The Virgin Blue (5 page)

She was delighted to find out that I had Swiss relations; it was she who made me sit down and write. ‘They may have been from France originally, you know,’ she said. ‘It would be good for you to find out about your French ancestors. You will feel more connected to this country and its people. Then it will not be so hard to think in French.’

I shrugged inwardly. Genealogy was one of those middle-aged things I lumped together with all-talk radio stations, knitting and staying in on Saturday nights: I knew I would eventually indulge in all of them, but I was in no hurry about it. My ancestors didn't have anything to do with my life right now. But to humour Madame Sentier, as part of my homework I pieced together a few sentences asking my cousin about the history of the family. When she'd checked it for grammar and spelling I sent the letter off to Switzerland.

The French lessons in turn helped me with my second project. ‘What a wonderful profession for a woman!’ Madame Sentier crowed when she heard I was studying to qualify as a midwife in France. ‘What noble work!’ I liked her too much to be annoyed by her romantic notions, so I didn't mention the suspicion my colleagues and I were treated with by doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, even pregnant women. Nor did I bring up the sleepless nights, the blood, the trauma when something went wrong. Because it
was
a good job, and I hoped to be able to practise in France once I'd taken the required classes and exams.

The final project had an uncertain future, but it would certainly keep me busy when the time came. No one would have been surprised by it: I was twenty-eight, Rick and I had been married two years, and the pressure from everyone, ourselves included, was beginning to mount.

One night when we had lived in Lisle-sur-Tarn just a few weeks we went out to dinner at the one good restaurant in town. We talked idly – about Rick's work, my day – through the crudités, the pâté, trout from the Tarn and filet mignon. When the waiter brought Rick's
crème brûlée
and my
tarte au citron
I decided this was the moment to speak. I bit into the lemon slice garnish; my mouth puckered.

‘Rick,’ I began, setting down my fork.

‘Great
brûlée
,’ he said. ‘Especially the
brûléed
part. Here, try some.’

‘No thanks. Look, I've been thinking about things.’

‘Ah, is this gonna be serious talk?’

At that moment a couple entered the restaurant and were seated at the table next to us. The woman's belly was just visible against her elegant black dress. Five months pregnant, I thought automatically, and carrying it very high.

I lowered my voice. ‘You know how every now and then we talk about having kids?’

‘You want to have kids now?’

‘Well, I was thinking about it.’

‘OK.’

‘OK what?’

‘OK let's do it.’

‘Just like that? “Let's do it”?’

‘Why not? We know we want them. Why agonize over it?’

I felt let down, though I knew Rick too well to be surprised by his attitude. He always made decisions quickly, even big ones, whereas I wanted the decisions to be more complicated.

‘I feel —’ I considered how to explain it. ‘It's kind of like a parachute jump. Remember when we did that last year? You're up in this tiny plane and you keep thinking, Two minutes till I can't say no anymore, One minute till I can't turn back, then, Here I am balancing by the door, but I can still say no. And then you jump and you can't get back in, no matter how you feel about the experience. That's how I feel now. I'm standing by the open door of the plane.’

‘I just remember that fantastic sensation of falling. And the beautiful view floating down. It was so quiet up there.’

I sucked at the inside of my cheek, then took a big bite of tart.

‘It's a big decision,’ I said with my mouth full.

‘A big decision made.’ Rick leaned over and kissed me. ‘Mmm, nice lemon.’

Later that night I slipped out of the house and went to the bridge. I could hear the river far below but it was too dark to see the water. I looked around; with no one in sight I pulled out a pack of contraceptive pills and began to push the tablets one by one out of their metal foil. They disappeared toward the water, tiny white flashes pinpointed in the dark for a second. After they were gone I leaned against the railing for a long time, willing myself to feel different.

Something did change that night. That night I had the dream for the first time. It began with flickering, a movement between dark and light. It wasn't black, it wasn't white; it was blue. I was dreaming in blue.

It moved like it was being buffeted by the wind, undulating toward me and away. It began to press into me, the pressure of water rather than stone. I could hear a voice chanting. Then I was reciting too, the words pouring from me. The other voice began to cry; then I was sobbing. I cried until I couldn't breathe. The pressure of the blue closed in around me. There was a great boom, like the sound of a heavy door falling into place, and the blue was replaced by a black so complete it had never known light.

Friends had told me that when you try to conceive, you have either lots more sex or lots less. You can go at it all the time, the way a shotgun sprays its pellets everywhere in the hope of hitting something. Or you can strike strategically, saving your ammunition for the appropriate moment.

To start with, Rick and I went for the first approach. When he got home from work we made love before dinner. We went to bed early, woke up early to do it, fit it in whenever we could.

Rick loved this abundance, but for me it was different. For one thing, I'd never had sex because I felt I had to – it had always been because I wanted to. Now, though, there was an unspoken mission behind the activity that made it feel deliberate and calculated. I was also ambivalent about not using contraception: all the energy I'd put into prevention over the years, all the lessons and caution drilled into me – were they to be tossed away in a moment? I'd heard that this could be a great turn-on, but I felt fear when I'd expected exhilaration.

