To Have and to Hold

  Down in the garden a cat yowled. The house breathed with its sleeping souls; she thought of Ann, washing her doll’s petticoat and hanging it up to dry, forgiving Viv who heard her murmurings under the bedclothes at night, speaking to a God she had to believe existed, for where else could one find the rightness of things? There had to be a rightness, otherwise one just believed in tossing a coin, and who could survive believing in a cruel flick of the wrist?

  A bed creaked and in the doorway stood Rosie in her Mothercare nightie. She rubbed her eyes and came over to Viv.

  ‘I had a horrible dream,’ she said.

  ‘Come here.’

  Viv pushed back the bedclothes and Rosie climbed in, as she so often did.

  ‘I dreamed there were lots of long men . . .’

  ‘Ssh . . .’

  She put her arms around Rosie and smoothed the hair from her forehead. But her daughter wouldn’t be calmed; she turned her head from side to side.

  ‘And then one of them dropped down from the tree . . .’

  ‘Ssh . . .’

  She willed Rosie to close her eyes. She must smooth it all away, because in a few years it would no longer be possible.

  That’s nerves, like being on stage. All the next morning Viv mouthed the words. Never had she felt such an actress, standing in the classroom with the faces in front of her and her eyes on the clock. Later she could remember nothing she had said, it had passed in a blur until lunch-break and she was driving the car to Wood Green High Road.

  She parked opposite the building society. For a moment she sat there, her throat tight. Now she had made up her mind she felt a curious, hot shyness. But she also felt that she had just woken up. She got out of the car.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Ann stared at her through the glass. ‘What’s happened?’

  Viv stood at the window like a customer. She felt she should write down her news and slide it through, like a cash withdrawal. She would see Ann unfolding the piece of paper; she would see Ann’s face change.

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ she said. ‘Come out to lunch.’

  ‘What? Can’t hear through this glass.’

  ‘Are you free for lunch?’

  Ann nodded and went to get her coat. A minute later they were getting into Viv’s old Peugeot. On its bonnet someone had traced, with their finger, I AM DIRTY.

  Viv did not start the engine. Ann sat beside her.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Viv.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking all night and I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.’

  ‘What?’

  Viv paused. ‘About the baby.’

  Ann stared at her. ‘What baby?’

  Viv said: ‘It’s so obvious.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘I’ll have it for you.’

  ‘Have what?’

  Viv said slowly: ‘The baby.’

  There was a silence. Later, Viv remembered watching a traffic warden walk towards the next car, starting to write in her book. She remembered a blur of red buses.

  Ann said: ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I’ll have the baby for you.’

  _____Five_____

  NEVER HAD A afternoon taken so long to pass.

  At last it was four o’clock. The bell rang, doors slammed, voices echoed along the corridors. Viv hurried back to the staffroom but Madeleine, as usual, was on the phone.

  ‘. . . Of course I’m ready for a relationship,’ she was saying, ‘but not a commitment. Look I can’t talk now . . .’

  But she would. Viv fidgeted nearby. She felt big with her news, blushing with it. She clutched her ten pence, hot in her hand.

  Harold, who worked with her in the English Department, came in and went to the lockers. He paused and turned round.

  ‘Viv dearest, I might be an obliging chap but I draw the line at correcting your homework.’

  Viv stared at the lockers. ‘Christ. Sorry.’

  She removed her books from his locker and put them into her own, one below. ‘My mind’s gone,’ she said.

  He patted her shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, we’re all suffering from terminal fatigue.’ He looked at her more closely. ‘Or have 4b been practising their sharing skills and passing you some of their substances?’

  Viv laughed. Madeleine was still on the phone.

  ‘Bright-eyed one,’ he went on, ‘are you going straight away or do you want a cup of tea?’

  She looked at the phone. She had to ring Ollie. ‘Er, I’ll stay a moment.’

  ‘I’m not rejecting you,’ Madeleine was saying, ‘I’m just saying I’ve got to prepare my tests tonight.’

  ‘. . . What a bunch of tarts,’ said Harold.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, guess who I saw in the pub last night with guess who?’

