To Have and to Hold (35 page)

‘I feel that way about sausage rolls too,' said the nurse, taking away Viv's untouched supper. She put the tray on the trolley and began to put up the screens around Viv's bed. An orderly appeared with a stretcher bed and parked it beside Viv.

‘What's happening?' Viv asked.

The nurse smiled. ‘Just going to check your dressing.' While she did so she said: ‘We're taking you to see him now.' She pulled down Viv's nightie. ‘We've all fallen in love with him. He's quite a little character.'

They started to shift Viv on to the stretcher. She stopped them. ‘No!'

‘Are we hurting you?' asked the nurse.

Viv shook her head. ‘I don't want to go,' she said.

‘What?'

‘Don't want to see him.'

The nurse and the orderly looked at each other; then the nurse turned back to Viv. ‘Feeling poorly?'

Viv nodded.

‘You rest then,' said the nurse, tucking the sheet around her.

Viv pointed to the screens. ‘Can you leave these up?'

Surprised, the nurse agreed. They left Viv alone, screened in.

Ann stood in the little back bedroom. It was empty. They had painted it cream, that was all. They had not dared to do more, though she had put up some curtains with red birds printed on them: not specifically childish.

Downstairs Ken was washing up the supper. She sat on the carpet, her back resting against the wall. Through the window she could see a square of London sky. It was too painful, to wonder if this room would ever be used. Instead she wondered about her sister, what she was thinking, what on earth she was feeling. She ran her finger to and fro across the carpet.

Down in the kitchen she heard the crash of breaking crockery. Ken had dropped something.

It was midnight, and the ward was dark. Everyone was asleep, except for Viv. She lay, gazing at the high ceiling. Outside the ward, in the nursery, a baby was crying.

Nobody stirred. The night nurse's office was lit but empty. The baby went on – a faint, insistent wail, as monotonous as wood being sawed.

She pushed back the bedclothes and swung her legs to the side of the bed. She flinched; her stitches hurt. The baby cried on. Carefully she raised herself to a sitting position, and slid off the bed. She stood, bent double. She felt dizzy, and supported herself on the side of the bed. Her head was still fuddled from
sleeping; she had been dreaming of long narrow corridors and other babies crying, or perhaps that had been no dream at all.

The sawing sound went on and on; it was a different sound from the babies in the ward, or maybe that was just her fuddled head. Bent double, she hobbled slowly to the door. The pain made her breathless.

The cries came from down the corridor, where the window was. There was nobody around. She hobbled across to the window, and looked in.

The days passed strangely, in limbo. The future was blank. Like the little bedroom it waited, empty; nobody dared furnish, or fill with their own pictures, the months ahead.

So they could say nothing. Viv was pale and polite with visitors, including her sister. The baby had been moved now into a cot beside her, and the girls came and touched him with their fingertips, then lost interest and whined for some of Viv's lemon barley water. He was a sweet baby, and so far bore no resemblance to any of them.

Ollie slept at home, in the study, and seldom went out. One evening Diz and some friends, having heard the news, rang on the door but he lay low and didn't answer. When the girls were at school he sat in Caroline's flat and tried to finish his book. For some reason he felt it must be done before Viv came out of hospital.

Ken and Ann went about the house quietly. Small talk seemed too small and plans too painful. Which left little to say. Ken, now self-employed, spent all day on his building site in a biting east wind. Trudging through the mud he thought breathlessly: I have a son. At lunchtime he sat in the adjoining pub, smoking too much and trying to chat to his chippie.

You can't trust Viv,
said her mother. Viv gave people slugs instead of blackberries.
I'm a wonderful liar,
she had told Ken. She had told her parents she was spending the evening with her friend Sandra, and instead she went out with a Maltese waiter who gave her love-bites. Now she was a highly disturbed woman who had just given birth. Ridiculously, everyone had expected a girl. It might have made no difference, but nobody
dared ask. The only clue to her state of mind was that, instead of breastfeeding the baby, she fed him with a bottle. Ann had not liked to remark upon this, except to Ken.

