Chapter 7
Lisa was lying on the couch in her conservatory, revelling in the luxury of having some time entirely to herself. The twins were sleeping in their prams beside her, and Seb was still at Meg’s. She had, she thought, about half an hour before he was due back.
‘Don’t you at least need a home help?’ Alec had nagged at Lisa several times in the last few days.
‘I’m managing extremely well,’ she’d snapped at him, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. ‘Rita gives the babies their bath, and I don’t want anyone else around them, spreading germs. Lucky it’s such torpid weather; I don’t even need to dress them most of the time. And God bless Pampers!’
Help, Lisa felt, meant someone constantly about, someone she’d feel obliged to talk to, someone who’d want to chat over coffee and biscuits, require regular cups of tea. Lisa preferred her own way of coping. She knew that Meg managed a much larger family and her chickens and goats. For the moment Lisa wanted as little interference as she could get away with. There was a sense, she realised vaguely, of not wanting to be spied on.
Alec’s returning interest in her body was a different issue. Something impelled her to try to keep him away for the time being, though why she felt this she couldn’t really understand. There was, after all, no longer any reason for it. She shelved the problem neatly by insisting he help her with the two o’clock morning feed. As she’d worked out, that knocked him out.
In any case he wasn’t at home all that often. The launch of Multiplier, due around the time of the twins’ birthday, had unexpectedly been postponed. The delay had infuriated Alec. All his hard work, all the time he’d spent, were wasted. Flaxton, overwhelmed with pre launch orders of what promised to be an even more commercially important fertiliser than Doubler, needed Alec’s presence both in Bristol and in London.
‘And d’you really have to go on wearing that awful gear?’ Alec had demanded several times, exasperated.
For some reason she could not explain even to herself Lisa continued to wear her maternity clothes. The bump, she had to admit when she examined her body in the bath, though marginally there, was flattening rapidly. Was she disturbed, suffering from post-partum depression? Did her conviction that another child would soon appear mean some sort of mental illness? She’d heard of women becoming psychotic after childbirth. Was that why she was so irritable with Alec, so on edge? Perhaps she’d ask Meg for some of the valerian tea she’d always sworn by.
‘Drugs do be addictive.’ Meg had shaken her head sagely when Lisa had brought the subject up. ‘I grow they roots right in me own garden. Stands to reason them got to be better for yer.’
The sound of crunching gravel on the drive shook Lisa out of her thoughts. Probably Meg already. She walked to the conservatory door and saw Meg and Sebastian, hand in hand, coming towards her. Seb was sobbing, wiping his eyes. He pulled away from Meg as soon as he saw his mother, and ran towards her as fast as he could.
‘Kitty dead, Mummy!’ he cried out, tears smudging down his face.
Lisa lifted him into her arms. ‘There, now, Seb; you know sometimes kitties get ill – ’
‘All kitties dead!’
‘Frank drowned all five on they,’ Meg greeted her, subdued. ‘Forgot him did promise one to Sebbie. Him be that upset.’
‘There now, darling. We’ll find another kitty for you, promise.’
‘I be picking out another one for he,’ Meg said uncomfortably. ‘Don’t know what Frank were thinking of, drowning all five on they.’ She smiled vaguely at Lisa. ‘Sebbie do like the calicoes specially. Thought as I spotted one at Mark’s t’other day.’
‘Come along now, Sebbie, everything’s going to be all right. There’ll be another kitty for you soon.’ Lisa cuddled the little boy to her as she turned to Meg. ‘It is good of you to take such trouble, Meg. You mean Mark Ditcheat’s got a new litter? That would be lovely.’
Meg was now peering into the prams, then swept her eyes over Lisa. ‘Still in your smocks? I’d have thought you’d be fed up with they by now,’ she said, looking at Lisa critically. ‘You’re that little anyways, and you got your figure back right off. Different for us; baint nothing else for us to wear.’
‘They’re much more comfortable in this heat,’ Lisa insisted evenly, annoyed at Meg’s indiscretion. ‘I’m sorry, Meg. I’d offer you a cup of tea, but I’m so pressed for time...’
