1975
Catherine is wearing one of those medical shifts that tie at the back. She has done her best to draw the heavy white cotton flaps together, to leave no gaps. But she does not think that she has succeeded. She feels that there is a ruler of bare flesh sliding from the nape of her neck, down her back, to the cleft between her pale buttocks and on to her clenched thighs. Under the shift she is naked. There is in fact only this single layer of fabric shielding her from the world. Oddly, nothing makes her feel more vulnerable than her bare feet. There are goose-bumps on her skin, and she is so cold that intermittently she twitches involuntarily.
She surveys the small room. Carpet tiles in dirty brown. A divan bed with a dark-blue cover. ‘It crackles when you sit on it,’ she mutters to herself. She established this when she hunched on a corner of it, chewing a painful hangnail. She pushed back the bedcover and saw the thick plastic sheet, then hastily drew it back again, as if she was nosing around in someone’s private bedroom, as if at any moment they might come in and catch her snooping. There is a wardrobe too, painted in maroon gloss, where she hung her clothes. A tartan skirt, a jumper, woollen tights, boots. She visualizes the dark interior of the wardrobe and her clothes hanging up waiting for her to return, for her to inhabit and animate them again. She visualizes the other white shifts waiting for the other women to file through. There is a chunky wooden chair with a red plastic seat. Her white handbag squats in the centre of it, like a PVC cat. The room is lit from above, a hanging bulb in a smoky-glass shade. There are venetian blinds at the window. They were closed when she came in. She tried to open them but they seemed to have jammed. Still, she supposes it doesn’t really matter. It is a cold grey November afternoon, a day in which the low winter sun barely seems to have the strength to crest the horizon, before starting its descent into the frosty darkness of another night.
Soon she will come for her, the nurse. Although she has said there will be a delay, that the earlier patient was late. ‘Some of these young girls just don’t think.’ She snorted cynically when she said this, her eyes flicking over Catherine, appraising her condition, judging how far gone she was. ‘Doctor’s time is money.’ She gave a disapproving sniff and her large nostrils flared, reminding Catherine of a pig’s. ‘Anyway, it’s had a knock-on effect, so I’m afraid that he’s running a bit behind. Nothing to worry about, though. He’ll get to you before you know it. In the meantime, enjoy the rest. That’s what I say.’
Catherine misheard, thinking she said ‘get at you’, and she tightened inside, as if bracing herself for his assault. She was understandably apprehensive. But she need not be. All she was saying was that there was a queue. Catherine was in line but must wait her turn. Nevertheless, she had taken an instant dislike to this woman, Miss Janney, two days ago when they first met, with her cropped greasy black hair, her shrivelled-apple skin, her cunning, small, grey eyes, and her foreshortened arms. She looked butch, muscled. Catherine suspects that Miss Janney isn’t a nurse at all, despite the green overall she is wearing. It could be a cleaning uniform for all she knows. Didn’t she keep telling Catherine, when she arrived, how clean the doctor was, how hygienic. She wonders if she means that he doesn’t pick his nose, or that he washes his hands thoroughly after going to the toilet. But then the nurse added with a meaningful lift of her brows, that he kept his instruments sterile, not like some she could mention. No risk of infection here. And again, perhaps it was because it all felt a bit surreal, an image of the doctor polishing a trumpet had interrupted her chain of thought.
Miss Janney probably isn’t qualified in anything except taking your money. Granted, she had been very good at that, though. Exceptional, actually. ‘Only cash is acceptable, the full amount, mind, up front. Small denominations but no coins. Fivers are best. If you come without it the operation will be cancelled. You’ve been warned,’ she told her when she rang, her earlier tones of consolation and reassurance falling away to be replaced by a hard, unyielding wall of terms.
Catherine’s thighs are rigid now, so that she imagines the doctor having to jimmy them open with a crowbar. There is a funny smell in the air, a smell something like throat lozenges mingled with bad breath. It makes her want to gag. She gulps in air and controls her exhalation in one steady stream. And as she does so she attempts to gather up the wayward ends of her thoughts, and set about plaiting them together, making good.
