The Things We Never Said (19 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

After a few weeks, it becomes clear that they can’t all survive on what Leonard earns, so Maggie finds a job she can do at home – making rubber pants for babies. She gets Leonard to set up their mother’s old Singer sewing machine in the living room, and she starts work. A box containing pieces of transparent rubber, cut out and ready to sew, is delivered each week along with two bags of white rubber bands – small ones for the legs and bigger ones for the tops. Maggie stitches up the sides, then sews the bands in and hey presto, rubber pants! She works throughout the summer, clattering away at the sewing machine, her foot rhythmically working the treadle. When she pauses to light a cigarette, it’s as though the machine is holding its breath, waiting for her to start again. Occasionally she looks out at the sun, high in the sky. Maybe she could take a short break, take the twins down to the beach perhaps. But no; she has a quota to fill.

As she machines away, much faster now she’s been doing it for a while, she thinks back to the day she’d got talking to Janine, who’d put her in touch with the people for whom she makes the rubber pants. It was back in May, the first day that it had been warm enough to go to the beach. The sun had still been weak, but doing its best to melt the grime-streaked snowman remains that still lingered in some of the front gardens even then. Maggie had looked down at the twins as she wheeled them along the promenade, Jonathan gnawing on a teething ring, Elizabeth leaning against him and just looking around, blinking at the world. Flashes of sunlight glanced off the water; the air smelled salty and carried the tang of freshly caught fish. She got them down the slope to the beach, and managed to drag the pushchair across the pebbles to a spot nearer the sea. They were trying to wriggle out of their straps, so she unbuckled them, lifted them out and set them down on the stones, where they gazed in wonder at seagulls as big as themselves, and waves gently fizzing onto the shore. She gave them each an Ovaltine rusk and they gnawed away happily while she flicked through a copy of
Woman’s Realm.

Within minutes, the twins had an admirer – a little girl called Diane, whose heavily pregnant mother was sitting nearby.

‘I’m Janine,’ the woman smiled. ‘You
are
lucky having twins – all the agony out of the way in one go!’ Janine wore pearls and a pale-green frock and apart from being in the family way, she looked just like Jackie Kennedy. She took out a pack of Park Drive and offered one to Maggie, and the two of them spent the afternoon chatting and smoking in the warm sunshine. Diane, besotted, entertained the twins with her new ‘Tressy’ doll – a rather creepy thing in Maggie’s opinion, with hair that ‘grew’ when you pushed a button in its back. It was as they were packing up to go that Maggie mentioned being short of money. ‘Have you got a sewing machine?’ Janine asked. And she told Maggie about the rubber pants. ‘It’s not much money,’ she’d said as she wrote down the telephone number on the back of Maggie’s cigarette packet. ‘But I’ve done it since Diane was born, and if it weren’t for junior here,’ she gestured to her swollen belly, ‘I’d still be doing it.’

Maggie could kick herself for not asking Janine for her number; she barely sees anyone except Leonard these days, and she could really do with a friend.

*

By the time the chill of autumn settles once more around Maggie’s shoulders, she is heartily sick of rubber pants. It’s difficult to sew when her fingers are so cold, but she needs the money. She hates this weather. The air smells damp and smoky, and a dense fog is trying to push its way in from outside. This isn’t exactly a ‘pea-souper’, but fog unsettles Maggie almost as much as it did her mother. It was, after all, what killed her father. He’d been covering for another chef in London during the smog of 1952 when he went down with bronchitis. The hotel sent him back home to Hastings, but he never recovered.

The twins sit side by side in their high chairs. Jonathan eats impatiently as usual, his mouth opening up like a little bird for each spoonful. He chomps twice, swallows, opens again then bangs the plastic tray in protest at the delay while Maggie tries to spoon mashed banana and custard into a reluctant Elizabeth, who clamps her mouth shut and twists away, her face wrinkling in misery. Jonathan reaches for his sister and his fingers brush against her forehead. She stops her fretting and rests her head against her brother’s hand. ‘Mimbet,’ Jonathan says, his eleven-month-old attempt at ‘Elizabeth’. His fingers flex and scrunch in her hair as though testing its silkiness. Briefly, Elizabeth is calm.