Viv was to leave the hospital the next Tuesday. On Monday, while Ollie was visiting, a woman in a tweed suit came up to the bedside. She carried a clipboard.

‘I'm so sorry to interrupt. Mr Meadows? Hello. I'm Mrs Brookes, the hospital registrar. If you'd both like to register the baby now, it'll save you a visit to the Town Hall.'

There was a pause. Ollie glanced at Viv, who was fiddling with the sheet.

‘Decided on a name?' the registrar asked.

Viv said: ‘Not yet.'

The registrar smiled. ‘Like that, is it?'

Viv said: ‘It's either Thomas or Mark.'

The registrar replied: ‘Could always be both.'

‘We'll leave it for now,' said Viv sharply. The registrar looked at her curiously, stood up and moved on to the next bed.

There was a silence. Then Ollie said: ‘You've got to decide.'

‘Everyone's always asking questions,' said Viv restlessly.

Most of the women in the ward were new now. Viv had been there over a week; her various bunches of flowers had died and had been taken away. She looked at Ollie. ‘You want him, don't you?'

‘Don't ask that,' he replied. ‘I can't help you.'

That day Ann spring-cleaned Viv's house, sweeping the kitchen floor and removing Ollie's old beer cans. She scrubbed the dresser with disinfectant; she washed the sheet for the baby's Moses basket, in which he would be coming home. Home? Here. Ten days, the arrangement was; until the midwife's visits ended, he would be here. Then what?

She disliked lying, but she had lied to them at the office, saying she felt ill and was staying at her sister's. In fact, she had never felt more vigorous. Damp with her exertions, she hoovered and polished. Her nerves felt taut as wire; tomorrow afternoon, at 3.30, she and Ollie would be fetching them from hospital.

Butterfingers. Scrubbing the units, she broke a cup. Clearing out the cupboard, she upset a wooden bowl of salt. It scattered on the floor; she closed her eyes, threw some over her shoulder, and wished. It had always surprised Ken how superstitious she was.
I thought you were the logical one,
he had said once. She had flared up – she remembered it, they were climbing the stairs to their flat – and she had replied:
You mean the boring one.
He had remonstrated, accusing her of jealousy, but she knew it wasn't quite as simple as that. Nearly, but not quite. He had never had a sister; he didn't understand.

She brushed the stairs: three floors of them, dust flying, from top to bottom.
The only exercise I get,
said Viv,
is sex and the stairs.
Ann's hands were grey from the fluff.
You wait,
Viv had said,
conkers under the stair carpet, tripping you up. Soggy bowls of cornflakes under the sofa.
You wait. For how long must she wait; for ever?

Viv had let her hold him. Casually, just once, in hospital she had passed him to her. But then she would do that if Ann were just an aunt. Ken had held him too.

Soft, tiny mouth. Fingernails. Perfect. All those years ago, her own little daughter had been perfect too; except she never moved.

She had put her finger in his hand, hoping he would grip it. He did. A hot rush through her body.

Perhaps Viv hadn't talked in the hospital because she was being discreet; somebody might hear. When she came home, it would all be different.

But Viv wasn't the discreet type. Ann emptied the dustpan into the bin. Some of it scattered on the floor.

‘Fuck!' she said aloud, surprising herself.

Viv had packed all her stuff into two carrier-bags. Dressed, she sat on the edge of the bed. Her son lay in his cot, quietly gazing up at her. Neither of her daughters had had such dark hair. His face was a perfect oval, with a tiny pointed chin. Neither of them, new-born, had been so small.

She jumped; the sister had come up to her.

‘Aren't you having any lunch?' she asked.

‘No thanks,' said Viv.

‘They won't be here till half past three.'

Viv nodded; the sister went away. Once she was out of the ward, Viv picked up the shawl she was going to use for carrying the baby.

I'm not quite myself,
people say when they feel they're going mad. Viv felt like somebody else as she picked up the baby, wrapping him tightly in the shawl. The real Vivien Meadows wouldn't be as cruel as this, leaving her husband and sister to find an empty bed. How could the real Viv upset them like that?

Her body felt flabby; she was short of breath. Carrying the baby and the bags, she stopped at the end bed. There was a girl there she liked.

