Lifesaver (46 page)

I yawned, suddenly overwhelmed with a massive, bone-crushing exhaustion.

I felt wrung out, empty, and all I wanted was to sleep.

Lil stroked the hair back from my face. ‘Have a nap, darling, you look worn out. You’re going to need all the rest you can get now, aren’t you?’

She stood up, picked up our empty cups and saucers and left the room, closing the door softly behind her. The shepherdess and I were alone. Her painted eyes remained wide open, gazing at me indulgently as if to say, ‘well, you’ve really done it this time, Anna,’ but mine closed within seconds. Lil’s words, ‘have a nap’ echoed in my head; and I badly wanted to see Max draw one his ‘naps’- the one which showed ‘Really Really Actually Heaven’; ‘The Airport’; and ‘The Place Where Stories Were Made’.

Then I fell asleep. I dreamed about my baby: he was a little blond boy; Max’s little brother. He looked like Max. He was peering through a low picket fence at me, gurgling and chortling, pointing skywards at an aeroplane crossing the wide blue sky which I realized we knew contained Ken, jetting off on a business trip - or more likely just out of my life for good. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him again, but ‘sorry’ didn’t quite seem to cover it. The plane was represented on Max’s ‘nap’ with a moving dotted line, like they sometimes used in films to denote a flightpath. It flew over ‘The Big Bad Wolf’s House’, and on, past ‘Our House’, and towards ‘Where the People Die’.

The shepherdess was still smiling at me when I woke up, five hours later.

‘Please stay,’ I said out loud to my baby, my hands on my belly.

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

George Valentine was born by elective Caesarian section. My obstetrician suggested it, and I agreed without hesitation; it wasn’t that I was ‘too posh to push’, as common parlance had it, I just liked the idea of knowing the exact date and time when he’d come into the world. It somehow made me feel that there was less margin for error.

I couldn’t stop marvelling at how quick it was, either; so sterile and painless. I felt the blunt unzipping of my abdomen, and the weirdness of gloved hands reaching into me, but I didn’t look at their green-gowned bodies bent over my stomach behind the curtained off area which bisected my body. I looked instead at the people holding my own hands: Vicky, on one side of me, Lil on the other, their anxious masked faces peering into mine until I felt like a lab rat pinned out on a slab. Nonetheless, if I kept eye contact with them at all times, it helped keep the waves of terror under control.

I’d secretly worried that having Lil there would remind me of when Holly was born, but it hadn’t, not really. It was so different. And I couldn’t have done it without her; without the lifeline of her cool, thin hand. She didn’t say much, other than the odd muttered word of encouragement, preferring to leave the talking to Vicky.

Vicky, in contrast, hardly stopped talking, her mask wobbling up and down until I became transfixed by the movement. She and her four-month old baby Chloe had accompanied me on all my ante-natal visits, whilst Shock-Headed Peter had minded the other two children—remarkably uncomplainingly, it seemed. He’d really pulled his finger out since Chloe was born, and had cut his working week down to four days, to allow Vicky a whole day to herself. I wasn’t sure whether the salutary tale of me and Ken had had any impact on them, but they seemed much happier together.

‘Wish I’d known how easy Caesarians are, I’d have done it for all of them. Nobody staring at your parts. No stirrups. No midwives having to strain your poo out of the birthing pool with a sieve—that was sooo humiliating, even with the contractions coming every thirty seconds, I still had time to be mortified…And after three of ‘em, my pelvic floor’s like the stage trapdoor now. I always thought that your stomach muscles would never recover after a Caesarian but they do if you work at it, don’t they, I mean, look at Victoria Beckham, her tummy’s like an ironing board…

Tummy. That word always reminded me of Adam. Adam was never far from my thoughts—how could he be, when they were taking his child out of me? I still missed him and Max badly, but for the past few months all my energies had been focussed on growing George.

