Postcards From Berlin (22 page)

“I think Richard is trying to help you here, Catriona,” says Jane Watson.

“But I mean — the baby blues,” I say. “Everyone has that. It’s just a hormone thing. I adored her right from the beginning.”

“Perhaps I could give you a little feedback here,” she says. “Because when you spoke to Richard then, I saw you move away
from him a little. And now you’ve got your arms crossed in front of you, as though you’re defending yourself from something:
as though you’re protecting yourself. I’m wondering what you feel you need to protect yourself from.”

I uncross my arms. Be careful, be careful, says the voice in my head. “I just think my reaction was perfectly normal,” I tell
her.

“It may very well have been,” she says. “I don’t deny that. What I do see is how you react when Richard reaches out to you.
Sometimes it’s very hard for us to accept help.”

I don’t know what to say to this. There’s nothing I can say.

“Perhaps you could tell me about your child-care arrangements when Daisy was little. Now — what work were you doing before
you had Daisy?”

“I worked in a nursery school.”

“And after Daisy was born?”

“I’ve never gone back to work.”

“It can be very demanding,” she says. “Spending all day on your own with a small child. It can be a difficult lifestyle.”

“I always enjoyed it,” I tell her. “I didn’t want to work. I never considered going back, to be honest. I thought I was just
incredibly lucky.”

“Lucky?” She looks at me quizzically.

“It was what I’d always wanted.”

I see myself on the carpet at The Poplars, the smell of disinfectant all around me, and Lesley sitting there with her self-esteem
tree drawn out in colored felt tips, asking what I would choose if I could wave a magic wand. I remember the picture as I
saw it in my head: the lawn, the lily pond, the laughter of children. And how, when I met Richard, when we came to the house
with the seven stone steps and the green front door — and then, when Daisy was born — I knew the answer to her question. I
thought, This. This is what I would choose: what I have always wanted.

“Daisy wasn’t demanding at all,” I tell Jane Watson. “She was just always good fun. I like being with children — I think they’re
often more interesting than adults. You know — the things they come out with. I love that.”

“Sometimes,” she says, “we can hide our feelings from ourselves. And it’s perfectly normal to envy people whose lives are
different from our own.”

“But I really don’t think I felt that. I never wanted to be a power-suited career woman.” I realize too late that Jane Watson
doubtless has a wardrobe full of pristine tailoring. “I was happy with my life.”

“And Richard? What about you?” she asks. “How did you feel about this — Catriona staying at home? I find that some men today
can quite resent it.” A half smile curves her lips, softening what she’s saying. “That they want their wives to be out in
the workplace bringing in lots of money.”

“It was fine,” he says. And then, as though aware this sounds rather lukewarm, “Catriona was always a wonderful mother.”

“OK. Well, let’s move on a bit. I’d like you both to tell me a little about your childhoods and family backgrounds.” She says
this as though it is the easiest thing in the world. “It’s always important, I think, to have a look at the past and see how
it may have shaped us.”

I try to keep my face still, but I can feel the sweat on me.

“Richard, perhaps you could go first,” she says.

“It was mostly OK,” he says. “Though I hated boarding school. I went when I was eight. A ghastly place — some of the staff
were sadists. I mean, trust me, that’s no exaggeration.”

Her face seems to open when she looks at him. “I know the kind of thing,” she says.

“I was homesick as hell at first,” he says. “But you get used to it.”

“And your parents are still alive?”

He nods. “They’re in their seventies now — but yes, still going strong.”

“And Catriona? What was your childhood like?”

“OK. An ordinary childhood. Nothing remarkable.”

I feel unreal suddenly, my body long and fragile and thin. As though I am too tall for the room, as though I could reach to
the ceiling: but so flimsy, a cardboard cutout body, easily blown away.

“My mother was on her own. My father left when I was a baby — I never knew him.”

She has the look of a hunter, eager and alert.

“So you must have been aware, growing up, of being in a rather unusual family: of feeling different, perhaps of missing out?”

“I suppose so. Though it was what I was used to.”

The palms of my hands are wet.

