Keeping Secrets (16 page)

‘I want you, I want you, I love you, go on, go on, go on …'

When they had finished and lay, still half-clothed, sprawled against each other, she thought: This is what married sex should be, perhaps this is what it's like for some people. And perhaps it wasn't. But the truth of their life over the past few months, so loveless and horrible, so bleak and bitter, welled up as she had not allowed it to do before, a nightmare she'd endured without daring to call it nightmare, thinking only: somehow we must get through this.

And here they were, and how had this come about?

‘Stephen?'

‘Mmm.'

‘That was …' She drew a long breath. ‘What happened?'

Stephen yawned. ‘You looked so lovely,' he said. ‘In the studio. I looked at you and suddenly I remembered why I wanted to get into bed the moment I set eyes on you. You looked just like you did then – a bit on edge, but very exciting. And being so good about the studio – I know you hate it.'

‘No, I don't. Only if you're going to be out there because … because everything's so bad between us.'

Stephen yawned again. ‘Well, perhaps it'll get better now.'

In the middle of the night, long after they had properly undressed and pulled the bedclothes over them, Miriam woke, without knowing why. It must have been a dream, she thought; what was I dreaming? She lay in the dark, remembering only a boy, running. Away from her? Yes. Had it been Jonathan? She tried to recall the face, but could see only a dark head, bobbing into the distance.

She got up and went to the bathroom, and as she came back again, moving sleepily along the landing, she knew, with sudden certainty, that she had conceived. This time there would be no waiting, and wondering; this time it was only a question of having it confirmed. She went into Jonathan's room and stood looking down at him, imagining, as she had not allowed herself to do for months, his sister in a crib beside him. Or perhaps the baby could be in here, a proper nursery, and Jon could have Stephen's old studio, with more space to play. She bent to kiss him, and went out, wakeful now, and into Stephen's ex-studio. He'd never carpeted it, and never wanted curtains; it was, now, as it had been when they first moved in, empty and waiting. Moonlight filtered through the trees; Miriam, in bare feet, walked up and down, restless and excited.

She started bleeding two days before Christmas, and this time there was no dull ache but a sharp, agonising pain in her side, and no thought of waiting until Stephen came home before she went to hospital. She phoned him, phoned the hospital and went in by ambulance, dropping Jon off with one of the mothers from the village. This time she hadn't told him she was pregnant, but he knew straight away why she was going in, remembering.

‘What's wrong with this baby, Mummy?'

‘You don't worry your Mum now,' said the woman kindly. ‘You come and see what's on telly. D'you like Yogi Bear?'

The ambulance drew away, driving at top speed past bare ploughed fields, frozen hard. Stephen was already at the hospital, waiting outside Casualty. He helped her, doubled up, climb down from the ambulance and into a wheelchair. The pain in her side was like flames.

Inside the entrance to the hospital stood an enormous Christmas tree, with coloured lights and empty boxes wrapped up to look like presents. Miriam was wheeled quickly through the Casualty doors, Stephen hurrying alongside. A cubicle, a nurse, a doctor, examining – Miriam distantly saw herself go through each step towards the operating theatre, leaving Stephen to go home, and look after Jonathan. In the ante-room, drowsy with pre-med, she felt the nurse squeeze her hand. ‘What a shame.'

‘Yes.'

‘Still – you can always try again.'

‘Never.'

Then came the pinprick, and oblivion.

She woke a long time later, dimly registering darkness and a single light, women breathing in rows. She couldn't think where she was, and fell asleep again, waking with the clatter of tea-cups, and carols on the ward kitchen radio. Her side was sore and uncomfortable, but no longer agony. She lay quite still, listening to the words floating tinnily over the banging in the kitchen:
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given …

Miriam pulled the sheet up over her head.