How different they are: Jonathan with his scrubby little tufts of golden hair, robust and solid and always laughing; Elizabeth with her satiny white-blonde curls, tiny, fragile, skin almost translucent.

‘Come on, darling,’ Maggie coaxes. ‘Just one mouthful.’ But Elizabeth refuses and resumes her whimpering. ‘Come
on
.’ Maggie pushes the plastic spoon against her child’s firmly closed lips. Elizabeth is testing her; Elizabeth knows she is not a proper mother, merely an accidental one who is failing. ‘Please, darling. Be a good girl for Mummy.’ But Elizabeth shakes her head. ‘Oh, for crying out loud!’ Maggie scrapes her chair back and tries to wipe spilt food off her already-stained slacks. ‘Can’t you eat the damn stuff just one time without a fuss?’

Elizabeth starts to cry. ‘You’re doing this deliberately,’ Maggie snaps. Jonathan’s eyes widen and his lower lip trembles. He too starts to yell. ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ She lifts Jonathan out of the highchair, moves aside the overflowing laundry basket with her foot and sets him down on the rug, then puts Elizabeth down next to him. Jonathan, easily distracted, starts happily tearing off strips of the
Daily Sketch
and trying to eat them. Maggie disengages the paper from his tightly curled fingers and gives him some wooden bricks instead. Elizabeth makes no attempt to play, despite Maggie’s open handbag being within her reach. Her skin is pale, the pallor emphasised by the redness of her eyes, which seem tiny and piggish in her moon-face. When Jonathan tries to interest her in a green brick, she continues to sit immobile. He tries a red brick, but to no avail. Maggie touches her daughter’s forehead and is shocked by the intensity of the heat. How could she not have noticed? Thank God Leonard insisted on having a telephone put in. But when she asks if the doctor can call round, the receptionist can barely keep the outrage from her voice: ‘Doctor has
far
too big a round to be coming out to snuffly babies,’ she says. ‘Bring her along to evening surgery. Five o’clock.’ And she hangs up.

Maggie crushes a baby aspirin and mixes it into a jar of egg custard, Elizabeth’s favourite. But she won’t open her mouth. She even refuses rosehip syrup. Maggie telephones Vanda, who is sympathetic but can’t offer practical advice:
Darling, the only thing I’ve ever looked after is a boa constrictor, and even he died!

Maggie lights another cigarette. If only her mother were alive; she’d know what to do. She drums her fingers on the arm of the settee; Jonathan is playing contentedly with his bricks while Elizabeth sits listlessly on her lap, coughing occasionally. The hands on the mantel clock seem paralysed. She picks up her book, but after two pages she realises she hasn’t taken any of it in. How is she going to get through until the surgery opens?

After half an hour or so, Elizabeth brightens, and she doesn’t feel quite so hot.

‘Look, sweetie,’ Maggie says, reaching for
Tabitha and her Kittens
, one of the books Vanda sent down for the twins’ birthday in November. ‘Where’s the pussycat? Show Mummy the cat.’

Elizabeth touches the page. ‘Tat!’ She turns to Maggie, her little mouth widening into a smile and revealing four snow-white teeth.

‘Clever girl!’ Maggie kisses the top of her head.

Elizabeth puts her thumb in her mouth, curls her index finger around her nose, then leans back onto Maggie’s chest and closes her eyes, as though her work is done. She must be teething again, Maggie thinks. Or it’s another bloody cold.

Maggie reaches for her cigarettes. Damn, it’s her last one. She looks out of the window. The fog seems to have lifted now. Perhaps the air will clear Elizabeth’s nose. She dresses the twins in padded leggings, coats, hats and mittens, and straps them into the pushchair. Jonathan wriggles and frets. He too is looking slightly red-eyed and pale. Please don’t let them both have colds.

