Weldon, Fay - Novel 07 (25 page)

 
          
In
the thirtieth
week of Liffey’s
pregnancy Mabs went out into the night with a dead candle, and melted it down,
and moulded the soft wax into an image of Liffey, stomach bulging, and drove a
pin through its middle. An owl flew out of a hedge just as she struck, hooting
and flapping, and quite scared her.

 
          
When
she went back into the house to put the image into the drawer Audrey was
groaning at the kitchen table, complaining of stomach pains, quite taking Mabs
aback. She took the pin out, and in the morning Audrey’s pains were gone. Mabs
asked her mother to stick the pin for her.

 
          
“I’m
not sticking
no
pins in any poor girl’s stomach,” said
Mrs. Tree crossly, ‘just because you want to breed a football team. Why don’t
you look after the ones you’ve got? Something terrible will happen if you go on
like this, and it won’t happen to her, it will happen to one of yours, and
serve you right.”

 
          
So
the image lay in Mabs’s drawer, without a pin but with a hole through its
middle all the same.

 
          
Next
time Liffey went to see Dr. Southey and lay on her back on his couch while he
felt, with firm, chilly fingers, the outline of the baby, she noticed a flicker
of surprise on his face. She always watched his expression carefully as she
lay, thinking she might find out more from that than from his words.

 
          
“What’s
the matter?” she asked sharply.

 
          
“Nothing,”
he said, “but I think we might send you up for a scan.”

 
          
“What’s
a scan?”

 
          
“A sonic picture.”

 
          
“Is
it bad for the baby?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Does
it hurt?”

 
          
“No.”

 
          
“Why
do you want me to have one?” She snapped the question out, first thing first.

 
          
“The
baby seems rather high, that’s all.”

 
          
“Too high for what?”

 
          
“It
might be nothing. It might be placenta praevia.”

 
          
“What’s
that?”

 
          
“The
placenta is attached below the baby, not beside it or above it.”

 
          
“Is
that dangerous?”

 
          
“If
there weren’t doctors and hospitals in the world, it might be. But as there
are, it isn’t. You can go in for the scan by ambulance tomorrow.”

 
          
“Ambulance?
Am I delicate?”

 
          
“No.
It’s simpler and more comfortable and I'll be sure you’ve gone. Your husband
might like to come too. It's nice to see a picture of the baby, after all.”

 
          
Liffey
rang Richard from the surgery. Miss Martin answered the telephone.

 
          
“I’m
afraid he’s at a meeting, Mrs. Lee-Fox. Is it important?”

           
“No.
” ,

 
          
“I
can take a message if you like.”

 
          
“No, thanks.”

 
          
Sad,
thought Liffey, putting down the phone, that nasty things are thought
important, but nice things aren’t. News of death travels faster than news of
triumph. Miss Martin did not tell Richard that Liffey had rung. He was not in
fact at a meeting but chatting with a colleague down the corridor. She did not
think Richard would go home that weekend, and if any question of the phone-call
arose, the passage of time would have clouded the issue by the time he saw
Liffey again.

 
          
Liffey
went by ambulance to the hospital, and marvelled at how smooth the ride was,
compared to what it was like when she drove with Mabs. She sat behind two
white-coated ambulance men, who were friendly, and
wondered
at her courage, living all alone miles from civilisation, nearing her time, and
without a telephone. Liffey, hearing it put like that, felt, for the first
time, almost sorry for herself.

 
          
“I
have friends and neighbours,” she said.
“The Pierces.”

 
          
“Mabs
Pierce? Old Mrs. Tree’s daughter?” said one. “Well, as long as she’s a friend
and not an enemy.”

 
          
“Why
do you say that?” Liffey asked, but neither man would answer directly.