In 1978 Jonathan started school. Miriam drove him each morning through the lanes; he sat in the back seat, fiddling with his straps. He took a few weeks to warm up, clinging to her hand as they went into the classroom, tearful on the first few mornings when she left him. Then he was off, one of the gang. He brought boys home for tea, or to play on Saturdays, but he didn't seem to mind too much when they went: as when he was very small, he always had something on the go, digging a hole, collecting centipedes, building a den. When he was six, they bought Tess, and it was, for a while, as if they'd had another child – only much better, for Jonathan, because a puppy was an instant companion. They went for long walks through the woods and across the open fields, small boy and dog, he whistling and calling when she went out of sight, she running back again, nose to the ground. He never complained about being an only child; he seemed happy at home, and happy at school. But when Miriam dropped him off she came home to an empty house.

She took to calling in at the small supermarket near the school on the way home on Mondays, shopping for a week's after-school teas; one day she found herself adding, on impulse, half a bottle of gin to the basket of apple juice, Wagon Wheels, beefburgers and wholemeal rolls. Why not? They were running low at home anyway, and Stephen, though he didn't drink much himself, liked to have plenty to offer people. When she got back, she let Tess out in the garden, and put away the shopping. She cleared up the house and wondered what to do until half-past twelve, when anyone was allowed, surely, to have a glass of something. She did some weeding, kneeling on an old sack, and piling up dandelions and groundsel. By five to twelve she was sitting in a deckchair with a glass of gin and tonic, wondering why she hadn't thought of this before.

It began, then, quite casually, and from time to time she invited one of two of the women she had got to know through Stephen's dinner parties, or mothers she had met at school, to come over and join her for a drink, a light lunch. On these days she felt a mixture of purposefulness – someone coming, a meal to be made – and discomfort, at least until the first glass, which she generally had before they arrived, waiting for the questions: was Jonathan the only one, did she want more; what was she going to do now he'd started school, what had she done before she met Stephen? Sometimes, trying to answer, or deflect by asking her own questions, Miriam thought it better to have had none than one. How could that be true? At least, if you were childless, you could if you chose avoid children almost completely. Miriam saw children every day, pouring out of the school gate, greeting ‘their'babies. Before she met Stephen, she told these other mothers, she had worked as a secretary. All she knew now was that she didn't want to go back to that.

‘And I don't blame you,' said Flora, one of the lunchtime visitors, a woman Miriam genuinely liked. Flora was tall, always in jeans, with untidy hair and a loud laugh. She had two noisy boys she was always shouting at, benign and distracted, and a plain, untidy house.

‘My God, how I long for order and beauty,' she said, when Miriam showed her round her own house. ‘You've got a flair for all this, Miriam, we just live in a heap.' She gazed at the bedroom, with its freshly made bed, flowers, sofa with cushions Miriam had made. ‘Even if I didn't work we'd live in a heap, I'm hopeless.'

But happy, thought Miriam, taking her downstairs. Flora taught part-time at the school; at the end of the afternoon she piled her boys and any number of others into the back of the car and drove home to fish and chips and children's television. Her husband was a maths teacher; they had moved out from London five years ago, exchanging a square of garden in Finsbury Park for half an acre and a dilapidated orchard. ‘Best thing we ever did,' she said, taking the glass Miriam offered her. ‘Gosh, I could do with one of these, thanks.' But she refused a second, and drove off at a quarter to two, to her little group of children with special needs.

When she had gone, Miriam felt like a spare line. She washed up the lunch things, listened to
Woman's Hour
, and had a strong coffee before going to fetch Jonathan. That evening, when Stephen was out in the studio, and Jon asleep, she sat in front of the television with a large gin, and had two more before she went up to bed. Next day, finding the bottle low, she thought she might as well finish it off, and drove to school in the afternoon very slowly.

What had begun as an impulse became a need. She sat with her glass out in the garden when it was fine, indoors at the kitchen table with
The World at One
when it rained. She drank for Stephen, who did not love her and was always working; for Jonathan, who was going to grow up alone and leave her; for the babies she had lost and would never have. She drank for herself, despising her self-pity. She had read that to drink alone was the worst, but she couldn't remember why, and it gave her the most pleasure – no one to watch, or criticise, no one to know. She bought bottles of mouthwash, along with the other bottles, and never, ever, drank herself silly.

