‘A bit stunned,’ she admitted. ‘Every rational instinct was telling me I was wrong. I was just about ready to believe I was imagining things. It's like…you try to prepare for the worst, but in your heart you really expect that everything will be fine. You keep thinking, As long as I'm expecting a problem there won't be one. If I'm psychologically prepared to lose this baby, I'm going to be over the moon if all that happens is it comes out with a hare lip.’
‘And has he?’ Deacon had to clear a frog from his throat. ‘A hare lip?’
‘No. He's very pretty. Except…’
Brodie saw the dread in his face and wished she hadn't paused. ‘Except?’
‘He has white eyes.’
‘He's blind?’ She heard the crack in his voice, wasn't sure if Deacon had heard it himself. Then his heavy brows gathered in a frown. ‘How do you know? They don't open their eyes for the first two weeks.’
‘I think that's puppies,’ murmured Brodie. ‘He has retinoblastoma. It's a cancer, and he has it in both eyes. They're going to try to save one of them, but it's hard to know how much vision he'll have. The other one, the safest thing is
to remove it.’ She managed a mournful smile. ‘Don't think he's going to be a freak, Jack. He isn't – he's beautiful. He just rooted around in the genes of one of us and pulled out a short straw. The good news is, ninety per cent of children born with this condition in the UK survive. Ninety per cent in the world as a whole die.’
She'd never seen Deacon look so shocked. She resisted the urge to keep talking, waited for what she'd said already to sink in. Waited for a response.
Finally he said, ‘He could die?’ His voice was hollow, barely his own.
‘It's possible,’ she acknowledged, ‘but unlikely. He's a racehorse with a ten-to-one chance of winning. Wouldn't you put money on him?’
Distractedly, Deacon ran his big blunt fingers through his hair. He hardly knew what to say. ‘And they want to take one eye out?’
‘It's a matter of balancing risk against benefit.’ Brodie had had fifteen hours to get her head round some of this, to start to understand the implications, for the child and for herself. She found herself in a strange place, knowing this was something to grieve for and not being ready to grieve. She had a live child who had every chance of surviving – for now that seemed enough. She felt no urge to shriek and beat her head against the wall.
She was aware that this sense of unnatural calm might not last, that the diagnosis would bring immutable problems and difficult decisions soon enough. But the rational part of her brain reckoned that was all the more reason to use this quiet time, when even looking after the new baby was being done
by other people, to get done those things she most needed calmness for. Like telling the child's father as much as she knew, so he'd know what they were dealing with before he spoke to the doctors, so he could deal with the grief in privacy.
Oddly enough, telling him about it, having to explain carefully, was helping her too. Was making it real for her by manageable degrees, climbing the mountain one rock at a time.
‘By removing the worst eye they limit the risk of cancer spreading to the central nervous system. Then they treat the cancer in the other eye in the hope of giving him some vision. He's never going to be a pilot. But he might have some sight. He might at least be able to distinguish between light and dark well enough to avoid walking into things.’
It wasn't a joke. But he looked at her as if she was joking, and the levity was a knife in his heart. His eyes were swimming. She'd never seen that before. With all they'd been through – with all she'd done to him – she'd never seen him cry. In a single movement she swung her legs out of the bed and put her arms around him. They hadn't held one another for maybe seven months. This child was the product of almost the last time they were that comfortable together. So she was amazed at how right it felt to be holding him again. And almost equally amazed that he let her.
‘Jack, there are worse things thaxi being blind. It's rotten luck and it's going to make his life difficult – but there's still a whole host of things he'll be able to do if he wants to. He'll learn to read through his fingertips, and if he's smart enough he can go to university. He can be a businessman, a lawyer, a musician, a politician, a teacher. He can be anything that
demands more of his brain than his hand-eye coordination. He can't be a surgeon. He'll never be a professional sportsman, but if he enjoys sports there'll be lots open to him. He can enjoy the company of friends as much as you do -well, as much as I do. He can travel, he'll be able to live independently, he'll be able to marry and raise a family. That's a rich life I'm describing, Jack. Don't feel too sorry for him until you see what he can accomplish.’
