Chosen (26 page)

‘Where's
she
gone?'

‘He said, “Now those girls have flown the nest I'm superfluous to requirements.” Of course I told him that was nonsense,' Regina added quickly, avoiding my eyes, ‘but once he'd got the notion in his head . . .'

‘Upped and off,' Kathy finished. She put the goat on the table. The thick roasty smell made me feel sick. I'd eaten almost nothing but plain rice for the past few weeks; anything else sent my bowels into a panic.

I swallowed the bile that rose into my throat. ‘And Stella?' I said. I saw a look pass between Aunt Regina and Kathy. ‘What?' I said. ‘
What?
'

I started to go dizzy then, humming and buzzing gathering in my ears and blotting out my vision. I put my head down on the table and let the feeling of dizziness roll over me.

‘Barley sugar,' Kathy said. ‘Quick, Reg, she's blacking out.'

‘No I'm not.' I sat up and the fuzziness drained out of my head and I could see straight again. ‘I'll have a glass of water though,' I said, and in their eagerness to get it, they collided at the sink.

‘Where is she then?' I said. I was quite clear-headed now. ‘Did you tell her I was coming?'

‘I left a message,' Aunt Regina said, putting the water down. ‘Sure you wouldn't rather a cup of tea? Or a glass of pea-pod? I expect she'll ring this evening. Has the phone rung?' she asked Kathy.

‘I've had my head in the bath,' Kathy said. I could hear the broad beans roiling to a boil. She began to carve the meat and I had to look away.

‘Where is she then?'

‘Set the table, Reg?' Kathy said.

‘London,' Aunt Regina said. The table mats, which looked like they'd been knitted from string, were new, but the knives and forks, with their stained bone handles, were so familiar they made my stomach hurt.

‘What's she doing? Has she got a job?'

‘Shall we open a bottle?' she said.

‘Aunt Regina!' I said.

‘It's rather awkward,' she said.

‘What?'

‘I don't want your homecoming to be ruined.'

‘
What?
' I shrieked.

‘After you'd gone, Bo – Adam – came here in search of you, of course.'

‘Did he?'

‘And he went to see Stella, in order to find out if you'd said anything to her, anything about your whereabouts. She was – well, you know what a pickle she was in at the time. He talked to her, he stayed with us for a while and really, Melanie, he was marvellous, it was a new insight into him: off to the hospital like clockwork every day and he quite pulled her round. Of course there was a lot of religious claptrap, but we were at our wits' end – if it worked we didn't question it. And to cut a long story short . . .'

My hands encircled the cold water glass. ‘What?' I said.

‘She went back with him and joined the, what's it?'

‘Soul-Life Community,' Kathy said, with mocking emphasis, slapping a wad of meat onto my plate. ‘Do open the wine,' she added.

‘That's OK,' I said. ‘That's not so terrible.'

Kathy gave Aunt Regina a significant look. ‘Oh, get out from under my feet, you stupid dog,' she said, and there was a yelp from beneath the table. ‘Wine?'

Aunt Regina busied herself with the corkscrew.

‘What aren't you telling me?' I said.

‘Let's enjoy this feast,' Aunt Regina said.

But the hefty slab of meat, the mountain of potato, the greasy wash of gravy and the beans were impossible for me to touch. I did swallow a little of the sharp green wine.

‘Please tell me,' I said.

They exchanged glances again, then Aunt Regina sighed, got up and went to the dresser. She took out a yellow Kodak envelope. She pulled a photo from the wallet and put it down beside my plate.

And that is when I first saw you, Dodie. You were in Stella's arms, and behind you both stood Adam. I picked it up and looked at it and put it down. I got up from the table and went upstairs to the bathroom to be sick. I climbed the ladder to my room, which had been hastily cleared, lay down on my dusty bed and stayed there. Sometimes I heard the phone ring, and sometimes Aunt Regina came up with a cup of tea and a piece of toast. Sometimes I took a sip or two or a nibble of crust. For several days I stayed there sweating and shivering in turn, until Aunt Regina sent Kathy up the ladder. She wanted me to go to hospital but I refused. She prescribed antibiotics and the fever went, leaving me in a weak but strangely blank and cheerful state of mind.

