Nikki Gemmell’s Threesome: The Bride Stripped Bare, With the Body, I Take You (23 page)

the patient should submit cheerfully to being kept on her back, to the supplication of a tight binder and to other remedies that the nurse or doctor will suggest, the patient should pull on a sheet secured to the end bedposts

You awake at three a.m. with what feels like a small grey cloud drifting across your abdomen. Like a giant – or God – is squeezing your belly.

You file your nails, for you’ve heard you’ll dig them so hard into Cole’s flesh you’ll draw blood. You have a shower, wash your hair; God knows when it’ll be washed again. Watch CNN, ring your mother. And somewhere in there you’re in the bath that Cole’s drawn and he’s in the nursery ironing his shirt because he doesn’t know what else to do and he’s never heard you yell fuck, Jesus,
fuck
and in such a gamy way before and then you shout to ring the hospital, please, to get you out. Cole’s packing the car and helping you into it and you’re scrabbling at your clothes, trying to claw them off, you don’t know why, it’s
some instinct all feral within you; to have nothing on your body, not even a watch, and at a stop light you’re clutching at Cole’s hand like it’s never been held before, you’re clutching bone. There are contractions like wild buffalo pummelling through you, oh God let the child come, come.

Five hours after the first clench in your belly, ten minutes after your waters have broken, the baby’s out like a fish whooshing along a deck. You’ve given birth on all fours, with just gas and air to get you through it, and Cole and the midwife in the room. A textbook birth, says the midwife afterwards. An easy labour, laughs your mother over the phone. You tell her that no labour’s easy, that there was a moment during it when you felt like you were splitting apart, that there was a point where you said to yourself, very calmly, you were
never
doing this again.

You didn’t know you’d defecate during labour.

Didn’t know there’d be so much blood.

Didn’t know that several hours after the birth your belly would resemble a child’s attempt at baking a cake, all sunken and soft in the middle.

Didn’t know such love.

the moment any part of a living body ceases to change, that moment it dies

Cole is in a chair beside the bed you’ve given birth in. He’s sitting with his whole body curved around his squawly bundle of son, as if to shield him from the glare of the hospital lights and the midwife as your vagina is stitched up. Cole’s face is cracked, red, raw, it’s wet in great streaks with a teardrop clinging to the tip of his nose.

He is all wonder and love and shock at the little hand like an alien’s that reaches up from the blanket and hooks on to his thumb and holds it tight. As if this is the supreme moment of his life, as if you hardly matter any more.

It’s so odd and sullen, that thought. You lean and stroke your husband, once, in the clearing behind his ear, as if in apology. He smiles, he does not look up, he kisses his son’s fingernail; it’s the size of a nail head in his toolbox.

all have to travel, through life at any rate, if they do not go abroad

Your son’s skin is your new terrain, you ache for it when you’re separated from him, you want to be breathing it like the desert sky during an English winter but the need is worse, much worse.

And it has released you, for the time being, from a spikier kind of want.

He’s called Jack.

His face is unfolding. His ears are like two little squashed roses. His hair, smoothed, is a shell-spiral; ruffled, a corrugated lake. His tiny nails are soft and ragged until you peel them away, his hands balletic in sleep. His eyes are deep and blank and dark and seem to go on for ever. Does he see you? You don’t know. He sees your voice, you’re sure
of that, and your smell and your nipple, oh yes, that. You’re exhausted. Transfixed. He fills every corner of your life.

When your mother visits the hospital she holds him uncomfortably, as if he’s rare china; afraid of his fragility. How strange, you muse: she’s done all this before. Maybe she’s out of practice? Doesn’t want Jack to cry?

When are you babysitting for us, gran, Cole teases.

Maybe in a year or two, she laughs, a touch too fierce.

Perhaps that’s the key: she won’t be comfortable with Jack until he’s not a baby but a person, you’ll have to wait for a year or so. Or maybe she wants you to stand on your own two feet with this, give you space. You won’t push it. Watching her, you realise you have no right to expect her close involvement. As much as you’d like it.

misfortunes are brought upon some by the bad conduct of others

Martha visits you in hospital. Jack cries when she holds him and you tell her to slip her little finger into his mouth. He stops.

Wow, she says.

Princess Diana used to do it. I get all my motherhood tips from the telly.

