After the Storm (35 page)

Billy had rolled onto his back with his arms outstretched and his sleep blissful. He has the most adorable peachy fat cheeks and I wanted to pick him up and cover him with kisses. When he was born I was filled with this healing love that made me feel I could have a good life after all. When they put him into my arms all my fears that I might not be able to cope with a baby just melted away.

I met Markus at an architectural conference in Newcastle. We were in the same break-out group and were discussing the role of regeneration. Markus was so articulate and emphatic in his views on everything. It was obvious he didn’t like the man who was chairing our group, who was the well-known architect behind the successful regeneration of London’s East End. This man had made a fortune from the regeneration and he and Markus got into this argument about the social responsibility of architects.

Markus said it was the role of the architect to make living in cities and towns better for the majority of the people, not just the wealthy. We should never create ghettoes of the rich and ghettoes of the poor; communities should always be mixed. I could see that Markus was winning the argument and asserting himself over the rest of the group. Then I was asked by the chair to do the report-back. He’d seen me scribbling away on my pad while the two of them had argued. We all shuffled out then to get coffee, except for Markus who stayed behind in the room, writing something. Fifteen minutes later he came up to me and handed me a sheet of paper with all his arguments listed in perfect logical order.

‘For your report-back,’ he said, his first direct words to me.

He had a physical presence about him that you couldn’t ignore with his handsome, broad face, long, ice-blue eyes and narrow, straight nose. His notes were a test, I think, which I must have passed because at the end of the conference he came up to me and said, ‘Can I call you when I get back to London?’

On our first date he took me to The Widow’s Son pub in Bow in East London. It was a large, noisy, cheerful place close to where he lived. We sat in a corner by the window and Markus pointed over to the bar.

‘Look up there,’ he said. ‘See all those hot-cross buns?’

I looked up and hanging from the rafters above the bar was a collection of hot-cross buns at various stages of age and decay. Some were large and glossy, others small and blackened with age, and there must have been well over a hundred buns hanging there.

‘Every year they add another hot-cross bun to that collection,’ he said.

‘How strange...’

‘It’s a tradition. The first owner of this pub was a poor widow with an only son. He was a sailor and was expected home at Easter, so she kept one of her hot-cross buns for him. But he didn’t turn up. She waited and waited, and he never came back from his voyage. She couldn’t accept that he was drowned, so every year she baked her buns and put one aside for him. And the collection grew. As long as she kept the buns for him she thought that one day he might come home.’

‘That’s such a touching story.’

‘It is. When she died they found the buns hanging from that beam and they’ve kept the tradition going. Every Good Friday a sailor comes to the pub and adds a hot-cross bun to the collection.’

‘Wouldn’t the buns smell? I mean, as they got old and mouldy.’

‘Strangely enough, they don’t,’ he said. ‘Something in the spice mixture made them turn brown but not mouldy.’

On our second date he took me on a tour of his favourite buildings in the East End. He liked industrial buildings, those with a clear function: warehouses; printing works; grain stores. Most of these stood by the river and had been turned into expensive riverside flats for city workers. He enjoyed looking at the Victorian brickwork and the original tiles and the elaborate chimneys and he pointed these out to me.

We ended up in another pub after three hours of walking and talking and I was so attracted by his heartfelt enthusiasm for the buildings. I also thought how sexy he looked in his black leather jacket and jeans. We sat next to each other on the banquette in the pub and our thighs touched. You know that moment when you make physical contact for the first time with someone you are attracted to – shy, embarrassed, awkward, happy. The evening slipped away.

Markus seemed to spend a lot of time on his own, working in his stark, barely furnished flat or going for walks along the canal towpath near where he lived. He had grown up in Helsinki and didn’t have many friends in London and I think I brought some warmth and colour into his life. He made me feel safe at last after the chaotic ups and downs of my years with Eddie and we started to see each other regularly.

