The Godmother (14 page)

“Don't pull out that stock answer. Everyone has been hurt; it's not a good enough reason to barricade yourself in. And it's not about your boss either.”

“Ex-boss.”

“Whatever. Tessa, I'm talking about something that has been going on for a long, long time, and you know it.”

“Since when?”

“Tessa…”

“I don't know what you're talking about. Tell me.”

Claudia looked at me intently. I played dumb. An act I'd perfected so well I convinced myself most of the time that I had no idea what she was insinuating.

“You're gay.”

There was a second of silence before we both burst out laughing.

“You silly old tart,” I spluttered.

“Had you.” She laughed again.

“What if I was? This could have been a very difficult thing for me.”

Claudia laughed again. The woman had a heart of stone. “Bollocks. I've
often wished you were. I know some great gay women who'd be perfect for you.”

“And this I'm supposed to thank you for? Mind you, I did snog a girl once, and it wasn't bad.”

“Maybe you could go to see an acupuncturist and ask her to bring out your feminine side.”

“Masculine side, you idiot.”

“Depending on whether you wanted to be the bloke or the girl in the relationship.”

“The girl. No, the bloke. No, the girl. I'm not doing away with my girly products and I don't really want a blokey girl shaving in the bath, so she'd have to be a live-out lover. So I'm the girl, I'd still earn—must have my own money—live on my own, and just call in my bitch, who's a bloke in disguise, for the occasional shag. Hang on, isn't that my life?”

Claudia laughed again. “Stop, I'm going to pee in my pants.”

She left the room. I heard her laughing up the stairs to the little bathroom on the landing. Silly old cow. I sighed with relief. Claudia was a wise woman. She knew better than to open that old can of worms. But for a second there, I thought she was calling my bluff—and I don't know if I could lie as easily to Claudia as I frequently did to myself.

I turned up the radio and moved on to the pot of biro-top blue. The bunting was beginning to look real. It was during my A level year that I realized I was in trouble. Perhaps it was Mary, talking about the plans she and Ben were making, or perhaps I was a late starter and my hormones only kicked in at seventeen, or perhaps I had always liked him more than I should have. It wouldn't have been hard. At fourteen, Ben opened the door for girls. He wasn't a bully and he knew how to talk to women, and though he went through the girls, he always let them down gently. Everyone, even teachers, had a crush on him, but it was me that he chose to be his friend. Me. Nothing ever happened between us, but a lot of people imagined it had. I got grief from girls who liked him and saw me as a threat. And I suppose I was the greatest threat of all. I was his best friend and that gave me the edge. It terrified me when I realized I wanted to be more than friends. Not only did I risk losing our friendship, I had become just like everyone else and I knew exactly how he felt about all of them.

I never told anyone I liked him. Not even Claudia, though I suspect she and Al have discussed the possibility of “us” at great length. It would make a neat ending, wouldn't it? But they don't know what happened the day Ben broke his leg. The only person who knows is Helen. And I only told her because when we met on a beach in Vietnam, I never thought I'd see her again.

I heard another song end. That made it four since Claudia had gone to the loo. “Claudia? Are you coming back, or what?”

There was no answer. I put down my brush and wiped my hands on Al's shirt. I opened the door. “Oi, you lazy cow, you can't get me over here to work while you have a little nap.”

Still there was no reply. Have I mentioned this wasn't a large house? You could hear the cat-flap flap from the top landing.

The bathroom was only half a staircase in front of me. The door was a fraction ajar.

“Claud, are you in there?”

She didn't reply. But I knew she was there. I could feel the density of her behind the door. I carefully pushed the door open and stepped inside. I would rather be blind than have seen what I saw that day. Claudia sat on the loo with her pregnancy jeans around her ankles. Her knees were parted wide open. I couldn't see her face because she was staring into the toilet bowl, but her arm was stretched up towards me. In the palm of her hand was tissue sodden with blood. It had seeped through her fingers, and dropped on to the white wooden floor boards around her feet. Floating in the palm of her hand was…I still to this day don't know what it was. It looked like an old grey piece of rotten sponge. The fact that it wasn't red scared me, it was the color of a tombstone.

The smell of blood coming off Claudia was intense—earthy, sweet and thick. I could hear dripping sounds. One was rapid, high-pitched, as if a metronome had been set with the weight at the base. The other was set to a slower, heavier beat. It wasn't until Claudia looked up at me through the trestles of her long, dark hair that I realized what it was. Bright red blood was spilling out of her. Intermittently her body hacked up viscous-blackened
globules and spat them into the toilet. They sank through the red water and congealed on the base of the bowl.

“I can't get the red paint off,” she said, staring at her hand.

