The Marriage Bed (16 page)

“… bit of an oddball, for sure, eh?”

“Yeah. These Brits. I wonder whether it was a good idea after all.”

“I mean, that crazy
braid.
Somebody’s got to tell her, poor kid.”

“Charley told her he missed Trinidad, and she said, ‘How frightful for you.’ ”

“No – you’re kidding!” Under cover of their hilarious giggling, I closed the door quietly once more. Then, back in bed, I stared fiercely into the dark and made a number of resolutions. One was never to speak to either of them again. Another was to go at once to a hair-stylist and have my plait cut off, regardless of expense. Seconds later, of course, I reversed both decisions. This was much the nicest apartment I’d seen in the university area. Come to that, Karen and Bonnie were charmers, compared to some of the rock-jawed landladies I’d interviewed first. As for the hair, I would keep it just the way it was, and to hell with the whole lot of them.

But it was not so easy to accept the painful truth – that even in this country of aliens, I didn’t belong, and perhaps never would. I’d been so sure the lonely past was over, but it was not, and might never be. Like that stupid bat, I’d been liberated, but I might never be truly free; never really at home anywhere now. Two small, hot tears ran down my cheeks, and then I fell asleep.

M
inutes later, as I scrubbed at the crusty remains of cheese in the casserole dish, my wedding ring caught painfully under its rolled edge. I gave it some four-letter advice, but instead of bringing relief, this only released a sudden, violent rage. Roughly drying my hands on my smock (which did not improve its charm), I tried to twist the gold band off. That ring no longer had the slightest relevance – wearing it was both tasteless and stupid. How could I ever
have allowed myself to be lassoed into the thing in the first place? Now, though I tugged and swore, I couldn’t get it off. “I’ll send it to you in the mail, Edwina Graham, finger and all,” I thought vengefully. “Because if it hadn’t been for you …”

The word “pregnant” caused her face to bleach and seconds later flush to a dusky red.

“Oh, Ross,” she whimpered. Out came an initialled linen handkerchief with which she dabbed her eyes like someone cruelly and personally betrayed. “How … 
could
you?”

“The usual way,” I almost said angrily, but bit my tongue. It was now my turn to sit in silent dejection and look at the carpet.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” she went on between dabs. “What a tragedy, Ross, just when you’re starting out at Fraser and Dawson’s … 
what
a calamity. Your poor father, what ever would he have said?”

“Not much point wondering about that, is there, Mother? And please stop crying; that doesn’t help either.”

It seemed to buck her up to be bullied. She put the handkerchief away; but Ross began to pace up and down the room in a distraught sort of way, as if he might be the next to cry.

“Well, my boy,” she said after a pause, drawing up her large bosom like a defensive shield. “I suppose there’s only one … 
decent
thing you can do, in the unfortunate circumstances. You’ll have to marry her.” The bland assumption that I was not there to be spoken to made me angrier than I’d ever been in my life before.

“Nobody has to do anything of the kind,” I said loudly.

“But Anne, what else can be done?” And her question was so well aimed, right at the centre of my vulnerability, where Billie had struck more openly, that I felt slightly sick.

“Nobody has to marry me,” I repeated fiercely, looking at Ross. But to my considerable surprise, a look of something like relief had come over his face.

“Anne, somebody might want to. Even insist.” He came and sat on the arm of my chair. Edwina at once averted her eyes as if witnessing an indecency. He didn’t touch me, but I could feel his legs trembling.

“It’s money that’s the chief problem,” he said, trying to sound mature and judicious; but all of us knew he was only waiting for her to settle that question too. “I could try to get a job for a year or two and finish my articles later, but –”

His mother fumbled out the handkerchief again. Money, after all, was just as tender an issue as morality, if not more so. “No, no, Ross; that’s
quite
out of the question. Your father – well, we did hope you’d wait till you were thirty to marry; that’s why Herbert left your inheritance in trust. But when it’s a question of your future like this, of course we’ll have to talk to the executor. Dear old Mr. Campbell I’m sure won’t raise any difficulties about making funds available now … enough, say, for the down payment on a house, and some kind of monthly living allowance.”

I could feel Ross trying to repress an attack of hiccups. He was subject to them when under stress. I sometimes wondered how he would manage in court. He still didn’t look at me or take my hand. My jaws ached from holding in tears.

