The Things We Never Said (20 page)

CHAPTER FORTY

Throughout several long days and nights, Maggie nurses the twins exactly as the doctor told her. She sponges their fevered foreheads, dabs calamine lotion onto their itchy skin and bathes their swollen, crusted eyelids. Leonard helps out on his day off, bringing her cups of tea and cheese on toast, and Mrs Dean pops in with Lucozade and cigarettes. When Maggie finally sinks into bed, she lies rigid as the babies thrash around in their cot, their dry, rasping coughs ripping though her.

On the fifth day, Jonathan’s fever breaks. He stands up in the cot, holding out his arms. Thank heavens. She lifts him out, and he snuggles into her neck, sucking contentedly on his little finger. At lunchtime he manages some scrambled egg and by teatime he’s almost back to normal. But Elizabeth is no better.

‘The rash is fading,’ Dr Cranfield says when he calls in on his evening rounds. ‘But I’m surprised she’s still feverish.’ He takes off his bottle-end spectacles and cleans them with the hem of his jacket. ‘Hmm.’ He purses his lips and taps his stethoscope in the palm of his hand. ‘Keep sponging her down and I’ll call in again tomorrow.’ He puts the stethoscope back in his bag and clicks it shut. ‘This little chap’s on the mend, anyway,’ he adds, as a grinning Jonathan clutches his trouser-leg and pulls himself to a standing position.

The following morning, Elizabeth’s temperature is a hundred and three. Jonathan, disgruntled by the lack of his mother’s attention, whinges and pulls at her sleeve every few minutes. Maggie crawls through the day, and by the time she puts the babies down for their nap, she is almost crying with tiredness. Jonathan fidgets when she tucks him in at the other end of the cot – he doesn’t understand why his sister isn’t up and playing. Elizabeth’s forehead is still burning, but for the moment, she’s quiet, so Maggie allows herself a short rest. Just ten minutes, she thinks as she curls up on the settee. She picks her housecoat up from the floor, throws it over herself like a blanket and sinks immediately into sleep.

*

The shrill ring of the doorbell rips her from sleep and she looks incredulously at the clock; she has slept for almost two hours. She calls to a protesting Jonathan as she goes to open the door. ‘Mummy’s coming, darling. Just a minute.’

She’s still disoriented as she opens the door to Dr Cranfield. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbles, pulling her hair into place. ‘Fell asleep.’

The doctor smiles. ‘I’m sure you needed it.’ She steps back to allow him in and then follows him along the hall. ‘How’s the patient today?’

‘Much the same. Not as grizzly as she was, but—’ She stops. Something about the doctor’s posture as he stands over the cot . . .

He drops his bag and leans over to Elizabeth, then he turns to Maggie. ‘Are you on the telephone?’

‘Yes, yes, we are. What—?’

‘I want you to telephone for an ambulance. Put me on the line when you get through.’

After twenty minutes of pacing the floor and looking anxiously out of the window, Dr Cranfield drives them to the hospital in his own car. Jonathan wails with indignation at being dropped off with Mrs Dean, but there’s no time to stay and settle him. Elizabeth is limp and heavy in Maggie’s lap. The rash that had seemed to be fading is now more blotchy and livid than it was even at the start, and although Elizabeth’s eyes are open, they are vacant and stare through Maggie as though she isn’t there.

The doctor swings the car into the ambulance parking area, leaps out and runs round to the passenger side. Elizabeth’s eyes are now rolling back in her head. He takes her from Maggie’s arms and runs into the hospital, kicking open the double wooden doors as he enters. He doesn’t break his stride as he hurries past the reception desk and into the treatment area, barking something at the nurse as he passes. Maggie tries to follow but the nurse takes her arm and guides her to a seat in the waiting room, where rows of weary-looking people with nothing obviously wrong are slumped in their chairs.

Maggie came here when she was little after breaking her wrist. They’d waited hours but her mother, a force to be reckoned with in her own home, was so in awe of doctors and nurses that she wouldn’t even ask when they’d be seen. Well, Maggie is not her mother. She marches up to the desk and demands to be told what is happening.

The nurse tells her not to worry, her daughter is in good hands. ‘Sit down and look at a magazine, dear, and let the doctors do their job. I’ll bring you some tea.’

Panic starts to rise in her chest and her instinct is to scream at the nurse, tell her not to be so bloody ridiculous, but she recognises the genuine attempt to calm her. The nurse is smiling, asking if she takes sugar. ‘One, please,’ she says, and makes as if to go back to her seat. But as soon as the nurse turns away, she darts through the double doors, ignoring the signs that tell her not to. The treatment area is deserted but for an elderly lady holding a handkerchief to her mouth while a nervous-looking doctor stitches a gash on the side of her foot. For a moment, Maggie’s thoughts are suspended as she tries to work out what to do, then she sees another set of double doors, another ‘No Admittance’ sign, and she charges towards it. Just as she is reaching out to push the door, it opens from the inside, and Dr Cranfield appears. He starts as he sees her, then his whole body slumps. ‘Margaret,’ he says. It is the first time he has used her name.

