Remember Why You Fear Me (11 page)

So when she found out she was pregnant once more he nearly hit the roof. He asked her what on earth she thought she was playing at. And she told him she hardly thought she was the
only
one responsible here, and burst into tears. And he said sorry, sorry, and put his arms around her, and said it was okay, it was
nobody’s
fault, they’d just have to take even more precautions in the future, that was all. And maybe it would be all right anyway, maybe it was just another bit of furniture they could chuck in the skip, they must keep their fingers crossed. And it
was
another bit of furniture. Some time on Wednesday, whilst her husband was at work, she became the proud mother of an escritoire. She didn’t know it was called an escritoire, mind you, so she had to be a bit vague when she called him on his mobile, and when he came home early he didn’t know it was called an escritoire either. The husband sighed, and asked what they could want with a writing desk, he never wrote anything anyway. And she showed him all the drawers, and the place you could put your pens, and the lovely design on the mahogany, but he wasn’t impressed. He said that if she was going to propagate furniture, couldn’t she at least come up with something that was actually
useful
? They needed so much stuff, why not just pop out a couple of chairs or a table? He said he thought it was embarrassing anyway, he’d better call the lads from work, see if they wouldn’t mind carrying the desk to the skip, but if they began to suspect all this unwanted furniture was coming from his wife’s belly he’d be a laughingstock. He went as far as to say that had he known he’d been marrying someone who was a bit abnormal in the baby department, he might have had second thoughts. She cried and said that maybe
he
was the abnormal one, not her, it might be his sperm not her eggs, and he said no, he knew
perfectly
well that he could produce babies, did she really think she’d been his first? There was tons she didn’t know about him,
tons
. And they both fell silent because they’d said too much, and then she asked him if he had a child she didn’t know about, and he reassured her that it hadn’t got as far as that, they’d dealt with it, it was okay—but he went on to mutter under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear, that he was pretty bloody sure all that palaver he’d been through hadn’t been for a king-size sofa or some fancy writing desk. And then the lads came.

As the lads were about to lug the offending escritoire down the stairs, one of them asked the husband whether he’d be prepared to take twenty quid for it instead. The husband narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Why would a spot welder want a writing desk? What was in it for him? And the lad buckled and admitted he knew someone—not that well, mind, so this was a bit of a gamble—who liked to buy up posh furniture once in a while. The husband went very quiet. The lad asked if he wanted the twenty quid, and the husband said no, he didn’t want his twenty quid. And the lad said, all right, should they put the desk in the skip then, and the husband said no, he thought he’d hang on to it after all. And the lad said, sod you then, and that the husband mustn’t think he’d come out late at night again and have his time wasted like that, and the husband rudely assured him he wouldn’t want him to. There was a banging of doors as the lad left, taking all the other lads with him, and had the escritoire been a human baby it would undoubtedly have started crying—but, because it was an escritoire, it didn’t. The husband looked at the desk thoughtfully, as if for the first time. He pulled out the drawers one by one, turned them over, gave them a proper inspection. It almost made the wife tear up with joy to see him being so paternal at last. And then he said he was going to phone in sick for work the next day—he had things to do.

When the wife woke the next morning the husband had already left—and the escritoire had gone too. But he didn’t bring it back with him. Instead he brought back a Chinese takeaway for them both. A bit of a treat, he called it, he thought they deserved to splash out. He announced that he’d sold the writing desk for three hundred pounds—three hundred!—and he beamed at her as if expecting a round of applause. The wife didn’t want to let him down, so gave as congratulatory a look as she could muster. Her husband explained that their son turned out to be a genuine antique from the reign of George III—that was the 1700s, you know—and the dealer had been very keen to get his hands on it. The wife asked how it was possible their son was from the 1700s when he’d only been born yesterday, but the husband huffily asked her what she thought he looked like, a furniture expert? After she’d polished off her sweet and sour prawn balls, the husband led her to the bedroom. She started to get out their precautions—one for him, one for her—and he shrugged, and said he didn’t think they needed to worry about precautions
too
much.

