The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (50 page)

Oh how eager everyone was to welcome her back into the family, normal, herself: they ignored, because she wanted them to, her tenseness, her tiredness.

David would put his arms around her and say, ‘Oh, Harriet, you
are
all right?’

Two months to go.

‘Yes, yes, I am. Really.’ And she silently addressed the being crouching in her womb: ‘Now you shut up or I’ll take another pill.’ It seemed to her that it listened and understood.

A scene in the kitchen: family supper. Harriet and David commanded the head and foot of the table. Luke and Helen sat together on one side. Alice held little Paul, who could never get enough cuddling: he got so little from his mother. Jane sat near Dorothy’s place, who was at the stove, ladle in her hand. Harriet looked at her mother, a large healthy woman in her fifties, with her bush of iron-grey curls, and her pink fresh face, and her large blue eyes ‘like lollipops’ – a family joke – and thought, I’m as strong as she is. I’ll survive. And she smiled at Alice, thin, wiry, tough, energetic, and thought again, These elderly women, look at them, they’ve survived everything.

Dorothy was filling their plates with vegetable soup. She sat down, at leisure, with her own plate. Bread was passed around, a big basket of it.

Happiness had returned and sat at the table with them – and Harriet’s hand, unseen below the level of the table-top, was held over the enemy:
You be quiet.

‘A story,’ said Luke. ‘A story, Daddy.’

On days when there was school tomorrow, the children had supper early and went up to bed. But on Fridays and Saturdays they ate with the grown-ups and a story was told during the meal.

Here, enclosed in the hospitable kitchen, it was warm and steamy with the smell of soup. Outside was a blustering night. May. The curtains were not drawn. A branch stretched across the window: a spring branch, full of pristine blossom, pale in the twilight, but the air that beat on the panes had been blasted down south from some iceberg or snow-field. Harriet was spooning in soup, and broke hunks of bread into it. Her appetite was enormous, insatiable – so bad she was ashamed and raided the fridge when no one could see her. She would interrupt her nocturnal peregrinations to stuff into herself anything she could find to eat. She even had secret caches like an alcoholic’s hoards, only it was food: chocolate, bread, pies.

David began, ‘Two children, a boy and a girl, set off one day to have an adventure in the forest. They went a long way into the forest. It was hot outside, but under the trees it was cool. They saw a deer lying down, resting. Birds flitted about and sang to them.’

David stopped to eat soup. Helen and Luke sat with their eyes on his face, motionless. Jane listened, too, but differently. Four years old: she looked to see how they took in the story, and copied them, fixing her eyes on her father.

‘Do the birds sing to us?’ enquired Luke doubtfully, frowning. He had a strong, severe face; and, as always, he demanded the truth. ‘When we are in the garden and the birds sing, are they singing to us?’

‘Of course not, silly,’ said Helen. ‘It was a magic forest.’

‘Of course they sing to you,’ said Dorothy firmly.

The children, first hunger appeased, sat with their spoons in their hands, wide eyes on their father. Harriet’s heart oppressed her: it was their open trustfulness, their helplessness. The television was on: a professionally cool voice was telling about some murders in a London suburb. She lumbered over to turn it off, plodded back, served herself more soup, piled in the bread…She listened to David’s voice, tonight the storyteller’s voice, so often heard in the kitchen, hers, Dorothy’s –

‘When the children got hungry, they found a bush covered with chocolate sweets. Then they found a pool made of orange juice. They were sleepy. They lay under a bush near the friendly deer. When they woke up, they said thank you to the deer and went on.

‘Suddenly the little girl found she was alone. She and her brother had lost each other. She wanted to go home. She did not know which way to walk. She was looking for another friendly deer, or a sparrow, or any bird, to tell her where she was and show her the way out of the forest. She wandered about for a long time, and then she was thirsty again. She bent over a pool wondering if it would be orange juice, but it was water, clear pure forest water, and it tasted of plants and stones. She drank, from her hands.’ Here the two older children reached for their glasses and drank. Jane interlaced her fingers to form a cup.

‘She sat there by the pool. Soon it would be dark. She bent over the pool to see if there was a fish who could tell her the way out of the forest, but she saw something she didn’t expect. It was a girl’s face, and she was looking straight up at her. It was a face she had never seen in her whole life. This strange girl was smiling, but it was a nasty smile, not friendly, and the little girl thought this other girl was going to reach up out of the water and pull her down into it…’

A heavy, shocked, indrawn breath from Dorothy, who felt this was too frightening at bedtime.

