The Things We Never Said (5 page)

‘Yes,’ he nods, ‘I remember you telling me.’ A grandchild will give her something to look forward to, he thinks; a new purpose.

‘He let me carry on working after we married. He was ever so good about it. I remember once . . .’

He stops taking it in. He’s suddenly very keen to tell her; it’ll make all the difference, and what’s more, they’ll have a common interest, a bond.

She’s looking at him. ‘I should have—’

‘Mum, I’ve got something to tell you.’

She looks bewildered for a moment and he realises she was speaking.

‘Sorry to cut in but I – we – meant to tell you, but what with Father being ill . . .’ Guilt nips him sharply for using that excuse. ‘I didn’t say anything before but . . .’

She seems to recover herself. ‘Oh darling, do get on with it.’ She lights another cigarette and winds it towards her mouth with some difficulty.

‘Yes, right. Sorry. Well, the thing is, Fiona and I, I mean . . . well, we’re going to have a baby. You’ll be a grandma!’

He waits. He doesn’t know what to expect, but it isn’t silence. Her face is blank. The only movement is her cigarette smoke, drifting upwards, greying the room.

‘I said, you’re going to be a grandmother.’

The gas fire continues to hiss and pop. The old mantel clock ticks so loudly that it’s more of a clunk. ‘Mum?’ He tries to read her expression but she’s looking through him.

‘It’s a bit of a shock,’ she says.

He is so unprepared for this that anything else he might have said falls away. He searches for the right words but he can’t come up with a single thing; it feels as if his mind is just a great void. ‘A shock?’ he manages eventually. But she doesn’t respond. Several moments pass and the silence becomes increasingly brittle. His mouth and lips feel dry and he feels cold inside. ‘Maybe I should be going,’ he says after a while, ‘and let you get to bed.’

She doesn’t reply, so he stands and says goodnight. She’s staring straight ahead, eyes blank, mouth turned down. He pauses at the door. ‘Mum, are you all right?’

‘What?’ She turns towards him as though she’s forgotten he’s there. ‘Oh, yes. Yes, thank you.’ Her voice has changed and she seems distracted as she gets to her feet. ‘I think I shall get off to bed now. I won’t see you out, if you don’t mind.’

Back at home, Fiona is standing at the fridge eating leftover pizza. Next door’s cat is winding itself around her ankles, weaving in and out. ‘Now the nausea’s worn off, I can’t stop eating.’ She smiles. ‘Well? How was she?’

‘I told her.’

‘Told her what?’

‘About the baby.’

Fiona’s smile dims. ‘You told her? Just now?’

He nods. ‘She, er . . .’ He considers lying, saying his mum had been delighted and couldn’t wait to be a grandma. But there’s no point. He crosses the room and puts his arms around Fiona. ‘There’s no easy way to say it; she didn’t seem very pleased.’

He feels her stiffen then she pulls away. ‘It’s hardly bloody surprising, is it? What on earth made you tell her today?’

‘It may not have been the best—’

‘Of course it wasn’t! She’s just buried her husband, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I know, but I thought—’

‘Sometimes, Jonathan, you can be such a fucking idiot.’ She pulls out a chair and collapses into it. ‘What were you
thinking
of?’

‘You, actually.’ He throws his keys on the table and goes to the fridge, tripping over the cat, which hisses at him. ‘You’ve been on about it for weeks.’ He takes out a bottle and empties the last of the Chardonnay into a glass. ‘When I finally—’

‘When you finally decide to tell her, you choose to do it a few hours after your father’s funeral. Un-fucking-believable!’ Shaking her head, she gets up, takes a glass from the draining rack and tips up the wine bottle, but only a few drops drip out. ‘Fuck,’ she says, and bangs the bottle back down. ‘Come on, then.’ She looks at him, and the flame goes out of her voice. ‘You’d better tell me what happened.’

‘She said it was a shock.’

‘A shock?’

‘I know. Surprise would have understandable, I suppose, but . . .’

Fiona turns away from him. ‘I really thought she’d be pleased.’ There’s a catch in her voice. She reels off a few sheets of kitchen roll and dabs at her eyes.

