The Decision (47 page)

That was the night when Eliza discovered there was not a clean or even a dry nappy in the place. Every single one of the two dozen were in the disagreeable-looking and worse-smelling pails in the bathroom.

That was the night when she told him to piss off when he tried to make her smile, told her it didn’t matter and they could rip up a towel and use that for a nappy; that was the night when he said he didn’t mind any of it, except her being so bloody miserable; that was the night when she told him if he didn’t give her a break and look after Emmie one night a week, she couldn’t answer for the consequences; that was the night when he told her to pull herself together and that he was going back to the office.

That was the night when she rang her mother and her mother told her to go out and buy some bottles and some Cow & Gate milk powder first thing in the morning.

The next night was the one when Emmie slept as she was supposed to do, from six to ten o’clock and then from eleven to almost five.

Gradually things improved; Matt was cross about the bottles, but grudgingly admitted that Emmie did seem happier. Eliza knocked her life into some semblance of routine, managed to get a meal on the table although not usually before nine or ten, and discovered that great saviour of new mothers, the nappy service, whereby a cheerful man arrived on the doorstep every morning with a neatly folded pile of clean nappies and bore off the heap of dirty ones in a plastic bag. It seemed a much better use for her godmother’s money than the cleaner.

They were not of course short of money; Matt was making a lot now and was the opposite of mean with it, but Eliza had had to hit the hard and unforgiving buffers of not having her own supply. She had saved up a bit, but her natural extravagance combined with the beguiling nursery department of Peter Jones had soaked up most of it.

She would not have believed how diminishing and dispiriting it was to have to rely on money she had not earned herself. She had not given it much thought, indeed, until a few weeks before Emmie was born, when she had announced to Matt that she was thinking of changing her car, ‘it’s only got two doors, difficult for putting the carrycot in,’ and he had said, yes, fine, he’d had the same thought, and what about a Ford Capri?

‘Matt, I am not driving our child around, or myself come to that, in a Ford Capri, horrible vulgar cars. I thought a Hillman Imp might be nice, or there’s a Fiat 124, that’s very pretty.’

Whereupon Matt had given her one of his old-fashioned looks and said the Capri might be vulgar but it was very economical and he thought she might like to remember that.

She had been about to say she didn’t care how economical it was when the full meaning of what he was saying struck her rather hard somewhere in the centre of herself; such decisions were no longer hers to make. Leaving her job, which she had with an aching heart only a week before Emmie was born, didn’t simply mean giving up status, interest, and the utilisation of her talents; it meant that she was about to be answerable to Matt for everything she wished to buy. Money, she saw in that moment of ferocious clarity, wasn’t just the means whereby you acquired what you wanted or even needed; money was power, and lack of your own supply, even under the most benign and domestic of circumstances, was a genuine and rather ugly impotence.

Christmas that year was spent at Summercourt with her parents; her mother had written and begged her to come. ‘You must try to forgive us for our attitude to Matt, we can see now we were very wrong, and he is so fond of you and clearly a most devoted father and this could be Daddy’s last Christmas, certainly I fear his last one at home, and it would mean so much to him, even more than to me, to have you with us.’

To her surprise Matt had said yes, all right, her dad was a good bloke even if her mother did have a poker up her backside, and he could see Adrian hadn’t got a lot of time left, ‘but just for the two days mind, I’ll be climbing those elegant walls by then.’

Charles and Juliet had also said they would like to come for Christmas Day, but would have to leave early on Boxing Day morning as it was Juliet’s father’s birthday; Sarah was so happy at the turn of events that she went round the house singing for at least two days before working herself into a fever of anxiety about the coldness of the house and the bathrooms in particular and in relation to Emmie, but Eliza said she could bath Emmie in the big sink in the kitchen and she could sleep in their room and they could bring a couple of their own fan heaters to warm it up.

‘I’m sure we’ll all have a lovely time,’ she said, ‘don’t worry. Matt is looking forward to it, truly. And he’s so obsessed with Emmie, he’s just happy to be with her.’

‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’ said Sarah. ‘One wouldn’t have expected it,’ and then added hastily that she simply meant that men weren’t normally obsessed with their babies, ‘I’m not saying anything specially about Matt.’

‘Yes, well, I sometimes wish he wasn’t,’ said Eliza gloomily, ‘and he’d just leave me alone to get on with looking after her.’

‘And – how are you finding it, darling, being at home? With Emmie? Enjoying it I expect, not missing your job too much.’

‘Oh – yes, it’s – it’s lovely,’ said Eliza carefully. There was no way she could even begin to explain to her mother how she felt.

Lost. Disenfranchised. Lonely. And confused.

Now that she was feeling better, now that Emmie slept a bit, now that the days had more shape to them, she wanted to be happy, to enjoy it so much; but she missed work horribly. Missed the daily pressure, the tensions, the dramas; missed the joy of having ideas, clever ideas, and then seeing them through, however difficult it might be. Missed the company, the association with people who talked her language, cared what she cared about, understood her ambitions. And – yes, Matt had been right, and she was ashamed of it, but she did miss the praise, the admiration, the acknowledgement of her success, the glossy rewards of her job. She just couldn’t help it.

On the other hand, now she had Emmie, it was quite difficult to imagine leaving her. She loved her more than she would have believed she could love anything. She would look at her as she slept, making her funny little twitchy movements, and her odd little snuffly sounds, and marvel at how passionately she felt about her. The day Emmie first smiled at her, she never forgot. She had just fed her and burped her and was sitting looking at her, holding her on her lap, and Emmie’s brilliant blue eyes fixed very firmly on hers. She seemed to be concentrating very hard, almost anxiously, on what she was doing, which was looking back at her mother. And then, slowly, her rosebud of a mouth moved into a rather lopsided, but distinctly joyful, smile. All her tiny world, every bit of her effort was in it; it was a great, joyous, evolutionary leap. And Eliza touched beyond anything by it, found tears in her eyes and a great aching rush of love and something close to awe.

She had experienced that feeling once before: the first time she had felt Emmie move. Like a small dusting of sensation, deep in her stomach, that came and went and then, as she wondered what it could be and then dismissed it, it came again; and she thought, with complete wonder, that she wasn’t just pregnant, she was a mother, or soon to be one, that there was actually a person growing inside her, not just a cluster of cells or a bobbing embryo, but a small human being, a new member of the human race that she and Matt had created, and she walked round the flat for half an hour, looking down at herself in wonder, willing it to happen again.

She had tried to explain her feelings to Matt, half-expecting him to pooh-pooh it, to tease her; but he looked at her very seriously and then kissed her.

‘God, I love you,’ he said.

It was at such times that she knew she had done the right thing.

Christmas worked out very well. Her father was incredibly frail and was beginning to find making himself understood difficult; but he was so patently happy to have them there that it was impossible not to feel pleased in return. Pete Shaw had, as promised, been down to Summercourt to install some ramps for his wheelchair, both in the house and the garden, which was a great help to Sarah, and had taken to coming down every other Saturday to take Adrian to the pub.

‘Well,’ he said to Sandra, ‘what a life, stuck in that freezing pile of a place, no one to talk to except Mrs C. and she may be perfectly nice, but she’s not exactly a barrel of laughs. He likes a good joke, and we can talk about the war a bit, he was in the army, the gunners, did some pretty brave things, and then I tell him about being at sea, and it’s closing time before you know it.’

He had also, he said, nipped up to the top of the house to look at the rooms: ‘sodden they are, it’s bloody terrifying, thinking what might happen, but doing nothing’s really daft, they seem to think it’ll all go away if they ignore it. I’m going to tell Matt to have a look, see what he thinks, if anything can be done that won’t break the bank. Funny, isn’t it, you’d think they was rolling, but Matt says the only money they’ve got is tied up in the house.’

‘They should sell it,’ said Sandra, ‘buy a little cottage somewhere. Then they’d be in clover. What d’you reckon it’s worth?’

‘Oh – I dunno. Hundred grand at least.’

‘A hundred thousand pounds. Crikey, Pete. What couldn’t we do with that?’

