(1990) Sweet Heart (34 page)

She nodded glumly.

‘I want to do a quick internal examination, to make absolutely sure. I think you’re going to be rather pleased with my diagnosis.’ He jumped up and held the door open for her, then led her across the hallway to the examining room. Miss Moneypenny glanced up from her desk and she was grinning too. Charley wondered if they were both drunk, had just finished an after-lunch bonk, if that was why they were looking so inane.

He asked her to undress and lie on the couch. She kicked off her shoes, pulled down her cotton skirt, slipped off her knickers and unbuttoned her shirt, then lay down on the fresh sheet of paper on the couch. She watched him as he pulled on a surgical glove, squeezed out some KY jelly, felt his fingers sliding up inside her and winced at the coldness of the jelly.

She studied the concentration on his face, the movement
of his eyes, looking for some trace of doubt or anxiety, but he just nodded and kept smiling. She sniffed to see if she could smell alcohol on his breath, but could detect nothing even when he leaned right over her. The fingers probed deeply, then he removed his hand, peeled off the glove and dropped it in a bin. He ran a tap and washed his hands. ‘You told me you last had a period a month ago.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’ He dried his hands on a paper towel.

‘Yes. Maybe five or six weeks. Things have been a bit chaotic, the move —’

‘Put your clothes on and come back to my office.’

She dressed, irritated by this game he seemed to be playing. She went into his office where he was writing notes on an index card. He put the pen down.

‘So you can’t remember exactly when you had your last period, but definitely not longer than five or six weeks ago?’

‘Definitely.’

He beamed even more broadly and leaned back in his chair. ‘Well — you’re pregnant!’

It took a moment before the word registered. Then it hit her like a breaker wave. Washed crazily over her, winded her. She stared back, speechless.

‘It is quite possible for women to go on having periods well into pregnancy,’ he continued. ‘It’s unusual beyond a couple of months, but it does happen. I’d say you are about sixteen weeks pregnant.’

Pregnant. Sixteen weeks. The words crashed about like surf inside her head.

‘Everything feels fine in the uterus, all in the right place. We need to do a few tests, because of your age — but I really wouldn’t worry. We’ll arrange an ultrasound scan as soon as possible.’

‘Sixteen weeks?’

‘You haven’t felt any movement inside you? You should start getting some soon.’ He turned the index card over and tapped his teeth with his pen. ‘Pretty surprised, eh?’

‘How — how can it have gone on so long, without my knowing?’

‘It happens. I had a very fat patient who got to seven months without knowing.’

Pregnant.

The word lay beached inside her. The sun beat down, drying it up, shrivelling it into a blackened carcass.

NEWLYWED DEAD IN BLAZE HORROR

‘You don’t look very happy. I’d have thought you’d be jumping for joy.’

‘I don’t understand. All these tests and things. We haven’t been trying for months. The acupuncturist wanted us to wait until my body balance —’

The doctor waved his pen around. ‘You know, Charley, medicine’s a funny thing. It’s a very inexact science. I can’t tell you why you haven’t realised sooner, any more than why you’ve got pregnant now instead of five years ago, or ten years ago. There are so many factors, psychological ones just as important as physical — sometimes more important.’ He pulled a pad out of a drawer and scribbled on it. ‘I’m going to give you some things to take, iron and some dietary supplements. Cut out alcohol completely and you must avoid all medication. You haven’t been taking anything in the last few months, have you?’

‘No.’

‘I had a pretty good feeling what your symptoms were, but I didn’t want to say anything and get your hopes raised.’

‘You knew?’

‘Not for sure. It could have been temporal lobe epilepsy, but I didn’t think so. Tom’s going to be pretty
pleased. Want to call him?’ He pushed the telephone at her.

She shook her head.

‘Tell him later, eh? Give him a homecoming surprise.’

She said nothing.

‘Don’t look so glum! I don’t think I’ve ever seen an expectant mum look so glum when I’ve given her the good news.’

‘It’s not good news,’ she said. ‘Not good news at all.’

He frowned and leaned forward. ‘Not good news?’

She bit her lip, then tugged at the skin on her thumb. ‘Do you mean that
all
the symptoms I had are explainable by my being pregnant?’

‘Yes.’

‘So I’m definitely not epileptic, or anything else?’

