Cuckoo (30 page)

‘I'm pregnant,' she murmured. ‘Now, here, in this garden, at this moment.' A DC 10 screamed over. She ignored it. She could feel the baby growing inside her, imperceptibly, like grass.

‘Frances, for Christ's sake, get up. It's raining.'

Frances opened one eyelid a crack, and shut it hastily. A large, dark cloud was looming in front of her – Charles in his iron-grey suit, with a black umbrella over him. Cold, accusing drops of rain were stinging her bare legs, sneaking down her neck. Charles had brought rain on purpose. His influence reached even as far as the Meteorological Office.'

‘You've no right to be here, Charles.'

‘We've got to talk.'

‘We keep talking and it never gets us anywhere. I've told you not to come.'

‘It's hardly your role to tell me what to do. If you don't want me here, then please return to Richmond. It's high time you came back and faced your responsibilities.'

‘I am facing them. That's why I'm here.'

Silence. Charles had suddenly collapsed, like his own umbrella. He was squatting on the grass, thin, stiff, closed in on himself, the rain spitting on his suit. She picked a lupin from the border and stuck it in his jacket.

‘Charles …'

‘What?'

‘Let's not fight. Our anger affects the universe.'

‘Christ, Frances, you're impossible! Every time I try to reason with you, you churn out some pathetic mumbo-jumbo. The flower-child thing is twenty years out of date.' He snatched the lupin from his buttonhole and held it awkwardly. He was like a suitor, on his knees to her, flower in one hand, rolled umbrella in the other. ‘I came to take you out to dinner.'

‘You came to reason with me.'

‘Can't we do both? I booked a table at Croft's.'

Croft's was fossilized Charles – his ancient and illustrious Club. He rarely took her there. It was reserved for top clients, a male sanctuary, private and inviolable.

‘Let's eat here. I'll do you scrambled eggs.'

‘I had scrambled eggs for lunch, scrambled eggs for breakfast, and scrambled bloody eggs for last night's so-called dinner. I haven't had a proper meal since you left.'

‘Poor darling! There's not much here, either. Ned seems to live on tins. I could probably rustle you up some baked beans or …'

‘I never want to hear that man's name again, and as for setting foot inside his house …'

‘Well, let's eat outside then. A picnic in the garden.'

‘In the pouring rain? I'm soaked already. It's bad enough having to chase after you over the whole of W3, without catching pneumonia on top of it.'

She laughed. It was easy to laugh when you were pregnant. ‘Do you know, Charles, you're really rather comic.'

He shot up his umbrella, as if he were firing a rifle, and disappeared beneath it, stomping round the side of the house. He suddenly looked small – old, defeated, bowed.

‘Charles!' she called. He stopped.

‘I'll come.'

He didn't turn round. She ran after him and squeezed beside him under the umbrella. She was laughing again. ‘So long as I can have the biggest steak they've got. I must admit I'm sick of beans, myself.'

His blue streak of a Bristol looked as if it had lost its way in Mayfair and landed up at Acton by mistake. She eased herself into the soft suede upholstery, draping her damp skirt in front of her.

‘Aren't you going to change?'

‘No need. If you put the heater on, I'll be dry in two ticks.'

‘Yes, but I thought perhaps … another dress?'

‘What for?'

Damn it, didn't she know what for? You didn't go to Croft's in some shapeless sack more suited to a Hackney stall-holder than a director's wife. She looked pregnant already, her neat, girlish figure swamped under cheap pink seersucker. But he dared not argue. The days and nights without her had put their cold hands around his throat and slowly squeezed, until he was left choking and retching with outrage, shock and murderous jealousy. He had forbidden such feelings ever to come near him in his life before, but they had sneaked up on him and grabbed him unawares, held him down, while he shouted out for a wife who wasn't there. It was humiliating, horrible – and worst of all, uncontrollable.

He stopped outside the Club and glanced across at her. She had her hands cradled on her lap, tuned in only to her own womb. He was shut out from all that growth and mystery, as he had been with Piroska. Fumblingly he leaned over and tried a tentative embrace. The girlish shape was still there, underneath. If anything, she was even slimmer. He felt her stomach, flat and innocent, sloping down to the slender thighs.