She is here for an abortion. These days it is a common enough procedure, nothing to make a fuss about. She is a modern woman, and this is what modern women do when they discover they are pregnant and they do not want a baby. The nurse said that most women had one, some time or another. ‘It doesn’t always happen when it’s convenient, does it? You’ve got to get things right. You owe it to yourself, don’t you?’
You’ve got to get things right. That phrase leapt out at Catherine. Because she hasn’t got things right, not ever. Only wrong, dreadfully wrong. And it seems to her that every decision she takes is like another step out on the fragile ice, another wrong turn in a maze. She has lost her bearings. The farther she goes the less likely it is that she will make it back.
‘I won’t lie to you. It isn’t pleasant. But so long as you catch it early enough, it’s no worse than having a tooth extracted.’ Catherine hasn’t had a tooth out yet, so this comparison, even if it is apt, is somewhat wasted on her. When Miss Janney said this, Catherine wanted to ask if she was talking from personal experience, if she’d had an abortion herself. But the prickly manner dissuaded her.
The turn in which she had walked up to the altar and said ‘I do’ to Sean Madigan, had been a monumental disaster. She hadn’t loved him then, doesn’t love him now, for God’s sake. Is she an imbecile? Why does she think you get married? This she can answer readily enough, though. To escape, to flee the mother who yanks on the strings of your life, until you feel as if you don’t have any control over it at all. Secretarial college in Twickenham? What had she been doing there? She doesn’t want to be a typist. She doesn’t want to type up the notes from someone else’s life, from a man’s life. She wants her own, her own life, her own notes, thank you very much.
Her thoughts wing back to their first meeting, hers and Sean’s, the way people talked sentimentally about this fateful collision. Well, if it was fate, kismet, call it what you will, then it was a contrary branch of it. Not only are they star crossed, their families are a sea apart, literally – the Irish Sea. What’s more, the pair of them are dismally lacking when it comes to explosive chemistry betwixt the sheets. There is, she broods meditatively, something to be said for sex before marriage. She should have tried it. The litmus test to check if you are compatible, and so avoid years of misery if you aren’t.
She was waitressing at L’Auberge in Richmond to earn some spending money of her own. He came in for a meal with friends. He was very polite and his eyes – were they blue or were they green? Even now she couldn’t make up her mind. But they were kind. His eyes were kind. Besides, she liked his soft Irish accent, his come-to-bed tones, even if when you got there it was a dreadful anticlimax. It was easy on the ear, his voice. It calmed her, made her feel safe.
She sits on the edge of the bed now and feels the plastic buckle noisily under her bottom. She expects that they have plastic covers because of the blood. Otherwise the mattress would be stained. And a stained mattress is sordid, a chilling taster of what’s to come. It could put ladies off, ladies less decided than she was. This way they can pop the cover into a washing machine, give the plastic protector a wipe-over with a bit of disinfectant, and it will be as good as new. It’s sensible really.
Sean doesn’t know, not about the baby, not about the abortion. But she thinks he has guessed the other part, the heartless part. Because without it things don’t work. They don’t work with it, either, sometimes. But at least you stand a reasonable chance. Her mother and her father are ignorant too. If they knew where she was this minute . . . There had been a weak moment when she thought she might tell her brother, Stephen. But she changed her mind. She realized they would all try to stop her going through with it, not for her sake, but for themselves.
Her mother would dote on a grandchild in a way she couldn’t do with her own daughter. She would indoctrinate it, until one day Catherine’s child would see her through her mother’s eyes. And then it, too, would despise her. For Sean, it would be a better cure-all than brandy, for a short while anyway. A baby to fix things, to tether them together, to make them a family, to make him a fairytale father. She had a hunch that her brother would convince himself that she was only frightened, and would intervene. And then he would go away and leave her to it, feeling like a great guy, a brother who looked out for his kid sister. Selfish motives, all of them, really.