One day I woke up and Stella was sitting at the end of my bed. It took me several blinks before I could believe she was really there.

‘Do you want me to go?' she said.

I squinted at her. The sun was shining through the skylight and sparking off her. She looked the same, though not quite as thin, and with more colour; more gloss and thickness to her hair.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

‘Have you really had a baby?' I asked.

‘Do you hate me?'

‘Where's Adam?' I said.

‘I bought you some flowers, freesias, shall I bring them up? Aunt Regina wants you to get up so she can do your sheets. You could have a bath. It does honk in here.'

‘Ta,' I said. ‘What's her name?'

‘Baptized Dorcas,' she said, ‘but I call her Dodie.'

‘Adam called her Dorcas?' I guessed. ‘Where on earth did that name come from?'

‘Need you ask?'

‘Jesus?'

She snorted and from downstairs there came a thin bleat of sound.

‘Get up and you can see her,' Stella said. She went down the ladder. I rolled out of my sheets and followed her down, my legs like string. I visited the bathroom and saw my thin face printed with crumple marks. I was yellow from the faded suntan and the sickness. I splashed my face, brushed my teeth and went down in my pyjamas.

Stella was feeding you with a bottle. Her blond hair fell down in a curtain and your little hand was tangled up in it. I could see at once that you should have been mine.

Of course, I didn't say that. I simply sat at the kitchen table and watched as Stella fed you. Aunt Regina watched me nervously. She gave me a hot elderberry drink and went up to run my bath and change my sheets. There is something lovely about familiarity – it makes a warmth grow in the heart – and
you
were so familiar. Stella sat you up and rubbed your back to make you burp. Your eyes were the blue of bottle glass and they looked straight at me, skewering my soul.

‘I'd let you hold her, but . . .'

‘When I've had my bath?' I said. I knew I smelled. I hadn't had a proper wash since I don't know when. Not even since I got back from India. My hair was greasily matted together, practically in dreadlocks.

‘Do you think you're contagious?' she said.

I shook my head. I knew in my bones I could never be bad for you.

Aunt Regina called me to say my bath was ready. ‘Please don't go,' I said to Stella.

‘Of course I won't!' She smiled. ‘I'd like to stay for a few days – if that's all right with you?'

‘Of course it's all right.'

‘Mel,' Stella said, as I left the kitchen, ‘I can't
believe
you're not angry.'

But I wasn't angry. Not at that moment. I was overwhelmed. I was undone by love, but I wasn't angry. In the bath I looked at my shrunken body. Stella and I had changed places. Where I had been the big sister, the one who was in charge, now I was weak and lost and she was the grown-up and sensible one; she was the mother I would never be. My hip bones stuck out like jug handles and my breasts were empty. Stella was heavier and for the first time she had proper breasts. Why didn't she feed you with them? I wondered. I would never have fed you with a bottle.

I tried to wash my hair but couldn't get my fingers through it. When I got out of the bath I hacked out the lumpy tangles with a pair of nail scissors. I didn't want to scare you with the odd way I looked. I put on the clean pyjamas Aunt Regina had laid out for me and I called her in to cut the rest of my hair short. She took me into the kitchen where you were sleeping in your carrycot on the table, and took her dressmaking shears to me.

‘Where's Stell?' I said.

‘She's having a nap. This little tinker kept her up half the night.' She nodded towards the carrycot. ‘I'm very impressed, Mel,' she said carefully, ‘with how mature you're being. Stella was petrified you'd never speak to her again.'

I didn't say anything.

‘In the old days,' she told me, ‘when someone was sick they'd often have their hair cut off. Long hair was thought to sap the strength.'

When she'd finished I rubbed my fingers through the wet spikes of my hair – she'd cut it short as a boy's – and then I studied you, your perfectly familiar face that made so much sense to me. I put out my finger to touch your corona of downy hair, just the soft black of soot.

‘Isn't she exquisite?' Aunt Regina whispered.

I stroked your cheek. ‘Of course she is,' I said.

†

Next day I got up and dressed for the first time. I found clothes I hadn't seen or thought of for years: a pair of velvet jeans, a long, belted cardigan. Everything was too big – but the way Aunt Regina was about to feed me up, it wouldn't stay that way for long.