‘I’m absolutely certain your symptoms are due to your pregnancy — and, of course, not realising for so long would make them puzzling to you. Pregnancy causes hormonal changes which can affect women both physically and emotionally.’

She picked at a nail on another finger. ‘Medicine is very convenient,’ she said bitterly.

‘What do you mean, Charley?’ he said, surprised.

‘You can explain everything, can’t you? Neat. Pat.’

‘It’s what doctors try to do.’

She stood up, unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it open. She pointed to the small, barely visible ribbed line, three inches long, on the left side of her stomach. Then she hitched down her skirt and indicated the similar line on the inside of her thigh, below her groin. ‘How do you explain these birthmarks?’ she said.

He came round the desk and examined them closely. ‘They’re not birthmarks,’ he said. ‘They’re scars.’

‘Scars? They’re birthmarks. My mother always told me so.’

‘They’ve been stitched, a long time ago. You must have had an accident when you were very young. Quite neat lines. You might have been cut by a knife, or glass.’

She pulled her skirt up and sat down, rebuttoning her shirt. ‘Are you sure?’

He sat down again himself. ‘Yes. Old-fashioned stitching leaves marks like that; modern stitching is much better.’

She was silent, aware of his worried stare. ‘Tony, are unborn children able to register what’s going on when they are in the womb? What I mean is — could we — sort of — live our mothers’ lives as they live them and remember things later?’

‘Remember things our mothers did whilst we were in the womb?’

‘Yes.’

He pushed himself back in his chair. ‘What is it, Charley? Something seems to be really bugging you. Last time you asked me about reincarnation, now you’re asking about pre-birth memories.’ His eyes narrowed and he nodded pensively. ‘Unborn children can respond to stimulae, yes; tests have proved that.’

She still picked at the nail. ‘So there’s nothing — supernatural — about perhaps remembering things — that maybe happened when you were in the womb?’

‘A five-month-old foetus can hear a door shut twelve feet away.’

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

He grinned. ‘Listen, I’m going to get strict with you. I know pregnant women have abnormal fears, but you’re going over the top. You must relax. You’re a normal healthy person and I’m quite certain you have a normal healthy baby inside you. You’ve been very wound up about these things that have been going on that you haven’t understood. Now you know the reason for them, you don’t need to be scared any more. You have
nothing to worry about. Just enjoy your pregnancy. Otherwise your poor child’s going to be born a nervous wreck,’

She heard a voice somewhere inside her head, faint, as if it were trapped like an echo in a vacuum.

Seems healthy and normal. Doesn’t appear to have been affected by the mother’s blood loss. Two surface cuts to be sutured from the stab wounds
.

She felt a chill blast of air down her neck. It triggered a feeling of fear, fear so deep and strong that the tiny creature inside her womb could sense it too.

It kicked.

It was dusk as she drove down the lane. She’d left Ross in a daze and wandered around, trying to put it all together, to find some meaning. The Citroën jolted through the deep pothole past Yuppie Towers.

There had been times in the past when her period had been late, when she had hoped … When she had imagined the look on Tom’s face as she told him the news. Happier times.

As she drove up to Rose Cottage the falling light seemed to change, to flatten. Viola Letters’s Morris had gone from her drive. Instead there was an old black saloon. She was so distracted she almost failed to see the figure in front of her.

She stamped on the brakes, the wheels skidding on the loose surface, and was flung against the seat belt. The car lurched to a halt and she touched her belly gingerly, worried about the child inside and blinking at what she saw through the windscreen.

A man sitting at an easel, erect, with fine posture, in a white shirt, cravat and cavalry twill trousers. He tilted his head back, oblivious to her, raised his brush in the air, closed one eye and lined it up against the cottage then made a mark on his canvas. It was Viola Letters’s husband.

He turned, as if he had become aware of her, and stood up stiffly.

Then he faded. Was gone.

The light brightened a fraction. She looked at the cottage. The black car was no longer there. The old woman’s Morris Minor sat in the driveway.

Gibbon. Hypnosis. Still under. She was barely aware of where she was and wondered if she had imagined her visit to Ross, if that had been a dream. Then she felt another movement in her belly, faint, like a scratch.

