Never Go There Page 6

Nuala

  Tuesday, 23rd August, 2017

  It was a boy.

  It seemed right, somehow, that she would have a son. He’d be named Maxwell, after her father. She had been thinking of moving back to Oxfordshire, where she had lived as a young child, taking a house in Woodstock or Yarnton, join mother and baby groups, make some friends of her own. Sell this house, their house, the house where, in the rose garden he had loved so much, James’s ashes were buried.

  But, best laid plans …

  At twenty-two weeks, the baby stopped moving.

  Three days of running up and down stairs, drinking iced water, eating chocolate and sugared doughnuts, prodding her belly, massaging her belly, singing to her belly and praying to God that her son would move, would punch, would hit, would somersault and kick her in the ribs, would do anything, anything.

  On the fourth day, she lay on the hospital bed, the lights turned to their lowest, the ultrasound screen showing the white limbs of her son, his stomach and head, his heart still as the moon.

  It was the same sonographer she’d had at the twenty-week scan; the young man with jet black hair who had shown her all the organs inside Maxwell’s body.

  ‘Here are the lungs … heart looks healthy … left ventricle, right ventricle … keep still you cheeky monkey: your son, not you, don’t worry.’

  The stillness had stolen his joviality. He left the room, a touch of her ankle as he walked past. ‘I’m just going to ask for a second opinion.’

  She never saw him again.

  The consultant, all thick grey hair and tortoiseshell glasses, hadn’t been able to meet her eye when he broke the news. ‘A silent miscarriage, no rhyme or reason behind it,’ looking down at the squares of blue linoleum beneath his feet, their colour, like the colour of his skin, turned to ash in the dimness of the room. ‘Sometimes, these things just happen. But I am sorry, so sorry, for your loss.’ A tear slid down his cheek, glistening in the light from the monitor.

  He turned the machine off, a fuzzy scratch of noise as the screen died, the silence behind it breathtaking.

  ‘Turn it back on, please.’

  ‘Mrs Greene, there really isn’t—’

  ‘Turn it back on!’

  He breathed a hoarse sigh and the monitor came back to life, the screen split into four squares and an image of her boy in each.

  ‘From the measurements taken, we think he died about a week ago.’ He stood behind the bench, his hand lightly on her shoulder and his back to the screen. ‘Normally it’s longer, three or four weeks sometimes before the mother finds out. A week may sound like a long time, but it really is comparatively quick.’

  Her son had changed since the last scan. His legs and arms looked longer, head rounder, nose and lips distinct. She could see the shell-like shadows of his ears, the dark zig-zag of his intestines that she couldn’t see before, maybe because of the angle the pictures were taken, maybe because, for these images, he wasn’t moving.

  She listened to the doctor talk about her options, his voice gentle, tired, explaining to her the differences between hospital delivery and home, medical intervention and natural birth, the drugs they could offer her, the test they could do, the decisions she would have to make.

  She didn’t listen. How could she? The room around her, the man behind her, all receded into the black hole, her ears deaf to the constant talking, her eyes blind to everything but the four images of her son.

  A week ago. He had died a week ago, and what had Nuala been doing? Painting his bedroom pastel green, ordering thick curtains so he could nap in the day, putting together his cot because at last, it was safe to do so; his twenty-week scan was all clear.

  ‘I want to go home. I want to take him home.’

  Another sigh behind her, the sound of his hands rubbing his chin. He was talking again, something about the risks of infection, the safety of a hospital, availability of diamorphine.

  ‘I’m going home.’

  The doctor stood in front of the screen, blocking her view of the monitor and staring into her eyes for the first time, the sympathy gone from his voice, replaced with frustration, anger.

  ‘It could take weeks for it to happen naturally, don’t you understand?’

  No, she wanted to say, I don’t understand. How can I?

  He left shortly afterwards, leaving her with a nurse. They wanted to move her, take her to a quiet room somewhere to talk but she wouldn’t go, wouldn’t leave the images of her son on the screen, not even when they offered to print them for her.

