Sorrow and Bliss(37)

*

I stayed sitting by the stream after he walked on, but kept my head up so as not to attract any more concerned persons. I hadn’t been alright from the time Patrick went away. Sitting there, I thought about other times that I had felt like this – the months I was with Jonathan, on and off in Paris, the past few weeks – the lowest points of my adult life were related by the factor of his absence. It was so clear. And there had been that day in the summer – I stood up and brushed the back of my jeans. That is when I began to think of Patrick as the cure. By the end of our marriage, I saw him as the cause.





18

I WENT TO the airport to meet Patrick, early in the morning, the day before Christmas. We hugged each other like two people who had no practical experience of embracing, had only taught themselves the theory from a poorly worded manual.

He did not smell amazing. He had a very saddening beard. But, I said, aside from that I was so happy to see him. I did not say, beyond description, beyond what I had imagined.

Patrick said you too. And my name. ‘You too Martha.’

In front of the ticket machine, he asked if I wanted to come home with him. It felt like a stone dropping – the disappointment – when he said ‘not in that sense obviously’ and laughed. I told him I did, not in that sense either.

The flat was quiet, with the air of a long absence, and neat although Heather was supposedly still in residence. Patrick opened windows and asked me what I wanted to do. I said let’s shave that beard off and I sat on the closed lid of the toilet while he did it, in humorous increments – Charles Darwin to suspected attacker via Mr Bennet, BBC adaptation.

I went out afterwards so he could have a shower and sat in the living room, reading a book I found under his coffee table, trying not to think about the sound of running water and the steam and soap smell that was either carrying from the bathroom or being produced by my imagination. I wondered what he was doing. I wondered what he was doing, too exactly, and left the house to buy breakfast and food for his fridge, staying out until I was sure he would have finished.

We talked until it was too late for me to go home; Patrick gave me his bed and slept on the sofa.

*

In the morning, we walked all the way to Belgravia, along Battersea Park, over Chelsea Bridge. Winsome opened the door and looked surprised to see us together. While we took off our coats, she seemed on the cusp of saying something, not that my hair looked very nice as it ended up being.

Before lunch I went into the dining room and found her rearranging the place cards because, she said, having now seen Ingrid, she thought it would be better to have her on the end, to make it easier for her to get in and out. My sister was thirty-six weeks pregnant by then and had put on a significant amount of Toblerone weight.

Now, Winsome went on, she was wondering if Ingrid might also be more comfortable on a sturdier alternative to the formal dining chairs which, she pointed out, had such silly thin legs.

Perhaps I could suggest it to her. My aunt said, ‘She wouldn’t be offended would she?’ and touched her pearls.

Ingrid was offended and refused to take the sturdier alternative, despite the additional inducement of a cushion. Once we were sitting down, she told us she was going to try and force out her mucus plug in the hope of ruining the upholstered seat of the thin-legged one she had made Hamish give up. He was next to Patrick, and glanced at him for reassurance after suggesting to my sister that perhaps all the pretend bearing-down wasn’t the best idea, as funny as we were obviously all finding it.

She started laughing. ‘A woman can’t dislodge her mucus plug by pretending to.’

He looked back to Patrick and asked if that was true.

Ingrid said, ‘He’s been a doctor for ten minutes Hamish. I doubt he knows. No offence Patrick.’

‘He’s actually a registrar, darling.’

‘Okay well I don’t know the difference but fine, I will leave my mucus plug in situ.’

Jessamine, next to her, said, ‘I am so excited for when we all stop staying mucus plug,’ and got up.

A moment later, Rowland appeared and took her seat. He had just acquired a sibling pair of whippets to replace Wagner who had been kept alive for much longer than God intended through many rounds of chemotherapy, dog dialysis and multiple cutting-edge surgeries at a cost that he did not by his own inconsistent metric consider obscene.

Now he was hoping Patrick could advise him on their problem of nervous urination, he said, ‘In your capacity as a medic.’ Ingrid said he’s actually a registrar and got up, announcing to the table that she was going upstairs to lie down because she felt sick. I went with her and stayed until she was asleep. By the time I came down, everyone had left on the walk. I was sitting at Winsome’s piano, trying to play something, when she texted me. ‘Fck pls come up here and ring Hamish.’

I found her in Jessamine’s bathroom, kneeling in front of the basin and pulling down on the edge like she was trying to rip it out of the wall. The floor around her was wet and she was crying. She saw me and said, ‘Please don’t be angry. I was joking. I was joking.’

I went over and knelt beside her. She let go of the basin and lay on her side, curled up with her head in my lap. I rang Hamish. He said okay, okay, okay, okay, okay until I told him I had to go. A contraction was coming. My sister’s body went rigid, like she was being electrocuted. With her jaw clenched she said, ‘Martha, make it stop. I’m not ready. The baby will be too small.’ As soon as the contraction had passed, she asked me to go please Google how to keep a baby in. ‘Its birthday is going to be fucked, Martha.’ Laughing, or crying, she said, ‘Please. It’s going to get a combined present.’