‘Listen, Frances, are you absolutely sure you're pregnant?'

‘Of course I'm not sure …'

He heard the windscreen wipers almost startle with relief.

‘Not your sort of sure. Pregnancy tests and signed statements from three Harley Street laboratories and a nationwide broadcast from the Queen's gynaecologist. I just
feel
pregnant. It's a gut thing, intuitive. Oh, I know you'll scoff. You always insist on data and statistics, but I've started looking at life differently. It's feelings that count, not your universal Rule of Reason.'

‘God almighty, Frances, this is the most critical problem we've ever had to face in our entire married life, and you're resorting to gibberish. You don't get pregnant merely by feelings.'

‘No, that's not what happened.'

He winced. ‘All right, let's have dinner and discuss it then. Perhaps you'll be more rational over a decent claret.'

He whispered to the head waiter to change their table, seat them in the darkest corner, where they could hide away. He'd never been seen there with a woman in no make-up and bare legs. He tried to lose himself in the menu, but the veal was sauced with some sod's semen, and Clomid had curdled the vichyssoise. There were no prices on the wine list, no vintages, only ‘day thirty-two' printed over everything. He glanced around furtively, to make sure no one was listening. The place was half empty – it was early yet.

‘Look, let's get down to hard facts, Frances. According to my reckoning, it's day thirty-two.'

She almost hugged him for getting it so right. It
was
day thirty-two, but she always felt she was the only one in the world who knew or cared. Day thirty-two meant four days late, and that was the most precious, incredible, terrifying thing she could possibly imagine. She was never, ever late. Her period started on day twenty-eight exactly, and had done since the age of thirteen and a half. And always in the morning. She could almost set her watch by it. But this month – nothing. She'd inspected herself at least a hundred times, checking and re-checking. No stained pants, no drop of blood, no pre-period pain. On day twenty-nine, she had ordered extra milk. On day thirty, she panicked and took six hot baths and three double gins. Still nothing. On day thirty-one, she hovered between hope and horror, spent the morning in Mothercare, comparing prams and prices, and the afternoon in tears. On day thirty-two – today – she had accepted the inevitable. She was pregnant, indisputably, so she'd damned well enjoy it.

She had almost succeeded, until Charles turned up – and all the horrors with him. So long as he kept away, she could concentrate on having Ned's baby Ned's way. But Charles brought complications – not only guilts and fears, but a reminder of all the things she missed and needed: steak, standards, security and strength. She looked across at his stern, sculpted features, his pained, prosecuting eyes. He was toying with the brown bread and butter which had come with his salmon mousse. His Club was almost part of him – the fine china and Georgian silver; the jealously-guarded membership, with instant recognition of a member, and suspicion of any stranger, even a guest; the low-key, reverential service; the impeccable address. He'd been coming here for years. The food was good, but not that good – he came for something else – old-fashioned standards, attention to detail, the solid continuity of tradition.

She loved him for his standards, for his own fastidious good manners. He was nibbling on a finicky morsel of crust. Ned would have stuffed the bread whole into his mouth and then kissed her through it; dolloped tinned spaghetti rings on to chipped and dirty plates, or eaten straight from the saucepan.

‘Four days overdue hardly constitutes a pregnancy,' Charles was saying. Even the way he spoke was careful and melodious. Ned dragged words through hedges.

‘No.'

It wasn't just a question of days. Admittedly they had been the longest and most frightening of her life, but she'd known she was pregnant almost the moment she conceived. It was something precious and primal you felt deep inside. You didn't count it on calendars or prove it with tests. It was a subtle sacred blossoming, which took you over and transformed you. There was nothing you could do to counter it, oppose it. You were only the receptacle, the instrument.

Her wine had arrived, decanted into a Georgian claret jug, and mixed liberally with homage. Charles was drinking a
Mersault-Charmes
'71. He waved away a posse of grovelling waiters.

‘We need something more definite to go on. What about your charts? Isn't your temperature meant to stay up if you're pregnant? Is it up?' He was still talking in a whisper, as if they were planning crime or
lése-majesté
.