It was early March and for the first time it felt like spring. After lunch, Stella and I sat in the garden. I had a blanket over my knees, but I didn't need it; the sun was warm on my hair, such a shy and polite sun compared with the blaring show-off in India. There were primroses on the lawn and the birds sang sweetly in the green-flecked beech hedge. You lay in your carrycot waving your arms and legs about. You were dressed in an outfit knitted by Aunt Regina in horrible lemon wool. I'd been telling Stella about my time in Edinburgh, how I loved the city and how, when I was better, I might move back.

‘What will you do?' she said.

‘Dunno. Waitressing, maybe?'

Aunt Regina came out with tea and biscuits. ‘Not too cold?' she said. ‘Make her come in, Stella, the minute she shivers, won't you? Not too tired? Don't let her tire herself out.'

‘I'm fine,' I said, a little sharply and she grimaced humorously at Stella and went back inside.

‘Have a biscuit,' I said to Stella, but she shook her head.

‘Need to get my figure back,' she said.

‘You look much better like that.'

She pulled a face and lifted up her jumper to show me the slack tummy flesh where you had stretched her out of shape.

‘Why aren't you breastfeeding?' I said.

She shuddered. ‘I couldn't,' she said. ‘It's much too personal.'

I wanted to laugh at that. Too personal! If you'd been mine I would have fed you from my breasts for years. Everyone knows that mother's milk is the best thing for a baby. Too personal! But I did feel pleased about that; I don't pretend to be a saint. She might be a mother, but she was not as good a mother as I'd have been.

‘I'd like to see Adam,' I said.

She stared at me, her eyes pearly pale in the sunshine. ‘Would you?'

I nodded. ‘Don't forget I
am
his wife,' I said, and I let that last word sound neutral, with no trace of bitterness at all.

‘But it wasn't a legal ceremony,' she said. ‘It wasn't real.'

‘Real in the eyes of the Lord.'

‘I bet you've slept with loads of people since . . .'

‘So has he,' I pointed out.

You woke then and she picked you up and held you against her shoulder. I put out my finger for your little fingers to clutch at – and oh, you clutched so tightly!

‘She's strong,' I said. ‘Before I go back to Edinburgh, or wherever, maybe I should come back with you?'

‘Back?' Stella said.

‘To London.'

‘I . . .' I could hear a click as she swallowed. ‘Adam's dad died,' she said.

‘Oh?' I said. ‘So? Is he cut up about it?' I got a flash of memory, the frowsty comfort of curling against his shoulder while he told me stories about the great house he was set to inherit. ‘But they didn't get on, did they?'

‘I'm going to stay at his place,' she said. ‘Me and Dodie.'

‘Not Adam?'

‘He'll be in London.'

‘Why don't you stay with him then?'

She lifted you from her shoulder and scrubbed at a bit of milky dribble on her shirt.

‘Let me,' I said, ‘then you can drink your tea.'

She hesitated for a moment before she put you in my arms, and, with the slight but solid weight of you, the heat of you through the ugly lemon suit, I was overcome. I couldn't speak for a moment. You lay and looked up at me, perfectly calm and full of recognition.

‘Do you want her to call you Aunt Melanie or just Mel?' Stella said. She stretched her legs out and flopped back in her seat, staring up at the sky.

‘Don't mind,' I said. ‘So,
why
aren't you?'

‘See . . .' She took a sip of her tea. ‘When I was . . . well after . . .'

‘When you were in the loony bin?'

She snorted. ‘That's when Adam came to see me. He wanted to know where you were. If you'd only told me, he might have come after you . . .' She left me to work out the implications of that. And yes, maybe he would have followed me, found me. Maybe everything would have been different. But the point is, it wasn't.

‘But then Dodie wouldn't be here,' I said. Your lashes were fluttering sleepily and your fingers were splayed, relaxed, perfect; poised as if about to conduct a symphony.

‘And he talked to me about Jesus being a reason for living, him giving his life and all that and, well, somehow or other, Mel, he talked me out of wanting to die.'

A sparrow was hopping about looking for crumbs but my hands were busy holding you, and Stella was looking fiercely into her tea as she spoke. I breathed out quietly with the relief of being absolved of the awful promise.