The Winter Children (8 page)

Olivia nods. She feels weak and the idea of merrily lifting anything so heavy as a saucepan seems impossible anyway. But what she
mainly feels is empty. Even though her breasts are full and swollen with milk, her nipples stiff and sore, and her body is heavy with fatigue, she is hollow. The babies are gone. Her bump, once so
full and ripe, is a sagging pouch with only blood and water in it, and her heart yearns for the tiny bodies she was able to hold close to her for only a day before they were taken away. She is
expressing milk whenever she can with the big pump lent to her by the hospital, filling bags of breast milk that can be bottle-fed to the babies. She longs to have them latched on to her, sucking out the
nourishment she can offer, but as they’re in their incubators, monitored by machines, this is all she can do for now, getting them what they need while she maintains her own supply.

Dan comes in, back from the shops with a bulging bag of groceries. She looks at him gratefully. She doesn’t know what she would do without him.

‘Everything all right?’ he asks anxiously, seeing the midwife.

Olivia nods. ‘It’s fine.’

The midwife gets up and puts on her coat. ‘She’s doing very well. And I hear the babies are coming home this week.’

‘We hope so.’ Dan accompanies her to the door and holds it open for her. ‘Thanks for coming by.’

‘That’s all right. I’ll see you again in a couple of days.’

As soon as she’s gone, Dan turns to Olivia. ‘Are you ready to go?’

They’re going to the hospital. When they’re not there, as close as possible to the babies, life is empty and meaningless. The only good thing is that they’re sleeping deeply,
recovering their strength. No doubt that will change when the babies are home.

Olivia hauls herself up out of her chair and Dan rushes over to help her. ‘I’m so weak,’ she says, and tears spring to her eyes. ‘I’m not used to this.’ She
wants to sob. She’s happy and miserable at the same time. She’s in love with her babies and agonised to be away from them, but she also knows they’re being cared for. It’s hard to fight the powerful sense of thwarted longing and the misery it brings.

‘Hey, it’s okay. We’ll be with them in a short while. I’ve parked the car right outside, sod the traffic warden. Come on, darling. You’re doing so well.’

She sniffs. ‘I’m not sure about that. I’m a mess.’

‘Don’t be daft. You’ve had a major operation and you’re working like anything to keep the milk going.’ He looks at the large pump in the corner. ‘You’d
be on that all day if you could.’

‘Have you got the milk bags from the freezer?’ she asks quickly.

‘I’ll put them in the cold box now. Then we’ll get going.’

‘Thanks.’ She watches, full of love and gratitude as he hurries to get the milk. She’s loving seeing him like this: desperate to care for her, full of love for the babies,
doing whatever he can to help. This is a different stage in their lives together, a new challenge for both of them, and he is rising to it in every way he can. They’re a family now. There are
tiny helpless people in their lives, whose needs must be put first. She’s always wondered how they’ll cope, now that they’re so used to their childless life, so set in their ways,
so accustomed to pleasing themselves.

Perhaps we’ll manage very well. After all, the babies are so wanted. But . . .

She looks out of the window at the cold wintery day, feeling far from her mother and sister. She wants them now, to be with her and share all of this. She thinks of the hot Argentine sun, and the memory of her nephews, gurgling on a rug in the cool shade, their fat little limbs bare and kicking in the warmth.

She shakes her head.
I won’t think about that now.

‘Come on,’ Dan says, holding up the cool box. ‘We’re all ready. Shall we go?’

In the hall, they brush past the huge bunch of flowers Francesca sent. It was too big for anywhere else but the table there. They ought to be beautiful but Olivia doesn’t like them. Her
taste is for wild flowers, not manicured hot-house blooms in sheaves of cellophane. The heads of the lilies are already dropping rusty pollen, and one leaves a smear on the back of Dan’s coat
as he brushes past them. Olivia sees it but doesn’t have the strength to wipe it off. Her focus is only on getting to the babies as fast as possible.

Later, in the hospital, she feels complete. She’s with them. They’re all together. She can hold Stanley but Beattie is still confined to the incubator, a tiny mask over her nose and
mouth as the machine helps her to breathe. Olivia cuddles Stanley, patiently manoeuvring her nipple into his mouth, encouraging him to latch on and suck, while Dan stands next to Beattie’s
perspex cot. Her tiny fingers are wrapped around his large one, and he’s gazing down at her with awe and love.

