Babyville (3 page)

At eleven Julia went up to bed. Mark said he'd come up after the film, at which point Julia gently reminded him that tonight was one of those nights, and could he please come up earlier. He huffed and puffed a bit, but didn't say anything. Just crossed his arms and continued staring at the screen.

Not perhaps the best of starts. It wasn't going to get any better. . . .

Once upon a time Julia wore sexy lingerie. She had drawers of lacy scraps of silk, with shoestring straps that slipped off her shoulders. Now she has oversized T-shirts for summer and pajamas for winter. Usually T-shirts that had been sent to one of her researchers, because someone, somewhere, thought that emblazoning an XL T-shirt with a huge logo would be a good selling point. T-shirts that have faded from the numerous washes over the years, that she wouldn't be seen dead in anywhere other than in her own house.

As for the pajamas . . . very definitely not sexy pajamas you might imagine someone like Meg Ryan wearing, nor even someone like Julia. Not the kind of men's pajamas that look cute and cuddly on models curled up by log fires in the pages of the glossy magazines. These men's pajamas are fraying at the edges. The bottom bags down to her knees, and because the elastic lost all its elasticity a long, long time ago, the waist is held together with a safety pin that isn't exactly safe but, amazingly, has never stuck her. They're baggy, colorless, and shapeless, except she doesn't actually care because they're so comfortable and warm.

That night was a pajama night. Julia made an effort to brush her hair and shake it out to sit on her shoulders in the way that Mark always used to love. She sat up in bed reading, intermittently looking at the clock. Even though she had promised herself not to shout at him, after half an hour her frustration became too much: She stormed to the top of the stairs and yelled at him to come up.

Five minutes later Mark came upstairs and stood in the doorway with a thunderous look on his face.

“I was in the middle of watching something that would have been over in fifteen minutes, and you could have been more patient. I'm fed up with everything revolving around you. Whatever you want, whenever you want it . . .” Julia opened her mouth to interrupt but he carried on. “And now I'm not in the mood. I know all about Day Thirteen, but frankly I find it completely implausible, and the last thing I want to do right now is have sex.” He spat this last word out as if it were the most distasteful thing in the world.

Julia swallowed her own frustration, something she found almost impossible to do, but after all, it was Day 13, and schedules must be adhered to, egos must be stroked, not to mention anything else.

“I'm sorry,” she said meekly, looking up at him from lowered eyelashes as she climbed out of bed and walked toward him. “I was selfish. I wasn't thinking. I'm so sorry.” She reached up and kissed his impassive cheek of stone, knowing that there was only one way for this to go in the direction she wanted. She moved her hand down to the zip on his trousers as she lowered herself to her knees.

“Will you forgive me?” she mumbled, mouth full. Then she knew it didn't matter any more.

Ten minutes later she was lying on the bed, legs up in the air, reading a pregnancy book as Mark went to grab the toilet paper in disgust.

He didn't say anything when he came back to the bedroom. Just shook his head sadly as he looked at Julia and climbed into bed. A few minutes later he spoke, and his voice was muted, weary. “Was it ever better than this? Tell me it was better than this. Didn't we use to make love? Didn't it use to take hours? Wasn't it fun before all this baby stuff?” He looked at Julia, as if expecting an answer, but she chose not to reply, so he turned over with a sigh. Within a few minutes all you could hear was the sound of his gentle snoring.

How could she possibly have answered him? There was nothing to say.

Julia
looks at Sam and shrugs. “Don't you think the sex always goes at some point?” she says without feeling. “Sure, it was great in the beginning, but doesn't it always wear off after a while? Mark thinks that trying for a baby has made it mechanical and boring, but I'm sure the passion would have gone anyway because it always does. We've been together four years, and you really can't expect your sex life to be fantastic after four years.”

“But you're not even married,” Sam says, suddenly looking serious. “Are you sure about this baby? Are you even sure about . . . Mark?” She chooses her words carefully, tentatively, for she is voicing things Julia doesn't want to think about, let alone hear. “Julia, all I'm saying is that I don't think it's fair to bring a child into the world if you're not sure you're with the right—”

“Okay, okay.” Julia stops her mid-flow. “I'm sorry, Sam, but this just isn't something I can talk about. You know how much I want this child. How can you say these things?”

