Trio - [28]

She went into the living room. Robert was watching Coronation Street. She would have liked the chance.

‘I’m taking her out in the pram,’ she said. I can’t stand being cooped up with her any longer.’

He frowned with concern. ‘Do you think that’s…’

‘What?’ She snapped at him. Piercing screams reached them from the hall.

‘If you think it’ll help.’

‘It’ll help me.’

She walked fast around the block, pushing the pram. Trees lined the streets. It was a soft, pretty evening. The hazy evening light, the summer smells of night stocks and roses and honeysuckle, the dreamy quiet of the air seemed to amplify the wretched squalls Nina made. On her way she passed several people. She was sure that the looks they gave her were not sympathetic but were judgmental and suspicious. There she goes. Can’t comfort the poor child. Not her own, of course. Some women just don’t have the maternal instinct. Bad mother.

But she kept on and on, walking until her legs and arms ached and the night dew was falling and the child’s cries stuttered into sobs and then quieted.

Caroline Kay

Theresa

Caroline

Caroline sat at her grandmother’s grave. She had brought a piece of heather from the tops, it had enough roots to take. There was no headstone up yet. They were still carving it, adding her name to that of her husband’s. Both in the same plot. A purchase that had been made shortly after their wedding.

Caroline poked a hole in-between the turves of grass that were growing together over the mound and worked her fingers until it was wide enough and deep enough for the plant. She pushed the wiry, threadlike roots in and pushed the soil back packing it round them. Soft, rich, black soil. The colour of tar. The cemetery was exposed, out on the hillside beside St Martin’s. You’ll have a good view, Grandma. In this light with the haze burnt off she could see right across to the other side of the valley. She could pick out the Colby’s farm, the huddle of buildings and the foursquare farmhouse with its gravel drive. She saw a Land Rover bumping along one of the lanes and, further along, the silver streak of Dunner’s Ditch, where water tumbled down towards Otter’s Gap.

She loved these hills, felt comfortable here, unlike Mary, the friend she’d had at school, who yearned for the bustle of town or the headier excitement of Manchester with all the shops and coffee bars. Caroline found peace up here. No one to answer to, no one to bother her. But she felt lonely these days. Not a feeling she had been familiar with. An ache for warmth, for something to complete her.

Coming home had been a lesson in misery. Like a sleepwalker she had watched her mother set her endless practical tasks with some notion of keeping her busy.

Her mother had continued to act as though nothing had happened. No, that wasn’t true. She had stopped touching her. Unclean. Caroline had felt her face burn when she realised. I’ve had the ceremony, they let me go up to communion now. If the Church can accept me, why can’t you? Was her mother even aware of it? And her father, he was awash with embarrassment and hurt.

She hadn’t a clue what she was going to do but she couldn’t bear the thought of staying here. A life of nothing, a home scorched with shame. She cast her eyes around the graveyard and beyond. She was still alone. She stretched out the length of the plot to one side, where the grass was thick and green and dotted with white clover. She closed her eyes and let the sun heat her skin.

‘Oh, Grandma,’ she said, ‘I had a baby, a little girl.’ Words she could never speak, only to the dead. ‘I gave her away.’ She paused. ‘No, they took her away. I didn’t want… I wanted to keep her.’ She remembered that moment, frozen, the babe in her arms, the nun coming towards her, turning to run and finding her way blocked. No, no, don’t take her! She faltered, pressed her palm to her lips. No tears, empty even of tears. Just that ring of grief stuck in her throat like a bracelet.

She couldn’t stay here to choke her life away. But how could she leave? There were three ways out. Marriage, hardly likely; college, but she’d have to go back to school and down a year and she had no great desire for learning; or work. Go into nursing or the forces, something where lodgings came with the position. She would ask at the library next time she went in.

Kay

The baby’s face wrinkled and a tiny neat sneeze startled her awake.

‘Oh, baby!’ Kay Farrell chuckled at the bundle in her arms. She sat beneath the apple tree in the corner of their garden. The baby had been in the pram but Kay wanted to cuddle her. Dr Spock went on about routine in his book and Kay hoped that picking her up wouldn't end up unsettling her for her feed but she just had to keep holding the child.

It was a perfect June day, the leaves dappled in the sunshine, the scent of cut grass. Adam had done the lawn and was edging it now with the half-moon. She glanced across at him and then at the baby. Their baby.

‘Hello!’ She stared into the dark eyes. She looks so wise, Kay thought, as though she’d got it all worked out. She stroked the miniature hand with her little finger and was rewarded by the small fist clutching tightly. ‘You are strong,’ she said. ‘Are you getting hungry? Mmm?’