“And your mother — how often do you see her now?” she asks.

I clear my throat.

“My mother is dead,” I tell her.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Richard turn toward me. I will him not to say anything.

Jane Watson leaves a small respectful silence.

“And how long ago did she die, Catriona?” she asks then, serious, gentle.

“Oh, quite a few years now. It was a heart attack. She never saw Daisy.”

I’m walking on ice, listening out for splintering.

“That must be a deep source of sadness for you.”

I nod. Richard says nothing.

There’s another pause, acknowledging my grief. These silences chill me.

Richard clears his throat, and my heart pounds. I am so afraid he will speak. But he says nothing.

She leans back in her chair.

“Well, I think we should maybe leave it there for today.”

Relief washes through me. I cover my mouth with my hand, afraid it will show in my face.

She turns off her cassette recorder. “Now, what I’d like you to do for next week is to maybe talk together about your childhoods.
To see how what happened then may have affected you as parents. I always find that a valuable exercise. In our parenting,
so often we do as we were done to.”

We walk out through the waiting room, where there are faded armchairs and copies of
Hello!
I can still smell her perfume: It catches at my throat.

“She seems good,” says Richard, as we get into the car.

I’m in the driving seat; I’m dropping him off at the station. But I don’t start up the car.

“Yes, I thought you liked her.”

“A clever woman, I thought,” he says.

“I didn’t think that was what impressed you about her.”

“She’s quite attractive, of course,” he says. “But I did think she was pretty much on the ball.”

“But what use can any of this possibly be to Daisy?”

“They know what they’re doing. They handle this kind of thing all the time.” He frowns. “You should have been straight with
her,” he says. “About your mother.”

“No, Richard. No.” I’m appalled. I grasp his sleeve.” I don’t want her to know. She mustn’t ever know.”

He shrugs. “Well, if that’s what you want,” he says, as he said before. “But I’m really not happy with it.”

“I don’t trust her.”

He shrugs. “No. Well, you never trust women, of course.”

We drive to the station in silence.

T
HERE’S SOMETHING ON MY PATIO
, something that shouldn’t be there. I’m in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil after Sinead has left for school,
looking out into the garden, where the peony buds are fattening, ready to flower, when I see it. At first, with a slight sense
of surprise, of something being out of place, I think it is a forgotten thing, abandoned or flung down, an item of clothing
or a cuddly toy that one of the girls has left there. I go to the window, hear my quick inhale. It’s a fox, dead, in a pool
of blackish blood, lying there quite precisely in the middle of my patio; and it enters my mind that there’s a deliberateness
to the placing of it, as though it has been put there, as though it has some profound and disturbing significance. I push
the thought away.

I take the washing-up gloves and a rubbish sack and go out to the garden. There’s a smell of rottenness, rich and meaty and
foul. The fox is quite small — smaller than the foxes I usually see in the garden — just a cub, really. There’s a trail of
blood that leads round the side of the house: It was knocked over by a car, perhaps, and slunk round here to die, looking
for a hidden dark place, but only reaching this far. Its face is contorted by its death throes, the mouth pulled back from
the teeth, and its legs are stuck out stiffly, as though it keeled over where it stood and died before it fell.

I put on the washing-up gloves, holding my breath as I approach so I won’t breathe in the smell. Even with the gloves on,
I don’t pick it up directly — I hold it through the plastic of the rubbish bag. The body is rigid as wood. When I’ve maneuvered
it into place, I tie up the bag and put it in the dustbin. You can still smell it, but faintly, and the dustmen come tomorrow.
I get some Ajax and scrub away the blood. It leaves a paler, bleached mark there in the middle of the patio. I throw away
the rubber gloves and the scrubbing brush and go inside and wash and wash my hands. This incident leaves me with a troubled
feeling, as though it’s a malevolent act, something that has been done to me.

There’s a knock at the door. I wipe my hands and go to open it, expecting the postman; or Nicky, on her way back from school,
perhaps; or even Monica from next door, to fix up that coffee we’re always going to have.

It’s Dr. Carey. She’s wearing a decorous little jacket with buttons bright as coins.

