The Immaculate (3 page)

Terry nodded perfunctorily, picked up the briefcase, then reached out, though he did not quite dare grasp the doctor's arm. “Please, Doctor,” he said, “could we hurry? There's something wrong with Alice.”

“Wrong?” repeated Travis as if the word offended him. “Whatever do you mean?”

Both men looked up as Georgina's bulk appeared at the top of the stairs, appearing to cast a shadow over them.

“Are you two going to stand there nattering all night?” she demanded. “There's a woman here that needs help—and quickly from the looks of her.”

Both men began to ascend, Travis slowly, bony hand gripping the banister and hauling himself up one step at a time. Terry fluttered behind him, teeth clenched and forehead furrowed as if trying to propel the old man forward through sheer act of will.

“What's wrong with her?” Travis asked between gasps as he entered the bedroom.

Georgina tersely recounted the symptoms. She was sitting on a chair beside the bed and had enclosed Alice's left hand in both of hers and was stroking it tenderly.

Terry hung back as Travis moved forward to examine Alice. He probed her belly, making her moan and writhe. In the dim room he resembled a black spider hovering over something fat and helpless in its web. He snapped open his Gladstone bag, withdrew a stethoscope and listened to her tightly stretched stomach. Indicating the bowl of water, now stained pink once again, he said, “Could you fill that with hot clean water please, Georgina?”

She nodded curtly and did as he asked. Terry, hovering in the doorway, stepped into the room out of her path, studiously avoiding eye contact. Travis placed a palm on Alice's forehead, then half-turned and waved Terry forward, indicating his desire for the fat briefcase. Terry passed it to him. He watched as the doctor cleared the bedside table, placing the lamp on the floor. He put the briefcase on the table, opened it, and withdrew two squat cylinders, to each of which was affixed a length of tubing and a transparent plastic facemask. He said to Terry, “Why is it so bloody dark in here? Turn the light on, can't you?”

Terry did so, and immediately Alice groaned and screwed up her eyes. He did not realise how muted the colour of her blood had been in the dimness until the unflinching light made it spring up more vivid than ever. Georgina returned with the water and placed it, at Travis' request, on a chair that the doctor tugged from beneath the dressing table. As he scrubbed his hands with a brush and a cake of soap that had been wrapped in cloth in his Gladstone bag, he explained to Georgina about the cylinders, one of which would provide Alice with gas for her pain, the other of which would provide her with air.

It was when Travis reached down between his wife's legs that Terry had to look away. Mumbling that he didn't feel well, he turned and stumbled to the door. Suddenly he thought he could smell blood in the room, something he hadn't previously detected. He felt lightheaded, the sensation like someone unscrewing the top of his skull as if it were a jar. The storm crashing against the house seemed to recede as if his ears were blocked. Outside the room he clung to the doorknob for a moment, certain he was going to faint.

Gradually his muffled senses cleared and returned to normal. Terry winced as he heard his wife cry out, and he tottered to the top of the stairs. He hadn't wanted to attend the birth or any of its preliminaries. He had known the blood and the mess and the pain would upset him too much. What he had envisaged was his wife going upstairs, the doctor arriving, and then, a couple of hours later, hearing the sound of a baby's cry. He'd imagined entering the bedroom to find his wife sitting up in bed, perhaps in a cloud-white nightgown, looking tired but beatific and serene. In her arms she would be holding a clean, pink, chubby baby, and she would look up at him and smile proudly. He would go to the bed and enclose the two of them in a protective embrace, and the child would blink its startling blue eyes and reach up for him with tiny, perfect hands. . . .

Alice cried out again, shattering the illusion. For a moment Terry felt almost resentful toward her. Why couldn't she just give birth like a normal woman? Why did there have to be all this palaver? He felt ashamed as he descended the stairs. He hadn't meant that. He was upset, that was all. His legs felt weak and he gripped the banister as tightly as Dr. Travis had done. He needed a cigarette. He deserved one. Just this once lung cancer could take a running jump.

He entered the sitting room and slumped into his armchair, which, after a decade of use, had moulded itself to his shape. The room was large, though its clutter of furniture and its lack of natural light made it seem cosy.