“OK, sweetheart.” I took the thing out of her hand and physically shuddered as I felt it slip like raw liver through my fingers. I threw it into the bath. “I need you to lie down, honey, OK? Can you do that?”

“I can't get the red paint off,” she said again.

“It's OK, we'll clear it up later. You lean on me. Lean on me.” The moment she was standing I realized I should have taken her jeans off. But it was too late, I couldn't stop. I saw a rivulet of blood run down her inside leg. I wrapped a towel around her waist, held on to her and it, and we shuffled like geriatrics to her room. I didn't give a second thought to her hand-embroidered sheets. I pulled them back, lay her down and covered up that awful, awful mess between her legs. Then I left her, because I had to talk to her doctor and I didn't want her to hear. I would have called 999 but I didn't want her being carted off to the nearest hospital. She had specialists, people who'd understand what she was really losing.

“118 118, this is Craig speak—”

“The Lister Hospital, London.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“The Lister Hospital. Please, this is an emergency.”

“What town is that?”

“London. Jesus, please—”

“I cannot get you a number if I don't know—”

“I'm sorry.” I wasn't sorry. I wanted to punch him.

“Would you like to be put through directly?”

“Yes.”

“There will be an addit—”

“I don't fucking care.”

There was silence, and for a terrible moment, I thought he'd cut me off. Then the phone started ringing. I don't know what I said to the woman who answered the phone, but very quickly I was talking to someone who knew Claudia and said her name softly. He wanted to know what I'd seen, how much blood she was losing and what color it was. I told him.

“She's losing the baby,” said the voice.

“I fucking know that,” I screamed. “Tell me how to stop it, just tell me, tell me how to stop it, please, please tell me how to stop it…” My voice had cracked the first time I asked him, but I couldn't stop repeating the words because I knew that when I stopped asking I would have to come to terms with the fact that there was no answer. Claudia was losing her baby girl and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The bunting was coming down.

I ran back upstairs to Claudia's room. She hadn't moved. I told her what the doctor had told me. “An ambulance is coming. They'll get you to the hospital and run some tests. Even a dramatic amount of blood loss doesn't mean a person is losing their baby.”

She didn't seem to understand what I was saying. She just looked at me. Her hair still sticking to her face. I lifted the sheets off her. The towel had slipped. There was blood everywhere. Too much, I knew that, but I kept the reassuring smile stapled to my face. I peeled her trousers off, wiped her down as best I could, then put her into a clean pair of underpants. I'd found large sanitary pads in the bathroom, a half-empty pack. Too much blood had been soaked up in this household over the last nine years. I put two pads into her underpants, and pulled them up her legs. I got a flannel and wiped up what I could on her hands and legs. Everything was going pink. I eased her up, put a skirt over her head and got it down around her waist. I wanted to hide as much as I could, but I couldn't hide the truth.

Claudia didn't say anything, she just kept shaking her head from side to side. It was a small movement, with enormous meaning. I got her to her feet. She cried out, cramped over, and fell back down on the bed with her head between her knees, her breath coming in short, staccato pants. We waited for the pain to pass. Slowly I watched her face loosen from its contorted position. Then she retched. She was sick all over the floor.

“I think it just came out,” she said, looking back up at me.

“OK. It's OK.” It's not fucking OK, stop saying it's OK. I peeled her underpants down again. I felt sick and had to screw up my face to stop myself from retching. I tried not to look.

“Is it my baby?” asked Claudia. I took the sodden underwear away and threw it in the bath. It was more of the same. Grey sponge. Like placenta with no blood. Dead.

“No, honey,” I called back, “just more blood.” Like that was OK? I walked back into the bedroom. Claudia was staring at me.

“Too much blood?” she asked.

“I don't know,” I said. But I did. I repeated the process with the pads and the underwear and got Claudia downstairs. The ambulance was fast. I went with her. She lay down on the gurney and let a medic pull up her top. She was still wearing Al's shirt. We both were. I'm used to bargaining with a God I don't know if I believe in; when my mother's MS rears its ugly head, I start hedging my bets and offering deals to any God who'll listen. But while I watched the technician squirt clear jelly on to Claudia's stomach, I prayed harder than I'd ever prayed in my life. The inside of the ambulance went very quiet. I didn't breathe as the medic rolled the ultrasound through the jelly, over her belly. We waited for the sound of life to come out of the amplifier. A hectic heartbeat, racing to grow. There was nothing but static. I saw the medic's shoulders droop. I reached over and took Claudia's hand.

“There are more advanced machines in the hospital,” he said. “The baby may be in a strange position. How many weeks are you?”

“Fourteen,” I said.

“We'll get you there as soon as we can. It's possible I'm not picking up the heartbeat.”

