Cuckoo (24 page)

She tried not to read the rest of the letter. It was too intimate, too painful. ‘Little one,' Viv called her. ‘You know I care about you.' How dare she care! And Magda wasn't little – she was a great hulking colt of a creature. ‘Remember what I told you …' What had Viv told her, and why were they having secrets from her? How did Viv communicate, when she had failed? Love for Viv was something everyday and plentiful, dollops of it larded over everything like cheap strawberry jam. Love in the Parry Jones establishment was rarer; rationed; measured out like caviare, in tiny, precious portions.

Frances dropped the letter miserably back on to the desk. She'd tried, for God's sake, even read books on parenting and puberty. She'd coached Magda in history and offered to cook her favourite food. But Magda didn't have a favourite; didn't want her fancy dishes, or anything to do with her. The studio was empty now. The cornflowers had disappeared with the lipstick, under a wash of bland new paint. Magda had turned herself into Viv's daughter and gone off to be a wombat.

She always seemed more like a cuckoo, a rapacious, gatecrasher bird, taking over someone else's nest. Almost absent-mindedly, she replaced the W volume of the encyclopaedia and took out the C to D, leafing through the prim, print-crowded pages from Crusades to Cubism. She stopped at
Cuculus
.

‘A shy, brown, undistinguished, often furtive bird.'
Yes, that was all more or less correct.
‘A summer visitor to these islands'
– right again –
‘it departs for warmer climes in early September.'
(Would to God it did!)
‘Famed for its habit of brood parasitism, the mother cuckoo selects its victim, then destroys or devours one of the host bird's eggs, to make room for its own.'

Frances stared at the drawing of the cruel, predatory female stalking towards an unprotected nest. Wasn't it symbolic, somehow? The very word ‘victim' was strangely apt. She had always felt duped and oppressed by Piroska. By infiltrating an alien chick into the nest, she had somehow destroyed her own capacity to be a mother in her turn.

No, that was quite unfair. She was taking her Clomid, wasn't she, preparing herself to conceive this very month, only days from ovulation. It was absurd to draw analogies between a cuculid parasite following its instinct, and a human child deprived of her natural rights. She tried not to see the drawing of a doting and devoted robin perched on the baby cuckoo's back, feeding it a grub.
‘The fledgeling cuckoo soon grows larger than its foster mother.'
Well, that was true, at least. Magda towered above her, made her look puny and insignificant.
‘It rarely receives attention from its real parents.'
How could it, when one of them was whoring in Hungary, and the other truant in Nassau? All the more reason for it to have the full devotion of its foster mother. But Frances was no tireless robin or self-sacrificing pipit. And there was no precedent in bird life for a fledgeling to fly away to another nest.

‘I've failed, Ned,' Frances muttered, when they were climbing Box Hill with ice cream cornets and a home-made kite. ‘Magda doesn't even want to live with us. I can't get close to her at all. Do you realize, I've never so much as kissed her goodnight. And yet she lets Viv give her bear hugs. How does Viv do it, Ned, when I can't even touch her?'

Ned swapped cornets. His was three-quarters finished and hers was melting. ‘Viv's not married to Charles,' he said. ‘Viv's not beautiful and talented. Viv's got Bunty.'

He didn't add ‘Viv doesn't live in a showcase, or polish up her own swingeing version of the ten commandments. She's a mother and you're a monster.' He didn't even insinuate that she hadn't kissed him goodnight, either. He could have hinted that she was the one who was scared of touching. She loved him because he didn't. In all the five days they'd been out and about together, he never nagged or criticized, or made everything complicated and accusing. Even when she shied away from him – his mouth, his dangerous body – he only grinned and teased her, and called her a gazelle or a unicorn. She let him hold her hand because he did it so matter-of-factly, and she allowed their bodies to touch and overlap a little, when they lay down to capture a view or digest their sandwiches. It seemed churlish to make a fuss about simple, easy things. She had to repay him with something, when he gave her so much time and understanding, listened unendingly to her fears about Magda. She knew he wanted more, impossibly more, but she tried to close her mind to it.

Brighton had been a dangerous precedent. She had been knocked off guard by sun and sleep, and then her own body had betrayed her. She almost marvelled at it. It seemed like someone else's flesh and blood, doing things spontaneous and sensual, without a nagging chaperon. But once was enough. Her body belonged to Charles and was trying to have his baby. It had no right to jaunt off on its own and help itself to barren pleasures.

