Dark Dance (25 page)

Rachaela reeled off a book-established fact.

‘December.’

‘A Capricorn. They’re lovely. But good lord, you’re in your fourth month. You’re very small. My middle daughter was like that, tall and slim and you could hardly tell. It used to annoy her the way everybody took no notice. She said she wanted to ‘sail upon the land’ like Titania’s handmaiden. My oldest daughter, poor girl, swelled up like an elephant. What does your chap say at the hospital?’

Rachaela said, ‘Apparently everything’s the way it should be.’

‘Yes, of course. And you’re so young too. It’s exactly the right age.’ Emma Watt blushed again. ‘All the same, it’s rotten for you, having to manage on your own.’

‘That was my decision.’

‘Yes, but it’s courageous of you. And so wise to go ahead and have the baby, if you want it.’

‘I didn’t,’ Rachaela said, ‘I don’t.’

And wished she had not spoken.

Emma Watt did not look shocked, but only tremendously sad.

‘But that’s terrible. Why—’

‘I went to the wrong doctor.’

‘You poor girl. But couldn’t you—no, I suppose not. And you’re resigned to it now. I still think it’s best. When your baby’s born—they’re so rewarding. I loved it. When they’re little, watching them grow. And I love them, I love my children. It’s such a pity they’re so far away. I hardly ever see them. They phone me up, of course, but it isn’t much good. They’re always so scared I can’t cope after their father died. I have to keep proving to them that I can.’ Emma smiled valorously, proud of her façade. Her eyes were moist. ‘I’ve missed all the grandchildren, too. It’s awful. I just love babies, children. They fascinate me. These tiny helpless little things that just come to life day by day, until they’re people. Oh, I’m sure you’ll be glad.’ She raised her head. ‘There’s the kettle.’

She went to make Rachaela the unwanted tea.

She made none for herself, but left Rachaela at once with the mug in her hand.

The room darkened oddly, perhaps a trick of the electricity.

The summer came at the beginning of August.

The city baked, the trees turned coppery. Ochre dust rose from the blazing pavements.

A blue sky of cobalt made a lid for every stink and fume. Everything smelled and tasted of asphalt, petrol, car exhaust and sweet ice-cream.

Rachaela’s back ached continually. She could put this down to her job. The red dress was firm but the apron hid it. One of the girls made a crack that Rachaela had put on weight due to the food.

One day she amassed ten pounds from those careless customers who did not count their change.

The man from Horsley Road had fixed the music centre. The radio was not very good but the tape and record players were excellent.

She bought books and lined the shelves of her bookcase.

Emma found excuses to appear, but not very often. Emma still did not know her first name.

September was a tawny month, tanned, cooked skin on the streets, brown crispness on the leaves.

October yellowed, banana sunsets cut with gilt, lemon first-light as Rachaela, cramped and sleepless, saw the dawn begin, and the trees in the park like topaz flags.

Storms at night. Downpours of hot rain.

Sibelius, Mozart, Shostakovich.

No need to think. So sluggish. She would have to give up the Pizza Eater. Her back shrieked, and when she bent to serve the late-night customers with their breath of beer and Cinzano, her head swam. Nobody had noticed she was pregnant. They thought she had got fat, a good advert, on the succulent nosh.

The summer ended on the first night of October. Hail thrashed the roofs and glass windows.

Rachaela had called in sick and sat at her window and watched it, her back packed with cushions and pillows.

She had an hallucination of a tall dark man on the street, striding through the hail. Adamus in a cloak of thunder, come to claim her again for the Scarabae.

But all that was over. It was a dream. She had conceived immaculately and here she was, the slave of this molten tumour in her womb, and it was real.

From the larger stores along the high street, carols wailed and jingle bells jingled, compulsory joy.

It rained heavily. There was a lot of flu about.

Rachaela had given in her notice at the Pizza Eater and left just as the free balloons began to be given out and Christmas pudding appeared on the menu. Children had knocked over the tree of green and red glitz, and everyone was picking it up; that was her last image of the restaurant.

