The Private Parts of Women (14 page)

‘Go and get Daddy, darling,' I managed to say.

The day was like that. Waves of stupendous, bone-mashing pain, existing beside me, filling the rooms, my body frozen. I could not breathe through it. I was helpless. I could not even think. Richard soon stopped telling me to pull myself together. I think even he was scared. He got a friend to pick up Robin and phoned Pauline who had been waiting, bags packed, poised by her front door probably, for the past month. The midwife came but there was no question of a home delivery. ‘Just put me to sleep,' I begged whenever I could get a breath. I vaguely remember the ambulance jolting, the pain squeezed in there with me. Time distorted. I was injected with something.

‘Darling, you're hysterical.' Richard loomed over the bed. ‘It'll be all right. Try and get a grip.'

‘Fuck off Dr Goodie,' I said. I think I might have laughed, anyway I heard laughter. I remember monitors and a sudden panic about foetal distress and thinking that I was dying. I didn't think about Robin at all. I was beyond that. I would have been glad, would have been grateful to die just to stop it. Then I remember nothing.

Billie was born by emergency Caesarean section. She was badly distressed and very tiny. ‘Looks prem,' I heard someone say. ‘Placental insufficiency,' I heard and felt criticised. I didn't much want to see her. I was glad she wasn't a boy – I thought Robin would have been more jealous of a baby brother. All I wanted to do when I woke, groggy and sore the next morning was to go home, back to Robin, and forget the whole episode.

But we stayed in hospital for a week, Billie and me. Richard came twice a day with flowers, newspapers, good sandwiches – the hospital food was impossible – fruit, chocolate and his best bedside manner. Pauline and Robin came every afternoon. Robin got in bed with me and I sniffed his silky hair and marvelled at how huge he was, how huge his face and hands compared with the skinny baby they were bringing me every day to try and feed.

She was a difficult baby. She didn't feed well. I don't think she liked my breasts, she struggled and wailed and hurt my wound with her kicking legs. She had very pointed toes, the second one longer than the first like no one in my family's – like Richard's. She was like an alien baby. I kept thinking I'd got the wrong one that soon they would bring me mine and I would like it. But she
was
mine, Richard's. Pauline was full of how like Richard's sister Lucy as a baby she was, the dead spit. I wanted my mum to be there. I wanted to ask her what you do when you don't like your baby. I couldn't tell Richard or Pauline or any of my friends who came with books and Baby-Gros.

I dreamt one night they did come, Mum and Dad and Bonny. Mum was holding Billie wrapped up in a clear sheet of polythene like a doll. Her eyes were shut. ‘Won't she suffocate?' I asked. ‘Yes, but that's quite normal,' my mum said. Bonny licked my hand and my dad said, ‘I can see you in her, as a baby, the dead spit.'

I woke up and looked at Billie, but she was nothing like me, nothing.

‘Robin's bought a present for his sister,' Pauline said. They'd brought a hideous pink teddy-bear. Robin's hair was all wrong, wetted and combed with a parting instead of all tumbled and curly and he held Pauline's hand and didn't immediately run to me. I thought he was a traitor.

‘Granny brought it but I
choosed
it,' he said proudly. When I hugged him I could smell Pauline, her face-powder and perfume.

‘I'm coming home the day after tomorrow,' I said.

‘And the baby?'

‘A few days more, she's out of Special Care, they just want her to gain a couple more ounces.'

‘You're coming home
without
her? What about feeding?'

‘She prefers formula,' I said. Richard was annoyed that I wouldn't persevere with breast-feeding, ‘Breast milk is designed for babies,' he said. ‘It's what I tell all my mums.' ‘You feed her then,' I said. ‘I've heard its possible, if you take female hormones and let her keep sucking.' He gave me his long suffering look.

I tried again but Billie just didn't like it and nor did I so we gave up. It meant that Richard could get up in the night with her, and that suited me.

