house was quiet, except for the distant sound of the television. Marcelle let her bag and Daisy’s music drop on to the hall floor.
The air seemed heavy and stale with the taint of Sunday’s unresolved quarrel.
It had been a terrible argument, the more frightening because it had swelled out of almost nothing, out of an ordinary weekend disagreement about whether Michael devoted enough time to his children. He had come into the kitchen, dressed for golf.
Marcelle had demanded, ‘Are you going out again? What about Jon and Daisy, don’t you think they might like to see their father on a Sunday? They don’t see you all week, do they?’
‘Yes, I am going out. I’m going to play golf. I work hard and I need time away from there’ – he meant the concrete and glass slabs of the hospital ‘– and from here as well.’ Michael had made a gesture with his hand as if to push back the walls of their house.
The resolute coldness in him had scared her, and then it had made her angry. She stared back at him over the chopping board, the kitchen table, the basket of ironing waiting to be folded.
‘I work hard, too, Michael. What about me?’
His anger had answered hers, and then exceeded it.
‘Everything here is about you. Your standards, your ideals. You want to be the perfect mother with the perfect family, you want your job, you want your house just so. It’s all to do with what you want. You want it, you have it, but don’t expect me to conform to the design.’
‘It isn’t a design. I do it out of love for you all.’
Marcelle had begun to shout. Her fear was intensifying but it became fear of herself, because she never shouted, never made scenes.
‘It doesn’t come across as love.’
‘I can’t help that, Michael. Perhaps you can’t accept what you won’t give.’
‘It’s always me, isn’t it? What I can’t or won’t do? I support you, don’t I? You have your children, your hobbies, your sewing and cooking. It doesn’t seem to me that you have a bad bargain.’
‘Cooking isn’t a hobby, it’s my job. I make my contribution, as far as I can, with two children to care for as well.’
The argument had grown, sloughing and bouncing between the two of them and gathering momentum until it became an avalanche of unleashed resentment. Reason and consideration had seemed to stand up like sticks in its path, only to be snapped and swept away.
‘Perhaps the truth is that you don’t love me any longer,’ Marcelle said.
‘Perhaps,’ Michael agreed coldly.
The avalanche had run out of impetus, with no more ground to consume. Hot-mouthed, they regarded each other across the bleak murrain.
Marcelle had become aware of the heavy silence spreading through the house. She knew that the children were crouching upstairs in their bedrooms, listening to their parents’ ranting voices. She had felt pinched with shame, for herself and for them.
A moment later Jonathan had appeared pale-faced at the head of the stairs.
‘Don’t argue,’ he had shouted. ‘Stop arguing.’
‘Adults do argue,’ Michael told him sharply. ‘That’s something for you to learn.’
He had gone out, then, with his golf bag slung over his shoulder.
Jonathan’s homework books were spread on the kitchen table now, but Jonathan was in the next room watching television. Michael had collected him from a late evening at school. The boy glanced up at his mother and sister.
‘Hello, Ma, Daze.’
‘Hello, Jon. Had a good day? Where’s Daddy?’
Marcelle asked the question although she knew the answer already.
Jonathan shrugged. His eyes had returned to the television screen. ‘Upstairs, working.’
Marcelle ran Daisy’s bath and saw her into it. Then she went along the landing to Michael’s study and opened the door. He was sitting at his desk, surrounded by papers and files and medical journals. He had been staring at a research paper, but he had taken in none of the information it contained. Instead, since Marcelle had come in, he had been listening to the sounds of the house. There had been a quickening of the air, and the joists and timbers had seemed to creak under the pressure of her briskness. He heard her feet on the stairs, and the sound of water running, and the children following her directions. This was so familiar to him that he had to concentrate to extract the idea of his wife, separate in herself, from the fug of domesticity. He was frowning when she opened the door.
‘Had a good day?’ he asked, taking off his reading glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
Marcelle saw the frown. ‘Yes, not bad. Nina’s going to help me with the costumes for the play.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I’ll see Daisy into bed, then I’ll make some supper.’
‘Fine. I’ll be down before too long.’
Marcelle hesitated, running her fingers around the smooth circumference of the doorknob. She was reassured to see him, here in his place, because she was half afraid that there would come an evening when he would not return home. But her relief was immediately soured by her resentment of him, and the two sensations made a sickly brew inside her. Struggling with herself she went and stood beside his chair. When she looked down she could see the patch of thin hair on his crown, and the fine network of thread veins on the nearest cheek.
In a distant voice she offered, ‘If what happened on Sunday was my fault, I’m sorry for it.’
It was the first time it had been mentioned since Michael’s return on Sunday afternoon.
After a moment, he said, ‘I am sorry, too.’
He did not make any move to touch her, even to take her hand, as he once would have done. Marcelle waited, staring at the work on his desk. It was a report on the orthopaedic rehabilitation of geriatric patients after hip replacement operations.
‘Will you come down and have a drink?’ she asked, wanting to find a warmer voice than the small, cold one that came out of her.
‘I won’t be too long,’ he repeated.
She left him to his work, and went to see the children into their beds.
Gradually the baby’s mouth went slack and the drowsy sucking stopped completely. Her head fell back as her gums released the breast. Vicky held her still for a minute, gazing at the tiny dark crescents of her eyelashes and the whitish pad of tissue on her upper lip, rimmed with milk. This baby was like Mary and Alice had been but she was also different, more beautiful and more precious, because she would be the last one. There was no doubt about that. Gordon would never agree to a third try for a boy.
Vicky rocked the baby in her arms, softly humming. She had already forgotten the
