The Soul Room (7 page)

It was a moment
in a swimming baths, when I was about 28 that brought me the greatest grief
I’ve felt at not being able to have my own child. There was a woman with a
little boy – about two years old, in the showers. He had hair so curly that it
stood up in little arches and cows-licks even though it was sopping wet. He sat
astride his mother’s hips, his right arm draped complacently round her neck.
Her arm came across his back and rested under his bum; and her muscles stood
out at the effort of it. Her swimming costume was pulled down and she was
soaping herself with her free hand and talking to the little boy at the same
time. She was tall and strong looking, almost Amazonian, with broad hips and
high breasts. At the bottom of her stomach, just before the point where her
costume was folded back, I could see a line - about six inches across – like a
faint smile. I realised it was a Caesarean scar. There was something so raw and
beautiful and painful about their ownership of each other; a child and a scar.
I’d never felt such envy before.

I remembered
this moment as I felt the rough edge of the vinyl chair in the doctor’s room
dig into the back of my thigh. The sensation was the only thing that reminded
me I was in the real world. My heart was racing and I was short of breath, all
the oxygen that was in me shrinking suddenly into the top of my lungs.

‘You’re sure? There couldn’t be any mistake?

The doctor shook her head. ‘No mistake. We can do the tests again for you
in a day or two if it would make you feel better but the result will be the
same.’ She smiled, a little condescendingly. ‘You should start taking Folic
Acid, research has shown it can dramatically reduce your chance of having a
baby with Cystic Fibrosis or Downs Syndrome – something that at your age you’re
going to be at a higher risk of. I also suggest that you make sure you go to
Kings College Hospital in London and have a nuchal fold scan.’

I stared back at
her blankly. She could see that she was getting nowhere.

She sighed. ‘Take a moment to think Ms Armstrong while I go and get you
some literature.’ She got up and shut the door quietly behind her. I couldn’t
move. I was totally at a loss to know how I was feeling. I’d only gone to the
doctor because I was increasingly getting regular twinges of nausea and hoped
she could give me something to deal with it. Instead, she had asked me a couple
of personal questions relating to my love life then asked me to wee on a small
cardboard stick. I told her it was impossible for me to be pregnant, that I
wasn’t capable of it, but she just looked at the two little lines that had
appeared on the stick, smiled forbearingly and explained that hormonal problems
sometimes righted themselves. I told her about Italy, and she said that all the
fresh fruit and vegetables, sunshine and exercise could well have been all my
body needed to ‘re-align’ itself.

I walked home along the seafront in a daze. I had to have a scan the
following week to see how far on I was, and half of me decided that I simply
couldn’t believe I was pregnant until I could see it with my own eyes. The
other half of me knew it was true. Not only did it explain the nausea, it also
explained the occasional cramps I’d thought were down to anxiety, and the
bone-deep tiredness that could overwhelm me without warning.

It was a mild blustery day and I was gently buffeted down the seafront
towards Hove by an obliging easterly wind. The sea had thrown shingle up onto
the promenade before the tide had gone out; and only distant lines of white foam
suggested its earlier ferocity. After half an hour’s walk I came to the peace
statue that marks the border between Brighton and Hove, her angel’s wings
framed by milky blue sky and high scudding clouds. I sat down on the low wall
that surrounds the statue’s podium and absently watched the knots of families
and tourists milling about the nearby café.

A shock of cold went from the tips of my hair to the soles of my feet.
The little figure in my dream. It had looked like a child. Maybe it was
my
child. I was trembling. And then another intense shiver: Nonna’s parting words
to me:
‘He is a wise boy.’
She had looked at me strangely when I’d
thought she meant Sergio. My hand went to my belly. Was this who she meant? I
thought of Sergio, how he had got his wish after all. And I, hadn’t I got my
wish? The wish I had nurtured for the past ten years? Why wasn’t I euphoric?
Why wasn’t I shouting it from the rooftops? Why did I suddenly feel reluctant
to tell Sergio he was a father? Perhaps I had got so used to living with the
loss of not being able to have children that it was hard to adjust. It would be
like my dead mother walking up to me now and sitting down beside me and asking
me how I was. Half wonderful and half unsettling – maybe even wrong somehow?
There had been months – years even, where I would have given my heart and soul
just to be able to talk to her one more time. To ask her all the questions I
wished I’d asked her, to give her one last hug, to tell her how much I loved
her. And most importantly perhaps, to forgive her for her mistakes, and ask her
forgiveness for mine. But it had been so long; fifteen years, and the sadness
and the grief had softened. Become part of me instead of
on
me and it
was like that with children too. I had learnt to accept myself as just that – a
woman without a child, and yet here I was with this tiny life inside my belly.