It did get better. When Billie learned to smile and gurgle I started to quite like her. Robin loved her. I think he knew I didn't and was puzzled. He didn't feel betrayed. She was his favourite toy. He talked about ‘my baby' at nursery and drew pictures for her bedroom walls. I had to stop him lugging her out of her cot and carrying her about by her head. And she adored him, more than anyone. Her eyes followed him and her smiles were, more often than not, directed at Robin. She grew fatter and pinker. People said she was pretty. Her hair grew fluffy and brown, my colour. Some people even said she looked like me. I took pictures of the two of them. I went to the park every day and to the Baby Clinic every week. I had lunch with friends. Family life was all right. Billie cried at night a lot. She was colicky and fretful from sunset to sunrise like some sort of vampire, but Richard coped with most of that. It made him too tired for sex which suited me.

By the autumn, things had settled down. Richard was vague to me. I did everything you have to do if you have children. Oh the house was a mess but I was not
bad
. Richard suggested we hire a cleaner, but I didn't want anyone to see the mess or know about it. Sometimes I went blank. Once I just lay down on the kitchen floor and couldn't get up. My face was pressed against the door of the freezer and I could hear it humming and I was comforted by the thought of all the food in there frozen stiff, white and frosty and safe, all suspended from the rotting process. Billie was crying in her pram in the garden. Robin was playing upstairs. I just lay on the floor and went through the contents of the freezer in my head: ice-cream, lollies, fish-fingers, chips, peas, sweetcorn, spinach, broccoli, bread, haddock, free-flow mince over and over. I could see and hear what was going on but I could not move and I could not get my mind out of its groove. I felt nothing. I don't know how long it was before Robin came downstairs and said: ‘Mummy, Billie's crying.' He stood and looked at me for a minute, then went into the garden to rock the pram. Billie was crying harder and harder. The telephone rang and stopped. It was only the sound of our next-door neighbour, Jan, talking to Robin over the fence, asking him where I was, that broke the spell and enabled me to move.

At Christmas Pauline came to stay. When she'd gone, on New Year's Eve, I got very drunk. I was drinking with relief because Pauline had gone home, because the terrible year had ended, that I could look
forward
now. And I felt odd, I hardly recognised the feeling, a heat in my lower belly, a sort of voluptuousness. I seduced Richard who was drunk himself and, having been both on-call and on-duty with Billie every night over Christmas was stultified with exhaustion. I took off my tights and knickers and stood in front of him, slumped on the sofa as he was.

‘Inis!' he laughed nervously. ‘What's going on …' We had hardly made love since Billie's birth. I undid his trousers and climbed on top of him. ‘Help,' he said, ‘Oh Inis …' I didn't do it for him but for myself. It was quick and good.

‘Happy New Year,' I said. ‘I'm sorry I've been such a cow.' He pulled me down to kiss him but I didn't want to be kissed. He stank of whisky. He had been helpless. If he had done that to me while I was drunk and drowsing, taken off his trousers and climbed on to
me
, I would have called it rape. Therefore I could not blame him, not even slightly, when two weeks later I woke feeling sick, checked my diary for the date, secretly bought a testing-kit and saw the little stick turn pink.

AFTERNOON TEA

Trixie hears a knock at the door and heaves herself out of her chair. On the television a young woman is showing her how to stencil grapes and strawberries on her walls, something she would never do in a million years, yet its nice to watch the neat slide of paint, the lovely fruity frieze appearing. She's been in a trance, half of her watching, half of her miles away. She sighs. It will only be Inis with her bits and pieces: washing-up liquid, lavatory paper, carrots. She opens the door, planning to take her shopping and get straight back to her programme, but Inis practically barges her way in.

‘Got your stuff,' she says. The dark roots of her hair are plainly showing and she looks pale and seedy. ‘Shall I put it away for you?' She stands in the room with the carrier-bag.

‘No,' Trixie says, ‘no need. I'll do it later.'

Inis's eyes stray to her letters on the table, as they would.
Want to look?
The stencil item has finished now and there's that nice coffee advertisement. But still Inis stands there in her horrible skimpy black trousers all bagged at the knee. They make themselves look such frights, these days, the young.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?' Trixie asks reluctantly.

‘Thought you'd never ask.' Inis laughs and flops down into a chair. ‘I'd better have a look at your leg first. How is it?' Trixie rolls down her stocking and Inis, sniffing, kneels down in front of her and peels off the tape that secures the lint. ‘It's still a bit wet,' she says. ‘I'll bathe it for you.' The graze is shrinking, the skin thick and dark round the sticky place. There will be quite a scar. ‘All right?' Inis asks. Trixie nods. ‘Let me put the kettle on,' Inis says.