If she lets the baby come it will bind her fast to this nightmare existence, to Sean, the dreamer, the drinker, the womanizer, the man with big ideas that evaporate with the coming of dawn and the arrival of the hangover. Was it only two months ago that they married? It seems like a lifetime. She closes her eyes and sees herself on the big day. And she very nearly gasps because she looks so young, like a little girl who has been let loose with a dressing-up box, a girl trying on her mother’s outgrown ballgown. She does not look like a woman in a wedding dress, radiant on her wedding day. She had dropped a dress size in a matter of weeks. She was lost in flounces and frills of white satin, lost in the snowy maze of a winter’s day where every turn brought her closer to the perilous ice. The tightly gathered crinoline skirt, fitted bodice, puffed sleeves, designed to emphasize such feminine attributes as a neat waist, shapely hips and an alluring bust, sagged on her drooping frame. Even her red hair, gathered optimistically into tortuous loops and curls, was rebelling. Wisps had defied the industrial hairspray, applied so copiously by her mother that Catherine, choking, thought she might pass out. They gathered in single-strand corkscrews at her hairline and shadowed her eyes, giving her the vague appearance of a pampered poodle before a dog show. She was slumped on the uncomfortable leather-effect settee. Her mother’s earlier admonition that she must remain standing so as to avoid creasing, at least until her father arrived to collect her, being patently ignored.
‘Otherwise you’ll look all crumpled, darling. You wouldn’t want that.’ Catherine, eyes down, made no response to this. She battled back the tears that threatened to finish off the job started by her hair, and devastate her makeup as well. Shortly after this her mother departed for the church. Her father had rung to say he was leaving her brother’s garage. This very minute he was sputtering his way towards the Kingston house in the polished, beribboned Austin Seven, with her brother, Stephen, the chipper chauffeur for the day, at the driving wheel. And despite the cloud she was engulfed in seeming impenetrable, it did have a lining that was considerably better than the hackneyed silver one. White gold, Catherine decided, her green eyes lifting to lock with Rosalyn’s.
Yes, the American Hoyles were over for the wedding. Better still, Rosalyn was her unofficial bridesmaid – unofficial because she would not suffer her to wear a hideous garment on a par with her own. She was bridesmaid in title only. In fact, Rosalyn in a laurel-green silk trouser suit, with a scarf dappled in beiges and purples looped at her graceful neck, was a feast for the famished. Her shoulder-length black hair fell in thick layered waves. She wore a chipped fringe that gave a quirky, mischievous slant to her pretty face. In addition, she had another accoutrement that filled Catherine with envy. In her lap was a camera, a Rolleiflex. Rosalyn was a freelance photographer, and although it was early in a career that promised to be successful, her work had already been remarked upon. It was garnering attention in the right quarters because, exactly like Rosalyn herself, it was unique and original. Today though, she would probably face the greatest challenge ever to her burgeoning skills – how to make a desolate bride look ecstatic. She narrowed her eyes and peered into the view-finder, sighting her cousin, and adjusted the focus. Catherine flinched. Snap. A crystallized second. Photograph one. Frightened young bride swamped in ill-fitting wedding dress. She lowered the camera.
‘Catherine?’ she said. ‘Catherine?’
Catherine sniffed and there was something pathetic in the sorry little inhalation. Her lips quivered and she pursed them tightly. Not now, don’t cry now, she told herself. The voice of reason whipped back, ‘If not now, then when, Catherine, when?’ She dismissed it and spoke up instead.
‘My mother says this was the happiest day of her life.’ She delivered the line with the aplomb of an actress off an old black-and-white film, terribly correct and English. ‘She says that she felt like a princess, that everyone treated her like a princess. She says the day passed in a swirl of dancing and champagne and presents.’ She picked disconsolately at a seed pearl sewn into her dress. Rosalyn contributed nothing, knowing when to keep silent. Catherine took a huge breath, as if her next words would be a physical feat, as if, like a runner primed for the starter gun, she needed extra oxygen to get clean away from the blocks. ‘The last time I saw you was at granny’s funeral.’ A barely perceptible nod from Rosalyn. She kept mum, her little finger stroking the barrel of the lens. A pause that thinned gradually with the beginning of a sentence. ‘Ah . . . ah . . . mm . . . I was happier on that day than I am now.’ Their eyes met again and held.
‘She was a tartar, Granny Hoyle. Do you remember how she used to charge out of the house, a tea towel flapping in both hands, to scare the starlings off the bird feeder? Black vermin, that’s what she called them.’ Rosalyn sprang up and moved effortlessly into mimicry. ‘Shoo, shoo, you nasty things. Vermin! Flying vermin! No better than rats. If I had a rifle I’d shoot the lot of you, pick you off one by one. Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!’ Catherine laughed in spite of herself. Rosalyn took a bow and sank back into her seat.