“Well, that’s settled, then. I’ll phone Ian Campbell tomorrow.” Edwina put away the handkerchief once more.

“Yes; do that.” He looked as pale as his own ghost, but his voice was firm.

“Look, Mrs. Graham, I don’t want Ross to be pressured into –”

“Shut up, Anne.”

Edwina smoothed her bosom. “Well, I can’t say I’m delighted, with Ross just at the start of his career, but I suppose we must just make the best of it. After all, you’re not the first couple to … hm. I’ll get in touch with your … 
parents
tomorrow, Anne, and we’ll arrange a very … 
quiet
wedding as soon as possible. Luckily,”
she added thoughtfully, “nearly everybody’s away for the summer just now.”

“Which will not prevent your friends from counting backwards the day I give birth,” I thought. “Not if your friends are anything like you.”

“I don’t see any need at all for marriage to come into this,” I remarked sulkily. Neither of them paid any attention to me. Edwina had now produced a number of sharp pencils and a block of paper. It seemed to cheer them both up greatly to have things to write down and figures to add up. Under her direction, Ross trotted to and fro fetching things they seemed to think mattered, like insurance policies and a calendar. Both of them grew more and more chatty. Ross even laughed once. They appeared to have forgotten my existence – which was actually rather a relief to me.

“Now I think some time around the fifth. That leaves three Sundays to call the banns. The licence you can get right away; I think it’s fifty dollars.…”

I sat back in the armchair and drifted into a sort of half-doze. After all, it was a comfort to be in the hands of a woman as sure as Edwina that there was a Right Thing, and we were doing it. It was three years before I grew up enough to despise both of us for that.

A
fter Cave Bears, we three dropped into sleep in our fireside nest of bedding. Hugh, full of baby Aspirin, breathed loudly through his mouth. Mao curled himself up behind my knees, purring. The day’s effort was over, and I gradually felt the approach of a slow, tidal peace. My fetus stretched drowsily in its water-bed. Together we listened sleepily to the muffled echoes of sound in an outer world – rumble of traffic, swish and gurgle of digestive tract, lubdub rhythm of heart-beat, hiss of burning wood. Pictures formed and melted behind my closed eyes. Seagulls. Ten-month-old Martha,
her fat face rosy with sun under a little white hat, smacking a tidal pool with her toy shovel, to scatter its tiny crab population. Our Gaspé holiday.

Ross squatted beside a driftwood fire he’d built on a flat rock. Yams wrapped in foil roasted in the embers, and he was now building the fire up to a blaze before grilling the steaks. The wind off the dark-blue water tousled his hair. His nose was peeling with sunburn.

“I love you a
hell
of a lot,” I told him. His answering smile was shy. In his tattered denim shorts and checked shirt, he looked about six. I did wish beaches weren’t such hopeless, gritty places for making love, because this one was beautifully deserted. As it was, I would have to wait till we got back to the motel.

“Get on with that steak, love. It’s getting late.”

He tossed a bit of seaweed at me. “I know what’s on your mind, you sex maniac.”

“Too right.”

“Well, hold on. Let’s eat first.”

This was a perfectly acceptable arrangement. That cold, pure, salt-bright air stimulated all the appetites. We stayed on the beach eating till the sun was low and red. Martha fell asleep in her stroller as abruptly as a drunk passing out. The seagulls mewed and called with their greedy, yearning voices, their wings flashing over the green foam of an incoming tide. We finished a bottle of wine, hugging the thought that the motel was only ten minutes’ walk away, and that the grim white nights of Martha’s colic were far behind us. We walked back along the beach pushing the stroller, so close together we made one shadow.

“I am so damn happy with you it isn’t decent,” I told him minutes later while taking off his shirt. I began to tickle his neck and jaws with small, teasing kisses. He groaned with pleasure as I pushed him onto the bed and rolled over him.

“Mmm. Lovely. Oh God.”

“Absolutely.”

“Wait a sec, Anne –”

“What for?”

“You sure your whatsit is in?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Okay, we just don’t want any little accidents, right?”

“Oh, do stop. You’re such a worrywart.”

