Mothers and Daughters (34 page)

No matter what happened Anastasia would always
be her first-born, wherever she was now. In returning to Crete she’d completed her mama’s circle of life.

But when will I find the missing bit of myself?

Everyone was puzzled when Connie booked herself into a private clinic for the coming birth. The partners’ wives were sniffy. ‘We like to fly the flag for our local maternity unit wherever possible,’ advised Marianne, the senior partner’s wife. ‘I had all my three children there with no problems at all. So don’t worry, babies deliver themselves. Given half a chance.’

‘I had all mine at home,’ said Celia, wife of the second in command and next one down the pecking order. ‘It was lovely. We have to be seen to support our surgery and the midwives in the town.’

And you like to keep yourselves to yourselves behind the great iron gates of Albert Drive, playing bridge with your friends, sitting on charity committees and sending your children to public schools. They meant well, these middle-aged ladies, with their
smart clothes and permed hair, but she found them so scary.

How could Connie begin to explain that she needed the privacy of a clinic where no one locally might see her medical records and deduce that this was not her first pregnancy? Paul wasn’t bothered either way, but she was.

I really want to deliver out of town, she thought, but said nothing. She was learning fast that being a prospective junior partner’s wife in an established practice meant bending to unwritten rules and traditions, supporting her husband, of course, at every turn, and no complaining.

Paul was expected to do all the unpopular on-call hours, cover for school holidays. They were expected to live within a mile of the new practice and to respond to emergencies, to be careful with patients socially, to conform to a standard of living, and above all to be seen to be paragons of virtue in public behaviour.

The honeymoon was over on their return and Connie’s sickness made her condition soon evident. Everyone was congratulating them, but Connie felt panic. It was all too soon, she had hardly taken up her new social work post before she was having to hand in her resignation because no one expected a doctor’s wife to work with a new baby in tow.

Rosa continued to make slow progress. She was busy crocheting a patchwork shawl of Afghan squares.
Joy was already collecting up Kim’s precious baby clothes from her cupboards in bags smelling of mothballs. They were thrilled to bits for her, and if ever there was a time to tell her friends about Anna it was now, but her courage failed. She just couldn’t confess anything to them right now.

How different this pregnancy was, how public, how welcome. Everyone was giving her maternity clothes, baby equipment and buckets full of advice.

She did avail herself of a private relaxation class to learn the technique of psychoprophylaxis; learning to breathe in labour while tensing muscles. This time she’d not make a mess of things, this time she knew what to expect and all about the stages of labour and how to react physically to the pain. Everyone thought she was a first-time mum and guided her along as a novice. She took herself swimming and for long walks, and tried to feel excited, but it only made her remember that very first time and all the girls at GreEveryone was puzzled when Connie booked herselfen End House. Where were they all now?

With Gran’s generous legacy Connie and Paul were able to put a deposit against a mortgage to buy old Dr Unsworth’s farmhouse on Green Lane. It wasn’t far from the new Health Centre premises going up. Even this move was sniffed at by the partners’ wives as extravagant for a newly married practitioner.

Lane House was a period stone house with a walled garden. Most of its land had long gone for building around it but there was still an acre and a half of
trees and outbuildings, which gave it a rural air. Connie had loved it since a child, recalling those Boxing Day gatherings with Diana Unsworth. It smelled of soot and must. It had seen better days, but was a loving family home, shabby and spacious and airy again now that the Unsworths had taken away all the clutter of antique furniture to their retirement house in the Derbyshire Dales. Neville, Joy and the gang mucked in to help Connie and Paul move in, as every time Connie smelled fresh paint, she threw up.

A week later, Celia and Marianne paid a state visit, eyeing the interior with knowing nods, suggesting they could accompany her to art auctions so that she might collect suitable pieces to fill out the bare rooms. Connie smiled politely, knowing there were no funds left for that sort of luxury. Instead, with Nigel’s help, they furnished the rooms with second-hand pine, an old Chesterfield and gaudy cushions, an Indian coffee table, painting the walls white, and brought a large scrubbed pine table and chairs through a newsagent’s ad. For curtains Connie used old lace hand towels and tablecloths, embroidery and lace reminding her of Crete, and the gift of a hand-woven Cretan rug they hung on the wall like a painting.