 
          
Liffey
lay on a slab, with her stomach oiled, and a technician moved a scanner back
and forth, back and forth over the mound of the baby, building up a picture on
a screen, as a child makes the pattern of a coin on tissue paper, shading the
circle with pencil. There was the curve of the baby’s backbone, the little
hunched head. Liffey felt both reassured and shocked at what seemed an untimely
manifestation of spirit into flesh. The technicians pointed and murmured.
Beneath the baby’s head, banning its exit to the
world,
was the shadowy boat-shape of the placenta.

 
          
Mabs
felt her spirits rise. She dressed up and went into town and had coffee with
Carol, and had her hair done, and looked at her face in the hairdresser’s
mirror and saw again the face of a young girl, Tucker’s bride, happy to have
left her mother’s cottage and become mistress of Cadbury Farm, pregnant and
fruitful, in the days before she knew the depths of her own malice and anger
and greed. That’s what I was, thought Mabs; that’s what I still could be—happy
and simple and good. What happens to all of us, with time? But when she got
home, all the same, she stuck a pin into Liffey. Tucker’s baby was not to live
in Liffey: she had every right to stop it. Debbie complained of a pain, but
Mabs took no notice. Liffey came to Mabs in tears.

           
“They think I’ll have to have a
Caesarian,” she said.

 
          
“That’s
bad,” said Mabs. “Why?”

 
          
“Otherwise
when labour starts I’ll just bleed to death, and the baby will suffocate.”

 
          
“They
always exaggerate,” said Mabs. “Dr. Southey loves to frighten women. He’s
famous for it. Have some tea?
Or a glass of wine to cheer you
up?
I’ve got some of last year’s plum.”

 
          
“I’ll
have some tea.”

 
          
Mabs
made some rosemary tea and sweetened it with honey and put in a pinch of dried
mushroom powder.

 
          
“Placenta
praevia,” marvelled Mabs. “Dr. Southey said I had one of those with Eddie. But
it moved over by itself: they always do. I had a perfectly normal labour.”

 
          
“And
I’m so far from the hospital—supposing I don’t get there in time.”

 
          
“We’ll
look after you,” said Mabs.
“Come to that, we could always
deliver you ourselves.
Think of all the cows Tucker and I have done.”

 
          
It
was meant to be a joke, and Liffey tried to smile.

 
          
Mabs
rang Richard on Liffey’s behalf, since she seemed the only one able to get past
Miss Martin, and told him that Liffey was upset and why, that the doctor was
just being an alarmist, and that Liffey looked all right to her, and Caesarian,
in any case, was perfectly routine. Liffey listened.

 
          
“I
expect she’s got it all wrong anyway,” said Richard. “You know what Liffey’s
like.”

 
          
Liffey
went off to be sick, and attributed it to nerves, not to Mabs’s tea. After all,
Mabs had drunk it too. But it was the sort of thing she noticed these days.
When she got back Mabs had put down the phone.

 
          
“He
had to take a transatlantic call,” said Mabs. “But he sent you his love. He
said Tina and Tony had got German measles. I don’t think he ought to come down
until
he’s out of quarantine, do
you? If you get it,
the baby can be born blind and dumb.”

 
          
“I
thought that was only in the first three months.”

 
          
“That’s
what they say, but I had a friend had it at six months and her baby was a
Mongol.”

           
Richard did not come back at the
weekend, at Liffey’s request. Tina and Tony coughed and groaned and sweated,
out of sight and out of their parents’ minds.

 
          
Richard
had become suddenly afraid that the baby would be born deformed, that out of
the once beloved, wholesome Liffey a monster would emerge.

 
          
“That’s
guilt speaking,” said Bella. “You believe you’re so bad you can’t produce
anything good.”

 
          
“I
expect it’s true,” he said, and wept.

 
          
“Christ,”
said Bella, “don’t I have enough with Ray, without you starting as well?”

 
          
Bella
curled her legs around the small of his back and they rocked and rocked, and
Richard’s tears passed.