‘Me too. Maybe when it’s sunk in. Anyway, it’s what we think that matters.’ But he’s shaken, too. He’s used the term ‘gutted’ so carelessly after minor disappointments that it’s become meaningless, but it describes perfectly how he feels now: like a fish on a slab with its guts, its very centre, cut out.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Maggie’s sessions with Dr Carver are on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; she remembers this now. And she remembers most of the nurses’ names, and almost all the patients’, at least, those from her ward. Her memory is beginning to grow, but the roots still aren’t very strong.

‘Don’t push yourself too hard,’ the doctor says. ‘Relax, talk to the other ladies, and let nature take its course.’ He taps his temple twice.

‘I know.’ Maggie speaks the words along with him: ‘You can’t force the old grey matter into action . . .’

‘ . . . before it’s ready. Quite right.’ He smiles as he shows her out. ‘Now, mind you get yourself along to the social this evening,’ he adds. ‘Do you a power of good.’

*

There will be ‘party food’ according to Dr Carver; bridge rolls, cheese and pineapple, cocktail sausages – but not on sticks, apparently, because some patients can’t be trusted. So the evening meal is light; liver sausage or luncheon meat with Heinz vegetable salad and brown bread and butter, or beans on toast. Maggie isn’t hungry, so she just has a piece of toast and then heads back to the ward where she lights a cigarette and sits on her bed, legs stretched out in front of her, watching the smoke swirl up and up in the evening sunlight. What will this ‘social’ be like, she wonders? She’s used to Pauline, Norma, and the other women on her own ward, but as for meeting new people, patients from the other wards . . . her stomach shifts at the thought. Although Pauline seems to think it’ll be fun. ‘I always enjoy them once I get there,’ Pauline told her this morning, ‘but I have to force myself to go.’

‘Dolly!’ Maggie calls out as the old lady passes. ‘You going to this thing tonight?’

‘The shindig? No, love, I ain’t got time. I’ve got to get me stuff packed. I’m going home soon, see.’

‘Oh, I see.’ Maggie nods. ‘That’s good, then.’ At first, she’d believed everyone who said they were going home soon, but now she knows it’s mostly wishful thinking. After a couple of weeks of daily treatments, though, Dolly does seem to be going though a good patch. She walks upright, smiles at everyone and can even be heard singing to herself as she works in the laundry. At the moment, Maggie’s working in the laundry too, but she’s asked Sister if she can work in the kitchen. How long will she be here, she wonders? And what is her
real
life? A loud clapping breaks into her thoughts. ‘Here we are, ladies.’ Sister holds up a small cardboard box. ‘You’ve got fifteen minutes to make yourselves beautiful.’ She puts the box on the table and folds her arms. The women hurry down the ward. Maggie stubs out her cigarette and follows them. They crowd around, rummaging in the box and pulling out various items before scurrying over to where one of the orderlies is setting up a row of mirrors. When she can get near enough, Maggie looks into the box: there are stubs of lipstick, well-used pots of eyeshadow and rouge, pitted black cakes of mascara and mirrored compacts of pressed, pinky-beige powder. The scent reminds her of her mother, and a wave of childlike longing sweeps over her. She fights the urge to cry and concentrates on selecting some make-up. As she joins the other women at the mirrors, she is surprised to realise that she remembers her own face; it looks familiar, almost the same as she left it, apart from the puddles of darkness under her eyes. The cake of mascara is cracked and dry, so she spits a little saliva onto it and uses what’s left of the brush to mix it to a usable consistency. She glances to her left and sees a line of women, all applying make-up at the same time. There is another rumbling in her memory, and she pauses with the brush in her hand. There was a long, narrow dressing room, and all the girls sat in a line, putting on thick, greasy make-up. She travelled by train to get there; she had a suitcase . . .

When she’s ready, she goes along to the other end of the ward to find Pauline, who’s lying on her bed, clutching a photograph and staring at the ceiling.

‘Are you coming to this social thing?’

Pauline shakes her head and looks at the picture she’s holding.

‘Oh, come on,’ Maggie says. ‘You said you always enjoy it when you get there.’

‘Can’t face it tonight,’ Pauline says. ‘You go. You can tell me about it later.’

‘I don’t want to go on my own. Please come, Pauline.’

Pauline doesn’t answer.

