significant.
PART THREE
30
“He’s been gone for nearly three weeks. Staying with his parents in Penzance. He won’t answer my calls.”
“That sounds stressful,” says the woman with a Northern Irish accent, who identified herself as Rachel at the start of our phone conversation.
“It is.” I’m out of breath, navigating my way over spiky grey tufts of marram grass. I’m walking over sand dunes, heading away from the main beach, towards the cliffs at Kelsey Head.
“What was it that made James feel he wanted some time away?” Rachel asks.
She probably thinks I’m being abused. Or I’m addicted to drugs. Or I’m depressed. I’m not depressed.
TripAdvisor says that at low tide, you can see an Argentinian shipwreck here. The tide is lowish now, but it’s rising, and I can’t see anything except water.
“James went away because of something I told him. It was something that happened back in June. Me and another woman. All we did was lie together.”
“What were your feelings towards her?”
I scramble over a large rock, careful not to slip on the seaweed. A few years ago, a scourge of toxic turquoise algae appeared on Porth Beach. It bloomed after a long, hot summer, killing the fish and irritating people’s eyes and skin.
“I was intrigued,” I say eventually. “And jealous. I wanted to be inside her. Not sexually. I mean, I wanted to feel what it was like to be her. Is that weird?”
Finally, I come to a long vertical slit in the rocks. The entrance to Holywell Cave.
“Did you speak to James about these feelings?”
“No, of course not.” I step inside the slit. “He wouldn’t understand. I barely understand.”
Inside the cave, I can make out limestone formations, like poured concrete. Higher up, there’s another, smaller cave entrance. Fresh water is trickling out of it.
The rocky steps leading up there look slippery, but I reckon I can climb them if I take it slow. I’m going to have to put the phone down, though, so I wait where I am for now.
“What did James say when you told him about the woman?”
I think back to that day. The sun through the curtains. The sting of the tattoo. The question James asked several times, which I did not manage to answer for him: Why?
“He told me that he knows things have been difficult. He’s seen me struggling since the start of the year, since he suggested we try for a baby. If he’s honest, he saw me struggling before that too. He thought trying for a baby would make things better. He made a mistake. He shouldn’t have asked. He feels bad.”
“And the woman? What did he say about her?”
“He told me that a relationship is a collage. New layers bury old ones. There are dark bits, bright bits, rough bits, smooth bits. He told me that our glue pot is empty. There’s nothing left to stick the pieces together. The glue is trust. The trust is gone.” That’s not all James said. He also said: “Fuck you, Solvig.”
“Do you think that the trust can be rebuilt?”
I look down at my hiking boots. I’m standing in a puddle. You’re not meant to come here when the tide is rising. I shouldn’t hang around. I say: “How are you meant to know what you want?”
“You’re not sure that the trust is worth getting back?”
I look at my wrist. The scab looks like a grey cloud. I’m hoping that when it falls off there’ll be something glorious underneath, but I know that there won’t be. It’s just an illegible scrawl. In places where I’ve pushed too deep, I’ve got subcutaneous ink seepage. Blowout, James called it. The ink has blurred like a permanent bruise. At least the infection has subsided. Turns out I didn’t clean the area properly before I started. James made sure to tell me about wound aftercare before he left for Penzance. That’s the kind of person he is.
“I was pregnant,” I tell Rachel. “For five weeks and five days. Or, technically, if you go from conception, less than a fortnight. We were trying for nine months. I didn’t know if it was what I wanted, but then it happened, and I was excited. And then it ended, and I was sad.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Solvig.”
I take a quick look at the time. I need to hurry up. “That woma
n—the one I lay down with—was pregnant. I felt like I wanted to find her sexy, but I didn’t. When I was pregnant, James said I was amazing, gorgeous . . . all these things I didn’t feel.”
“I wonder if there’s a way that you can—”
“It’s like the Venus of Willendorf debate.”
“The what, sorry?”
“There’s this Palaeolithic figurine, made of limestone,” I say, running my fingers along the walls of the cave. “James and I watched a TED Talk on it. The archaeologists who found her assumed she was an erotic sculpture because of her voluptuous figure, but later, other people thought maybe she wasn’t erotic at all—that she was a symbol of fertility. Her round belly was carrying a child. Most people view the figurine as one or the other: erotic or fertile.”
“You mean, rather than seeing it as both at the same time?”
“Exactly. The mother or the lover.” After I put the octopus onesie on the table, James got us to watch the entirety of TED’s pregnancy series.
“Is that how you feel, Solvig? That you can’t be both?”
“Is it bad that I don’t feel drawn towards either? I’d rather go to Mars.” Saying it outright feels freeing. “Yes. I want to go to Mars.”
Obviously, Rachel doesn’t get the significance of this. “How are you feeling now?”
“I suppose I’m wondering something. If it’s okay for me to not know what I want, then what happens when I need to make a decision?”
“Well, you need to—”
My reception cuts out.
I put my phone in my pocket. Never mind.
I look up at the hole in the rocks above me, and then I head towards it. I crouch to enter the cave.
Inside, I perch on a slab, and I switch on the light on my phone. Everything is pink and glistening.
The water in this cave is said to be holy. This has been a pilgrimage site for hundreds of years, helping ease sickness and grief. I dip my hand into a shallow pool and feel a tingle run up my arm, straight to my heart.