‘Hi,’ she said lamely. ‘How are you doing in there? OK, is it? What are we going to call you? You going to be a boy or a girl? I think you’re a boy. I don’t know why — you feel like a boy.’ She patted her stomach gently. ‘You want to stay in there for as long as you can. It’s the pits out here.’

A smell of smoke and a haze of acrid blue fumes was drifting across the lane, and there was the droning staccato roar of an unsilenced engine. She was about to put the car in gear when she saw Zoe and her pointer walking towards her.

Zoe pegged her nose with her fingers. ‘God, what a fug!’ She flapped away the fumes. ‘Bloody Hugh, honestly!’

‘Is that where it’s coming from?’

‘Of course. Polluting half of Sussex! I don’t know how on earth he can work in that — any normal person would be asphyxiated. I haven’t forgotten about having you and Tom over. I’ll sort out a date in the next day or so.’

Charley drove on, past Hugh’s house. He was in his workshop, bent over the engine compartment of the Triumph, blue exhaust rising around him. He seemed to be engrossed, as if he were trying to tighten a nut, and she wanted to stop, run across and tell him her news but she drove on, afraid the news might put him off her.

Pregnant. Who wants to be lumbered with a pregnant loony?

Tom’s child. Was Tom going to care?

Was Hugh going to believe her when she showed him the photocopies of the newspaper article?

The builders and the electrician had gone and she was relieved to hear Ben’s bark. She hurried across the gravel and up the steps, then she noticed something off about the barks; they sounded muffled, intense, not like his usual greeting.

Angry.

She unlocked the front door and pressed the hall light switch. Nothing happened. Bugger. She sniffed. There was a smell of rotting meat in the house. Fridge, perhaps. She ran into the kitchen. Ben stood in the boiler room, barking at the ceiling, gruff barks as if he had made himself hoarse.

He turned his head towards her, whined, then looked up at the ceiling and barked again, desperately, as if he were trying to tell her something. She stared at him, then up at the ceiling, the black ceiling with the lagged central heating pipes. ‘What’s up, boy?’

He ignored her, then twisted round on himself and barked at the wall beside him, then snarled and ran out through the kitchen and down the passageway. She followed. He stopped at the foot of the stairs, glared up at them and growled.

‘What is it, boy?’

He took two steps back, his hair almost rising straight up.

She climbed a few stairs. The smell of rotting meat was stronger here. She climbed on up to the landing. A gust of wind blew outside; something slithered down a wall. Her bedroom door was ajar; some of the floor-boarding was still up and a coil of the electrician’s wire was resting against the skirting board. The smell of
rotting meat was stronger still; she wondered if it was a dead mouse, like the one in the attic. Except it seemed too strong.

She walked towards her bedroom, the loose boards rattling beneath her feet, echoing in the shadowy silence. She pushed the door further open and looked in.

The tin was on top of her dressing table. It was no longer rusty; it looked brand new. As new and shiny as when she had carried it up the hill in her first regression with Ernest Gibbon.

Someone had polished it.

Her head turned in short snapping movements; the room seemed to be closing in on her. She snatched up the tin and pushed off the lid. Then she screamed.

The locket was not there. Gone. Instead a real heart lay in the tin. It was small, fetid, rotting, and mostly covered in writhing white maggots.

She tried to back away, but the tin came with her, in her hand, the foul stench that had been released from inside churned her stomach like a pitchfork.

She backed into the wall and the tin jerked. The heart shook and some of the maggots fell off it. Others wriggled over the side of the tin and fell on to her hand, cold, dry, their feet pricking into her skin, trying to grip on her trembling flesh before they tumbled to the floor.

One crawled out, bigger than the rest, and perched on the rim. It see-sawed, then rolled on to her wrist, bit her as if in anger at having its meal interrupted, then tumbled through the air as her hand shot up and the tin flew through the air, hit the ceiling, then hit the floor with a bouncing clatter sending the rotten bloody heart rolling against a leg of the dressing table, scattering the maggots around it.

But she did not see it; she was already out of the room, running down the stairs, running for the front door.

Ben thought everything had changed into a game and ran joyfully beside her up the driveway. As they neared Hugh’s house, the blattering roar grew louder; the engine was sounding uneven now, as if he were accelerating then decelerating, accelerating, decelerating, and every few seconds it missed a beat and backfired.