  Alan, their Head of Department, came in.

  ‘Dare I tell him?’ asked Harold.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Alan. ‘I’m innoculated. The ILEA does it for free.’

  ‘I was telling Viv, I saw the cream of our womanhood, Eileen and Yvonne from the Upper Sixth, in the pub last night with the schoolkeeper.’

  ‘Don’t blame them,’ said Viv. ‘He’s got a lovely little bum and he comes with a free house.’

  ‘Know something, Viv Meadows?’ said Alan, half joking, but you could never be sure. ‘You’re worse than the lot of them.’

  ‘She’s being very skittish this afternoon,’ said Harold. ‘I think 4b slipped her something.’

  Madeleine put the phone down. Viv darted to it.

  ‘Ollie? Hello. Listen, will you be late? What’s happening tonight?’

  Ollie said he was going to a gallery opening – one of the staff photographers had a show. ‘What’s up?’ he asked. His voice seemed faint and crackly, as if he were a hundred miles away. She wondered how she could ever tell him.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she said. ‘See you later.’

  Ken was still out, visiting sites. Ann put down the phone. If only she could simply hear his voice; though what she could tell from his voice she had no idea. She just wanted to know he was there, and that at some point she could speak. It was 4.30. She pictured him tramping up and down some rubble-strewn house, innocent of her news and therefore incomplete.

  Derek came over to her desk. ‘Er, Annie.’

  ‘Yes?’

  He showed her a sheet of paper. ‘There’s a little something here that puzzles me. You worked this out?’

  She nodded. ‘Just now.’

  ‘Correct me if I’m mistaken, but shouldn’t these,’ he pointed, ‘be in hundreds?’

  She stared at the paper. ‘I am an idiot.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Rather a relief really.’

  ‘Why?’

  He touched her shoulder. ‘To see that even you can make a mistake sometimes.’

  Faces stared. They grimaced, they grinned. They pointed their fingers at her. Their hair was spiked and their cheeks painted: tattoos, swirls. Sometimes their chests were bare; that was when they were African tribesmen. Sometimes they wore chains and pins; that was when they were punks. Viv moved from photo to photo, pretending to look. She tried to feel casual.

  ‘All this narcissism.’ Diz came up behind her. He was Ollie’s magazine editor.

  She pointed to the photos. ‘These?’

  ‘Us.’ He indicated the guests: smiles, glistening lips, small whoops of laughter. ‘Who’s looking at the pics?’

  ‘I am,’ she lied. Now she saw Ollie.

  He came over, eyebrows raised. ‘What’re you doing here?’

  ‘She couldn’t resist these beautiful bodies,’ said Diz.

  ‘Don’t inflame her,’ said Ollie. ‘You’re heading for trouble.’

  Diz passed him a glass of wine. ‘Half an hour with the Pentels and you too could be an art object.’

  ‘Sex object.’ Ollie sipped. He looked at Viv over the rim of his glass. She smiled and wished she hadn’t come. ‘She wa
nts something. I know that look.’

  Diz refilled Viv’s glass. She drank. ‘I just felt like it,’ she said. She wanted to shout her news and silence the room. She wanted never to tell anybody.

  Giggling, they stumbled into the hall.

  ‘Where’re the kids?’ Ollie asked.

  ‘Julie’s got them for the night.’

  They went into the living room and she started pulling off his jacket.

  ‘Hey, what’re you doing to me?’ he mumbled.

  ‘Come on, now’s our chance.’

  ‘You’re pissed. This is rape within marriage.’

  ‘You’re always going on about knee trembles.’ She pulled him on to the sofa, unbuttoning his shirt.

  ‘I knew you were turned on by primitive men.’ She gave up with the shirt and pulled it over his head. His voice came out muffled. ‘All gay, you know, those tribes. Poncing about – ow,’ as she yanked, ‘poncing about with their little mirrors.’

  Viv got his shirt off and silenced his mouth, kissing him. She ran her cold fingers down his back, feeling him flinch. She would heat him up.

