Sorrow and Bliss(41)

20

WE WENT TO the hospital the next day to see Ingrid. My parents, and Winsome and Rowland, were already there with Hamish, crowded into a room that was small and overly supplied with chairs.

As we were getting ready to go, Patrick said, ‘Just quickly, everyone, I asked Martha to marry me last night and she said fine.’

Ingrid said oh my gosh, finally. ‘It’s been a real will they, will they situation.’ My father did a triumphant movement with both fists, like someone who has just discovered they’re the winner of something, then tried to make his way over to us, pushing through the surfeit of chairs. ‘I’m parked in, Rowland – move, I need to shake my son-in-law’s hand.’ Patrick went over instead and I was, for a second, by myself.

Ingrid said, ‘Hamish, hug Martha. I can’t get up.’ While I was being hugged stiffly by my sister’s husband, I heard my mother say, ‘I thought they were engaged already. Why did I think that?’

Hamish released me and my father said, ‘It doesn’t matter. They are now. What do you think, Winsome?’

My aunt said it was lovely because it made everything so tidy. And we were welcome, she said, to have it at Belgravia, should we so wish. Rowland, beside her, said, ‘I hope you’ve got ￡50,000 to hand, do you Patrick? Bloody expensive business, weddings.’

When my father finally reached me, he pulled me into a crushing hug and kept me there until Ingrid said, ‘Can you all leave now please?’ and Hamish showed us out.

*

Patrick and I went back to his flat. There was a note on the table from Heather, reminding him that she had gone away and wouldn’t be back until the weekend. I read it over his shoulder. He said, ‘I promise I didn’t arrange that. Do you need a cup of tea first or anything?’

I said we should have it afterwards, as a reward, and pulled my T-shirt off.

*

Patrick wondered if it was the worst sex that had been had by two people in the UK since records began. For the few minutes it lasted, he had the set expression of someone trying to endure a minor medical procedure without anaesthetic. I could not stop making small talk. We had got out of bed straight away and dressed with our backs to each other.

In the kitchen, drinking tea, I told Patrick that it was like a terrible party.

He asked me if I meant highly anticipated but then disappointing.

I said no. ‘Because only one person came.’

The second time, we agreed, was motive to continue.

The third time, it felt like we had been melted down and made into another thing. We lay for so long afterwards, facing each other in the dark, not talking, our breath in the same pattern, our stomachs touching. We went to sleep that way and woke up that way. It was the happiest I have ever felt.

*

In the morning, after he gets out of the shower, Patrick puts his watch on first. He dries himself in the bathroom and leaves the towel behind. It is more efficient, he says, not having to make a return trip just to hang it up. I was still in his bed, the first time he performed the routine in front of me, coming into the room, wandering from his drawers to his wardrobe. Naked except for the watch. I observed him for as long as I could before he noticed and asked me what was funny.

I said, ‘Do you have the time, Patrick?’

He said yes I do and went back to his drawers.

Men describe themselves as real leg men. A tits man. With Patrick, I found out I am a real shoulders man. I love a good set of delts.

The fourth time, the fifth time …

*

Ingrid wanted to know what it had been like, sleeping with Patrick. We were walking to a park close to her house. It was intensely cold but she had not been out of the house since she was discharged from hospital and had begun to feel delirious, she told me, presumably for lack of oxygen. She was pushing the pram. I was carrying a heavy seat cushion from her sofa because she needed to feed the baby and the only way it didn’t hurt was with the cushion – only this cushion – underneath him. We found somewhere to sit down and while she was getting ready she said, ‘Just tell me one thing about it. Please.’

I refused, then relented because she kept asking. ‘I didn’t know it could be like that.’ I said I hadn’t known that was what it was for. ‘How you were meant to feel afterwards. That the afterwards is why sex exists.’

She said, that’s nice. ‘But I meant an actual detail.’

On the way back to the house Ingrid said, ‘Do you know what annoys me so much? If I got hit by a car while we’re crossing and died, in the newspaper it would say a mother of a something-dayold baby was killed at a notorious intersection. Why can’t it say a human who incidentally has a baby was killed at a notorious intersection?’

‘It makes it sadder,’ I said. ‘If it’s a mother.’

‘It can’t be sadder,’ Ingrid said. ‘I’m dead. That is the saddest it can be. But apparently I just exist in terms of my relationship to other people now and Hamish still gets to be a person. Thanks. Amazing.’

I helped her get the pram inside, re-established the sofa and went to make her tea. The baby was feeding again when I came back from the kitchen. She kissed his head and looked up. I saw her hesitate before she said, ‘I think you and Patrick should have babies. I’m sorry. I know you’re anti-motherhood but I do. He isn’t Jonathan. Don’t you think, with him –’