Relative Love (58 page)

‘Dad, any chance of a dessert wine from the cellar?’ boomed Peter who, thanks to the Stephen Smith development, was still in the mood for celebrating. ‘To go with these delicious raspberries.’ At a nod from John he left the room to see what he could find. Once in the cellar he took his time, aware that while his own spirits might be soaring, all was not well with the rest of the family. The children were cheerful enough, their faces shining and freckled from time in the sun, their conversation pitted with unintelligible references to in-jokes and joshing as to who had done what to whom; Serena, too, seemed a little happier, which was a turn-up for the books, but Elizabeth and Charlie (even after he had broken the good news about Stephen Smith) were both twitchy as hell, while his parents, no doubt because of the heat and the old dog dying, seemed depressingly drained and subdued. Most disappointing of all, however, was Helen. Naively, perhaps, Peter had hoped that a week’s holiday in the country would take the edge off whatever illness she was suffering from and her anxiety as to the still pending diagnosis. No news, as he kept telling her, was good news. A brain tumour would have had Dr Fuller on the phone in an instant and pulling out all the stops. Yet ever since his arrival from London she had seemed more anxious than ever, saying her head still ached but refusing to take anything, not even the new analgesics he had bought specially in his lunch-hour, recommended by a colleague who had revealed himself as a slave to migraine.

Peter returned to the dining room with a bottle of Sauternes. All of the adults accepted some, apart from Helen who – much to his dismay – promptly excused herself from the table. In pursuit
of an early night, she said, casting him a departing glance that was hard to read. Something between reprimand and supplication. Feeling thoroughly thwarted, but also by now quite concerned, he had just one glass of the Sauternes when he would have liked two, and followed her upstairs.

He found her lying on the bed in the dark, still fully dressed. He eased off his shoes, then went to lie next to her, putting his arm across the back of her pillow. ‘I think we should call Fuller – it’s outrageous that he still hasn’t responded, if only to put our minds at rest.’

‘Peter, he has responded. On Monday. While I was at the lake with the children. When Boots got bitten. Dr Fuller called me then.’ Helen stared at the ceiling rose overhead. Her eyes were accustomed to the dark, and its intricate white circle of carved plasterwork was clearly visible, as was the beaded glass lampshade hanging from its centre. When the light was on the beads cast expanding circular shadows out from the rose, like ripples across still water.

‘He has?’ Peter hoisted himself on to his elbow and looked at her. ‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because,’ continued Helen, steadily, ‘I needed to collect my thoughts.’

Instead of speaking, Peter buried his face in his hands, succumbing in those first few moments of shock to a private miserable rage at this worst of all body-blows fate was now dealing him. Helen sat up and prised his hands from his face. ‘No, it’s not what you think – it’s not so bad as that … It’s … Peter, I’m expecting a baby. The headaches are hormone surges or something. I didn’t feel great with the other two, did I?’

‘You’re pregnant?’ Peter’s voice trembled, whether from relief or shock, he hardly knew himself. ‘How can you be? It’s not possible. I mean, what about the – I thought you said you were in the middle of the menopause. Weren’t you? Aren’t you?’

Helen explained what she thought had happened, while Peter rolled away from her, head in his hands once again. ‘Jesus Christ, I don’t believe this, I just don’t believe it.’

‘I knew you wouldn’t be pleased.’ Helen lay down and crossed her arms.

‘Of course I’m pleased you’re not sick, darling – of course I am,’ he assured her hastily, reaching out to pat her folded hands. ‘But it’s hardly what you’d call good news, now, is it? I mean, we almost decided not to have Chloë, and you’d be the first to admit what a struggle it’s been for you – work and motherhood and so on. A
third
child would be even harder. It would also change everything, make the future so much more complicated —’ He broke off, adding a little too eagerly, ‘You must be – what? Thirteen weeks gone? I mean that’s still … fairly early days, isn’t it?’

