It was one of those cold, bright spring Sundays that’s perfect for pushing the mower back and forth, working up a glow, then going into the house smelling fresh, like the grass. But we were at Mum’s, for tea.
Mum handed round a cake she’d made. She spent every Sunday morning baking, ready for our arrival.
‘It’s too dry,’ she said as she cut into it with her silver cake knife. ‘I know it’s too dry.’
It was coconut, and there was a coating of that chewy desiccated stuff on the top. As I picked a piece up a lot of crumbs fell back onto my red spotted plate.
‘It’s lovely, Mum,’ I said.
‘Bless you, Howard, for your charity. It’s the coconut. Difficult not to make it too dry.’
We were sitting in the living room. In front of Mum was the second largest of her nest of tables, upon which was the coconut cake, and the silver cake knife that was part of Mum’s set of Good Cutlery. That knife came out every Sunday, but I had never seen any other item in the set of Good Cutlery.
Mum poured the tea into the iris-patterned cups. ‘I love irises,’ she said. ‘I think blue is my favourite colour. For flowers.’
Kathryn had been quiet all day. I could tell she felt cold because she had her hands clasped around her knees and was hunched forward. Mum tended not to have more than one electric bar on unless it was completely necessary.
Mum eyed Kathryn’s posture. ‘Is she cold?’ she mouthed to me.
‘I’m fine,’ said Kathryn.
Mum took a bite of cake, chewed and swallowed. ‘Isn’t Kathryn having any?’ She waved a plate in my wife’s direction. ‘Come on, tell us what you think, Kathryn. I think it’s better than shop bought, at any rate.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ I said.
Kathryn bit into the cake.
‘Of course, not everyone has time for baking,’ said Mum. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones.’
I looked over at my wife. She put her plate down on the arm of her chair.
‘It is a little dry.’ She spoke very quietly, hunching her shoulders up higher and fixing her gaze on the corner of the table.
Mum’s cuckoo clock ticked loudly.
As she put her cup and saucer down, Mum’s eyebrow began to twitch. She shifted in her seat and said, ‘Well. Well. Well.’ Then she stood, nearly toppling the second largest of the nest of tables, swooped an arm down to pick up Kathryn’s plate, and marched into the kitchen, pleated skirt swirling behind, plate held out in front.
I looked at Kathryn. ‘What did you say that for?’
‘She’s the one who said it, Howard. I was just agreeing with her.’
‘She always says that, though. She always says those things.’
‘What do I always say?’ Mum had re-entered the room and was standing behind me with a big plate of Gingernuts in her hand and an even bigger smile on her face. ‘I thought Kathryn might prefer a biscuit. Seeing as she doesn’t care for cake.’
‘Look. I just agreed with what you said.’ Kathryn’s voice was suddenly loud, and she put her hand up to her throat as she spoke. She looked over at me. ‘That’s all I did.’
‘Coconut cake is meant to be a bit dry, surely – ’
‘It’s all right, Howard,’ said Mum. ‘You don’t have to try to make it better. Kathryn’s quite right. The cake was dry. I don’t know how anyone could eat it.’
The three of us were silent for a moment. The cuckoo clock kept ticking. Then Mum leant over Kathryn and for a minute I thought she was going to grab her by the neck, but she just placed the plate of Gingernuts in her lap and said, ‘Have a biscuit, dear.’ She looked into my wife’s face. ‘Go on.’
Kathryn took a biscuit and began to chew as Mum watched.
‘The cake’s wonderful. Really,’ I said. ‘Wonderful.’
Mum straightened up. ‘I think I’ll put it in the bin.’
She snatched the cake from the table and marched out again.
Kathryn and I sat in silence, listening as Mum scraped the cake into the bin, the knife screaming on the china.
After a moment, I spoke. ‘Get your coat on. I’ll meet you outside.’
By the time I’d left Mum’s, Kathryn was halfway down the road. She walked with her head on one side and a little swing in her hips. She walked like she wasn’t in any hurry, one foot stepping deliberately in front of the other, her arms swaying a little, her hair swaying a little.
Even then, I wanted to touch her.