Terry was thirty-four, Alice two years younger. They had married in 1958, soon after he had come out of the army. At first things had been hard. They had lived in a cramped flat above the butcher's shop in Beckford. Terry had flitted from one casual labouring job to another, finding it more difficult than he had imagined to adapt to civilian life again. He had found himself increasingly irritated by the village mentality he encountered when he returned, scornful of the narrow-mindedness of community life. If it hadn't been for Alice, her inexhaustible sympathy and understanding, he would have pulled up his roots and made his way to Leeds, or even to London, in search of worth, direction, meaning. But gradually, backed by her love and support, he had rediscovered himself. He was offered, and was delighted to accept, a job as a mechanic at Joe Bates' garage in the village, thus utilising the trade he had been taught in the army. After his father's death in '65, he and Alice had moved from their cramped flat to the cottage and so had finally been able to discuss the prospect of starting a family. It had taken five long and uncomfortable years for Alice to conceive, but at last, in January, had come the news for which they'd been waiting. And tonight would see the culmination of all that heartache and uncertainty. Terry closed his eyes and tried to reproduce the mental image of Alice, angelic in a white nightgown, sitting up in bed holding their baby—but instead all he saw was her blood on the sheets and her white face contorted in pain.

He shuddered, opened his eyes and reached for his cigarettes, which were on the table by his armchair. He lit one and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. He stared at the fire, which was the only light in the room, a glow of orange coals behind a guard of fine wire mesh. Rain and wind battered the two small windows behind him, and Terry shuddered again, pulling in his legs like an animal preparing to hibernate. His armchair was to the left of the fire. Facing it was the settee, and to the right of that was a black and white television set. Behind the settee was a dining table and six chairs, and beyond that, against the far wall, a sideboard that had belonged to Terry's parents.

Alice's watercolours, mainly Yorkshire farming scenes, covered their walls despite her protestations that she didn't want them hung. Painting was a passion for her, though she ended up giving most of her pictures away to friends, and always felt terribly embarrassed when they insisted on paying her for them. Though he possessed his own creative tendencies, Terry had always stifled them. However, after the screening of
The Quatermass Experiment
on the BBC in 1953, when Terry was seventeen, those tendencies had almost emerged. Inspired by the series, he had begun to write his own science fiction story, but in the end the spectre of his father had been too much for him. One night he had fed his unfinished manuscript into the same fire that had devoured his comics a decade before. He had kept his literary exploits a secret from Alice, feeling as guilty and ashamed as if he'd been having an affair. A couple of times, mostly when he was drunk, he had almost told her of his aspirations, but in the end he had chickened out, and to this day she knew nothing of his suppressed dreams.

If she had known—if she
did
know—Terry was certain she would encourage him. “When the baby comes,” he murmured, staring into the fire, “I'll tell her. And I'll start writing again. I'll write stories for her and my child.” Only the storm answered his vow, and the coals, crackling gently. All at once Terry felt convinced someone was standing in the shadows at the back of the room. He turned, knowing he would see his father's scowling face.

But of course there was no one there.

He laughed humourlessly to himself and finished his cigarette. He waited five minutes, then lit another.

Time passed, though how quickly he was unsure. He smoked four cigarettes one after the other, stirring from his seat only to jab the embers into reluctant life when they began to fade. He looked up at the ceiling above the windows and saw the reflection of the rain there, a vague slithering of light and shadow. The storm drowned out whatever sounds may have been coming from upstairs, allowing Terry to indulge the belief that all was well in the house, that now that the doctor was here everything would be fine.

He did not remember falling asleep. It must have been the fire, the sinuous overlapping of flames, that stole his consciousness as stealthily as a pickpocket. He felt a hand on his shoulder shaking him, opened his eyes a crack, grimaced at the taste in his mouth, like the contents of an ashtray. He was cold. The fire had gone out. Rain still drummed at the windows, this sound laid over another almost constant sound, which was the hissing of rain in the undergrowth.

“Hmm, what?” he slurred.

“You'd better come,” said Georgina in a sharp, tight voice.

“What time is it?”

But she had already turned away and did not answer his question.

