Remember Why You Fear Me (37 page)

But my wife had another, better explanation. “It’ll be a virgin birth,” she said. “You know, like that one in the Bible.” And it was funny, because she’d never been a religious person before, we’d got married at a registry office at her suggestion. And there was that time my mother came over, and all she’d done was ask whether we were going to get Laura christened, and the way my wife had shouted at her, had told her to mind her own business, it had reduced my mother to tears, and I’m quite sure Mummy meant no harm. “No, I’m not having it,” my wife said when I asked her to forgive my mother, “it’s too late for her now, she had a child once and she’s had her chance, she’s not going to ruin my baby the way she ruined hers.” But now my wife would study the Bible, looking for some way to make sense of this unexpected blessing bestowed upon us. “It stands to reason,” she told me. “The first virgin birth was out of the stomach of a grown woman, in the sequel God would want to make it harder.”

And one of the great joys of my wife’s pregnancy had been choosing Laura’s name together. We’d lie side by side in bed, and try different ones out for size, and we’d laugh at them all, we’d laugh so much back then. “Mary Marshall, Moira Marshall, Mattie Marshall.” And we chose Laura in the end, because Laura was the name of my wife’s late mother, and my wife’s mother had died very young and my wife had never known her well but she was certain she’d have loved my wife very much, and she wanted her mother to be commemorated somehow because she thought it’d have meant the world to her. And because it was the name of the very prettiest of my ex-girlfriends. Though I didn’t share that information with my wife. And, no, we didn’t christen her, but how proud I was when we signed her name on the birth certificate, that name somehow made her real, it turned her into a person. And I had hoped that now there was a new baby in our lives we could do the same thing; we’d lie in bed, we’d say names, we’d laugh. But my wife wasn’t having any of it. “He already has a name,” she told me. “He’s Jesus.” And that did solemnify the mood somewhat, it was hard to laugh in bed when you knew that the messiah was growing inside your infant daughter’s belly in the room just across the hall.

I wouldn’t want to give you the impression that my wife wasn’t kind to Laura, because she was, quite often; and she’s the one who had to spend all day with her, after all, I got to go to the office, I got some escape from it. And Laura does moan too much. The way she complains about her cramps, you’d think no one had ever been pregnant before! You’d think her own mother herself hadn’t been pregnant, and she’d had the cramps too, she was bent double with them, but she’d smiled through them, she’d welcomed them with open arms. But I feel sometimes that my wife doesn’t talk to Laura very much, she just talks to the foetus inside her—and even when she addresses Laura by name, tells her to clean her teeth or pick up her toys, it’s the bump she’s looking at. And me too—I still pick her up, I still hold her in my arms, but I feel I’m faking it, I no longer quite get that rush of love, I try to, I look for it, but it’s just out of reach. I hold Laura in my arms, and I can feel her little heart beating, but now I think, is it
her
heart? Or is it Jesus’s? And it troubles me. Laura cries so much, and my wife feels no sympathy, she tells her she should be grateful to be the vessel of the Living Lord. And I don’t know, I think there might be a less spiritual reason for this pregnancy, but I admit it, I can’t feel much sympathy either. Because she’s my little girl, and she’s hurting, and I wouldn’t want her hurting for the whole wide world—but deep down I wonder whether she might have brought this on herself, that she might just be a cheap slapper.

The cramps were so bad this morning. Laura came to our room, and she was crawling along the floor, it was as if she’d regressed all the way back to a one year old. And there was blood. I insisted we take her to the hospital, and at first my wife refused, but I could tell she was scared, and I was able to convince her to do the right thing. And the doctor inspected Laura. He took X-rays. And even then I wondered whether we’d got the symptoms wrong, that Laura wasn’t pregnant, that our daughter was merely a fat kid who threw up. But no, he was amazed; he said he’d never seen anything like it; “Mr and Mrs Marshall, your little girl is with child.” “Yes, yes,” snapped my wife, “but what of the baby, is He all right, is He going to be okay?” The doctor smiled through his medical bemusement. “Everything’s all right,” he assured us, “the baby’s fine. You’re going to have a healthy granddaughter.”