‘Go on, just for half an hour.’

Pauline sighs, then she sits up, pushes the hair off her face. ‘Oh all right; might as well, I suppose.’ She swings her legs over the edge of the bed. ‘Give me a minute, will you.’

Pauline’s face is pale and gaunt. Her eyes are dull, the lids swollen and reddened; there are bruise-like crescents underneath and a deep red mark on each of her temples. She shows Maggie the photograph. ‘Look. That’s my baby, Angela. It’s her first birthday today, but they won’t let me go home because it’s “not the right day for home visits”. I’ll see her on Tuesday, but it’s not the same.’ She takes a comb from her handbag and starts viciously backcombing her hair. ‘A year old, and she barely knows who I am.’

Maggie looks at the picture. The child has fair hair and a tiny curl resting on her forehead. Her little starfish hand is clutching a fluffy toy of some sort – a dog, perhaps – and she’s smiling at whoever is behind the camera. The smile is slightly lopsided, just like Pauline’s. The genial-looking man holding her is gazing at her with pride. There is a tug at Maggie’s memory and she remembers there’s something she’s supposed to do, in thirteen . . . or was it on the thirteenth? But she doesn’t even know what month it is, let alone the date. Something else is coming back, but before she can grasp it, the nurse’s voice cuts across her thoughts. ‘Come along, ladies. Do get a move on!’

*

The day room is packed with people. There are patients and staff, some in uniform, some in civvies. The first thing Maggie notices is the pungent smell of body odour, and the men – the very presence of them. Apart from the doctors, the only men she usually sees are the orderlies who bring the dinner trolley from the main kitchen, and the pig-man – the rotund little Irishman who collects the buckets of pigswill from the ward kitchens on Mondays. She fans herself with her hand. The room is so crowded that she’s lost sight of Pauline already. Even though the windows are open a few inches at the top and bottom, the heat is almost unbearable, and she can feel a film of perspiration forming on her upper lip. The ceiling fans rotate above her head, but they barely disturb the hot, heavy air. She tries to think about what it is she has to do; something to do with the picture Pauline showed her . . . but with the smell and the heat and the people jostling her, it’s impossible to concentrate, so she stores the thoughts away for later.

She drifts around the room until she spots Norma sitting on the wide sill, looking out across the grounds. The bees are making the most of the last rays of evening sunshine as they hum lazily around the lavender that grows just beneath the window.

‘Hello, Norma,’ Maggie smiles. But the face that turns towards her is desolate; the eyes that yesterday twinkled with mischief are now flat and dead.

‘Too far down the pole,’ Norma says, her voice so faint it only just scratches the air. ‘Too far down today.’ And she turns back to the window. The sun slips behind the trees and in an instant the garden is in shadow, robbed of the pinks, reds and yellows that provide such a welcome contrast to the dismal hospital interior. Maggie hovers for a few moments. Apart from Norma, the only other women she’s talked to are the other nervous breakdowns.
How long have you been in? Have you had ECT? When are you going home?
They ask each other the same questions, repeat their stories to anyone who’ll listen, and compare notes about their sessions with Dr Carver. Maggie can cope with that; and she can cope with the sunny, childlike Norma who flits around the room like a butterfly. But this Norma is different, her cold misery impenetrable. Maggie lays a hand on her shoulder, but there is no response. A fat, glossy bee has slipped in under the window and is now buzzing around Norma’s head and butting dementedly at the glass. Norma doesn’t even seem to notice.

CHAPTER NINE

The phone rings just as he’s getting out of the shower.

‘Jonathan, it’s your mother. I’m so glad you’re there – I thought you might have gone to work. I – I couldn’t sleep last night. I’ve been thinking about what you said. I’m pleased for you both, really I am, and I’m sorry for my behaviour. It was just that I wasn’t—’

‘No,
I’m
sorry. It was really bad timing.’ A mental image of Fiona nodding pointedly pops into his brain.

‘Listen, darling, could you come over? I’d like to explain properly.’

He hesitates. So far, yesterday is the only day he’s taken off. He could take more time, but it would feel dishonest, given that what he’s feeling isn’t really grief. And anyway, when he’s teaching, his thoughts don’t keep returning to that last fraught visit with his father. Try as he might, he can’t remember the last words they’d spoken to each other.

