A Quiet Life(89)

Then Edward backtracked. ‘I just looked at it,’ he admitted, walking over to the drinks cabinet. ‘It’s all lies; it’s all about fear – and cruelty. How can that be?’

‘That can’t be.’ It wouldn’t make sense. Fear, surely, was the characteristic of their incomplete lives, of the fact that they were not yet where they should be. Where they were going, that was what they should talk about. They must remember what their joint belief was – for the future, for their child. ‘I think—’ Laura was about to say more, but just then she was jolted by a clench of pain.

In later weeks, when Laura thought back to that evening, it was as though a crimson curtain came down over her sight. Through the curtain there was only pain, slamming her over and over again to the floor. She had always hoped she would be good at childbirth; she had seen herself as a stoical figure, and both Ellen and Mother had always been dismissive of too much talk of the awfulness of the experience. But by the time the cab Edward called had brought her to the hospital, she was groaning and lowing like a cow, and by the time the doctor was brought in to examine her, long yells were periodically escaping from her.

‘Don’t make so much noise, you’ll scare your baby,’ said one cross-faced nurse to her, at which she turned to Edward and said, ‘Make her go away,’ with vehement intent, before the next wave of pain picked her up and slammed her down again.

The nurse did not go, but was joined by a number of other medical staff, talking in hurried voices. Laura was trying to ask what was happening, when a mask was put over her face and she was allowed to go under the wave entirely and absent herself from the spectacle of the tragedy that was about to unfold.

Much later, Laura learned words for what she had gone through. She learned about a detached placenta, about haemorrhage, and a resultant lack of oxygen. But at the time there was nothing as precise and transparent as words. When Laura woke to the emptiness of the hospital room, there was only a receding tide of pain. She tried to move, and felt the pull of a wound in her abdomen. She saw Edward, asleep in a chair. ‘Edward,’ she whispered, and then louder, until he woke. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, and lying there she watched the grief take shape in his eyes, just as she had watched the happiness take shape months earlier.

The return to the little house took place some days later. They got out of the cab, Edward holding that bag of clothes and the teddy bear, and opened the door into the quiet hall. It did not feel like coming home, Laura thought; she had never liked that hall table with the curved legs, and where had that stain on the bottom step of the stairs come from? She walked into the living room and sat down with a grunt of discomfort. Edward brought her a cup of tea. ‘Shall I put something stronger in it?’ he said. She shook her head and watched him tip gin into his own cup.

The silence between them was broken by the telephone ringing. It was Mother, saying she would be there by the evening. Edward had dutifully rung her from the hospital, and had been taken aback by her announcement, which he had duly reported to Laura, that she would come to stay with them for a while. ‘I wish you hadn’t let her come,’ Laura said now in a monotone, and Edward said in a similar voice that he hadn’t known how to stop her, but that maybe in fact it was a good thing, since he had to leave for this trip with the new ambassador, Inverchapel, the next day.

Laura had forgotten about the trip. ‘My head hurts so much, will you help me upstairs?’ was all she said.

She was drifting in and out of sleep when she heard the door slam and Mother’s voice intermingling with Edward’s downstairs. Later, Laura was aware of her looking in on her, and even in her vague state she registered how odd it was that Mother’s usual demanding manner seemed to have been put to one side as she drew the curtains, but left the room without speaking. Later that evening, when she came in with a tray – on which she had put a meal that she and Kathy had clearly put together in a hurry, though it was perfectly edible – again she did so more or less in silence.

The next day Laura stayed in bed all morning after Edward left. Through a fog she was aware of those household noises that remind a sick person that they are still part of the world, that cushion them with the warp and weft of daily life; she heard footsteps, a telephone conversation, a vacuum cleaner going, and at lunchtime another knock at the door with a tray. Mother came in and, as Laura ate, she moved around the room folding clothes. Laura heard her trying to open the drawers of the tallboy. ‘They always stick,’ she heard herself saying.

‘We could get you some new furniture,’ Mother said.

‘It’s not our house,’ Laura said, and put her hand up to her head. Headaches from the anaesthetic were still troubling her.

Mother was by her bed, but to her relief didn’t talk about what had happened. ‘I thought we’d try a sponge bath after you’ve eaten.’

After the bath her mother sat doing a crossword puzzle while she listened to the radio, and then they talked about a novel that they had both read, and about what they thought of the fashions in the Vogue magazine that Mother had bought. That’s how they passed the next three days, not talking about the baby or the hospital, but in an odd way Laura felt that Mother’s presence and inconsequential conversation formed a net, and although every night she dreamt she was falling, alone, with no one to catch her, her baby son slipping away from her as she fell, during the days she began to feel as though she was being brought to shore.