A Quiet Life(88)

Edward came in late, the tiredness etched into his face. He walked into the living room where Laura was lying on the sofa and sat down with a glass of gin, picking up a book that was lying on one of the shelves beside him. Laura sat up, stretched a little, and realised she wanted to tell him about the thoughts that had been passing through her mind.

‘You know you said I was low – I think I am worried …’

Edward put his finger in the book he was holding, and looked up. ‘It is frightening for you – but I’m sure it will all be all right. The doctor said you were going along fine, didn’t he? I found out today that I’m going to be expected to go with the ambassador on a speaking tour in a couple of weeks, but that’s still well before your date.’

Laura tried to explain that it was not fear about the birth that was dragging her down, or at least not the physical reality of the birth. Trying to convey what bothered her, she found herself returning to that moment many years ago when she had first been told about the possibility of a finer way of life. Whenever she travelled back to the memory of the Normandie in her mind, she found those few days still bright and clear into her mind. The promise of the future. ‘When I first met Florence, when she told me what communism would do for people, it was something she gave me to read. It was really impressive. Even today I remember every word—’

Edward said nothing, but Laura pressed on. She was not sure if what she was saying was welcome. The habit of secrecy had intensified between them, but at that moment she longed for reassurance from him, a moment of recognition of their shared dream. ‘It was from the Worker. About what family life would be like under communism. The writer said: “There we see no selfish husbands who expect servants rather than companions, and no nagging wives who realise life has passed them by. We see women who proudly go out and put their shoulder to the wheel, and men who are not ashamed to rock the cradle.” Or words to that effect. It’s odd how one can remember something for so many years, if it’s really important.’

Laura wanted to go on and talk to Edward about how they could be that kind of family, that they were not doomed to be like the families she saw around them – the distant fathers and resentful mothers, the growing rifts, the possibility of anger, of violence, the secrets that lay at the heart of families. But Edward stood up to get himself another drink, and Laura lost the thread and finished up on a different, more complaining note. ‘I suppose now we’re having a family I’ll never have anything else to do.’

‘But that is such an important thing for you to do,’ Edward said, sitting back down and opening his book again.

‘It’s easy for you to say that.’ Laura felt frustrated in her effort to communicate her feelings about the way they seemed to be sleepwalking forwards rather than choosing their path. ‘What’s the book?’ She didn’t want to make him argue, but equally she couldn’t bear silence to descend just now. To her surprise, Edward closed the book and put it under his chair.

‘It’s nothing – one of the professor’s old books, actually. Tell you what, why don’t we have another go at chess?’ Laura had tried often enough to play with him, and she didn’t really fancy trying again, but she acquiesced.

As the days passed and the birth came closer, Laura’s mental anxiety receded and all her consciousness seemed to become concentrated in her body. The movements of the baby inside her woke her at night and startled her during the day. There were still some three weeks to go before her due date, and yet she found herself packing and repacking the bag that she was to take to the hospital, putting in not only things for herself but also the impossibly small clothes for which she had shopped with Monica.

She even became infected by a desire to keep the house cleaner than it usually was, and after Kathy had finished dusting, she would sometimes find herself going through the rooms with a cloth, or rearranging things in closets and shelves – not that she ever seemed to make much difference to the dark, unhomely rooms. One day she was in the living room when she noticed how under each of the armchairs there was a faint shadow of dust on the parquet flooring, and, irritated that Kathy had not moved the chairs before sweeping the room, she went to get a dustpan and brush and came back and pushed the chairs to one side herself. Under one of them she saw the book that Edward had been reading the evening after Whiteley’s party. Picking it up, and looking at its title, she realised at once why he had not wanted to discuss it. Even she knew it was a book banned by the Party, absolutely known to be a pack of lies. He had left it open, face-down, and she couldn’t help looking at the page he had been reading. It struck her with horrible force: a father trying to speak to his son through a wire fence in some kind of prison camp. ‘For a second he turned to me, his face wet with tears, his hands clutching the grille convulsively.’ With a movement that almost shocked her, Laura threw the book back onto the floor and shifted the chair back over it.

When Edward came in, although Laura had not planned to do so, she returned to the discovery she had made that afternoon. ‘The book you were reading …’

‘Which book?’

‘The Tchernavin book.’

‘I didn’t read it,’ he said.

Laura was startled. She had seen him with it. She knew the Party would frown on it, but she didn’t think that even this would be a secret from one another.