by Wendy James
‘Sure then,’ says Sheila. ‘We can give the wee thing a suck on a bottle if she needs it, and let this poor sore girl have a rest.’
The young midwife wheels the baby away in a plexiglass trolley, and Sheila stays behind. She cleans Jodie up a little, wheels her back to the ward, then helps her into the shower, dresses her, tucks her into her bed. She brings her a cup of tea, a plate of toast. Through all of this Jodie hasn’t spoken, has barely uttered a sound, except for an odd sob that she’s hardly aware of, that could be coming from someone else.
4
Happiness. It’s not really something Angus thinks about too much. When he does consider it at all, he assumes happiness exists in some separate dimension, no longer accessible beyond the age of consciousness, an ideal connected to dimming childhood memories of circuses and fairy floss, beach holidays and ice-cream. Or perhaps it’s merely a construct, a chimera, not quite the fire-breathing monster of mythology, but a kind of illusory carrot used to coerce forward movement – always dangling tantalisingly just out of reach, never quite within chomping distance, regardless of effort.
But his life is running pretty much the way he expected it to run, and he has nothing to complain about. He works hard; his work is challenging and well remunerated. His family life is settled, comfortable. His children, as far as he can tell, are happy, and this is only right. Happiness is – or should be, though in too many instances it’s clearly not – the entitlement of all children. Tom and Hannah are well loved, well behaved, not overindulged, and as appreciative of their many privileges as they should be. Jodie, too, seems genuinely content. She is not a demanding wife by any stretch of the imagination; there has never been any pressure on him (a pressure that he sees in the marriages of so many of his colleagues and friends) to perform, to compete. There’s not some endless list of outrageous material demands – no diamond rings, no European cruises. Not, however, that Jodie has anything to complain about in this department; they are, by any standards, very comfortably off and if it should ever come up, a European holiday would not be out of the question.
His marriage is, as marriages of almost twenty years tend to be, a little on the humdrum side – but no more than is expected. Jodie is still an attractive enough woman, can still provoke the requisite lust at the appropriate moment. Angus had occasionally, during the earlier years of his marriage, let more than his eye wander, although he has never strayed too far or too seriously. But he is past all that now – he knows that what he has is good, is worth keeping.
But beyond this, he doesn’t think too much. He hasn’t time – and nor, it must be admitted, inclination – to go further, to tot up achievements, successes, against losses, regrets. After all, what would be the point? If he’s not precisely happy, he wouldn’t regard himself as unhappy either. Angus’s life is suffused by a slow and steady feeling of fulfilment, and he counts himself a lucky man, satisfied and content.
Even Jodie’s revelation has failed to make a seriously negative impression on his customary feelings of wellbeing, of good fortune. Naturally, what she told him has been unsettling, and he has needed a few days to adjust to the idea, to examine the facts and assess the possible consequences. For a few nights he has found it difficult to sleep and has taken himself off to the guest room and subsequently been short-tempered at work and at home. He has sensed Jodie waiting for him to bring up the subject again, to ask questions, dig further – she made it clear that she’d be willing to tell him anything, everything he wanted to know. But after those days of deliberating and after recovering from his initial hurt – that she’d kept this from him for all these years! – he’s found himself curiously unconcerned by what happened in the past – wanting only to assure Jodie of his support, his sympathy, his understanding.
‘It’s not,’ he tells her, ‘that I’m trying to trivialise the event itself. It must have been unimaginably traumatic at the time. You were so young, still a kid yourself. But that’s all over, isn’t it, and unless you want to get in contact with her, with the child – and you know I’d support your decision – I can’t see how this changes anything. For us, for you and me. And the kids, too. It might seem strange, Jodes, but really my main concern is for you, now – to make sure this doesn’t hurt you in any way. Psychologically, I mean. Having it all brought back. And then there’s the impact it must have had on you – having to keep this to yourself all these years … Maybe you should talk to someone.’
It‘s late, the two of them are getting ready for bed, and though the children’s rooms are at the other end of the house, Angus is whispering. When she doesn’t answer right away, he assumes she is upset, offended by his reaction.