Emma Watt came out of her door like a cuckoo from a clock.

‘I’ve bought a bottle of really nice sherry, and some wine. Will you come down and have a drink with me? To toast my little tree. I always have one. One must. Christmas is so important, it’s important to salute it, even if, well even if you’re on your own. Are you going anywhere for Christmas?’

‘No.’

‘just quiet by yourself. Yes, you must get all the rest you can. Anyway, do pop down. About six?’

‘All right,’ said Rachaela, to shut her up.

Rachaela had never bothered with Christmas. It had only meant one more day of privacy. She heard distant bells ringing and the strange silence of the streets. The radio had Christmas music which often she did not like, huge oratorios and quasi-religious peculiar plays. Once she had listened to a Christmas service out of curiosity. She knew the hymns from school days, the tunes at least.

Her mother had believed in celebrating Christmas too. There had been a dinner cooked, turkey or chicken with sausages, roast potatoes and stuffing. It had entailed much the same fuss and anger as the now-and-then Sunday dinners: Rachaela recruited to peel vegetables, make crosses on the thousands of sprouts. One Christmas her mother had scalded herself on the turkey fat.

Neighbours would come in for a drink and boxes of chocolates and handkerchiefs would be exchanged.

After the neighbours and the dinner and the Queen’s speech, depression would set in from the rich food and the gins and tonics.

Her mother gave Rachaela sensible presents, a new blouse or shoes that pinched. Once there had been a fairy costume from a neighbour. Rachaela had played in it for hours, she was six, it had been oddly magical. But somehow the wings got torn, like a symbol. Her mother scolded her and made her ashamed.

Rachaela did not mean to go down to toast Emma Watt’s tree. So far she had avoided the interior of Emma Watt’s flat.

Rachaela sat in comfortable misery before her electric fire, her back wedged with cushions, sipping a glass of her own wine. Her back was excruciating and she had also taken three paracetamol. Despite the pain she began to go to sleep.

She was woken by bright little squirrel knocks on the door: Emma Watt.

‘Damn her.’

Best go to the door and tell her she was not feeling well, could not come down, an early night and so on. Left unanswered, Emma Watt grew anxious and knocked and called; it had happened before.

As Rachaela got up something seemed to tear inside her all the way down, between her spine and stomach. In puzzlement she stood there, waiting for some sequel, but nothing happened.

She reached the door and opened it.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Emma Watt. ‘Oh my dear, you look dreadful.’

‘Yes. I’d better not come down,’ said Rachaela.

A pain like the worst toothache clutched her vitals. She felt herself wither.

‘What is it?’ said Emma.

‘Just a pain.’

‘What sort of a pain?’

Dazed, Rachaela told her. She had to hold the frame of the door. For the first time in months she felt very sick again.

‘Excuse me, I have to go to the bathroom.’

She made it. Her body emptied itself in all its chambers. She came out shaking, and Emma Watt was still there of course, standing in the middle of the room.

‘My dear,’ she said, ‘I think you’ve started.’

‘Started what?’

‘Your baby’s coming. Oh don’t be frightened. This will soon be over, and then the marvellous part begins.’

Rachaela sat down. The pain came again, griping her hollow guts, twisting her body like a cloth.

‘Must you be so stupid?’ she said.

Emma brushed this aside.

‘Say anything you like,’ she said, ‘call me names. I know this bit isn’t particularly nice. I’ll phone for you. The hospital—is it St Mary’s? What’s your doctor’s name?’

‘Oh, that,’ said Rachaela. ‘No doctor, no hospital.’

‘What?’

‘I haven’t been seeing anyone. That was just your happy little fantasy, Emma. Nobody knows.’

‘But my God, my God,’ said Emma. Panic took her all apart, and then she gripped herself together again. ‘Never mind. I’ll get an ambulance.’

Rachaela watched her, smiling. She took a mouthful of wine, but it came straight back up. This time she did not make the bathroom.