Look at these amazing babies. They’re still a unit – ‘the babies’ – but day by day, they’re dividing into two individuals.

Already she’s grown to know Stanley’s dark blue eyes, liquid and blurry, gazing up at her, the shape of his mouth and the flattened button of his nose. His scalp is covered in a fine dusting of dark hair and he has long fingers. Beattie’s
fuzz of hair is lighter, reddish, almost invisible, and her eyes are nearly always scrunched closed. She is longer than her brother and her skull is narrower.

Who are you, little babies? Who’s there, inside you, waiting to come out?

Stanley starts sucking, and she feels a rush of pleasure to be nursing him. Her nipple tingles and she thinks she can feel a gush of milk into his tiny warm mouth. This is what she has longed
for, waited for. And now it’s hers.

Dan is watching her, his expression soft and loving. They’ve come together into this new world, equally amazed and overwhelmed.

‘So,’ she says with a smile, ‘which one do you think looks like you?’

He laughs, and gazes down at Beattie and the tiny row of fingers curled round his. ‘Who knows? They look like themselves.’

‘Yes.’ She gazes down at Stanley and the regular movement of his jaw as he pulls and sucks for her milk. ‘That’s it. They’re just themselves.’ She had
thought she would feel ownership, but instead she feels only responsibility – they are in her care, but they don’t belong to her. They are themselves.

The nurse comes up to check the readings on the machine monitoring Beattie, greeting them cheerfully. ‘So, you’re off home at the end of the week!’ she says. ‘Isn’t
that nice?’

‘Yep,’ Dan says. ‘We can’t wait to get them home.’

‘It’s a miserable time of year, though, isn’t it?’ she says, marking on the chart hanging on the side of the incubator. ‘I expect you won’t want to go out
much.’ She smiles over at Olivia. ‘Just snuggle up and stay warm at home.’

Olivia nods. Warmth is what she craves. She looks over at Dan, and wonders when she’ll tell him what she wants.

Later. When I’ve worked it out for myself.

Francesca is pretending to read a magazine in the sitting room, but she isn’t taking in a word. Instead, her mind is whirling with the impact of what happened in London. Walt comes in,
chortling, just off a telephone call and returning from his study. He’s merry and pleased with himself, congratulating himself on the deal he’s worked out.

When he sees her, he exclaims, ‘We got the place for a song, Frankie! I mean it – just under three million for a place like that? You can’t get a decent London flat for
less.’ He sinks down in the armchair opposite her.

‘Well done, darling.’ She likes seeing his pleasure, even if the project has left her cold. Walt always has had infectious happiness. It was one of the things she most liked about
him. The pleasure he takes in life warmed something in her when she thought she was dying. She remembers what it was like when she first got together with Walt and that wonderful feeling of being
brought back to life. He resurrected her when her plans for her career had collapsed and everything had begun to fail. She thought that her life was over, and that she was whirling down a plughole
towards darkness and despair. Walt brought her back into the light and made her feel whole again. He also offered her a life in which she no longer had to rely on herself for success. He would give her the
trappings: the houses, the clothes, the cars. She would be a wealthy woman. Everyone would have to be impressed by that. They would notice her, and admire the way she had guaranteed herself a
life they all aspired to: comfortable, safe, pleasant. And she found, almost to her surprise, that she loved Walt too. He was so straightforward and plain, the antidote to the young men
she’d been surrounded by for the last few years. He lacked their preening intellectual competitiveness, and concentrated on the hard work that would bring the kind of success he valued.
Money was part of it – what was success without it? – but making his mark in the world was just as important, and something in Francesca responded to his simple creed. There was nothing
pretentious about it. It made sense. And his love restored her. After he made love to her, she would cry happy tears because she could feel herself reawakening a little more each time.

But she never could resist the dark addiction of her feelings for Dan. They came back to get her eventually: all that longing and need and desire. The bond between them that she felt was
unbreakable, the irrefutable sense that they were supposed to be together. All of it gradually killed off her love for Walt and pushed her further and further away from him.