 
          
“You’ll
feel better when the baby’s born,” Bella assured him. “When I was pregnant with
Tony, Ray went on a gastronomic tour of
New Zealand
; and with Tina, it was
Tierra del Fuego
. At least you’ve kept within telephonic
distance.”

 
          
“I
don’t like the thought of Liffey being cut open,” said Richard.

 
          
“Saves
you having to do your paternal duty and watch,” said Bella. “I’m sure it’s
unnecessary anyway. Doctors just make more money out of the National Health
doing operations than leaving things to nature.”

 
          
Liffey
was frightened. The baby was silent. She felt that the scan had been in some
way an insult to him: she’d been checking up on him.
Giving
him physical shape before he was ready.

 
          
The
weather grew colder. It rained and rained, and slugs got the poor, sodden
strawberries. Four cows broke through from Tucker’s side of the stream,
breaking down the fence, splashing through the water, trampling and munching
her patch of vegetables. She asked Tucker to move them, and he didn’t, and she
had been afraid to persist, for his kind and friendly eyes, as she asked, had
taken on a speculative look, and he had laid his hand on her stomach in the
half-pleased, half-envious way people did sometimes, but that was somehow
something different in Tucker, reminding her of what she would rather not
remember. So there the cows stayed, staring and munching and splattering
round her back door, and Richard not coming back for seventeen days, which was
the incubation period for German measles, and a pain in her stomach every now
and then, as if someone had pierced her through the middle with a laser beam,
but which Dr. Southey told her was nothing.

 
          
As
if a placenta praevia was not enough.

 
          
Richard’s parents came down
to stay as
soon as Richard was out of quarantine. Liffey made the house as pleasant and
pretty as a shortage of money and energy would allow. She dusted out cobwebs,
and turned sheets side to middle, and noticed how quick the processes of
dilapidation and depression were—when cracked cups were kept because there was
no money to replace them, and burned saucepans scraped, not thrown away, and
stained carpets merely scrubbed, and damp wallpaper patched. The houses of the
poor take longer to clean than the houses of the rich—rooms must be tidied and
polished before guests appear; a wealthy disorder is tolerable, the jumble of
desolation is not.

 
          
Mr.
and Mrs. Lee-Fox were shocked by the change in Liffey’s appearance, but felt
she was wholly to blame. She was letting herself go: she would depress Richard.
She was young and healthy and had nothing else to do all day but look after
herself —why was she not doing it properly? Mrs. Lee-Fox told Liffey how well
she was looking and remarked on how pregnancy evidently suited her, and looked
forward to at least another six grandchildren.

 
          
Mr.
Lee-Fox went further into the matter of Mory and Helen’s occupancy of the
London
apartment.

 
          
“Of
course it was a gift to you and Richard freely given,” he said, “but we hardly
expected it to be given away so soon!” He appeared to be joking—he smilecLand
smiled as he spoke. “All the same,” he added, “Collins is a fine solicitor;
he’ll get them out of there in no time. Of course the law of the land these
days is on the side of thieves and vagrants.”

 
          
Mr.
and Mrs. Lee-Fox liked their cups to rest on saucers and their saucers on
tablecloths and their tablecloths on polished tables, and Liffey did what she
could to oblige. Her own daintiness seemed a thing of the past, her swelling
belly on too large a scale to allow for a retreat into little,
pretty
, feminine ways.

 
          
When
Richard arrived, having been delayed, or so he said, by queues of traffic
leaving
London
, his car was laden with the exotic foods
that once had been their staple diet. His parents marvelled.

 
          
“How
well he looks after you, Liffey!”

 
          
“Worth waiting for, after all, Liffey.”

 
          
“All the goodies of the world on your doorstep, Liffey!”
“Why live near to the shops with a delivery service like this!” “Isn’t Richard
a
wonder!
Where does he find the
energy.
Not to speak of the time. Makes the money, does the shopping, drives a hundred
miles for a kiss, and comes up smiling!” “Whose friends were they, Liffey, this
Helen and Mory?
Yours or Richard’s?”