The next time she fell pregnant he didn’t get angry at all. On the contrary. He brought her cups of tea, kept asking how she was, wanted to make sure she didn’t overexert herself. And he’d nuzzle her swelling belly, kiss it, and whisper to it—what are you going to be when you grow up? What are you going to be? Over the next few weeks she produced a grandfather clock, two sixteenth-century tea chests, and an ornate dining table designed to seat a party of twelve. Every time they’d appear, pushed and pushed, after so much
pushing
the wife thought she’d burst, he’d unwrap the covering gloop and snip the cord like a kid opening a Christmas present. There were manymore Chinese takeaways, and the wife began to associate the taste of sweet and sour with the nausea she always felt after giving birth. And it wasn’t just Chinese takeaways the husband would buy; bit by bit, the hand-me-down furniture was replaced with fresh items he’d get from Argos. But every new item she’d produce from her stomach still somehow made them look as drab as the hand-me-downs, and a bit more plasticky to boot. In the bedroom the husband would become more experimental—wonder if they’d produce different types of furniture if they had sex in different positions. They did it standing up and were soon blessed with a Victorian standing lamp. They did it on all fours, and out came a whimsical framed portrait of four dogs playing poker. He invested in a lavish edition of the Karma Sutra, and was delighted with the gold statuette of Vishnu she delivered, so very exotic.

One evening, in a daze of sweet and sour, she told him that she missed the set of brass toasting forks he’d sold that day to buy their dinner. He looked perplexed. Told her patiently that they had no
need
for toasting forks, brass or otherwise. She agreed; but added softly that they were their children, weren’t they? Right down to their little brass handles they were their children, and she missed them. He told her that she couldn’t possibly
miss
something she hadn’t even had until one o’clock that afternoon; she was being illogical, it was just her post-natal depression playing up again. And she supposed that was true. In the same way that she couldn’t help but feel there was something different to their lovemaking now. She’d lie beneath him, watching as he bounced around on top—well, whenever the Karma Sutra allowed bouncing—and she’d zone out a little watching his face, the gritted teeth, the rolling eyes, the spit, all that effort, all that work. It didn’t seem like it had anything much to do with her anymore. She no longer felt the urge to squeal; if there was any squealing to be done, he’d be doing it, and it’d be a squeal of avarice. But when she tried to bring this up, as delicately as possible, she’d be told the same thing. Illogical. Post-natal Depression.

And then, one day, something truly miraculous happened. She’d just given birth to a four-poster bed, and thought little of the fact—she coolly admired all the frills and drapes, but she’d long ago taught herself not to get too attached to things like that. It was a big bit of furniture, it all but filled the room, and the wife wasn’t sure how her husband could get it to the dealer. But, she considered wearily, that was
his
problem,
his
part of the job, let
him
deal with it. She tried to swallow down the inevitable taste of sweet and sour sickness that took her after a delivery, no matter what she ate before it. And was about to go into the kitchen, make herself a cup of tea, when she felt something fall out of her body and hit the floor with a dull clang.

It was a kettle, she saw. Not an especially nice example of kettledom, the stainless steel a little rusted. Not antique either—her Mum’s one was just the same, and she doubted that predated the seventies. Under normal circumstances, the kettle would be a disappointment, you’d be lucky to get a fiver for it. But sitting on the floor next to the opulent bulk of the four-poster bed, it looked laughably banal. Probably no better than the hand-me-down kettle they had in their hand-me-down kitchen.

But it looked like her.

She’d all but given up looking at her children for any signs of resemblance, to see whether they took most after mummy or daddy. However impressive it might have been on its own terms, the four-poster bed was really just another four-poster bed; she knew intellectually it was of her flesh, but she felt no bond to it. But the kettle was something else. She couldn’t work out why they looked so similar; the spout didn’t look like her nose, the handles were nothing like her ears. Maybe it was just because it a bit tarnished, a bit dirty, and it wouldn’t go for much in Oxfam.