You both laugh.

Isn’t your mother helping you, she asks.

No, not really. She doesn’t seem to want to, I don’t know why.

Maybe she’s afraid of being shown up.

How do you mean?

Well, she’s always done everything so well in her life. She looked after a baby a hell of a long time ago and I guess
everything’s changed so much. Maybe she doesn’t want you seeing that she doesn’t quite know what to do any more.

You think of her holding Jack in her rusty, awkward way, willing him not to cry. Your poor, dear, impenetrable mother; she always hates admitting there’s something she can’t do. Perhaps, perhaps Martha’s right.

She asks, as she’s leaving, if you’ve heard the news about Gabriel. Your stomach churns; thank God Cole isn’t around to hear the name. What contact has she had, you cannot bear to ask, you know you’ll blush, you don’t want to hear about a marriage, a wife.

He came back to the Library, Martha says. He was completely changed. His hair was cut. He had this crisp new shirt. New shoes. He looked, I don’t know,
proper
, respectable. And then Martha leans close, she speaks low, distinct: he told me he’d been in Spain. She slows. He told me he’d been getting over this absolutely shattering breakup. It sounded like it was the love of his life or something.

Your breath catches in your throat.

Can you believe it? I mean, talk about a dark horse. He didn’t tell me much else. But, then, and this was the funny bit, he said that I had to help him find a girlfriend. He said that was his new goal.

You cannot speak.

I tell you, I wanted to jump right in there and say me, Gabriel, me, I’ll leave Pat, anything you want, Martha laughs.

You murmur, hmm.

let us remember that in helping others and seeking their happiness we are finding our own

You hear her before you see her, know instantly the clack of those heels on linoleum. The determination in them, the energy of someone who’s never at rest. Then the familiar black suit is striding down the hospital corridor. And the face, you know it so well, every nuance, you know it better than Cole’s or your mother’s. Of course you’ll see her now, you’ve changed. You feel powerful, more powerful than you’ve ever felt before. Like a real person now, richer, deeper, full of juice.

Hello, stranger, you say, getting in first.

Hi. She’s wary, one side of her mouth up, one side down. You don’t know why she’s here, perhaps it’s her curiosity but whatever she throws at you you’re ready, she can’t touch you now, it’s in your smile. She carries a bottle
of champagne and a romper suit that’s too big, with too many clasps.

You both examine its complexity: I know about as much as you, you laugh.

God help you.

Her fingers are unpractised with the baby, quickly she places him back. She sits on the edge of the bed and you hand her two coffee cups and the champagne cork pops. You sit without words for a while, gazing into each other’s face. There is too much to say so nothing is said, you sit open-faced, reading the changes over both your lives. Nothing can describe the intricacy of the relationship you’ve shared, and not shared. And where, now, to start. Your son is beside you, asleep, you can feel his body warmth. His arms are wide, all surrender, all trust.

How’s the breastfeeding going, she asks.

It’s OK. It’s working, for the moment.

Good for you. I had a client who could only do it for three weeks because every time the baby’s mouth was on her nipple she’d have an orgasm. She said it was wonderful for the first day, but completely exhausting after that.

You laugh. It’s good, in some ways, to have Theo back.

You’re so lucky, she says.

I know, and then softer, I know. You catch in her face a sudden pain like a rogue cloud scudding across the sun but then it’s gone; your hand reaches across to her. She slides hers away.

I couldn’t bear to think about you for a while, after I
found out you were pregnant. I didn’t expect it to affect me so much. It’s just…and she stops, she looks down at Jack. I’d do anything to have one of these.

I can’t imagine what you’ve gone through.

Yeah.

Oh Diz.

Nothing’s worked. They’ve told me to give up. She’s on the verge of tears, she’s holding them back. You lean forward and put your arms round her; she breaks. Hey, you say over and over again, hey. It wasn’t meant to be like this when you finally met up. You hold her until the shuddering stops. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand; mascara is smeared in black streaks.

I’m so sorry, she says to you.

You can’t bring yourself to say anything. You just nod, you won’t cry, won’t give her that.

We should get together some time, she says. When you’re back home. I want to – be a better friend for you.

Yes, let’s.

Not sure when you’ll see her again, not sure you want to now, with your new life.

