After the bath her mother sat doing a crossword puzzle while she listened to the radio, and then they talked about a novel that they had both read, and about what they thought of the fashions in the Vogue magazine that Mother had bought. That’s how they passed the next three days, not talking about the baby or the hospital, but in an odd way Laura felt that Mother’s presence and inconsequential conversation formed a net, and although every night she dreamt she was falling, alone, with no one to catch her, her baby son slipping away from her as she fell, during the days she began to feel as though she was being brought to shore.
On the fourth day after her mother’s arrival, Laura felt well enough to get up, and they sat for a while in the living room. But as soon as her strength began to return, Laura found her mother’s presence less reassuring. She began to feel gritty with irritation over her slow-moving conversation and her anxiety about small things such as what they would eat that evening and why Kathy kept burning the potatoes. And she found her tentative movements, as she padded around the house with self-conscious attention not to make too much noise, undeservedly maddening. Above all, Mother’s decision not to mention the expected presence who had failed to arrive no longer felt kind. It seemed excruciating. But Laura said nothing, and remained the dutiful patient, eating her soup and playing cards in the afternoons.
It was ten days after her mother’s arrival that Edward returned. He had telephoned each day, but had been as monosyllabic as Laura had been, and it was a shock, when he came in, to see her own exhaustion reflected in his face. Mother was not at ease with him, and as he went to get out the gin bottle before dinner, she asked him needling, polite little questions about his trip. In response, he talked about what he had been doing, accompanying the new ambassador on a public relations trip through unexciting areas of Colorado and Oregon, and Laura was surprised by how bitter he allowed himself to sound. ‘Poor Inverchapel had to keep telling them how wonderful it is that the empire is unravelling, and to try to play up to their rabid Red-baiting. He did it all better than Halifax would have done, though, I think.’ He shook his head. ‘Though neither of them finds it that easy flirting with these homespun Americans. Who would?’
Mother and Kathy had cooked roast chicken with creamed potatoes and string beans, and Laura found herself eating properly as Edward sat there, drinking and mulling over his trip. After a while she realised he was talking, for once, simply to ensure that he did not have to hear too much about how things were going with her, but she did not judge him for that reluctance. She felt relieved that he was back. Soon Mother would go and when they were alone again they would have the chance, she told herself as she scraped up her chicken, to recreate the happiness that could be theirs. She picked up her glass of wine and the cold burst of sourness in her mouth was refreshing. She smiled at Edward as he went on talking in that uncharacte?ristically inconseque?ntial way.
4
‘You’ve recovered so well,’ Monica said when they met at a cocktail party held by a senator a few weeks later. Apart from an overriding sense that she had to be careful not to move too quickly, or talk too fast, that the carapace she had built up for herself had to be carefully handled at all times, Laura inwardly agreed with her; she had recovered well. The scar on her belly was itchy now rather than painful, and that evening she had experimented with a dark eyeliner and bright lipstick of the kind she never usually wore, which seemed to compensate for the expressionlessness of her face. And she felt almost grateful that nothing seemed to have changed around her; this was the kind of party she remembered from before her pregnancy – the tables of smoked turkey and ham, the trays of martinis and manhattans. There was Edward still at the British ambassador’s side, even if it was no longer the slender, wry Lord Halifax, but the altogether more talkative Inverchapel.
‘I hear your trip to Iowa went very well,’ Monica said to the ambassador, simply the expected words at the expected moment, as he paused near to her.
‘It wasn’t too bad,’ Inverchapel conceded, and then launched into a would-be amusing anecdote which, Laura thought, must have been trotted out a dozen times already that evening. ‘The slight difficulty was that I had asked to stay in a farm for three days, and I’d brought as a gift a quart of Scotch and a quart of Schnapps – I thought the father looked a little tight-lipped. It was only later I discovered they were all strict teetotals.’ Inverchapel acknowledged their smiles, and walked on to more interesting conversations.