‘Well, sort of.'

‘Sort of? Frances, you simply must be more precise.'

How could she tell him that she hadn't done the charts? Staying with Ned made it more or less impossible. What excuse was there for fussing with a thermometer, when you were clearly in the pink of health? She'd tried to pretend, one morning, that she was sickening for 'flu and had to check her temperature, but Ned had rushed around with steaming hot Ribena, and by the time she'd swallowed that, it was up in any case.

Rathbone insisted that you took your temperature before eating, drinking, talking, moving, but he hadn't calculated on having a Ned around. As soon as she woke, Ned was there, feeding her Ambrosia rice pudding out of the tin, or asking her opinion on Icelandic verb endings, or balancing his teacup on her navel. How could she lie still and silent for a full five minutes with a thermometer stuck in her mouth, when Ned was laying siege to all her other orifices?

‘You're so extremely vague, Frances. It seems ridiculous to disrupt our whole existence, when we haven't got a shred of proof.'

‘We don't need proof. I simply know I'm pregnant. My whole body feels quite different.'

‘How could it, Frances, after only four days?'

‘It does, that's all. Anyway, if you want statistics, there are plenty as far as Clomid's concerned. Very encouraging ones, I might add. In one study of women taking it, twenty-four per cent of them conceived, and they weren't even ovulating before they started on it. And in another group …'

Charles pushed his plate away. He didn't want a second helping of statistics. Even without them, he felt a stab of certainty, like a bone stuck in his throat. Sixteen years ago, he'd had the same conversation with Piroska. He had scoffed then – used almost the same words: ‘It's merely stress, that's all. Wait another week or two. Of course you can't be pregnant.'

She had been. And so was Frances. It was obvious she had changed. Some new, careless lethargy clung around her body like a second skin. It wasn't just the shabby dress, but something very basic. He had seen it with Piroska. The only difference was, Piroska had been expendable and Frances wasn't. He leant across and took her hand, checking first that nobody was watching.

‘Come back, Frances. Please. I miss you. I've wronged you over Magda – I admit it, and I'm sorry. But you've wronged me, too, and far more irresponsibly. But I still want you back – I know that. I've never told you this before, but I need you. Very deeply.'

She almost choked on a fragment of French bread. Charles never needed anyone. He was totally self-sufficient, moulded people, enlightened them, but
needed
them – impossible! She saw herself reflected in the pale wastes of his eyes, could hardly believe that he was pleading with her, begging.

‘Frances, let's start again, darling. I love you. I want you.'

He had never told her he loved her in a public place before. And this was Croft's. Nothing was fake at Croft's, or insubstantial. Croft's meant genuine authenticity, true sterling value.

She forced down the scrap of bread. ‘But do you want the baby?'

A waiter glided over and stared reproachfully at Charles' untouched mousse. ‘Was something wrong, sir?'

‘No, no, absolutely not. Everything first-rate as always.'

‘Thank you, sir. I do hope you'll do justice to the sole, sir. They were sent up from Newhaven just this morning.'

Newhaven. That's where Ned had caught a conger eel. They'd gone there after Brighton, a lifetime ago, squatted on a breakwater and skimmed pebbles through the waves. Ned would teach the baby to fish, build it sandcastles, make it laugh. The crested silver soup-spoon suddenly felt too heavy in her hand. She put it down. ‘Do you want me back with the baby?' she repeated.

That would be the perfect compromise – Ned's baby in Charles' house. If she tried, she could almost turn it into Charles' child. There were things a kid needed – a heritage, a legacy. You had to pass on values and traditions. This Club, for instance, symbol of all Charles represented, and all she'd come to prize herself. She couldn't deny those standards to her child.

Two waiters were already hovering, bearing the sole like the Blessed Sacrament. ‘Shall I fillet it for you, sir?'

‘Please.'

He hadn't answered her. He was fussing over his fishbone while her baby's fate hung in the balance. A third waiter swamped them both with vegetables –
épinards au beurre
and
chou-fleur Mornay
smothering an unborn child.