The Wildflowers by Harriet Evans (32)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

April 1991

It was a glorious spring that year. She would sit for hours on the porch in the daytime in her ancient fleecy blue sweater whose cuffs were chewed and loose, wrapped in a blanket like a whale beached on the shore, her long thick hair covering her: yet another layer. She’d eat endless toasted cheese-and-tuna sandwiches Ben made her and read murder mysteries, while Ben worked on his script. The spring wild flowers at the Bosky were totally different, the house was totally different from the dry heat of summer. Buttery primroses and glossy celandines around the house and on the sloping grassy verges before the grass gave way to sand, the lanes edged with bobbing, pretty, baby-blue forget-me-nots and hot-pink campions. Blackbirds sang in the hedgerows beyond the house; she could hear them in the morning and at night, when she lay shivering and uncomfortable in bed.

The old wooden house was no good at retaining heat and Mads suffered. For it was still bitterly cold come evening, the stars glittering and hard over the bay. A waxing moon rose early over the sea towards the end of their stay and hung, shining ice-white light, towards the Bosky in a jagged path across the waves. By day it was peaceful but when she got up in the night as she did frequently she could always hear up above her the strong spring tides lashing the beach with violent force. They could not go on the sand except at low tide. It was for the best: the two babies inside her might come at any time, they said. They could not accurately measure them and so weren’t sure when they were due. In any case, she should not be scrambling over the dunes. And so she stayed in the house, waiting for the building work in London to finish, waiting for these children, so looked-for, to come.

‘Isn’t it strange, how different it is here in spring. Like another house,’ she said to Ben on their last night there as they sat inside in the cosy, timber-lined kitchen-diner, looking out over the bay at the rising moon. She shifted in her chair, trying to make room for more pasta, unable to get comfortable as one persistent foot repeatedly jabbed under her ribcage, as if it were trying to escape.

‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘We came here once for Easter when I was little. It was strange. I’ve never forgotten it. The grass all fresh and green, and the flowers and everything else.’

‘When was that? I didn’t know you’d been here at Easter.’

He eyed her with a twinkling smile. ‘Didn’t you keep a detailed record of our visit in your diary?’

Mads kicked out her foot and he laughed but she said, passionately, ‘Oh, don’t tease me about it. I liked things being orderly. It wasn’t like that.’

Ben took her hand, still smiling, and stroked it. ‘It was, Maddy, and that’s why I love you so much.’

He kissed the hand, then shifted his chair over, and put both his own hands on her huge bump.

‘One’s kicking. There’s a foot right up there.’

‘Hey,’ he said, talking to her stomach. ‘It’s Daddy here. Stop kicking your mother. I can teach you karate when you’re out. We’ll watch Karate Kid. Just chill, for the moment. Be calm. Not like Mummy.’ He looked up at her mischievously.

Ben’s hands were still on her. She pressed them against her mound even more firmly. ‘Ben . . . I’m scared.’

‘I know,’ he said, looking down at the bump. ‘I know you are. It’s huge. It’s twins.’ He rubbed his face; he looked very like Althea, horror mixed with wry amusement. ‘But we’ve got money now. We’re not penniless students eating our baked beans out of tins any more. We can have help. A nanny. Nannies, plural—’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her hair; like a creature in a fairy tale, it seemed to grow thicker, more lustrous with each day of her interminable pregnancy. ‘I said this before. I don’t want nannies. I want to look after them myself. And I’m not stupid, I know it’ll be hard. But I – I didn’t know my mum. I was two. I know she was called Suzanne and she was from Worthing and she was married to my father for six years before she died having the other baby—’ Her lip quivered; lately, she couldn’t stop thinking about her mother. She remembered nothing of her apart from the suggestion of a tiny figure with long hair and firm thin fingers, a smell of lilacs, and she knew nothing apart from a few bland little letters she’d written to Aunt Julia that Mads had inherited (Dear Julia. Thank you for your letter. I am glad to hear all is well in Sydney. All is well here. Ian is well. Your niece is called Madeleine Ann. She is very good. I enclose a photograph. We will be pleased to see you in the summer. Love, Suzanne), a quaint sixties photograph of her parents’ wedding day, her mother decorous and shy in a lace wedding dress, her father impassive behind horn-rimmed spectacles as her mother smiled timidly at the camera. ‘They’re having a mum and a dad who are there, who love them, not people who’ve been paid to love them.’