  ‘Women are just for reproductive purposes,’ he muttered, lifting himself up so she could slide his trousers off. ‘Just bodies, just wombs . . .’ She pulled off his shoes. ‘Just duty . . . it’s only what I’m doing, after all . . .’ She eased off his underpants . . . ‘Just doing my duty . . .’

  She flung aside a child’s shoe and climbed on him, pushing back his head. Over on the dresser the wheel scraped as the hamster, now wide awake, went round and round.

  ‘Candles,’ said Ken, nodding appreciatively, he sat down. ‘We ought to do this more often.’

  ‘You like it?’ The lights were low. Ann lifted the lid from the coq au vin. ‘Ken, I wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Tell you what. Let’s be really romantic.’

  He jumped up and went over to the music centre. He searched amongst the records and held up a Simon and Garfunkel. ‘Remember when we first heard this?’

  She nodded.

  ‘At Bob and Jenny’s.’ He smiled. ‘There you were, looking through the records and feeling as spare as me. In that red dress with the things on it.’

  ‘Listen, Ken –’

  He switched on the stereo. The lights fused.

  ‘Blast!’

  Viv and Ollie lay on the sofa, their limbs damply locked. Clothes lay strewn on the floor. There was silence, but for the scrape, scrape of the hamster.

  ‘Primitive enough for you?’ asked Ollie at last.

  ‘Ollie. I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘Oh no, you were buttering me up.’ He gestured at the clothes.

  ‘No. I just feel . . . so excited. Shall I tell it to you straight?’

  ‘Go on. Get it over with.’

  She laid her head on his chest. Her cheek felt his thumping heart. She said: ‘I want to have a baby for Ann.’

  ‘What?’

  She lifted her head. ‘It suddenly seemed so obvious. It’d be like having a baby for ourselves.’ She paused and then spoke, her voice low. ‘I could do it, Ollie. We could do it.’

  ‘You want to what?’

  ‘Have a baby for her. We’ve worked it out. I could take a couple of months off work, then breastfeed it for six weeks and –’

  ‘We? Who?’

  ‘Me and Ann. We had lunch today.’

  ‘You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I am. I’ve never been so serious in my life.’

  He moved her back and stared at her. At last he said: ‘What?’

  She took a breath. ‘It’s possible, Ollie. I know I could do it. What do you think it must be like for her? The finality? The hopelessness?’ She spoke slowly. She had rehearsed this scene all day, but now she couldn’t remember how she was going to put it. ‘She thinks she’s going mad.’

  ‘It’s you who’s going mad.’

  ‘Just when she thought that this time, at last, it would be all right.’ She sat up, beside him. She looked at his watchful face, his brown, messy hair. ‘What do you think it must be like, seeing our children grow up? Everybody’s children?’

  They sat there. A car passed in the street; the hamster scraped.

  ‘Ollie, it’s actually possible to help her, to change somebody’s life. Don’t you see?’

  He didn’t reply.

  She spoke in a rush. ‘You and me, we’re always talking. Words, words, that’s all anybody does. Well, at last we can actually do something.’ She lifted her hand and turned his face towards her. ‘Don’t you see how lucky we are, how unfair it is? Don’t you see we can do something about it, just because I’m a woman?’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Just because I’m a woman,’ she said again. ‘I can choose to. There’s a marvellous freedom about it.’

  ‘Free? Being pregnant?’

  She nodded. Her whole body concentrated – every fibre, every nerve. ‘Listen, Ollie.’ She cupped his face in her hands but he jerked away. ‘It can be done.’ She spoke urgently. ‘It can.’ She searched his face; she could tell nothing from it.

  ‘Think I’ll put on my underpants.’ He moved aside, reached down and pulled them on. It sealed him away and made her more naked. He sat down again on the other end of the sofa.

  She looked at the floor and thought: which way will he turn? At this particular moment she had no idea. It was as if she had met him ten minutes ago. It shocked her, that he could be so unfamiliar, when for fourteen years he had been her best friend.

  ‘You are an extraordinary woman,’ he said at last. ‘And I thought I knew you.’

  She fumbled amongst the clothes for her cigarettes and lit one. She blew out the smoke. ‘You do.’

