Authors: Ian McEwan
‘I had to wait, I had to have time. When I first found out, last July, I was furious with myself, and with you. I felt cheated. It seemed so unfair. I came out here for solitude, I wanted to make myself stronger. This seemed exactly the wrong time, and I was thinking seriously about an abortion. But all that was just a moment of adjustment, two or three weeks. Being alone by choice can make you very clear-headed. I knew I couldn’t really face another loss. And the more I thought about it, it did seem extraordinary, the ease with which it happened. Remember how long it took us to have Kate? I realised that what I meant by the wrong time was really the inconvenient time. I began to think of this as a gift. There had to be a deeper patterning to time, its wrong and right moments can’t be that limited.
‘I could have written to you then. I knew you’d come. We would have been all right, we would have settled things and thought that the worst was behind us. But I knew that was dangerous for me. Important matters would have been buried if I’d called you then. I came out here to face up to losing Kate. It was my task, my work, if you like, more important to me than our marriage, or my music. It was
more important than the new baby. If I didn’t face it, I thought I could go under. There were some bad, bad days when I wanted to die. Each time that came back it was stronger and more attractive. I knew what I had to do. I had to stop running after her in my mind. I had to stop aching for her, expecting her at the front door, seeing her in the woods, or hearing her voice whenever I boiled the kettle. I had to go on loving her, but I had to stop desiring her. For that I needed time, and if it took longer than the pregnancy, that would have to be how it was. I haven’t been completely successful …’
Her gaze shifted to a corner of the room. The old grief was constricting her voice. He felt it flare his nostrils. They waited for it to go. The curtains were drawn wide apart, and in the uppermost panes was the whitish glow of the moon’s approach down the side of the cottage. On a table under the window was a package of medical items ready for use by the midwife. By it, obscured by the shadow of a wardrobe, was a vase of daffodils.
‘But I’ve made some progress. I tried not to shy away from the thought of her. I tried to meditate on her, on the loss, rather than brood on it. After six months I began to take comfort from the idea of the new baby. That grew, but it was so slow, Stephen. I still had days when it seemed I’d got nowhere at all. One afternoon the quartet came out. They brought an old friend from college, a cellist, so we played, or tried to play, the Schubert C Major Quintet. When we got to the Adagio, you know how lovely it is, I didn’t cry. In fact, I was happy. That was an important step. I started playing again properly. I’d stopped because it had become an evasion. I was taking on these difficult pieces and working at them furiously, anything to stop thinking. Now I was playing for its own sake, I was looking forward to the baby coming, and I was beginning to think about you and remember, and really feel how much we loved each other. I felt it all come back. I’m sorry it had to be this
way. But I knew this was right. I’m ready to go on now. I had to trust that you were getting stronger too, going your own way. So at last I phoned you, all yesterday afternoon. I couldn’t bear it when you weren’t there …’
He wanted to show her how much stronger he was. In his elation, he was ready to spring up from the bed and demonstrate his rebuilt backhand, or take up a pen and show off his calligraphy, compose a poem for her in Classical Arabic. But he could not let go of her hands. The pure grey eyes shifted their attention from his left to his right eye, down to his mouth, then back. Her mouth was ripe with its held-in smile. She pushed the covers away and guided his hand. The head was engaged, the skin above the tangle of hair was hot and hard, almost like bone. Higher up, below her right breast, he felt a fluttering against his palm, the kicking of a foot.
He was about to speak and looked up at her. She whispered, ‘She was a lovely daughter, a lovely girl.’
He nodded, stunned. It was then, three years late, that they began to cry together at last for the lost, irreplaceable child who would not grow older for them, whose characteristic look and movement could never be dispelled by time. They held on to each other, and as it became easier and less bitter, they started to talk through their crying as best they could, to promise their love through it, to the baby, to one another, to their parents, to Thelma. In the wild expansiveness of their sorrow they undertook to heal everyone and everything, the Government, the country, the planet, but they would start with themselves; and while they could never redeem the loss of their daughter, they would love her through their new child, and never close their minds to the possibility of her return.