Stephanie’s face came into my mind before I could stop it.
‘I don’t
deserve this baby’
I found myself thinking and my eyes burned.
‘That’s
why I’m not happy, because I’m dead inside. Because the deaths have shut part
of me down that’ll never start up again. Where I should have a heart there’s a
cold, broken little engine instead, rusting and rotting. I can’t do it. I’m not
good enough to love a child!’
I jumped up involuntarily, surprising myself
by shouting out loud. ‘No! No!’ I ran down towards the sea, the shingle
whipping up and stinging my legs. White noise built up inside my head. The
great imperious cold lung of sea, breathed noisily against the sparkling
stones, and inside my head there was the rushing noise again.  I sat down
heavily, 'Not again! Please don't let me feel like that again’.   After a few
minutes I could see that I was causing some interest and concern from passers
by.  I desperately didn’t want anyone to come over and ask me how I was.  I
pulled myself up, wiped my face and walked unsteadily home.  As soon as I had
shut the front door behind me I dragged myself into my bedroom and threw myself
on the bed.

As I
descended through the thick darkness towards the now familiar tiled floor I
felt a little flutter of nerves, but there was no-one there. I slumped into one
of the window seats and leant my head against the cool glass. The surrounding
ocean was incredibly still, and there was a pink light in the sky that could
have been traces of dawn or sunset. The sea felt so different here, not
indifferent, but emanating meaning and response, a kind of liquid
transmutation. It almost seemed to have an inner glow, to be moving
imperceptibly beneath it’s glassy surface.

‘Hello.’

I started round, my hair standing on end, and there he was (as I
realised now I had known he would be) sitting neatly beside me on the seat, his
little legs hanging half a foot from the floor.

‘Hello.’ I managed to gasp back. He smiled a little smile in response
and we sat there looking at each other in silence for a good minute. He had an
oval face, and big brown eyes that were made even darker by his slightly
serious expression. His hair was almost black, short and straight, and framed
his face in a way that reminded me of those little boys you see in shirt cuffs
and tank tops in old black and white photos. He was dressed like thousands of
little boys are dressed these days; scuffed trainers, jeans and a long sleeved
T-shirt, with a short sleeved one over the top. He looked about four or five
years old.

‘Are you OK Mum?’

‘Yes, I think so. I was expecting you, and yet…’

‘It’s a surprise?’

‘Yes sweetheart, it’s still a surprise.’

‘You don’t need to be scared Mum you know.’ He frowned and tilted his
head slightly. A little thread of recognition went up from my hip to my jaw.

‘Of what?’

‘Of us, it’s going to fine.’

I put my hand up to my mouth to stifle a sob. ‘Really? Am I really
going to do OK?’ I reached over to him but he shook his head.

‘No Mum. You can’t do that yet.’

‘But I just want to touch you!’

Suddenly his face broke out into a huge smile and was transformed. His
eyes sparkled and all the earnestness left him. He laughed.

‘But you are touching me silly!’

That dream was
definitely the start of it. The start of acceptance, that whatever happened,
this child was now the most important thing in my life. I knew, also, that
whatever I had done in the past - the mistakes, the occasional acts of
selfishness or insensitivity, the doubts and guilt; I had to learn somehow, to
live with. To accept them for part of who I was - that like everyone, I had
little points of shame and regret, and that unless I trained myself to look at
them, accept them and learn from them, they would rule me again and I wouldn’t
be able to be a good mother to my child. Of course, it wasn’t going to happen
overnight. These things never do. But realising it was the first step to
something new. Perhaps I would be able to act with a greater strength, to believe
in myself a little bit more, just through the knowledge of it. The rest would
follow as my emotional stamina increased, I was sure.

