Chocolate Cake for Breakfast (37 page)

We sped across town to the maternity unit, a white-painted prefab tucked in behind the rest home. We parked and made our way along a concrete path between beds of ornamental cabbages to the door, where a handwritten sign on yellowed A4 paper informed us that visiting was strictly by appointment only.

There was nobody in reception, but a buzzer sounded as the door opened and we could hear the murmur of voices from somewhere down the hall. I hadn’t been here since visiting Em and a tiny crumpled Annabel six years before – my midwife’s appointments to date had been at Eloise’s office on the main street – but the decor had changed very little. Even the
Breast
Is Best
poster on the wall across the room was the same.

‘Lovely,’ Mark said, eyeing it doubtfully as we sat down.

‘Isn’t it just?’ The poster was of a large woman sitting on a park bench with her knees spread, a toddler on tiptoe beside her straining to reach the large white boob she was liberating from her shirt. Startling stuff. ‘Oh, how was your photo shoot?’

‘Pretty heavy going,’ he said. ‘I had to spray on about four cans of deodorant before they got the shot they wanted. If anyone had struck a match I would’ve gone up like a torch. Probably still would.’

Publicity shots of Mark were invariably of his head and bare torso, and deodorant is the ideal prop if you want to focus on someone’s upper body. I leant over to sniff his neck. ‘You’re good. You smell nice – sort of citrus-y.’

He smiled. ‘I washed with lemon-scented Jif. Good tip.’

‘Wonderful stuff, isn’t it? You can use it to clean your stove, your toilet, yourself . . .’

Just then a woman screamed somewhere down the hall. It wasn’t a loud scream, but rather a breathless high-pitched gasp that suggested she was trying really, really hard to be brave but that it really,
really
hurt. Mark and I stiffened in our plastic chairs.

The sound stopped abruptly, and there was silence. Then a deep agonised groan, fading to a whimper. Then silence. Then another, louder scream, and a burst of panicked sobbing.

Of course I had known that labour hurts. As Kirstie Alley once put it so beautifully, you’re pushing something the size of a watermelon out of an opening the size of a lemon, so it’s hardly going to be an enjoyable experience. Then again, I’d delivered quite a few calves and lambs and puppies and I’d never heard any animal make a noise like that. And I’d thought, in so far as I’d thought about it at all, that it couldn’t be
that
bad. Most women have more than one child, after all. But as we listened to that poor tortured girl down the hall, it occurred to me that perhaps this was going to be a lot nastier than I’d imagined.

Mark put an arm around my shoulders.

‘Why don’t they
give
her something?’ I whispered. ‘I thought they had gas and stuff.’

‘I don’t know.’

I began to time her on the clock above the reception desk. Quiet for forty seconds, leg-being-severed-with-a-hacksaw for twenty-five. Quiet, hacksaw. Quiet, hacksaw.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Mark muttered. ‘Let’s go.’

We got to our feet, although it seemed a horribly craven thing to do. Perhaps we shouldn’t just slink away – we should burst into the room and demand that the poor woman be given some decent pain relief. Surely as a society we were well past the notion that childbirth was a woman’s cross to bear and lessening the agony was somehow immoral.

‘Helen, my dear, I’m so sorry, we’re going to have to reschedule,’ said Eloise, appearing in the doorway from the passage in a blue disposable gown. Her face lit up as she saw Mark beside me. ‘Hel-
lo
! Mark? How lovely to meet you!’

There was another scream from the depths of the building.

‘You’ll have gathered we’re a wee bit tied up just now,’ she said, smiling. ‘All ready for the World Cup?’

There are times when social chitchat is wildly inappropriate, and this was clearly one of them. ‘Huh? Yes – look, we’ll get out of your way,’ said Mark.

‘Oh, it’ll be a little while before we deliver.’

‘Can’t you give her something?’ I asked.

Eloise looked puzzled.

‘For the pain.’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said. ‘She’s got the gas.’

‘It doesn’t seem to be working very well!’