‘No call to worry none; just bringing Seb back,’ Meg said quietly, searching Lisa’s face. ‘And Frank said to let you know as he didn’t forget the milk. Don’ll drop it off later. Him won’t be long. It be market day; him be taking some of the Jerseys in.’
‘We can survive for at least another hour,’ Lisa joked. ‘After that the racket will be intolerable.’ She glanced at the prams affectionately.
‘Seems the goat’s milk be doing they a power of good. Natural be best, whatever they doctors do say.’
‘I know.’ Lisa couldn’t help sounding proud. ‘They didn’t lose a single ounce. Rita says she’s never come across prems putting weight on right away; Janus looks almost plump! I told her your two did just as well. She was very impressed.’
‘Her come from London,’ Meg dismissed Rita as irrelevant. ‘But I never did see a baby put on weight as quick as your Janus. Not even Phyllie.’
Lisa laughed, delighted. She was assured now in her motherhood. She was no longer infertile, pitied and patronised. On the contrary, she was admired, looked up to. Even sophisticated London friends, normally uninterested in babies, were clamouring to see the twins, though Lisa was keeping them at bay. ‘Janus certainly loves his food. And they do seem to be thriving on the bottle.’
‘You be settled on not giving the basil tea another go?’
‘I can’t manage to feed two of them, Meg. And there’s so much to do, I’m always rushing round. It’s very kind of you, but I simply haven’t got the energy.’
Lisa felt guilty about rejecting Meg’s kind attempts to help her breast feed the infants. Meg was doing all she could to support her, and yet... Lisa realised she was acting almost churlishly towards Meg and smiled brightly to cover up.
‘There is something I’d like to try, though, Meg.’
Meg’s eyes lightened into friendliness. ‘And what be that, then?’
‘You mentioned about valerian tea. A sedative, you said, better than any tranquilliser.’
‘Having problems sleeping?’ The eyes questioned her, sought out intimacy.
‘Rather het up, I suppose,’ Lisa admitted unwillingly. ‘I’m always worrying.’
‘I be sending a few roots round with Don,’ Meg immediately reassured her. ‘Steep an ounce in a cup of cold water for a day or so. Don’t taste that good, mind. And make sure yer don’t take too much.’
‘I won’t.’ In spite of Meg’s obvious concern Lisa could not rid herself of the feeling that Meg was holding out on her somehow, that she’d known something - some other aspect - about having twins which she’d refused to share with Lisa.
What made Lisa even more uncomfortable was her own changed attitude to Meg’s children. She felt them to be a threat to her babies in some mysterious way she simply couldn’t account for. Surely she wasn’t prejudiced by Phyllis’s defect? It wasn’t contagious, after all. The clubfoot had, according to Meg, simply been caused by the position in the womb. Two foetuses, naturally, had less room to play with. And Meg’s twins had been considerably larger than her own. But what really upset Lisa was the look of the brace on Phyllis’ leg. It seemed so obtrusive, so ugly. Perhaps the valerian tea would calm her down about that as well.
Meg kissed the top of Seb’s head. ‘Us knows yer be pressed so us won’t keep yer.’ She made no immediate move to leave, however, but stood, staring at the infants lying asleep near the shaded windows. ‘They be getting on all right?’
‘Getting on?’
‘No little problems?’ She looked at Lisa, then back at the infants. ‘Yer knows, like my Phyllie. Always best to make sure as yer catch small troubles directly.’
Lisa remembered that Meg hadn’t wanted medical interference when Phyllis was first born. It was Frank who’d insisted on the operation. Even the doctors had maintained it was a borderline case. Why was Meg advocating doctors for Lisa now? It seemed entirely out of character for the woman who believed in using herbs rather than modern drugs to cure the occasional minor ailments her family suffered from.
‘They’re perfectly all right, Meg.’
‘Just remember: us can drive yer over to the doctor’s any time,’ Meg said, waving goodbye to Seb and finally moving off.
Lisa hugged Seb to herself, stroked his hair, enjoyed the feel of his strong energetic limbs. She always made a point of spending time with him when he came back for lunch, before the twins’ two o’clock feed.
‘More kitty,’ he insisted. ‘Miaow, miaow.’