The air is damp, and the pavements look wet even though it hasn’t rained. The seagulls seem to be shrieking particularly loudly. She wishes they’d just shut up, stupid, useless birds. As soon as she manoeuvres the huge pushchair into the tobacconist’s, a smiling Mrs Dean comes out from behind the glass-topped counter. She has known Maggie since she was a little girl and must now be well into her seventies, though still slender and attractive, pearls in her ears and at her throat, her hair an improbable shade of auburn and her face carefully made up. ‘Hello, my poppets!’ she cries, ducking her head down to the pushchair to kiss the twins. But then she freezes and the smile evaporates. ‘Goodness.’ She looks at Maggie. ‘Ought you to have them out?’

Maggie looks at her, then at the babies. ‘Elizabeth’s got a cold,’ she says. ‘I’m taking her to Dr Cranfield later, but he’ll probably only give her a linctus.’ Then she looks more closely and begins to see what Mrs Dean sees. Red patches on Elizabeth’s face; a rash. Jonathan looks blotchy as well, screwing up his eyes against the light and pulling at his ear. She puts her hand to his head and feels the heat before she touches him.

‘Measles!’ Mrs Dean announces. ‘They shouldn’t be out while they’re infectious, dear. I’d take them straight back home to a darkened room and get Dr Cranfield out.’

Maggie is flustered. ‘Measles? I thought they were too young for measles.’ But now she looks at them again she can see that it’s not just any old rash. ‘They said I should go to evening surgery . . .’

‘Poppycock! Those children should be tucked up in the warm and if . . .’ She stops. ‘Never mind.’ She nods towards the wooden chair in the corner of the shop. ‘Sit yourself down for a minute, pet. I’ll sort this out.’

Maggie watches her disappear into the back room, hears the whir and click-ker-ching as the telephone dial spins round. Mrs Dean shouts into the receiver, demands the doctor come out immediately. She doesn’t give a tin ker’s cuss whether Dr Cranfield is about to have his tea; she’s had three children and seven grandchildren and she knows a measly child when she sees one. There is a clunk as she slams the receiver back into its cradle.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Before now, Jonathan has only ever seen Cassie smiling and laughing; this is like a different person. Her face is dark and her mouth has gone thin and hard; when she looks at him, her eyes seem powered by an electric current, as though she might zap him with one laser glance. He and Malcolm sit meekly side by side in the back, the frost that sparkles on the deserted streets failing to rival the iciness inside the car. Talking is clearly not permitted. He glances at Malcolm, whose skin is now the colour of an old bandage. It must have cost him a great deal to talk about what he’d been through, Jonathan realises. As he gets out of the car, he catches Malcolm’s hand and holds it for a moment.

As he walks up the path, he braces himself. It’s gone four now, and yet the lights are still on downstairs. She’ll be furious, and she has every right. He should have phoned; she’ll probably accuse him of going to Sian’s again or something. At least her car’s here – when Malcolm said Cass couldn’t get hold of her, it crossed his mind that she might have gone again. He’s surprised she didn’t call, but then he reaches into his jacket for his phone. Shit. It’s still on ‘silent’ and there are four missed calls and a text. He scrolls down as he fumbles for his keys. But there’s only one from Fiona – the others are from Lucy. He switches it back to ‘outdoor’, puts his key in the lock and pushes the door open.

He stares at the big red drops on the carpet and bloody handprints on the wall; he bounds up the stairs, feeling the sticky wetness as soon as he touches the banister rail. He pushes the bedroom door open and freezes. The smell hits him first, a rusty, coppery tang. The duvet is on the floor, one corner completely sodden with blood. The bed is covered too, and there are bloody handprints on the chest of drawers. He can’t move; he can’t think. Perhaps this is some sort of drink-induced hallucination. His phone rings. Lucy. He presses
answer
but he still can’t speak.

‘Jonathan? Where the fuck have you been, you selfish bastard?’

He’s never heard Lucy swear before. ‘What . . .’ But his voice still won’t work. He clears his throat and tries again. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Fiona’s been rushed to hospital,’ Lucy says, in a tone that suggests it’s his fault. ‘She was bleeding, and yet again you—’

‘Lucy, please. Just tell me what’s happened.’

‘Lewisham hospital; the labour ward.’ Then her voice fractures. ‘Just get here.’

‘Lucy!’ But she’s gone.

