by Alyson Rudd
He nodded warily.
‘Forget how sorry you are, et cetera,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come back to me and, if you do, how can you know, let alone expect me to me know, if you will shag around again?’
They were good questions. Excellent questions. Women were good at asking questions.
‘I do want to come back. It’s not original of me, I know, but sometimes you don’t appreciate what you have until it’s gone. I drifted into our marriage, if I’m honest. It was a nice drift but it wasn’t urgent. And now it is. I don’t want to drift in the other direction. I want you and I want to make you happy and for us to be in love.’
Rachel allowed him to see her smile.
‘And part two?’
‘The answer is in part one. If you allow it, I’ll be properly married to you, not accidentally married to you.’
They sat in silence. She closed her eyes. He could smell her perfume, always the same perfume, daringly masculine.
‘And there is a girl who is pregnant,’ Rachel said cautiously, as if the words were too sharp, too painful to pronounce properly. ‘What happens there?’
‘I’m not sure I know the words to explain how sorry I am and how angry I am with myself. She is the same age Lauren would have been.’ He exhaled noisily. ‘And I’m having a problem with another child dying. I think she might not have an abortion. I’m not sure.’
Rachel sat up straight and leaned forward.
‘That implies you want a relationship with the child,’ she said and she could feel bile forming at the back of her throat.
Bob looked at the ceiling, then at the rug on the floor, then spotted a small spider’s web above the curtain rail.
‘I want you,’ he said.
Lauren
She had read a feature about couples falling apart because of a failure to conceive.
‘You do know we can’t just decide “oh next summer or next autumn we will have a baby”,’ she said.
‘Hmm?’ he said as they had, he thought, been in the middle of discussing whether they really wanted to be involved in a campaign to advertise cider.
‘I mean, we can’t even assume we can have children.’
‘Right,’ he said puzzled as he had indeed assumed that they would have children exactly when they chose to have them. ‘Can you do a test, then, to see if we can?’
‘Sure,’ she said, ‘the test is coming off the pill and getting pregnant.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, let’s do that then.’
They both laughed and then hugged and then ended up in bed.
‘You’ll probably be pregnant now,’ Tim said.
‘No doubt about it,’ she said. ‘I’m sure me even considering not taking my pill tonight is enough.’
She was almost right. Three months later they were staring at a pregnancy paddle.
‘My, oh my, I’m virile,’ he said only half joking. He had somehow found himself almost thirty and was worried he might be slowing down.
‘Let’s buy a house. With a garden. And a paddling pool,’ he said.
‘Let’s,’ she said and they embarked on the busiest few months of their lives, with the agency thriving and the house-hunting exhausting and the pregnancy daunting. Lauren suffered more headaches than normal but her doctor was unconcerned so she stopped even mentioning it.
She felt she had been on a conveyor belt. Find a nice job, marry the boss, have a child together. In her final few months of pregnancy however she had slid from the conveyor belt and sat and contemplated her grown-up world, finding that it afforded her such warmth that her eyes would fill with tears of gratitude. She would watch Tim lug the groceries into the kitchen, unpack and start to prepare them both supper, see how he picked up the pepper grinder and then replace it knowing she was not keen on the stuff. She noted how he would read books on diet during pregnancy and look at her not as the beached whale she thought herself to be but just as desirable as before.
He sprouted a few grey hairs, grew a moustache then immediately shaved it off, dumped his new aftershave in the bin when she said her hormones hated it.
‘I think you’re getting sexier with old age and new-found responsibility,’ she told him one evening.
Tim stood up, loomed over her and licked her from her chin to her forehead.
It was, she thought, the craziest thing she had ever seen him do and it filled her with nervous excitement. They were becoming better together, she was loving him more, wanting him more.
They found a pretty semi-detached house with a courtyard garden close to Richmond, which was inadvertently close to Tim’s mother, and as they reminded her of her promise to babysit she hastily detailed the demands of her rep company and her current run in an Alan Ayckbourn.
‘I think she’s pleased,’ Tim said in mock dismay. ‘But I guess being a grandmother hinders her forty-something persona.’
In the last weeks Lauren could barely walk such was the pressure on her knee, and it made her sob with the indignity of it.
‘I want to stroll through the park with you,’ she grimaced, ‘not wait for you to come home with treats like I’m a housebound pet.’
‘We’re nearly there,’ Tim said and he really did feel they had run a marathon and were in the final half-mile stretch. He was by turns panicked and proud and bemused. He exchanged contracts on the Richmond house when his wife was eight and half months pregnant, which seemed to him to be either astonishingly efficient or appallingly foolhardy depending on how well Lauren had slept the night before.
He hatched a plan for all the packing to be done while Lauren was in hospital and for him to drive her and the baby to their new home straight from the ward. He was much more exhausted than he knew but filled with the energy of responsibility and love.
‘I did have my doubts,’ Bob said to Vera, ‘but he’s made a first-rate husband for our Lauren.’
The climb down the stairs to reach the car for the drive to hospital would have been comical but for Lauren’s tears.