‘I understand. You know I do.’ Ben nodded. She could hear the nervousness in his voice as he added, ‘I’ll be away, though, you know, this Irish priest thing I’m doing and it’s at Pinewood but it’ll still be—’

‘Of course, we agreed, I know that. I’ll do it myself. And you’ll have breaks between films and you’ll see them. But they’ll be mine and I want them to myself and I want them to be looked after by me.’ She heaved herself up. ‘I’m their mummy.’

‘I know. But—’ Ben took her plate of pasta and started shovelling it into his mouth and she watched him in distaste. ‘Don’t be a control freak, darling. I know you like to understand everything, to know everything and have a list and everything all ready but – God, you know, when I visited Hamish and Sunita they spent thirty minutes getting the baby ready to go out to the park for a walk and then she did this poo that sort of went everywhere, all over her clothes and the pram, and they had to start all over again and that’s all they were doing for the two hours I was there, changing her, feeding her and then cleaning all this shit up off surfaces. I thought Hamish was going to fall over at one point, he was so knackered. And that was two of them. And only one baby.’ He looked pale. ‘It was – it was really intense.’

Mads stared down at him. She was very tired. Ben finished the pasta.

‘Say something,’ he said.

‘You’ve got ragu on your mouth,’ she said eventually and, collecting the plates, she went slowly to the kitchen counter. ‘I might go to bed.’

‘Are you feeling OK?’

‘Actually, I feel a bit sick.’

‘Oh. How long for?’

‘Just now.’ She leaned against the counter. ‘Just now.’

He came over, and she rested her head on his chest. ‘I can’t hug you,’ he said, kissing her hair. ‘But I can hold you like this.’ He wrapped his arms around her shoulders.

‘I – I don’t know if we’ve done the right thing,’ she said, in a very quiet voice.

‘That’s normal.’

Her blood felt like ice, as so often these days. Normal. He was running his hands through her hair, the way he had when they were children, the way he had the first time they met again, and she felt better immediately, the soft, sensual tickling sensation calming her. Normal. She blinked away the memories that flashed in front of her now with increasing regularity and potency . . . the sight of him, that night, the way he knelt down and wept silently, pressing his palms into his eyes like a child.

‘Julia,’ she had heard him say, softly, brokenly. The catch in his voice as she helped him to his feet again and held him, and kissed his cheek and sort of missed so half kissed his lips, for a moment too long, so that they broke apart and stared at each other, in recognition of something they had never before understood . . .

The moment of pause, inside the beach hut, as the sea washed the shore outside and he put his hands on her hips and pushed her gently against the wall . . . those old veined hands of his, that she suddenly realised she didn’t know at all, on her breasts where she was used to Ben’s missing fingers . . . the glazed, terrified look on his face as he plunged into her . . .

And then it was too late and she was enjoying it, and that was the worst part of all. It wasn’t a mistake – it was what she had always wanted, since she was aware of studying her own feelings carefully, tacking it against information about female desire gleaned from seamy library books, Victoria Holts and Shirley Conrans. She liked information, and she knew that she desired Tony, that he wanted this, that he was barely himself, a shell of what he had been. That this might help him. She knew that she wanted him, in a way that was unlike her need for Ben, her love for her husband. That was the greatest shame of all.

A fortnight later, her scientific knowledge gave out on her and instinct kicked in. After they had returned to London, and she had gone out jogging in Regent’s Park, and had had to sit down on a bench very suddenly, she understood instantly then that she was pregnant. She was never alone with Tony after that, never spoke to him about it, but she knew he knew too. It was obvious, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it obvious to Ben, to Althea?