  The nurse was red-haired and freckled, lines around her eyes and mouth and neck.

  ‘I’ve finished my shift,’ she said as she walked in, ‘so I can stay as long as you need.’ She dragged a stool next to the bed, looking at the monitor with Nuala, reached over and held Nuala’s hand, her fingers covered in rings, the metal warm and rugged in Nuala’s grip. ‘“Silent Miscarriage” doesn’t do it justice, does it?’

  Nuala held a little tighter onto the woman’s hand, the first tear of many spilling over.

  They sat together, hand in hand, for an hour before the nurse spoke again.

  ‘You might feel scared about the pain.’ She passed Nuala a prescription for painkillers the reluctant doctor had left behind. ‘But the pain won’t be the worst thing about it.’

  And for the first time since James died, Nuala felt someone understood.

  ‘Will there be someone with you at home, when it happens? A friend? Your mum, maybe?’

  ‘My mother?’ Her voice cracked and the nurse had nodded.

  ‘That’s good,’ she said, patting her shoulder. ‘Your mother will help you through it.’

  And Nuala knew that no one would ever understand.

  Her mother had died seven years earlier. James only three months ago. And her son had perished inside her, whilst she painted his room pastel green.

  No one would ever understand.

  She was alone. Completely alone.

  The nurse had been right, though; the miscarriage was far from silent, but the pain, nearly unendurable, wasn’t the worst thing about it. When it was over, and she lay shivering on the bedroom floor, she realised that the worst was yet to come.

  Because her baby was just that: a little baby. She had expected a small alien-like creature, like the pictures in pregnancy books, but what she held in her hands was a little boy. The reality of his eyes, his nose, his tiny pursed lips delved inside and tore her apart because he was so perfect, complete in everything but his size and his breath, because there was nothing she could do, because it was cruel, needless. Because she didn’t understand.

  For two days, she held him to her chest, skin to skin beneath her shirt, singing Seoithín, Seo Hó, just as her Irish mother had done. His body, curled like a foetus, never got cold. His skin was thin and soft and his head, when she had cleaned away the blood and vernix, showed the first strands of hair. Not blond like her, or the sandy brown of James but dark, nearly black, like her mother’s.

  His eyes were closed, she would never see the colour behind the lids but she supposed they would be blue. Newborns mostly had blue eyes, or so she’d read.

  On the third day, she woke in bed, the sheets damp from her milk, and he was not on her chest as he had been, nor had he fallen into the crook of her arm.

  He lay, uncovered, on James’s side of the mattress. She reached for him, pulled him towards her and onto her chest but the softness of his skin had gone. She could smell the end of the umbilical cord where it hung from his belly.

  He was cold.

  And Nuala was all alone.

  She wrapped him in his blue cotton blanket, a pattern of elephants in white parading along, and took him to the garden, to the rose bush and the willow casket that waited beneath its roots.

  She lifted him from his place, nestled against her breast, and kissed his little cheek before settling him down with his father.

  There was a woman out there who didn’t know her son, her only son, was dead. Jame
s had always said to never contact that woman, no matter what happened. Nuala had burned and buried James without his mother. She had done it alone, just as she was doing this alone. How cruel that was, she now realised. How cruel, that they were both alone, but needn’t be.

  There was someone, in that place she’d promised never to go, who might understand. Who could be there for her, help her, who could be the mother she needed.

  Eyes closed, she replaced the lid, filling the hole with blind, empty hands, singing all the while. ‘I’m here by your side praying blessings upon you, hushaby, hush, baby sleep for now.’

  Nuala

  Saturday, 18th November, 2017

  ‘No.’ Nuala looked beyond Lois to the window, to the sky, grey with clouds. ‘No children.’

  ‘Didn’t you want any?’ The tapping sped up. Lois’s knees started bouncing, her ankles and feet jerking in rhythm. ‘Worried a baby would interfere?’

  Nuala kept her eyes on the window, biting the inside of her cheek and reminding herself that this woman had just had a shock, had been plunged into a state of sudden grief, that surely this attack was a reaction to that.