Above all, I was exhausted. I was sleeping badly, dragged into a room of blue each night. I didn't say anything to Rick, never woke him or explained the next day why I was so tired. Usually I told him everything; now there was a block in my throat and a lock on my lips.

One night I was lying in bed, staring at the blue dancing above me, when it finally dawned on me: the only two nights I hadn't had the dream in the last ten days were when we hadn't had sex.

Part of me was relieved to make that connection, to be able to explain it: I was anxious about conceiving, and that was bringing on the nightmare. Knowing that made it a little less frightening.

Still, I needed sleep; I had to convince Rick to cut down on sex without explaining why. I couldn't bring myself to tell him I had nightmares after he made love to me.

Instead, when my period came and it was clear we hadn't conceived, I suggested to Rick that we try the strategic approach. I used every textbook argument I knew, threw in some technical words and tried to be cheerful. He was disappointed but gave in gracefully.

‘You know more about this than me,’ he said. ‘I'm just the hired gun. You tell me what to do.’

Unfortunately, though the dream came less frequently, the damage had been done: I found it harder to sleep deeply, and often lay awake in a state of non-specific anxiety, waiting for the blue, thinking that some night it would return anyway, unaccompanied by sex.

One night – a strategic night – Rick was kissing his way from my shoulder down my arm when he paused. I could feel his lips hovering above the crease in my arm. I waited but he didn't continue. ‘Um, Ella,’ he said at last. I opened my eyes. He was staring at the crease; as my eyes followed his gaze my arm jerked away from him.

‘Oh,’ I said simply. I studied the circle of red, scaly skin.

‘What is it?’

‘Psoriasis. I had it once, when I was thirteen. When Mom and Dad divorced.’

Rick looked at it, then leaned over and kissed my eyelids shut.

When I opened my eyes again I just caught a flicker of distaste cross his face before he controlled himself and smiled at me.

Over the next week I watched helplessly as the original patch widened, then jumped to my other arm and both elbows. It would reach my ankles and calves soon.

At Rick's insistence I went to see a doctor. He was young and brusque, lacking the patter American doctors use to soften up their patients. I had to concentrate hard on his rapid French.

‘You have had this before?’ he asked as he studied my arms.

‘Yes, when I was young.’

‘But not since?’

‘No.’

‘How long have you been in France?’

‘Six weeks.’

‘And you will stay?’

‘Yes, for a few years. My husband has a job with an architectural firm in Toulouse.’

‘You have children?’

‘No. Not yet.’ I turned red. Pull yourself together, Ella, I thought. You're twenty-eight years old, you don't have to be embarrassed about sex anymore.

‘And you work now?’

‘No. That is, I did, in the United States. I was a midwife.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘
Une sage-femme
? Do you want to practise in France?’

‘I would like to work but I haven't been able to get a work permit yet. Also the medical system is different here, so I have to pass an exam before I can practise. So now I study French and this autumn I begin a course for midwives in Toulouse to study for the exam.’

‘You look tired.’ He changed the subject abruptly, as if to suggest I was wasting his time by talking about my career.

‘I've been having nightmares, but —’ I stopped. I didn't want to get into this with him.

‘You are unhappy, Madame Turner?’ he asked more gently.

‘No, no, not unhappy,’ I replied uncertainly. Sometimes it's hard to tell when I'm so tired, I added to myself.

‘You know psoriasis appears sometimes when you do not get enough sleep.’

I nodded. So much for psychological analysis.

The doctor prescribed cortisone cream, suppositories to bring down the swelling and sleeping pills in case the itching kept me awake, then told me to come back in a month. As I was leaving he added, ‘And come to see me when you are pregnant. I am also an
obstétricien
.’

I blushed again.

My infatuation with Lisle-sur-Tarn ended not long after I stopped sleeping.

It was a beautiful, peaceful town, moving at a pace I knew was healthier than what I'd been used to in the States, and the quality of life was undeniably better. The produce at the Saturday market in the square, the meat at the
boucherie
, the bread at the
boulangerie
– all tasted wonderful to someone brought up on bland supermarket products. In Lisle lunch was still the biggest meal of the day, children ran freely with no fear of strangers or cars, and there was time for small talk. People were never in too much of a hurry to stop and chat with everyone.

With everyone but me, that is. As far as I knew, Rick and I were the only foreigners in town. We were treated that way. Conversations stopped when I entered stores, and when resumed I was sure the subject had been changed to something innocuous. People were polite to me, but after several weeks I still felt I hadn't had a real conversation with anyone. I made a point of saying hello to people I recognized, and they said hello back, but no one said hello to me first or stopped to talk to me. I tried to follow Madame Sentier's advice about talking as much as I could, but I was given so little encouragement that my thoughts dried up. Only when a transaction took place, when I was buying things or asking where something was, did the townspeople spare a few words for me.