‘What’s happening? What’s wrong with her?’

Dr Cranfield starts to talk, and Maggie tries to listen but she can’t take in what he’s saying. She identifies a few words,
complications
and
rare
and
sometimes, after measles
, then she realises he’s waiting for her to speak, but her voice won’t work so she just looks back at him.

‘They don’t usually allow it,’ he says, ‘but as I’m your family doctor . . . I thought, well, if you held her for a . . .’ He takes his spectacles off, wipes his eyes, then puts them back on and looks at her. ‘You mightn’t want to, of course, but . . .’

Might not want to hold her baby? Of course she wants to hold her baby! She follows him back through the doors and there is Elizabeth, a little scrap of a person adrift in the high hospital bed. Maggie is vaguely aware of several pairs of eyes turning towards her as she approaches, but it is not until the young hospital doctor gently lays Elizabeth in her arms and starts to remove the tubes from her tiny body that she realises her child is already dead.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

After moving the car to an ordinary bay and putting six quid in the pay and display, Jonathan climbs into the back seat and sleeps. He wakes dry and nauseous with a crick in his neck. His hangover now hits him with a vengeance, thudding in his head when he moves and sticking the walls of his parched blood vessels together when he’s still. He buys paracetamol in W. H. Smith, swallows two with water from the basin in the gents then goes to the hospital café for coffee and toast before heading back up to Fiona.

They’re just wheeling the ultrasound machine into the room when he arrives. Fiona looks better, but still pale and blotchy, and there are dark circles under her eyes. The sonographer seems bored as she checks Fiona’s name and enters something on the computer. She rubs the gel over the neat little bump they’ve been calling Fred for the past few weeks. ‘We just need to check to see that everything’s in order, and make sure the placenta hasn’t started to come away from the wall of the uterus.’

Fiona’s legs are shaking visibly. The sonographer looks at her for the first time, then squeezes her shoulder. ‘Try not to worry,’ she says. Fiona grabs Jonathan’s hand and grips it so hard it hurts.

He says another silent prayer as the image starts to form on the screen. His eyes have barely adjusted to the fuzzy black and white picture when the sonographer says quickly, ‘Baby’s fine,’ and smiles at them both.

‘Are you sure?’ Fiona whispers.

‘Lively as a little jumping bean, look.’

Tears spring from Fiona’s eyes now, but they’re tears of relief.

‘The placenta’s lying about halfway across the cervix,’ the sonographer explains. ‘There’s roughly a fifty per cent chance that it’ll still move up and out of the way as the pregnancy progresses, but we’ll need to scan you every two weeks now to monitor it. If it doesn’t move, we’re looking at a caesarean, I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t care how it’s born as long as everything’s all right,’ Fiona says.

Jonathan is mesmerised. At the last scan, he’d been distracted, and although he’d pretended he could make out hands and feet, it had just looked like a blurry negative, whitish blobs in a blackish sea. This time, there’s no doubt that he’s looking at a tiny human baby. At one point, it seems to be kicking at the device the sonographer is running over the bump, and it is very clearly sucking its thumb. This, he tells himself, is my child. This is what is real; this is what it’s all
for.

‘I can tell you the sex, if you’d like?’

They look at each other; both shake their heads. As they watch their baby doing somersaults as though playing in a swimming pool, it suddenly puts out a hand and seems to wave, then it turns very definitely and faces them.

‘Hello, baby,’ they say in unison.

*

Soon after the sonographer leaves, the doctor from last night comes into the room. There are two fresh shaving cuts on his neck, and his eyes look tired and bloodshot. He stifles a yawn as he pulls up a chair next to the bed. Fiona will have to stay in for at least a couple of weeks, he tells them, and then, all being well, she can go home, although she’ll be on bed rest right up until the delivery. Still slightly stunned, they both nod and thank him, not really processing what he’s said but incredibly, overwhelmingly grateful for what he’s done.

Fiona needs to sleep, so Jonathan heads off to pack some things to bring in later. As he walks towards the car, he sees Lucy coming the other way.

‘How is she?’ Lucy says. She looks pale and there are bags under her eyes. ‘Matt’s taking the kids to school so I thought I’d pop back.’

‘She’s tired, and they’re keeping her in for a while, but she’s okay. And we’ve just had the scan – the baby’s fine, too.’

He sees Lucy’s shoulders relax. ‘Thank heavens for that. I know they said it was looking good, but I was still worried.’ She looks at him. ‘Did you get any sleep?’