Vicky was still wittering on: ‘...My stomach’s terrible at the moment—when I lie down on my side, it lies next to me, like a puppy or something. We’ll do millions of sit-ups together after your six weeks is up, you wait, it’ll be torture…The babbas can play together while we sweat—Chloe needs a mate. She’s already growing out of her baby gym. It’s funny how four months will seem like a big age gap between them for the first year, and then there’ll be no difference, will there? Besides, poor little Chloe’s going to need an ally of her own age, what with Crystal and Pat torturing her whenever I take my eyes off them…’

At first I’d felt like telling her to put a sock in it, but after a while I found it oddly comforting, and focussing on her words helped take my mind off the whole scale rummaging occurring in my stomach. I also realised that she hadn’t talked about her previous labours to me before, nor about the future relationship between her new baby and mine, for fear of upsetting me, or in case it all went wrong again. It was a good sign, I thought.

Then Vicky finally did shut up, because the doctors were tugging out my baby, and then they were holding him aloft and cutting the cord, and I saw him for the first time, purple and bloody just as Holly had been, but outraged and squawking at the rude interruption to his peace and quiet, his tiny arms punching and flailing in the air. I knew then that he was going to be fine. His mother’s son, I thought; I bet he’ll love his sleep. They put him on my chest and he quietened down immediately, gazing into my eyes as if to say ‘well, and wasn’t I just worth waiting for?’

‘Oh,’ sobbed Vicky, tears running over her mask. ‘A boy! Boys always look at their mums that way. He adores you already…Oh Anna, I can’t believe it! Oh, congratulations. He’s just perfect.’

George just stared and stared at me. There was a patch of my blood on his cheek, and it made me smile to think of all the other patches of blood to come in future, his own blood, not mine, a boy’s grazes and scrapes and cuts. Tree falls and playground skirmishes, bike accidents and possibly worse. I stopped smiling at the thought, never far from the surface of my mind, that maybe, God forbid, he would have a serious fall or a terrible illness—but then seeing him in my arms, so real and solid and human, made me think, well, maybe he wouldn’t. And if he did, I’d get him through it, like Adam had got Max through his. We’d get through anything together. Whatever happened, he was his own person, on his own path, and nothing I could do would affect that. All I had to do was to be there for him, and I knew I always would be.

‘Hello my darling boy,’ I said to him. ‘Meet your great-great-aunt.’ I passed him over to Lil and she cradled him to her chest, his skinny little legs dangling comfortably over her forearms. I tore my gaze away from his ankles, smaller than marbles, and still-pliant shins—I’d grown those inside of me! - and watched the tears falling unrestrained down Lil’s face, as she pressed her lined parchment skin gently against his soft red cheeks.

My darling son. He had Adam’s eyes.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Anna Valentine

C/o Rosemead

21 Seymour Road

Hampton TW11

Adam Ferris

43 Hardcourt Road

Gillingsbury

Wilts.

October 31st 2003

Dear Adam,

I hope you won’t be upset to hear from me, and that everything is going well for you and Max and Marilyn. Please tell Max that I miss him, and I miss his emails. I know I haven’t written many to him over the past few months either, but—well—the reason for that is also the reason for this letter…hich I’ll come on to later. Anyway, I’m dying to hear what his latest pinball score is, and how many teeth he’s lost now. Tell him Spesh is fine. He sleeps with me at night and guards my bed every day.

I’m living with my great-aunt, Lil, and have been since I last saw you. My husband and I split up, and are just waiting for the decree absolute to come through. Seven months ago I told him about you and Max, and his reaction was not dissimilar to yours, when I told you about him. But it’s OK. Lil has been amazing to me, and I’ve been spending a lot of time with my best friend Vicky and her children. I’m not working, but Vicky and I are planning to set up some kids’ theatre workshop groups—Wigwam Drama - in a few months’ time.

Ken, my soon-to-be ex-husband, has found a new girlfriend. Her name is Nadine, and she’s twenty-seven, a County tennis player (he’s mad about his tennis. Did I ever tell you that I can’t stand tennis?!), fit and tanned and gorgeous - Ken is over the moon. And I’m surprised at how happy I am for him. After me treating him so appallingly, he deserves it. He was so angry with me when I told him, but since he and Nadine got together, he’s being more friendly. We have to talk regularly, about finances and selling the house and stuff, and it’s a lot more pleasant now that he can be civil to me again. Like you, he won’t ever forgive me completely though.