“Peek-a-boo,” she said to the kettle, and smiled. “Peek-a-boo!”

And she knew then that she was going to be all right. She could cope with all of this. Produce children who weren’t going to be her children. Live with a husband that she knew less and less day by day. Make love that wasn’t love at all. If she could just have her little daughter by her side, see her face whenever she needed to, remind herself what this whole family thing was supposed to be about. Was she a daughter, maybe he was a son . . . ? She picked up the kettle gently, ever so gently. Daughter. Definitely daughter. How lovely! Up to now all the furniture had been boys.

She’d got her now,
daughter
, she told herself,
daughter
, and she wasn’t going to get away. She cradled her in her arms, and the baby kettle gave a sigh of calm that quite broke her heart. She wouldn’t tell the husband, this was all hers, she was all hers. And she took her into the kitchen, kissed her softly, and shut her in the cupboard.

He’d said he liked companionable silence, that was a sign of friendship. But when it came down to it, what they had was just silence, really, wasn’t it? As they sped down the motorway in the dark, no sound except the low roar of the engine and the occasional grunt of the windscreen wiper, she felt drowsy, she thought at least that she might get some sleep. But she didn’t dare—it’d seem rude—they
weren’t
companions, not really, in spite of what they’d done—and he kept on stealing little looks at her, throwing her awkward little smiles, and saying, “Sorry I’m being so quiet, sorry.” If he wanted the companionable silence then why did he keep popping up with such stuff as, “Oh, look, only twenty-two more miles to the nearest service station,” or “Oh, look, cows”? Always with that apologetic grin she’d found rather endearing only a day before.

“Do you want some music?” he said at last, “would some music be nice?” He fished around for a wad of CDs with his spare hand, “I think some music would be nice,” he said, “I’ll see if I can find Elton John.” And then she didn’t so much hear it as
feel
it, there was a thud, and a quick streak of something very solid against the windscreen. “Jesus,” he said. He didn’t drop the CDs, she noted, he put them back safely into the glove compartment. “Jesus, what was that?”

“Pull over,” she said. And he looked at her with bewilderment. “Pull over,” she said again, and he did so. The car stopped on the hard shoulder.

“Jesus,” he said again. “We hit something.”

You hit something, she thought. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I think so,” he said, “yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Are you all right? What do you think it was? I mean, it just came out of nowhere. You saw that, didn’t you? There was nothing I could have done. Jesus,” he looked up at the windscreen, “I hope it hasn’t damaged anything.”

“You should check,” she said, and he just gave her that bewildered expression again, so she sighed, undid the seat belt, and opened the door. She wondered whether he might be in shock, but she’d seen him look bewildered a fair amount that weekend, and it couldn’t
always
have been shock. She wondered whether she might be in shock too. “Fuck,” she said, as she stepped out into the dark and the rain, “fuck fuck,” but actually she felt good, some fresh air at last, and something was happening, there’d be no need for a companionable silence now, she didn’t feel like saying ‘fuck’ at all. She gave the windscreen a cursory inspection, and from inside the car he gave her a hopeful thumbs up. She gave him a thumbs up back, but she hadn’t looked, not really, there could be shards of glass all round for all she cared. And then she turned and walked back down the hard shoulder to look for a body.

It wasn’t rain, not really, just a bit of wetness in the air, and it was refreshing. She liked it out here in the black, on her own, and she wondered how long she could get away with it, with not returning to the car, returning to him—pretending instead to look for whatever it is they might have hit, she’d never find it now. And then she saw it, maybe about two hundred yards behind the car, a little mound that had been knocked into the middle lane. She stood parallel to it, but couldn’t make out what it was. She thought it might be moving. She waved back, indicating he should reverse the car. For a moment nothing happened and she thought she’d have to walk all the way back and tell him what to do, “fuck,” she said, and then, slowly, surely, the car began to back down the hard shoulder towards her, he’d got the message.

“It’s just there,” she told him, as he wound down the window. “Try to angle the car a bit, so we can see what it is in the headlamps.”