He nods. ‘Couple of hours.’ He rubs the back of his aching neck. ‘On the back seat of the car.’

Lucy grimaces.

‘Luce, do you fancy a quick coffee?’

She nods, and they walk back through the car park to the hospital canteen.

‘So,’ he says, putting the two polystyrene cups on the table. ‘When did she find out about this? And why the hell didn’t she tell me?’

Lucy sighs. ‘They told her after the last scan. But it didn’t seem to be a big deal; they said the placenta would probably move, and that—’

‘But it’s my baby too. Why—’

‘I know. She should have told you. But you have to see it from her point of view. You’ve had all this carry-on with your school, and then that policeman turning up . . .’ She hesitates.

‘Go on.’

‘Fiona felt . . . well, the way she put it was that she didn’t think there was room in the marriage for any more problems. She felt you’d sort of cornered the market.’

He shakes his head. Part of him is angry that she didn’t tell him, but also angry with himself for making her feel she
couldn’t
tell him.

‘Don’t be too hard on her; she’s been pretty down recently. She said you thought she wasn’t being very supportive, that she was too wrapped up in the baby.’ Lucy rummages for her sweeteners in her enormous handbag – her ‘mummy kit’, Fiona calls it. He catches a glimpse of a toy bus and a Mr Men book among the usual handbag contents.

‘I didn’t think that.’ But as he speaks, he realises he hasn’t been thinking about Fiona at all. He’s been totally preoccupied with his own worries.

‘It’s hard to understand what it’s like to be pregnant,’ Lucy says, ‘even for the dad. For a woman, it’s the most important thing in the world – for that period of time, anyway.’

Jonathan nods. ‘I’ve been rather self-obsessed, haven’t I? I don’t think I did understand how she felt, not at first, anyway.’ He takes a mouthful of coffee. ‘Do you know what?’ He smiles. ‘I caught her stuffing a cushion up her jumper at one point, just so she could see what she’d look like when she got big.’

Lucy laughs. ‘We used to do that when we were kids, playing Mummies and Little Girls. I’d have tantrums because Fiona always got to be the mummy; she used to wear our mum’s high heels and clip-clop about saying, “I’m the eldest, so I have to get in practice.”‘ They both laugh, then she’s serious again. ‘She’s always wanted kids, Jonathan. And she’s good at pretending she’s not worried about being nearly forty.’

He nods, then looks at her. ‘Thanks, Luce.’

On the way home he goes over it in his head. He hasn’t been ‘involved’ with the pregnancy; all he’s really done is to worry about what sort of father he’ll make, and that isn’t the same thing at all. What a total dick he’s been. And now, as he drives, he keeps trying to recreate the moment their baby – their very own child – turned to face them. It’s the most profound thing that has ever happened to him: exciting, yet calming at the same time. All his anger – at his parents, at Ryan and Chloé, at Don Hutchinson and his ‘cold case’ – is starting to dissipate.

Right now, nothing –
nothing
– matters except Fiona and the baby. He can feel the connection at last. It’s like a game of tag, like lighting a fresh new candle from the flame of one that’s already burning down.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Maggie’s grief attaches to her body like a parasite, dragging at her throat so that she can hardly speak, hanging off her in great heavy folds and trailing on the floor behind her as she moves.

Leonard takes some time off work, and Auntie Alice, her mother’s sister, comes to look after Jonathan. Auntie Alice has a fierce shampoo and set and three chins that wobble when she talks. She smells of ginger biscuits and faintly of body odour, probably because of her fondness for Tricel blouses and Bri-Nylon frocks. But she does her best.

Leonard puts Auntie Alice in the room above Maggie’s. One night when Maggie goes to lie on her bed – she no longer sleeps, merely moves to a slightly less painful level of consciousness – she notices the cot has gone. Then she hears Jonathan crying upstairs, and Auntie Alice’s soothing voice. She knows she’ll have to start looking after him again soon, but right now she can’t bear to hear him asking for ‘Mimbet’ over and over and over.

The grief-drenched days roll one into another. Maggie moves around in a trance-like state. The air in the house feels thick and stiff, difficult to breathe. She stares out of the window. A few flakes of snow swirl in the golden light from the streetlamp. Snow. Isn’t it too early for snow? But she has no idea what day or month it is, so probably not. They say it won’t be as bad this year, but how can they be sure? Her mind creeps back to last winter. She lights another cigarette to steady her nerves. It was the worst winter on record: the ‘big freeze’. She should never have brought the twins back to Hastings in those horrendous blizzards; why hadn’t she waited until the weather improved? Elizabeth had never been right, not since the day they left Vanda’s. Tears spill over her hand as she takes a drag of her cigarette. She’d snapped at Elizabeth when she wouldn’t feed on the journey back, and had bundled her over to Leonard while she’d gone off and sat in a café. Even once they were home, she shouted at Elizabeth. She’d always treated her two babies differently; she sees that now. How many times had she left the poor child wailing in her cot while she fed Jonathan, simply because he was easier? Had she cuddled Elizabeth as often? She wriggled and fidgeted so much that Maggie thought she didn’t like to be cuddled, but maybe Maggie simply hadn’t been holding her properly. Maggie now sees her own ineptitude with such startling clarity that it almost dazzles her, a great bright orb of blame, bouncing at her from all angles.