Cole tells me you still meet up for a drink now and then, you say, nudging a response: wondering if this, too, was yet another clever lie.

I won’t sleep with him, all right, she snaps, heat flaming her cheeks and she looks down again at Jack. It tells you nothing. You tilt your face to the ceiling, you smile: it doesn’t matter any more, she can’t touch you, can’t
wound you. You’re living, now, a much larger life. And in that moment of holding your face to the ceiling with your eyes shut, all the tension of uncertainty that’s been with you since Theo’s letter – about what you’ll do, about how you’ll proceed from this point – is at last snapped and decision is falling over you like soft rain. And Theo knows nothing of that. You drop your head, you smile serenely at her.

Your son lies beside you; the warm, firm wedge of him, and she will never have that. Finally, finally, there’s something you have that she will not.

the mother has now received the very crown of womanhood, and in the contemplation and care of her child she feels that she herself is new born into a world of delight

You write in twenty-minute bursts, once a day, twice if you’re lucky. It’s all that Jack will allow you. You sit at your desk in that wonderfully clear, bright, curious time in the morning when his day hasn’t been corrupted by nappy changes and wind and too little sleep.

Six weeks after the birth, flowers still fill the flat, blousing out and tumbling petals. The rooms have the gentle, new glow of the just married. You’re still bleeding, just. Your genitals still smell meaty and fleshy. Your stomach muscle’s split, a line of pigment still dissects it. Your breasts have ballooned and dropped and are marbled with blue veins like river lines on a map and when you go to the toilet it feels ragged and loose, and it’s agony if urine splashes the wound, your whole body winces at the shock.
You’re constipated, badly. The muscle’s ripped at the back of your vagina and you’ve been told it’ll heal with a hard line of scar tissue and you may be incontinent in later life. None of this matters.

Such love.

The rapture, the rapture of that.

He’s soaked into your fingers, nails, clothes, sheets, hair. You’ve never known another body so intimately. The smell of his milky breath, the palms of his hands, the powdery folds of his groin. You’re jealous of his sleep, for it takes him from you. Cole offers to feed him sometimes, to give you a break, and Jack suckles the bottle of your expressed milk as furiously as a calf with a teat. You sleep by your son as close as a lover, your arm round him, face to face, and your nipples drip watery, blue-white milk. Sometimes you think that he’s a succubus, that all you are is a feeding machine and you retract from his voracity. But then he smiles and the love you feel is again wild, out of control, it’s bigger than you. Germaine, poor love, was wrong: this isn’t a catastrophic decline in your quality of life, it’s living made luminous.

You’ve found a kind of peace with him, especially when you’re feeding. You’ve shed all that’s extraneous because, simply, there’s no time any more. You lose yourself staring in whole gold days of him. You know, now, why a man travels home in his lunchtime for his child. Jack’s head smells so strongly of the briny shoreline, of rockpools during low tide and as you sit there holding him,
breathing him in, you are back, suddenly, to summer holidays long ago, to the sky and the ocean and salt and sand. The most powerful non-erotic smell, oh yes. You feel drugged within this wondrous little world, this babymoon in which nothing, for the moment, is allowed to intrude.

every day brings fresh delight in conscious strengthening of body and development of mind

A cheap pizzeria round the corner from your flat. Cole sits before you and Jack is asleep in his car capsule at your side, propped on a seat. Cole straightens his little hat. You appreciate your husband for different reasons now; for changing a nappy without complaint, drying his son so carefully after a bath, holding him into quiet.

Goodness knows when you’ll make love with Cole again, the want has shrivelled from your life as suddenly as it exploded forth and you don’t know when, if ever, it’ll be back. You feel no sadness, it’s just a fact. At this point you cannot tolerate lust and nurturing at the same time. Your fantasies have completely gone. You miss them, but suddenly you can’t conjure them out of thin air. You’re sure, one day, they’ll return; you hope.

Jack wakes and stretches his body as completely as a puppy, his arms over his head and his fists balled. You’re overwhelmed by the crush of love surrounding him. It’s ferocious, the rush of joy, the tenderness of family and friends and strangers surrounding the newborn. God bless the little one says a waiter at the restaurant as you leave and it fills your heart. You smile out loud as you walk down the street, it bursts from you, you cannot hold it in.