“I know. Sorry. Only since they took you off the pill, I can’t help … I mean this diaphragm thing isn’t all that foolproof, is it.”

“Well, next to total abstinence, I’m told it is. Now will you stop it.”

“Sorry.”

“Mmm. Now where were we …”

A log in the fire broke, shooting up a bright lick of flame and wakening Mao, who uttered a querulous, sleepy yowl. I shifted Martha’s weight off my arm and sat up, glad of the interruption. Remembering past and gone joy was about as rewarding as pulling out your own hair in handfuls. It would be much more helpful, I told myself grimly, to recall past miseries. Like, perhaps, the day we got home from that same Gaspé holiday.

I’d been having some discomfort and a little bleeding, so on our way through the city, Ross dropped me off at the doctor’s. There, to my consternation, he found me pregnant.

“Oh Lord. So much for diaphragms.”

“Well, you’ve got to put ’em in right side up, you know. Better talk this over with your husband, and if you decide …”

The instant Ross got home I told him the news, blurting it out in a desperate hurry while I still had the courage.

He pulled off his glasses and rubbed both eyes with the heels of his hands. “No – no – Anne, you said that next to total –”

“I know. Only it turns out I’ve been putting the damn thing in upside-down or something. Miller says he’ll install an
IUD
next time. Please, please don’t be sore about it. I’m awfully sorry about the timing; but after all, you wouldn’t mind a son, would you? It just means we’re having our family early, that’s all. Lots of people say you might as well have another one right away when you’re tied down anyhow with the first one. Please, you’re not sore about it, are you?”

He tried with minimal success to smile, and he put his arm around me, but a worry-frown dragged at his forehead, and he gave a sigh like a sad and weary old man. His goodness made the tears roll richly down my cheeks. He patted my back.

“There now, honey, don’t cry. It’s all right. Come on, blow your nose. It’s all right, I tell you. When does Miller say you’re due?”

“Early December. Martha will be eighteen months. It won’t be so bad. I can have her trained by then, and –”

“Well, you’d better get some rest now. Lie down, why don’t you. I’ll cope with Martha.”

“Our bed’s not made yet. Sheets and all that are down in the laundry room.”

“I’ll go get them. You take it easy.”

Five minutes later he was back from the basement. His face was dead white with fury.

“Anne. Do you know where I found the laundry? In one great big wet lump. Covered with mould. In the drier. You forgot to switch it on. That whole horrible mess has been sitting there for two
weeks
!” His voice rose to a yell. “It’s absolutely, bloody TYPICAL! I’ve told you again and again, but you never listen. This place is
chaos
! Your junk is all over the place – you’re always making clothes in the kitchen or reading in the toilet, toys and pots and God knows what cluttering the stairs – it’s disgusting! It makes me physically sick!”

“I’m sorry –”

But he flung out of the room, still furious, and I thought, if we were being typical, how like him it was to make such an uproar about a few sheets. Just the same, I began to suspect for the first time that the trivial conflicts between us might be the ones, in the end, to prove true destroyers.

The red eye of the fire winked at me cynically, as if to remind me of the value of hindsight. Wide awake now, as it always was in the small hours, the unborn one flexed its spider limbs. In stages, like an old buffalo, I heaved to my feet and, one after the other, lugged the children up to their beds. As I climbed the stairs with Martha slung over my shoulder, I heard the faint echo of those gulls wistfully calling on the Gaspé beach.

A
little later, when all of us had for some time been in our beds, I woke sharply to a noise like the coughing of some large, hoarse goat. Shivering, I groped along the creaking hall floor to the children’s room. A big white moon like a face with toothache looked in at the window, and by its light I found Hugh wheezing and choking with croup. I lifted him out of the cot, wrapped his sweat-damp body in a blanket, and carried him to the phone.

“Next time, don’t take him to Emergency,” our pediatrician had told me. “Traumatizes the poor kid too much. Call me and I’ll bring over our cold steamer.” Luckily Jeff Reilly lived only a few blocks away.

“Anne Graham here. Sorry to bother you so late, Lynne, but is Jeff there?”

“Yes, he is. Hold on a minute.”

“Jeff, our boy’s having another bad go of croup.”

“Argh. Well, bundle him up and take him out on the porch or somewhere – the cold air will help. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”