Keeping Secrets (14 page)

He spent a lot of time now in his rusting corrugated iron shelter, where the rain drummed on the roof. When he came towards them over the wet grass, Jonathan held out small green apples, no longer alarmed by the puckering hairy lips and yellow teeth.

‘Doesn't he get lonely, all by himself? Poor donkey.'

‘Poor donkey. Never mind, at least he's got us.'

‘
That's
not very much.'

In the evenings, when Jonathan had gone to bed, Miriam sat in the kitchen making curtains, spreading yards of cotton across the table, whirring along the hems with the machine. In the warm room with the cat asleep on the rug in front of the Rayburn, she began to feel the house grow into a home, closed in on itself, shut up, secure. Evenings were easier than the long wet days; no one expected to be able to go out and do things on winter evenings. She listened to plays and concerts and wondered, sometimes, if she could go back to work in the spring.

When Miriam had met Stephen she'd been working as a secretary to a firm of solicitors in Norwich: over-qualified, with an arts degree, and under-confident, knowing she should be doing more than typing other people's letters, not knowing what more to do. She knew now that there were women everywhere fretting at being at home with small children, longing to get out, get a job, get away from the housework, fish fingers and play dough. Miriam felt out of tune, knowing she really wanted only to be here.

She packed away her sewing, put out the cat, who hunted all night along the hedgerows, and climbed the stairs: she ran a bath and went to look at Jonathan, who had kicked the bedclothes off. His cheek was pale and cold; she covered him up and tucked him in, and went to have her bath, passing the other small bedroom, piled high with bits and pieces, including Jonathan's old cot, and carrycot, and a box of baby clothes. She lay in the hot water, making calculations, and went into Stephen's room in her dressing gown.

‘Have you nearly finished?'

‘Still a bit to do.'

He was sitting in his high swivel chair, tapping his pen in his hand, long legs wound round the base. The red anglepoise lamp shone on to drawings of open-plan living rooms, long narrow kitchens with rows of units, neat squares of garden. An electric fire burned near his feet; the rest of the room felt very cold.

‘Come to bed,' said Miriam. ‘It's freezing up here.'

‘In a minute.' He tapped the pen against his teeth, thinking. Stephen had beautiful teeth, sloping slightly backwards, and his smile was revealing, inviting. He was a good-looking man whose regular features and curly hair might have made for blandness if he hadn't also been clever and, usually, charming. He was the kind of man women fell for, and Miriam had fallen. What was he thinking about?

‘Have you really got much more?'

‘I said – just a bit. Go on, darling. Have you checked on Jonathan?'

‘Yes, he'd kicked all the clothes off.'

‘Okay – I'll have another look at him before I come.' He squinted again at the board. ‘See you in a little while.'

Such ordinary conversations, the day-to-day talk of married life; hearing them one might think they came out of an easy domesticity, a deep steady love kept alive by passion. But Miriam and Stephen's bed was becoming a battleground. She went out, leaving the door ajar.

‘Shut it,' said Stephen lightly. ‘I'll keep you awake.'

‘No you won't,' said Miriam, uneasy. If not tonight, then tomorrow? If not tomorrow, when? Tonight, please tonight.

‘Go on,' said Stephen, not so lightly. ‘I prefer it shut.'

Miriam closed the door and crossed the landing to their bedroom. She took off her dressing gown and climbed into bed, reaching for her book.

In the days when Miriam had slept alone, she had read late into the night, sleeping in the next morning. Even then, as a student, she'd wanted more than anything else to be a mother, hadn't known, really, what else to do with her life. Now she lay sleepily turning the pages, a married woman, mother of one, still wondering. Above her, in the rafters, mice skittered; a car drove past, speeding along the lane, slowing at the bend before the village; a little later, from the woods, came an owl's hoot, breathy and hollow. Miriam's hand dropped from the book and it slid to the floor; she fell asleep with the light on.

And woke to hear Stephen switch it off, very carefully and quietly, not wanting her to wake. He went round the bed in bare feet, pulled back the bedclothes and got in beside her. Only Stephen could go to bed naked in the middle of winter. Did other men get naked into bed and turn away? She moved towards him, hardly daring to breathe.