‘She was like a gunfighter with those tea towels. Deadly aim. Remember how she used to hit Grandpa with them? “Out of my kitchen, now. You’re getting under my feet. How can I be expected to cook with you shambling about?”’ Her imitation was a poor cousin of Rosalyn’s, but then, she felt like she was a poor cousin. ‘I bet . . . I bet . . . oh never mind—’
‘No, go on,’ urged Rosalyn, sitting forward.
‘It’s stupid.’ For a moment she had forgotten and it was good, but she remembered now.
‘Go on,’ persuaded Rosalyn.
‘No, it’s . . . it’s just that I imagine she’s still doing it in heaven.’
‘What?’
‘Shooing starlings off the pearly gates.’ A giggle from Rosalyn. ‘I told you it was daft.’
‘Only,’ said Rosalyn, ignoring this rider, ‘only she’s more than likely using her own wings to do it these days.’ They lapsed into another silence. They could hear a car revving its engine. ‘He’ll be here in a minute, your father.’ The gold clock on the stone-effect mantelpiece was electric. It did not tick, but there was a metal pendulum wheel that spun at its base, on view through the glass-dome case. Forward and back it went, forward and back.
‘I don’t love him,’ Catherine mumbled, eyes cast down. The tiny pearl hung by a thread. She raised her eyes to her cousin. ‘I don’t love Sean.’
‘Oh Catherine!’ said Rosalyn. Then, ‘Why?’
‘Because—’ Her lips were numb and she broke off to collect herself, started again. ‘Because I hated secretarial college. Because I hated living at home. Because it was like a prison. I had no free will. I thought this was a way out.’
Rosalyn slipped the camera strap around her neck and got up. Catherine stared at her. She was tall and elegant, beautiful, a woman full of passion for her art. She had matured while Catherine felt her growth was stunted. ‘We’ll call it off,’ said Rosalyn courageously, her high cheeks flushing in empathy.
‘I can’t,’ Catherine uttered wanly.
‘I’ll do it for you. I’ll explain everything. It will be absolutely fine.’
‘I can’t.’
Then she was sitting beside Catherine, a big sister taking control. ‘You absolutely mustn’t go through with it. You made a mistake, that’s all. Lots of women do it. The important thing is that we stop this whole rigmarole before it goes any further.’ They heard a noise on the porch. Catherine’s heart lurched. ‘It’s okay. You stay here. I’ll go out. I’ll explain.’
As she rose, Catherine caught hold of her hand. ‘Do you think about it?’ she asked in an urgent whisper.
A suspenseful pause, then quickly, ‘Yes.’ As if the line of telepathy established that long-ago day was still intact, she had no need to query what her cousin meant.
The front door shuddered open. ‘Catherine,’ boomed her brother from the hall. ‘Are we allowed into the bride’s presence yet?’
‘Just a minute,’ called back Rosalyn, then she immediately dropped her voice. ‘I think about the ice every day.’ Their handhold tightened.
‘We almost died,’ whispered Catherine.
‘I almost died,’ corrected Rosalyn. With her other hand she pushed back her cousin’s corkscrew impromptu fringe.
‘Catherine!’ The father of the bride was importuning her now. ‘Any longer and we’ll be unfashionably late, sweetheart.’
‘Please, let me speak to them?’ begged Rosalyn.
Catherine’s ‘No’ was simply a flick of her eyes. She rose to her feet. ‘In this damn dress I feel as cumbersome as a pregnant cow,’ she murmured. They were both on the verge of tears; the pain of holding them back was not shared but doubled. ‘My veil, if you please,’ Catherine forced, sounding a rickety note. It was displayed on the coffee table, draped over its edges and corners so that it resembled an iced cake. Rosalyn obliged, and with dexterity fitted it on Catherine’s head. She looked steadfastly into her drained green eyes.
‘It’s not too late,’ she mouthed.
‘There was a second when it all changed, a second when we realized it wasn’t a game. Buried by bricks of ice in the freezing water.’