‘I’m sorry if I seem to be treating it too lightly, but I’ve thought about it, and really, it doesn’t matter. I’m not angry or disappointed or anything …’ He breaks off, not quite sure where he wants to go next. ‘Actually, you know, I’m not really sure what you expect, how you want me to react – but you must know that this doesn’t change anything, anything about us, about how I feel …’ He hesitates, ‘… about you, I mean.’
‘Oh, Angus. I didn’t, I don’t expect anything from you.’ Jodie is smiling widely, is on the verge of laughing. He’s not quite sure whether she’s amused or relieved. ‘I was just worried that this – what I told you – would make a difference. Spoil everything. And I don’t want to contact her, I really don’t. I can’t imagine I ever will.’
Angus is relieved, tries hard not to show it. ‘Well, if you change your mind, I’d understand.’
‘I won’t. Honestly. But if you want to know more … If you want the details, the father —’
‘Oh, no.’ He feels a surge of something – dismay, alarm, dread – at the prospect. ‘You’ve told me enough, Jodes. Really. I honestly don’t care about that. In fact, I really don’t want to know. Maybe some things are best left?’
The panic begins just a few days later, though he doesn’t really think that the two are connected. He is lunching with Arding’s mayor, Jim Dixon, at the Red Heifer. Though separated by almost a generation, the two are old family friends – Jim had been at his parents’ wedding. But the lunch is more business than pleasure, has been set up to explore the possibility of Angus standing as a mayoral candidate in the next local election. Angus’s eventual elevation to the position is a long-established but unspoken understanding amongst various local powerbrokers; his reputation in both the commercial and civic communities is solid, his success more or less guaranteed. Jim is a genial Santa Claus of a fellow, a retired stock and station agent, now keen golfer, who has already enjoyed more than a decade in office. He is holding forth, in that expansive elder statesman way, saying something about Jodie, asking whether Angus is sure that she’ll be comfortable in the role – would she welcome it, resent it? He knows from experience that the mayor’s spouse (first lady, haw, haw) is also expected to commit much time and energy, and he hopes it won’t compromise their family life. ‘You’re lucky to have such a young family, Angus – mine are all grown up and flown the nest. And boy, do I miss ’em – in another twenty years you’ll know what I mean. These are your golden years, son, you should enjoy them. Life goes by so quickly.’ Angus is listening patiently, waiting for a break in the seemingly endless flow, when out of the blue he feels himself overcome by wave after wave of terror. He thinks, briefly, that it is a heart attack – can feel not a pain in his chest, but distinctly, deafeningly, the rush of blood through his arteries, too hard, too fast, too loud. His breathing is inadequate, laboured. Jim is too busy reminiscing to notice, and Angus is able to cover the moment by professing nausea and escaping to the hotel bathroom.
It is a good ten minutes – time spent sitting on the toilet, his head in his hands, taking slow deep breaths – before he can compose himself sufficiently to unlock the cubicle, face his reflection in the mirror. And then another long while splashing water on his face before he can rejoin his concerned friend in the dining room. His first brief glimpse in the mi
rror reveals eyes that are flecked with blood, and open far too wide, the irises fully exposed, like the blazing orbs of a headlight-dazzled dog just before the moment of impact.
After this the attacks come frequently. First once a week, then twice, then every second day. They come at odd, unexpected times – always when he is at his most relaxed, often when he’s alone, and never in moments of stress or crisis. He tells no one – not his mother, his business partner, his doctor, not Jodie – and somehow no one ever seems to notice. Miraculously, he’s able to give in to this unwelcome compulsion to run, to escape, to take the necessary time, waiting for his heart rate to subside, his breathing to return to normal, without drawing any attention to himself. He looks up the symptoms on the internet. They are classic panic attacks that he’s experiencing, but he isn’t impressed by any of the recommended pharmacological treatments, is sceptical about the less traditional remedies. He has no interest in looking for a cause; for the present he accepts the attacks as an inconsequential but unavoidable impairment (a consequence of ageing, like bunions, arthritis?), as if hoping that this lack of serious engagement will make the symptoms disappear. He works hard to minimise the likelihood and the impact of the attacks, and relegates them to the murky backwaters of his consciousness: he does not know, doesn’t want to know, what they mean, what they augur.