‘Probably still early enough to have a termination, if that’s what you mean.’ Helen levered herself into a sitting position and folded her arms back across her chest. ‘But I’m not sure I could have one. I know it’s supposed to be a joint decision and everything and I know it’s what you would ideally want, but I’m the one who would have to go through with it and right now I’m just not sure. A part of me wonders, you see …’ She paused, marshalling the thoughts that had been raging inside her since her call to Kay and Theo’s fall. ‘… whether this baby could be my chance – our chance – to get it
more
right, to find the balance that I haven’t so far between enjoying work and enjoying being a mother. Things have been happening to me this year, Peter, difficult but good things. I’ve tried to explain some of them to you, not very well probably. But the fact is, in spite of all our clashes I’m feeling much closer to Chloë – and Theo too. It’s helped me realise that, although I will always need work and so on, ultimately what matters most in the world are our children. Being a family. I want more of that. This could be my chance to have it, to
enjoy
it properly, to —’

‘It’s that woman, isn’t it? She’s talked you into this, hasn’t she? All her lah-di-dah about getting in touch with feminine feelings, which is all very well until one considers the nitty-gritty of what life is
really
about —’

‘And what is life really about?’ interjected Helen quietly.

‘Practical things, day-to-day stuff – money for starters, work, sleepless nights, not to mention health. Forgive me for being bleak, Helen, but at your age the chances of something being wrong with a baby are pretty high, aren’t they? How would we cope with that, eh? A handicapped child, or brain-damaged or something … Oh, no, oh, Helen, don’t cry, I’m sorry, don’t cry. I know I’m being a brute, but this is so important we can’t just sail into it with our eyes closed. We’ve got to think it through, see all sides and come to the right decision.’

‘I want to have the baby,’ Helen wailed, so loudly that Peter, fearing some other member of the family might be passing along the corridor outside, was tempted to cover her mouth with his hand.

‘Shush, Helen, please. We’ll think about it, okay? We won’t make a decision now. We don’t need to make a decision now. Okay? We’ll just sit on it for a bit, let it sink in, see the right doctors, talk through the options.’ He held her to his chest and stroked her hair, murmuring, ‘I’m sorry to seem unkind, darling, you’re going through a lot, I know that, but I’m here now to go through it
with
you … We’ll sort this out together. Okay? Together.’

‘Theo knows,’ said Helen, her voice thick and high. ‘He overheard me talking to Kay. He thinks I should have it.’

‘Oh, does he? Great, that’s absolutely great,’ muttered Peter, resorting to sarcasm because his head was throbbing and for that moment he had no other cards left to play.

SEPTEMBER

By the first of September the weather in the north of the country had broken, releasing slanting rods of rain that bounced off the hardened earth like a storm of glass arrows. Further south the skies over London and the Home Counties were ranged with billowing clouds, as dark and thick as belched fumes of industrial smoke. The compressing dampness of the heat seemed to suck the oxygen and energy from the air, making each breath feel as if it was being drawn through the stifling mask of a wet flannel. Charlie, buckling his seat-belt in preparation for his flight across the Atlantic, sighed with relief under the funnels of icy air-conditioning and the saccharine smiles of the stewardesses.

Serena, who was refreshing herself under the feeble sprinkle of their
en-suite
shower having sent the children to the Wimbledon Odeon for the afternoon, groaned in recollection of Charlie’s departure and the unsatisfactory manner of their parting. They were like a pair of unbalanced scales – one up, the other down. It was almost as if he had been waiting for her to start to feel better so that he could take the mantle of misery upon himself. Throughout their week in Sussex he had refused to discuss Tina or anything else. He had run, swum, bowled cricket balls – generally played the role of good father – but had treated her as if she was invisible. Since they had returned to London he had left for the office before she was awake and got back when she was on the point of going to bed. When the taxi had arrived to take him to the airport he had been packed and ready for hours, suitcase and laptop parked – with unprecedented clinical efficiency – by the coatstand in the hall. As if he could not wait to be gone. As if he could no longer stand the sight of her. As he had stepped outside, Serena, miscalculating badly, had tried a last shot on the Tina front. She had been quiet on the matter for days and was desperate to move it along, desperate for him to recognise the importance and ingenuity of the plan. Charlie had glowered at her, his face shining with the perspiration of despair rather than heat. ‘Something’s got to change,’ he hissed. ‘Something’s got to change or I can’t go on.’ Taken aback, Serena had still been rallying her thoughts for a reply as he pulled the taxi door shut. She tapped the window, wanting to say something – anything to make the farewell better – but all he did was raise his hand in a single emotionless valedictory wave, such as a chauffeured dignitary might bestow on an ogling stranger.