Behind branches just coming into bud, the sun was low in the sky. As I followed Kathryn out of the gate and along Totleigh Way, the sun hit me full in the face. I stood still for a minute, blinded by the bright orange light, and I felt my hands and feet go warm. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.
Kathryn could wait. Mum could wait.
‘I’m expecting a baby.’
I opened my eyes and squinted against the sun. She must have stopped and walked back towards me, because she was facing me now.
‘Howard. A baby.’
Her coat was unbuttoned and I could see the whiteness of her throat.
I stepped forward and slipped my hands inside the rough wool of her coat and pulled her towards me. There was a slight smell of bacon fat on her collar; it mingled with the sweet hairspray scent of her hair. I held her closer. We stood in silence. It was so warm there in the sunlight that her forehead was slightly moist when I kissed it.
I looked around me. There was nothing but that strange orange light.
Kathryn put her arms around my shoulders and rested her head on my chest. Her hair tickled my neck as she spoke. ‘Are you pleased?’
I wanted to shout out in the street, to run back to Mum’s and tell her, to pick my wife up and carry her home, but all I could
do was say yes, yes. Yes.
I had no idea you could get so ill just from that, from expecting a baby. It was like every part of Kathryn’s body was against the idea. Bits of her that I thought might have just yielded to the situation swelled up, bruised, bled and even split. Every month her body seemed to resist that little bit more. And all the while, he was in there, growing stronger and stronger.
By the seventh month, her legs were like thick branches. Her curves were swelling, bending the wrong way.
One morning I kissed her in the kitchen and left for work as usual. But when I stepped outside it was colder than I’d thought, so I popped back upstairs for my jumper, and there she was, naked, standing in front of the mirror, a hand on her belly, looking herself up and down. She’d slipped off her dressing gown, and it lay in a red Kathryn-shape on the bed behind her. It was as though she was standing in front of one of those distorting mirrors you get at the fair; she was a strange reversal of her usual shape, her flesh now solidly filling the spaces where her curves had once dipped in and out.
She turned and saw me standing in the doorway.
I looked at the floor. ‘My jumper – ’ I said, ‘it’s a bit chilly out there.’
I knew she was staring at me.
‘I’ll leave it.’ I began to retreat. ‘Sorry.’
As I was closing the door behind me, she called my name. I hesitated on the landing before answering, to give her time to put her dressing gown back on, then I spoke into the small crack in the door. ‘I’d better get to work.’
‘Come back in.’
‘I’ll be late.’
There was a silence before she said, ‘Please.’
I stepped into the bedroom. She was still standing in front of the mirror, one hand on her rounded belly. The dressing gown in the Kathryn-shape remained splayed out on the bed behind her.
‘Do you want to feel the baby?’ she asked.
I looked at her. She wasn’t smiling but her eyes were soft. I lay my jacket on the bed beside her dressing gown, put down my briefcase, and shut the door carefully behind me before approaching. She watched my reflection in the mirror as I moved towards her. I noticed that her breasts had spread out across her chest and the nipples were so dark they looked like flattened poppies.
‘My hands are cold,’ I said.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
There was a streak of talc running from the top of her thigh to her knee and I wanted to reach out and rub it away, but she led my hand to her stomach. Even her fingers were softer and rounder; as her hand clasped mine, I thought of plunging my fingers into warm earth.
‘Can you feel it?’
I waited. Her stomach was hot, and my hand was heating up.
‘Not yet.’
‘There. Did you feel that?’
All I could feel was the heat, and I kept thinking of the talc on her thigh. ‘Aren’t you cold like that?’ I asked.
‘Like what?’
‘I just thought you might want to put your dressing gown on.’
‘There!’ she said. ‘Did you feel that?’
There was a pulse beneath my hand. I waited, and then there it was again, something pushing through Kathryn’s skin and into mine.
‘I felt it,’ I said.
‘I knew you would,’ said Kathryn. ‘Eventually.’ She smiled up at me, and I let out a laugh as our baby kicked again.