Trixie rolls her stocking up. ‘I think I can manage that.' She presses her lips together and goes to put the kettle on. She should be grateful but somehow she isn't. Inis is being kind, she reminds herself, she is being a good neighbour. But now she'll miss ‘Economy Cook' – feed a family of four on £15 a week – she likes that, watching them stretch mince with lentils and grind dandelion roots up for coffee. It reminds her of the war, not that Trixie had to worry, money sticks to money she thinks with a guilty shiver, spooning tea into the pot.

Inis comes and leans against the kitchen door-frame, but Trixie keeps her back to her. ‘I can't get my heating right at all,' she says. ‘It's getting worse, the radiators are hardly even warm. And I think I'm getting a cold.'

‘I manage with my electric-fire,' Trixie says. ‘Never had central heating and I'm not starting now.'

‘No … well it's what you're used to,' Inis says. ‘Actually, Trixie, I've got a favour to ask.'

I'm sure you have
, mouths Trixie. ‘Just a minute dear.' She arranges the tray very slowly, the embroidered cloth, only a little splashed, the sugar bowl, the milk jug, a few biscuits on a plate. As she does so she practises saying no to whatever it will be, though she can't imagine.
No dear, I don't think so, not this time
.

‘I'll carry it,' Inis says, muscling in. ‘And shall I pour?'

‘Let it brew a minute.' Trixie sounds quite sharp, for her.

‘It's nice out,' Inis says. ‘Have you been in the garden?'

‘Yes dear.' She watches the way Inis's eyes skim the room, what is it she's looking for?

‘Actually, could I go to the loo?' she asks, such a bolt from the blue it quite takes Trixie's breath away. ‘I've come straight from the shops.'

‘Yes dear,' Trixie says, ‘of course you can.'

Inis goes up the stairs and Trixie's heart thuds at the sound of another person moving in her house. The cheek, the downright, bare-faced cheek. As if she couldn't pop discreetly back next door like any decent person. What is it she thinks she'll see up there? Trixie paces about agitatedly, her nails slicing the palms of her hands, listening to the movement, the running of the taps, the flushing sound … then a pause a little too long, what is she doing, looking in the medicine-cabinet or what? Then the door opening and another pause. Is she looking in the bedroom, is that it? Potato soup with home-made
croûtons
followed by jelly trifle, a filling meal, nourishing and cheap, but Trixie cannot even look at the screen. She cannot contain herself another minute, she goes to the foot of the stairs, ready to call out but Inis is on her way down, her face quite bland.

‘I do like your landing wallpaper,' she says. ‘Very old. Original perhaps?'

The raging cheek of her!
Very old
indeed! ‘I'm sure I don't know,' says Trixie.

‘Shall I be mother?' Inis says, all perky as you like and then suddenly a flinch like she's been stung.

‘Yes, do,' Trixie says.

They sip the tea in silence. Inis's shoes need a polish, her fingernails are dirty. She keeps sniffing, Trixie practically expects her to wipe her nose on her sleeve.
Why don't you blow it?
she longs to ask. Inis eats three biscuits and drops crumbs down her sweater. ‘Time for my quiz soon,' Trixie hints.

‘Oh yes,' Inis says, politeness personified all of a sudden. ‘I won't keep you, only I wanted to ask …' Trixie holds her breath. ‘Those photographs, remember we talked … I thought if I could get a few of you in the garden and around the house, candid shots, nothing posed, you needn't dress up.'

‘No dear, I don't think so,' Trixie is amazed to hear issue from her lips.

Inis's face falls, it is quite comic the way the smile drops from her face so that you almost expect to hear it smash on the floor.

‘But I thought …'

‘I know what you thought.'

‘You said …'

‘I know what I said, but I've, well let's just say I've reconsidered.' Trixie is practically enjoying herself.

Inis finishes her tea and puts down her cup. ‘It's just that I've got this project all mapped out in my head now and …'

‘Old ladies are ten-a-penny,' Trixie says. ‘You'll have to find another one.'

Inis stands up. ‘OK then.' She's all sag; her knees, her elbows, her neck and Trixie feels almost sorry. ‘Don't get up,' Inis says. ‘Bye.' Trixie sits still a minute until she hears Inis's door bang and then she turns up the volume on the television.