           
“Mine,” said Liffey.

 
          
Richard
was kind, charming and hard-working all weekend. He was up early to make the
breakfast, bring tea in bed for Liffey; then he fetched the papers, weeded the
garden, mended the banister, peeled the potatoes, and washed up.

 
          
“Good
heavens, Liffey, it isn’t a husband you’ve got here, it’s a servant.”

 
          
That
night Liffey placed Richard’s hand on her stomach, but he withdrew it as soon
as he tactfully could. Being in his
parents
presence
had focused the matter for him forcibly. He did not want to be a father. He did
not want to join the grown-ups. He wanted to be a boy-husband and have a
girl-bride. Liffey was making him old beyond his years.

 
          
On
Sunday afternoon, while Richard was out walking with his father, Mrs. Lee-Fox
enquired further into Liffey’s side of the family.

 
          
“Of
course I met your mother at the wedding. What a brave and independent lady! I
only wish I could have been like her and flouted convention. But I never had
the courage. What was your father like, Liffey?”

           
“Slippery, from the sound of him,”
said Liffey. “Apart from that, I don’t know.”

 
          
“But
your mother
is
a widow.”

 
          
“No,”
said Liffey.
“Unmarried and deserted.”

 
          
Mrs.
Lee-Fox’s hand trembled as she sipped Mabs’s homemade plum wine. The wine
contained a distillation of the seed of a flower known locally as Tell-the-Truth,
and had been given to Liffey and Richard by Mabs on the grounds that, one way
or another it was bound to cause trouble.

 
          
“I’m
glad you told me the truth, Liffey,” said Mrs. Lee-Fox. She wore many rings on
her once pretty fingers and a thick gold charm bracelet on a still slender
wrist. Her hair was grey and curled, and sad eyes battled for predominance over
a mouth composed into an enduring smile.

 
          
“Thank
you for telling me your secret, Liffey,” said Mrs. Lee-Fox, sipping plum wine.

 
          
“I
shall now tell you my secret,” added Mrs. Lee-Fox. “It’s bigger than yours and
I’ve kept it longer.”

 
          
“I’ve
never really loved Richard,” said Mrs. Lee-Fox, her head spinning from
Tell-the-Truth, “because, you see, Richard isn’t his father’s child.”

 
          
“He
has his father’s nose and his father’s neck,” confided Mrs. Lee-Fox, “and his
father is Mr. Collins, the solicitor, who treated me very badly. Talk about
being seduced and abandoned!”

 
          
“No
use looking shocked, Liffey,” reproved Mrs. Lee-Fox, “because all women are sisters
under the skin, and if this child of yours is Richard’s, I’ll eat my hat. If it
was his he’d be here all the time. He’s acting completely out of character, all
this sweet talk and washing up; you’re both of you putting on an act, and I
.know what it is. You’ve cheated on him, Liffey, and he’s agreed to stand by
you.”

 
          
“No,” cried Liffey, on her feet.
“No!”

 
          
“Another
secret,” said Mrs. Lee-Fox calmly, “is that Mr. Collins is an extremely bad
solicitor, but I can hardly tell my husband that in the circumstances, let
alone my son.”

 
          
“I
did my best to raise Richard properly,” wept Mrs. Lee-Fox into her glass, “but
he always reminded me of what I’d rather forget. And Liffey, Mr. Collins had a
grandmother who was an Asiatic. I remember him telling me so. If the baby has
slant- eyes, Liffey, for my sake say it comes from your father’s side. I have
lived in fear of this for so long. It has clouded my whole life.”

 
          
Liffey
put her mother-in-law to bed with a hot-water bottle. When the older woman woke
she seemed perfectly normal and the smile was back, and she and her husband
departed with little conventional cries of pleasure and admiration and
apparent ordinariness.