‘Sorry, Mum, I told them I’d be back today, but I’ll pop in on my way home, all right?’

*

Somehow, he muddles through the day, but he knows he’s not on form; maybe he should have taken a few more days off. Darkness is falling rapidly as he drives through Blackheath Village; he looks at the fairy lights strung across the narrow roads and the Christmas trees twinkling in shop windows. Next Christmas, he’ll be a father; his mother will be a – he thinks about the words –
grand mother
. She’d never been a particularly motherly mother, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t be
grandmotherly
, did it?

The sitting room is warm and smoky when he arrives. He glances at the half-full ashtray.

‘I know,’ his mother says. ‘I shan’t be able to do this when the baby comes.’

He smiles, disproportionately pleased to hear her say
when the baby comes.

‘You must have thought my response yesterday extremely rude.’ She takes another cigarette from the pack and he notices her hand shaking.

‘No, it was my fault. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

‘I’m sorry, darling, could you light this for me?’

He takes the lighter and holds the flame steady for her, half-expecting a craving to take hold of him again, but it doesn’t.

‘It’s not that I’m not pleased, it’s just that it was, well, as I said, something of a shock. Oh, don’t look at me like that; I know we’ve never discussed that sort of thing but you’ve been married, what, eight years? I suppose I thought you’d decided not to have children. One doesn’t like to ask.’ She takes a long draw on her cigarette. ‘Jonathan, I’m thrilled you’re going to have a baby, I really am. And I’ll do my best to be what a . . . what a real grandma should be.’

‘Well, thank you,’ he says, but she still seems agitated.

‘There are some things I need to talk to you about; things I should have told you before, probably. Your news . . .’ She smiles at him. ‘Your
wonderful
news – put me in mind of something that happened long before you came along.’ She pauses. ‘I had a baby, you see, a little boy who died soon after he was born. We called him Gerald, after your father and his father. He only lived for two hours; such a tiny little scrap. Your father was heartbroken.’

‘Mum,’ he says gently. ‘I didn’t know—’

‘Oh, there’s a lot you don’t know.’ She takes a gulp from a cup of what looks like cold tea. ‘They wouldn’t let me hold him; they didn’t in those days. Just took him away and told me to try again while there was still time.’ She keeps her head lowered as she fumbles in her bag for a handkerchief and blows her nose, then she takes a deep, shaky breath. ‘It changed Gerald a great deal, you know.’

Jonathan tries to think of something to say but nothing comes, so he just listens.

‘You had to get on with life in those days. It took me a while, though. I barely got out of my chair at first, so your father had to look after me as well as the house. He was very attentive; even read to me to try and take me out of myself. But he wasn’t as strong as people thought. Once I started to get back to normal, he went downhill; couldn’t sleep, couldn’t read; he even stopped listening to the wireless. Sometimes he’d sit in that chair for hours, just staring at the wall.’

Jonathan tries to picture them, grief-stricken, bewildered, trying to come to terms with the loss of their baby. Why hasn’t she told him this before?

‘I wanted another baby so much. I thought it might make things better, but . . .’

He leans forward. ‘But what?’ he asks softly.

‘You see, your father didn’t . . . I mean he wouldn’t . . .’

‘He didn’t want another child?’ Things are beginning to make sense now.

‘It wasn’t that, exactly. It was . . . oh dear, this is terribly difficult.’ She stubs out her cigarette and reaches for another.

Part of him wants to press her, to ask her exactly how his father had reacted when he knew she was pregnant again. Had he been angry? Had he continued to be angry after the birth? Another part of him doesn’t want to know. His mother’s hand is shaking even more now. She seems to have second thoughts about the cigarette and tries unsuccessfully to get it back in the pack.

‘Mum, look, don’t talk about it any more now, not if you don’t want to.’

She reaches for the handkerchief again. ‘No, no, I must.’

He waits. But she’s pressing the handkerchief to her lips, trying unsuccessfully to compose herself. How much longer can he sit here watching an old lady’s distress? ‘Mum, don’t.’ He rests his hand on her arm. ‘It’ll keep.’

