I Won't Forgive What You Did (17 page)

It was also the only life I knew. And though I liked being with Joe, I’d never really felt properly at home in his house; at least my house, if not a ‘home’, was familiar. I agreed that, as long as I could keep seeing Joe, I’d return.

Once there, however, I became more clear-sighted. Away from such close proximity, I could see how strange Joe’s behaviour often was. One day, for example, after we’d just been out and bought some clothes, he had cut all of them up into little tiny squares. There was a reason for this, and for many of his other strange behaviours, but this was the seventies and I was young and naive, and didn’t know about drugs. I’d certainly never been informed enough to identify that strange, sweetish smell around him. It was only years later that I realized he was addicted to various drugs, the principal ones being speed and marijuana – it was obviously that which I’d smelled when we first met. It also wasn’t long before something else became clear. That I didn’t really want to be with him. I’d probably gone to live with him for all the wrong reasons – to escape my life, not because I really loved him. By the end of the month I’d finished with him.

Back at home, things with my mother had got worse. She now spent every weekend going to jumble sales, tabletop sales, any sort of sale – just as long as there was junk to be had. She’d come home, her arms straining under the weight of carrier bags filled with second-hand books, pot plants, crockery and ornaments, which she’d wrap in newspaper and stuff into cardboard boxes, to be stashed in the loft and the shed. The house was as disgusting as ever but she didn’t clean it. There was still dirty crockery on every surface, and the pedal bin reeked from its overflowing contents, which sat there and mouldered for days. There was dust everywhere, the beds were filthy and unmade, and my youngest brother and sister, now four and six, were completely undisciplined and neglected.

In the midst of all this, my mother would sit humming, cutting endless bits of paper out of endless magazines, or going clickedy-clickedy-click with her fingers.

My father was absent more than he was home, so it was little wonder he needed me back there. My older sister had left home now, and on at least three nights every week my father didn’t return home either. Though my mother did tell me he was staying with another woman, she seemed little interested in doing anything about it. It was just a given, like the filth and the chaos.

By now I had at last found myself a permanent job, working as a cleaner in the old people’s home I’d done casual work for. With cleaning being something I’d done all my life, I was very good at it and, strangely, enjoyed it. I’d probably have enjoyed anything that got me out of the house but, again, it was marred by my inability to hold normal conversations with the people I worked with. I’d been comfortable around Joe, but I still felt useless and out of my depth with almost everyone else, and older women made me particularly anxious. I now understand this was all about my relationship with my mother, but then it just felt like yet another handicap of being me.

As a consequence, for all that I did it willingly, I realized soon after moving back home that I was slipping back to the depressive feelings that had only lifted briefly when I’d gone to live with Joe. My life once more began to feel utterly without meaning. I returned to the doctor and was put back on antidepressants, which once again made me feel desperate. It was perhaps this that was largely responsible for what I found myself deciding that spring.

I hadn’t seen anything of Joe for three months when I spotted him in town with a girl on his arm who I thought looked uncannily like my mother. For reasons it would take me many years to unravel, this distressed me. I felt a great rage towards my mother, but at that time without any real understanding of why. All I knew was that I couldn’t stop thinking about Joe’s relationship and realizing it was making me wild. I wasn’t thinking straight – how could I have been? But on impulse I resolved to get in touch with him, even though I no longer cared for him. This was because I’d decided (again, without logic or reason) I must spite my mother by having a baby with him. I didn’t know who I most wanted to punish – her or me – only that it felt like a compulsion.

Despite his new relationship, Joe seemed keen to see me and as soon as we met I felt an almost overwhelming sense of sadness descend on me. And as we walked and talked it felt like there was something really bad inside my head; that I was being controlled by an emotion so strong that it couldn’t possibly be me. We walked to the common and, despite how bad I now felt, I instigated sex anyway. Joe being Joe, he didn’t argue. We spoke little, and certainly his girlfriend wasn’t mentioned, but I’d expected that; with Joe almost everything in life was greeted by his cheerful ‘easy come easy go’ mentality.

When it was over I felt sick and ashamed. We didn’t agree to meet again and nor would we for a few months. I said I’d ring him, and he answered with his characteristic ‘see you around’, and then we went our separate ways. My principal feeling, as usual, was sadness. I knew I wouldn’t ring him. I’d brought him there to use him – though what I’d hoped to achieve I’d no idea. I carried on as before, feeling numb about it all, trying to blot out the whole incident – it now seemed like the utter impulsive madness it had been.

I was still working at the old people’s home, cleaning, but now feeling sick all the time. My periods had stopped too, and when I started fainting I decided I’d better see a doctor. Incredibly, my conscious mind wouldn’t let me consider the obvious answer to my symptoms.

At the doctors I explained my symptoms and had a urine test and, to my embarrassment, the doctor examined me and it was then he delivered his verdict – ‘You are,’ he told me, ‘roughly three months pregnant.’

I stared at him in shock and left the surgery soon after. Only out on the pavement did the pressure inside release. I started laughing hysterically and couldn’t stop.

As I stood on the pavement outside the surgery, trying to regain control, I reconsidered. Perhaps the doctor was wrong. I couldn’t possibly be pregnant. I hadn’t
meant
to have a baby. Not a
real
baby. It had just been a strange, random thought, not for real. I couldn’t think what to do. Should I go back inside and ask him to repeat what he’d said? Perhaps I’d heard wrong. He couldn’t have said what I’d thought he’d said, could he? How on earth was I going to tell my mother? And what about my father? My blood ran cold. He’d kill me. He must never, ever know.

I held my hands against my tummy. A baby was growing in there, apparently, and its existence inside me felt terrifying. It was just like when I’d wished Adam dead, and then he
had
died. I had decided I wanted a baby and now I had one. Well, would have, in six months. Just like that. It frightened me so much to realize what I could make happen just by wishing it so.