*

After four weeks, Auntie Alice returns to her home in Cornwall. She can’t leave Uncle Dennis to fend for himself any longer and heaven only knows what sort of a mess the place’ll be in when she gets back. Before she leaves, she makes a huge pan full of soup and puts a steaming bowl in front of Maggie. ‘Come on, Margaret, love,’ she says, her powdered chins wobbling. ‘You don’t eat enough to keep a sparrow alive.’

Maggie looks at the thick green soup. Pea and ham; she used to love this when she was little, especially when Auntie Alice let her cut dry bread into cubes for croutons. She picks up her spoon. Her throat feels stiff and paralysed. She forces her lips to open and although she can feel the warmth of the soup as it floods onto her tongue, she cannot taste it.

‘Time’s a great healer,’ Auntie Alice says. ‘And at least you’ve still got Jonathan.’

With all her might Maggie tries, but the soup just will not slip down her throat.

‘And you’re still young; you can have another baby some day.’

*

Jonathan watches her warily from his cot when she curls up on her bed, pulling her knees up to her chest in an attempt to soothe the hollow, empty pain inside her. He sighs a lot, she notices. He shouldn’t sigh like that, but she is unable to do anything about it. At least he’s stopped calling for Elizabeth now. For a while, Maggie thought she’d never be able to be in a room with him again. ‘Mimbet,’ he’d whimper, flexing his little fingers in his own hair as if it was a substitute for Elizabeth’s. Then there was the day he found one of her shoes down the side of the settee. Maggie had bought the little bootees when Elizabeth started pulling herself into a standing position, just two weeks before she died. They were made from soft, pliable leather with two metal eyelets for the single lace, exactly like Jonathan’s but cherry-red instead of navy. As soon as Maggie put them on her, she’d pull them off again and turn them over and over in her starfish hands, concentrating fiercely as she examined them.

‘Mimbet,’ Jonathan said when he found the shoe. He held it out for Maggie to see.
‘Mimbet, Mimbet.’

‘No!’ Maggie shrieked. ‘No Mimbet! Bad boy!’ Then she’d fled from the room, flung herself on her bed and sobbed. When Leonard came home, he found Jonathan sitting miserably under the kitchen table, cold and soggy in nothing but a wet nappy and a dribble-soaked cotton vest, the red boot clutched tightly in his hand.

Since then, Jonathan has barely made a sound. Occasionally, he’ll mouth a little tune, or point to the pushchair and say ‘out’; but mostly, he just sucks his little finger, clutching Elizabeth’s red boot as he watches Maggie silently, his eyes wide and round, so dark they look like black marbles.

*

Maggie takes to asking everyone she sees about measles; have they had it, have their children had it, how ill were they, how long did it last? She asks Dr Cranfield again and again why Elizabeth died. All children get measles at some point, don’t they? She can vaguely remember having it herself: she and Leonard, spotty and miserable, tucked up together in their mother’s bed, surrounded by colouring books as their mother fed them chicken broth and warm orange juice.

The doctor explains patiently: ‘Yes, measles is very common, but there can be complications, which is what happened in Elizabeth’s case. She developed a secondary infection that caused inflammation in her brain. It’s very rare, but it happens sometimes.’

And you did nothing to stop it.
That’s what he wants to add, she can tell. But he doesn’t say it, and so she returns to his surgery almost every day and asks him again why her baby died, and every day, he talks about this ‘infection’.

‘Margaret.’ The doctor leans back in his chair, laces his fingers and taps his thumbs together. He’s looking at her very oddly now. ‘As I’ve already said, I want you to come and see me whenever you feel . . .’

Maggie nods, a quick, short nod to shut him up.

‘. . . but I think, well . . . I’m not sure it’s good for you to come here every day like this.’ He leans forward again, looks at her notes. ‘You’re taking the tablets I gave you?’

Maggie nods, begins to get to her feet.

‘Just a minute.’ He stands and puts his hand out towards her shoulder. ‘Sit down again, Margaret, please. I’m trying to think what would be best for you.’

She doesn’t want to sit down again; she needs to get outside, needs to be walking. She moves towards the door. ‘I have to pick Jonathan up,’ she says curtly.

‘Margaret,’ he sighs. ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t come. I’m concerned, that’s all. I think you might need a little rest . . .’

But she doesn’t hear any more because the door swings shut behind her.