Something I'm Not (15 page)

We are in the middle of a t'ai chi manoeuvre (led by Dylan whose knowledge of the art, learned on one of his retreats, is at best partial) when the west door is thrust aside by a figure resembling a female wizard. Wearing a diaphanous purple robe and menacing oversized treble-clef earrings, this creature strides to where the nave usually is.

‘Sorry I'm late, darling,' she says, throatily. She air-kisses Dylan several inches from his cheeks, as though to avoid an infection. ‘I couldn't tear myself away from Earl Spencer.'

Harry, standing to my left, leans in towards me and discreetly raises his eyebrows. ‘She means the Earl of Spencer pub in Wandsworth.' I have to stifle a snort.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce Bea, your director for the show.' Dylan smiles beatifically. ‘And may I say how very lucky we are to have secured her services,' he continues, which makes me think of dry-cleaners and tyre replacement concerns. Over near the Lady Chapel, the top crescents of the spectacles on the face of Julian, the church organist, are just visible above the parapet of the upright piano.

I watch this woman. Already I envisage conflict. It isn't that Bea resembles my mother in anything other than age. The most obvious difference is that Bea drapes her stockiness in flamboyant clothes, whereas my mother's pipe-cleaner frame prefers ration- coupon grey. Or camel, when under pressure to be sociable (not that I can ever recall my parents receiving invitations). Bea also models a technique for applying make-up that appears to consist of tossing the contents of her cosmetics bag into the air and standing underneath. But then she is a thespian, a career Bea is now detailing, from her salad days in the 1970s hoofing it naked in
Hair
– which frankly I don't believe – to directing one-off pilots for television; shows with unfamiliar names and obviously ignominious fortunes. ‘She'll be telling us next she knew Noël Coward,' says Harry in a stage whisper of which Bea would be proud. Her performance contrives to be amusingly self-deprecating (at which laughing is mandatory) and, for me, conceited. It doesn't bode well. Already I can sense the power lines being drawn up.

‘Why', I ask Dylan, in a break, ‘did you get someone like her involved?'

Apparently Bea runs drama classes at a school where Dylan's a governor. It's obvious to me that, not only has he fallen under her Boadicean spell, but that he hopes she might act as a bulwark between him and Pamela.

God, how much energy we adults spend in trying to keep our parents at bay.

He asks after the audition I've just had.

‘It was fine,' I say, casually. ‘Julian played some scales which loosened my voice up nicely. And then, as I hand him my music, Bea asks me who my singing teacher is, and of course I have to confess I don't have one, so she gives me this passing-wind look before asking me what song I'm going to sing, and then, can you believe it, when I tell her she says, “Oh, but that's a black song. I have real issues with white girls doing obviously black songs—”'

‘She called it a black song?' whispers Dylan. ‘Streuth, she's worse than my mother—'

‘I mean, it's George fucking Gershwin! How can anyone have an issue with that? So, yes, thanks for asking, my audition went brilliantly.'

‘Well, hopefully she'll have been just as snooty to the parish clique, and they'll drop out. Primadonnas, every one. You can't believe how difficult they were over my plans for last Christmas's inaugural
In Excelsis Deo
extravaganza. I'd ordered dry ice and everything. And anyway, I've told Bea that if she doesn't give you a decent part, I'm pulling the show!'

‘You can't do that,' I laugh.

‘Why not? It's my gaff. It's my hall. I can do what I bloody well like.'

‘Still, I'm not sure I can fit all the rehearsing in. I've got this huge project—'

‘You've got to. This show's going to be my swan song. I want to go out with a bang.'

I gasp, and hold his gaze. ‘A swan song? I'm afraid I have real issues with humans doing swan songs—'

Dylan pretends to throttle me.

The session after the break is exhausting. During a dance- through of the show's opening number, Dylan tries to avoid bumping into the statue of the Virgin Mary and collides instead with Jenny's angora-clad breasts. They both retire, feigning injury. When Bea next calls a break, everyone else collapses on to pews, facing each other from opposite sides of the nave – an audience at a medieval jousting contest.