Sometimes she longed to tell Ned everything. But how could she trot out Mr Rathbone, when Ned was playing hopscotch at the zoo, or launch into the topic of infertility when they were sitting in a teashop with butter dripping down their chins? They had constructed a Peter-Pan-and-Wendy world where grown-up subjects didn't stand a chance. It suited her, in fact; a never-never land, where the nevers weren't real and chilling as they were with Charles.

‘We'll never have a baby,' she felt like shouting at him on the phone, when he rang so punctiliously from Nassau. It was already day eleven, so they should have been making love by now. It was so damned difficult explaining, long-distance, that her egg was bursting to be fertilized, primed and prepared by Clomid, waiting to turn them into pedigree parents, if only he weren't five thousand miles away. There were just three more days to go, three crucial, desperate days, before the whole thing was too late, the egg dead and dissipated. He
must
be back, he must be.

‘I will be, darling, trust me.' Charles sounded solemn, like a bishop. ‘I know how critical it is. I can't wait to get out of here, in any case. The air-conditioning's broken down and the court room's like an oven. Look, I should know more tomorrow. With any luck, the whole thing will be over when I ring you then. Miss you, darling.'

Oh yes, she missed him, too. She missed the circles round the dots, the rutting hallmarks on her blank, barren charts; she missed him as her partner and accomplice with the Clomid. And yet in some ways, she didn't want him back. Things were simpler and sunnier without him. Ned had turned a damp July into a sparkling August. It was bad enough, coming home each evening to a dark frowning house, after the bright patchwork days with a man who used the world as his playground, rather than his bank vault. She never asked him in. The house was Charles' territory. There were barricades around it, which even Frannys weren't allowed to enter.

It was Frances who sat there every evening, alone and dutiful, washing off Ned's hands, gargling away the picnics, filling in her charts. If it weren't for the charts, she might almost have welcomed a court case which left her free to walk barefoot in pine-woods or learn to beach a dinghy in a force seven easterly.

On day thirteen, she refused to see Ned – made up some excuse about a headache. She was so tense, she
did
ache – not only her head, but all of her. Charles had been due home the evening before. He was already two days late. There were only twenty-four more hours to fertilize that precious egg, which had become frighteningly important. The days with Ned had been only squandered time, a parenthesis between the real, serious business of life and parenthood. Ned was a bachelor, a layabout, a law unto himself. She was married, joined, a womb, a receptacle, a woman who must prove her womanhood, however high the cost. She belonged to Charles, she bore his name, his hallmark, and she must also bear his baby, before it was too late.

‘N-no, Charles,' she had stammered. Her voice was ship-wrecked. ‘I simply can't believe it. Y-you must come home.'

There were cracklings on the line, strange whistlings and buzzings. She wanted to scream. It was so grotesquely difficult to communicate.

‘Charles, you don't understand. This drug has side effects. It may even be dangerous. What's the point in my taking it, when you're never here at ovulation time? We'll
never
have a baby.' Never-never land. The real one, the grey hopeless empty one, where the nevers stretched five thousand miles. Charles sounded a lifetime away, his whipped-cream voice curdled by all the interference on the line.

‘I'm distraught about it, darling. Of course I realize what it means to you. I'd simply no idea the case would drag on as long as this. But now they've traced the missing funds to a Cayman Trust, so I've got to check all the transactions in between.'

‘But why can't someone else do it? What about Bill Turner? He's got all the facts.'

‘Darling, you're talking nonsense. Turner's just a lackey. I'm a key witness. I've been subpoena'd now. They simply won't release me. If it were anything else, I'd leave immediately, you know I would. But I can't defy a judge.'

She cried. It was a waste of money, crying long-distance. The phone turned her tears into a jarring dissonance. Charles hated tears, in any case. She tried to choke them back.

‘Look, Charles, how about tomorrow? If you could make it by tomorrow, we might still be OK – just about.' It was so confusing with the time being different in their two parts of the world. She had to keep subtracting five hours. Charles' tomorrow might not even be her own.

‘Impossible! Oppenheimer's flying in and I must be there when he arrives. He's king, Frances, and the courtiers don't run off when royalty arrives.'