Six months after that first meeting in Newcastle I discovered that I was pregnant. This was entirely unplanned and came as a shock to me. Markus was also stunned by the news of my pregnancy, so much so, in fact, that I did a second pregnancy test at my flat. He arrived on that Saturday morning unshaven, looking like he’d had a bad night. I had bought a more complicated pregnancy test from the chemist, just to be sure. I set the apparatus up in the bathroom and made coffee for us while we waited for the result. After ten minutes I called him through and showed him the tell-tale dark red circle in the bottom of the test-tube. It’s always quite chilly in the bathroom. Was that why he shivered as he looked at the result of the test?

‘What happens now?’ he said finally.

‘We need to give ourselves time to think about it. It’s come as a shock to us both.’

‘You must know what you think, Kathy.’

‘I guess I feel relieved that I
can
get pregnant and a bit scared that I
am
pregnant. How do you feel?’

‘Overwhelmed, I hadn’t expected this to happen.’

We walked back into the kitchen and sat at the kitchen table. I felt obscurely guilty.

‘Would you like some more coffee?’

‘Yes, please.’

My kitchen is a comforting kind of place. I felt I wanted to sit there all day at my aunt’s much-scrubbed and scratched wooden table. I got up and rinsed the coffeepot and then Markus was standing right behind me.

‘I’ll make it,’ he said.

‘God, I don’t need pampering yet!’

‘I just want to make it a bit stronger than the last lot.’

He frowned at the packet of supermarket ground coffee and then spooned a lot of it into the funnel and pressed it down hard.

‘So you have decided you want the baby?’ he said quietly.

‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

‘Your remark just now, about being pampered...’

‘Oh.’

After he’d gone the next morning I walked slowly around the flat and looked into each room with new eyes. It was strange how things worked out. This flat had been my refuge, my safe port in a storm, and now I could see that it would be a good home for a baby too, this solid, roomy, old-fashioned flat. I found that I did want the baby. I didn’t want to tell my parents or my friends just yet; I needed to nurse the idea quietly and peacefully for a few weeks while I absorbed what it would mean.

Markus has a strong puritanical streak and he hates waste and conspicuous consumption. In fact, good coffee is one of the few luxuries he allows himself. A few months after we decided to have the baby he moved in with me and I noticed how little he brought with him. He must have lived like a monk in his East End flat. He has an ancient Saab, a good drawing table and a plan chest, boxes and boxes of books, some diving gear and a few very fine, much-washed shirts.

We were happy together during the months of my pregnancy. We rarely went out in the evenings. Markus was working on a project and said we needed to be quiet, and I welcomed this new found domesticity. Eddie would always get claustrophobic if we stayed in two nights in a row. He would talk me into going to his local where his friends would be gathered and where he had a willing audience to listen to his funny stories. Too many nights we had rolled back late and drunk to our flat. Now my life had changed so much. I had given up alcohol during the pregnancy and I got into cooking healthy meals for us and I felt content.

When I was five months pregnant Markus and I spent a long weekend at Portland in Dorset. I think this was our happiest weekend together, even though it is a rather bleak and windswept place. I’ve noticed that Markus likes these stark coastal landscapes – Portland Bill, Spurn Point, Selsey Bill. He dislikes anything chocolate box or picturesque. So he has taken me, the native, to places all over England that I would never have thought to visit. We were staying in a bed and breakfast in the village of Southwell, and on the first day we walked the coastal path to Portland Bill. It was a glorious June morning with a soft breeze and I felt healthy and hopeful; my pregnancy was going well. As we set off through the village we passed a sweet shop, which had row upon row of those old-style confectionary jars filled with loose sweets.

‘Let’s go in here,’ I said.

I pointed out my favourites to him.

‘They look disgusting,’ he said.

‘They taste of nail-varnish remover. And I’m craving some right now.’

He laughed and asked the woman in the shop for some pear-drops, which she measured out and put into a small paper bag.

‘Tell your wife she’ll have an easy time giving birth,’ she said to him.

‘Really?’

‘I was a midwife before and your wife has big feet, always a sign of an easy delivery.’

‘Thank you.’