  ‘You want us to have a baby, and then just give it to Ann and Ken?’

  Suddenly she grabbed his hand. ‘Isn’t it a wonderful idea? Isn’t it exciting?’ His hand didn’t move. ‘We’re always going on about – oh, how we should break down the old systems, nuclear families, how we should be experimental –’

  ‘Ah, so this is an experiment.’

  ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘It’s real!’ She stopped, and adjusted her voice lower. ‘It could be,’ she said softly. ‘If we let it.’

  He shook his head. ‘Extraordinary woman.’ He was half smiling, but that made her uneasy. ‘Why don’t we save the bother and just give them Daisy?’ He raised his eyebrows, his voice jauntier. ‘And throw in a set of placemats and some Green Shield stamps? And come to think of it, the milkman looks a lonely sort of chap, we could give him Rosie – no –’ he held up his hand, his voice rising – ‘no, we’ll hold an auction for her, plenty more where she came from –’

  ‘Ollie!’

  ‘We’ll put ourselves in the Yellow Pages and say we’ll deliver anywhere in the London area.’

  ‘Ollie.’

  He stopped, breathing heavily. Then he started to laugh. Warily, she smiled. He leaned forward, shaking, and put his head in his hands. She gazed at the bumps of his backbone, at his long lean thighs. He could be sobbing or he could be laughing. It unnerved her that she couldn’t guess which.

  ‘Ollie,’ she said gently. ‘Talk to me. Tell me what you think.’

  He stayed sitting there, his head buried. Finally he looked up. His face had changed; as if it had collapsed and been reassembled.

  ‘Know something, Viv? I haven’t dared tell you, all these years.’

  ‘What?’

  He stayed gazing at her. Finally she dropped her eyes. He said: ‘You frighten me.’

  Ken stood on a step-ladder in the hall, fiddling with the fuse box. Ann held up the candle.

  ‘Blasted bloody thing,’ he muttered. ‘Just one of those days.’

  ‘Poor Ken.’

  ‘Screwdriver please.’

  She passed it to him.

  ‘My godfathers, what a day. First Bob prangs the van, then there’s a gas leak at that place in Willesden. Panic stations. Then – wait for it – but who gets a flat tyre?’ br />
  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Muggins here.’

  The lights came on. She sighed and blew out the candle. How could she talk to him now?

  ‘Sorry.’ He climbed down from the ladder. ‘Ruined that lovely meal.’

  ‘It’s not ruined,’ she lied.

  She told him in the darkness, in bed. She prayed into the blackness that he would listen, that he would simply let her finish speaking. She pushed her feet round and round the cool edges of the sheets; the electric blanket was on and she was hot. She thought: how can I think about being hot at a time like this? She thought how in the past she had bargained with God under the sheets, long ago now, and how Ken’s body had moved into hers – oh, how many hundreds of times? With my body I thee worship. Under this sheet they had pressed their warm limbs together. Mouth to mouth, life had begun.

  She began.

  ‘Ken.’

  ‘Mmm . . .’ He shifted drowsily.

  ‘Ken, I must talk to you.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘There never seems to be the right moment.’

  He turned over. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s about this baby business.’

  He paused. ‘I’m sorry, Ann. I just can’t do it.’

  ‘It’s too late anyway. I rang an adoption society.’

  ‘What? When?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ she said. ‘The latest age for a woman is thirty-five. That gives us less than a year.’

  ‘You sure about this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can’t be. I’ll phone them up.’

  She said, ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘It can’t be!’

  ‘You refused anyway.’

  ‘But . . . oh Annie.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.

  ‘It does!’

  ‘It’s too late, it doesn’t matter.’ She took a breath. ‘At least, it needn’t matter.’

  ‘What?’

  By now her eyes had become used to the darkness and she could make out his shape beside her. But she kept her gaze on the ceiling. ‘Would it seem like adoption if Viv had the baby for us?’

  She turned to look at him. Beyond his head she could see the green numbers pulse on their digital clock. 11.51 changed to 11.52.

  He said: ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘I’m not. Nor is she.’