Lucy Gordon - The Pregnancy Bond

Over the years he’d taken his own pictures of her, and there was one where everything had come together perfectly. Focus, colour, pose were all brilliant, and in the centre was a girl, laughing with joy because the man she loved was giving her all his attention. Her head was thrown back and happiness seemed to pour from her. Jake had blown this one up and framed it to keep. And then he’d hidden it away in secret.

Now, she thought, she knew everything. But she was wrong. The drawer had two final secrets to yield. First was a pair of baby bootees, one larger than the other. Kelly stared at them a long time, wondering about this man whose heart was so much deeper than she’d suspected.

But it was the last item of all that made her cry: a blue furry elephant, his trunk knocked permanently out of shape on the day she’d thumped Jake with him.

Now she remembered him, that night in the park, saying, ‘It was definitely Dolph the elephant. I know because I-because his trunk was always wonky after that.’

He knew because he’d kept him all these years, grieving for the child they’d lost as deeply as herself, but unable to say so. And perhaps grieving also for those early happy days that had gone. She bent her head and her tears fell on Dolph’s fur.

She felt Jake’s presence as he sat on the bed beside her, and his arms went around her.

‘Don’t cry,’ he said. ‘You can give him to your baby. He won’t mind about the trunk.’

‘It’s not that,’ she wept. ‘It’s everything-we had so much and we lost it.’

He drew her close and she sobbed freely on his shoulder. Now it was his turn to comfort her, and he did his unpractised best.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ he told her. ‘I never really did. Perhaps we never could have kept what we had. We were both so young, and I was clumsy. You had all those exam passes and all I had was “front” and “attitude”. I made them do a good job for me, but in the end they’re not enough. When you got pregnant I was so relieved. It gave me the chance to tie you to me so that you couldn’t escape. Not very nice behaviour, but I wasn’t a very nice character. Look at me-’ He’d taken up the wedding picture. ‘I was a bit of an oaf in those days. You were the best thing that ever happened to me, so I grabbed with both hands.’

‘I was-the best thing-you loved me?’

‘I’ve never loved anyone in my life as much as I’ve loved you. And I never will. All I wanted was for you to love me, and somehow I could never quite believe that you did.’

‘Love you?’ she echoed, astonished. ‘But Jake, I adored you. You must have known that. I positively hero-worshipped you.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew you hero-worshipped me, but that’s not quite the same as love. It was quite scary. I kept waiting for you to discover that I had feet of clay. I reckoned you’d dump me when that happened. In the end you did, but I can’t complain. We had eight years, and that was more than I hoped for.’

At first she was too shocked to speak.

‘But-but it wasn’t like that,’ she stammered at last. ‘It was always me scurrying around in your shadow, afraid I was boring you. You achieved so much-’

‘Only because you told me I could. I was a bum. I had a big mouth and I could talk my way into jobs, but I usually talked my way out again because I annoyed people by being too clever by half. Then I met you, and you actually admired me, which nobody had ever done before. If my name was mentioned people used to say, “Oh, him!”’

‘Jake, that’s not true-’

‘It is true, but you never knew. You made me see myself through your eyes, believe that I could be what you thought me. And then when-when we broke up, you made me see myself through your eyes again, someone who’d taken everything and given back nothing. That’s really why I agreed to the divorce. I reckoned you deserved to be free of me.’ He gave a snort of self-condemning laughter. ‘Even so, I convinced myself that you’d back off at the last minute. I never thought of your flying straight into the arms of another man.’

‘I didn’t, Jake, honestly I didn’t.’

‘What about Carl?’

‘What about him? He’s not my baby’s father.’

He grew still, searching her face. ‘Is that true?’

‘It’s true. Jake, you know who this child’s father is. You do. You’ve always known, really.’

He shook his head helplessly. ‘I don’t know anything any more. It’s no use asking me to work things out. It’s all gone. Everything I used to have or be, it’s all gone.’

‘No, it hasn’t. You’ve still got me, you’ve still got our baby, and you’ve still got your talents.’

He barely seemed to hear her. He laid his hand over her swelling stomach, only just touching it.

‘Our baby,’ he whispered. ‘Ours?’

‘Yours,’ she said softly.

She wished she could see his face, but his head was bent. Gradually he slipped to the floor, resting his head against the swell, and beneath her hands she could feel the violent shaking of his shoulders. She tried to speak, but the effort died. No words would be adequate. No words were needed. She put her arms as far around him as she could and held him quietly while he sobbed.

This might have been despair at an added burden, but her instincts told her that he was weeping for joy. Once she would have found that hard to believe, but they’d travelled far together in the last few months. He was clinging on desperately to anything that would keep him sane in the middle of chaos, and now he had new hope.

‘Tell me again,’ he said huskily. ‘Say this is my child.’

‘Darling, of course it’s yours. Who else’s could it be?’

‘But I thought-’

‘There was never anyone but you. How could there be? I divorced you because I thought I’d lost you already. When you turned up at the party I wanted you to see me as the belle of the ball, for the sake of my pride. But the truth was I still loved you, even though I wouldn’t admit it to either of us. Afterwards, how could I tell you what that night meant to me?’

‘Can you tell me now?’ he whispered.

‘I love you, Jake. I always have and I always will. This baby is yours, and I want you to be there, always, to be his father.’

‘I’m not much of a bargain in my present state.’

‘Stop talking about yourself like that,’ she said fiercely. ‘You’re mine, and I’m never letting you go again. Clear everything out of this place. You’re not coming back here. I’m taking you home for good.’

His answer was to lean his head against her breast, spreading his arms to encompass her and their child.

‘I am home,’ he said.

F ORa while practical matters held their attention. Jake put his flat on the market, finding a buyer at once.

‘But I’d like to keep that money aside for a deposit on a proper home,’ he said. ‘This’ll be a bit small when there’s three of us.’

She agreed, but didn’t say more, leaving Jake wondering how their future life was to be organised. For the moment it was enough that they were back together. When he looked into the future he saw several paths, all with turnings that he couldn’t follow. Yet, strangely, the uncertainty didn’t trouble him. Everything was in Kelly’s hands, and there were no hands that he trusted more.

One day Kelly said, ‘You’re feeling a lot better, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, how did you know?’

‘You’ve stopped talking like a robot. When you were at your worst the words came out sounding harsh and mechanical. Those pills the doctor gave you were good.’

‘It wasn’t the pills, it was you.’ But it was true that the clouds were shifting. Now he found he could organise his work into some kind of order, and at last he had a synopsis of his book.