My wife didn’t say much in the car, and Laura didn’t either, she could tell her mother was cross. I tried to be cheerful. I said that maybe it’d be okay, or maybe the doctor had made a mistake. Until my wife retorted, “It’s not going to be okay, Jesus wouldn’t come back as a
girl
, would He? That’s just ridiculous.” So I said nothing for a bit. I then said, that maybe if the baby wasn’t Jesus, we could all have some fun thinking up another name for it instead? But my wife said she didn’t care, and Laura was still being quiet, and I had to admit I couldn’t think of anything appropriate.

But when we got home there was a message on the answering machine. It was the doctor. And he sounded excited, and that wasn’t a surprise, he’d sounded excited from the start, he hadn’t had the time to get fed up with the pregnancy like we had. I nearly turned the message off, but my wife stopped me. And the doctor said they’d examined the X-rays of the foetus. And it was incredible. It was incredible, there were no words for it, it was incredible. Because she was pregnant. Not Laura—well, yes, Laura, but not just Laura—the foetus, the foetus inside her. The foetus was pregnant. Inside that little lump of life growing inside our daughter was another living lump littler still, not even a lump, no more than a speck, but it was thriving, and it was getting bigger, and it was human. And the doctor said he couldn’t tell the gender of the speck for sure, but he thought it might have a penis. A new baby. A new miracle. And my wife standing there listening to the news, and tears rolling down her cheeks—and my daughter, feeling at her stomach involuntarily, tears streaming too—and I thought I knew why they were both crying, there was despair on my daughter’s face, and I looked at my wife’s, expecting only to see relief and awe, but no, no, that was despair, I think she had a new despair of her very own.—And I have to be honest, I felt a bit emotional as well.

Laura’s still cramping badly, but we’ve given her painkillers, and we’ve closed the bedroom door so we can’t hear her. And my wife and I are alone. And my wife has put on perfume, and she never wears perfume, not now. She’s come to me, and she’s smiling again, and I see the smile is made of lipstick. The smile is meant to be seductive, or maybe it’s trying to be happy, or maybe it’s just trying to look shy and awkward, and shy and awkward is its best bet. “I love you,” she says. “I love you.” And she kisses me, and we haven’t kissed for a long time, and I’m a bit taken aback, I don’t think of her as anything other than a mother anymore. “We’ve still got it, baby, haven’t we?” comes the whisper in my ear. “We’ve still got it?” And she asks me to make love to her. “Fill me with your baby juice, we can be special too, can’t we, we can be special too, tell me we can be special.” How she glows. And it seems wrong, that we’re competing with our own daughter like this, but my wife wants a baby of her own, and whatever she wants, that’s what I try to give. And I do my best. I really do. I strain inside her and try to think baby thoughts, I try to will something new to life. But I keep thinking of my grandchild on her way, and of my great-grandchild too, and all the descendants that may be following after, and I’m sad to say, I can’t help it, I droop a little, I droop, I feel so very old.

He thought at first that she was dead. And that was terrible, of course—but what shocked him most was how dispassionate that made him feel. There was no anguish, no horror, he should be crying but clearly no tears were fighting to get out—and instead all there was this almost sick fascination. He’d never seen a corpse before. His mother had asked if he’d wanted to see his grandfather, all laid out for the funeral, and he was only twelve, and he really really didn’t—and his father said that was okay, it was probably best Harry remembered Grandad the way he had been, funny and full of life, better not to spoil the memory—and Harry had quickly agreed, yes, that was the reason—but it wasn’t that at all, it was a bloody dead body, and he worried that if he got too close it might wake up and say hello.

And now here there was a corpse, and it was less than three feet away, in the passenger seat behind him. And it was his
wife
, for God’s sake, someone he knew so well—or, at least, better than anyone else in the world could, he could say that at least. And her head was twisted oddly, he’d never seen her quite at that angle before and she looked like someone he’d never really known at all, he’d never seen her face in a profile where her nose looked quite that enormous. And there was all the blood, of course. He wondered whether the tears were starting to come after all, he could sense a pricking at his eyes, and he thought it’d be such a
relief
if he could feel grief or shock or hysteria or something . . .
when she swivelled that neck a little towards him, and out from a mouth thick with that blood came “Hello.”

He was so astonished that for a moment he didn’t reply, just goggled at her. She frowned.

“There’s a funny taste in my mouth,” she said.

“The blood,” he suggested.

“What’s that, darling?”