  The clouds were darkening, and the room with it. The light wasn’t on. Nuala looked up to the bulb swinging above her head, covered with grime and dust. There was no heating, no lighting, no cooker, no life. Nothing. This woman had nothing.

  But what did Nuala have herself?

  ‘James always wanted children, always wanted a son. Married for five years and you have nothing to show for it.’

  ‘Six years,’ Nuala said, trying hard not to grit her teeth. ‘We were married for six years.’

  ‘You are listening then! I thought you were ignoring me. Or maybe I’d just hit a nerve.’ Lois leant back in her seat, her eyes brightening as she hit on Nuala’s weakness. ‘So, you were married to my son for six years. And in all that time, he never told you why he wouldn’t come back? Why he refused to contact me?’

  Nuala changed tack, studied the floorboards instead of the sky, the tip of her tongue held tight between her front teeth.

  ‘Does your silence mean no? If so, why don’t I believe you?’ Lois said. ‘You expect me to believe he never told you about me, never told you about this village?’ Lois cocked her head to the side, her thin smile adding crows-feet to her red-rimmed eyes. ‘Did he ever tell you about her?’

  Nuala’s right hand jumped to her left, feeling for a band of gold that wasn’t there. She thought back to the letter, tried her best not to wince, but it was instinctive.

  The words in the letter had been loving. Kind. They’d shown that the sender was longing for James to return, had given Nuala hope James’s mother had changed, was no longer the woman he had described.

  Nuala didn’t think Lois could write such kind words, feel such longing.

  But if she didn’t write them, who did?

  Because James had promised her that she was his first, just as he had been hers. That in a village of people like this, there was no one he wanted, no one he loved. Not until he met Nuala.

  He wouldn’t have lied about that.

  And then Nuala remembered the odd look on Emma’s face when she’d given the name Mrs James. The look on Lois’s when she told her James was married.

  Again she thought of James, not just the oath that he swore over six years ago, claiming he was a virgin like Nuala, but the look on his face as he made it. His eyes wide and earnest, lips parted. It had melted the last of Nuala’s doubts and made her lie down in submission. It was an expression she came to know well. He wore it when she failed to show up for her art school interview and had lost her place as a result: they must have dialled a wrong number, talked to the wrong household, because they never spoke to James and left him the details, regardless of what the Head of Admissions had said. And it was the same look he had worn the morning after their wedding, eating a breakfast of croissants and jam, when he had promised Nuala he would tell his mother he had married.

  Lois kept on smiling, her grin growing wider until her teeth showed, little yellow razors in her mouth. Nuala was reminded of the note left on her car, the scrawl of angry words.

  ‘Would you like me to tell you?’

  Yes, Nuala wanted to shout, tell me, please, but the words wouldn’t form and she shook her head instead.

  ‘A part of you must be curious, on some level at least. After all, if he’d never left here, he would never have met you, isn’t that right?’

  Nuala stared at her knees, her fingers knotted in her lap.

  Lois continued, ‘Or maybe you thought it was all fate, is that it? He was fated to leave this place because he was fated to meet you? You were meant to be?’ She mooned over the words like a school girl, hands clasped to the side of her face.

  ‘I love him!’ she shouted and Lois stopped, hands still caressing her cheek. ‘I loved him.’ She winced at the tense. ‘And he loved me. And you wouldn’t understand, you could never understand because I know you never had that in your own damn marriage!’

  James had told Nuala that he knew his mother never loved his father, how could she? Jim Lunglow had been a brute of a man, James had said. His idea of affection was a cuff round the ear for his son, or a punch on the arm so hard it could never be thought of as fond. His final birthday present for James, when the boy turned eleven, had been a second-hand porno, its pages curled at the edges. James told Nuala he had opened it and cried, disturbed by the looks on the women’s faces. Jim had slapped him so hard he had felt his jaw pop, then he had gone off drinking, come home so blind drunk he’d fallen down the stairs and broken his neck. James said it was the best birthday present he could have asked for and Nuala had known, by his sober voice, that he meant it.