Claudia smiled weakly. The medic radioed through to the driver, the ambulance lurched forward and sirens filled the air. I couldn't get the image of that grey, sponge-like matter from my mind. My tiny, perfect, thumb-sucking goddaughter was dead. I knew it.

The bleeding eased up when we got to hospital, almost stopped, and we were suddenly hopeful. Claudia was rushed through to the scanning room where she was given more jelly. More false hope. They turned the sound off the machine, and turned it away from Claudia. Only I saw the baby's outline. Floating in the dark. Still. There'd been more vitality in the picture that Claudia had given me than there was on the screen. At one moment the technician moved the device and it looked like the baby moved. I gasped, but the techni
cian rapidly shook her head. She removed the stick, wiped off the jelly, pulled Claudia's top down then wheeled her chair to Claudia's side.

“I am so sorry, Mrs. Harding. The fetus is dead.”

Jesus, did she have to be so brutal? I saw Claudia bite down on her lip. Maybe she did. Maybe that was the only way to get a mother to believe that the invisible life force she'd been carrying around inside her had gone. She hadn't even been feeling ill.

“We'll get you cleaned up and then your consultant will come and talk to you about your options.”

I took Claudia's hand. We both nodded numbly.

They tried to put Claudia in a wheelchair, but she refused. She climbed off the bed, stood up tall and walked out of the room.

There was nothing to say. After a while, Claudia looked at me.

“Al,” she said.

I let go of her hand. “I'll leave a message.”

“Don't tell him.”

“I won't. I'll just tell him to call. Claudia, I am so sorry.”

“I know,” she said, then went back to staring at her lap. When I returned she was talking to the consultant. He offered her two options: let the miscarriage continue naturally, or have a D and C, which involved a general anesthetic during which time her uterus would be cleared out. I couldn't imagine anything worse than more of what I'd witnessed back at Claudia's house.

“How long would it take to happen without the D and C?”

“Anything up to ten days.”

I looked at Claudia. “Don't put yourself through that.”

“Are there any risks?” she asked.

“As far as conceiving again, a D and C is probably better; there is less risk of matter being left behind. It is often done as a precursor to IVF treatment, creates a nice clean environment, but it is invasive, and you've had a lot of invasive treatment.” Claudia once told me she'd had a film crew up her vagina. But at least she'd be out cold for this one.

I don't think Claudia was listening to the consultant, so I tried to think what Al would do if he were here. He'd want her to suffer as little as possible; he'd want it to be over. For the blood and gore to end. He wouldn't want Clau
dia to feel chunks of herself falling out and for ever wonder what it was she'd held in her hand, which bit.

“Can you do the D and C today?”

“I can do it now.”

Claudia looked at me again. I nodded. She turned back to the consultant. “Let's get this over and done with,” she said. It was a futile comment. Things like this were never over and done with.

I was with her right up to the time she counted backwards from ten. I watched the anesthetist open up the valve in her wrist and pour the opiate in. She didn't make it past seven. I looked at the consultant. “Make sure you get it all. No complications. No infections. No more bleeding. And please come and get me when she comes round.”

I was shown through to a small green waiting room. When I was sure I was alone, I opened my wallet and pulled out the twelve-week scan that Claudia had given me when she'd crossed the three-month line. I stared at the little head, the little thumb, the perfect lips and baby profile. I traced them all with my finger. When I started crying it was for Claudia, for that tiny baby I'd never meet, and I couldn't stop. I wailed silently into my hands. I thought about the nine years, the previous failures, the innocent hope she'd had, who we'd been before all this, where we thought we'd be by now, where we were, where I was, my own childlessness, my own loneliness, and a fresh wave of tears over-ran me. I couldn't be brave any more. Not for Claudia, not for myself. And that made me cry even more. How could I feel sorry for myself when I wasn't the one losing a baby? A nurse came in, took in the scene and jumped to the wrong conclusions. I was a grieving mother. She put her arm around me and offered me a tissue. I don't know why I didn't correct her. But I didn't. It felt nice to have someone's arm around me for a change.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. I looked at the number. I turned to the nurse.

“It's the father,” I said.

She took her leave. I waited until the door closed then I answered the phone.

“Tessa? Is Claudia OK?”

“Yes. But—”

“The baby.”

“I'm so sorry, Al. She's had a miscarriage.”

“Can I talk to her?”

“She's in theatre. They're operating now.”

“Jesus…”

“It was very quick.”

“Tell her I'm on the next plane back. Tell her I love her. Don't forget.”

“I won't.”

The phone went silent. I imagined Al running through Singapore Airport, trying to find someone who'd help him get home. Not wanting to explain why, but being forced to by people who wouldn't otherwise take him seriously. He may even have to exaggerate it, as if what was happening wasn't bad enough. One in three women had miscarriages, what was the big deal, right? It wasn't one, until it was your turn. There was a gentle knock on the door. Another nurse came through. “She's back.”