She brought him home from the hospital wrapped tightly in a yellow crocheted blanket that Mum had kept from when I was a newborn. It was trimmed with satin, soft from so much washing. I worried that the car wouldn’t start in the cold, but I turned the key in the ignition and we were off first time.
We drove home on icy roads. I took each corner very slowly, changing down into second in plenty of time. The sun was out, despite the cold; puffs of steam from the power station cooling towers were full and white as we came into Calcot. Kathryn opened her own coat and folded the bundle of our baby inside, close to her chest. As I drove, I left one hand on the gear stick so Kathryn could hold it.
She carried him into the house. Wrapped in his blanket, he was a bundle of yellow wool with a tiny pink nose sticking out. I kept looking over her shoulder to see his face, but I couldn’t find him in his woollen nest. So I asked her how he was, and that was the first time she put her finger to her lips to shush me. I thought of how I had never seen her do that in the library, even though that’s what librarians are supposed to do. One finger pressed down over both lips so they bulged a little beneath it.
‘Shush, Howard. Baby’s sleeping.’
She held him closer, gathering his blanket around him, and he woke with a yell.
Baby’s sleeping. It became her catchphrase. Be quiet, Howard, baby’s sleeping. I can’t do that, Howard, baby’s sleeping.
He slept in his carrycot next to our bed. Every night I would wake several times to the sight of Kathryn bent over in her nightie, checking on him, and I knew she was resisting the temptation to touch his face, just in case, to listen for his tiny heartbeat, just in case, to bend her head to his mouth so she could feel his breath on her cheek, just in case.
In fact he was a good sleeper, right from the first. He even snored a little, his lower lip gently puffing away, bubbles of spit blooming.
When I looked at him I saw my own mouth, big and unwieldy, pouting back at me. And when I lifted him from Kathryn’s arms as
she went to fetch his bottle, it was my mouth I saw open, the lower lip dropping drastically so he looked like a little clown
with drawn-on downward lips. His hair swirled at his crown and stuck up in a tuft at the back of his head. ‘Just like a cockatoo,’
I said. ‘You’ve got a cockatoo touch,’ I whispered to him, holding his face to mine and feeling the hot dampness of his cheek
as he cried and cried.
When he was a few months old, I came home from work and said her name, but there was no response.
‘Where are you?’ I called down the hall. ‘How’s Robert?’ I removed my scarf, gloves and coat. As I bent down to unlace my shoes, a smell reached my nostrils. It was sweet, horribly sweet, and slightly musty.
‘Kathryn?’ I said, but again there was no response. Leaving my shoes on, but unlaced, I pushed open the living room door. The smell became stronger. Burning. Something was burning.
She was asleep on our new three-seater sofa; Robert was in his carrycot at her feet, and his baby blanket was scalding by the gas fire.
I picked up the carrycot, removed the scalding blanket, and switched the fire off. I looked at my wife, at the blackness beneath her eyes, at the hair that was stuck to her cheek. She was fast asleep, her mouth hanging open, her head slumped down to her chest. I didn’t want to wake her. I wanted to let her sleep. So I opened the window a little and I left her there on the sofa.
I carried my son up the stairs and he didn’t stir. I opened the door to his room, and I put the carrycot down on the floor. I reached down and fished him out of his blankets. His hair, dark brown, was like a fine cap, tight to his skull. The skin on his legs and arms looked tight, too, filled to bursting point with flesh. I smelled his head, feeling the wispiness of his hair tickle my nose, and he smelled of Kathryn. He didn’t smell of baby powder or of any sweet smell of his own, but of Kathryn’s mixed odour of rose talc and gingery sweat. I inhaled the smell deeper, and then I put him down in his cot and covered him with his new Sooty eiderdown.
‘Where’s Robert, where’s my baby?’ Her voice reached me before she did.
When she came into the room, her face was bright red and still skewed from sleep; her eyes looked odd, as if they were staring in different directions.
‘Where is he?’
‘He’s here. Look.’
She rushed to the cot and gripped the bars. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s all right.’
She reached into the cot, but I put my arms around her and turned her towards me. ‘It’s all right.’
‘Howard, what – ’
‘Shush,’ I said, as I held her. ‘Baby’s sleeping.’