I felt a new optimism, lightness. Looking at the sea and sky, and people
around me as I walked I felt little buzzes of excitement and hope in the pit of
my stomach. I believed in the life ahead. I believed for the first time in
years that there really was something to look forward too. And it wasn’t just
the dream that fuelled it. I was increasingly beginning to believe that there
was something greater than me that I could tap into. Some energy or power that
surrounded us – that surrounded Nonna and gave her her gifts, that had somehow
given
me
the gift to meet my son in that beautiful sea-bound room. Or
even at least, to
think
I was meeting him. To be honest it didn’t
matter. For the first time in my adult life I had faith. In what, I still
wasn’t sure, but I felt it just the same.

Sergio was
sobbing softly and I felt sympathetic tears come into my own eyes. The earpiece
of the phone felt warm against my cheek, as if our emotions, rather than my
skin, had heated it.

‘
Tsoro
. It is the most wonderful thing. You cannot imagine the
gift you have given me!’

‘And you have given me Sergio. Don’t you forget that!’

‘So you are happy? You are truly happy?’

‘It took me a couple of days, to get over the disbelief but yes. He is
the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me.’

‘He?’

‘Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.’

‘He…he.’ He trailed off. I got the feeling he was collecting himself.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘No!’ He laughed, a high little laugh. ‘No Maddie. I am just overwhelmed.
Mi Padre
will be speechless!’

‘And Nonna?’

He laughed again. ‘Oh she probably knew months ago.’

I let it go. ‘I’ve got my first scan on Tuesday. They’ll be able to tell
us how old the baby is and if everything looks OK’

‘And I shall come and hold your hand and weep with joy!’

‘Wonderful! We’ll see him for the first time together!’ I lied.

I went around
suffused with a warm knowingness. I had a wonderful secret, and somehow it gave
me a licence to smile at everyone, to be vivacious and kind. I held doors open,
I grinned stupidly at every small child I saw, I was particularly courteous to
people behind tills.  I half expected my joy to undermine my motivation to find
out what had happened to Dan but it didn’t. If anything it gave me a new sense
of purpose, a new drive, and the fuel in the engine was hope. I couldn’t
believe, that in my new world, anything really bad could have happened. ‘Maybe’
I found myself thinking for the first time, ‘maybe he's holed up in some nice
little crofter’s cottage in Scotland laughing at us all!’ and the thought
brought a little smile to my face because I was too happy, now, to be angry
with him.

The morning of the scan arrived and I enjoyed a languorous lie-in,
starfish-spread across the mattress, a sliver of winter sunlight falling across
the duvet. Then I felt a sharp pain bite across my abdomen. I remembered
reading something in one of my baby books about practice contractions, but
surely it was much too early for that. I felt a wave of panic, but then the
pain went as quickly as it had come. Anxiety got me out of bed and I dressed.
What if the scan wasn’t ok? I hadn’t let the thought cross my mind; even though
I was in my late thirties and the risk of defects was higher. And miscarriage,
how could I be so foolish to have forgotten miscarriage? Didn’t about one in
three pregnancies end in miscarriage? I reached for my phone to look up the
statistics, but burst into tears before I could complete the search, my eyes
too blurred to focus on the little screen.

This was supposed to be my special day – the day of my first scan –
Sergio’s first chance to see his son – so why did a pall have to fall over it?
I sat around, unable to focus on anything, drinking tea, half-heartedly
washing-up, watching television programmes that I instantly forgot.
But you
know he’s alright.
I told myself.
You talked to him yourself last night
and he told you so.
I shook my head at the absurdity of the thought, but
felt strangely comforted. Finally the doorbell rang.
At last, I won’t be on
my own anymore.
I felt a little rush of pleasure at the thought of seeing
Sergio; of being held and comforted; of talking late into the night about our
baby; of some gentle lovemaking. I pressed the buzzer and waited at the top of
the stairs excitedly. But even before I saw who it was, the ponderous step told
me it wasn't Sergio. Finally he appeared, like Columbo in his creased brown
mackintosh, taking each step slowly and methodically.