I miss you, Adam. I think about everything we did together, and, unless I’m looking at it through rose-coloured glasses—which I don’t think is the case—I realize how perfect we were for each other. I know I shouldn’t say this, but I miss everything about you: waking up with you, making love with you, playing with Max. Being part of your family, which was all I ever wanted. Every day I hear your words in my head: ‘I can’t believe how spectacularly you’ve blown it, Anna’—and you were right. I did blow it, didn’t I? I was such a colossal idiot, not to be honest with you from the start. Oh well. I won’t say any more—this is probably making you feel really uncomfortable, and I don’t want that. However much I miss you, I do genuinely wish you happiness too, and I know that I was always the cuckoo in your nest. Regardless of the bone marrow donation, I had no right to try and take Marilyn’s place. I’m sorry.

There’s something else I have to tell you now… remember that letter you wrote to me, telling me that I’d saved Max’s life. You said you were crying as you wrote it, and how could you not. Well, I’m crying too now, over what I’m about to say. I’m crying because I have to tell you in a letter, and I’m crying because I messed everything up; because ‘I blew it’.

Anyway, here goes… suppose the best thing to do is just let you have the facts: I had a baby. Your baby. His name is George Adam Valentine, and he’s now nearly four weeks old. He’s utterly beautiful and looks just like you.

I didn’t tell you I was pregnant; partly because I wanted you and Marilyn to have a real chance to work things out without this potentially complicating matters for you both; partly because I didn’t—and don’t—want you to feel responsible for us; and partly, on a more practical note, because I was afraid that history might repeat itself and even if I carried him full term, something might have gone wrong at the birth like it did with Holly. I couldn’t bear to tell you, and then have to ‘untell’ you.

But nothing went wrong. He’s healthy and gorgeous, and I’m fine. I don’t want anything from you, Adam, so please don’t feel under pressure to even respond if you don’t want to. I understand that Marilyn might find this a little difficult to cope with, and I’ve caused enough problems for you already. Perhaps you’re planning more children of your own—perhaps Marilyn’s pregnant again already. You just have a right to know that you’ve had another son.

I haven’t enclosed a photograph because that somehow smacks of emotional blackmail—although, if you want to know what he looks like, just email or write and I’ll send you some of the several hundred thousand pictures I seem already to have accrued…he poor child thinks that his mother has a camera glued to the end of her nose.

But seriously, Adam, I mean it: I’m not telling you this because I want anything from you. I know that what I did to you was unforgivable, and how much I hurt you, and I will completely understand if you don’t even respond to this letter. Perhaps when George is older, you might want to get in touch, but it’s up to you and, like I said, I will understand if you don’t.

I think of you and Max all the time. Even after the total mess I made of everything, I can’t help feeling that we’ve each given the other the best gift of all—I gave you Max back, and now you’ve given me George. Like you said in your letter to me, ‘I could fill pages with thank-yous but that still wouldn’t express my gratitude.’

With much love,

‘Auntie Anna, look, both of George’s noses are blocked up.’

‘Well, Crystal, he’s only got the one nose, but let’s see what we can do about it, shall we?’ I extracted a tissue from my sleeve and attempted to swab out George’s crusty green nostrils, but they were so small and so full that it was an utterly futile exercise. My son had a stinking cold, and it was true to say, was not looking his best. He peered wearily at me from between pink-lidded eyes and shot me a look which said, ‘
please
just leave me alone.’

‘This dust probably doesn’t help either,’ I added anxiously in the direction of Vicky’s backside. She was up a stepladder in Ken’s and my old house, wielding a feather duster and coaxing an extended family of spiders out of their homes along the cornicing in the hall.

She and Crystal had come to help me give the place a thorough clean. It had been on the market for five months now without a bite and, on the phone to me at Lil’s the other day, the estate agent had used the word ‘tired’ to describe it; which I knew and he knew actually meant ‘filthy.’ Ken and I had never really bothered to keep it nice when we lived in it, let alone since we both moved out. But there was to be a rare viewing that afternoon, some woman who’d already sold her house and was keen to buy, so I was hoping to show it off to its best possible advantage.