Throughout this they lay face to face on the bed. Now Julie kicked the bedclothes clear of her feet. She lifted her nightdress and turned and crouched on all fours. She spread her elbows until her face was pressed into the pillows. He
murmured her name at the sight – in a body so dignified and potent – of the sweet helplessness of her raised buttocks, untidily framed by the embroidered hem of her nightie. The silence resounded after all their promises, and merged with the stirring of a billion needles in the plantation. He moved inside her gently. Something was gathering up around them, growing louder, tasting sweeter, getting warmer, brighter, all senses were synthesising, condensing in the idea of increase. She called out quietly, over and again, drawn out sounds of ‘oh’, each of which dipped and rose in pitch like a baffled question. Later, she shouted something joyful he could not make out, lost as he was to meaning. Then she was pulling away from him, she wanted to be on her back. She settled herself squarely and drew a sharp breath. She rested the tips of the fingers of one hand on the lower part of her belly and massaged herself lightly. He remembered the pretty name, effleurage. With the other hand she clasped him, squeezing tighter as the contraction gained in intensity, in this way communicating its progress. She was prepared, she was controlling her breathing, making steady, rhythmic exhalations that accelerated into shallow panting as she approached the peak. She was off on this second journey alone, all he could do was run along the shore and call encouragement. She was going from him, lost to the process. Her fingers dug into his hand. His pulse was banging in his temples, disturbing his vision. He tried to keep the fear out of his voice. He had to remember his lines. ‘Ride it, ride this wave, don’t fight it, float with it, float …’ Then he joined in her panting, making a heavy emphasis on the breathing out, slowing down as the grip on his hand loosened. He suspected that the form of his participation had been devised by medical authorities to oppose the panic of paternal helplessness.
As the contraction passed they took a deep breath together. Julie cupped her hands over her mouth to counter the sickness of hyperventilation. She said something, but
her words were muffled. He waited. She dropped her hands and smiled wryly. They returned to the room, and to themselves, as though emerging from shelter after a storm. He could not recall what they had been talking about, or whether they had been talking. It did not matter.
‘Do you remember it all?’ Julie said. She was not asking him to reminisce. She wanted to know if he knew what to do.
He nodded. He would have liked to take a peek at one of Julie’s books. There were precise stages of labour, as he half remembered, different breathing techniques associated with them, time to hold back, time when it was important to let go. But there was a long day ahead. There would be leisure for that. And he remembered the last time clearly enough. He had been brow mopper, telephonist, flower man, champagne pourer, midwife’s dogsbody, and he had talked her through. Afterwards she had told him he had been useful. His impression was his value had been more symbolic. He dressed, then crossed the room and found a pair of Julie’s socks to put on.
‘Where’s the midwife’s number?’
‘In my coat pocket, hanging behind the door. Put the kettle on as you go out. Make two hot-water bottles when you come back. And a pot of jasmine tea. Both the fires need building up.’ He remembered too these husky commands, the mother’s absolute right to order her own domain.
Outside the dawn was still confined to the eastern sky. The clouds had disappeared entirely and for the first time he saw stars. The moon was still the main source of light. He walked quickly up the brick path in his wet shoes, noticing that Julie had taken the precaution of sweeping the snow clear. The phone box on the corner had no light inside and he had to feel for the numbers. When he got through, he found he was talking to a receptionist in a medical centre in the nearby town. He was not to worry. The midwife would be contacted, and would arrive within the hour.
On the way back, as he walked the short stretch of road he had run along less than an hour before, he slowed and tried to take the measure of the transformations; but he was incapable of reflection; he could think only of details, of tea, logs, and hot-water bottles.
The cottage was quiet when he returned. He prepared the tea tray, fetched wood from a lean-to outside, built up the downstairs fire and filled a basket for the one upstairs. He scanned Julie’s shelves without success for books on birth. To buck himself up with a show of competence, he stood at the kitchen sink for several minutes scrubbing his hands.
Balancing the tray on the basket, and holding the hot-water bottles under his arm, he tottered upstairs. Julie was sprawled on her back. Her hair was damp and clung to her neck and forehead. She was agitated, querulous.
‘You said you wouldn’t be long. What have you been doing?’
He was about to dispute with her when he remembered that irritability could be part of the process, one of the markers along the route. But surely that should have come later. Had they missed out some stages? He gave her the tea and offered her a massage. She could not bear to be touched, however. He arranged the bedclothes for her. Recalling how furious she had been before when the midwife had spoken to her like a child, he adopted the tone of a soft-spoken football coach.
‘Move your leg, this way. Good. Everything’s looking good. We’re on course.’ And so on. She was not really mollified, but she complied, and she drank the tea.