‘Don’t drink that,’ said Emma through a white blur. ‘Take my hand. That’s it. They won’t be long.‘The pain came and crushed her away. ‘My God,’ said Emma, ‘they’d better be quick. Just hold on. Hold on, darling. It’s going to be all right.’

‘Now push,’ said someone, some mad woman. ‘That’s it.
Push.
Good girl.’

Were they speaking to her, these lunatics?

She lay on a scarlet beach and Uncle Camillo bent over her. He hauled the crimson obstacle from her womb. She felt it go as if her body had been disembowelled.

So this was the abortion. The pain was terrible. Much worse than that girl had said.

‘One last try. Push.’

She could not push. What did it mean?

A fearful rhythm like galloping horses—stopped.

It was so quiet.

There was so much light, but growing darker.

‘You can rest now.’

Who were these people, so many of them, crowding round her in a white hedge. Had she fallen in the street?

The pain had ended. There was another pain, but it was different, slow and closing.

Something cried like a savage animal in the wilderness.

It was alive.

The thing had been got out of her, and it lived. It made noises, horrible and unhuman.

In a sort of aperture she saw a white baby hanging upside down from a nail of light. A single, blood-red ribbon marked its back, shining.

‘A girl. You see? She’s quite perfect.’

❖

Emma Watt sat by the bed. She was bright-eyed and faintly flushed. She had brought pink roses and a bottle of apple-juice, and grapes, and sweets in coloured wrappings.

‘You’re not to worry about a thing, Rachaela,’ she must have found the name out from a nurse. ‘I’ve seen to it all. Everything. We can sort the money side out later, but I don’t want you to worry about that either. It really doesn’t matter. I have more than enough, my old love saw to it I was comfortable. And I know, well—let’s not talk about it now. The baby clothes are pink, of course. That’s one good thing about not getting anything until we knew.’ Emma hesitated. ‘They’ll be along soon, won’t they.’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t wait to see her again. Oh, Rachaela, don’t you feel clever? A gorgeous little girl.’

‘I don’t feel anything.’

‘Well that can happen. Have you told them how you feel?’

‘It isn’t any of their business.’

‘But Rachaela, it is. They can help you to feel better.’

‘I feel all right.’

‘But you said—’

‘Emma, I told you. I didn’t want this—baby.’

‘But she’s here now. And she’s yours.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you wishing,’ said Emma cautiously, ‘that he—’

‘No. He wouldn’t be any more interested than I am.’

Emma looked away. After a moment she said, ‘Have you been luckier in feeding her.’

‘Luckier? Do you mean can I breast-feed her yet? No I can’t. Apparently I haven’t got much milk.’ Rachaela fought down her disgust. ‘I find it repulsive. It’s bad enough with the bottle.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Emma.

‘Emma, you’ve been more than kind, but you don’t understand.’

‘No. I’m sorry about that too.’

‘It’s all right. I can’t do anything about it. I accept that I can’t.’

All those months swelling up, the pain and weight, and pretending it did not exist. But it had arrived and was actual. The pain had taken on a form, which cried, and dribbled from every orifice. A white hospitalized package smelling of faeces, urine and sick. Something she was expected to love. Aliens might have placed it in her, it might have burst out of her body rending her—it had done so. It had enslaved and damaged her. Now it was to rule her life. Why should she love it, this demon?

The nurses were coming with their Father Christmas sacks of snivelling and screaming babies.

‘Here you are, Emma. Your moment.’

And Emma’s unhappy face had freshened. She was not however indiscriminate. She rose and took Rachaela’s child from the nurse with a gliding ‘May I?’, a sort of sleight of hand. Emma held the baby exactly as it should be held.

‘Hallo, precious. Hallo, my sweet.’

Emma loved it. But dutifully she passed the bundle down into Rachaela’s cold white arms.

Rachaela peered into the gnomic face.

It had lived in her, used her, but it was not hers. It was theirs. The Scarabae.