The Sisterhood (18 page)

Billy seemed to be working harder than usual. It felt that way, anyway. The days were strange grey things that lasted for ever. Because she didn't sleep any more, she felt that she lived in a half-night, whatever time it was. The baby slept quite a lot, in a cot next to the bed, but it woke up for a bottle every four hours or so, and in between, Mary just lay there, trying to find a way out, thinking of Kathmandu.

She knew she was unnatural. She couldn't begin to tell anybody about the way she felt. Everything was wrong and she was evil. Nobody knew that she was in the wrong life. No one could tell how she was feeling about this baby. The baby was her own flesh and blood — she knew that, in her mind, but she couldn't feel it. She couldn't feel anything towards it except resentment. She hated it more, every day. It was a horrid little bundle that made demands on her day and night, that insisted on overriding whatever she wanted to do. It cried when she was trying to nap. It took half an hour to cry itself to sleep in the cot, and sometimes the neighbour on one side banged on the wall, and at other times the other neighbour came over to tell her to rock it to sleep instead of leaving it to cry.

Mary told the neighbour that the baby still cried if it was being rocked, but in fact she never tried it, because she was scared of herself. She was beginning to realise that if she carried it around, she was going to give in to an unspeakable urge. Sometimes she had to stop whatever she was doing, to freeze and wait for the feeling to pass, because she knew that if she didn't, something awful was going to happen, and the baby would die and she would go to prison.

As she lay in bed, she tried not to think about her alternative life. If Billy hadn't got her pregnant, she would have gone travelling. She would have left him, and he wouldn't have cared, and she would be in Afghanistan or somewhere by now. If she ever escaped this life — and although she couldn't, she was going to — then she would never have sex again. If she never did it again, she could never be trapped like this again. If she only had herself to think of, she could do anything. She lay in bed and cried silent tears as she tried to work out how old she would be when Elizabeth left home, and how long it would be before Billy had an affair, and whether she would be able to get a divorce and leave the baby behind, and if so, how soon she would be able to do it.

She had £125 in an envelope. The magazine was under the mattress. The bus was due to leave in April. She was going to send off for her ticket, post an envelope full of cash. She was going to do it, as soon as she dared.

The alarm woke her, so she must have drifted off. She rolled away from Billy and pretended to be asleep as he got. up and dressed in the shirt she had somehow managed to iron for him (the iron and the baby together were dangerous for her, and she could only trust herself to do it when Elizabeth was asleep, in a different part of the house). She was aware of him pacing around the room, and heard him pause by her side of the bed, and she wondered whether he could tell that she was awake. Was her breathing all wrong? Were her eyes too tightly shut?

He only stopped for a moment, then continued out of the door. Without looking, she knew that his shirt was open, that his tie was hanging over his shoulder, and that he was going to the bathroom to shave. She knew that he thought his wife should get up before him, to cook him a filling breakfast. For the moment, the baby was so young that she could get away with 'resting', but soon, she knew, he would start to pressurise her. Soon she would have to do it properly: she would have to spring up out of bed like a housewife from ten years ago, cook breakfast for her husband, wave him off to work, and devote the day to housework and the baby. This was her personal version of hell.

They were in the 1970s now. Things were supposed to be changing. There was a street in Lambeth where everyone was squatting. There was France across a tiny stretch of sea, there were mopeds, and there were people of her own age drifting around, free. There was music and there were cigarettes and there were fabulous things to wear. But scratch the surface, and there was no revolution. As a woman, she was still expected to stay at home and subsume herself. She was still nothing.

And so there was a terraced house, in a street near Brighton station. There was a man who had transformed himself from casual hippy boyfriend to boring old-fashioned husband, a man who seemed to dote on the baby, but who could barely think of a word to say to his wretched wife. He was sinking into the life his parents led because he had no idea how else they could do it. He could see how miserable his wife was — even Mary could see that he was concerned about her — but he couldn't do anything. He lacked the vocabulary, emotional and literal. As the weeks went by, Mary watched Billy becoming frustrated. She didn't care. She couldn't find it in herself to care about anything. The bus was her only lifeline. She had to be brave. She had to do it.