“There’s a lot of blood,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes, that would make sense. Oh dear. I don’t feel I’m in any pain, though. Are you in any pain?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I haven’t tried to . . . move much, I . . .” He struggled for words. “I didn’t get round to trying, actually. Actually, I thought you were dead.”

“And I can’t see very well either,” she said.

“Oh,” he said.

She blinked. Then blinked again. “No, won’t go away. It’s all very red.”

“That’ll be the blood,” he said. “Again.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Of course, the blood.” She thought for a moment. “I’d wipe my eyes, but I can’t seem to move my arms at all. I have still got arms, haven’t I, darling?”

“I think so. I can see the right one, in any case.”

“That’s good. I do wonder, shouldn’t I be a little more scared than this?”

“I was trying to work that out too. Why I wasn’t more scared. Especially when I thought you were dead.”

“Right . . . ?”

“And I concluded. That it was probably the shock.”

“That could be it.” She nodded, and that enormous nose nodded too, and so did the twisted neck, there they were, all nodding, it looked grotesque—”Still. All that blood! I must look a sight!”

She did, but he didn’t care, Harry was just so relieved she was all right after all, and he didn’t want to tell her that her little spate of nodding seemed to have left her head somewhat back to front. She yawned. “Well,” she said. “I think I might take a little nap.”

He wasn’t sure that was a good idea, he thought that he should probably persuade her to stay awake. But she yawned again, and look!—she was perfectly all right, wasn’t she, there was no pain, there was a lot of
blood
, yes, but no pain. “Just a little nap,” she said. “I’ll be with you again in a bit.” She frowned. “Could you scratch my back for me, darling? It’s itchy.”

“I can’t move.”

“Oh, right. Okay. It’s itchy, though. I’m allergic to feathers.”

“To what, darling?”

“To feathers,” she said. “The feathers are tickling me.” And she nodded off.

His first plan had been to take her back to Venice. Venice had been where they’d honeymooned. And he thought that would be so romantic, one year on exactly, to return to Venice for their first anniversary. They could do everything they had before—hold hands in St Mark’s Square, hold hands on board the vaporetti, toast each other with champagne in one of those restaurants by the Rialto. He was excited by the idea, and he was going to keep it a secret from Esther, surprise her on the day with plane tickets—but he
never
kept secrets from Esther, they told each other everything, it would just have seemed weird. And thank God he had told her, as it turned out. Because she said that although it was a lovely idea, and yes, it
was
very romantic, she didn’t want to go back to Venice at all. Truth to tell, she’d found it a bit smelly, and very crowded, and
very
expensive; they’d done it once, why not see somewhere else? He felt a little hurt at first—hadn’t she enjoyed the honeymoon then? She’d never said she hadn’t at the time—and she reassured him, she’d
adored
the honeymoon. But not because of Venice, because of him, she’d adore any holiday anywhere, so long as he was part of the package. He liked that. She had a knack for saying the right thing, smoothing everything over.

Indeed, in one year of marriage they’d never yet had an argument.

He sometimes wondered whether this were some kind of a record. He wanted to ask all his other married friends, how often do you argue, do you even argue at all?—just to see whether what he’d got with Esther was something really special. But he never did, he didn’t want to rub anyone’s noses in how happy he was, and besides, he didn’t have the sorts of friends he could be that personal with. He didn’t need to, he had Esther. Both he and Esther had developed a way in which they’d avoid confrontation—if a conversation was taking a wrong turning, Esther would usually send it on a detour without any apparent effort. Yes, he could find her irritating at times, and he was certain then that she must find him irritating too—and they could both give the odd warning growl if either were tired or stressed—but they’d never had anything close to a full blown row. That was something to be proud of. He called her his little diplomat! He said that she should be employed by the UN, she’d soon sort out all these conflicts they heard about on the news! And she’d laugh, and say that he clearly hadn’t seen what she was like in the shop, she could really snap at some of those customers sometimes—she was only perfect around
him
. And he’d seen evidence of that, hadn’t he? For example—on their wedding morning, when he wanted to see her, and all the bridesmaids were telling him not to go into the bedroom,
don’t
, Harry, she’s in a filthy temper!—but he went in anyway, and there she was in her dress, she was so beautiful, and she just beamed at him, and kissed him, and told him that she loved him, oh, how she loved him. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t ever going to be angry with him. And that night they’d flown off to Venice, and they’d had a wonderful time.