We were giggling about her remark as we followed the coastal path towards the main lighthouse, a resplendent white tower with a large red stripe around its middle. The landscape was striking with great ledges of limestone, which are softened in the summer by the grasses and the sea-pinks. There was barely a tree in sight. We sat down on the grass and I sucked contentedly on my pear-drops.

‘I love it here,’ he said.

‘It looks wonderful today in the sun but it would be awfully bleak in the winter. There are no trees!’

‘That’s what I love about it; just sea and sky and not much evidence of man, except for the quarries.’

He pointed out Pulpit Rock to me.

‘That was created by quarrying. And there are steps cut into it so you can climb to the top. The local kids jump off that into the sea.’

‘It’s a long way to jump! How did you find this place?’

‘Through my diving club; there are some good dives here, around the sea caves. We can walk over and look at them in a bit if you feel up to it.’

‘I feel great.’

He helped me up and we walked east to look at the caves in the cliffs. Markus was holding on to my arm in a protective way as the ground was a bit uneven and then we reached the cliffs and there were these huge, echoing caverns. There were large piles of seaweed that had collected in the gullies and they gave off a distinctive rotting, salty smell. We sat down again outside the caves and Markus threw pebbles into the sea. He looked as happy as I had seen him.

‘One day I want to build a house by the sea,’ he said.

That night I told him that my big feet were obviously a mixed blessing and we laughed as we hugged, curled up in the lumpy B & B bed, my bump against his stomach, my big feet keeping warm against his.

The next morning I woke up at six-thirty to see Markus standing naked by the window of our room, which had a sea view. I lay in bed gazing at him, feeling languorous and happy and admiring his broad shoulders and shapely bottom. He was looking out of the window with the kind of intensity that you see in children, as if caught up in the wonder of the moment. I wanted to make love again, as we had the night before. He turned round then and saw me watching him.

‘I didn’t mean to wake you.’

‘You didn’t.’

I patted the bed and he sat down next to me and pulled back the covers and started to stroke my bump gently.

‘You should sleep a bit more. I think I’ll go out for an early morning walk.’

‘I was admiring your bum!’

He laughed.

‘I bet you have loads of women admirers.’

He bent down and kissed me lightly.

‘I’m a one-woman man. Now rest and I’ll be back for breakfast.’

As he dressed quickly I mused that even then, when we were at our most happy and relaxed, he did not want to talk about his past, about any attachments he had had. And I already knew that it was best not to push it with Markus.

Later, over a big fried breakfast, I took the plunge and suggested he move in with me, and he agreed.

The woman in the sweet shop was wrong. My labour lasted thirty-six hours because my contractions were ineffectual. Eventually, after many hours, the doctor injected me with something to speed up the birth as the baby was getting distressed. Billy’s head was large and I tore badly as he came out and needed many stitches. And childbirth has changed me, more than I would have thought possible. Before Billy came I was very focused on my work and ambitious too. I was determined to become an editor, perhaps one day even to launch my own magazine. And then I split open with Billy and I lost something. Yes, I lost my dedication to getting on and gained the secret sensual world of my beloved boy.

Billy was born in October. On New Year’s Eve Markus was keen that we should go and watch the fireworks that would welcome in the year. Billy was only three months old and I was so tired I wondered if I would be able to stay awake until midnight. Markus said it was important that we share this moment together – our first New Year as a family. I bundled Billy up in a woolly hat and fleece jumpsuit and Markus strapped on the baby sling and we put him into it. We went to wait for a bus to take us to Clerkenwell. There was to be a big firework display there, near where he worked.

While we were waiting for our bus at Baker Street an old man standing in the queue in front of us dropped his shopping bag. There was a crack of something breaking and the contents rolled out of the bag. I knelt down and started to pick up his groceries for him. Among them was a half-bottle of whisky and this had smashed when the bag hit the pavement. The old man was tearful when he saw that his bottle of whisky had broken. This was probably his treat for that special night. I salvaged the rest of his shopping for him and put the broken glass into a bin, wrapped in paper.