King! She almost spat. Heinrich Oppenheimer was just a self-made millionaire with a first-class tailor. All right, she knew he was the power behind her camel coats and Citroëns, but she'd gladly renounce all that, to have a baby. With a child in your womb, who cared if you had only cheap rags on your back, or a Ford Fiesta in the garage?

‘Listen, Charles, I've got a plan. It could still work out. You meet Heinrich first thing in the morning, have your briefing with him – explain the whole situation at home, if it helps – then catch the next plane back. We could just about make it then, by the skin of our teeth. I'll meet you at the airport, if you like. We could even book a room at the Heathrow Hotel, so we don't waste precious time driving back to Richmond.'

‘Frances, my darling, you sound absolutely obsessed. It's simply out of the question. Oppenheimer's plane doesn't get in till lunchtime, and that's already evening, your end. In any case, he's relying on me to see this whole thing through to its conclusion. I'm not a free agent. The court's sitting and I must be there – at least three more days.'

Three more days! The egg would be long since shrivelled, her half of the baby flushed away like a tampon. Anger thrust between the crackling wires. ‘What if I were dead, Charles? I suppose they'd leave me stinking and unburied, before they let you out.'

‘You're
not
dead, darling. Do be reasonable. We've still got next month. Look, I promise you faithfully I won't go away next month. If it's anywhere remotely near ovulation time, I shan't even risk an overnight stay. That's a solemn undertaking. Now, come on, Frances, try and understand. I miss you. I love you.'

She didn't say ‘love you too', she didn't even feel it. Only a bleak, gnawing pain, and horrible confusion. She couldn't really blame Charles – his job had always been like that. And for fifteen years, she'd enjoyed the fruits of it. Emeralds round her throat and Paris in her wardrobe, steak in the freezer, claret in the cellar, charge accounts at Fortnum's and Harrods, Lillywhites and Simpson's, her string of credit cards, her new McGregor golf clubs – all were Charles' bounty.

But there were other sorts of bounty – kites and cuttle-fish, peanut-butter sandwiches, puddles and paddle-boats. You could always opt for spam and shandy instead of salmon and champagne, and who needed diamond chokers to dam a river or reel in a trout? But that was only a week's new thinking, play-acting. Five short days of pretending to be a gypsy, dressing as a tramp. It was easy to lunch on bangers and mash in a transport caff, when she could top up in the evening with
caneton á l' orange.

Or grub in the fields for fungi, when she had Fortnum and Mason truffles swanking in her larder. Hypocritical to swan around with Peter Pan and spend Tinkerbell days grabbing at rainbows, when she'd been made, saved, and subsidized by Charles and Oppenheimer.

She stayed in all day and tried to turn herself wholly into Frances. But Frances was empty, barren. She locked the door and took the phone off the hook. She didn't want Laura snooping round, crowing, ‘So when did your hairdresser expire, darling?‘ or ‘No wonder Charles stays away, sweet, if you will wear jeans from the Oxfam shop.' Or Viv to ring and explain that all Magda needed was love. Or Ned rocketing down the phone with a witch's potion for her headache and two free tickets for a pop festival. ‘I'll bring the peace and the pot, and you bring the Snoopy blanket.'

She didn't want anything except a baby, a circle round her dot. She wasn't barren, there was a baby there – she knew it – waiting, only lacking a Charles to kick it into life. The week with Ned had primed and softened her; all that sun and sea, fresh air, wild flowers, new feelings, had worked like some lush fertility rite, blown out the gloom and tension from her womb, and made it fruitful.

Slowly, she walked upstairs to the top of the house, where she kept her filing system. Drawersful of past PR campaigns, promoting furs and fashion houses, bridal gowns and beachwear; details of all their Richmond furnishings – colour swatches and fabric samples; photographs – Charles as a young man, looking just the same but less assured about it, herself at seventeen, dumpier, and grinning in a way she hardly recognized. The bottom drawer was her baby file, full of articles and cuttings she'd been collecting since she gave up her career: the best form of childbirth, the advantages of breast-feeding, lists of equipment, nanny agencies. She took out the folder and sorted through it. The pictures of babies hardly moved her – they all looked much the same, chubby and torpid. It was the mess and mystery of childbirth itself that appalled and fascinated her. Something so natural and yet so strange and undignified, like sex. It both sanctified and sullied every woman who went through with it. Her mind felt prepared now, and her body ready – breasts fuller than usual on account of the Clomid, and a sick, expectant feeling in her stomach.