He knows he shouldn’t be driving but bollocks to it. He almost falls down the stairs in his hurry to get out of the house and into the car. Labour ward; why is she on the labour ward? She’s only twenty-four weeks.

He stopped believing in God when he was about ten, but now he’s desperate to believe there’s something out there that can influence what’s happening.
Please, please, please
, he prays as he drives.
Please don’t let us lose this baby. Let Fiona be all right, I’ll be a better person, I swear. I’ll be a good husband and a good father and I’ll try my hardest to be a good son; just let our baby be born safely and I swear I’ll bring him up properly and I’ll take him to church. Show me what to do; I’ll do anything, I promise, anything if you’ll keep them both safe.
He coughs to hold back a sob that threatens to slip between his lips.

*

The car park is full, even at this time of night, so he parks in a disabled bay and runs into the hospital. One of the midwives buzzes him into the ward and meets him just inside the doors. She’s wearing what look like green pyjamas. ‘Your wife’s very poorly,’ she says as she leads the way along the corridor. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood but we managed to find a match fairly quickly and we’re giving her a transfusion now.’ The woman’s buttocks are so large that each seems to move independently of the other, but she walks quickly despite her size, and Jonathan has to hurry to keep up with her. It’s only five in the morning and many of the rooms are still in darkness, but there’s a feeling of activity, a sense that the ward is awake, alert.

As they pass one of the side rooms, he can hear a woman crying out in pain. For one awful moment he thinks . . . but the midwife marches straight past, thank God. A heavily pregnant woman in a pink and black dressing gown is pacing the corridor, supported by her dishevelled-looking partner. Behind the door of another room, a baby cries insistently.

‘Nurse!’ An older woman comes out of one of the rooms, her face creased with anxiety. ‘Please, when are you going to see to my daughter? She’s in such a lot of pain.’ Behind her, an enormously pregnant teenage girl is leaning over the bed while another girl of about the same age rubs her back. The first girl is crying loudly.

‘We’ll be along to check on her in a little while,’ the midwife snaps without breaking her stride. ‘There are other patients besides your daughter, you know.’

Up ahead, there’s a hubbub of activity. A lot more people in green surgical pyjamas are going in and out of one of the rooms. They move quickly and purposefully; the sense of urgency is palpable.

‘She’s in here,’ the midwife says, pushing the door open and standing aside as someone else hurries out. ‘You’ll have to stay out of the way; they’re still trying to get her stable.’

Lucy is standing just inside the door, her hair a mess. She’s wearing glasses instead of her usual contacts, and she looks as if she’s been crying. Instead of yelling at Jonathan, she almost collapses into his arms. ‘Thank God you’re here. I thought . . . I thought she might . . .’

Men and women in green surround the bed, moving in and out of the little cluster like bees around a hive. They’re all frowning, intent on what they’re doing; they speak in sharp, clipped sentences but he can’t make out what they’re saying because they’re talking so quickly. One of them reaches up to adjust a bag of blood that’s hanging from a stand next to the bed.

‘She was fine when she left me earlier on,’ Lucy is saying. ‘Then she phoned at about half two and said she was bleeding and could I come over, but by the time I got there . . . oh God, it was . . . I’ve never seen so much blood.’

Then a gap appears in the group around the bed and he can see her. She looks smaller, somehow. At first he thinks she’s unconscious, but then she opens her eyes. He steps forward and she looks at him, but her face doesn’t register anything at all; it’s as though she isn’t actually there. He’s never seen her so pale. Her face is ashen; her skin glistens with sweat and there’s dried blood on her forehead and in her hair. She tries to speak but it’s very faint.

‘All right, Fiona,’ one of the men says in an extra-loud voice, as though she’s deaf or stupid. ‘You’re doing fine. Everything’s under control now.’

Fiona murmurs something again, but no one takes any notice.

‘Pulse is coming down, but it’s still one-twenty,’ someone says.

‘Give her another two units,’ the man who appears to be in charge shouts. ‘Come on, let’s speed it up a bit, shall we?’

One of the women fixes another bag of blood to the stand beside the bed. There are so many of them, all around her, all doing things to her.