But the children sat frozen with attention. Little Paul, grizzling on Alice’s lap, earned from Helen ‘Be quiet, shut
up
.’

‘Phyllis – that was the little girl’s name – had never seen such frightening eyes.’

‘Is that Phyllis in my nursery school?’ asked Jane.

‘No,’ said Luke.

‘No,’ said Helen.

David had stopped. Apparently for inspiration. He was frowning, had an abstracted look, as if he had a headache. As for Harriet, she was wanting to cry out, ‘Stop – stop it! You are talking about me – this is what you are feeling about me!’ She could not believe that David did not see it.

‘What happened then?’ asked Luke. ‘What happened exactly?’

‘Wait,’ said David. ‘Wait, my soup…’ He ate.

‘I know what happened,’ said Dorothy firmly. ‘Phyllis decided to leave that nasty pool
at once.
She ran fast along a path until she bumped into her brother. He was looking for her. They held each other’s hands and they ran out of the forest and they ran safely home.’

‘That was it, exactly,’ said David. He was smiling ruefully, but looked bemused.

‘And that was what really really happened, Daddy?’ demanded Luke, anxious.

‘Absolutely,’ said David.

‘Who was that girl in the pool, who was she?’ demanded Helen, looking from her father to her mother.

‘Oh just a magic girl,’ said David casually. ‘I have no idea. She just materialized.’

‘What’s materialized?’ asked Luke, saying the word with difficulty.

‘It’s bedtime,’ said Dorothy.

‘But what is materialized?’ Luke insisted.

‘We haven’t had any pudding!’ cried Jane.

‘There’s no pudding, there’s fruit,’ said Dorothy.

‘What is materialized, Daddy?’ Luke anxiously persisted.

‘It is when something that wasn’t there suddenly is there.’

‘But why, why is it?’ wailed Helen, distressed.

Dorothy said, ‘Upstairs, children.’

Helen took an apple, Luke another, and Jane lifted some bread off her mother’s plate with a quick, conscious, mischievous smile. She had not been upset by the story.

The three children went noisily up the stairs, and baby Paul looked after them, excluded, his face puckering, ready to cry.

Alice swiftly got up with him and went after the children, saying, ‘No one told me stories when I was little!’ It was hard to tell whether this was a complaint or, ‘and I’m better for it.’

Suddenly, Luke appeared on the landing. ‘Is everyone coming for the summer holidays?’

David glanced worriedly at Harriet – then away. Dorothy looked steadily at her daughter.

‘Yes,’ said Harriet weakly. ‘Of course.’

Luke called up the stairs, ‘She said, “Of course”!’

Dorothy said, ‘You will have just had this baby.’

‘It’s up to you and Alice,’ said Harriet. ‘If you feel you can’t cope, then you must say so.’

‘It seems to me that I cope,’ said Dorothy, dry.

‘Yes, I know,’ said David quickly. ‘You’re marvellous.’

‘And you don’t know what you would have done –’

‘Don’t,’ said David. And to Harriet: ‘Much better that we put things off, and have them all at Christmas.’

‘The children will be so disappointed,’ said Harriet.

This did not sound like her old insistence: it was flat and indifferent. Her husband and her mother examined her curiously–so Harriet felt their inspection of her, detached, unkind. She said grimly, ‘Well, perhaps this baby will be born early. Surely it must.’ She laughed painfully, and then suddenly she got up, exclaiming, ‘I
must
move, I have to!’ and began her dogged, painful hour-after-hour walk back and forth, up and down.

She went to Dr Brett at eight months and asked him to induce the baby.

He looked critically at her and said, ‘I thought you didn’t believe in it.’

‘I don’t. But this is different.’

‘Not that I can see.’

‘It’s because you don’t want to. It’s not you who is carrying this – ‘ She cut off
monster,
afraid of antagonizing him. ‘Look,’ she said, trying to sound calm, but her voice was angry and accusing, ‘would you say I was an unreasonable woman? Hysterical? Difficult? Just a pathetic hysterical woman?’

‘I would say that you are utterly worn out. Bone tired. You never did find being pregnant easy, did you? Have you forgotten? I’ve had you sitting here through four pregnancies, with all kinds of problems – all credit to you, you put up with everything very well.’

