Chapter Thirty
29 July 1992
It happened today.
Iris walked for the first time – three steps. (That’s not what happened.) Very unstable, like she’s drunk. Emily watches her from the corner of the kitchen, bemused. Tony and Althea were here, doting grandparents that they are. Althea clapped, she took pictures. She loves the girls, it’s strange quite how much. Tony stared at Emily, watching her sister walking across the lino, and I knew he’d seen it. Seen what I can see. Iris’s legs are crooked. The doctor says, with a note of irritation in his voice he doesn’t try to hide any more, that it’s simply the way babies walk but I wonder if there’s something wrong with her – with both of them . . . More worries. I have these worries, Book. Emily watches her, & doesn’t move – the doctor says that is normal too – and Althea scoops her up & covers her with kisses, cooing at her and whispering secrets in her ear. Emily has curls around her head, fine and damp after she’s woken up. Her cheeks are like cool, plump, soft pillows. Two more weeks till Ben’s shoot is over. I had three hours’ sleep last night. And that was a good night. Do you know what lack of sleep is like, Book? Let me try & write it down. For weeks you just feel terrible, and then the mind games start, because you’re still as tired as ever but your body is used to it. So you feel human some days & then you will start shouting at one of them when they cry, shouting in their faces so they stare at you in surprise, or you suddenly stab the table with the kitchen scissors when you can’t open the damn milk. Or when the van driver almost knocks you over as you’re waving your in-laws off, then yes, you will press yourself against the windscreen hammering with your fists & you will scream at him, scream till he drives off, you swearing at him in the road. The neighbours think I’m crazy. It’s true, I am. They had such high hopes for us at the start: Tony Wilde’s son & daughter-in-law & their delightful twin daughters. Instead they’ve got me. I look like a drug addict or a homeless person, in baggy worn jog bottoms with holes in them, and my hair has tangles in it I can’t begin to brush out so I don’t bother any more. I have bruises under my eyes: I can see them, but I can’t stop pressing my fingers into my eye sockets, when I start to see things I don’t want to, again. Like Tony’s face. Like Iris, walking. Like Ben, as he said bye. Like Emily’s sweet head nestling into my chest. I’ve got eight pages left. Book, my Book, what will I do with you when I’ve finished writing in you? I’ll do something. My father always used to tell me I looked like a scarecrow. ‘My little scarecrow’. He hit me once bc he said I was so dirty. I had been playing Flowers & Stones with Ben and Cord most of the day, in and out of the flowers by the house, then Dizzyman by the shore as the tide came in and went out. I fell in a couple of times. We were almost sick with laughter (Ben actually was sick, back at the house after lunch) and we were soaking and covered in sand, and then we’d gone to look at the rabbits in the field where the grey mare lived behind the lane. I can’t remember her name, Book, & I’d been crouching on the sandy, dirty field trying to coax one towards me but they’re very shy, rabbits. They really won’t come near you not even if you have chocolate, which we thought they’d like (Cord said they did). When I got home, I was filthy, smelling of seaweed and rabbit poo & probably sick but I was happy, really, really happy for once, tired in the way you only can be if you’ve been laughing all day. Crying has the same effect. My father liked everything just so. Always has. He was drunk when I came in. And he hit me. He said I was a little slag for hanging around with them all day, that Ben Wilde would try and do to me what his father had done to Aunt Jules and that’s why she’d had to leave school early and never got her school cert. He wouldn’t stop talking. He said that’s why she’d moved to Oz for all those years & was now fat and bitter & sad and never came to the Bosky any more. He hit me so hard I fell against the corner of the table and he said I wasn’t his problem. He was sick of having to worry about me. The next day he was sorry. He actually gave me a kiss on the head at breakfast. “That’s a bit of a lump. Listen, I am sorry I walloped you, but it’s for your own good I hope. I just want to warn you. You really must understand what they’re like, that lot.” Oh, Daddy, what would you have done if you’d seen me, all those years later, doing the same as Aunt Jules did with Tony Wilde, then? That’s what she did, wasn’t it? Making the same mistakes she did, only that’s the thing, it wasn’t a mistake, it can’t have been because look at what I have now. It is the culmination of everything. It has to be. Perhaps they’re not his. Perhaps they’re Ben’s. I never asked Tony about it. I know Tony, I know he wouldn’t have treated someone badly. That’s the thing about him, that years later even when I was in the middle of it with him, when he was on top of me, putting it in me, staring at me helplessly and rather sweaty – ‘Are you sure, darling?’ he said, the faintest stirrings of doubt blooming in his eyes & I nodded and gave him a little sigh to let him know how much I liked it. Because I did like it, even though he was slower, and rather older and purpler than in my life-long fantasy, I still believed he wasn’t doing it to play a trick, to tick me off a list. But because he needed it. I don’t know if he knew it was me, and not Aunt Jules. Poor Tony. I think he is trapped somewhere in time as a 14 yr old.
