Chris Womersley
I am no stranger to the middle of the night, to its creaks and whispers. It is the time when one is most clearly able to see into the core of oneself, a moment I relished when I was a younger and vainer woman but which I now find almost unendurable. And yet, despite a regularity that grows with each passing year, I am still always surprised to find myself lying on my bed at ungodly hours, staring into the darkness. Should I live another ten years, I can imagine spending entire nights awake. Perhaps this unprovoked waking is no surprise; after all, night is where memory resides and, just as a bear lives off its fat during long, cold winters, the elderly are sustained by their memories.
The first thing I do, as my eyes adjust to the gloom, is listen for Graham’s breathing. He will be eighty-two next birthday and his health is, as they say, failing. Even now his breath catches like a bicycle chain slipping a cog. But at least he is still alive, thank God. I dread the day, or the night more likely, when I shall have to put a finger to the artery at his neck, the way I once saw someone do a long time ago. I don’t even really know what to feel for. A mild throb, I suppose. A pulse. All I recall is the expression on the ambulance officer’s face. It struck me at the time how similar he looked to a trout fisherman, feeling for tremble on his line.
The night also, of course, offers the time and space to imagine the things one would still like to do. It is as if a lifetime of regrets, having accreted about my joints and the ventricles of my heart while sleeping, are dislodged and make themselves known: read that damn Proust epic everyone is supposed to read; sail the Mediterranean; learn an instrument. Naturally, there are other, more profound regrets: affairs never pursued; opportunities squandered. Once, forty years ago, a gentlemanly artist cornered me at one of those inner-city parties populated by the absurdly tasteful and made me an offer I could – and did – refuse but have pondered ever since. Every now and then I hear of him just when I have almost forgotten his face and when I do, it never fails to inspire in me a mild shiver of longing. Not that I regret my time with Graham. On the contrary, he has been my saviour in many ways; I could never have done it without him.
Sadly, the middle of the night is also the moment when one is most acutely aware that one will now never get around to accomplishing these undone things and that one must be content with one’s lot, as it now stands. At this stage of life, the die is pretty much cast. The Italians, bless them, even have a word for it:
caducita, the terrible chasm between our attempts to construct our lives and the slow ruin of time. In other words: it is all too late. Might explain why the Italians have failed to produce much since the Renaissance, aside from Fellini, of course.
Inevitably, at times like this, I think of Peter. I calculate his age had he lived. The kind of man he might have become. Not that different, most likely, from the boy he was, who was not that different from the baby he had been. He would be fifty in April. Still fifty in April, still the same age I calculated last night and the night before. When pregnant, I imagined him as an apostrophe nestled in my womb, a grammatical scratch that unfurled into a letter, then a word, a sentence and finally into a story of his very own, a tale of no small woe. I knew something was wrong from the moment he was placed, like a chunk of bloody meat, at my breast. Graham sensed it as well, although neither of us spoke of it for some months, as if to articulate our worst fears might give them breath, unleash them.
Not that it mattered. When he was six months old I would inhale his milk-damp breath on nights like this, with the light just so and a dim, naive hope of a future. By the age of three, he seemed to have extra limbs; always clumsy, his chin always glistening with drool. When he was five we organised a birthday party. Not one of the brats we invited from the neighbourhood showed up. God how we persevered throughout that dry afternoon; the smattering of family, everyone mortified, striving valiantly to inject enthusiasm into the occasion, still afraid to speak of his strangeness. I remember the sad-eyed Pole we had hired to juggle for the children took Peter’s utter indifference to his coloured sticks and balls as a personal affront. I could never determine if I was more aggrieved by the lack of pain the dismal event caused Peter – another ‘developmental hiccup’– or by my own realisation of the wickedness of small children and parents who would organise such a boycott. You think you know people, but they always have something hidden away. It’s an awful lesson, corrosive, and one I am still glad my son was never equipped to learn.