‘Your dad’s so good to mine,’ said Eliza on Christmas Eve, as she began the momentous task of unpacking Emmie’s things for the two days’ stay. ‘I’m so grateful to him. Funny, isn’t it, they’re really quite good friends now.’

Matt said he couldn’t see why it was funny, and what the hell was this contraption; Eliza said it was a sterilising unit for the bottles.

‘I thought boiling did the job. That looks a lot more expensive. OK, don’t give me that constipated look, I’m only kidding. Now look what I got Emmie for her first Christmas. Can’t you just see that on her little wrist?’

It was a gold bangle, hung with two discs, one engraved with Emmie’s name and one ‘Christmas 1965’.

‘D’you think she’ll like it?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Eliza, laughing, ‘she’ll absolutely love it and she’ll say thank you so much Daddy, it’s beautiful, please will you help me put it on.’

He looked hurt; he couldn’t stand being teased about his devotion to his daughter. Sometimes Eliza wondered just how far below Emmie she came in the family pecking order. A long, long way …

They put Emmie in the carrycot on wheels and took her for a walk while they waited for Charles and Juliet. Eliza was looking forward to seeing Charles. He seemed to be avoiding her and had become a commuter, leaving London on the six o’clock train to Guildford and their new house, and apparently completely unable to delay for even an hour for a drink. But he was quiet and subdued she discovered, miles away from the charming, funny brother of their childhood and youth; and Juliet had developed an attitude towards him that Eliza really didn’t like. She had always been bossy, but now she was quite overbearing, and seemed to have him constantly running round after her, fetching her cups of tea and ‘another cardigan, darling, it’s so cold here’, refusing to go for a walk on Christmas morning, which would have been fine, except that she wouldn’t let Charles go either – ‘I really don’t want to stay here all alone, on Christmas Day.’

Eliza marvelled at Charles’s patience, worried about his state of mind and resolved to insist on meeting him when they were all back in London. She was, after all, free every lunchtime.

On the other hand, she had to admit Juliet was very sweet to both Sarah and Adrian, kissing Adrian and making a great fuss of him, telling him she was looking forward to sharing the Mateus rosé she’d brought him that was his favourite wine, and chatting quite animatedly to Sarah, about her job and a new dress and jacket she’d bought to wear on Christmas Day. Sarah was fond of Juliet; they would chat about house décor and clothes for hours on end.

They all went to midnight mass in the village church, apart from Matt who agreed to babysit both Adrian and Emmie; ‘How marvellous of you,’ said Sarah, looking at him quite fondly. Eliza pointed out briskly that this was the first time ever Matt had looked after Emmie, and Juliet said she thought that was quite right, babysitting was not a man’s job. It began to look like a long Christmas to Eliza.

Christmas lunch – ‘this is one of your best, Mummy,’ said Eliza, smiling at her – was followed by a walk – Juliet agreed to this one, as it was necessarily short – and then presents, followed by tea which nobody wanted and some carol singing by Eliza and Juliet, while Sarah played the piano. Everyone was putting up a very good pretence of being happy, Eliza thought; and who was to say it was only pretence? She had enjoyed her day, Matt had behaved very well, and he and Charles had spent a fair bit of time reminiscing about the army, and he had presented her with an extremely pretty gold bracelet watch, ‘in case you got jealous of Emmie’s. I’ve put the date on yours as well.’

‘Now,’ said Matt, as Eliza stood up and said she was going to bath Emmie, ‘I’d like you to come upstairs with me, Eliza. Got something to show you.’

‘Goodness,’ said Juliet, looking arch.

He led her up to the top of the house, into the leaking rooms.

‘My dad told me to take a look at these,’ he said, ‘shocking sight, isn’t it? Tragic really. Why they don’t move, your parents, I’ll never know. Still, I got an idea. Wanted to see what you thought.’

‘Mummy! Daddy! Matt wants to talk to you. It’s so exciting …’

‘What is?’ said Sarah, her eyes meeting Eliza’s. Heavens, Eliza thought, she thinks I’m having another one already.