Jonathan watches what’s happening as though it’s a film. He wants to intervene, to stop them prodding at her or at least to ask what they’re doing and why, but he’s in limbo; frozen.

‘We’re getting there,’ someone says after a while. ‘BP’s picking up.’

‘Thank Christ,’ says the man in charge. ‘Good girl, Fiona. You’re doing just fine.’ He says something to the woman next to him, then turns to Jonathan. ‘Right, you the husband?’

Jonathan nods.

‘We’ve given her six pints of blood; the trick with this is to get the blood into her faster than it’s coming out – pretty basic, really. She seems to be stable now and her blood pressure’s looking much more healthy, so it doesn’t look like we need to do a caesarean—’

‘Caesarean? But the baby’s not due until—’

‘Only option if the bleeding doesn’t stop spontaneously we’re risking mum and baby otherwise. Placenta praevia can be a life-threatening condition, but I think we’re out of the woods now.’

Jonathan looks at the doctor, who clearly expects some response.

‘He doesn’t know,’ Lucy chips in. ‘She hasn’t told him.’

‘
What?
’ Jonathan turns to Lucy. ‘You mean she knew there was something wrong—’

‘Not like this. They didn’t think it was serious.’

‘But why didn’t she—’

‘Because she didn’t feel she could tell you,’ Lucy sighs. ‘I know it’s not your fault, Jonathan, but with everything else . . .’

The doctor is speaking again, and Jonathan tries to focus on what he’s saying.

‘We still need to see how the baby’s doing. We’ll get a CTG on her now she’s stable – sorry, that’s a cardiotocograph – it measures the foetal heartbeat so we can tell if the baby’s in distress. Then we’ll need to get her scanned so we can see what’s been happening in there.’

The midwife who’d let Jonathan in fits a strap around Fiona’s belly and pulls another screen into place. Fiona mutters something. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart.’ The midwife lays her big paw of a hand on Fiona’s forehead and strokes her hair. ‘No more bleeding now; you’re going to be just fine.’ Her voice is considerably less strident than when she spoke to him outside. ‘Hey now, look who’s here to see you. And you with no lipstick on!’

Jonathan moves nearer to the bed, but Fiona looks right through him. ‘The baby,’ she whispers.

There are tubes going into the back of both her hands, and there are wires and loops everywhere, but he manages to curl his fingers around hers as he leans over and kisses her. Her lips are dry and cracked but her skin is clammy to the touch.

‘Okay, Fiona,’ the midwife says. ‘You see that line on the screen there? That’s your baby’s heartbeat, still nice and strong. And listen . . .’ She adjusts something on the machine. ‘There we are – listen to that! Good, normal, healthy heartbeat.’

‘Thank God,’ Jonathan whispers, gently squeezing Fiona’s fingers. Her gaze flickers towards him and she smiles weakly.

Lucy bursts into tears, kisses Fiona and Jonathan, and says she’s going outside to phone home. Everyone else in the room is smiling too, and there’s a sense of ‘job done’, of tidying up. The room begins to empty until the only people left apart from himself and Fiona are the man in charge, who’s writing something on a clipboard, the big midwife and a tall, red-haired man who Jonathan has only just realised is also a midwife. He looks ridiculously young and is so slender he could play Laurel to his colleague’s Hardy.

‘Well done, Fiona,’ the doctor says. ‘Things are looking good, so you try and get some rest now, okay? I’ll pop back and see you later.’ He nods at Jonathan. ‘She’ll look a lot better in a few hours, but she’ll be staying with us for a while. Sister’ll fill you in.’ He smiles at Jonathan for the first time, and Jonathan is struck by an absurd desire to embrace the man. Instead, he tries to thank him, but his teeth start to chatter and he can’t get the words out.

He turns back to Fiona. She’s still hooked up to a drip and the male midwife is attaching another bag, this time of clear fluid, which looks far less terrifying than the blood. ‘Just some saline,’ the midwife says, as though that explains everything.

Fiona is watching the jagged line on the monitor. Jonathan strokes her hair back and kisses her damp forehead. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers. ‘I’m so, so sorry I wasn’t there.’

She turns her head away, and he realises he probably still stinks of whisky.