Eloise smiled at me and patted my arm. ‘She’s doing just fine. Don’t you worry. Now, I’ve organised for your notes to be sent to a midwife at National Women’s Hospital – I’ll give you a ring a bit later this evening. Okay?’

I nodded.

‘Mark, it’s
such
a pleasure to meet you,’ she said. ‘I’m a huge fan.’ And with obvious reluctance she went back down the hall.

35

WHEN WE CAME INTO THE KITCHEN TEN MINUTES LATER
Em was on the phone. ‘. . . Caitlin from music at five, at the Anglican church hall – you go round the back past . . . Oh, hang on, Helen’s just come in.’ She lowered the phone. ‘Sweetie, is there any chance you can go and pick up Caitlin? Bel’s hurt her arm and your father’s been held up at work.’

‘Of course,’ I said.

‘Deb, don’t worry, Helen can do it. No, no, we’re fine. You’re wonderful. Thank you so much – okay, talk soon, take care.’ She dropped the phone on the bench and hurried into the lounge, calling back over her shoulder, ‘Mark, how lovely to see you. I’m afraid we’re having a bit of a crisis.’

Bel lay on the long sofa, wrapped in a pink velour blanket and looking alarmingly pale. ‘I fell off the jungle gym,’ she whispered, not without pride.

‘Did you hurt your arm, McMunchkin?’ I asked.

‘Mummy thinks it’s broken.’

‘There’s a funny lump above her wrist,’ said Em. ‘Come on, darling girl, let’s get you to the doctor.’

‘Want me to carry you to the car, sprat?’ Mark asked.

‘Yes, but don’t bump my arm!’ said Bel.

‘Yeah, broken arms are pretty sore,’ he said, picking her up. ‘I was about your size the first time I broke mine.’

‘Did you have a cast?’ she asked.

‘Yep.’

‘Did people write on it?’

‘Sure did. My brother wrote
Mark sucks
. So he got sent to his room, and my mum drew a shark over the top to hide it.’

‘I don’t want a shark,’ said Bel as they went up the hall. ‘I want a unicorn and a princess with a tiara.’

‘What about a Humvee with a surface-to-air missile launcher?’

There was a thoughtful pause before Bel said, ‘No thank you.’

‘How gorgeous,’ Em hissed. ‘Bless him.’

‘What else can we do?’ I asked. ‘Anything for dinner?’

‘No, it’s all done, the casserole’s in the oven . . . Oh, you wouldn’t be able to drop Granny hers, would you? It’s all ready for her on the bench, and I was going to take her some carrot cake. It’s in the blue Tupperware container in the fridge. She likes to eat by five thirty.’

‘No problem,’ I said.

‘Thanks. You’re an angel.’ And she hastened down the hallway.

Mark and I should have realised that Caitlin wouldn’t fit into his car before the three of us were standing on the pavement outside the Anglican church hall. We didn’t, for which our only excuse was that neither of us had quite recovered from our recent brush with childbirth.

‘Where am I going to sit?’ Caitlin asked.

‘Good question,’ said Mark. ‘Hang on, your ute’s just round the corner, McNeil.’

So it was, parked behind the clinic where we had forgotten to collect it after the midwife’s appointment. ‘I’ll go and get it while you two take Granny her tea,’ I said.

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Caitlin hastily.

‘I’m not taking her her tea!’ said Mark. ‘She’s
your
grandmother.’ 

‘Wimp,’ I said, and he smiled.

‘Tell you what, you take my car to your grandmother’s and I’ll go and get your ute.’ He handed me his car keys. ‘Man, I must love you.’

‘I’m honoured,’ I said. ‘But I’ve just remembered the ute keys are in my handbag on Dad and Em’s kitchen bench.’

The whole operation was only slightly less complicated than the D-Day landings, but in the end a reluctant Caitlin and I set off on foot with Granny’s dinner while Mark shuffled vehicles.

