Rosie Thomas - Sun at Midnight

When he had finished protesting she listened carefully. She thought she could hear a tiny, feathery whisper. It was the sound of her illusions, softly collapsing.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said.

He thumped his clenched fist on the bench. It was a theatrical gesture. ‘Listen, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. It was a mistake and I was regretting it even before you walked in. But it happens.’ The way an avalanche happens, or a thunderstorm, presumably. A natural cataclysm that was beyond his control.

Alice said carefully, ‘You didn’t look as though you were regretting it. I’m going back to work now. We’ll have to talk about what’s going to happen, about how to…’ She was going to say put an end to everything, but she couldn’t find a word that fitted. ‘But I don’t want to do it today. If you can’t find a place to stay tonight, I’ll go to Jo’s.’

She was dry-eyed and her voice sounded level, but she didn’t feel in control. Her stomach churned with nausea and the palms of her hands were wet. Then she turned round and walked out through the studio. The polystyrene head was still gently turning on its thread of wire. She had never understood Peter’s art, she thought. She had longed to, had dragged her mind and her senses to contemplation of it over and over again, but she had never been able to make sense of it. She was like Trevor and Margaret, really: just a literal-minded scientist.

Unable to think clearly, she cycled back to her office, combed her hair and drank a glass of water. Then she sat through a long discussion with five of her colleagues about grant allocations for the coming year. She took the minutes, concentrating on noting everyone’s different points with meticulous accuracy. Once or twice, though, when someone spoke to her, she found herself staring at them and struggling to inject meaning into the babble of their words.

‘Are you all right, Alice?’ Professor Devine asked as the meeting broke up. David Devine was the head of her department and an old friend of both of her parents.

She smiled straight at him. ‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine.’ In fact, she felt sick.

From her office, she called Jo. ‘Are you in? Can I drop in after work?’

‘Of course I’m in. I’m always in. The babies are having a bit of a crap day, though.’

‘I’ll give you a hand.’

Jo and Harry lived in Headington. Alice cycled slowly up the hill, buffeted by the tailwind from passing buses, her legs feeling like bags of wet sand. She rang Jo’s doorbell and leaned against the wall of the porch while she waited for her to come to the door. How many times had she stood here?

Jo opened the door with one of the babies held against her shoulder. She cupped the back of his head with one hand and kept him in place with her chin and forearm. There was a bottle of formula in her free hand. Alice kissed her, smelling baby sick and talcum powder.

‘Come through,’ Jo said. She edged past the double babycarrier that blocked the hall and led the way to the kitchen. The second twin was in a Moses basket on the table. He was awake, his black-eyed stare fixed on the shadows moving on the ceiling above him. ‘Cup of tea? Wine?’

‘I’d love some tea, please,’ Alice said. She didn’t think she could keep a glass of wine down although she would have welcomed the bluntening effect of alcohol. ‘Can I hold him?’

Jo handed the baby over at once. He frowned and squinted up at Alice, who knew that she handled him with that stiff, alarmed concentration of the utterly unpractised. He responded by going stiff himself and puckering his face up, ready to start crying.

‘Here, plug this in,’ Jo said, handing over the bottle of formula. Alice poked the rubber teat into the baby’s mouth and he began to suck. She eased herself into one of the chairs at the kitchen table, the Moses basket and a packet of Pampers and a pile of baby clothes at her elbow. Through the open doors into the garden she could see leaves and the ragged, dirty-pink globes of mophead hydrangeas. Getting into his stride, the baby snuffled and sucked more vigorously.

‘How are you?’ Alice asked and Jo half turned from the sink. She looked, as she so often did nowadays, on the verge of tears.

‘I’ve had to start bottle-feeding in the last couple of days. I just can’t go on feeding them both myself. This way, they sleep a bit longer between feeds and I can sometimes get as much as two hours myself.’

‘That’s much better, isn’t it?’

Jo nodded, but without seeming convinced. She wanted to be a good mother, as well as a good girl, and that meant breastfeeding. Alice knew this without Jo having to say as much.

‘Look at me, Ali,’ Jo said quietly.

‘I am looking.’

She was wearing a shapeless shirt under which her breasts swam like porpoises. Her skirt hem hung unevenly and revealed pale calves and unshaven shins, and her pretty face was drawn. Alice thought she looked older but there was also a new solemnity about her, an extra elemental dimension that added greatly to her appeal. Even in her weariness she was sexier than she had ever been before her pregnancy.

‘Sometimes I think that no one ever looks at me now, even Harry. I’m an invisible appendage. I have no function except as a machine for feeding and wiping and tending Leo and Charlie. I’m just a mother. I want to be myself, but I can’t even remember what I was like before this happened.’

‘You are yourself. Only more so. This time will pass.’

Alice wanted to put an arm round her friend, but she was pinned down by the baby she was nursing. And this was only one of them, for a few minutes. When she looked out into the garden again she saw how narrow the view really was. Jo had told her how long it took to get both babies ready to leave the house, even for a walk to the shops. What must it be like, to think that the world had shrunk from its infinite breadth to the four walls of a house and a square of suburban garden?

‘It’s only twelve weeks since they were born. They’ll grow up and start running around.’ With the present helpless morsel of humanity in her arms, Alice realised how very far in the future this must seem.

Jo sighed. ‘I know, of course they will. It is getting better, too. Remember at the beginning when some days I didn’t even find time to get dressed? I’m sorry, Al. I don’t mean to complain. I’m just sounding off because I’ve been here on my own all day. I wanted them so much and I do love them. I didn’t even know what loving meant before I had them.’

She put a teapot and two mugs on the table.

‘Which one is this?’ Alice asked sheepishly.

Jo laughed. ‘Leo.’

‘I’m sorry. I’ll learn to tell them apart.’

‘Don’t worry. Even Harry gets it wrong half the time. D’you want some toast or a biscuit or something? ’Fraid I haven’t made a Victoria sponge.’

Alice shook her head quickly.

Jo eyed her, then sat down next to her at the table. ‘What’s up?’

‘It’s Pete.’

‘Go on.’

Alice told her. While she was talking Leo’s eyelids fluttered and then closed. His gums loosened on the bottle teat and a shiny whitish bubble swelled at the corner of his mouth.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jo said at the end. ‘And I’m sorry for going on and on about my problems without giving you a chance.’

‘You didn’t. You never do that.’

There was a moment of quiet in the kitchen. Both babies were asleep, and the oasis of calm silence was more notable and the more precious because it would last only a few minutes. Jo’s face went smooth and luminous as she stared peacefully into the garden. Alice’s sympathy for her twitched into sudden envy and she bit her lip at the realisation.

She said, ‘The thing is, I’m not sure that Georgia is the only one. Now I’ve seen this much, all kinds of other details seem to be falling into place. Pete’s so evasive and maybe I’ve been convincing myself that it’s just because he’s an artist, needs space, can’t be tied down. When he doesn’t come home in the evenings, when he goes off to Falmouth or London or Dieppe for days at a time, I just get on with my work and feel pleased about how…how separately productive and mutually in accord we are. In fact, he’s probably got half a dozen women on the go, hasn’t he?’