5
Jodie was surprised by Angus’s response. She had imagined he would have been hurt – not by the infidelity itself, how could he be – but by her failure to confide in him, a betrayal of a far more serious kind. The two days of awkwardness, with Angus a polite but cool stranger, the separate sleeping arrangements – this is what she had expected. But his almost airy dismissal of the events, his determination to leave the past in the past, though a great relief, had been thoroughly unexpected. And though she’d had to stifle an initial urge to laugh, she’d found Angus’s awkward avowal of unconditional support and steadfast affection incredibly moving. They had made love that night – more fiercely than they had for years – and had talked, though not about anything in particular, nothing serious, until the early hours of the morning. Angus had eventually drifted into sleep, had turned on his side, away from her, snoring gently, but Jodie lay rigidly awake, trying not to think, not to remember. Wishing there was some way she could un-remember – or even better, some way to undo the whole thing – to make it untrue.
But the past looms larger than the present, larger than Angus likes to imagine, throwing its shadow over everything, like some sort of terrifying temporal eclipse.
The act itself was singularly meaningless; indeed, she has so little memory of it that she would be hard-pressed to remember more than a few disconnected details about the man – the boy – himself. Was his hair brown? Or was it reddish? He was dark, rather than fair, surely? His hair was long, of that she’s fairly certain, held back from his face in a ponytail. She thinks he may have been tall and thin – but no, she might be thinking of someone else. He could just as easily have been short, stocky – even slightly pudgy. Oh, God. He had been a boy, that’s all she really remembers. Just a boy. She thinks of her daughter’s male friends: at sixteen, seventeen, even eighteen, the boys’ features are still not quite defined; they seem closer to their toddler selves – their brows smooth, jaws soft, eyes clear – than the men they’re on the brink of becoming. And that’s what he had been: just a boy, a long-haired, denim-clad, beer-drinking boy she’d sat next to in the pub. That he was the father of her child, the father of any child, was simply unimaginable.
She’d gone out that night with her flatmate Sharon. Angus had been in London then for more than two months and in all that time she’d dutifully stayed at home on weekend nights, watching videos, reading, or writing long, forlorn letters that she could never bring herself to post. Sharon, impatient with Jodie’s shyness, her excuses, had finally talked her into coming out to the pub.
‘Oh, come on, Jodie, you’re like a bloody old woman. You’re eighteen, aren’t you? Not eighty. You need to get out a bit, see some life. I’m sure your Angus won’t give a shit. You don’t really think he’s staying home night after night in London, pining for you, do you? Come out and have some fun.’
And so she’d gone with Sharon to some pub in Newtown, not expecting fun, not expecting anything much, really. It was the Sandringham, she thinks, and there’d been a band, a bit of a crowd, and he’d been there – was it Gibbo or Hendo or Sheppo or Stevo? A friend of a friend of a friend of Sharon’s, up from Melbourne or over from Adelaide or down from Brizzie. He’d bought her a drink, two, three, six, and they’d danced – it had been some sort of a punk outfit as she recalls, though they were already at the tail end of that particular musical scene. What she does recall is the sense of risk – it wasn’t the sort of place Angus would have taken her: the pub was dark and seedy, hazy with cigarette smoke, smelling of dope and dirty carpet, crowded with long-haired students, half of them stoned out of their brains, all of them pissed. And Jodie, despite everything, had found herself enjoying it. The dark, the dirt, the heat, the pounding music, the sense of being out of it, being out of herself. She had found herself embracing, for once, the sensation that nothing more than the here, the now, was of any consequence.