Granny’s mood that evening was more than usually acidic, and Caitlin and I were quite crushed by the time we emerged from her living room. We found Mark leaning against the ute’s bonnet at the kerb.

‘All good?’ he said.

‘She told Caitlin she has a sway back – you don’t, Caitlin – and she told me about how the doctor broke her tailbone when he delivered Uncle Simon with forceps.’

‘Just what you needed to hear,’ Mark said.

‘We forgot the plate!’ Caitlin cried. ‘Mummy always puts the food on one of Granny’s plates, because Granny never gives ours back!’

‘Run back in and get it,’ I suggested.

‘No way!
You
go.’

‘We’ll get it another time,’ I said feebly.

The rest of the family were home when we returned. Bel’s self-importance knew no bounds; her cast was fluorescent pink and her arm had been X-rayed. She sat in state in Dad’s armchair, which had been moved across the big open-plan living area so that it was beside the table, with her blanket draped over her legs and her broken arm in a sling.

‘Janelle’s allowed to write on my cast, but not Courtney,’ she announced.

‘Why not?’ Mark asked.

‘She didn’t let me have a turn on the computer at school, even when I said please.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said.

‘I was
very
brave when my arm got X-rayed. Dr Hollis said I was a star. Didn’t he, Mummy?’

‘Yes, darling,’ Em said absently, tipping broccoli from a pot into a china serving dish.

‘And then after my arm got X-rayed I – Daddy!’

‘Hmm?’ said Dad, who was poking around in the depths of the fridge.

‘I had to sit on a bed while Alison was winding the bandage up around my arm, and there was a picture of lots of different sore eyes, and one person’s eye looked like a hard-boiled egg. And Dr Hollis had a runny nose.’

‘How thrilling,’ Dad said. He found a bottle of beer and offered it to Mark. ‘Drink?’

‘No, thanks,’ Mark said.

‘Right, everyone, come and sit up,’ said Em.

‘
I
can’t,’ said Bel importantly.

‘No, you can have your dinner in Daddy’s chair. Daddy will put some paper across your lap in case of spills.’

Dad put the beer back in the fridge, shut the door and turned to get a newspaper from the basket in the corner. He spread it across Bel’s lap and she cried, ‘There’s a picture of Mark!’

‘So there is,’ said Dad, picking the paper back up.

‘What does the article say?’ asked Em.

‘It’s about sports stars’ income from sponsorship deals,’ said Dad, skimming through it. ‘It’s not about Mark in particular.’

‘Can I cut out the picture?’ asked Bel. ‘I want to take it to school for News.’

‘Tell them about your arm,’ Mark said. ‘That’s way more interesting.’

‘And you
always
take pictures of Mark for News,’ said Caitlin.

Mark looked somewhat taken aback.

‘Right, sit down, everybody,’ Em said. ‘I’m afraid dinner tonight’s not all I’d hoped.’

‘It looks lovely,’ I said.

‘I
was
planning to make that potato dish with smoked paprika and something nice for dessert, but somebody went and broke her arm.’

Bel giggled.

‘Now, Mark, you’re off to Christchurch this weekend, aren’t you?’ Em said, helping him lavishly to casserole.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Then Brisbane the weekend after, and then home for a bit.’

‘All that travel must get tiring,’ Em said.

‘I like going on planes,’ said Caitlin. ‘I’ve been on two, but Bel hasn’t been on any.’

‘So what happens when this baby’s due?’ Dad said abruptly to Mark. ‘Are you planning to stay home, or just hoping it’s not born while you’re on the other side of the world?’

I looked at him in surprise, never having seen my father act even slightly like a heavy parent before.

‘Stay home,’ said Mark. ‘The baby’s due the day of the Super Rugby final, so if we’re in it, and it’s an away game, I won’t go. Management’s known about it for months; it won’t be a problem.’

In response to this eminently reasonable answer Dad only grunted, and I said hurriedly, ‘Actually, I’m reconsidering this whole giving-birth thing. I might just stay pregnant instead.’