‘More kitty, Seb?’ Lisa felt for her little boy and his distress. ‘You mean you’d like a new kitty now. We’ll find one for you very soon.’
‘More, more,’ he persisted.
His insistence on more of everything was beginning to fray her nerves. Lisa kissed him, then brought his paint-box out. He splashed seven similar shapes all over the paper.
‘More kitty,’ he repeated.
Lisa took the brush and added ears and tails to five of the vague blobs he’d sloshed down. Meg had said there’d been a litter of five.
‘More, Mummy!’
She added further ears and tails to two more blobs. That seemed to satisfy him.
The rumbling of a farm vehicle in the drive alerted Lisa to Don’s arrival with the milk. She hurried through to the kitchen and was surprised to see him, milk churn in his left hand, moving around the outside of the house, towards the conservatory. She went out by the back door and followed him.
He turned as he heard her feet crunch gravel behind him. ‘A’rternoon, Missus. Brought t’milk.’ He stood awkwardly, looking beyond her, making no move to hand her the small churn whose contents she always emptied straight into the bottles in the steriliser.
‘That is kind of you.’ Something about Don’s intense stare, his stolid stance, made her feel uneasy, made her wonder why he continued to stand there. ‘Thank you so much.’
He made no move to leave. There was evidently something he was nerving himself up to say. Lisa noticed his leathered cheeks, lined in a dozen runnels. She was startled to find herself thinking what an unusually attractive face it was. The open light grey eyes, honest and clear in sun-creased skin, had the direct sympathetic look of a man who cared. Then she remembered Don had no children of his own. His wife hand reared any orphan lambs on the farm, instead. And he had, Meg had told her, taken a special interest in Meg’s twins. So why was she so nervous of him?
Don was staring through the windows of the conservatory. ‘Be they in them prams now?’ The low diffident voice had finally emerged. It took Lisa by surprise. Was he really concerned about her babies? Though smiling occasionally at Seb, he hadn’t ever spoken to him, or paid any attention to him. Perhaps Don was captivated, like so many others, by the special charm of identical twins.
‘You’d like to see them?’
He nodded, expressive eyes sweeping towards the door and waiting for her to go in ahead of him. He followed almost on her heels, put the milk churn on the floor, and peered first at one infant, then at the other. Lisa expected a perfunctory glance into each pram followed by a quick retreat. Instead, Don took his time, moving his eyes slowly backwards and forwards from one baby to the other. At last the small spare man turned to her.
‘Be them stout littl’uns?’
Stout - Lisa presumed he meant healthy. ‘The doctor said they were exceptionally healthy,’ she said, mystified.
‘Got t’same mark on they ears,’ Don said. ‘Doctor seen she?’
‘It’s just a little mark, nothing to worry about,’ Lisa explained. Don’s powers of observation were impressive.
‘Be hard to tell they apart.’
‘I know,’ Lisa agreed, laughing now. ‘I dress them in different colours just to make sure we know which is which. Yellow for Janus and red for Jeffrey,’ she said, pointing to the tiny T-shirts over their nappies.
‘I’s green,’ Seb put in, looking up at Don, and jiggling Janus’s pram handle vigorously up and down.
‘And Seb’s favourite colour is green. He’s the eldest, so he was allowed to choose,’ Lisa put in quickly, taking the little hands off the handle. She always tried to remember to include Seb. He’d been upstaged by two infants, not just one.
Janus, woken by the violent movement, opened his eyes.
‘You’ll probably need earplugs now,’ Lisa said. ‘He expects the instant appearance of the bottle when he wakes, and he’s got a very healthy pair of lungs.’ Lisa lifted Janus out and held him up for Don to see. The infant’s eyes opened wide. Lisa was struck again by the piercing gleam that seemed to glow from them, then noticed Don’s eyes broaden as Janus focused on him. The stockman stepped back, crashing into the goat’s milk, spilling white liquid all over the quarry floor. He twisted back down rapidly to right the churn, but at least half a pint of milk had oozed along, creeping towards the sisal rug. A large stag beetle, obviously lurking at the sides, began to crawl towards the milk.