“I just thought I’d drop in on spec,” she says. “I was visiting in Ferndale Road, and I thought I could fit in a quick visit
and see how things were going.”

She’s studiedly casual and friendly, as though this is the most natural thing, for her to call on me.

I stand aside to let her in. “You’ll be able to see Daisy; she didn’t make it into school today.”

“Right,” she says.

I take her into the living room. It’s fresh in the morning light that falls through the wide windows, and there are irises
on the mantelpiece, in the Chinese vase.

She looks round appraisingly, eyes widening.

“It’s a lovely house,” she says.

I can tell this room and its elegance have impressed her: as though my tasseled tiebacks and pelmets edged with plum-colored
braid have somehow strengthened my case. I despise her for this, but I’m also grateful for it.

“Well, we’re lucky to live here,” I say.

Her eyes skim over everything, come to rest on my drawing on the wall, the one I’ve just put up: the children who peer between
bars that are woven from briers.

“Who’s the artist?” she asks.

“I am,” I tell her. It’s some unexamined impulse, to show there are things I can do, wanting to say, Look, I can draw, I have
another life, there’s a bit of an artist in me, I’m not just a demanding, hostile, overprotective mother.

“I wondered,” she said.

She has her head on one side, looking at the picture.

“It’s very dark,” she says. Though whether she means the color or the subject, I don’t know.

“I paint all sorts of things,” I tell her. “Gardens, mostly. Flowers.”

“Really, it’s quite sinister in a way,” she says. “The children look so scared. What’s the meaning of it, would you say?”

“The meaning?”

“You know — what do you think you were trying to say?”

“I don’t really think about it like that.” I’m struggling to find the right words. “I mean, I don’t plan it. The picture just
comes to me kind of complete, in my head.”

“Oh,” she says. “I see.” She looks as though she wants to say more, as though she’s trying to formulate a question that evades
her. She shakes her head a little. “To be honest,” she says, “art isn’t really my thing.”

She looks at the picture for a moment longer. I start to feel uncomfortable.

“Let me get Daisy for you.”

She turns to me. “Let’s not disturb her,” she says. “If there isn’t any change. Really, it was you I wanted to see. Just to
find out how things were going … You went to see Dr. Watson?”

I nod.

“And how did you get on?”

“Fine,” I say. “She seemed pleasant.”

“She’s very approachable, isn’t she?”

“Yes,” I say.

“She’s extremely well-respected in child psychiatry circles,” she says. “She has some inpatient beds at the Jennifer Norton
Unit. That’s a psychiatric unit for children — you might have heard of it?”

“No, I haven’t,” I tell her.

“It’s very well-regarded,” she says. “Dr. Watson has done some notable work with anorexics there.”

“Right.”

“So: Mr. Lydgate came as well?” she asks.

“Yes,” I tell her. “Yes, he was happy to come.”

I sense that she wants to talk about our marriage, as she did when I first took Daisy to see her, but she doesn’t know how
to start or what to say. Here, on my territory, the balance has shifted a little: I see how uncertain she is. It’s different
from the surgery, as though the normal rules of courtesy operate here.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met Mr. Lydgate,” she says.

“Well, he isn’t often ill.”

She nods and waits. She wants me to say more. We stand for a moment in an awkward silence.

“Oh,” she says then. “By the way. That letter from Dr. McGuire.”

“The receptionist rang me,” I say.

“You managed to read it, did you?”

“Yes,” I say.

“We didn’t ever find it,” she says. “Never mind. We got another copy from Dr. McGuire’s secretary.”

She picks up her black bag and goes toward the door. There’s a vague dissatisfaction about her, as though she hasn’t got what
she came for.

Outside, at the top of the steps, she turns toward me. I wonder if she can smell the smell of decay from the dustbin. Her
face looks harder, older in the brightness of the light.

“It’s crucial for you to be straight with me, Mrs. Lydgate,” she says. Her eyes are narrowed against the sun; I can’t read
her expression. “You see, I really can’t help you and Daisy unless you’re straight with me.…”

She turns and goes before I can reply.