It had taken twenty-seven minutes to take out what had taken nine years and ninety-eight days to build.

Claudia was just opening her eyes when I came into the recovery room. She was bleary-eyed and slurring her words. She smiled up at the consultant. Then me.

“I spoke to Al. He's on his way home.”

“Tell him not to feel sorry for me,” said Claudia. “I have a beautiful daughter at home.”

The consultant and I exchanged glances.

“He wants you to know he loves you with all his heart,” I said.

“He'll leave me now.”

“No. He'd never do that.”

“Don't let him leave me. Where's my baby? Tessa, what have you done with my baby?”

“It's all right, Mrs. Harding,” the consultant stepped up. “You're a little confused. You're at the hospital, remember? We've had to operate. You've lost the baby. But there will be more.”

“No more,” said Claudia. “Don't make me do it again. Don't make me do it again. Please, Tessa, don't make me…” Her voice trailed off. She fell asleep. I was alarmed.

“It's just the effects of the drugs,” said the consultant, reassuring me. “Let her sleep. You'll be able to take her home at about six.”

I left her to the hospital staff. Hailed a taxi and returned to Claudia and Al's house.

It was very still inside the house. I walked up past the photos without looking at them, and into the nursery. Our red and green flags stood out against the white wall. Our paintbrushes were stiff. I carried on up the stairs. The bathroom was a mess. I pulled on the washing-up gloves and picked up the items in the bath and put them into a plastic bag. I threw Claudia's jeans and pants in with them. I flushed the loo without looking into it. When the water had stopped gurgling I checked everything had gone. It hadn't. The thick, black, liver-like substance stuck to the bottom. I reached for the loo brush, pushed it around until the water went red, then flushed again. I did it three times before the sticky stuff went completely. I threw the loo brush into the bin liner, along with everything else. I stripped the bed and carried the blood-sodden sheets down to the laundry room. I put them all into a hot wash then went back upstairs to deal with the mattress and the vomit. I sponged down where the blood had soaked through and then tipped the mattress on to its side. I picked the contents of Claudia's stomach out of the carpet and sponged that down too. Then I went back downstairs and watched the sheets spin inside the drum. I looked at my watch. I needed help.

Twenty minutes later I opened the door to Ben. He was in his suit. He'd come out of a meeting to take my call and never gone back in. As soon as I'd told him what had happened he'd left the office. “I don't know what to do, Ben, I don't know whether to paint over it or not. But I can't leave it and the white won't hide it. I don't want to use red, and pink has too many connotations…”

He held his arms out wide. I simply fell forward into them. For a while I let him hold me. I had help now. Somehow we'd manage.

“Ssh,” he said, stroking my hair.

“I feel so awful for Claudia, Ben. It was horrific—one minute we're paint
ing away, laughing about stupid things, the next, she's hemorrhaging. Blood everywhere. We've got to get that room repainted. She can come home tonight.”

“Orange.” Ben let go of me and picked up two cans of paint from the doorstep. “It's bright, but dark enough to cover what you've already put on the wall. I picked these up on the way.”

“You're amazing. Thank you.”

“Don't be silly. This is Al and Claudia we're talking about. How long have we got?”

“The hospital will ring me when they're sure she's stopped bleeding. But hopefully no more than two hours.”

“Let's get cracking.”

We didn't talk much while we painted. I was concentrating so much on slapping on the paint that I didn't think about anything else. We covered the wall with most of the flags on first. Then I put down the paintbrush and went downstairs to put another load of sheets on. I pulled the first set out of the machine. There was a pink stain, with a darker red outline. I swore loudly. I had no choice but to throw them away. I stuffed them into another bin liner then went back upstairs. Ben was making good progress with the second wall.

“You all right in here? I've just got to make the bed up.”

“Need help?”

“No. You keep painting. You've got it in your hair, by the way.”

“Sasha will think I'm having a mid-life crisis, and have taken to dyeing my hair.”

“How many mid-life crises would that be now?” I said, trying to smile.

“One too many,” he said, turning back to the wall.

I pulled the mattress over on to its other side, found some fresh bed linen and started making the bed. When I'd finished I noticed a drop of blood on the carpet. I went down to the bathroom to wet a sponge when I saw the blood still in the bath. Suddenly it felt like there was blood everywhere. I could still see the faint echo of pink on the bottom of the toilet bowl. I couldn't get rid of it. I felt very queasy all of a sudden and toppled over. I hit my head on the door handle as I fell forward and cried out in pain. I felt my head, it was slick with sweat. This was not the time to get flu. I tried to stand up, but I wobbled and fell back down with a thump.