Rosalyn nodded. ‘Catherine?’
‘No. How do I look?’
‘Lovely. You look lovely.’
Catherine gave a soulless smile and instinctively, Rosalyn looked down into the viewfinder through the impartial lens. Snap. Photograph two. Resignation under a veil. Then a slight rise of her chin. She was ready. Rosalyn went to open the hall door, to let the men in. There was the proud paternal gasp as Keith Hoyle surveyed his daughter.
For Catherine there was but one way to survive this. She became the child who, having raided the dressing-up box, now made up the play. As she went through the motions her thoughts ran on:
‘In this part I am a woman desperately trying to grasp every second of this, her most jubilant day. I am riding in an Austin Seven, ribbons and roses on its gleaming bonnet, with my father and my brother and my best friend, Rosalyn. People passing in the streets peep in to see the beautiful bride. I am arriving at St Andrew’s Church in Ham, stepping out of the car, treading under the covered gate, walking up the path. It is a summer’s day. The leaves on the trees glisten as if they have just been dipped in green paint. Sunlight and shade pattern the sky above and the land below. The gravestones and tombs stand erect and peaceful. I clutch my bouquet of white roses more tightly and wonder how long it will be before the blossoms wilt. My chauffeur winks at me. Rosalyn goes before me, taking her photographs. Snap, wind the hand crank, snap.
‘As I move into the church the music strikes up – “Mendelssohn’s Wedding March”. And I think, is it me? Am I really the bride? Is this how a bride feels? A sea of heads bob. My eyes rove and take in their costumes and disguises, posh frocks, smart suits, beards, moustaches, glasses, blonde, brunette, red and grey wigs too. The air is a playground of coloured shafts of light. There is a smell of dust and wood, a glint of silver, a flutter of candle flame. I can see my mother. She is scrutinizing her reflection in her compact mirror, still looking for those stubborn grey hairs. My heels click on stone. There are huge displays of flowers, their fragrance scenting the air, and more flowers and ribbons at the end of the pews.
‘The vicar is waiting for me, arms outstretched. And someone is standing in front of him in a pearly grey suit. I see his fair hair lifting against his collar. I wonder, will he turn, this bridegroom, turn to see his bride? He doesn’t. When I am next to him he steals a peek, gives the hint of a smile, takes my hand. His is trembling but mine is quite steady. It strikes me that he is nervous, and suddenly I find this hilarious. But I mustn’t laugh. It is as essential not to laugh now, as it was not to cry before. I pinch my waist as a preventative measure and find it is not there any more, only satin slips between my thumb and forefinger.’
Then, ‘Do you, Catherine Hoyle . . .’ In the hush she understood suddenly that the vicar was addressing her, and that she wasn’t starring in a play, but in her own catastrophic life. ‘Snap’ went the camera. Photograph three. Catherine praying. ‘Should I marry Sean Madigan?’ His fingers felt frozen and hard in hers, like the ice closing in.
‘I do,’ she said. And they were man and wife.
Her wedding vows were a sham. Her wedding night was a sham. She is a sham. Of course she understood the mechanics of it, of what was expected of him and of her. But the truth was that she entered her marriage bed a virgin. Sean was very attentive and patient, but it made no difference. When the rip came she cried out with pain and outrage and humiliation – but not with any pleasure, never that. She does not love him. She does not love this Irish man. She does not even fancy him. He is not repulsive to her, but by the same token he does not remotely attract her either. She feels about him the way you might do about someone you happened to be stuck in a lift with. There is no getting away from them, and to pass the time it is sensible to be pleasant. But that is all. She has married him but she does not love him.
She revisits the night of her deflowering, spies on the newly married couple. There she was, the bride, Catherine, or at least there were her legs splayed, her arms outstretched, her hands gripping the sheets. If she kept her neck at that angle for long she would have a terrible crick in it by morning. There was the groom, Sean, heaving into her, panting and gasping, his face grim with effort. Her light-green eyes were just visible. As if in some sort of meditative state her gaze was trained on the bumps on the ceiling, on the futile progress of a feathery moth colliding repeatedly with the sage-green lightshade, on its distorted shadows wavering on the woodchip. Finally he rolled off her, spent, replete, sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.