Walt looks over at her now. ‘I want us all to go over to England, once the kids are back for the holidays. We’ve gotta show them the house. It’ll be exciting.’

Francesca remembers that place – the dust and dirt and lack of anything that might offer any comfort at all. ‘But . . .’ she says weakly, ‘there’s no
electricity.’

‘Not in the main part of the house. But there are parts of it where we can stay. We’ll be perfectly fine.’

She can tell that he’s got his rose-coloured spectacles on. He’s used to five-star hotels, not roughing it in a caretaker’s cottage.
Well, he’ll learn.

‘Are you happy?’ he asks, an almost anxious look in his eyes. Her approval matters. She remembers that he has always looked up to her in that way. It helped rebuild her
confidence.

‘Of course. Very happy. You’re right. It will be exciting. You’ve always wanted a country house.’ She smiles and it fades on a sigh.

Walt frowns. ‘You seem a bit low, Frankie. You’ve not been yourself since you got back from London.’

‘No, really, I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

She nods. The house hardly seems to matter now. All that concerns her is what Dan told her when she was finally able to visit.

The babies had been home well over a fortnight when she arrived in a whirl of largesse, with those stupid baby clothes. And there they were – two tiny creatures wrapped up in blankets,
asleep for almost the entire time. Only occasionally did they open their eyes, sleepy, limpid. They were so unformed, a fuzz of almost invisible hair on their soft skulls, their eyebrows only
faint shadows, no real shape to their plump faces, each with the same large turned-up nose, and pink, cupid-bowed mouth. Even so, she was astonished by their reality. It was more incredible than she’d expected to see them. In
fact, it was hard to take her eyes off them, and she held each one in turn until Olivia grew restless and put out her arms to take them back. All the while, she searched the tiny faces for signs
that they were a mixture of herself and Dan, absorbed in examining their features, hair colour, eyes, anything that might give a clue, but it was impossible to see anything. She remembered how
Frederick and Olympia had been the same as infants: little doughy bundles, beautiful to her but – now that she could look back at the photographs – really like any babies.

But look at these little ones . . . they’re gorgeous. Special . . .
Her heart twanged as she held each one, something deep in her responding to them. She barely heard anything that Olivia said to her.

Then Olivia took the babies away to nurse them and put them to bed. Francesca watched them go with a kind of hunger inside her she hadn’t felt for a long time. As soon as Olivia was gone,
she turned to Dan with a joyful expression, her eyes shining. ‘Oh, Dan, they’re amazing.’

Immediately, she sensed a change in the atmosphere. Dan stood across the room, looking back at her impassively.

She said softly, ‘They’re perfect.’

‘I know.’ His voice was low, emotionless, as though denying her any response that she could feed off. ‘We’re very happy.’

‘I was so worried for you all when they needed special care. I’m so delighted they’re home and all’s well.’ She was trying to make sure he knew she cared. That she didn’t intend any harm. ‘Olivia seems to be
coping wonderfully.’

‘She is. She’s been through a lot, but she’s getting better. She’s been very brave.’

‘I can tell.’ She said nothing more, watching him. He couldn’t quite meet her eyes. She’d hoped that she was wrong about her suspicion that Dan was fobbing her off and
keeping her at arm’s length, and that when she actually arrived –
the mother of his children, after all
– there would be an air of complicity and secret pleasure in the
success of their scheme. She’d even thought there might be gratitude. But there was nothing like that. He was staying closed off, refusing to allow her to refer in any way to what she’d
agreed must be unsaid.

All right. So I’ll take it slowly. He’ll come round.

Her gaze was caught by the mound of baby clothes on the discarded tissue paper. They were accepted with thanks but also with barely concealed amazement, as though Olivia couldn’t imagine
what they would use these things for. And now, they did look ridiculous. Who puts babies in cashmere?

She was determined not to let him put a dent in her enthusiasm. Maintaining a good front always got results, softening Dan, making him feel safe and comfortable. She said chirpily, ‘But
are you sure about Stanley and Beattie? As names, I mean. If there’s time, you could think about something a bit less . . . granny chic?’