‘When my husband comes,' she said, ‘can you tell him I've gone home early?'

The taxi driver actually tried to help her in with her bags. She refused, thanking him. She didn't want anybody else coming into her empty house.

The taxi drove away. She stood in her living room. It was spotless. There was a bunch of flowers on the table and, propped against it, a
WELCOME HOME
poster from the girls. Beside the Moses basket was a packet of disposable nappies and two new Babygros.

I have never been alone with my child.
Would anybody understand?

I must be going mad.
She sat down on the sofa, clutching him tightly. He mewled, his tiny, wet mouth against her ear. He started sucking the lobe, and the stud of her earring.

The room was silent. His gums gripped her skin; her body bloomed.

‘Hello Thomas,' she whispered.

IT WAS NO
better now Viv was home. Still she didn't speak about the baby. All she said was,
give me time.
Ollie's presence confused and irritated her, and he was told to stay in Caroline's flat. He went; nobody dared contradict her.

She was acting oddly, but what could anyone do? Ann dropped in each day to bring the shopping and make the girls' tea. Viv was grateful – in fact, she was gushingly grateful, as if Ann were an acquaintance at a cocktail party. Politely she said: ‘Please don't, I can manage.' She sat with the girls; once she laughed so hysterically at one of their TV programmes that even her daughters were startled. She talked about the baby quite naturally, and complained that he kept her awake at night. She sounded normal, but her eyes were bright, as if she were taking drugs. She asked about Ann's office day in eager detail, looking fascinated when Ann told her the computer had broken down. She talked, all right; but she didn't speak.

By the third day Ann was so highly strung that she shouted at a man in the street who had dropped some litter. She yelled at him like a fishwife. Back home she dreaded Ken's return. As usual, he asked about Mark.

What could she say? ‘He looked fine. Gaining weight.'

Some Elgar was playing. As she spoke, the needle stuck; again and again it played the same bit.

‘Blasted bloody stereo!' She switched it off. The record ground to a halt. Ken flinched.

‘Ann –'

‘Sorry. I know how precious your stereo is, more precious than anything in the world – and your fish, and your kitchen units, and –'

‘Ann!'

She paused. Then she asked: ‘Do you think we live a sterile, boring life?'

‘No.'

‘Fixing things and repairing things and putting polyurethane on them?' she asked. ‘Leafing through our Habitat catalogue, when we should be reading Tolstoy?'

‘It's called home-building,' he said. ‘We're building a home.' He paused. ‘We've built one.'

‘She thinks it's sterile and boring. I know she does. She thinks we don't know how to live.' Her voice trembled; she hated how she sounded. Peevish.

He sat down beside her. ‘Listen –'

She interrupted him. ‘That's why she can't bear to give him up.'

He looked at her in surprise. ‘Did she say that?'

‘No, but –'

‘Our life's as good as theirs. Look what a mess she's made of hers.'

‘Because of us,' said Ann.

‘Rubbish.' He took her limp hand. ‘Look, she's in a state.'

‘
I'm
in a state.'

‘Yes, but she's just had a baby. Women get funny then.'

Sarcastically she replied: ‘From your vast experience?' How she loathed herself.

‘She's all confused –' he began.

‘And what's she doing to everybody else? She's playing with us, she's the same old Viv, sneaking him out of the hospital –'

‘She did phone when she got home.'

Ann shouted: ‘Stop defending her! I know you find her irresistible –'

‘Ann!' He jerked his hand away and stood up.

‘And far more exciting than me –'

‘That's all finished!'

‘But it does seem remarkably tactless –'

He grabbed her hand. ‘Come on.' He pulled her to her feet. ‘We're going out.'

She looked at him, surprised. ‘Where?'

‘Have a meal. Get out of this place.'

That night Ollie, as usual, was sitting in a Real Ale pub off Kensington High Street. Most nights he ate there: sausage and mash that almost tasted like home. Not quite, but still.

He was staring moodily at his glass when somebody slapped him on the back.

‘In all the bars,' growled a Bogart voice, ‘in all the towns, in all the world, and I have to come to yours.'