He was blowing on the embers, encouraging a flame across a handful of twigs, when he heard her call his name. He hurried over. She was shaking her head. She made as if to place her fingers over her belly, and then gave up.
‘I’ve been up all night. I’m too tired for this, I’m not ready.’
His words of encouragement were cut off by a long shout. She fought to inhale, and there was another, a prolonged hoot of astonishment.
‘Ride it out, ride the wave …’ he began to say. Again, his words were cut off. He had lost his place. Exhortations to rhythmic breathing were now inane. A gale had torn the instructions away from him. She held his forearm with both hands in a fierce grip. Her teeth were bared, the muscles and tendons of her neck were stretching to breaking point. He was lost. He could give her nothing more than his forearm.
He called out to her, ‘Julie, Julie, I’m here with you.’
But she was alone. She was drawing breath and shouting again, this time wildly, as though in exhilaration, and when she had no more air in her lungs, it did not matter, the shout had to go on, and on. The contraction lifted her off her back and twisted her on to her side. The sheet was still gathered up to her waist and had knotted itself round her. He felt the bed frame tremble with her effort. There was a final click at the back of her throat and she was drawing breath again, tossing her head as she did so. When she looked at him, past him, her eyes were bright, wide with purpose. The brief despair had gone. She was back in control. He thought she was about to speak, but the grip on his arm was tightening again and she was away. Her lips shivered as they stretched tighter over her teeth and from deep in her chest came a strangled groan, a bottled-up, gurgling sound of colossal, straining effort. Then it tapered away, and she let her head fall back against the pillows.
She took deep breaths and spoke in a surprisingly normal voice. ‘I need a cold drink, a glass of water.’ He was about to stand when she restrained him. ‘But I don’t want you to go away. I think it might be coming.’
‘No, no. The midwife isn’t here yet.’
She smiled as if he had made a joke for her benefit. ‘Tell me what you can see.’
He had to reach under her to get the sheet clear.
There was a shock, a jarring, a slowing down as he entered dream time. A quietness enveloped him. He had come before a presence, a revelation. He was staring down at the back of a protruding head. No other part of the body was visible. It faced down into the wet sheet. In its silence and complete stillness there was an accusation. Had you forgotten me? Did you not realise it was me all along? I am here. I am not alive. He was looking at the whorl of wet hair about the crown. There was no movement, no pulse, no breathing. It was not alive, it was a head on the block, and yet the demand was clear and pressing. This was my move. Now what is yours? Perhaps a second had passed since he had lifted back the sheet. He put out his hand. It was a blue-white marble sculpture he was touching, both inert and full of intent. It was cold, the wetness was cold, and beneath that there was a warmth, but too faint, the residual, borrowed warmth of Julie’s body. That it was suddenly and obviously there, a person not from another town or from a different country, but from life itself, the simplicity of that, was communicating to him a clarity and precision of purpose. He heard himself say something reassuring to Julie, while he himself was comforted by a memory, brief and clear like a firework, of a sunlit country road, of wreckage and a head. His thoughts were resolving into simple, elementary shapes. This is really all we have got, this increase, this matter of life loving itself, everything we have has to come from this.
Julie was not yet ready to push. She was recovering her strength. He slid his hand round to the face, found the mouth and used his little finger to clear it of mucus. There was no breath. He moved his fingers down, below the lip of Julie’s taut skin, to find the hidden shoulder. He could feel the cord there, thick and robust, a pulsing creature wound twice in a noose about the neck. He worked his forefinger round and pulled cautiously. The cord came easily, copiously, and as he lifted it clear of the head, Julie gave
birth – he saw in an instant how active and generous the verb was – she summoned her will and her physical strength and gave. With a creaking, waxy sound the child slid into his hands. He saw only the long back, powerful and slippery, with grooved, muscular spine. The cord, still beating, hung across the shoulder and tangled round a foot. He was only the catcher, not the home, and his one thought was to return the child to its mother. As he was lifting it across they heard a snuffling sound and a single lucid cry. It lay face down with an ear towards its mother’s heart. They drew the covers over it. Because the hot-water bottles were too heavy and hot, Stephen climbed into bed beside Julie and they kept the baby warm between them. The breathing was settling into a rhythm, and a warmer colour, a bloom of deep pink, was suffusing its skin.