‘Stephen?'

‘Mmmm?' he said sleepily, abstracted.

She moved closer, slipping an arm around his bare chest, and yawned, she couldn't help it. Stephen patted her hand and yawned too, elaborately.

‘Night, darling.'

Closer still, hearing the owl again, but faintly, hunting further afield, beyond the woods. It seemed suddenly such a lonely cry, and Miriam, her arms around Stephen who so clearly was refusing her, felt her hopes of the house, and her sense of it as a family home, recede into a bleak, unreachable distance. She lay awake for a long time, listening to his breathing grow slower and steadier. Sleepless, she discovered, was quite a different word from awake – awake was alert, interested, alive; sleepless was full of tension and anxiety, restlessness. Miriam's nights became sleepless, wondering: if he doesn't want me, who does he want? She remembered aching lines from Beckett, read years ago:
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

Was that true? Was there only one ‘you'in the world?

There were nights which were not like this, nights which followed evenings when they sat at the kitchen table with notebooks and gardening books, making plans for the spring: for bedding plants, a willow, a pond for Jonathan. Through the landowner for whom he was converting the barn, Stephen met other people; his card in the village shop brought phone calls. He asked Miriam to invite these new acquaintances for supper, and since she knew she was a good cook, she in some ways looked forward to these evenings. It didn't matter in the least to anyone else if she didn't talk much – their dinner guests were voluble about life in the country, only too eager to tell her how she should go about things, and to listen to Stephen talk expansively, as he always did at dinner parties, about his work, about local history, and churches, and the guests' own houses, asking all the right questions. Everyone liked him, warming to his easy manner, his way of making sure that they all had what they wanted, and were able to talk about themselves. He was the perfect host, but also – unobtrusively but surely – he was smoothing the path for his own career: inspiring confidence, making introductions. When Miriam got up to make coffee, he would fetch his photographs of earlier projects completed and under way. There were strong, black and white photographs of the derelict barn converted with the best local materials, using the finest craftsmen; of extensions and conservatories and lofts – light, airy homes which looked as if their owners could want nowhere else now.

He took the guests on a tour of the house, gently flirting with the wives, showing them the flagstoned hall, with the rugs Miriam had found in an auction, the sitting room he was going to get Frank to work on, knocking down a wall, exposing beams, ripping out a postwar fireplace to reveal the original chimney breast. If he was in love with anything, Miriam realised, not just at these dinner parties but gradually, over the course of that first winter, it was with the house itself – partly for its own sake, more as a setting for himself and his future.

On nights like this, when she had cooked well, and everyone had eaten and drunk well (she, perhaps, unnoticed, drinking a little more than the others) she and Stephen climbed the stairs together when their guests had gone, and undressed together. The bedroom, too, had long pale rafters beneath the stripped-off layers of paper; Miriam had emulsioned the walls in a washed-out pink, and curtained the low windows with faded tapestry found in an auction. The bed was wide and inviting – as it was every night, but Miriam was, apparently, unable to invite Stephen. Now, when he was aroused – by her, or by the image of someone else at the dinner table? – she lay beneath the soft heap of duvet, warm, open, longing. And Stephen made love to her expertly, as he had done from the beginning – as he would, she felt, have done with anyone. They fell asleep in each other's arms, and she woke next morning filled with hope, to find Jonathan standing by the bed or clambering in between them. ‘Hello, darling.' On mornings like this they were the happiest of families, and she absurd to worry. Everything was all right, everything was going to happen.

But by the new year Miriam was not pregnant, and by the end of January Stephen had drawn up plans for a studio out in the garden, where the light was better.