Julia knows exactly how she can say these things. Sam is only saying all the things Julia thinks when she wakes up in the middle of the night with a pounding heart, almost suffocating with the panic, the need to escape, only bearable because she knows normality will return with daylight. And how can she trust these night fears anyway? How can she trust them when they leave in the morning? If they were real, if she were supposed to be listening to them, then she'd have them all the time, wouldn't she?

Wouldn't she?

“I'm sorry.” Sam is contrite. These are difficult words to say. Even to your best friend. “I just worry about you.”

“I know,” Julia sighs. “I worry about me too.”

3

Mark is, as always,
the first to wake up. He turns to Julia, still dead to the world, mouth open, hands clenched tightly into fists, pulling the duvet up around her ears, and he leans down to kiss her softly on the cheek. When she is like this, so soft, so innocent, he knows exactly why he loves her, why he is still with her.

He places his feet on the floor, stretches his arms to the ceiling, and yawns before padding quietly out of the room, slowly shutting the door behind him so as not to wake her.

Mark has been working hard. He has been staying in the office late, trying to get everything done, forgoing the gym as there's too much to do. He has stopped eating lunch in the canteen, instead grabbing a sandwich and eating it at his desk, piles of legal papers his lunchtime reading.

He feels tired these days. Always tired, but there's so much to think about, so much to do, that a lie-in is not on the cards. Not that he doesn't want one, but his mind is always racing. Getting off to sleep is fine. Easy, even. But most nights he is awake in the early hours. He lies there, listening to Julia, knowing that she's also awake, but unable to reach out to her, and he thinks about his work, his life.

And he is so used to getting up at 6:45
A.M.
for work that even on the weekends he wakes up automatically, at precisely that time, which is ridiculous given that Monday to Friday he needs an alarm clock to wake him. Monday to Friday he stumbles groggily to the bathroom, wishing for more sleep, but Saturday and Sunday he positively bounces out of bed.

Mark goes downstairs and puts the kettle on, placing
The Times
on the kitchen table as he pulls two slices of bread from the plastic wrapper and sticks them in the toaster.

Crash. The noise of the post tumbling through the letterbox and landing on the doormat startles him. He groans as he bends down to pick up the letters, and shuffles through looking for anything interesting as he goes back into the kitchen and tips some fresh coffee into a cafetiere.

Nothing exciting today. Junk mail, junk mail, more junk mail, and bills. That time of year when all the bills come in. He opens the Visa statement and reads through it quickly, stopping to go back and read it again because he can't quite believe what it says.

Now Mark knows that Julia loves cosmetics, toiletries, girly things. He accepts that Julia cannot pass a chemist's without going in, and he knows that, once in, she will happily browse for hours, spending fortunes on pastel-colored bottles of things he's never heard of. She had even once emerged with a selection of velvet scrunchies in assorted colors that she deemed irresistible. When she had short hair.

But he also knows that there are strict rules about the joint account. As independent creatures are wont to do these days, they keep their money separate. Julia has her account, from which she takes money for anything that doesn't involve Mark, and Mark has his. And then there is the joint account, generally used for household bills, restaurants, furniture, food shops, gifts for mutual friends, and holidays. Anything, that is, that involves both of them. Which doesn't include Boots. And, more to the point, how in the hell did she manage to spend nearly two hundred pounds there? What the hell has she been buying?

Julia
has been buying pregnancy tests. She tries to resist them, but every month, in that run-up to her period, she gets what she has come to call her ClearBlue craving. Unfortunately one just doesn't supply her with the fix she needs.

She did manage to start off with one test. They always do. Nine months ago she bought one test five days before her period, right at the beginning when they were first trying. She took it round to Sam's amid much giggling.

“I really think it's too early,” Sam said.

“But if I'm pregnant, then my body might already be producing the hCG hormone, and if it is, then it might show.”

“But the packet says you have to wait until the first day of your period, and you haven't even got any of the symptoms.”

