He had expected hysteria at home, he realized; he had feared blood, or a confrontation of female biology. This muted calm was disconcerting and made his role unclear. She already had a hot water bottle, and beside her on the coffee table lay a still life of sickroom requirements: a plate of biscuits, a cup of tea, a glass of water, a packet of chocolate buttons, a box of painkillers, a small packet of tissues, a weekly celebrity magazine. He had come home intending to nurse her, an evening of his own hard penance so he could go back to school having altered something. But her requirements had been met.
“Are you okay?” he asked, foolishly. He leaned over to kiss her and she inclined her head toward him so he ended up catching her paternally on her hairline.
“I’m okay. Your dad got me an appointment with his friend tomorrow morning. Not that Claire person, someone else. It’s nice of him, usually I’d have to wait longer. It’ll be more comfortable after that, apparently.”
“Does it hurt?”
She shook her head. “They said I could take Paracetamol, but then when we got back your dad gave me— He said I didn’t have to be hurting when he had something stronger that’s okay to take. So he gave me something . . . American,” she finished. This speech had taken effort; she sank back onto the sofa, wearied by it.
“Lucky, Dad never gives me his good drugs. But I mean, you’re okay. You’re safe?”
“Yes. S’just one of those things. Wasn’t meant to be, or whatever.”
“But how can it just be—” His voice broke and he took Gwen’s white hand and raised it to his lips. He could not quite find her in the dark hollows of her eyes. It had begun to dawn on him what had not seemed real or possible before this loss—that he had almost had a child. A son, maybe. A moment later he found himself weeping. Gwen shifted to her knees and held his head tightly against her breast. “How can it just be gone, just like that? That was our baby.”
“It’s okay,” she whispered, “everything’s okay.” Her hand stroked his hair, but the more she soothed, the harder he wept. He did not want to stop. Nothing was okay. He had lost something in which he had never believed.
? ? ?
UPSTAIRS, GWEN SANK INTO BED. She had ordered Nathan back to school, back to his necessary responsibilities and the unaltered reality of exams. It had been a relief when his father drove him away and the house was silent again. When James returned she could vaguely hear his voice and her mother’s mingled, soft and low in the kitchen, and for once she did not feel an angry impulse to eavesdrop, did not fear secrets or treachery. She knew they were speaking of her, and speaking tenderly. She did not deserve it.
Her mother had changed the sheets and refilled her hot water bottle and this Gwen clutched to the dull ache in her abdomen—though in truth the pain was not bad, no worse than period cramps. After a moment James knocked and came in, with two tablets and a glass of water.
“In case you wanted something in the night. You could take one now and one after two a.m., if you wake.”
“Will it help me sleep?”
He nodded.
“It’s not actually hurting that much. But can I take it anyway?”
“Just tonight, sure. One at a time, though. Gwen”—he paused in the doorway and ran a hand through his hair, gathering the front in his fist, a mannerism she recognized in Nathan—“I’m so very sorry. I’m on call tonight but you know I won’t leave this house unless I really have to. If you need anything in the night—”
“I know. Thanks.”
“Good night. Your mother will come in in a minute.”
“Wait!” She heard her own voice calling him back, and seconds later he returned and was at her bedside.
“Can I ask—” She had no vocabulary for her question but her hand was suddenly between James’s, clasped tightly and shaken on each emphatic syllable.
“You did not make this happen, you hear me? It is not possible. It’s not coffee or what you ate or what you didn’t eat or a heavy box you lifted or anything within your control. This happens in one in five pregnancies, even at your age, and people don’t talk about it and I have no idea why; it would spare a lot of women a lot of needless, toxic guilt. I would not bullshit you. I need you to hear me, okay?”
He would not look away, she knew, until she nodded.
The door closed, and she took a deep, unsteady breath. James had not understood. She had done this, not with her body but with her mind. She had wished away a baby. Overjoyed at the end of the fatigue and nausea, she hadn’t known that for days she had been celebrating death within her. She had longed for liberation and in answer a violent, unexpected liberation had come.
Beneath her hot spread hands her abdomen was flat and unremarkable. In, out. She sank back into her pillow exhausted, washed into unconsciousness on a tide of Tramadol, and a rising steady surge of dark relief.
40.
Long ago on a different floor of that same hospital, Julia had cradled newborn Gwen and known her body’s work: to shield this child from harm, lifelong. The cord between them severed but her daughter pulsed in her veins and swelled her heart. Life, she promised her, would be a thing of beauty—no less was due to such unblemished perfection.
The arrogance! Vigilance could not keep her child beyond the reach of germs or falls or playground bullies, nor from allergies or fights with friends or the teachers who found her unfocused, or petulant, who couldn’t see her unique brilliance and charm. Julia had failed so often, and then could only suffer for Gwen, suffer with Gwen, and try in the aftermath of each small calamity to make amends. And then Daniel had died and huge wet fawn eyes had looked up at Julia and pierced her, and she had read in their bewilderment, How could you let this happen?
Far taller than all her classmates, awkward and angular and exuding toxic sadness, for that first year Gwen had repelled the other girls. At the school gates they passed her by in flocks, tiny sparrows twittering, avoiding the unsettling spectacle of her bent, trudging form. In her hands an egg of Silly Putty constantly molded and remolded, on her back a grubby purple rucksack and in it the world’s weight. She was not open or appealing but heavy browed, frowning, angry, impossible to befriend. Julia picked her up each afternoon with a lead weight in her stomach. She couldn’t make it better. Instead, she compensated.
Now such an adult misfortune, a complex, adult sorrow. It was obscene and unbearable to feel relief, seeing Gwen’s face pale against the pale sheets, her daughter meek and bewildered, curled fetal beneath a winter duvet on long summer days. For her child’s lost innocence, Julia wept. Such knowing, now, as no grown woman ought to know!