She lay in bed and listened to him downstairs. He had the radio on, a dull drone that was imparting the news of the day in a masculine monotone. She couldn't hear what it was saying, but she knew vaguely what it would involve. Nixon, Wilson, Rhodesia. It all washed over her these days.

She pictured him. He had shaved, buttoned up his shirt, and tied his tie. He was eating toast, slightly burned, that he had made under the grill himself. It was covered with slabs of butter and an inch of marmalade. His hair was tidy, swept into place with a wet comb. Billy had caved in and cut his hair before their wedding, under parental pressure. Once, Mary had liked the way it curled over his geometrically patterned collar. Now it was brutally short at the back and sides, and a little longer on top. His eyes had seemed gentle to her. Now they were panic stricken, and his face was closed, and he looked just like everybody else. His shirt was white. His suit was dark grey. He was twenty-six, but he might as well have been forty. The only concession to the boy he had been a year ago was a slight flare to the suit trousers.

He was picking up his briefcase. The front door opened. From upstairs, Mary sensed his hesitation.

'Bye, love,' he called softly.

She rolled over. As he banged the door shut, the baby started to stir.

15 April

The best way to watch her was by sitting at the station. If I got there early, at about seven, I could sit with the boy and wait. He didn't mind.

'Hiya,' he said today, and he patted the pavement next to him.

'Thanks,' I said, and I sat down, leaned back against the grimy wall, and looked at him. 'How are you?' I asked politely.

He shrugged. 'Better. Better with the weather.'

It was sunny, and not at all cold. I was pleased, because I'd got very cold some days, sitting with David. He stayed there when it was raining, and when it was icy, and even, once, when it hailed. He never asked me why I came to join him, and I never asked how he got there in the first place.

'Why don't we go into the station?' I asked, the first time it rained.

He snorted. 'You're joking! Do you think we'd last five minutes in there?'

'Why wouldn't we?'

'They'd chuck us out. Don't you even know that? You haven't been doing this long, hey?'

At first, I thought he might try to steal things from me, or ask me for money, but he didn't. He didn't seem to care about anything at all.

I began to examine everyone who came past. It was hard work, at this time of day, because there were too many of them, and hardly anyone stopped to look at us. Some did, and quite often women would give me money. They looked at me with funny 'poor you' expressions on their faces. I always gave it all to David, because he didn't look as if he had a credit card from his father.

Liz came at five to eight. When I saw her, I pulled my baseball cap over my face, and looked down at the pavement.

'There she is,' David hissed. He raised his voice. 'All right, darling? Spare us anything, love?'

Liz stopped, fumbled in her pocket, and chucked us a pound coin. I kept staring at the pavement, even though I knew she was trying to look at me. This was always the dangerous part. She moved on quickly, and I got up, smiled a goodbye to David, and followed her into the station.

I hated her and I was glad that Mother had left her. But at least I was keeping an eye on her, and, on the positive side, she had taught me how to use the Tube.

I went with her to her school, which was in a place called Pimlico. As soon as she went through the gates, I turned round and wandered away. That was my work done, for today.

I walked and walked, and ended up in St James's Park, asleep on a bench. When I woke up, there was a newspaper in a bin, next to me. It was
Loot.
I knew that this was the place to look for a flatshare, and so I picked it up, just out of curiosity.

21 April

'See you later then, darling,' said Anna. We kissed each other's cheeks, and I watched her saunter over the road, back home. She lived almost directly opposite. I was pleased that I'd knocked on her door and invited her for coffee. The fact that I had a pregnant, local friend made my life immeasurably better.

I bounded upstairs, ready to attack the flat. My flat was annoying me. It annoyed me with its infidelity, with the fact that it stubbornly resisted being mine alone. Until I found seventy thousand pounds, half of it would be devoted to Steve.

