Keeping Secrets (15 page)

‘Hey, hey, that's enough, it'll go through the floor.' Miriam found a cloth and mopped at the lake. Behind her, Stephen pushed wide the door.

‘Evening all.' He sounded relaxed and cheerful; he sat on the edge of the bath and threw a sponge at Jonathan. ‘How's it been?'

‘Okay.' He threw it back again, giggling.

Miriam got up, feeling slightly dizzy from the bending. ‘Guess what.'

‘What? Hey, Jon, that's enough, you'll soak me.'

‘What do you think?' Miriam looked at him, long lean body perched on the bathside, perfectly fitting casual clothes: well-cut cords, good cotton collar above a dark crew neck. His foot swung lazily to and fro, like a cat's tail; he looked at her, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yes?'

‘Yes,' said Miriam, ‘Confirmed this morning.' She went across and kissed him, brushing his hair with her lips. There were a few grey hairs, just appearing at the temples; she touched them with her fingertip, lightly. ‘All right? Are you pleased?'

‘Of course, if you are,' he said, and she frowned, feeling a shiver of anxiety.

He pointed down at Jonathan's wet head, questioningly.

‘He knows,' she said, ‘I told him straight away. Stephen … aren't you pleased?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘It's all right, don't look like a frightened rabbit. I am, especially if it's a girl.' He tapped Jonathan on the head. ‘What about that, then? Mummy's going to have a baby.'

‘I know,' he said. ‘She's told me.'

‘So now you'll have someone to play with.'

‘I want to play with you.'

‘Well, here I am. I should think it's about time you got out.'

Miriam passed Stephen a towel. ‘Do you want to do him while I get supper ready?'

‘Okay.' He took the towel and reached across and kissed her. ‘Happy now?'

‘Very,' she said. ‘Very,' and felt relief sweep over her – they'd done it. She went downstairs humming, hearing him say to Jonathan, ‘Come on, monster.'

By the middle of April the trees and hedgerows were hazy with the first green of the year, and, the foundations of the studio and several courses of bricks were laid. There was to be a stable door, to let in maximum light when it was warm enough, and windows on all sides.

In the middle of May, in the middle of a morning, Miriam, bending on the garden path to pick up Jonathan's lorries, felt an ache, more than a twinge, and then, please God no, but yes, a light but unmistakable wetness.

Indoors, she stood in the bathroom, shaking. She shook when she sat on the bed and telephoned the house where Stephen was working. A woman answered the phone, a pleasant, light-voiced woman who was terribly sorry but Stephen wasn't there, he'd gone off to another site. Of course she'd tell him, as soon as he came back. Miriam hung up, and lay down, hearing Jonathan coming in from the garden and banging his way upstairs. ‘In here, Jon.' She turned her head to look out of the window: birds sang in the woods across the road; thrushes and bluetits and the soft contented coo of wood pigeons. There were bluebells therenow, she'd picked some yesterday. A perfect May morning, sunny and fresh. If she lay here all day, all week …

‘Mum? Where's Batman?'

‘What?'

‘
Batman.
I left him on the step.'

‘Did you? Sorry, I don't remember – I picked up all your lorries and things. Go and have another look, darling.' Go away and let me be all right, please.

‘
You
come and look. Why're you lying down?'

‘I've got a tummy ache, that's all. Come and lie down with me, if you like.'

‘No.' He wandered over to the window, disgruntled. ‘Can we go and feed the donkey?'

‘Perhaps. A bit later.'

A bit later Miriam was still bleeding. Stephen rang at tea-time, was home by six, complaining about traffic in the city centre, but concerned. By eight, Miriam was in hospital, and bled all night, messily and profusely. The following afternoon she sat in a room full of visibly pregnant women in nightdresses, waiting with a bursting bladder to be scanned.

The woman in charge of the ultrasound was young and thin – well, perhaps no younger than Miriam, but Miriam felt as if she had stepped into the territory of a much older, disappointed woman, light years from the pale white-coated girl who ran her instrument over her stomach, slippery with gel. She turned her head towards the screen, remembering Jonathan, on the same screen in the same room, grow from an animated flicker to a slowly moving bulk, with spinal cord, and beating heart, seeing the blurred face swim into focus, looking like an Easter Island statue, primitive and enormous, calm, with a dreamy smile. Had she really seen all that? Now she heard the girl cough, hesitating, before showing the dark mass of her swollen bladder and the cavity of her womb.