To an extent she was whistling in the wind. No amount of positive thinking altered the fact that this baby was unlike the vast majority of babies in that his life, and the life of his family, would get harder and more complicated the more he grew. As an infant his needs wouldn't be very different from any other's: food, warmth, keeping clean, being loved. You expect a lot of work, and a lot of sleepless nights, with a new baby. It's what new babies are for. But by degrees they start fitting in with your routine, and when you slot them into the school system you get a bit of your own life back.
But this baby, and therefore also his mother, had extra hurdles to negotiate. There would be hospital visits, and the anxiety that went with them. There could be repeated surgery. There could be vital decisions to take regarding how much risk was justified by how much benefit.
Even if all went well, this child was never going to get what he needed at his neighbourhood primary school. There would be decisions to make about that too – does a child with special needs get a better overall deal at a specialist school or with extra support in the mainstream? Whatever she decided, there would always be extra time, extra work and extra worry involved.
Which held implications for her other child. Perhaps the hardest thing she'd have to do was stop the baby monopolising her, somehow make the space in which her relationship with Paddy, which had been the chief treasure of her life, could go on flourishing. She wasn't yet sure how but she knew she would do that. She had to do that. But she sure as hell couldn't do a full-time job as well.
Deacon was looking at her with raw, glistening, astonished, above all respectful eyes. As if he didn't know her; as if they'd just met. He wasn't a fool – he knew what this meant, to her and to her future. He knew that being positive in the face of tragedy – because it was a tragedy, however bravely she faced it and however well she coped – took real, genuine, accept-no-substitutes courage. And he'd forgotten that was the one thing she had in abundance. She could be sharp to the point of shrewish, she could be selfish, she could be arrogant. She could be stubborn and demanding, quick to anger, quick to take offence. She could make massive, world-stopping mistakes and yet be devastatingly intolerant of other people's flaws.
But with all that, she had the heart of a lion. Where the interests of anyone close to her were involved she seemed to have infinite reserves of physical and moral courage. She would not be beaten. She refused point-blank to even consider the possibility of defeat. She would hurl herself against a brick wall until the bricks fell.
Deacon swallowed. He said, ‘Marry me.’
Brodie was so surprised she all but recoiled. ‘No!’
‘Marry me,’ he said again, more forcefully.
He watched emotions flicker across her face like aurorae
flickering across a polar sky. He identified amazement, and amusement, and puzzlement, and for a moment something that could almost have been affection. Each came and went without settling in her expression. She knelt on the bed peering into his craggy tearstained face as if seeking an answer there. ‘No,’ she said again.
‘This is going to be hard work, Brodie. You don't have to do it alone.’
‘I won't be doing it alone,’ she said. ‘Of course I'm going to need you. Of course I'm going to count on you. I don't need a piece of paper to tell me that I can.’
‘Raising a child – any child, let alone this one – is a job for a couple. I can help – I want to help. Financially, emotionally, practically. This is something we should do together. I'll buy a bigger house – a family house. We should have done it before. We owe it to this baby to do it now.’
Brodie went on looking at him, seeing the earnestness, the determination in his eyes. She had no doubt it was a genuine offer, not merely a sudden improbable surfeit of sentimentality. It was the first time he'd said it. But it wasn't the first time either of them had wondered about it and thought that was probably where they'd end up. They'd had worse ideas in their time together.
At length Brodie said quietly, ‘This is a really bad time to be making life-altering decisions. I'll tell you what, Jack. If you want to, ask me again on this baby's first birthday. Let's see where we are then, where we stand. What we want. Ask me again in a year's time and I might say yes.’
They sat for a long time after that in silence. But it was a different silence. Companionable. Satisfied.
Finally Brodie reached for her dressing-gown. ‘Come on -it's time you met your son. By the way,’ she added, as if the thought had just occurred to her – which it had, although it arrived fully formed, signed, sealed and delivered as if
someone
had been thinking about it. ‘His name is Jonathan.’
Deacon's craggy features softened in a slow smile. ‘Of course it is,’ he said.