Graham snuffles and rolls in his sleep. He clears his throat as if preparing to speak, but says nothing. It is not uncommon in recent years for him to talk in his sleep, sit up, stare at me and mumble ‘Jesus, Helen, what have you done?’ or ‘The nursery is burning’ or some such nonsense before collapsing back onto the bed. The poor thing even went through a stage of sobbing himself awake. When he first started talking in his sleep, I would tell him in the morning of his outbursts and we would laugh, sometimes uneasily. Now I rarely bother. Let the night have its secrets, is what I think. There is nothing to be gained.
The water glass on the bedside table is empty. With effort, in the manner of the old woman I have somehow become, I disentangle myself from the bedclothes and sit on the edge of the bed. The deflated inner tubes of my breasts dangle against my stomach, long since emptied of their uses: aesthetic, erotic or otherwise. Two bony knees peer like tortoises from beneath my nightie. There is no glory in ageing, but unlike life’s earlier difficult periods – adolescence or youth or even middle age – one cannot of course wish it to end. In the en suite I drink a glass of tap water. It is immensely satisfying and I drink again. The tiles are cool beneath my feet. I feel slightly hungry. It is 4 a.m. so I may as well go downstairs, have a snack and struggle with yesterday’s cryptic crossword for a couple of hours before the day gets underway.
The stairway is lined with artworks and framed photographs of family scenes, lost places that are recognisable even in the half light: our wedding day, of course, a thousand years ago, in another country; Graham as a young man in Scotland with his mop of ginger hair that would stay with him for life; a black-and-white snap of a baby cousin in a metal washtub. And, of course, Peter on a swing in a park; the photo creamy with sunlight that seems, even now, many years later, to explode from his laughing head. There he is again, the Christmas we drove to Gippsland to stay in a rented beach house minutes from the sea. The best summer we had together. The last summer. Poor Peter. Still everywhere. Perhaps it is true that we are defined not by what we possess, but by what we no longer have. The press had a field day, of course. Dug out a dreadful photo of me from God knows where. Interviewed other parents. Pure hell. Even now, the sound of a newspaper thudding against the front door at dawn releases in me a flood of mild panic. What now?
I make a pot of tea, open the kitchen door to the garden, turn the radio on low and settle in to tackle twelve-down, on which I was left stranded last night. Sailor posted as missing. Six letters. Radio National murmurs: a boffin talking about a creature called, believe it or not, the vampire squid that lives in the deepest parts of the ocean. This beast apparently has the largest eyes comparative to body size of any animal, but also – thanks to its body being covered in light-producing organs of some sort – the ability to turn itself ‘on’ and ‘off’ so as to see at depths where light doesn’t penetrate. Quite a handy ability, I imagine, and one I could do with myself should I continue to wake throughout the night. Would cut the electricity bill, at any rate.
Although I grumble about it, there is a special pleasure to be found in the early morning. Indeed, there is something quite benthic about the ground floor of our old house at this time, a sense of existing in a time zone of one’s own, far from the ordinary world. The rules might well be different here. One might almost expect to glimpse one of these vampire fish or another bizarre creature that has evolved miles from human sight, far from anywhere, eyeless. Aside from myself, naturally.
Six letters. Sailor. It has rained in the night and damp garden smells drift inside. Posted as missing. Trees crackle and drip. Sailor posted as missing, six letters. ‘Missing’ the definition, no doubt. Graham would probably be able to do these crosswords far faster than I will ever be able to, but he has more or less given up on them. Says he has run out of use for words. Sometimes there is only so much you can say.
I don’t know how long I have been sitting here when I become aware of strange, high-pitched sounds coming from outside. At first I assume it to be an auditory hallucination but the noise, or noises, persist and I am compelled to investigate. I have to admit to feeling quite terrified, but call out nonetheless in my quavering, 79-year-old woman’s voice, ‘Hello?’ The sounds stop for a few seconds before redoubling in vigour. They have the sibilance of a coven of tiny witches, a sound like nothing I have ever heard before and I stand there in the middle of my huge kitchen, barefoot, clad only in a nightgown, wondering what on earth has come to visit me, what creature has at last discovered my whereabouts. Old thoughts, foolish thoughts. The noises intensify again. I am stranded in the middle of the kitchen, the knives out of reach, Graham asleep upstairs, far from any refuge when I realise what it is. Kittens. Of course. Our tabby cat Sally, who has been lugging her swollen belly around for weeks, has finally given birth.