‘Couldn't you raise money for your roof by having a raffle, like other vicars?' groans Clive, who came to drop Jenny off at the audition and got bounced by Dylan into contorting his angle-poise joints into unnatural positions for the good of the chorus. ‘Seriously, the lost opportunity costs, not to mention the low indicators of delivering on budget—' And there was me thinking management consultants were boring. Jenny tells her husband to shush. ‘Anyway, I think I've got cramp,' he concludes, rolling up a trouser leg to knead the flesh of his skinny calf. Sitting next to him, I can't help noticing that this exposed leg is utterly hairless. Almost shiny, as though waxed. It's so abnormally smooth I have to will myself not to reach out and touch it, not least because it jars with the hirsute image Clive puts about with his abundant moustache. How little we know the people we know.

‘I'd be fine if it wasn't for Bea,' says Harry, swigging tap water from a bottle recycled so often that what remains of the label is now white. ‘You've found a right taskmaster there.'

‘She's terrifying,' says Serena, who is peeling an orange and handing around segments. ‘She reminds me of my old primary school teacher, a ghastly woman who played electric guitar and wore scarlet lipstick. Once, she came to school wearing a mantilla complete with black veil. I was off my food for a week I was so terrified.'

‘You have unhappy memories of childhood?' I say.

‘Oh God, yes. Who doesn't?' Serena turns to face me, a mother being scrupulously attentive to her child. My friends aren't just my family; they've become my parents. ‘It's all changed now, of course, with marvellous people like Harry involved.' Here Serena leans forward to pat her husband's knee, which startles him, since he's talking to Jenny about the latest educational psychology on multiple- birth siblings. ‘But back then I hated it. I had asthma, and was always off sick. And because both my parents worked, I was cared for by a succession of neighbours. And because I missed lots of classes, I was called stupid and idle. I swear I've spent more time in a primary school since Eleanor was born, what with parents' evenings and concerts, than I ever did as a child!'

I hold my tongue. So, it's
school
Serena hated, not childhood. I can identify with her neglect and confusion. It's the bearing five children I don't understand.

‘So, how are we all?' Bea towers over us. Her Amazonian clefs seem to be pointing at us. But before anyone can reply she has moved in a swirl of fabric to grasp Jenny by the shoulders. ‘You, child, are a delight to watch. Such a voice! With whom did you train?'

Jenny stutters a response.

‘But that's impossible. Then you're a real natural.' And, having bestowed on Jenny the grace notes of her approbation, she turns on her kitten heels and bellows for Julian.

‘My word, Jenny,' winks Harry, ‘you're in there!'

*

Once inside our car, I kiss Matt. He smells of kebab, that faintly scandalous aroma of a man off the leash, left to his own culinary devices in the absence of his wife. Rex rang this evening, apparently, but I'm not interested. I urge Matt to just drive. He slips the car effortlessly into gear. ‘So, how was it? Has my wife won the starring role she deserves?'

‘Just drive,' I repeat, my smile fading, my jaw tightening.

‘What's up?' he asks, reaching out to squeeze my knee.

‘I'm not sure,' I say, and I begin to explain why I was late for the audition. How, as the friends had all shuffled out of Louisa's room, I heard her voice whisper my name …

*

I turned round to find the poor girl beginning to cry again. I moved to the bedside table and plucked some tissues from a box.

‘Have you heard from Eddie?' she asked in a small voice. I had to confess that I had not.

‘He shouldn't have come,' Louisa said, urgently.

‘Ed's been here?' I said. How on earth had he got past Panzer Prue?

Louisa grimaced. ‘Not Ed – Will.' Then she seized my wrist in an unnerving show of strength. ‘It's all my fault. Promise me, Amber, you won't tell anyone. Not even my mother.' Her large, green eyes were fierce and flinty. I could see no alternative but to agree. Louisa relaxed her grip.

‘They put a needle in my hand— I was exhausted, but they said— I was panicking, everyone was panicking, and the doctors— the doctors said, “I'm sorry Louisa, we have to get this baby out now”, and I didn't want him to come out— but it was too late—'

I sat on the bed, stroking the girl's forehead, just as I'd seen Prue doing. How pitifully pale she looked beneath the harsh fluorescent lights, wrapped in a thin nightie. And how large were the dark stains around her sockets.