‘What a shame.'

She swabbed away the gel with a piece of coarse tissue, and Miriam swung her legs off the couch, pulling the hospital gown around her; she went out, had a pee and then sat waiting for the porter to take her back by wheelchair to the ward, because she'd been told to wait, even though she couldn't see the point. She'd lost it, she'd lost it – where was it now? May as well climb ten flights of stairs.

‘What was wrong with your tummy?' Jonathan asked, as they went out with Stephen into the car park. Fool, thought Miriam, fool. Why did I tell him?

They passed a man energetically opening the rear door of a hatchback; his wife, holding a tiny shawl-wrapped baby, stepped carefully inside, while grandparents hovered, beaming. Miriam turned her head away, saying to Stephen, as if it were the only thing that mattered:

‘Where are we parked?'

He nodded towards their car a couple of rows ahead. ‘You all right?'

‘Not really.' She pointed down at Jonathan, mouthing: ‘Have you told him?'

‘No.'

‘Why?'

‘I thought you'd want to. I thought you'd do it better.'

At the car, waiting for Stephen to open up, Jonathan said again, ‘What was wrong with you?'

‘There was something wrong with the baby,' Miriam said. ‘That happens sometimes – it wasn't quite right, and now it's – now it's, well … it's gone.' Where? Why? At twelve weeks it – he? she? – had been fully formed, waiting to grow.

‘Gone where?' asked Jonathan.

‘Come on,' said Stephen, holding open doors. ‘Get in, Jon, I've got something for you once you're strapped in.'

‘What? What?' He scrambled inside.

They drove out of Norwich eating Smarties. The lanes were bright with buttercups; clumps of cow parsley trembled as they drove past. In the fields beyond the hedges the corn was a sharp, beautiful green; they passed the dairy farm three miles out from the village, where cows swished at the flies and swayed across to the water-trough at the gate. They drove without talking much, and Miriam began to feel soothed: a calm summer evening with her child in the back, her husband beside her, leaving behind the hospital, and everything that had happened there.

Home again, opening windows, pottering about, it felt as if she had been away for weeks. She went upstairs to their bedroom, and stood looking at the cool white bed, seeing herself lie there only two days ago, willing the baby not to drip away. Can I go through this again? she wondered. Can I put them through it again? Downstairs, Stephen was calling: ‘I've made some tea, do you want it up there?'

‘It's all right,' she called back, ‘I'm coming.' She went down the dark narrow stairs, her feet in sandals clicking on the stone floor of the hall. In the kitchen she looked at Stephen, standing with a mug of tea at the garden door, watching Jonathan. He turned as she came in; she wanted him to hold out his arms, to be glad she was back, to have missed her dreadfully. She heard herself saying: ‘Do you love me at all?' and then cover it at once, because it was dangerous and desperate to talk like that, with: ‘Sorry, I'm still feeling a bit wobbly,' in a high, shaky voice which sounded as if it came from decades ago: as if she wore nylons with seams and was always terribly brave. She sat down at the table as Stephen, still at the garden door, said carefully, ‘Poor Miriam,' and put her head on her arms.

That should have been enough. Later, three or four years later, Miriam thought she should have made sure it was enough, should have begun at once to look for a job, for something outside herself, something more important than herself. Instead, it all began again, but worse this time, because everything was spoken.

Are you coming to bed?

Not yet.

Please.

No!

You make me feel like a cast-off.

Don't be so maudlin.

I need you. I need it. Please!

I cannot, for Christ's sake, do it to order!

But if we don't do it now, that's another month gone …

Doors slamming, tears. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Be grateful for what you have. I try to be, I try.

By the autumn the studio in the garden was finished. Stephen and Frank spent the whole of a Sunday in November carrying out the contents of his room, bumping the plan chest downstairs, staggering along the path with the drawing board. Miriam watched for a while, then took Jonathan for a walk down the lane. They leaned over the rusting gate of the donkey field, holding out their windfalls.

‘Come on, boy, come on.'

