the high purple thistles that pushed their heads through the cracks in the stone floor. I laid her down on white bindweed bells and dug her grave outside the walls.
The garden has long lost its form. A low drystone wall marks its boundaries. In the summer the whitethorn and lilac grows wild, and the ripe fruit drops silently from a long forgotten plum tree during the autumn months. I wanted to name her. Everyone needs a name to stamp their identity on this world, no matter how brief their stay. Joy, I whispered. You would have brought us such joy. My body ached, bled, wept for what I had lost; but when I left that place, my mind was a cold, determined force with no room for grief or doubt.
In the hallway, I paused before a mirror. The weight I had gained during my brief pregnancy seemed to have fallen from my cheeks. My eyes had steel in the blue, a stranger’s eyes staring back at me through swollen eyelids, defying me to question or condemn. My hair looked dark, the blonde strands lank with sweat and mud. I was unrecognisable from the woman who had earlier walked the lane; yet, it seemed effortless, this casting aside of an old skin and stepping into the new.
I slept and awakened, slept again. I had no memory of dreams. Dawn was leaching the stars from the sky when I arose and showered dirt from my body, burned my clothes, the towels, the bathroom mat. I washed the floor and walls. I threw out the yellow roses. A bird sang outside the kitchen window, a shrill, repetitive solo, until others took up the song. Their chorus throbbed through the morning.
I rang Miriam and told her I would work from home for a few days. Too many interruptions in the office and I had spreadsheets to prepare, catch-up phone calls to make. Later, David rang from the rig.
‘Our baby moved,’ I told him. ‘Like a butterfly, fluttering wings beneath my heart.’
The words turned to ash in my mouth but they had been spoken and I heard him sigh, as if he had placed his hands upon my belly and felt his child respond. And all around me, in the cracks and crevices of these walls, in the nooks and crannies of this old house, in the chinks of all that had passed since I moved here, the voices whispered – No more…no more…no more.
Susanne
September 1993
Carla Kelly is everywhere. The public face of Anticipation. I see her on billboards and bus shelters, in glossy advertisements. Her white teeth, her full pink lips, her long blonde hair, and that look in her brown eyes, that amber shimmer of contentment; earth mother-to-be, with attitude and glamour.
These days, she’s the first celebrity to be interviewed in the media whenever the subject of pregnancy is aired. She writes a column in Weekend Flair. ‘My Pregnancy Diary’ she calls it. How to retain one’s sexuality and sense of fashion during those long nine months. Promoting Anticipation all the time. One thing about her, she always was professional.
The Anticipation maternity collection, Dee Ambrose told me when I called into the Stork Club boutique this afternoon, is the most popular label she’s ever carried. Lorraine Gardner is an excellent designer and she’s touched gold with Anticipation. I was so impressed, I bought a pair of fine wool trousers and a silk twist top.
Perfect for the final trimester, said Dee, and wrapped them in tissue paper before placing them in a carrier bag. Anticipation was written in gold lettering against a black background. An elegant bag for an elegant collection. On the way out of the boutique, I almost collided with a lifesize cutout of Carla Kelly. Dee laughed, noticing how my mouth opened with an apology in the same instant that I realised it was part of the promotion.
Only the big campaigns can afford her now. Her career took off after that lingerie promotion. It gave her an edge, a notoriety, all that sleek flesh and red lace flashing from the billboards. Drivers rang talk radio and complained that her image distracted them during rush-hour. Lorraine Gardner wouldn’t have had a chance of running her Anticipation campaign if Carla Kelly hadn’t been her sister-in-law.
I carried my carrier bag like a banner to the Nutmeg Café where I’d arranged to meet my mother-in-law. The rain fell steadily as I crossed Market Square and I walked carefully on the slippery cobblestones. A wretched day for the Saturday market, what with the wind billowing the awnings and people scurrying past the stalls towards the nearest shelter.
The Nutmeg was crowded. The smell of damp wool reminded me of crowded buses on muggy school mornings. Women stopped at my table to tell me I was blooming. Even the cashier, a frail, round-shouldered woman, smiled as if she’d known me all her life and said my bump had become enormous since the last time she saw me. I’ve no memory of us ever meeting but she knew that David had returned to the rig and that I’m planning an end-of-season discount sale at Miriam’s Glasshouse. I grew up in the solitude of crowds but here, where the population is sparse, everyone seems to know my business. Miriam arrived at the Nutmeg shortly afterwards and apologised for being late. Something to do with bumping into acquaintances on every corner she turned. She hugged me. Took me quite by surprise. No time to move before I was enveloped in her arms. My mother-in-law has a habit of nudging and hugging and tapping me when I least expect it. I’ve never grown used to her effusiveness. I expect it’s to do with my upbringing – nothing touchy-feely about my parents. I’ve told her about my childhood. The silence and the separation, two people living on either side of a glass wall of indifference, so steeped in their own unhappiness they were incapable of reaching out to me.
‘It explains a lot,’ Miriam said, and pitied me for the tenderness I’d never experienced.
I’m willing to endure her pity but not her touch. ‘Don’t tempt fate,’ I warn her when she asks if my baby is moving. Now she no longer seeks permission to rest her hands on my stomach, but today in the Nutmeg she hugged me so tight I thought my heart would flip over.
Phyllis Lyons entered and came straight to our table. No asking, just an assumption that, as Miriam’s school friend and my nearest neighbour, she had every right to join us. She picked up my Anticipation carrier bag and placed it on the table.
‘Go on, girl,’ she said. ‘Give us a look.’
I lifted out my new purchases and held them up for inspection. Miriam thought the twist top was a wonderful colour. ‘Sapphire blue, a perfect match for your eyes,’ she said, and ran her hand over the silky fabric. ‘So glamorous,’ she added, ‘yet it looks so comfortable.’
Phyllis checked the price tag. ‘Mother of God,’ she said. ‘Are you made of money or what? What’s the sense of glamour when you look like a whale? If I were you, I’d just keep letting out the waistband.’
What does she know? She’s a middle-aged spinster and gone beyond all that now.
Miriam looked apologetically at me and placed my clothes back in the carrier bag. She finds Phyllis as irritating as I do, but neighbours, she warned me when I first came to live in Maoltrán, have long memories. It’s wise to keep on their good side.
‘I feel sorry for her,’ she said, when Phyllis finally left to pick up a prescription for her mother. ‘It’s no joke looking after a creaking door and that mother of hers has been creaking for as long as I can remember.’
She asked when I was due to see Professor Langley again. ‘Next week, I told her. I’ll take the afternoon off, if that’s okay with you?’
‘Of course…absolutely.’ She nodded vigorously. Her anxiety smothers me. The harder she tries