Sure enough, in her basket in the laundry she is lying on her side with her blind brood mauling at her teats. She looks drunk, exhausted, but utters a croaky meow in greeting and allows me to stroke her head. Poor thing. This is her third brood because Graham won’t allow me to spay her. Her babies root about in her damp and bloody fur and clamber over each other like wingless bats. There are five of them. Every so often, Sally licks at the fur at her chest before collapsing back again. I know more or less how she feels. The fatigue peculiar to having given birth arrives, like a comet, from another solar system altogether. Depleted, drained, battered are utterly inadequate adjectives for it. It needs its very own dictionary entry, its very own dictionary. Perhaps the Italians have a word for that as well? More likely the Indians; they pop out millions of babies. That would be one for the crossword setters. Seven across, five letters. A Hindi word for the exhaustion of having given birth. Wherever this word exists, in whatever language, they might also have a better one for pain.
I fetch Sally a fresh saucer of milk and sit with her awhile. It’s starting to get light. Soon Graham will wander in and crouch down to peer happily at the new kittens and smile his smile of quiet satisfaction. Although we will give them away we will most likely spend much of today bandying around possible names for the new additions based on perceived characteristics. Dopey or Killer or some such. Graham’s enduring love of animals is one of the things I still love about him, when his ten-year-old self is closest to the surface, like the imp in the bottle.
After ten minutes or so it becomes apparent that one of the kittens is struggling to get its fair share of milk. A black and white one, already smaller than the others. The runt of the litter. The four other kittens shoulder it aside every time it attempts to jam its little face into Sally’s fur. Not nastily, just in the way the strong, in their enthusiasm, inevitably take more than they require. The little one has a scratchy cry and makes periodic attempts to snaffle its way in, but eventually gives up. Sally makes no effort to help it. Like a cartoon creation the kitten flops back unsteadily on its bum and stares up at me with cloudy eyes, as if seeking assistance. There is a speck of what I presume to be amniotic fluid on its nose. Again it squeaks. We watch each other for some time, the kitten and I. Occasionally it stares at its brothers and sisters happily gorging away, before turning back to me. It is heartbreaking. Time passes. The little thing utters pitiful cries, almost emptied of sound. Again it attempts to join the family, only to be batted away by a rival paw.
Eventually, I stand up and fetch one of the large ancient cushions from the cane garden chair. Outside it is light. It will be a sunny day, but cold. My favourite kind of weather. I pause a moment in the garden, inhaling the smells. You get to an age where every new day merely reminds you of one already lived and at this moment I am reminded inexplicably of a morning when I was a teenager in the house where I grew up, having breakfast with my parents, the smell of freshly brewed tea, the way mother placed her hand on father’s arm when they shared a joke.
Back inside I pick up the tiny kitten. It mewls against my chest, ever hopeful. Even its claws seem soft, malformed, ill equipped for a lifetime of struggle. We have a small moment, draw solace from each other, before I put the cushion on the floor in the corner, place the kitten in its middle, fold it over and lean on it with all my weight. I am sure it struggles, but I am unable to feel it. The cushion is large and doughy. Sally watches me, her ears pinned back for a few seconds before she relaxes and allows her head to fall back in the folds of the blanket lining her basket. She knows it’s for the best.
It is only after some time, roused by the sounds of Graham pottering about in the kitchen that I realise my face is wet with tears and the cushion, doubtless damp from overnight rain, has become even wetter. Then Graham appears in the laundry doorway. He beams when he sees Sally’s kittens but then turns to where I squat on the floor with the cushion beneath my knees and his expression alters slightly. We say good morning and mutter approving things about the kittens and how well our Sally has done. There is a brief lull in which the only sounds are those of Sally purring and the chirp of birds in the garden. Then Graham asks me, in his special off-hand voice, what I have got under ‘there,’ meaning the cushion, but I can tell by his face he already knows.
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