Tessa Hadley - Everything Will Be All Right

He had a distinct impression, however, that Zoe was not managing the baby very well. It cried surely more than they were supposed to, and the mess and smell and chaos in the house were worse than he had feared. Zoe herself was so changed. Her pregnancy had disconcerted him; the distended belly grotesque in its sheer improbability, forcing on whoever saw it naked the unpalatable truth that the oneness of the body is not indivisible. That transformation, however, hadn’t been unexciting. But he was sad that since the birth Zoe was so physically diminished from the proud girl careless of female fuss that she had been. She had always been scornful of women who made a bother about their menstrual cycle; now she was so jangled with hormones that she wept at the news on the radio (over what was happening in Beirut, for example), even if she thought he didn’t see it. Her skin was lusterless; she didn’t seem to find time to wash her hair and wore it pulled back in an elastic band; her stomach was still slack, and her breasts were heavy. She moved him not to desire but at best to a kind of sympathetic pity, which he could perfectly well perceive was the last thing she needed from him or could make any use of. He guessed that she smoldered with resentment against him, and this was exactly the kind of deterioration of their life together — which had been spacious and generous and free — that he had feared would follow the arrival of a child.

Sometimes she gave the baby to him to hold, no doubt in hope that the physical proximity would bring on the tenderness he was supposed to feel. It wasn’t very pretty, although he was amused by its fierce frowning look. He asked himself what bond he felt with this creature made from his own body, and in truth he felt nothing that he might not have felt for anybody else’s baby (some resentment, perhaps, at how its peremptory needs impinged upon him). If it moved him, it was to a blur of dismay at its feeble vulnerability contrasted with the more-than-hopefulness with which it attached itself to its life source, sucking and screaming and shitting, wanting everything. It made him fearful to think how much it didn’t know.

* * *

Simon announced to zoe one day when pearl was about twelve weeks that he was going to take them to visit an old friend of his.

— What old friend? Do I know him?

— Her. She’s got children, that’s why I thought you’d get on. I’ve borrowed a car.

It was absolutely characteristic of Simon that Zoe had had no idea that he had learned to drive or passed his test; he frowned now when she interrogated him.

— It seemed a kind of idiocy not to know. But it’s a process of no intrinsic interest. First you can’t do it, and then you practice, and then you can.

Actually, she thought he was more anxious about the driving than he would ever confess, so she was anxious too, and the journey passed in a tense silence, with Zoe clutching the sleeping Pearl tightly and watching the road as if their lives depended on her concentration. She had thought they would be driving somewhere in Cambridge, but he headed south out of the city, into Suffolk. After forty minutes or so, just outside Haverhill, and as if he had been here before and knew exactly where he was going, Simon pulled off the road into a stony puddled driveway and stopped in front of what looked as if it had once been a farmhouse, patched and extended with a straggle of outbuildings, screened by trees from the road with open fields behind. The house was neither neglected nor done up but in a middle position between the two, with heaps of builder’s sand and bricks and a cement mixer in the yard, all pooled with rainwater. The sun as they stopped was just struggling out from between lowering dark clouds; a blond woman in high-heeled boots and jeans and a white polo neck came round the side of the house as if she’d been listening out for them.

— The front door doesn’t open; we have to go in at the back; nothing works here; my heating was off all last week. Never marry a man who promises he’s going to do everything himself. Hugh has been doing up this place for four years. But he’s also running his own business, selling these trough things for planting made out of old tires, so of course meantime we live on a building site.

She explained all this ruefully to Zoe while she took them round the back — more mud, more heaps of sand and cinder blocks, also a brave showing of daffodils — and into a big warm downstairs room with a low-beamed ceiling, Laura Ashley wallpaper, an old stripped pine dresser, and a huge sagging sofa piled with patchwork cushions. Insulating material was visible around the edges of the windows, and the wiring hung in loops along the beams. Big logs smoldered in an open stone fireplace heaped with several days’ worth of ash; a little fair-haired girl was drawing at a table.

— Everything’s dirty.

The woman wiped her finger along the dresser and showed the dust disgustedly to Zoe. She was pretty and brisk, with a long straight nose, eyes slightly too close together, and natural pink in her cheeks (although the blond was dyed).

— I’ve surrendered in the battle with dirt here. If you knew how I longed sometimes to live in a little new semi with central heating and constant hot water.… I’m Dina, by the way. It’s nice to meet you. Simon’s told me all about you. And this is Simon’s baby. I can’t quite believe it. I must say, I didn’t think old Simon would get caught so soon. But it doesn’t look anything like you, Si. Oh, aren’t they just delicious at this age? Couldn’t you just eat them? Can I have a cuddle with her? No, wait, I’ll put some coffee on first, I don’t know about you two but I’m gasping. And I’m not allowed my first ciggy til I have a coffee. Which sometimes means I have it very early.

Simon was crouched, poking at the fire.

— Do you make decent coffee? I can’t remember.

— So, how do you two know each other? Zoe asked. She couldn’t imagine how this woman came to be a friend of Simon’s; she belonged to one of those types of person whose existence he usually managed to seem entirely unaware of: countryish and probably Tory-voting and definitely not bothered about things intellectual. There were some shelves of books, but they looked like nature books and stately-home books and perhaps even Jilly Cooper.

— Oh! (Dina looked quickly at Simon, as if he might want to answer first.) We grew up together. We lived practically next door. Our parents were friends. Of course, I’m more Ricky’s age than Simon’s; horribly ancient, as I’m sure you can tell. Simon, why don’t you leave that fire alone before you kill it?

— Zoe doesn’t know enough people with children, Simon said. That’s why I brought her.

— Well, children we do have here, if not much else. This is Bryony. (The little girl had climbed down from her drawing and was tugging at her mother to ask if she could hold Pearl.) Megan’s upstairs having her nap, thank God. A moment’s peace. You wait till you meet Megan. Hell on tottering legs, isn’t she, Bryony? And Charlie is at our local school, which is a sweet place. I’ll have to go in the car and pick him up at three-fifteen. My husband is away, of course, as usual.

— I’ll be back before then, Simon said.

— Be back? Zoe was astonished; she had had no idea he was going to leave her here.

— Won’t it be nice? said Dina. The girls will love to play with the baby. I’ve made some soup for lunch. And we could go for a walk if it brightens up. You can borrow wellies. We’ve got every size.

Zoe could hardly protest. And in fact she found herself not wanting to; it was better to be here with company than passing another long day in the mess of home. She might have been shy, but Dina seemed surprisingly eager to entertain her. Without Simon there, Zoe could study Dina uninhibitedly, trying to find out how one became a convincing mother of children. A certain flat manner seemed to work, without excesses of adoration or temper, wry in the face of catastrophe. Megan spilled orange squash at lunch, then scraped her knee jumping off the end of the sofa (“Mummy’ll put magic cream on”). The trick was to manage tortoise pace and businesslike both at once. They all professed to adore Pearl, who didn’t cry but watched the little girls with absorbed interest and then peacefully fed, only twisting her head away to check on her audience from time to time. Dina said she was so envious of breast-feeding—“that lovely time before the mucky eating starts.”