I can’t remember how it happened, except that I love Tony, I always have and he was so desperately sad, and I wanted him then. I have started to wonder if the reason Ben couldn’t get me pregnant was because I didn’t want his baby. Because my body somehow wouldn’t seek out the right sperm to make his baby & it’s my fault. Because I am BAD, & sent to tear them apart, to take revenge on them for what happened to Jules years ago – is that it? Giving me twins, laughing at our joint fecundity . . . Men take their pleasure, & the consequence is mild guilt. Women take pleasure, and they are punished for the rest of their lives. I took Ben’s name when we married, and I wish more than anything I had not. So those doctors, with medical statistics and helpful leaflets, they were all wrong. I needed one night, the right time of the month, one roll of the dice: and well, didn’t it work? I didn’t get my baby, I got two, 2 2 2! I have a family, my two girls, my babies, and they’re mine – and his. I’m sure they’re his. Sometimes I look at my little plump Emily, with her thick curling hair and her nose like a button and her funny dark eyes that flash and sparkle, & a small Tony Wilde stares back, and I wonder why no one else has noticed it. Why Althea or Ben or Cord don’t say anything. She is so like Tony it’s funny really, mercurial, charming, somewhere not quite with you all the time. Iris looks like me. I look at her sharp, watchful face and her darting little eyes and her solemn expression and how she won’t impress anyone just for the sake of it by cooing or gurgling and I could shout for joy. She picks things up precisely between one white slim finger & one white slim thumb. She is like him too, determined and quixotic & charming, both of them are charming of course, I understood them both perfectly the moment I saw them – also I knew the moment I saw them that what I’d done to get them here was wholly wrong & awful. A sin – I don’t believe in God, or anything like that, but I believe in sin. I have sinned. Tony did too but oh, I’m the one who made it happen, & I am living with it now. I’ve never given Tony or Ben reason to suspect, we have never repeated what happened that night. But I saw how he looked at Emily. He saw it. I’ve got them. I’ve got what I wanted. Now I simply have to live with what I’ve done, for the rest of my life. Try to forget all the broken pieces of things I stepped over on the way to get here. I have to simply get on with living, and the truth.
The truth for once? I’m not sure if I can.
5 August
Ben is back, we go to the Bosky tomorrow. He says he has been “thinking”. He says things have to change. He is insisting on a nanny. He won’t listen to me. I am much better now than the last few weeks. But he says I’m not coping. I thought this would be a relief but it’s not. It’s not because it means it’s real & I am doing it as badly as I thought. Iris was in bed with me when he came back, fast asleep under the duvet – she had wriggled down there in the night, Book, she wouldn’t sleep in her cot so I took her in with me. He shouted at me. He said she could have suffocated. I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s right. He brought the girls back huge dolls in frilly dresses that the studio gave him. One’s all in pink lace and called Pretty Lil Flirt with a pink hairband and the other one’s in a green-and-brown smock and she’s called Lynda and she has a trowel and watering can. I don’t know why but this makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, Ben stares at me, I can see him looking at me. He doesn’t think it’s funny. When they’re grown up, I wonder if they’ll look at the dolls & ask themselves why we gave them each the one we did.
7 Aug
When I write, the biro presses through the last three pages on to the back cover of my book. When I turn to the front and read the opening pages I see that 18 yrs ago I said I’d write down things I noticed about the Wildflowers & Book is nearly finished.
17 Aug
Something strange is happening to me and it doesn’t work to write it down any more which is good – the book is nearly finished. We got here 3 days ago. Ben is still bossing me about. He has forced Cord to come down too, the first time we’ve seen her for months. He says she must help with the babies too. Cord did help. She can do it, she just knows how to and I don’t. She knows how to hold them, how to stop Iris wriggling and, when no one is around, she sings to them, as she’s putting their night things on. “Stay Awake”, from Mary Poppins. “Little Jesus Sweetly Sleep”. Everything goes on as normal and yet it’s not. I’m leaving this book under the floorboards of the porch. With the strange birdman doll that is buried there. He has a bird face and wings & is very old. Book will be under the porch. It’s where Cord and I spent hours & hours on the steps predicting the waves, making up stories about the clouds, painting our toenails ridiculous colours, doing “Bits & Pieces” from the Radio 1 Roadshow.
You see, she almost as good as told me I had to end it all myself and I am grateful she has done it that way, it makes it all easier. I saw her – at the beach hut, last night, when I was sitting there trying to work out what to do. Feeling guilty because I had left the babies with Ben and Althea. She knows – I didn’t realise she knows about Tony and me, and the girls. She said such horrible things to me. She said I was a slag – a slag. It’s such a nasty word & it’s what Daddy used to call me for hanging round with them all those years ago. She said I was a twisted, evil person, that I had wormed my way into the family and was eating us away from the inside. That I was the reason everything had gone wrong. She blames me for everything. Book, oh Book, oh Book.