*

That evening, he lies in the bath while the water cools around him. He thinks about his parents, going about their daily tasks despite their grief for the child who hadn’t even lived a day; his mother cooking, shopping, struggling to contain her sadness. How the hell do you cope with the death of a child? It’s something he can’t even contemplate. He slides down, dropping his shoulders under the water to soak away the tension. Downstairs, Fiona has put on a CD – Elgar, because it’s good for the baby apparently – and he’s neither particularly listening to nor ignoring the music when he suddenly becomes intensely aware of it, moved by the deep, rich tone of some notes, the achingly melancholic quality of others. As he listens, the sound seems to soar up through the floorboards, spilling into the water around him and making his flesh feel raw. It is as though a layer of skin has been peeled off, exposing all the most tender places.

*

When he gets into bed, Fiona is sleeping soundly, her cheek resting neatly on the palm of her right hand and her lips parting with a little click as she breathes out. She’d seemed preoccupied tonight, and she’d wept when he told her about his mum losing her first child; perhaps he should have kept that to himself. He thinks about that long-ago baby, his brother. Would they have looked alike? He doesn’t look like his father but people say he has his mother’s eyes. He wants to ask his mum how she’d felt about being pregnant again, how she’d been after having him. Perhaps she’d had post-natal depression. He pictures his father looking down at him, seeing him both as a poor substitute for his dead brother and as the reason for his mother’s suffering. He hadn’t stood a chance of gaining a place in Gerald’s affections, he sees that now. And the strange thing is, he can see the logic. After all, if anything happened to Fiona, would he be able to forgive the baby? He thinks about the Gerald his mother described, the heartbroken husband caring for his grief-stricken wife. She said Gerald had cried.

He turns over and closes his eyes tighter, but the more he tries to empty his mind, the more impossible it becomes. He turns onto his back and watches the beam of a headlight sweep across the ceiling. Fiona mutters something in her sleep and turns over. It’s no good; he’s wide awake now. Gently, he slides out of bed and pads downstairs.

He pours a small brandy then unlocks the back door and stands there for a moment, looking out into the garden. The smell of fresh pine cuts through the smoky December air. The Christmas tree is propped against the side of the house, waiting to be dragged in, decorated, then thrown out again a week or two later. The thought triggers a wave of childlike sadness which surprises him. His memories of early childhood are hazy, but perhaps it’s just as well. Briefly, he pictures Gerald holding a newborn baby, and again he finds himself wondering whether, given the chance, his father would have mellowed in grandparenthood.

Despite the cold, he takes his glass, walks along the path to the bench at the end and sits down. The garden looks silvery in the moonlight, and there’s hardly any sound. He pulls his dressing gown more tightly around him. A movement to his left startles him, but it’s just a young fox, snaffling up the bread and scraps of meat Fiona put out for it. For a moment the creature looks up and their eyes meet.
See?
it seems to say.
You’re not the only thing she cares about.
Then it disappears through a hole in the fence and he is alone again.

Already, Fiona loves their unborn child; she talks to it all the time with tenderness in her voice, even looking down at her stomach as she speaks. He tries to imagine his little son or daughter, curled up inside her, listening to the gentle rise and fall of her voice against the rhythmic beat of her heart, but he can only summon up an idea or impression; he can’t seem to think of his child as a real person, not yet.

Soon, the combination of the cold and the brandy numbs his mind enough for him to attempt sleep again. He climbs back into bed carefully, so as not to touch Fiona with his icy limbs, and as he sinks gratefully into slumber, his thoughts mangle into dreams.

He is playing in the garden of his parents’ house when it begins to snow. He goes into the house through the French doors; the room is full of people, and there are two tiny white coffins on stands in the centre. His parents stare blankly through him. He turns back to the garden where he spots something moving. At first he thinks it’s a couple of cats or fox cubs and he tries to open the door, but it is locked. He pushes his face up against the glass and sees that it’s two babies, big enough to sit up, laughing and playing in the snow. He bangs on the glass and one of them looks up and reaches out to him. But the snow is so thick and heavy that the babies are already partly buried, so he needs to act fast. He turns back to the adults and tries to speak but no sound comes out, so he runs to each in turn and stands in front of them, tugging at their clothes and pointing to the disappearing babies. Still nobody sees him.