In March, Miriam, as every month, sat at the kitchen table repeatedly counting days on the calendar. Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight … Thirty-eight! Thirty-eight was hopeful, more than hopeful. Outside, Stephen was talking to Frank, the builder, pacing out an area of ground beyond the hedge that divided the garden. A sharp wind was sweeping across the bare fields, bending the apple trees. She could see the heads of the two men, bobbing along over the top of the hedge, and Stephen's arms, gesturing animatedly. Jonathan, in woolly hat and gumboots, was wheeling his barrow up and down along the path, talking to himself. Sitting in the warm kitchen, watching him, and the men, absorbed in their plans, Miriam found herself thinking: Shouldn't this be enough? He's a contented child, with plenty to do, the country life I wanted for him, following his father about the place, knowing I'm around. Who says he needs a baby to come and disturb all this? Who says Stephen does? It's only me who keeps wanting – can't I be satisfied with what I have? Then she thought: thirty-eight days … I really could be, this time. And she felt so excited that she couldn't sit there a minute longer, but got up and pulled on her own gumboots, and went outside, waving and calling: ‘How are you getting on?' as if a studio out in the garden, with Stephen working away from the house, and away from her, were of no consequence, indeed an excellent idea. Stephen looked pleased, and Frank nodded to her, touching his hat, a gesture from another age.

‘A nice piece of work,' he said.

Jonathan came through the gap, trundling the barrow.

‘Can Frank stay to lunch?'

They all smiled, conspirators against the easy world of childhood.

‘Will you, Frank?' asked Miriam. ‘You're very welcome.'

‘That'll be all right, thank you,' he said. ‘The wife'll have my lunch waiting.'

Jonathan's face fell. ‘Oh.' A high, frustrated note. ‘I
want
Frank to stay.'

He does get lonely, Miriam thought, he
does
need someone to play with. Even if it's all right now, it won't be, I know it won't. A boy on his own with his mother, father coming and going – it's not good. ‘Perhaps another time,' she said, picking him up. ‘Gosh, you're getting heavy.'

‘Right, then,' said Stephen, to Frank. ‘I think that's about it, isn't it? I'll give you a ring early next week.'

Early next week I'll know for sure, Miriam thought, putting Jonathan down again. They walked up through the garden, the wind cold on their faces. When Frank had gone, taking the path at the side of the house to his old van parked in the lane, they all went indoors. ‘Gumboots off,' said Miriam, helping Jonathan. The three pairs stood neatly on the mat, side by side: Father Bear, Mother Bear, Baby Bear, the perfect little family, snug in their house in the woods. What fairy tale was there with a brother or sister who was anything but ugly, or greedy, or jealous? Only Hansel and Gretel, and they were abandoned. Miriam put out the plates and soup bowls, and sliced a loaf of home-baked bread. She pictured a fourth place, a high chair up to the table, with a baby banging a spoon.

By the end of March they were digging the trench for the studio foundations out in the garden, and Miriam had her pregnancy confirmed. She drove back from Norwich down leafless lanes, singing, Jonathan strapped into his seat in the back of the car examining the tipper truck she had bought him to celebrate. ‘We're going to have a baby,' she told him, coming out of the surgery. ‘You'll have a little brother or sister. Which, would you like?' ‘A brother,' said Jonathan. ‘Can we go to the toy shop?' He didn't mention it again. She looked now into the driving mirror, hearing the tipper truck drop to the floor. ‘All right?'

‘Mmm.' His head was drooping; the car, as always, sending him off. Dark straight hair, thick soft eyelashes – a beautiful child, unbelievable that anything so perfect should have come from her. She looked back to the lane ahead, feeling the car sway a little. The fields were windswept but the morning was bright, clouds streaming above the trees; the flattened grass along the verges shone. I'm going to have another one, she thought. Thank God, thank God.

At home, she parked the car and left Jonathan asleep in it, walking round the side of the house to see how the men were getting on. Stephen was out on site today, leaving Frank to supervise. ‘Everything all right?' she asked them, much as she'd asked Jonathan, feeling now as if everyone could turn to her if things were not all right, because she, at last, was fine, wonderful, over the moon, capable of doing anything for anyone. The men nodded, looking up from their digging. She wanted to tell them, she wanted to tell everyone, and Stephen most of all. Indoors, she made lunch, smiling.

When Stephen came home that evening the men had long gone and it was cold and dark. She was upstairs bathing Jonathan when she heard the key in the lock.

‘There's Daddy.'

‘Daddy! Come up here!' Jonathan swooshed a wave of water over the side. ‘Come
here
!'