Tim wanted to call an ambulance but Lauren shrieked she would kill him if he did, so he rang Gregory, who dashed over from the office and between them they half carried her to street level. Gregory, sweating into his no longer crisp white shirt, waved them off self-consciously but neither Tim nor Lauren were watching.
With every push Lauren’s head hurt. The contractions were but a distraction. The instructions from the midwife were confusing; she could hear monitors beeping but her vision was blurred. She thought she could see slivers of shimmering light falling from the ceiling. They were bright enough to hurt her eyes.
‘Tim,’ she said. ‘Tim.’
She wanted to tell him she loved him more than ever, that she could not imagine anyone loved their husband more than she loved him but the words were trapped in her throat. Have I told him I love him? she wondered. Have I ever told him? I can’t remember.
Tim stepped back as they transferred her to an operating theatre. She’s not pushing, they told him. He held her hand and wiped her brow and wondered why her eyes were rolling.
‘You have a baby daughter,’ someone said.
‘Did you hear that, my love?’ he said, but her eyes were glazed.
He trembled a little. No one had told him quite how scary childbirth would be. His poor wife was barely aware of what was happening. She was exhausted. He vowed to spoil her rotten over the coming weeks. He vowed to make her a cup of tea the moment he got her home to their new house, into which their belongings were being unloaded that very minute.
‘We have a baby girl,’ he told her gently as someone ushered him firmly out of the room.
For some time, Tim sat, alone, in a pastel-coloured windowless cubby-hole. There were flowers in a vase and a box of tissues on a small table.
If he’d had more experience of hospitals, he might have been more worried.
Bob
The sensation, he decided, was most similar to how he felt when waiting for his exam results. Had he worked hard enough, w
ould he get lucky? Andrea asked him if Rachel was likely to try again with him.
‘I really think so,’ he said. ‘She’s worried, though, about the baby.’
‘How come?’
Bob frowned.
‘If I’m honest I think she is simply, if understandably, jealous.’
Andrea nodded and frowned too. They sat in silence. It began to rain. Bob helped her to her feet.
‘Ask her if she wants me to get rid of it,’ she said.
* * *
Bob did as he was told.
Rachel slammed her mug down in irritation.
‘What sort of a question is that?’
He looked down at the floor.
‘Let me hold you,’ he said and, he gathered her into his arms, pressing her head into his neck, rubbing her back.
‘I love you, I love you,’ he said softly and as he did so he realised what Andrea’s question had meant.
‘We could have a baby after all,’ he said, ignoring the way her body tensed. ‘I am an idiot and deserve all the pain in the world, but you don’t deserve it and neither does Andrea really and certainly not the baby. There is a baby that needs us.’
He braced himself for a punch to the stomach or slap across the face. Neither came. Instead, Rachel was silently weeping, making his shirt damp with her tears.
‘I always wanted a child,’ she said, but she sounded only mildly bitter.
This could work, Bob thought to himself. This could work.
* * *
Suki climbed into her car and nearly dropped her keys. She was in a state of near feverish excitement. The more she turned her idea over in her head, the more perfect a solution it seemed.
She would take the baby.
It would mean no abortion, no pain for Bob, no guilt for Rachel, and she would have a child. Perhaps not for long. Andrea might come back for it one day or Rachel might come to love it and take it to her and Bob’s home, but that was far ahead. A solution was needed right now and she had found it. She struggled not to break the speed limit. She struggled to recall a time when she had been so excited.
* * *
Andrea was understandably nervous about walking into the blackened-brick house and Rachel was understandably proprietorial about her being there but it was better than meeting at the beach, and preferable to meeting in a café.
Bob had thought through what he would say in such acute detail that he shook with nerves as Andrea sat at the kitchen table. Rachel, politely, asked her what she wanted to drink.
‘Really weak tea and a biscuit, please. I’m queasy all the time.’
‘Of course,’ Rachel said, wondering if she sounded sympathetic or sarcastic given that she was not yet sure herself. If pushed she would say she felt sympathy. She was always brewing tea for young women in trouble. She wanted to feel sympathetic. She wanted herself free of a jealousy that if left to its own devices could ruin more than just her marriage. She was, after all, the grown-up. Andrea was young, inexperienced, but she was about to make a big sacrifice. Rachel had to cling to that, not her own insecurities.
To Bob’s astonishment, Rachel led the discussion.
She spoke of Lauren, of how she and Bob had met while he was grieving, that he had been a father, then he wasn’t.
‘In most ways, Bob and I don’t matter,’ she said. ‘You and the baby are what matter. But perhaps this way the child can be with its father who will love it and…’ Here Rachel swallowed and breathed in. ‘And I will love your baby too.’
Andrea made to speak but Rachel held up her hand.
‘Please, let me just say this: I am hurt. But I am already hurting less. And you don’t know me, Andrea, but I would not offer to adopt your baby if I didn’t know I could be a good mother. A really good mother. I meet lots of young women who find themselves in unexpected circumstances. I only ever want to help them. You can trust me.’
‘And you have to trust me too,’ Andrea said. ‘I didn’t want this; I like Bob, but he loves you, and I really don’t want to have a child now. I think I could be happy giving it to you both.’