Cynthia eyed this motley collection of junk with interest. ‘You do have an eye, Connie, but I’m not sure what Dennis and Betty Unsworth would have made of it. The white makes all the rooms look lighter.
But you must get in a gardener. It’s looking very scruffy out there on the roadside and people will talk.’

Let them, Connie screamed inside, this is in my house and I’ll do what I please, but she swallowed her fury and said nothing. ‘More coffee, anyone? Pass the mugs across …’

‘Don’t you use your wedding china?’ Celia looked with interest at Grandma Esme’s Wedgwood in the cabinet.

‘Not on your life! Granny Esme would turn in her grave if I risked those antique cups on these stone floors. They take no prisoners!’

‘Then you ought to get fitted carpets. Much easier on the feet and for Baby when it crawls.’ Marianne sipped from the pot mug.

‘I rather liked the stone flags with rag rugs on them. It’s traditional.’

Marianne sighed, ‘But they do have some beautiful Chinese silk rugs in Mason’s … I’ve been telling Charles that we need another one in the drawing room.’

‘Rag rugs are fine. The baby will just have to learn to walk quickly,’ Connie smiled, watching Celia wince at the thick pottery and the Nescafé.

‘You do know you can get ground coffee in the Maypole? Did you get a percolator in your wedding presents?’

‘Somewhere, but it’s still in its box. Paul likes Nescafé and I can’t touch the stuff, or tea, or I’m sick.’

‘You might find it useful for your dinner parties,’ Celia said, oblivious to Connie’s reply.

‘What dinner parties?’

‘Dinner parties help to circulate you around the district, to meet other young professionals, advertise the practice. You’ll meet such interesting people who might be helpful to us, and Paul might find some new friends.’

‘But I thought doctors can’t advertise?’ Connie said. ‘I just like suppers by the fire with my friends.’

‘That’s all very well, but Paul has to make contacts. I hear you’re very friendly with that flower man and his fancy boy. Is that wise?’ Marianne said, her eyes roaming round the room.

‘You mean Nigel and Neville. Nev’s my cousin … we’re all family. Nigel helped me design this room, in fact. They’ve bought a derelict barn and outbuildings on the Preston Road. They’re going to go in with Joy, my half-sister, and open a series of design shops and outlets with a café and car park. Just what Grimbleton needs, don’t you think?’ Connie smiled, watching their cheeks flush.

‘I see,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s just that we don’t encourage those sort of liaisons.’

‘Don’t worry, the two of them go to the Blackie and Donovan surgery.’

‘Oh, I didn’t mean—’

No, well, I’m sure you didn’t mean to offend. Grimbleton’s a small place. Kick one of us and we
all squeal. I don’t expect it was like that in Solihull, but you’re right, we do have to be careful who we mix with,’ Connie said, looking so innocent that Marianne and Celia weren’t sure who had come out on top of the little spat.

I’m not one of you, am I? Connie thought. I’m too local, too Northern, too common, and I don’t want to join your sort of snobby club. I’ve got all the friends I need in the world, right here. I’ll do my share of wifely duties, but you won’t take me over and turn me into a someone who thinks just because she’s a doctor’s wife she’s somebody’s special.

‘You are a lucky girl to live in such a period property. How on earth did you get hold of it?’ Marianne eyed up the large hall and circular stairs with envy. ‘It never came on the market.’

‘Connections,’ Connie grinned. ‘Sometimes it pays to be local. Diana was my mother’s friend. She was like an aunt to me, so her mother asked if we’d be interested when Paul joined the practice.’

‘Oh, we never knew that, did we?’ Celia looked at Marianne.

‘I bet you didn’t!’ Connie smiled as Marianne put on her Jaeger coat to leave.

‘Thank you so much for showing us round. We’d love to see it again in the summer when you’ve done the back garden. Are you getting in a maternity nurse for your confinement?’

Connie smiled. ‘I don’t think so. We’ll manage.’ She didn’t want anyone living in their house. What was wrong with how things were now? She loved all the friendship and collective effort that had gone into their homemaking. Those remarks about Nigel had really hurt but she must learn to swallow her fury. There was more to her new life with Paul than she had imagined.

Before they took him into partnership he’d been vetted, and his wife alongside him, wined and dined and given the once-over. She understood why they must fit into the ethos of their set-up but the rest sat uneasy on her.