‘—and then they put a mask on my face, and I couldn't breathe, I couldn't see— and the doctors were shouting to get the others— and I thought I was going to die, I thought I was splitting in two, that I was going to die— and the morphine— and they said, “He's got to come out now”, and I knew it was wrong – it
is
wrong, Amber, isn't it? But there was nothing I could do—'

I shifted on the bed. I hadn't a clue what to say. Maybe it was her drugs. ‘Nothing's wrong, Lou. William's in the best place, and so are you. You did brilliantly today! Matt told me—'

‘It's all my fault. Oh Amber, help me. It's all my fault,' she wailed, gripping my arm even more tightly than before.

‘You've done nothing wrong,' I murmured. Inside I felt a complete fraud. Louisa was now retching with sobs. I thought about alerting a member of staff.

‘I kept saying no, but no one would listen— they drugged me and there was nothing I could do— he should never have come out. I wish he'd died, it's better that he dies. Please don't tell anyone I said that, but it is. And it's all my fault, I should never have kept this baby. I thought it would make Eddie come back— that he would want to see his own child—'

I felt a tremor ripple down my spine. It took me a moment to absorb this information. As I did so, my eyes rested on the forest of pastel cards propped on the cabinet. On the surface, the implication of Louisa's confession was preposterous. Surely women today didn't think that babies cement relationships? And yet here lay someone, of moderate intelligence one had thought, who had clearly assumed that they did.

‘And now I know Ed won't ever come back— What can I do, Amber? Tell me what to do.' Louisa must have seen the confusion on my face, for she continued, ‘I've always wanted to be like you—' Louisa's monologue had the whiff of what girls at school called a ‘pash'. ‘To be honest, you're the only one of Eddie's friends I ever liked. Or, rather, you're the only one I thought liked me. I'm so much younger than all of you, and I was so desperate to be taken seriously. So when I realised I was expecting, I thought it would make me look grown-up.' Louisa gulped for air. ‘I think that's why Ed stopped me seeing you all once my pregnancy was confirmed. I hoped it was because he was concerned, didn't want me overtired. But now I see it's because he hates the way I'm now linked to him for ever.

‘I am so envious of you, Amber. You're so lucky, and free. Your life is your own, you can do whatever you want. Me, I've just repeated my mother's mistakes.'

At this, Louisa sank back into her pillow. I sat staring at my knees. Outside in the corridor, something large and metallic clattered to the floor; two members of staff roared with laughter. I felt waves of guilt at finding Louisa's distress so reassuring. So it was true: not everyone wanted babies. Not even once they'd had them. And, even if Louisa's gloom was short-lived and could be attributed to medication, or to the recent trauma of childbirth, or even to postnatal depression, which can be cured (
see
The Mother as Child: Psychiatric Treatment Options in the NHS for Post-partum Depression
, by Dr Matt Bezeidenhout, London, 2000
), still I felt as though I'd heard a door creak open which had been stuck for a very long time.

I leaned forward and hugged Louisa tightly in what I hoped was a suitably Prue-like posture. All the time, I wanted to prove myself worthy of her by conjuring up the perfect sentence to reassure her she was wrong.

Which was hard, because a part of me still believed she was right.

*

While I've been telling this story, Matt has listened carefully; as if hearing a case study for his finals viva. By the time I get to the end, we are parked outside our house in a resident's bay. Matt reaches out and tucks a blade of two-toned hair behind my ear. I catch a whiff of onion.

‘Quite an eventful twenty-four hours,' he murmurs.

I freeze, and feel hot all over at the same time. The memory of airline seat fabric scraping my knees is so sharp it seems to burn my skin. I touch the right one, expecting to feel the betraying ridges of a graze. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, your big meeting, William's birth and now Louisa's confession. Heavy stuff. Reckon we're both knackered. Although I have to say it was fun to be back with the Obs and Gynae guys. I trained with Louisa's consultant, you know. And there's nothing like seeing a new life come into the world. One of life's magical moments. Shame he's so sick.'

‘Let's go inside,' I say, sharply, my knees trembling.

*

As I floss my teeth, I think about how life is all about choice. What on earth do you do if you suspect you've made the wrong choice? Or if the decisions you made were the right ones, but based on misconceptions?