I caught the bus back to the village in a daze. I couldn’t think what I was going to do, or how I’d ever find the courage to tell my mother. She was sitting in her armchair when I got indoors, surrounded by her usual pile of carrier bags of stuff, and a big stack of slimming magazines. Slimming magazines were her current obsession.

‘Do you know,’ she commented as she glanced up, ‘there are as many calories in a banana as a slice of white bread? Depending on the thickness of the bread, of course, and the size of the banana – about seventy.’

She picked up her mug of tea from the floor and drank from it, then scribbled this fact down in her little notebook. I could see there was a long list of calorific values already carefully noted down. I just stared at her, feeling the hopelessness of everything. What was I going to
do?

I sat down opposite her, and a new thought suddenly hit me. What about
Joe?
Why hadn’t I thought about Joe before now? I’d have to tell him. I’ll telephone him, I thought. He’d know what to do. I went into the hall to make the call out of earshot. My mother didn’t even look up.

Luckily, Joe answered the phone straight away. I blurted it all out to him in a panicky rush.

‘Slow down,’ he said. I couldn’t hear any worry in his voice. ‘Slow down and say all that again.’

I did so, and then he burst out laughing. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it! I’m going to be a daddy! Don’t worry,’ he finished. ‘I’ll come round as soon as I can.’

When he arrived the next day, I was still in a complete daze, the intervening twenty-four hours having passed in a fog of anxiety. We didn’t stop and discuss anything. We just both went into the living room, where my mother was again stationed, and I took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m pregnant’.

She said nothing for a moment. Just stared and shrugged. ‘Then you’ll have to get married.’ She looked at the little writing pad she had beside her again. ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said, nodding towards it. ‘I’ll start making a list. Of all the guests that will need inviting, what needs doing and so on. I can make some cakes and we’ll have to get some wedding invitations, we can book the village hall for the reception and—’

‘Get married?’ I spluttered. ‘Me and Joe get
married?’

‘Of course,’ she answered, carrying on writing things down. ‘Your father will need to be told of course . . . hmmm.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know how he’s going to take it. Perhaps Joe should go home while we tell him . . . yes . . . Yes, that would probably be a good idea.’

I felt numb. I turned to Joe. ‘Do you want to get married?’

He shrugged. ‘Dunno. Yeah, why not?’

By now my mother was so busy scribbling down the names of everyone she’d invite and the food we’d be having she barely looked up as Joe left.

My father arrived home at his usual time and my mother told him straight away. She was clearly anxious now, but betrayed little emotion as she dropped her bombshell on my behalf; quickly adding that she’d begun arranging the wedding, as if, in doing so, she’d already got rid of the problem, rendering any further discussion unnecessary.

Predictably, his response was very different from hers.

‘Fucking hell!’ he shouted. ‘We’re not having another fucking baby in this house. You’d better find somewhere else to fucking live, and quick.’ He then added, just in case either of us were in any doubt about his feelings, ‘Fucking kids, I’m fucked if I know! What the fucking hell!’

His attitude towards the situation was as expected. He could barely tolerate having me in the house, let alone a new baby. Even so, it brought home to me just how scary the whole thing really was. I walked around in a cloud of misery, and kept bursting into tears, still unable to believe I had a baby inside me.

A few days later, my mother announced she’d booked the church. ‘And arranged for the bells to be rung when you leave – that’ll be nice, won’t it?’ she added happily, the whole business of this unmitigated disaster seeming to fill her with uncharacteristic energy.

Yet I couldn’t imagine getting married, least of all to Joe. I hardly knew him, not really, and I certainly didn’t love him, but what choice did I have? And hadn’t my mother always said that I’d leave school and get married and have babies? Well, it seemed she’d been right. Now I was.

And it was becoming more real by the day. My father arrived home from work a few days later, with the news he’d found Joe a different job; one that came with a house we could live in.

‘But he already has a job,’ I said.

‘Well, he’ll have to fucking well leave it then, won’t he? Fucking
hell,’
he answered. ‘Give it up and go to this one, fucking ungrateful sod.’ He turned to my mother with his habitual furious expression. ‘That one should fucking think herself lucky!’

The house my father had found for us was on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Joe would apparently be able to work on the estate side of the farm, sawing and delivering logs and repairing fencing. The first time I saw it I was immediately struck by how isolated it was. It was situated a long way down a winding narrow road, which seemed to go on for ever, before turning into a lane. The house was up the hill, right at the top. Neither Joe nor I could drive, and the thought of living there – just the two of us and our baby – filled me with anxiety.

It wasn’t small though. In fact, for just the two of us, it seemed huge. It was a large three-bed semi with a lounge and separate dining room, as well as a kitchen with a Rayburn. It seemed inconceivable this place would become my home, but there was no time for it to sink in. Joe had to start working for the farmer in three weeks and my mother was racing ahead with wedding preparations.

My father, too, seemed to be on a mission. As had happened to his own mother when she’d been in my condition, the priority was clearly to get me out as soon as possible. The only difference, it seemed to me, was that unlike my great-grandfather, my father couldn’t be seen to just throw me out on the street, and risk the neighbours saying bad things about him.

Much to my mother’s obvious excitement, he came home one evening with the news that an old lady he was doing a removal for (one of his business sidelines) was moving from a large house into a smaller one and had said we could have some of her unwanted furniture. There was a green sofa and matching armchair, a table and chairs, a huge old double bed and a small fridge. She was also throwing out her wedding dress, and my mother insisted it would be perfect. It was a white brocade affair, heavily embossed, with a huge train and veil, and smelled musty. It was too big, but my mother thought that was good because it would hide my bump; by now I was four and a half months pregnant.