Pamela, palms round a cup of tea she did not want – it had seemed a tolerable way to fill the dead time between three and half past as she mustered a second wind to get on with preparations for John’s birthday weekend – stared at the leaden canopy of cloud pressing down upon the garden. Any time now, she thought, any time now and it will be over. The storm will break and we shall all be released.

John, drinking an equally unwanted cup of tea and chugging on a pipe within the fortress of his favourite armchair, reached absently with one foot for Boots and found only air.

At Helen’s offices the air-conditioning had broken. With the windows open her papers kept lifting off the desk, as if bent upon escaping the filing cabinet or her stapler. Exposed thus to the street, she could detect with the new super-olfactory powers bestowed on her by her pregnancy
the stale, faintly metallic odour of hardened dog faeces on the pavements outside, mingling with the pungent spices used by the chef in the Indian restaurant across the road. In recent days the aching in her head had shifted to her belly. It was too early for the baby to move but she could already imagine its shadowy shufflings somewhere deep within her abdomen; the first stirrings of a life, which, despite all Peter’s solid, logical arguments, she felt increasingly powerless to resist. The consultant they had seen together on Monday, rushing to Harley Street in their lunch-hour, had been equally cool and rational. It was still relatively early days. A termination was possible, perfectly understandable for a woman a couple of years short of fifty with a busy career and two older children to care for. Except that it didn’t feel possible to Helen. Not just because she could sense the bud of her child, flowering inside her, but because, as she had tried to explain to her husband, it felt like a third and final chance (a God-given chance, despite her agnosticism) to do it right: to embrace instead of fearing motherhood. To cherish the upheaval of love. To go with the flow instead of trying to resist and manage it. No decision had to be made yet, the doctor had said. But soon it would. Probably during the course of the approaching weekend. Ashley House. Again. John’s eightieth this time. Pamela had cracked her whip and, as usual, the entire family was running to do her bidding. As if they hadn’t spent enough time there already, marching to the Harrison tune through most of the summer, neglecting the rhythm of their own family lives in the process. Helen was dreading it, just as she was dreading the inevitable showdown with Peter when she broke the news that, no matter how much common sense he spouted, nothing would stop her having the child. Spina bifida, Downs syndrome, autism, premature labour – she would take the lot. She would take the fucking lot.

Stephen, too, standing at the bus stop near his flat, felt the mushrooming weight of humidity in the air. He was wearing new cheap plastic flip-flops, which rubbed uncomfortably between his big and second toes. His old leather sandals had broken, one vital strap shredding to nothing as he had strode back across Westminster Bridge two weeks before, still choking with indignation at Peter’s arrogant, belittling offer of money to buy his silence. He had taken them off and dropped them into a bin, finding perverse comfort in the gritty warmth of the ground beneath his bare feet.

On getting home he had phoned his editor at once to say that he did not want the added passages about Eric Harrison’s love affair with his sister-in-law included, making no reference to what had happened other than to say that he had decided he had no desire to run the risk of causing pain to the family. The editor had made a joke about being glad there would be no danger of anyone suing them and left it at that. Stephen had put down the phone feeling deflated but also clear-headed. Dreadful as the afternoon had been, he was aware that it marked a turning-point. Rejecting Peter’s insulting proposal – not for one moment tempted by it – had given a tiny boost to his floundering self-esteem. He might be a hopeless case, but he wasn’t that hopeless. He had a toehold at least on some sort of rocky moral highground – more than Peter Harrison anyway, with his bulging cheque book and greed to cover the truth. He had seen at once, from the look of shame on her face and the way she picked at the tab of her Sprite can, that Cassie did not share that greed. She had been as uncomfortable as he was, just as appalled at the level to which they had sunk.

The rush of love he had felt at the sight of her, while painful, had also been reassuring. Amid all the ups and downs of his emotions, it had risen like a phoenix from the ashes of that afternoon as something beautiful and certain, something that transcended the cruel inconvenience of non-
reciprocation or hurt to his pride. All that was now accepted. What remained was the simplicity of his passion and within that his even simpler desire for the happiness of Cassie Harrison above his own. In time he would move on, find a steady job, marry someone, maybe even have children, consigning to memory what he had felt for Cassie; a jewel in his heart. In the meantime she was unhappy, Stephen knew, not just because of the shame of being party to a bribe but because the love of
her
life had rejected her. The doctor. Daniel Lambert. A GP in Putney. Bound by duty to a wife he did not love and three young children whom he did love, fiercely.