On a showery morning just after summer half-term, Stephen came home to fetch some drawings he'd forgotten, and found her at half past ten sitting in the kitchen with the sink full of washing-up and the bottle out on the table.

‘What on earth –'

‘Sorry,' said Miriam, flushing. ‘I was just feeling a bit …'

Stephen picked up the bottle, sherry this time, a good third gone. ‘Do you make a habit of drinking in the mornings?' he asked, clearly trying to make it sound like a joke, hoping it was.

‘Yes,' said Miriam flatly.

‘Why?'

She shook her head. ‘Because. Because. Sorry.'

Stephen went to the sink and poured the remains of the sherry down it. ‘Actually,' he said, ‘I don't really want to know why. I don't want to hear about it, or try to understand it, I just want it to stop. Right now.'

Miriam said nothing. He turned round from the sink, threw the bottle in the bin and stood leaning against the draining board, furious. ‘What about Jon? What about when you fetch him from school?' She spread her hands. ‘It's okay.'

‘It's
not
okay! It is absolutely
not.
You make me sick, moping and mooching about over nothing, letting everything go to pieces –' He made a gesture to embrace the washing-up, the house, Miriam herself. ‘What's the matter with you? What is the
matter
?'

Miriam covered her face. ‘I just feel … empty. I feel like a black hole.'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake. You've got me, you've got Jon, you've got a lovely home.'

‘But nobody's in it!' Miriam sobbed through the sherry. ‘You're working, he's at school. What am I supposed to do for the rest of my life, walk the dog?'

‘
You
should be working,' said Stephen. ‘Why the hell aren't you?'

‘Because I don't know what to do! Because I'm afraid.'

‘Afraid? Of getting a job? Don't be so silly.'

Miriam ran from the room.

In the hall she pulled on her mac, fumbling, and opened the front door. The shower was ending in a fine, intermittent fall and the air was cool; drops hung, shining, all round the bird table. She clicked open the garden gate and began to walk down the lane, her hands in her pockets. Her shoes squeaked in the thick wet grass on the verge when she stepped on to it, hearing a car; beside her, Tess appeared, wagging her tail, sniffing along the ditch. Miriam grabbed her collar – she must have left the gate open, Tess could have got killed. The thought that this might have happened was suddenly overwhelming; as the car drove past she sank down beside the dog, her arms round her neck, stroking her, weeping into the thick damp fur.

‘I'm sorry, I'm sorry …'

Tess sat patiently, waiting to move on. After a while Miriam got up off the wet grass, and patted her. She found a scrunched-up handkerchief in her pocket, and blew her nose.

‘Come on.'

Released, Tess bounded ahead, nosing across the lane to the woods. Miriam crossed with her, walking alongside, hearing twigs break and the clapping of a pigeon, startled into the air. The sherry was wearing off; by the time she reached the donkey field her head was as clear as it had been for a while – she had kept herself so topped-up it was hard to remember what it felt like with nothing inside her. The donkey raised his head and came stepping towards her. Rain dripped from the trees.

‘Hello, boy.' He put his head over the gate. ‘Nothing for you, sorry. I just came for a chat.' She patted his cheek, and tugged at the rough furry ears. It's the middle of the morning and I'm standing talking to a donkey, she thought, seeing him, disappointed, nosing towards her mac pocket. And I've nothing for him, or anybody else for that matter. What the hell am I going to do?

When she got back to the house, she went down the path at the side, letting Tess in and closing the gate behind her. She went to the studio, and knocked, and hearing no answer tried the door, but it was locked. Back in the kitchen she found Stephen had done the washing-up, leaving it to drain. He hadn't left a note. When she went to the drinks cupboard she found it empty except for a couple of bottles of tonic. Seeing this she felt for a moment so angry she almost smashed them on the floor. Then she thought: but I couldn't have gone on like that, and went upstairs and ran a hot bath and lay in it for a long time. When she went to collect Jonathan she left the car and walked the whole way, taking Tess with her.

‘You look better,' said Flora, coming out of the gate with a troop of boys eating crisps.