‘But it’s not the same thing, it is
absolutely
different, I don’t understand why you can’t see it. Can’t you
see
it?’ She thrust out her stomach, which was heaving and – as she felt it – seething as she sat there.

The doctor looked dubiously at her stomach, sighed, and wrote her a prescription for more sedatives.

No, he couldn’t see it. Rather, he wouldn’t – that was the point. Not only he, but all of them, they
wouldn’t
see how different this was.

And as she walked, strode, ran along the country lanes, she fantasized that she took the big kitchen knife, cut open her own stomach, lifted out the child –and when they actually set eyes on each other, after this long blind struggle, what would she see?

Soon, nearly a month early, the pains began. Once she started, labour had always gone quickly. Dorothy rang David in London, and at once took Harriet into hospital. For the first time, Harriet had insisted on a hospital, surprising everyone.

By the time she was there, there were strong wrenching pains, worse, she knew, than ever in the past. The baby seemed to be fighting its way out. She was bruised – she knew it; inside she must be one enormous black bruise…and no one would ever know.

When at last the moment came when she could be given oblivion, she cried out, ‘Thank God, thank God, it’s over at last!’ She heard a nurse saying, ‘This one’s a real little toughie, look at him.’ Then a woman’s voice was saying, ‘Mrs Lovatt, Mrs Lovatt, are you with us? Come back to us! Your husband is here, dear. You’ve a healthy boy.’

‘A real little wrestler,’ said Dr Brett. ‘He came out fighting the whole world.’

She raised herself with difficulty, because the lower half of her body was too sore to move. The baby was put into her arms. Eleven pounds of him. The others had not been more than seven pounds. He was muscular, yellowish, long. It seemed as if he were trying to stand up, pushing his feet into her side.

‘He’s a funny little chap,’ said David, and he sounded dismayed.

He was not a pretty baby. He did not look like a baby at all. He had a heavy-shouldered hunched look, as if he were crouching there as he lay. His forehead sloped from his eyes to his crown. His hair grew in an unusual pattern from the double crown where started a wedge or triangle that came low on the forehead, the hair lying forward in a thick yellowish stubble, while the side and back hair grew downwards. His hands were thick and heavy, with pads of muscle in the palms. He opened his eyes and looked straight up into his mother’s face. They were focused greeny-yellow eyes, like lumps of soapstone. She had been waiting to exchange looks with the creature who, she had been sure, had been trying to hurt her, but there was no recognition there. And her heart contracted with pity for him: poor little beast, his mother disliking him so much…But she heard herself say nervously, though she tried to laugh, ‘He’s like a troll, or a goblin or something.’ And she cuddled him, to make up. But he was stiff and heavy.

‘Come, Harriet,’ said Dr Brett, annoyed at her. And she thought, I’ve been through this with Dr bloody Brett four times and it’s always been marvellous, and now he’s like a schoolmaster.

She bared her breast and offered the child her nipple. The nurses, the doctor, her mother, and her husband stood watching, with the smiles that this moment imposed. But there was none of the atmosphere of festival, of achievement, no champagne; on the contrary, there was a strain in everyone, apprehension. A strong, sucking reflex, and then hard gums clamped down on her nipple, and she winced. The child looked at her and bit, hard.

‘
Well
,’ said Harriet, trying to laugh, removing him.

‘Try him a little more,’ said the nurse.

He was not crying. Harriet held him out, challenging the nurse with her eyes to take him. The nurse, mouth tight with disapproval, took the baby, and he was put unprotesting in his cot. He had not cried since he was born, except for a first roar of protest, or perhaps surprise.

The four children were brought in to see their new brother in the hospital ward. The two other women who shared the room with her had got out of bed and taken their babies to a day-room. Harriet had refused to get out of bed. She told the doctors and nurses she needed time for her internal bruises to heal; she said this almost defiantly, carelessly, indifferent to their critical looks.

David stood at the end of the bed, holding baby Paul.

Harriet yearned for this baby, this little child, from whom she had been separated so soon. She loved the look of him, the comical soft little face, with soft blue eyes – like bluebells, she thought–and his soft little limbs…it was as if she were sliding her hands along them, and then enclosing his feet in her palms. A real baby, a real little child…