‘Sorry, Missus. Baint that cackhanded, usual.’
Lisa hated the sight of the big black carapace moving slowly towards the white liquid. She was about to scoop it up and throw it out when she saw Don’s heavy leather boot move towards it, then crush it. The beetle’s shell crunched open.
‘Don’t worry,’ Lisa breathed, stunned by the speed with which he’d acted. ‘Could you just hold Janus a minute? I’ll fetch a cloth.’
It seemed to Lisa that there was more than reluctance in Don’s eyes as he looked uncertainly at the child, then took him from her awkwardly. She dashed out to fetch a cloth and pail, wondering just why Don had stayed so long and become so clumsy. Coming back through the door she saw Don fingering Janus’s left ear. The child, leaning at an odd angle, looked as though he might slip out of Don’s arms.
Lisa sprinted forward in alarm, dropping the pail with a clatter. Don, startled, grasped the yellow T-shirt, successfully stopping the child from crashing on to the floor.
‘Clothes don’t stay on they tight enough,’ he said as she rushed towards them, holding out her arms. ‘Best use som’utt else.’
Lisa covered her irritation with a grin. This man had nearly dropped Janus on to the hard quarry-tiled floor. Was he presuming to tell her how to look after her own children?
‘Metal be best,’ he said, head down. ‘Baint on for they to rid theyselves o’ metal.’
He handed Janus back to her and took the cleaning gear to mop up the mess, slowly and carefully. Unhurriedly he crunched on several beetles and dropped their dead bodies into the pail. Then he backed out of the conservatory door. The eyes which had seemed so clear before were veiled.
‘Us’ll bring more milk,’ he said, not looking back.
‘When am I going to be allowed to see my new grandsons?’
‘I told you, Sarah. They’re very delicate. The midwife says they shouldn’t be exposed to too many people’s germs.’
‘Poppycock. You just don’t want me around.’
‘If that’s the way you want to interpret it.’ Lisa was already in bed, though it was only half past seven. Feeding the babies every four hours around the clock, and looking after Seb, made her snatch at any extra time she could get for sleep. But it was more than that. She simply could not rid herself of a feeling that something disconcerting was about to happen, a nervousness which showed itself in constant checking that the new infants were still all right. Was she worrying about cot deaths, or feeling guilty that she’d purloined a child she somehow wasn’t due?
Don had upset her. His odd reference to metal kept coming back to her, reminding her of tabbing on the farm. What on earth had he meant?
‘I’m sorry, Sarah. One of the babies is crying. I’ll have to go.’
Lisa was more than usually reluctant about a visit from her mother-in-law. It wasn’t that she harboured any special dislike for her, but something motivated her to keep her children, and herself, away from absolutely everyone, not only locals.
‘It’s the heat wave,’ she lied smoothly to Sarah. ‘And Rita thinks it would be best if no one visits for at least a month,’ she added. ‘There’s measles about. That could be fatal for such tiny babies.’
‘Wouldn’t it be useful if I came down?’ her mother-in-law finally asked, subdued. ‘At least I could take Seb off your hands.’
‘He really isn’t any problem,’ Lisa almost shouted. ‘Actually, he’s very good at helping me.’
Seb, though sadly neglected compared to the days before the twins’ birth, showed no apparent jealousy of his younger brothers. He merely followed Lisa about, handing her nappies, staring at one or other of his brothers lolling in his carrycot or pram, and watched silently as his mother fed them.
‘You’re telling me a child not yet two is more help than I would be,’ Sarah said dryly. ‘I quite see that.’
Lisa was once more overwhelmed by a presentiment of disaster, a feeling of an unknown inexplicable dread hanging over her. She swung out of bed and ran along the corridor, holding the cordless, intent on checking the infants yet again.
‘What’s that odd noise?’
‘I’m on my way to the nursery. The cordless tends to pick up static.’
‘They’re crying again? You need some time off, Lisa. You’ll wear yourself out completely.’
If only her mother-in-law would stop ringing her, Lisa thought dully. If only people would leave her to get on with it, stop telling her how to run her life. As far as she was concerned, she’d worked out a splendid routine. She didn’t need their help.