Apparently not. They were deliriously happy and happiness, as Mads already knew, obscured many truths. But it had happened, and she had got what she wanted. This is what she told herself, every day, every hour.

Now she pulled herself gently away from her husband. ‘I’ll get ready for bed. Can you pack up the kitchen? I think we should leave in lots of time tomorrow. I’ll need to stop and pee every hour at this rate.’

‘Of course, and then we’ll get back home and the house will be finished and ready for us and all you have to do now is enjoy it. Have some people over. Do a bit of shopping. Relax.’

‘People?’

‘Well. Friends. Family.’

‘My family’s all dead. I don’t have any friends in London, I’m hopeless at shopping and I bloody hate being told to relax,’ she said, ticking them off her fingers. He closed his eyes penitently.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘No, I’m sorry.’ She bit her lip. ‘Darling Ben, you’re trying to be kind. I love you—’ She put her hands to her burning cheeks. ‘Sometimes – oh, sometimes I wish with all my heart it was just you and me in our little bedsit in Clifton again, all snug and cosy and no money except for my job and your lovely sofa you filched from home. Don’t you?’ She gazed at him.

Ben said slowly, ‘Look. Perhaps I could get Mumma and Daddy to come over and pay you a visit once a week? They’re not busy since Daddy’s disaster with Hamlet. In fact, they’re twiddling their thumbs slightly till Mummy goes off to America to reprise Glass Menagerie.’

‘No,’ said Mads. ‘Not your parents. Not at the moment.’

He put his head on one side. ‘Maddy – I’m leaving you for two weeks. I hate the idea you’re on your own . . .’

‘Cord?’

He rolled his lips towards his teeth in a grimace. ‘Haven’t heard back from her. I’ve tried. It’s like she’s vanished.’

Mads arranged things on the counter. ‘Me too. Do you think . . .’ A thought, unbidden, pushed its way into her mind and she pushed it away, with vigour – she was having to become increasingly good at this, the forcible ejection of thoughts that threatened to overwhelm her, these days. ‘She can’t mind. I don’t know . . . I don’t understand it,’ she finished, her tone high so as to eliminate the catch in her throat.

Laughter, that’s what she missed most about Cord, and the Bosky holidays. They’d laugh and laugh, Cord with a proper gurgling giggle that entirely overtook her. About the funny faces Althea made to herself in the mirror when she thought no one was looking, or the way Tony tried to charm Mrs Gage to her total indifference, or the small boy on the beach peeing unseen into a bucket of seawater that his oblivious brother later threw over their parents. Or Cord’s ABBA routines, her poems she’d make up about communism, or the time she got a rash from spraying on too much Charlie Girl perfume . . .

She felt very tired. I miss her. Oh, what a bloody mess it all is.

‘I should call your parents. I just want to be alone, that’s all. They’ve been so kind, I owe them so much, but sometimes . . . sometimes they . . .’ Tears filled her eyes at the idea of distance from them, this family she’d loved so much. I’ve fucked it up. Properly, truly. Every one of them, I loved them so much and I have absolutely ruined everything. ‘I don’t know what I’m trying to say.’

‘You do really love us all, don’t you?’ he said, staring at her. ‘The only one who does. No, I won’t tell you. It doesn’t matter, in the end.’

‘Tell me what?’

Ben stood under the light; it gave him a golden halo around his head. ‘The reason I ran away. The reason I lost the fingers.’ He held up his hand: light from the bulb above shone on it dramatically. ‘I’ve never really told you why.’

She swallowed. ‘Tell me. Tell me why?’

He was silent. Then he reached over and pulled the curtains across the window, and the view of the bay vanished. ‘No, I won’t tell you. It doesn’t matter in the end.’

‘Ben—’

‘I can’t see how it makes a difference.’ He kissed her again. ‘And I wish I didn’t know, and he doesn’t know, and so perhaps it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. He . . .’ He coughed, clearing his throat. ‘He’s my father, after all.’

Mads pressed down on the kicking foot that jabbed up into her once again. ‘Yes,’ she said, as images danced through her aching, throbbing head. ‘Yes, he is, isn’t he.’