“I bloody have,” Julia said defiantly. “Look at the size of my breasts. They're enormous.”

“But your period's due in five days, and they're always enormous before your period,” Sam said, grinning.

“And”—Julia paused dramatically—“I've been running to the loo all night. I swear, my bladder's gone crazy.”

“You've always had the weakest bladder of anyone I know, but okay, okay. Point taken. Let's do it.”

Julia's face lit up. “Great! Can I borrow a glass?”

“What for?”

Julia read the instructions out loud to Sam. “‘Place the stick in mid-flow urine, or submerge in the urine.'” She missed the look of horror on Sam's face as she explained that she didn't trust the holding-it-in-the-stream method, just in case she missed.

“You're not bloody using one of my glasses for that!”

In the end they settled for the cap of Chris's deodorant bottle. “For God's sake, never ever tell him. I swear he'd divorce me for this.”

“Just rinse it out with bleach when I'm done with it,” Julia said, heading for the bathroom.

“I know, I know,” Sam shouted back as the door was closing. “What do you think I used for my test?”

The test was negative. So was the one she bought later that day. And the six she bought before her period started. At first it was her secret, but $13.95 is a hell of a lot of money to pay when you need around a dozen of these tests every month, and last month Julia decided that as they were trying for “their” baby, the tests should be “their” expense.

Naturally Mark doesn't know about the boxes of ClearBlue hidden under the piles of towels. Not that he'd mind them in principle—it's not like your parents discovering packets of the Pill in your bedside drawer when you're sixteen and you know they'd go up the wall—he'd just mind the amount that she's buying, because Mark is nothing if not a pragmatist. He would be horrified at Julia taking the test days before her period is due; at not following the instructions on the packet; at the impatience and extravagance of an addiction that he simply would not comprehend.

Mostly he would not understand because he doesn't understand Julia. The qualities that attracted him in the beginning are the very qualities that are pushing them apart now.

He
loved her energy when they met. Loved her laugh, her ambition and unconventionality. He'd noticed her at work, had already made some inquiries before he dared approach her in the canteen, had already decided that somehow he would get to know her, touch her, be with her.

He'd pass her sometimes, in the hallway, talking intensely with one of her friends, and as he approached he'd stare at her, willing her to look up, to notice him, but she never did. Every day there would be a knock on the door from a love-struck researcher with a bad excuse, and he was never interested, because none of them was her.

Mark didn't know how to approach her, what to say, and realized it was sensitive because they worked together. Even though in-house relationships were going on all the time, they were frowned on by management. His own father had always warned him not to dirty his own doorstep. In previous jobs he'd taken this to heart, but he forgot it when he saw Julia.

Even when Julia never seemed to see him.

Mark is one of those men who is good-looking without being arrogant, and it had never served him particularly well. His friends, less good-looking but far more laddish, had always had far greater success with women. The more hearts they broke, the more emotions they trampled on, the more women fell for them. Mark was termed a nice guy, and what can possibly be worse than that? At school he was the girls' best friend because he was good-looking and therefore good to be seen with, but too nice to want to go out with. So nice he was even considered dull.

It was only when he was at university that he came into his own, and even then it took a couple of years. He had been going out with Amanda for over a year, and he ended it because he knew she wasn't right for him, and because he only had a year left to enjoy himself.

Did he enjoy himself. Making his Mark, was how his friends described it with glee, and more than a touch of jealousy. To this day he is famous for his pulling power, with the number of women he is said to have pulled growing, rather like the proverbial fish, bigger and bigger over time. Although the irony was that he never had to try. He had always been Amanda's good-looking boyfriend, and as soon as he was single he became the most sought-after man on campus.

No more Mr. Nice Guy.

Except intrinsically, apart from unwittingly breaking a few hearts, he was still a nice guy, and still rather shy with women, particularly those he truly fancied. Like Julia. No one could imagine the effort it took to approach her that day in the canteen. By that time he had built her into the perfect woman, placed her on a pedestal so high she was in danger of getting lost in the clouds of his imagination.