The fact that Esme had been one of Crompton’s Biscuits clan did hold some clout, distantly related to the famous spinning wheel inventor, Samuel Crompton of Hall’th Wood, near Bolton. The fact Connie was a university graduate and a grammar school scholar also went in her favour. Winstanley was still a name worthy of comment in the town.

If only you knew the half of my history you’d not have been so keen on Dr Paul’s young wife, Connie mused, but that’s for me to know and you never to find out. That’s why I’m going to a private clinic. You play the ball where it lands, and she’d just scored a rounder.

Zoe’s birth was natural, lengthy but straightforward. She slid into the world, took one look at her anxious
parents and howled. Connie cried at the sight of her. She had so wanted a boy, deep down, an ally, not a rival, and a reminder of the baby she’d already given away. Paul held the tiny mite in his arms and cried. They were soul mates from that second on, and Zoe was very much her own person.

‘Why do all babies look like Winston Churchill?’ Connie quipped, eyeing up this new arrival for any imperfections. So full of life, curious, already the baby’s eyes flickered around, finding the light, searching her mother’s face, squinting with fierce concentration. They had loads of names for a boy – Alexander, Phillip, James – but only one girl’s name came to mind, they could agree on: Zoe, Zoe Esme Jerviss.

It was Joy who held her and swooned, ‘I want another baby. I want another. I thought you’d go for Anastasia,’ she said, ‘but Zoe is a lovely name.’

Connie felt she should have told Joy then how it was that the name was already used but the moment passed and she let it.

They chose something Greek with no strings and it suited this bundle of life. Connie and baby stayed in the clinic for a full two weeks, receiving visitors, cards, presents and revelling in the wonderful bouquets, cards, telegrams. She wrote to Yaya Papadaki enclosing a Polaroid snap of the two of them. Here was another girl, what a disappointment! Stelios would be raising his hands that Paul would have a dowry to find when the time came. Everyone
thought how clever she was, how beautiful Baby looked in her wicker crib edged with net and lace in her little nursery decorated in white with great murals painted on the wall by Nigel as his gift to the baby. It was the funkiest nursery in the town, but it didn’t meet with Marianne’s approval.

‘She’ll never sleep a wink with those colours.’ And for once the matron was right.

This was no fantasy baby, who slept through the night at three weeks, who took to the breast when it was offered, like a native. This was Zoe, like her namesake, feisty, fighting the breast, screaming through the night, so they took to driving her round the block in the dark. Connie was desperate for peace to sleep, to think her own thoughts, but Zoe had other ideas. Nothing she did seemed to pacify her, and yet when Paul took over the baby, she relaxed and fell asleep on his shoulder.

‘What am I doing wrong?’ Connie cried to Rosa. ‘I don’t think she likes me very much.’

‘Nonsense, just relax. She senses your tension and tenses up. It gives her wind,’ came the calm reply. Why was Rosa, who had so much to complain about, the one whose door was always open for a fag and a scream?

Try as she might Connie felt afraid of her daughter. The power of those blue eyes eyeing her up, dismissing her futile efforts to be the perfect mum, was electric.

Just keep her busy, keep on the move, pushing her around in Joy’s Silver Cross pram, visiting the shops, into the park, across town to see Rosa, anything to stave off the moment when they were alone together. Connie was exhausted, disappointed and lonely.

It didn’t help that Paul was worked off his feet. He was never at home when she needed him. His half-day off seemed to get nibbled at the edges by unfinished visits and phone calls. There were practice meetings, drug reps taking them out for dinners, paperwork and filling in for the others in emergencies. No one warned her just what hard work it was being on call, trying to calm down patients in distress when Paul was already on a night visit, and all against the background of a wailing child.

How she wished she had old Dr Valium’s prescription in her bathroom cabinet. How would she ever have coped on her own, with little Anna? What a fantasy that was. This was the reality of motherhood. She was on her own, full stop, but they had to come to an accommodation, to some truce. What was wrong with Zoe? It felt so personal, as if her baby looked at her, screwed up her face and said, ‘I don’t rate you much as a mother. But my daddy is wonderful, so let’s get on with it and you can tag along.’

It was as if that wailing bundle of energy just climbed into bed between them, separating them so they could only wave to each other from separate tracks.