Anna idled in the hall outside their bedroom, waiting for them to get ready. She paged through her Bible, passed on to her from Grandmother Ison:
The Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Chapter One. 1. The book of the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. 2. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren. 3. And Judas begat Pharos and Zara of Thamar; and Pharos begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram.
Anna, bumping her heels on the skirting board, heard: Oh Pete, I mourn my younger self. Anna peeked around the door. Her mother stood angled in disappointment at the dressing-table mirror, shoulders slumped, mouth down at the edges, her eyes gauging the swell of her hips, her middle: I’ll never go back to the way I was before I had the kids. Yes you will! Anna jerked back, knocking her forehead. It was her father, jackknifing from behind the wardrobe door, snapping his damp towel, his baggy underpants a stripe of white at the centre of his mad dancing body: You’ll always be desirable to me, Ellie. Love that bum. Love that bum. Peter, stop it. Anna saw her mother twist away, gasping, shrieking: Peter, we’ll be late, stop it. Anna flew through the door at him, swinging and kicking: Leave my mum alone. She saw finally that her parents were only playing, but the playing somehow made it worse. The Fathers and Sons Association instructed the boys, the Mothers and Daughters Association instructed the girls, a lecture with slides in the Institute, the parts of the body, the changes in the body at puberty. But who does what to whom? that’s what Anna wanted to know. Violet Flood was taken into care by the state. Only thirteen, she’d been doing it with shearers out on Showalter Park, charging a shilling a time. Violet resembled Chester, thin, hard and rawboned from poverty, her dark eyes expecting hurt and knowing little else. My age, Anna thought, and she’s pregnant. When Dr Pirie prescribed the Pill, Anna pranced around Maxine at school: Such a relief! She could not control her limbs; she wanted to dance; she felt need and greed stir in the pit of her stomach. Slut, they called her. Am not, she said. I take it for my periods, okay? A doctor at the university health centre advised Anna to go off the Pill: Five years is a long time without a break. There are side effects and possible long-term effects. Anna stepped outside, into the sunlight, onto the Union Building lawn, and it occurred to her that she hadn’t lost control but had more control now. She crossed the footbridge, light and giddy, daydreaming her way back to her room at the college. She could say to Lockie, who’d become such a pain, and say to the tutor, so inconstant and unimpressed that he hurt her every day, that she would not be making love to them for a while. Nope, don’t know when. When I feel like it again. That would show them. But Lockie didn’t hear the part about not making love. He heard only the part about going off the Pill. She hated the hope that reanimated his unhappy face: If you got pregnant, maybe they wouldn’t send me overseas. We could get married. Anna was able to pinpoint the conception day of her son. Sam Jaeger was a comfortable husband, a man of polite attentions, always with one eye looking over his shoulder at his parents, but Anna sneaked him away to a hotel beside the sea, and at last he relaxed, at last he wanted her. The sea wind stirred the curtains and Anna, feeling him pulse, knew at once that she was pregnant. She greeted Dr Pirie’s confirmation with a mild blink and a smile. She felt taller than the rest of humanity. She drove to the six-forty acres and sought out Hugo first, she didn’t know why. Because she knew he’d be the most genuinely delighted, that’s why. And Hugo—sentimental, unlucky in love, exasperated with their father—needed a shot of happy news. Then emotions began to chase through Anna, leaving her bewildered, changeable, stunned. She was elated, she was flat, her belly crawled with fear. She wrote: Dear Maxine, I’m writing to ask if we could be friends again. Maxine had two boys, three and eighteen months, and Anna watched, and listened, and learned. Maxine, jiggling her youngest: Everyone’s full of advice. You take what you need and ignore the rest. Like nipples, for example. I was told keep them oiled, I was told aim them at the sun ten minutes a day, I was told toughen them with an old toothbrush. She shrugged: If you’re the kind who gets sore nipples, you’ll get sore nipples. Anna had her baby, and suddenly found that her nerve-endings were responding to the slightest provocation. She felt a rush of milk in her breasts if Michael looked like an angel, if another baby cried, if another mother’s baby suffered in the news. She found herself unconsciously rocking, comforting herself, comforting those distressed babies. Her love was boundless, and she found herself wanting another baby, half thinking that another baby might check and absorb some of that love and keep it close to home. After lunch on a day in late September, the sun shaking off winter, the welcome swallows hauling pats of mud to the battlements of a new nest above the fuse box, she began to attack Sam, slapping and tickling him, coaxing him charmed and hot-faced down the verandah steps to the back lawn, where the rose hedge screened them. They awoke to Michael on his haunches, peering at them, reaching a hand out to Sam’s bare rump, while at the bottom of the hill the Mr bellowed: Sam. Where are you? Time’s a-wasting. The day that Anna made love to Chester Flood, she stood on his carpet, curling her toes, watching him come up for air. He trailed his tongue to her navel, flick, then to her ribs. He swayed back on his heels, assessing: A perfect left breast. Not that there’s anything wrong with the right. Anna pulled his head against them: I’m just glad to call them my own again. All that breastfeeding, I felt distinctly uninviting. He tugged on each nipple: You taste sweet, like a garden, like honey. Anna closed her eyes, blessing Connie, who had advised her in the ways of love many years ago. It’s rosewater, she murmured. When Michael was taken from Anna, she rocked and rocked, gazing at the wall. One day Rebecca came to her, seeking a cure for their unhappiness: Mum, can’t we have another baby? Anna clasped her daughter’s little head to her and rocked. Last year Carl Hartwig published a special liftout in the Chronicle to publicise the Showalter Park sperm-bank scheme. Anna found him working on the layout, juggling bromides: the artificial lake, workmen unloading Carrera marble, Lustre 8 with a Royal Show sash around his neck, a long, low building labelled ‘laboratory’, straws of semen sitting in a tank of frozen nitrogen, Mrs Showalter’s aquiline nose on the steps of the big house. Carl said, choosing his words carefully, not looking at Anna: It didn’t seem likely that you’d want to interview Wes Showalter, given your, you know, history with him, so I went out there myself. He shrugged: It’s quite a set-up. I’m tempted to invest. Anna said: Not me, thanks. When Rebecca and Meg have a baby Meg will be the mother. Birth mother, Rebecca says, holding a reminding finger in the air. Meg, spreadeagled on the hallway carpet before the sperm dies in the syringe—is that how they’ll do it? Anna wonders. Or will they make it more romantic than that? Will the sperm live for a while, long enough for them to get to the bedroom, for example? Anna would like to ask them these questions. She will not offer advice. Not to Meg, the older one, who strides through life; not to Becky, who will not listen. Meg, coming back fuming from showing the baby to some friends at work: I tell you, Anna, the breastfeeding police are everywhere. Anna will rock her granddaughter in her arms, walk up and down for hours to soothe her, and, catching her reflection in a mirror, think: And I’ve lost my young body.