Mark loved her vivacity, her easy, expansive, extrovert nature. She was everything he was not, everything he secretly wanted to be. When he was with her, he felt that he really was the best possible person he could be. Mark didn't want to be quiet, studious, introverted, when Julia was around. Being with Julia was like an exhilarating fairground ride, and he knew he wanted this feeling to go on forever.

Forever feels like a long time ago now. Most of the time he is exhausted by Julia. Exhausted and uncomprehending, because their worlds are so very different, and Mark sees that not only can he not escape from who he really is, but that he does not want to. He tried at first. The first year or so. An endless round of parties, of people dropping in, of being surrounded by friends, and friends of friends, and strangers. He enjoyed it for a while, mostly because he assumed it would be dropping off. Nobody can live that kind of life permanently, can they?

Julia could.

Mark realized sometime during their second year together that the constant stream of people through the house did not seem to be abating. That Julia coming home with handfuls of waifs and strays from work and expecting there to be enough food was not going to change.

And Mark knew it wouldn't be fair to expect her to change. He did, after all, know what he was letting himself in for when he first got together with her, but somehow he thought they'd be able to find middle ground, find a way of making it work.

At the beginning, still flush with passion and excitement, still full of the possibilities of finding that middle road, he had even thought he would propose. He planned a trip to Barbados in January, booked a restaurant overlooking the beach that had been voted one of the top ten romantic restaurants in the world, had even dreamed up his speech.

The unease started a couple of weeks before they left, prompted mostly by an argument about New Year's Eve. They had not been invited to any parties, much to Julia's disgust, and Mark had said that his ideal New Year would be to invite the two, or three, couples to whom they were the closest round for dinner and crack open the champagne at midnight.

Julia was horrified. She wanted to throw a party. A huge bash open to all and sundry, to really see in the New Year with a bang. She wasn't going to give way, so Mark had to, and even as he conceded he was rethinking the prospect of togetherness for the rest of their lives.

But he had already planned Barbados. Already planned the holiday. The proposal. Even the ring. Yet sitting on the terrace, watching Julia's face through the flame of the candle, he knew he couldn't do it. He loved her but he wasn't sure. He loved her, but he wasn't sure that love was enough.

He would wait. Not long, but the ring in his pocket would stay in his pocket, and who knows, maybe next year things would be different, maybe even next month things would be different.

Four years on, nothing is different. Mark and Julia have found a way of living in the same house, sharing the same bed, leading ever more separate lives.

As
he sits at the breakfast table and reads
The Times,
the pile of bills pushed to one side with the offending Visa statement on the top, Mark decides that they are going to have a nice day today, they are going to enjoy themselves.

Today is Adam and Lorna's wedding. They are getting married in Blackheath, a proper white wedding in an old-fashioned church.

Adam and Lorna are Julia's friends. Mark has to make this distinction because so few of their friends cross over. They never have. Julia finds his friends nice but too straight for her, too dull, while Mark has never really understood female friendships, with their gossip and secrets and giggling.

Many's the time he's walked into the kitchen to find Julia sitting at the table deep in conversation with two or three of her girlfriends, mugs of coffee and glasses of wine littering the table, ashtrays overflowing with Silk Cut Extra Low. Their voices are always lowered, they invariably start teasing Mark, which makes him uncomfortable, even though he tries to smile and go along with it. He tends to help himself to whatever it is he needed, before leaving them in peace and disappearing up to his study for the rest of the evening.

“Why can't you make more of an effort with my friends?” Julia asked when she went to bed, much much later that night.

“Why don't your friends make more of an effort with me?” Mark replied in self-defense, although what he meant was, Why can't they understand me? Why don't I understand them?

Mark has retained his friends from school and university, as men tend to do. He speaks to them more than he sees them these days, is adept at catching up with news via e-mail. They meet up from time to time, generally when Julia is away. On the few occasions when Mark tried to bring Julia into the equation it was an unmitigated disaster.

Julia tried to be nice. She tried to like them. But she really had nothing in common with them—less than nothing—and found each meeting more exhausting than the last. Eventually she told Mark she loved him but not his friends: He'd have to see them on his own. Mark pretended to be offended; in truth he was relieved. It was as much a strain on him as it was on Julia.