And she’d drunk more, and he’d drunk more, and they’d gone outside to share a surreptitious joint – not quite her first, but still, to Jodie a joint was daring, forbidden, vaguely indecent. As the night wore on she’d lost track of Sharon, and had eventually staggered back to the flat, accompanied by this boy, after closing, in the early hours of the morning. They had clutched one another, giggling and swaying, in order to stay upright, had climbed the stairs and collapsed onto her bed. And so they had fucked – drunkenly, clumsily, not out of any real desire, but almost as a matter of course. Because, in those days (and in these days too, she supposes) that’s what you did.
Jodie remembers nothing of the sex, really; the only detail she can summon is her dope-induced wonderment at the way a starburst of small black freckles adorning the boy’s scrawny shoulder kept dilating and contracting in her vision as he juddered above her.
And that was the end of it. They’d lain there together for a while, not touching, not talking. He’d lit a cigarette (you did that, too, in those long-ago days), ashed on the floor, and then, muttering something about having a train to catch, had pulled on his Levis and his T-shirt and left. He’d gone without so much as a goodbye or a thank you, let alone a telephone number, a name. Jodie had fallen asleep and hadn’t woken until late in the afternoon – sick as a dog, vaguely regretful. It was only later that the regret had sharpened into disgust, a mild self-loathing at her weakness, her betrayal of Angus, but she’d resolved that it would never happen again. And it hadn’t.
The one thing she does recall quite clearly, all these years later, is that the disgust, even the guilt, though real enough, had dissipated almost immediately. The encounter hadn’t really touched her, had left no lasting impression. It was a no-strings-attached sexual experience – unexceptional for a girl of her age, her generation, her culture. There’d been no intent, no preparation, not even a condom in those reckless post-pill, pre-AIDS, abortion-on-demand days of her youth.
So, it was a one-off. Some fun, a notch on her bedpost, perhaps, if she was the type to mark such events, but eminently forgettable. And there was no reason that Angus, that anyone, would ever have to know, was there? No need for confessions, recriminations. There was no need for anyone to get hurt, ever.
DECEMBER, 1986
‘Is there someone you want me to phone?’ Sheila asks. ‘I’d be happy to call for you if you’re too exhausted.’
Jodie would like to sleep, but somehow sleep won’t come. She still feels suspended, disoriented – even the discomfort in her buttocks, her lower torso, the muscular ache in her thighs that feels as though she’s run a marathon, seems distant – as if her body isn’t back yet, isn’t quite her own.
Sheila seems reluctant to leave her alone, has brough
t flowers left by some discharged patient, is arranging them fussily. ‘There must be someone, sweetie. It’s a huge event, a baby. Maybe the biggest in a woman’s life. There must be someone you want to tell. What about the father? Your parents? Shouldn’t you let them know?’
‘I don’t want it.’ Jodie is amazed to hear her own voice – so certain, so substantial – is surprised that there are still words, and a way to say them.
‘Eh?’
‘I don’t want it.’ More confident, louder; this time there’s no mistaking what she’s saying.
Sheila’s eyes widen. She stands still for a moment, considering, then goes back to rearranging the flowers, casually. ‘What do you mean you don’t want it, sweetheart?’ The woman’s words are careful, quiet, unstressed. ‘I thought you said you had a fellow, that your parents knew all about this?’
‘It was a lie. There’s no one.’ Jodie’s voice is flat and expressionless. ‘I don’t even know who its father is. And I don’t want it. I was on the pill – none of this should’ve happened. If I’d known earlier, I would’ve had it … aborted.’ It seems slightly obscene to utter that particular word here, in this place created to welcome and nurture new life.
‘What about your parents? Won’t they support you?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a hard thing, lovey, having a baby when you’re so young and all alone, but you know, there are ways, these days. It certainly wouldn’t be impossible. There are pensions – not much, I know, but it’s possible to live. You’d get help with rent and all the services. I’ve seen girls younger than you take their little ones home and make a go of it. Often as not, they make wonderful mums.’
‘No. I can’t have it.’ She swallows, steels herself. ‘I really need to talk to someone about having it taken away. I want to – to give it up for adoption.’