‘Are you okay, Catherine?’ he asked his bride. The chord struck was that of a politely solicitous inquiry – the good morning, how are you? delivered habitually to virtual strangers. Feeling, she imagined, rather like a rape victim, it struck her as pure bathos.
‘I’m fine,’ came her retort, much in the same vein. If this was a farce, she considered, it would be rather funny.
‘It wasn’t very good for you.’ This last was the understatement that brought the house down. ‘I’m sorry. But it’ll get better, you know. You’ll start to enjoy it. Oh God!’
A sudden rise in pitch indicating alarm. ‘What?’
‘I think the damn thing’s split.’ Was he talking about her? She certainly felt as if she had been cleaved in two with an axe, as if the bloody core of her had been exposed, as if only stitches and plenty of them could sew her together again. But then came clarification: ‘The condom. Damn! Oh damn!’ He rose and she watched his pale body retreating into the bathroom. ‘I shouldn’t worry, Catherine. Your first time. You won’t fall, darlin’,’ he called out in the deliberately careless tone that in a comedy was inevitably the forerunner of impending doom. ‘I’m sure you won’t fall, so. We’ll be more careful from now on, eh?’
Her heart imploded. She would be doing this again, enduring this again. That was what she siphoned out of his words. Then an echo in her head. Fall. Whatever did he mean, pondered Catherine, grown addled with weariness, pulling the blankets up to cover her nakedness. Comprehension arrived like a light bulb being switched on in her head. He meant fall pregnant. As if what she had been through wasn’t bad enough, she ran the risk of becoming pregnant because the condom had split. It seemed she was in a nightmare of bottomless horrors, all trying to outdo each other. He was back, sitting on his side of the bed, facing away from her. He reached for the hip flask on the bedside table. This was a prop she was unfamiliar with, but it was destined to become so ubiquitous in the scenes of her married life that soon she would effectively be blind to it. He leant back and, ever courteous, offered her the first sip.
‘No, thanks.’
‘Sure?’
‘Quite sure.’
His took several swigs himself and showed his teeth to the drab decor. ‘Just this once you won’t be caught. Trust me, my darlin’,’ he reassured, as if he was God and to conceive or not was in his gift. But she was caught already. She didn’t need a test tube to confirm it. There was no escape from her predicament. He drained the flask, clambered back into bed, kissed her on the forehead and switched off the light. She wound herself up in a tight ball and wept soundlessly.
I am still trapped in the ice, she reflects now, as the plastic sheet grumbles beneath her. Hot tears trickle down her cheeks. They wet her lips and she licks them off, tasting warm salt. She has held all these years to the conviction that it is Rosalyn who was irreparably damaged by their encounter in the iced pond, that it is Rosalyn who will never fully recover from the ordeal, Rosalyn who will pay the price for their tussle with death as surely as if she was horribly scarred that winter’s day. But no, it is her, she is the damaged cousin. Rosalyn has thrived. She is now a successful photographer, she is at the helm of her life, master of her ship, navigating safe passage. Whereas Catherine is shipwrecked, slowly but steadily being devoured by the icy teeth that still grip her. The baby is an anchor pulling her down and she must cut herself free or drown.
Now she hears approaching footsteps in the corridor and wonders if Miss Janney is coming to fetch her. Suddenly she badly wants to spend a penny, the way she did as a child every time nerves got the better of her. A door leads off her room into a cubicle where there is a toilet and a basin. She dashes in to relieve herself as the footsteps recede. She is rinsing her hands under the ice-cold water that gushes from both taps, when her mind drifts back to the occasion of her ninth birthday.
To begin with it had gone very well. The sun stayed out so they had games in the garden. And she blew out all nine candles on the cake in one go. Can she recall what she’d wished for? That’s easy, she’d wished to stop feeling so nothingish. More than ever that day she felt like one of those magic painting books they sold in the newsagents. And today she is still waiting for someone to bring her to life, to colour her in, someone like Rosalyn. When her birthday tea was over they had all taken turns to see how long they could bounce on her pogo stick. Afterwards they all had a go with the Magic 8-Ball someone had brought along. They piled indoors and sat in a circle on the lounge floor, taking turns to ask it questions. Her mother had closed the curtains so there were great blocks of shadow and streaky wands of light on the floor.