I pushed the vacuum with a grim determination. No dirt, dust or grime was going to survive this campaign. I was on a mission to make the place spotless. I would make it pay for the fact that it still belonged to Steve. The housework had been neglected for months. It would be neglected no more.

The radio was on, at a high volume. When I switched it on, on the dot of eight o'clock, every station wanted to tell me about a car bomb in Baghdad. It had taken several minutes to locate loud dance music from the nineties. The music took me back to an era when nothing had really mattered to me. It was an innocent era, both for me and, I thought, for the world. Back then, we were worried about the rainforests. The very idea made me nostalgic. Now we were worried about survival.

As I went on, I almost began to enjoy myself. Cleaning was turning out to be rather therapeutic. I patted my baby, who jabbed me back, and redoubled my efforts.

When the floors were clean, I got to work on the junk. As I worked, I decided that the cluttered bohemian aesthetic was outdated. When I could, I would get rid of the bits of mosaic and the black candlesticks. I would change the overly exuberant pictures on the walls. I would paint each room in tastefully neutral colours, perhaps frame some Hopper prints. The red walls in the sitting room gave me a headache. This was like a student house. I would make it different, better. The sitting-room walls, for instance, would be transformed if they were a pale green. The kitchen would look much better white than it did in blue and yellow. This flat needed to become my home, mine and the baby's. Not Steve's. Not a place where two silly, deluded people had wasted the best years of their lives with a love that turned out to mean nothing. It needed to be a grown-up place, somewhere that would shelter a funny little family.

I was aware that my ideas of what a home should look like had been formed entirely by cheaply made television programmes. This was depressing. It was sad to realise that I didn't have an original idea of my own, but I would do what I could.

The realisation that I couldn't change a thing hit me in the stomach. There was no way I was going to be able to afford to do anything so frivolous, ever. Every penny counted, from now on, and I was going to have to move house, so I could give Steve his money.

By the time I reached the spare room, I was fuming. I was often fuming, these days. Occasionally it worried me, but mainly I liked it. It gave me the strength to carry on. I pushed the door open with some trepidation.

'It wasn't meant to be like this,' I wailed aloud as I surveyed the junk. For the past six months, whenever I found anything I didn't want to look at or deal with, I had thrown it into the spare room. There were a lot of bits and pieces that belonged to Steve. There were clothes that no longer fitted me. There was a heap of Steve's post.

'It was meant to be different,' I whispered. I patted the baby. 'You were meant to be his.'

I cleared a space and sat down on the floor. For a moment, I allowed myself to be weak. I put my head in my hands and sniffed. Then I stopped.

'Pull yourself together,' I told myself crossly. That was what I would have said to a fourteen-year-old girl snivelling in a class. It worked on them, occasionally.

There was something odd under the bed, and the whole room smelt weird.

Nervously, I went closer. It took me a while to realise that I was looking at the green, powdery remains of two pumpkins. They had been silently disintegrating in perfect tandem with my life. It took three plastic bags, and much retching, before I was rid of them. The carpet would never completely recover.

The rest of the Halloween paraphernalia was scattered around the tiny room. I couldn't remember throwing it in there, but I supposed I must have done it in a rage, sometime after the dreadful night. There was a half-burned Halloween candle stuck on top of the curtain rail. Drink must have been involved, or I would never have thrown it so far.

I bagged up Steve's things, binned his pants, socks, and odds and ends, and put the rest of his clothes aside to take to the charity shop. I threw away the stupid witch's hats. I snapped the plastic Halloween-themed champagne flutes. I was mortified all over again when I recalled the way I had chased the boy, Miles, out of the flat, thinking he was a girl.

Years ago, in a different lifetime — a lifetime of heterosexuality and growing old together — we had painted the spare room walls purple. I had regretted it ever since. The day we did it, I looked at the finished effect, and shook my head.

'It's rubbish,' I announced. 'It's dark and spooky. Bad things would happen in here.'