She said she looked at the girls in the bath that evening and couldn’t stand it any more. She said it’s because they’re so beautiful and pure. That they are marked with a stain, & the stain is all my fault and it will ruin their lives if I’m still around, that I am what will tear them down eventually. She said she kept away because she didn’t ever want to hurt Ben but now he’d practically dragged her down there she couldn’t stay silent, not to me.
Everything you touch turns rotten,” she said. “I thought you were a good person. But you weren’t. You lied to us and you crept around hoping to be our friend. You lied to Ben and pretended to be all doe-eyed and passive to kiss him when we were young. You made my mother wish she had a daughter like you, all long hair and simpering, instead of the daughter she had. You couldn’t get Ben to give you a baby. I think you must have driven my father mad, mad over the years. I’m not surprised he went along with you.” I SAID to her, Cord, none of that’s true, but the noises hammering in my head, hammering so loud, wouldn’t stop. I said it to her, I said, Cord, I love you more than any of them. You’re my friend. “You’re not my friend,” she said, she was crying. “You’re a snake. You’ve slithered in & poisoned us. We were fine before you. We were just the four of us. We were happy.” She was so pale I could see the blue veins on her forehead & cheeks. Her big big grey eyes, her thick black lashes. Normally there’s a smile lurking deep down there no matter how sad she is. Not now, not any more. She just kept saying it, there on the sofa in the beach hut, and I stood at the door, shivering with the cold. “You poisoned us. Our family. You’re the bad thing. You’re the bad thing.”
I see it all clearly now in the beach hut, everything hurtful & sharp and real, like Cordy, or Tony, or Ben, or the smell and taste of my little ones, and how awful it is loving someone that much, they all feel very far away. As if I see them through thick, thick glass or plastic. Some material. And it’s easier that way, Book.
Because when I think about what might happen to my girls. How they might be hurt by horrible girls at school who tease them for their clothes like I was teased. How nasty boys might use them and try and get them to do things they don’t want. How they might hate their bodies and stare at themselves hour after hour in the mirror. How they might fall over & tear their perfect soft skin or have accidents on bikes or skates or get into unsafe cars or worse than anything be unloved, be sad and lonely and broken by their upbringing like I have been . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Can’t think straight. It hurts so much to think of them hurt. I have hurt them already. I am afraid I will make things much worse if I stay.
I have to close the gaping hole. I have to cover it over. I am not a good mother to them. I am not a good wife or sister, the pain of being like this comes in waves and at the moment I think the wave is too strong for me. It’s crashing now.
2 pages left & I wanted to finish the whole book but it’s not that neat, is it? That’s all really. Thank you, Book.
One more list. To use the space.
Cord wore: A blue shantung silk halter-neck dress and cork-soled wedge heel shoes. Sunglasses. She bites her nails, they are chewed to bits. She has an expensive watch. She is reading My Family and Other Animals. She brought Althea a pile of Rosamunde Pilcher & Mary Wesley books. Althea is delighted. She bought Ben a neck thing to wear on flights that you blow up and it stops your neck hurting – a little thing but it has already helped as he gets a sore neck all the time, it cricks and freezes. She is thoughtful. And kind. But so different in her smart dress and sunglasses. Her passport is always in her handbag. She pinches her throat all the time when she’s talking, she says it does her good. Pinches it really hard. She has left us behind and now I see why, I see why.
Keep on.
Tony: Yesterday he was wearing a navy polo shirt and some blue twill trousers. He had a red spotted handkerchief in his linen jacket, he wipes his face with it. He shakes a lot. I think he is ill. They all hated Hamlet, it knocked him for six. He has a book with all the reviews in. “Appallingly ill-judged”. “Unbelievably offensive”. He reads it every day I see him.
Althea is in a jersey silk dress from Jaeger in wine red / brown tiger print and she has sandals on, and her sunglasses, & her legs are slim and brown as ever, and all she does all day is lie on the porch reading her books, smoking and drinking camomile tea or gin. She grows the camomile here and collects it up and dries it and makes it into tea. She is totally oblivious to everything. I realised that long ago. She only wants to see what’s nice. She will do anything for the babies. She will do anything for Ben.
Ben . . . Ben is in his old Kate Bush “Hounds of Love” T-shirt that we bought together one each from Kensington Market on that trip to London. We thought we were so cool, didn’t we, so in love, oh my gosh, I loved him and his shorts from the market in Provence that summer after we were married. His chest is fuzzy with blonde hair. He picks the girls up and swings them over his head. He is reading Truffaut on Hitchcock and he is writing a screenplay about his childhood . . . I know this, they don’t . . . Yesterday he cut his finger cleaning up a glass I smashed and has an elastoplast on it. I put it on him. It will still be there afterwards. His hair needs a cut but it suits him, so shaggy and ruffled. Help me, darling, help me, please. That’s what she sings. Help me, darling, help me, please. I love him so much but he has to clean all the broken pieces up after me and he’s tired. I’m tired. It will actually be a relief.