But when her go arrived everything changed and went sour. Her jaw locked and her ribs hurt so that it was a struggle to breathe. Everyone stared at her, and suddenly a horrible sensation of being hot and cold all at the same time travelled over her skin. And then she felt the blood rushing to her face and her cheeks burned. She knew it was stupid but she disliked everyone looking at her. She felt self-conscious and embarrassed, the way she did when a teacher asked her to stand up in class. She had a horrid taste in her mouth as well. If she didn’t concentrate she was certain that she would be sick. At last she managed to clear her throat and speak in a little voice. ‘Is it possible that my aunt and uncle and my cousins will come for Christmas, and that we will spend it together in a big house in Sussex?’
She had been careful not to mention Rosalyn by name, acutely aware of her mother’s crafty green eyes blinking at her. She was leaning back on the wall by the door, arms folded critically. She was sure if her mother found out how badly she wanted to see her cousin, out of spite she would cancel it. She inhaled slowly, straightened out her shoulders, and repeated the question more loudly this time.
‘Is it possible that the American Hoyles will come to England for Christmas?’ She shook the ball, imagining it was a huge dice, held it upside down and rubbed the bottom of it vigorously with her thumb pad. Her eyes were riveted on the dark space, waiting for the message to appear. And they carried on holding for long seconds, hoping that there had been an error, that the spidery grey words would fade and reform. But they didn’t.
‘My . . . my reply is . . . is no,’ she faltered at her friends’ prompting, her voice squashed flat with disappointment.
There were a few consoling murmurs. But they didn’t seem to help. It was so awful because Catherine knew that she was going to cry, really cry. Her throat contracted until it was narrow as a pencil, her nose itched, and her lips grew swollen. After that the day had sagged, like one of her mother’s sponge cakes that hadn’t risen properly in the middle. Catherine longed for them all to leave, then she could go upstairs and crawl into bed. Wanting to cry and not being able to was the most hateful thing she had ever experienced, her nine-year-old self decided as she fought back tears. She had been so afraid that someone would look into her and unlock the pain inside. Only, when it happened, she knew that it wouldn’t be like emptying a cupboard until it was bare, it would just keep flowing out, forever.
By the time they all went and Stephen showed up revving his bike outside the house, Catherine didn’t feel like a ride any more. Nothing he said could chivvy her into the mood either. Her father was concerned that it was too dark anyway, so her brother slouched off with a shrug of his well-built shoulders.
‘Well, that’s that for another year,’ her mother commented tightly when she came to say goodnight to her daughter. ‘Do you like your Sindy doll?’
‘Yes, it’s nice. Thank you,’ Catherine replied levelly, eyeing Sindy who was doing the splits at that moment on her pillow. ‘She’s very pretty.’
‘Your father said you’d like a bike, but I told him that was silly. The one you’ve got will do very well for another year.’
Catherine was ashamed of her bike. It had been second-hand when they bought it. Her mother kept mentioning the solid rubber wheels as if they were a selling point, reminding her that they wouldn’t puncture. The trouble was, every jolt and bump went right through her, rattling her bones. Besides, it was painted black and white, the blobs and bubbles convincing her that the job had been done by a clumsy child. And really, she had wanted a bike that was red or blue or possibly purple; a Raleigh would have been nice. Her mother stood, patted her on the head, gave a quick sigh and tripped off. Later, when her parents assumed that she was asleep, she listened to them talking.
‘I suppose that went off all right,’ her mother sighed. ‘Though Catherine didn’t seem to appreciate it very much. Really, I don’t know why I bother sometimes.’
‘Oh, I think she did enjoy it,’ her father placated good naturedly. ‘She’s like me, she struggles to show her feelings.’
‘Well, she’s certainly not like me!’ her mother exclaimed on an indignant rising inflexion. ‘God, I didn’t want to be bothering with all this now. You were careless, Keith. She was an unfortunate accident.’
‘An accident we wouldn’t be without, Dinah,’ her father asserted, to which her mother made no response.