Terry sighed and blinked himself awake. He looked at his watch and saw that it was quarter to one. He stared disbelievingly at the time for a moment as though his eyes might have been deceiving him. But no; he'd been asleep—what?—five, six hours?

He pushed himself up from the armchair and stumbled after Georgina. His legs ached as they ascended the stairs; he was halfway up when he heard a baby cry. He halted for a moment, his breath solidifying in his chest, feeling suddenly dizzy with wonder and excitement and more than a little fear. Then, grabbing the banister, he thrust himself forward, taking the stairs two and three at a time.

The baby was still crying when he entered the bedroom. Georgina was rocking it in her arms. Dr. Travis was winding up his stethoscope. As he stuffed it into his Gladstone bag he looked askance at Terry.

“My baby . . .” he said, taking two hesitant steps forward.

“A son,” Georgina said in a flat voice. “It was a breech birth, but he . . . he's fine now.”

Something in her manner made him look at the bed. Only Alice's head and shoulders were visible above a clean white sheet. Her skin was almost the colour of the bedding. Her hair, by contrast, spread over the pillow, looked almost black.

“Alice?” Terry said. His excitement was draining away, the fear growing and intensifying.

“We did all we could for her,” Travis answered in a burdened voice, “but I'm afraid it was a very difficult birth. In the end she just wasn't strong enough.”

Terry swayed and blinked. Part of him wanted to believe he was still dreaming. “No,” he mouthed, but the word failed to emerge. Grief suddenly flooded through him, hot tears spilling down his cheeks, sobs racking his body.

“No,” he wailed, “no . . . no . . .” The denial, desperate, beseeching, was all he could manage.

As if it were consolation, Georgina said, “Your baby almost died, too, but we managed to save him. Come and hold him, Terry. He needs you now.”

He looked at her and felt a sudden hatred seize him, so acute it was like pain. He jabbed a finger at the wriggling infant in her arms. “That thing killed my wife,” he sobbed. “That bloody little thing took her away from me. I don't want it. It's not my son. I wish it had died instead.”

He ran out of the room, down the stairs and dragged open the front door. The rain and wind welcomed him. Terry plunged into it, joining it in its rage.

As soon as he turned from Shaftesbury Avenue on to Charing Cross Road, Jack saw the queue and his stomach began to flip. It was always the same: no matter how many public appearances he made or interviews he gave, the initial evidence of his popularity always came as a shock. He stood on the opposite pavement appraising the scene, telling himself to relax, that there was no need to be nervous. These people were here to praise, not to crucify him. He drew a deep breath, then clenched his fists and stuffed them into the pockets of his scuffed brown leather jacket.

He stood there for perhaps two minutes while the populace, a riot of cultures and creeds, flowed past him, while black cabs and red buses and the weaving motorbikes of couriers filled the air with noise and fumes. Only in London would his behaviour have been ignored. If he had stood stock-still on a busy street in any provincial town in Britain he would have attracted suspicious glances, veiled sniggers, perhaps even hostility. But London was tolerant of eccentricity, was even indifferent to it. Depending on his mood, this attitude either delighted Jack or dispirited him. Tolerance meant freedom, colour, a chance for creativity to flourish. Indifference, on the other hand, suggested selfishness, greed, a dearth of love. The city was a ruthless discriminator; it raised the successful high on its shoulders whilst grinding its boot-heel on the destitute. But Jack, who had felt the weight of its loathing, knew that there was a ladder to be climbed if only you could grasp the first rung. It had taken him fifteen years, but at last he was beginning to believe that his own personal summit was in sight. Events such as this were designed to bring that summit ever closer. Jack only hoped he had the strength to maintain his momentum.

His heart was not pounding quite so fiercely now, though he knew it would start hammering again as soon as he crossed the road and approached the shop and was recognised. Even as he watched, more people joined the end of the queue. Most were clutching books and magazines, though without his spectacles Jack could not see what they were from this distance. He unzipped his jacket halfway, reached inside, took his spectacles from their case and slipped them on. Now came clarity: Jack saw eager faces instead of blurs, saw the name above the shop,
STRANGE WORLDS
(red lettering enclosed within a yellow ringed planet), saw the right-hand window display, devoted exclusively to him.