He had been grazing on the far side, beyond his shelter; now he came slowly towards them, lifting neat hooves over the rough ground, with its straggling sorrel and hard mounds of earth. They stood while he crunched the apples noisily, patting his thick brown coat.

‘I wish we could groom him,' said Jonathan. ‘Couldn't we groom him?'

‘Perhaps.' Miriam felt the word was like a second name, a part of her. She said perhaps to everything now, and thought it, too: perhaps we'll have another child, perhaps we won't; perhaps it doesn't matter; perhaps Stephen and I will be all right in the end. When the last of the apples was gone the donkey began to graze again, staying near them. They moved away, getting chilled standing still, and he raised his head and followed them; when they turned to wave he was hanging over the gate, watching. The light was beginning to fade, and the air smelt damp. ‘Let's go,' said Miriam.

Back at the house they stood looking up to where Stephen used to be working, to where there was always a square of light. Now the whole upstairs was dark. They went down the side and into the garden, down to the gap in the hedge. Light from the studio shone out on to the grass. ‘It's like a little house!' said Jonathan.

Perhaps I should have bought a housewarming present, Miriam thought, as they walked towards the door over neatly laid stepping stones. Made it a celebration, made it clear I was on his side.

‘Daddy!' Jonathan pounded on the white wooden door.

There was a click, and the top half swung open; Stephen leaned out and neighed. Jonathan laughed, and reached up to pat him. ‘We've just been feeding the donkey.'

‘Have you? Are you going to feed me?'

‘No! Come on, Dad, open the door.'

He slid back the lower bolt and they stepped inside. It smelt of wood and fresh plaster, very clean and new. Stephen had been pinning up plans on cork boards all along one wall; there was a large white shelf, running the width of the room, which was to be his desk, and everything was already neatly arranged along it: boxes of cartographers' pens, filing tray, scarlet anglepoise lamp. The telephone was mounted on the wall.

‘Where are you going to sleep?' asked Jonathan, looking round.

‘In a basket,' said Stephen solemnly.

‘A
basket?
Where? Can I see?'

‘Actually,' said Stephen, picking him up, ‘I'm going to sleep in the house, you goose.'

‘With Mummy?'

‘Of course. Do sit down.' He placed Jonathan in the swivel chair and spun him round. ‘Bye.'

Jonathan shrieked.

‘What do you think?' Stephen asked Miriam, still standing by the door. ‘Do you approve?'

‘It's very nice,' she said. ‘You've done it beautifully.' She walked up and down, getting the feel of it. It was an ordered, purposeful place; anyone could work well out here, and for a moment she felt a pang of pure envy:
I'd
like somewhere like this. And at once, mocking: and what would you do in it? Cry? Sew, she thought, I could sew.

‘I'll get you some plants,' she said. ‘That's all it needs.'

‘Thank you. Something exotic, perhaps, like you.' Stephen caught the chair as it spun past, and stopped it.

‘Like me?' Miriam looked at him.

‘I feel sick,' said Jonathan. ‘You shouldn't have done it for so long.'

‘Sorry.' Stephen held out his hand. ‘Come on. You and Mummy go indoors now, it's almost bedtime.

‘And you. You come with us.'

‘In a minute. I'm just, going to finish unpacking.' He pointed to a pile of cardboard boxes in a corner, full of books. ‘You can have those, when I've finished.'

‘I could make
my
house!'

‘You could. Go on, off you go.'

‘I'll call you when supper's ready,' Miriam said. ‘Or should I telephone?'

‘I know,' said Jonathan, as they walked up the path. ‘You could have a
bell.
That's a good idea, isn't it? Then every time we wanted Daddy we could just stand outside and ring it, and he'd come running.'

‘A pretty thought,' said Miriam, wondering at exotica.

That night Stephen came upstairs to kiss Jonathan goodnight and afterwards kissed Miriam, too, closing Jonathan's door and pressing her up against the wall on the landing, leaning hard against her; He lifted her long winter skirt and ran his hands between her legs, his fingers teasing, exploring, urgent. He lifted her, wrapping her legs round him, and carried her into the bedroom, closing the door with his foot. Then laid her down gently on the bed, spreading her legs, standing over her as he took off his trousers. Miriam moaned, waiting, wanting him to do it all night, for ever.