Catherine meditated on this for a while. An accident. Like a bad fall, that was an accident, wasn’t it? Or a car crash, or an electric shock, or slipping with a knife while you are cutting up vegetables and slicing off your finger by mistake. They usually meant lots of blood and pain, and sometimes operations and stitches, accidents. Even the little ones could leave a mark, and the big ones could scar you for life, or cripple you, or even paralyse you. A bad burn, say, or slipping on broken glass, or being crushed under a horse? However you viewed them, they weren’t nice things, they were unwelcome, circumstances you would prefer never to have happened. It hadn’t been a pleasant thought to slide into sleep with, Catherine remembers, so she’d visualized Rosalyn’s face instead, the bluest of eyes, the mouth that had never learnt to wobble, the nose that was neat and straight, a nose that hadn’t been rubbed into anything horrid.
Her hands are freezing so she turns off the tap now, dries them and returns to her perch on the bed. She ponders what misty pronouncement the Magic 8-Ball would have made on her decision to marry Sean Madigan? What wise oracle would have risen from its murky interior? Better not tell you now or Outlook not so good or even Very doubtful. And if she’d shed a single tear of the squall that her itching eyes had heralded, they would have kept on coming. Once begun, she would never have been able to empty the cupboard of her misery. Well, it is the worst feeling in the world, wanting to cry, to sob her heart out, and not being able to. Her nine-year-old self had concluded this on that wretched birthday, and her twenty-one-year-old self could confirm the childhood hypothesis this winter’s day.
The door opens, startling her from her reverie. ‘Doctor’s ready for you now, Mrs Madigan,’ Miss Janney says, her desiccated face assembling in a quick smile. And she steps into the room and stands back, holding the door wide open for Catherine to pass through. Catherine pushes off the bed, and lands on legs that have dissolved. She straightens them with the sheer force of her will, knitting together sinew and muscle with resolve. This is a private abortion because she has to keep it a secret. She concedes that it would probably have been safer to go to a hospital, but then there would have been all those questions. Isn’t this something she should discuss with her husband? He really ought to know, to have a say in the decision. If she is married, what’s the problem? Often women are a little dismayed when they discover they are expecting, but generally this negativity soon passes, to be replaced with delight. She plays through the imagined consultations over and over in her head. No, best to avoid hospitals, and get the thing dealt with swiftly and efficiently, before the trap is sprung.
She trots after the nurse feeling scared, hoping it will soon be over, wanting to miss the bit in between. Afterwards she will recall only the sketchiest of details. Bright lamps concentrated on a medical trolley. This mattress covered in a paper cloth that reminds her of the disposable tablecloths her mother used for her messy birthday party teas. A tray of what, in a speedy glance, looks like cutlery. Black curtains falling in grimly funereal folds at the windows, blocking every arrow of light. A looped tube attached to a tank. Stirrups in the air so that you can ride upside down. And the doctor, whose white tunic is spattered in blood, whose hair is tucked away in a skullcap, who wears plastic gloves. His mask, hooked over one ear, is hanging down so that she can see his mouth.
‘Hello, Mrs Madigan. Sorry to keep you waiting. Just hop up here and we’ll soon have you feeling nice and relaxed.’
And, perhaps because of the nurse’s earlier simile, comparing an abortion to a dental extraction, what strikes her suddenly is the most absurd thing. His two front teeth, nothing else about his appearance but his two big furred front teeth, rat’s teeth. Worrisomely, they are off centre, so that the line of symmetry she mentally draws from his capped brow, down the large bony ridge of his nose, and on to divide his mouth, suddenly comes adrift in the yellowing enamel. It is as though his face has a kink in it.
‘Mrs Madigan, are you all right? You look a little unwell? I can assure you that there is no need to be alarmed.’
What can she say to this? I am alarmed because you are out of kilter, Doctor. Crooked. Better not. So she doesn’t say anything. She just briskly retraces her steps and grabs her clothes, making a dash for the front door. She finishes dressing in the stairwell of the building, with the parting words of Miss Janney ringing in her ears.
‘You can’t have a refund. I told you, no refunds. If you change your mind, that’s your affair. But we don’t give refunds.’
And then? Why then comes the slamming of the door, the jarring impact seeming to pass straight through her, making her eyes snap shut. And when she reopens them she winces as another fracture makes its jagged way across the ice floor.