  Jim had been a violent, bad-tempered imbecile nearly thirty years older than the girl he got pregnant, the young woman who became his reluctant wife. What James had failed to tell her was just how young a woman Lois must have been when her son was conceived, fifteen or sixteen by Nuala’s guess.

  Silenced, momentarily, by the slight on her marriage, Lois’s hands dropped down to her lap. Her eyes followed suit until they fell to the floor, resting on Nuala’s leather boots.

  ‘And you really think he loved you first?’

  ‘He did!’ Nuala said. ‘He found me alone and he made me whole, we put each other back together. And yes, we were young and naïve and hopeful but we were never, either of us, carefree. But we cared for each other and split our worries between us from that very first moment, from the second I saw him and he saw me. It’s worth fighting for, that connection, the rarity of being each other’s first love in every sense of the word.’

  She stopped, out of breath, her head awash with James, all of his expressions, his moods, those sudden little changes in manner that made her stomach flip, never sure if it was his praise or criticism she’d be receiving. Remembering his hands on her body, gentle as if he were holding a newborn, his hands in her hair, combing it through with his fingers as she lay with her head on his chest. It had been their connection, he’d always said, their special connection, his body craving her body because it had been the only one he’d ever known. It made up for the times he was silent, or sullen, or told Nuala she was an idiot for something or other. For believing she could ever get into St Martin’s, for example, after she missed the admissions interview. Or that any of her friends would want to come to Nuala’s birthday, because why would they? Really, why would anyone, apart from James?

  They had a very special connection, and it would always see them through.

  ‘You lied to me,’ Lois said.

  ‘No.’ Nuala blinked, her mirage of James melting away and revealing, in its place, his bitter mother. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You said you knew nothing, yet he clearly told you about his damned father.’

  Nuala got ready to defend herself again, to tell this woman she was wrong. But then Lois said, ‘He lied to you, too. He said you were his first, but you weren’t.’

  Nu
ala shook her head because she was sure of what she knew, what James had told her from the very first time.

  Lois lifted her eyes from the ground, drinking in Nuala’s jeans, her sweater, neck, face and hair. ‘He lied to me, too. Made promises, before he left, that he never kept.’

  ‘I’m not like you.’

  ‘I didn’t say you were. I said he lied to you, just like he lied to me. He lied to everyone he cared about, it would seem.’

  That ‘everyone’, that hint that there were others, turned Nuala’s stomach. She felt the rising surge of bile burn her throat, thought of every time James had called her stupid, foolish, an idiot, such an idiot, but it was OK because they loved each other, because their love was special, would outlast every other relationship in existence, no matter what stupid thing she did, or hurtful thing he said, or the way the money in her account made him green.

  ‘You weren’t his first,’ Lois said.

  Nuala closed her eyes, tried to gather her thoughts, but was already aware nothing would work. There were no coping mechanisms that could help her navigate this woman’s venom. She should never have come.

  ‘I want to go home.’ It was meant to be internal, whispered inside her head, but one look at the disgust spreading across Lois’s face told her she had whimpered it aloud.

  She wanted to go into her garden, lie down on the rosebed above Maxwell.

  Lois stood and moved to the window, her back turned, and Nuala knew the mother she needed wasn’t to be found in this room. The mother she needed was already gone, had died with Nuala’s father when Nuala was only just eighteen.

  She was suddenly eager to get out of that house, that tiny cold house, and feel the hard, creased leather of her steering wheel in her hands. Even the guilt she felt over imparting such bad news couldn’t make her stay any longer.

  ‘Look, time is a great healer.’ Nuala didn’t even wince as the cliché slipped off her tongue, she was so eager to escape. ‘James would want you to find some kind of happiness, to move on.’ She spouted out the phrases, one on top of another, desperate for their meeting to end, repeating the tired platitudes she had hated so much, that had made her turn away from the few who had attempted condolence after James’s death. ‘It’s important to remember the good times you shared, the happy memories.’ She massaged her temples, trying to concentrate on the words and not the feeling in her gut telling her to run.