There was silence and both women looked at Bob, who ran his hands through his hair and smiled weakly.
‘We’ll make it work,’ he said softly as they all heard a car screech to halt in the driveway.
Bob and Rachel opened the door together, smiling bravely.
‘You’ll never guess, Suki,’ Rachel said, her eyes damp, ‘but we’ve found a way. I think we are adopting the baby.’
For an almost imperceptible second, Suki’s face fell and she looked more middle-aged spinster than the daring vibrant woman she had felt seconds earlier.
* * *
‘This is unconventional,’ Rachel said as they drove to Andrea’s home.
‘It’s really hard for her parents,’ Bob said, ‘so let’s put them first, just this one time, darling. It will be worth it, I promise.’
Andrea opened the door in dungarees that accentuated her bump.
There was a plate of plain, chocolate and pink wafer biscuits on the coffee table and cups and saucers that were clearly not in use every day.
‘Mum, Dad, this is—’ Andrea was about to say Robert and Rachel but decided it was best to keep it formal. ‘This is Mr and Mrs Pailing.’
They shook hands, Bob and Rachel bending slightly to reach Andrea’s father, who remained in his voluminous armchair, Walter back at his feet having enthusiastically greeted Bob.
‘I’ll make the tea,’ Andrea said neutrally.
‘Please, take a seat,’ said her mother.
Rachel noted that the mother was wearing a small gold crucifix pendant and instinctively smoothed out her skirt to better cover her knees.
There was an awkward silence during which Bob cleared his throat but did not speak.
‘Thank you for having us over,’ Rachel said at last, wondering why she felt guilty, why she felt the need to make this work.
‘It was very important we meet,’ Andrea’s father said.
‘Yes, yes, very important,’ Bob said. ‘Thank you.’
Andrea carried in the teapot and placed it on the table next to a copy of the Daily Express which had a photograph of a Spice Girl on the front page. Her mother stared at it as if it had been Bob and Rachel who had brought the newspaper with them.
‘Best to let the tea brew for a few more seconds,’ she said.
Andrea remained standing, surveying the scene. She sighed.
‘Look, this is really weird,’ she said, ‘and we don’t have to pretend that it isn’t but neither do we all have to be cross with one another. Mrs Pailing has every right to be angry with me and Mum, Dad, you have every right to be angry with Mr, well, with Robert. But I don’t have to be angry with him. I’m old enough to have known better and I knew what I was doing.’
‘I’ll pour, shall I?’ said her mother, avoiding eye contact with everyone.
Andrea sat down with another sigh. She had thought through her options in such detail that she was almost bored of the whole thing. She turned to Robert and Rachel.
‘Mum and Dad don’t believe in abortion and that has rubbed off on me, I guess.’
She turned to her parents.
‘As I’ve told you, Robert had a daughter who died and he has trouble with my having an abortion too.’
‘Well, it’s too late for one now,’ her mother said sharply.
‘Yes,’ Andrea said patiently. ‘But I don’t want a child now. I was hoping, when Dad is a bit better, to go to college, maybe part-time with a job, leave home – and you and Dad can’t take on a baby. So.’
She looked across to Robert but then changed her mind and caught the eye of Rachel.
‘Andrea thought it was worth considering if we should bring up the baby,’ Rachel said softly. ‘And we have given it a lot thought, a lot of soul-searching. I can’t have children and Bob lost both his first wife and daughter so this could be a blessing.’
Rachel stared down at her skirt. Had she really jus
t called it a blessing? It was that damned crucifix.
Andrea’s mother frowned. She had hoped that Andrea’s boyfriend would offer them a large up-front sum so she could give up work and look after the baby and she had steeled herself to argue that he should, but Rachel’s plight and self-sacrifice made her doubt her rights in the matter.
‘Whose child would it be?’ said Andrea’s dad.
‘It probably can’t work unless it is theirs, Dad,’ Andrea said. ‘They have suggested they adopt and help fund my education and keep me informed as to the baby’s progress. I’m happy with that.’
Her parents were speechless. It all sounded immoral and dreadful but sensible at the same time.
‘But it’s our grandchild,’ said her father.
‘That’s partly why we are here,’ Bob said. ‘It is of course your grandchild. We can’t do this if you are unhappy. It’s a good solution but only if everyone is on board.’
‘Oh,’ said her father, feeling cornered. ‘It’s a right mess, if you ask me,’ but he sounded resigned.
They all stood and shook hands again and Rachel gave Andrea a hug, something which surprised them both, and as he sat in the car Bob smiled to himself. He had not once had to say it was his child too, but it was his child and he would work as hard as he possibly could to make sure Rachel felt it was hers as well.
‘It’ll be tricky, my love,’ he said, ‘but it will also be amazing. I love you.’
Rachel exhaled. ‘I must love you too, I guess. Or be the biggest fool in the North of England. Or both.’
He grasped hold of her hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said and his eyes welled up in gratitude. ‘Thank you.’
From her bedroom window Andrea watched them leave. She had run out of tears and she clung instead to the idea that, both morally and practically, she was right. She was right. And her child – her child would be loved.
Part Three
Lauren